Girls, today is another anniversary of sorts, albeit a grim one. Forty years ago today, in a house addressed 431 Hillside Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey, the bodies of five members of the List family--wife, Helen, 45, daughter Patty, 16 and sons John Jr,, 15, and Frederick, 13, were found encased in sleeping bags in the ballroom of the 19 room Victorian mansion. Upstairs, on the third floor, in the hallway, was found the body of 85 year old Alma List, mother of John List, Sr. the one, who on November 9, back in 1971, coldly and methodically murdered his entire family.
John List should have been a librarian. His appearance, and repressed manner fit the stereotype; a real Wally Cox/Mr. Peeprs sort. Mild mannered and innocuous, it is a wonder no one took List to be gay. But he wasn't.
Now, girls, as you know, I was not a math major, but the formulae of John List's life indicates an equation based on the three R's--Repression, Religion, and Resentment-- that added up to a ticking time bomb that finally detonated on that November back in 1971.
John List was such a Man Of His Time. He was born just a year after his parents married, on September 17, 1925. There was a 25 year age difference between the couple--he was 64, she 39--and he was her cousin's father. (So, she married her uncle????) Mr. List really did not care for children (he always referred to John as "the boy"), and left his upbringing to his wife. John was close to his mother, but grew up in a repressed atmosphere that taught him never to express his true feelings. He was even denied privacy; he slept on a couch in the living room, not even a room of his own!!!!!!!! Nevertheless, he grew to young manhood, graduated high school, served in the Army (where he allegedly suffered Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from the war, a rationale, one author, Augustin Goodrich, uses to almost justify List's heinous acts in his book "Collateral Damage"), went to college, where he received a B.A. in Business Administration, and an MBA in Accounting. Just what the Mainstream Young Man Of The Day studied and went into.
Except List's job history was extremely spotty, due to his inability to hold one. Not so much for performance; said to have had OCD, he was a tireless worker, but something in his manner, an inability to relate to other people, suggestive of a twisted brain chemistry that, had it been known, might have prevented the later tragedies, kept List from becoming the success he felt he should be. A maxim drilled into him by his parents, especially his overbearing, unloving, authoritarian father.
Now, I know what you are going to say, darlings!!!!!!!! People grow up in worse situations than this, and do not become Family Annihilators. But the formulae kept working.
He met widow Helen Taylor in 1951. They were wed, but she had been married before and carried something with her from her former marriage--a case of uncured (as it may have been unknown) syphilis contracted from her first husband. She also tricked List into marrying sooner by insisting she was pregnant. The revelation that she was not drove a rift of resentment into the List marriage.
Nevertheless, in rapid succession, they had three children-- Patty, John, Jr. and Frederick. To the outside, they looked the ideal suburban family. With his heightened sense of religiosity, List taught in the Sunday Schools and served actively in whatever Lutheran Church he happened to be affiliated with. But the job history was still spotty; however, things began to look up, when he was offered a Vice President job at at Jersey bank, not far from the town they moved to in 1965--Westfield.
For about six years, things seemed to be on track. But then, again, List lost his job, and this time, rather than looking for work, he feigned employment status, leaving home each day, going to the train station, riding a few stops, then hanging out somewhere--a library or coffee shop, say--for the entire day, till he returned home in the evening. He and his mother, Alma, shared a joint bank account, and, to feign a salary, he would dip into this.
But it could not go on. The pressures were building. There was an $11k mortgage on the house (purchased, it was claimed, by his wife pushing him), and other bills and debts, which began to mount. His wife was beginning to exhibit a decline in health due to her tertiary syphilis. Things were spinning out of control for John List, including his children, who were coming into puberty, a stage that would surely cause him to lose his tenacious hold on them. Already, his daughter Patty was--oh,my God!!! Appearing in THEATER (!!!!) and was set to star in a school play by Tennessee Williams, a KNOWN HOMOSEXUAL!!!!! List saw a society of evil that would potentially damage his children, and a future of destitution that would ruin them all, including his arrogant pride. He began to weigh his options.
The first was abandonment, but he could not bring himself to that. The second was to let things take their course; go bankrupt, on Welfare, downsize--but this was unthinkable. So guess what he comes up with, darlings???????
Due to a twisted sense of religious irrationality, not to mention brain chemistry, he concludes his family would be better off dead. His wife would be free from her suffering, and the children would be spared the horrors of poverty and sin.
He would, so he reasoned, send all their souls--including his mother--to Heaven. He would not end his life; living it out would be his Repentance. Besides, for him, suicide was a sin that would ban him from Heaven, where, he believed, if he lived out his life, he would be reunited with his family--and forgiven by them!!!!!!! Good luck with that one, John!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope they bitch slap you to Kingdom Come!!!!!!!
It is said List formulated this option as early as September, 1971. And, on the morning of November 9, he carried it out. First, he shot wife Helen, in the back of the head, while she was sipping her morning coffee. He snuck up behind, so she never knew. Hope she got at least a jolt of Java!!!!!!!! Then, he went upstairs to Mother Alma, and shot her. She was found in the hallway, so it is a question of whether or not she knew what she was in for, and tried to escape. The children, at school, were slain once they got home--first Patty, then Frederick, then John, Jr. who had a soccer game that day, and who List watched play, driving him home. List said he was careful to shoot each victim from behind, so they would not know, thus avoiding fear. However, John, Jr. did not go quietly. There was evidence John Jr. put up a considerable fight, for he had been shot more than any of the others--ten times!!!!!! Makes me wonder--since he was John, Jr, List's heir, was he symbolically rubbing himself out?????
With a methodology revealing the OCD he had, List covered his tracks via series of letters, explaining the family would be on a long absence, due to caring for an ailing relation in North Carolina. He wrote a confessional letter to his Pastor, which nevertheless still tried to justify his actions. Before leaving, he turned all the house lights on, to give the appearance of people being home. When, after weeks, with no one seen, the lights began going out one by one, suspicion among the neighbors began to surface. He went on the lam the next day, and was not heard from until 1989. He remained, and still remains, a spooky legend, in Westfield.
Ten months after the murders, a fire mysteriously burned down the List home. It remains unsolved to this day. Speculations range from a cult of Satan worshipers from South Jersey, to a group of Patty's teenage friends, who were into dabbling in the occult.
John List, under the pseudonym, Robert Clark, started a new life in Denver, eventually ending up in Virginia, where he had remarried, again become an accountant, and appeared to be living the same allegedly perfect suburban life, albeit with some of the familiar--ie; job and money--problems still intact. He was found out once his story ran on John Walsh's program, "America's Most Wanted," whereupon he was extradited to Jersey and sentenced to five life terms, in his now mid-sixties. Darlings, I would have loved to see him fry; and I would have had no trouble pulling the lever, but because Jersey had not reinstated the death penalty when the murders took place, he could not be given that sentence.
The rest of his life was a regimented one, which he seemed to like. He was evaluated by psychiatrists, and interviewed by media figures such as Connie Chung. List comes across as frail, due to age, but with a cold steeliness to his voice that can still speak of the murders, thirty years later, with a matter of factness that you or I, darlings, would talk about buying a quart of milk at the store!!!!! But his eyes!!!!!!! Look into them and you see........nothing!!!!!!! They are vacant--no emotion whatsoever. A sign of True Evil.
And the ironies!!!!! List died on March 21, 2008, which, that year, was Good Friday!!!!! How about that???? My irreligious friend, Brett always called that day, "Good Riddance Friday." For John List's death, I would say the name is apt!!!!!!! And the ceiling of the ballroom in the Westfield house was found to have a skylight that was a signed Tiffany original--with a value enough to have gotten List out of the debt he was in.
But even if that had happened, I think at some point the murders would have occurred. Raised by an overbearing, domineering mother, who limited everything he did, especially social contact with others (the fact List did not turn out gay shows the validity of that theory, darlings! Maybe he would have been better off if he had been), then marrying a woman he at heart did not want to, who, due to an illness she kept concealed, had addictive and behavioral problems beyond what he could handle, and always pointed out his sexual inadequacy (though they had three children); while the children were poorly kept due to his lack of being a "good provider", or provider enough for the standards around them; with the kids falling into dishabille in their dress, and heading in what he saw as distinctly immoral directions, the repressions and resentments just kept piling on, like the proverbial Pelion on Osa. List was a narcissist who was all about entitlement and control, and the minute that was loosened, the formulae that made him the ticking time bomb he was would inevitably go off.
My darling Monsieur asks me why I find serial killers, let alone List, so fascinating. I think, with List, it is his remarkable ordinariness, and the unfathomable answer of what pushed him to do acts others may at one time or another fantasize about, but never do. Why did he do it, and not others in similar situations???? Is it a matter of genetics, environment, or both??? And most importantly, to me--all the time List feigned employment, he could have been looking for another job. But he did not. Yet, once on the lam, he had no trouble getting work.
Which shows to me that he wanted OUT. His present day life, had, in his estimation, failed, and he had to eradicate it to start a new one. Because of his obsessive nature, dangerously so, conventional choices such as divorce or abandonment were void to him. It was all or nothing.
So remember the horror of this day, darlings. When the List murders happened, they were a big deal, as nothing like them had ever taken place. In this "Law And Order" age, it seems like with these issues being talked about more, there are more events like this seen than might have been noticed before.
All of which is "thanks" to John List. But let's see these events stop, with List remaining simply a reminder of what horror a person can be driven to. And that you really cannot see inside anyone.
Ta Ta, darlings!!!!!!!! No murder for me; just chocolate fudge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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