Netflix’s latest true-crime docuseries, Worst Roommate Ever probably made aficionados of the genre lose their shit as the five-episode series detailed the harrowing accounts of murderers, conmen and manipulators who made their respective roommates’ lives a literal hell.
Devoid of melodramatic tension, the anthology series, reminiscent of Catching Killers, is told in the most compelling manner. It includes real-life archival footage, interviews with friends, families, detectives and others involved in these intense cases, besides employing animation to make the events more tangible.
The stories do not rely on atmospheric music to build the tension as it is pretty terrifying in its own right. The individual episodes, which are no more than forty to fifty minutes in length, focus on the victims’ stories and help unravel the events that led to such gruesome events.
. Extremely well-produced, the show deftly juxtaposes the innocence and unsuspecting nature of the victims with the sheer malevolence and abhorrence of their vicious roommates. The first three episodes are individual stories while the fourth and fifth episode focuses on the same story. Although the series title is pretty amateur and cheesy, the content is extremely riveting and fascinating.
From gruesome grannies to fraudulent foreign marathon runners, the show has it all. Sinister and vile, these criminals have been ranked from being the least deadly to the deadliest below:
Ranking the deadly con-artists from ‘Worst Roommate Ever’
Youssef Khater
Khater has far exceeded Anna Delvey and Simon Hayut in his global scamming scheme. Although a journal stayed in touch with his crimes, he managed to pose as a marathon runner and scammed an entire community of Palestinian ex-pats living in Denmark, pretending to prepare for a jungle marathon in South America. He also manages to convince a fellow English runner into giving him money before attempting to bash his head with a piece of wood when the former asked him to repay the same.
However, Khater’s notoriety reached its extreme when he scammed a group of roommates in Chile by first taking their money and then attempting to murder a survivor. Although she survived and managed to press charges against him, he was extradited to Denmark from where he went to Costa Rica. His current whereabouts are not known and he is still at large.
Dorothea Puente
While she may come across as a harmless, adorable grandmother, behind her personable facade, lies a cold-blooded serial killer who gets off on killing the harmless homeless she houses within her Sacramento house. After being a regular offender in the eyes of law, she slowly collected herself and climbed up the social ladder after showing off her philanthropic side in the 1980s by opening a shelter for the homeless and providing food to them. While a lot of murderers went unnoticed, it was not until 1988 that Puente’s sinister intentions came to the fore.
After a homeless tenant went missing, a Social Security worker decided to pursue his mysterious disappearance when Puente’s answers did not seem convincing enough. Soon, after a series of important leads, the cops found sleeping pills in her cupboards and quite a few bodies in her backyard. she was arrested for first-degree murder and died in her prison in 2011 while on life imprisonment.
K.C. Joy
Yet another dangerous roommate who spread terror in the minds of Orange County residents after his deeds came to light, K.C. Joy developed an unhealthy obsession with his roommate Maribel Ramos, a military veteran. While they started off as friends, Joy was enraged when Ramos refused to return his feelings. From getting a $10000 face-lift to trying to get on her good side, Joy began showing psychopathic tendencies.
When Maribel’s sister opposed his intentions, very soon, Maribel went missing. While her sister immediately blamed K.C. for it, the authorities did not find enough evidence against him. However, they kept tabs on him until a suspicious internet activity at a public library led them to Maribel’s body and Joy’s subsequent arrest. Guilty of second-degree murder, he was sentenced to prison for 15 years to life.
Jamison Bachman
Perhaps one of the most unimaginable and spine-chilling criminals on the show, Jamison Bachman is a notorious squatter who used a variety of false identities to seek shelter in people’s holmes. As soon as he moved in, he turned his fellow roommates’ lives into a living nightmare, including clogging toilets with cat litter, stealing light bulbs and even forcing previous owners to evacuate the premises by using ominous legal methods.
A ruthless man, he even sent a person’s pet to a euthanisation centre and even attacked one of the roommates with a knife, splitting her thigh open. Although he had no gun on him, the bullets in his room led to his subsequent arrest as he was believed to have murdered his brother. While in jail, Bachman killed himself while awaiting trial.
