26 Facts About John List (murderer)

John Emil List was an American mass murderer and long-time fugitive.

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

John List 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.

John 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.

John List believed that killing them would assure their souls a place in heaven, where he hoped to eventually join them.

John List ended up dying in prison in 2008, at the age of 82.

John List graduated from Bay City Central High School in 1943.

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

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

In 1965, John 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, John List murdered his entire immediate family, using his 9mm Steyr 1912 semi-automatic handgun and his father's Colt.

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

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

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

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

In 1971, as the FBI later discovered, John List had traveled by train from New Jersey first to Michigan, then to Colorado.

John List settled in Denver in early 1972 and took an accounting job under the name Robert Peter "Bob" Clark, one of his college classmates.

John List joined a Lutheran congregation and ran a car pool for church members without transport.

At trial, John List testified that his financial difficulties reached crisis level in 1971 when he was laid off with the closure of the Jersey City bank.

John List diverted money from his mother's bank accounts to avoid default on his mortgage.

John List was dealing with his wife's alcoholism and her untreated tertiary syphilis, contracted from her first husband and concealed for 18 years.

John List filed an appeal of his convictions on grounds that his judgment had been impaired by post-traumatic stress disorder due to his military service.

John List argued that the letter he left behind at the crime scene, essentially his confession, was a confidential communication to his pastor and therefore inadmissible as evidence.

John List eventually expressed a degree of remorse for his crimes.

John List died of complications from pneumonia aged 82 on March 21,2008, while imprisoned at St Francis Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey.

The movie A Killer Next Door, based on the events that led to the capture of John List, was released in July 2020.