Billy Brennan on the Worst Roommate Ever

A Q&A with freelancer Billy Brennan about his New York Magazine feature.

Study Haller Billy Brennan details the years-long reporting that became a near-obsession for him, which turned into his viral New York Magazine piece about the worst roommate ever. 

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I first came onto the story of the “worst roommate ever” in 2013, when I read a short article in the Philadelphia City Paper about a woman in West Philly named Melissa Frost, who had invited a “Hurricane Sandy refugee” into her home only to have him take over her house and refuse to leave. (Memorably, he clogged her toilets with cat litter.) The guy eventually was evicted, but I thought about this story all the time over the years—what he did was so brazen and practiced, I always wondered if he’d done it to anyone else.

When I went freelance last summer, I decided to follow up on the story. In late July, I googled the guy’s name—Jamison Bachman—and found something intriguing: in 2015, a man had tweeted at Melissa Frost, writing: “My name is johnny and I live in Charleston SC. Jamison Bachman is in my house. He is doing the same shit. Please help!” I then emailed Melissa Frost asking if she knew what had become of Bachman, and she replied almost immediately: “He’s actually currently being prosecuted for doing the same thing to a woman recently, then assaulting her.”

She put me in touch with that woman (Alex Miller, whose story I used as a frame for the piece) and another victim who had written to her in 2014, and I began running online court-records searches in Miami, Charleston, DC, New York, Philly—cities where, I was told, Bachman had lived. These court records yielded more names, and I used Nexis Public Records (which I copped access to through a friend on staff somewhere) to find people’s phone numbers and cold-call them.

I spoke to five of his former roommates and a few other sources throughout August, got a sense that there was more to Bachman’s story based on what they told me and the patterns of behavior that emerged, then wrote up a 900-word pitch. My dream outlet was New York Mag, but I decided to be “realistic” and pitch what I considered an “attainable” non-national city magazine. Frustratingly, that magazine sat on the pitch for three unresponsive weeks before rejecting it. I decided I had nothing to lose by just trying to pitch New York, so I retooled the pitch to make it more NYC-focused and sent it to NY Mag in late October. To my complete surprise, the editor responded within a day that he was excited by the idea. A phone call later, andI had the assignment.

Some people who have read the story have remarked upon the shocking twist it takes at the end. In fact, the twist happened for me in real time: the murder occurred about three days after New York gave me the assignment. I went straight to Philly when I got word and spent a few days there gathering documents, making calls, visiting relevant sites, and doing in-depth, full-day interviews with sources. Through one of his former roommates, I also now had access to a large cache of Bachman’s personal papers, which proved invaluable in helping to corroborate parts of his story and track down other victims. (I did almost all the rest of my reporting by phone, except for anything in New York—where I live—and in Philly, where I grew up and, fortunately, could stay at my parents’ house for as long as I needed.)

In the aftermath of the murder, a few previously reticent sources opened up, deciding Bachman was no longer a threat to them. One of those sources was Bachman’s childhood friend, Bob Friedman, who I had talked to once before and who, without offering any detail, had mentioned a terrible crime Bachman had witnessed.  Now he told me the full story, including the detail about the “beheading.” He remembered only that the kid Bachman said had been killed was around their age, had gone to their high school, and was named Ken (he didn’t say anything about a cheese sandwich). The next morning, I went to the local library, found the archived high school yearbooks, wrote down the name of every Kenneth in the yearbooks from 1970 to 1975, and started searching “[name] + Tulane” on newspapers.com. The story Friedman told sounded so outlandish I had doubted it was true, but after about a half hour I found the story of Ken Gutzeit’s murder.

From November to January, I cold-called, emailed, and sent letters to dozens of people I thought could tell me about Bachman, much of it to no avail. But those people I did reach were usually helpful and had a lot to share. Given what Bachman’s roommates told me about his confrontational nature, I had decided at the outset of my reporting to learn everything I possibly could about him before reaching out for an interview, that way I’d be as prepared as I possibly could be for any curve balls he threw at me.

After his arrest for murder in early November, I decided to wait still longer, until his preliminary hearing—scheduled for mid-December—where I planned to approach his public defender. When I showed up for the hearing I was excited and nervous about finally getting to see him in person. But, as I describe in the piece, it turned out he had taken his own life in jail a few days earlier. So I never got to see or speak to Bachman, though I was able to hear his voice—one of my sources had a recording of her first call with him, which her phone had inexplicably recorded and stored as a voicemail. I still wonder what interviewing him would’ve been like, and what he would’ve said in response to my questions about his roommates’ allegations and about his background.

After Bachman’s death in December, I gave up the idea of a full night’s sleep and leaned into my reporting, uncovering new leads about his past—I would probably still be reporting now if, in early January, my very wise editor hadn’t told me to stop and get him a draft by the end of the month. (There’s so much I didn’t include in the piece because I couldn’t quite get to the bottom of it in time.) I sent my draft in on Jan. 31, we did edits and fact-checking in about a week and a half (while I did some last-minute reporting), and the piece shipped the day after Valentine’s Day.

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