The Netflix true-crime documentary, released by the horror-genre-famous Blumhouse Productions TV and movie company, hit streaming on March 1st – and the internet has been buzzing about its living partner horror stories ever since. In the show’s last two episodes, the titular “worst roommate ever” is a man by the name of Jamison Bachman.
As previously mentioned, Bachman has been dubbed a “serial squatter” since he started making headlines. The term fleshes out his M.O.; Jamison Bachman was a charmingly convincing con man (of sorts) who would move into a living space on good terms, and then refuse to leave when things inevitably turned sour with his roommates due to his behavior. The Netflix true-crime series shows how he’d agree to move in with an unsuspecting person who was looking for someone who’d bunk in their residence and split the bills. However, after not long at all, Worst Roommate Ever illustrates how he’d refuse to pay his share of living expenses. Not only that, a much more insidious side of Bachman would slowly permeate to the surface, becoming scary and/or violent, and making his roommates fear for their safety.
Unfortunately, Jamison Bachman didn’t dive into these ventures unprepared; he was a self-educated expert when it came to tenancy laws. And though he wasn’t an actual lawyer (though he often pretended to be one that simply wasn’t practicing), he did have a law degree. He knew all of the loopholes to shield him from swift eviction and even channeled his manipulative talents to use court systems and the police against his roommates who were clearly in the right. Before taking his own life in police custody in 2017 after a mini-spree of violence, Bachman wreaked havoc on a slew of different people in different locations on the east coast of the United States. Here’s a rundown of his victims, even ones that weren’t featured on Worst Roommate Ever:
Arleen Hairbaedian, Sonia Acevedo, & Alex Miller: Where Are They Now?
Worst Roommate Ever explains what happened to three of Jamison Bachman’s victims via personal interviews. Arleen Hairbaedian first met Jamison Bachman in 2005. The pair started out as friends, and eventually struck up a more romantic relationship. Bachman moved in quickly when he seemed to need a place to say, and then swiftly stopped contributing financially. He started receiving mail at the address, and things only went downhill from there. Bachman stayed at Hairbaedian’s apartment for almost four years, even after their relationship dissolved along the way and she wanted him out. Hairbaedian mainly started living in her spare bedroom, and says cohabitating with Bachman “was like coming home to this monster.” She was even put in jail after Bachman told police she came at him with a knife (which she adamantly says never happened), and she was subsequently put on probation for a year and kicked out of her own apartment by the court system. Jamison Bachman kept harassing Haribaedian’s landlord (who’s also interviewed in Worst Roommate Ever), along with another tenant in the building until he was finally evicted.
The Netflix documentary also interviews Sonia Acevedo, who, at the time of her interactions with Bachman, lived in a by-the-beach condo in Queens, New York. She needed someone to help with her mortgage and chose to pick Bachman as a roommate because he seemed like a “successful” and “mature” lawyer when he answered her Craigslist ad. He moved in immediately in February of 2012, but he stopped paying rent that summer. Acevedo had to take on extra work to supplement Bachman’s portion of the mortgage, and he even used his behavior to drive another brief roommate away. She says she felt scared with Bachman in the next bedroom. He eventually left the residence when Hurricane Sandy hit, but Acevedo ended up losing her condo to foreclosure. She even says in Worst Roommate Ever that she can’t afford to retire anymore because of how behind she got financially while saddled with Jamison Bachman’s cruel antics.
The Netflix true-crime show also interviews Bachman victim Alex Miller. She became his roommate in March 2017, when he initially interacted with her under the alias of “Jed Creek.” Things eventually reached a frightening, violent boiling point after Miller tried to annoy Bachman to the point where he’d finally leave the apartment. Miller says that he was violent with her, even slashing her leg with a knife. She filed an order of protection against him, which, after being bailed out of jail, he then violated by threatening to kill her during a meeting to retrieve his belongings. Unfortunately, as Worst Roommate Ever shows, Jamison Bachman’s brother bailed him out of jail a second time, just before the criminal brutally murdered his brother and took his own life in police custody. In the documentary Netflix crime series, Miller says she was forced to leave her apartment after Bachman left because of the drama he stirred up with his behavior. She says about initially trusting him (and all of his victims seem to echo the same sentiment), “I made a mistake, a very great mistake. I trusted his word. I saw him as a good man.”
