The 18 year case of John List.
John Emil List was born on 17th September, 1925 in Bay City, Michigan. John followed his father's footsteps and became a Sunday school teacher and a devout Lutheran. During world war11 he enrolled in the army and worked as a laboratory technician. In 1946, after getting discharged from the army he enrolled in the University of Michigan.
During the 1950's when the Korean war escalated, John was asked to serve the army again. Around this time he met Helen Morris Taylor. Helen was beautiful and already had a daughter. The two of them connected and soon got married. Later the family moved to Northern California.
John then started to work at a paper company in Kalamazoo. There they had 3 children(Patricia, John Jr, Frederick) and started a family.
Things were going good for the List family, but then in 1959 things started going downhill. When Helen became a raging alcoholic. It was said that she became very unstable at this time. She took out most of her anger on John.
In 1965 John was offered a position at a bank in New Jersey. So the family, along with John's mother, moved there. They moved to a 19 room Victorian mansion called "Breeze Knoll".
Everyone thought they had a "perfect life". His coworkers kind of envied him, but they also stated that John was 'cold'. Actually John lacked social skills and that was the reason he lost his job. But instead of telling his family, he would go to the train station and sit there all day. So no one would know that he had lost his job.
But the bills were due and he needed to come up with a plan soon. So he came up with a plan..
On 19th November, 1971, John decided to murder his whole family. At first he shot his wife in the head from behind, who was just enjoying her morning in the house. Then he went to his mother's room and shot her right above the left eye. In the afternoon when his kids, Patricia and Frederick, arrived home from school, he shot both of them in the head as well. Then he went into the kitchen and made himself some lunch.
Afterwards, he went to his bank and closed his and his mother's account and took out all the money from her account. Then he went to his son, John Jr's Soccer game. He watched him play. But after they got home, he shot his oldest son as well. He shot him multiple times because according to John "he tried to resist and run away".
Now John considered himself religious. So after committing all the murders he wrote a 5 page letter to his pastor, confessing to all the murders. He said that he killed his family to save their souls, and that the 70's were a very sinful time and he was worried that his family was giving into the temptations.
Then he put the bodies in sleeping bags and kept them in the ballroom of the mansion. He even cut off himself from all the family portraits, so when the police do show up, they won't find him. He turned down the thermostat, turned on the radio and then just like that, he was gone.
So the family used to be very reserved, so no one came to check on them. John even stopped milk, mail and newspaper deliveries. But the neighbors noticed that all the lights were always turned on in the house. But then the lights began to burn out one by one. That is when they got suspicious.
A month after the incident the neighbors reported the police and they immediately found the bodies.
They searched and searched for John but they found 0 to no evidence. All the reliable evidence had already been destroyed.
But 18 years later in 1989 John was found through the famous TV show 'America's Most Wanted'. In that show, they showed a forensic facial sculpture of John. Frank Bender created the sculpture according to what he thought John would look like after all these years. He even gave him glasses because he had a theory that John probably used glasses to disguise himself. And he was completely right about that.
A couple in Denver watched the show and they realized that the sculpture looked oddly similar to their old neighbor. So they called the hotline and through this couple they were able to find John.
They arrested him and ironically he looked exactly like the sculpture. He was even wearing the same frame of glasses. John stood by his fake identity for a month, but when they showed him all the evidence, he finally confessed.
So here's what John did in those 18 years:
According to John's statement, After the murders, he left the family car near the airport, then traveled by train and bus from New Jersey to Michigan and then to Colorado. He then went to Denver and took an accounting job there with the name Robert Peter Clark.
In 1985, he married a woman by the name of Dolores Miller. Then they moved to Virginia and freely lived there for many years.
Trial:
In his trial, John stated that back in the day he was financially struggling. He even blamed his wife's alcoholism at one point. Psychiatrists said that he had obsessive compulsive disorder. So for him there were only two options. Either ask for help or kill his family. Nothing in between. John was very prideful so asking anyone for help wasn't an option. He said that he was sparing them from the shame. He also believed that if he kills them, they'll go to heaven.
On 12th October, 1990, he was convicted of five counts of first degree murder and sentenced to 5 consecutive terms of life imprisonment. He was ineligible for parole for almost 75 years.
At the age of 82, on 21st March, 2008 John died from pneumonia. Regardless, John showed 0 remorse and no guilt for his actions.
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