John List (murderer)

Born in Bay City, Michigan, List was the only child of German American parents John Frederick List (1859–1944) and Alma Barbara Florence List (1887–1971).

Like his father, List was a devout Lutheran and a Sunday school teacher.

John Emil List (September 17, 1925 – March 21, 2008) was an American mass murderer and long-time fugitive.

List graduated from Bay City Central High School in 1943.

That same year, he enlisted in the United States Army and served as a laboratory technician during World War II.

His father died in 1944.

After List was discharged in 1946, he enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's degree in accounting, and was commissioned a second lieutenant through ROTC.

In November 1950, as the Korean War escalated, List was recalled to active military service.

At Fort Eustis in Virginia, he met Helen Morris Taylor, the widow of an infantry officer killed in action in Korea, who lived nearby with her daughter, Brenda.

John and Helen married on December 1, 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland, and the family moved to northern California.

The Army, recognizing List's accounting skills, reassigned him to the Finance Corps.

After completion of his second tour in 1952, List worked for an accounting firm in Detroit, and then as an audit supervisor at a paper company in Kalamazoo, where his three children were born.

By 1959, List had risen to general supervisor of the company's accounting department; but Helen, an alcoholic, had become increasingly unstable due to syphilis she had contracted from her first husband, which she did not disclose to List before their marriage.

In 1960, his stepdaughter Brenda married and left the household, and List moved with the remainder of his family to Rochester, New York, to take a job with Xerox.

There, he eventually became director of accounting services.

Westfield, which had few violent crimes recorded since 1963, received national attention as the site of one of the most notorious felonies in New Jersey since the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.

In 1965, List accepted a position as vice president and comptroller at a bank in Jersey City, New Jersey, and moved with his wife, children, and mother into Breeze Knoll, a 19-room Victorian mansion, located at 431 Hillside Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey.

On November 9, 1971, he killed his wife, mother, and three children at their home in Westfield, New Jersey, and then disappeared.

He had planned the murders so meticulously that nearly a month passed before anyone suspected that anything was amiss.

List assumed a new identity, remarried, and eluded justice for nearly 18 years.

On November 9, 1971, List murdered his entire immediate family, using his 9mm Steyr 1912 semi-automatic handgun and his father's Colt .22 caliber revolver.

While his children were at school, he shot his wife Helen, 47, in the back of the head, then his mother Alma, 84, above the left eye.

As his daughter Patricia, 16, and younger son Frederick, 13, arrived home from school, List shot each of them in the back of the head.

After making himself lunch, List drove to his bank to close both his and his mother's bank accounts, and then to Westfield High School to watch his elder son John Frederick, 15, play in a soccer game.

After driving John Frederick home, List shot him repeatedly because, as misfire evidence showed, his son attempted to defend himself.

List placed the bodies of his wife and children on sleeping bags in the mansion's ballroom.

He left his mother's body in her apartment in the attic.

In a five-page letter to his pastor, found on the desk in his study, List claimed that he saw too much evil in the world, and he had killed his family to save their souls.

He then cleaned the various crime scenes, removed his own picture from all family photographs in the house, tuned a radio to a religious station, and departed.

The murders were not discovered until December 7, nearly a month later, due in part to the family's reclusive tendencies, and in part to notes sent by List to the children's schools and part-time jobs claiming that the children would be visiting their ailing maternal grandmother in North Carolina for a few weeks.

Helen's mother was in fact ill, and had canceled a visit to Westfield because of it; had she made the trip, List later said, she would have been his sixth victim.

List also stopped milk, mail, and newspaper deliveries.

Neighbors noticed that all of the mansion's rooms were illuminated day and night, with no apparent activity within the house.

After light bulbs began burning out one by one, they called the police.

Officers entered through an unlocked window leading to the basement and discovered the family's bodies.

He was finally apprehended in Virginia on June 1, 1989, after the story of his murders was broadcast on the television program America's Most Wanted.

After extradition to New Jersey, he was convicted on five counts of first degree murder and sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment, making him ineligible for parole for nearly 75 years.

List gave critical financial problems, as well as his perception that his family members were straying from their religious faith, as his motivations for the murders.

He believed that killing them would assure their souls a place in Heaven, where he hoped to eventually join them.

List died in prison in 2008 at the age of 82.