America’s Most Wanted had been on the air for less than a year. Because of the show’s success in generating tips in locating fugitives, the producers were inundated with requests from law enforcement agencies nationwide. Due to time constraints, they were forced to turn down most of these requests.

The cases that made it on air in AMW’s early days profiled fugitives who had recently committed crimes and were considered an imminent danger to society. When the Westfield, New Jersey, Police Department contacted the show in early 1989 asking that a murder case from 1971 be profiled, it received a quick “no”. The request was made again and was met with the same answer.

Undeterred and desperate, the police kept persisting. Their prey, John List, had been a ghost since murdering his mother, wife, and three children nearly eighteen years earlier. Finally, after learning the details and the savage nature of the crime, AMW host John Walsh persuaded his bosses to take a crack at it. They were not optimistic about achieving any results.

America’s Most Wanted profiled the case of John List on May 21, 1989. Within minutes of airing the segment, to the producers’ delighted shock, the AMW telephone lines were inundated with phone calls regarding the longtime fugitive.

On June 1, one-and-a-half weeks after being profiled on America’s Most Wanted, John List, the murderer who had vanished without a trace for over seventeen years, was in police custody.

John List

John and Helen List, ages forty-six and forty-seven, married in 1951. By 1971, they had three children: sixteen-year-old Patricia, fifteen-year-old John, and thirteen-year-old Freddie.

The family lived in a large home in affluent Westfield, New Jersey, fifteen miles southwest of Manhattan. The children were popular among their peers, but their patents, in particular their reclusive father, had few friends and rarely socialized.

The List Family:

Top: Patricia and John Jr.

Bottom: John Sr., Helen, And Freddie

John’s eighty-four-year-old mother Alma also lived with them in a separate apartment on the home’s third floor. She had helped her son purchase his home on the condition that she be allowed to live there during her golden years.

Alma List

John’s Mother

John List had been an accountant and Vice President and Comptroller of the Jersey City Bank twenty miles from Westfield. He was well educated and intelligent, but his lack of social skills hindered him in his work.

Unbeknownst to his family, John had recently been fired from his position at the Jersey State Bank due to his poor relations with customers. By November 1971, he was in serious financial trouble and in danger of losing his home.

John told neighbors the family would be out of town for upwards of a month and sent notes to his children’s schools stating they would be visiting Helen’s ailing mother in North Carolina for several weeks. He also stopped the mail, milk, and newspaper deliveries.

Socially Awkward

Neighbors noticed all lights in the List home were on during both day and night despite seeing no activity at the residence. No one began to suspect anything was amiss until early December as the lights began burning out when there was still no apparent activity at the residence.

On December 7, the Lists’ neighbors contacted the police. After repeated knocks on the door went unanswered, they entered the home through an unlocked window. As they did so, they were struck by three things: how cold the home was, a foul odor, and the sound of music. The music spooked the officers; one said it sounded like “funeral dirge type music.” He was about to find out how appropriate the description was.

The List Home

Officers called out identifying themselves, but they received no response. The music grew louder and the odor grew stronger as police neared the home’s ballroom. They recognized the stench as the smell of decomposing flesh. As they entered the ballroom they came upon what they knew would be a gruesome scene.

Lying side by side on a blood-soaked sleeping bag were four bloodied bodies.

The Home’s Ballroom

The victims were identified as forty-six-year-old Helen List and her three children, Patricia, John, and Freddie. All had been shot to death at close range. A blood trail on the floor indicated each had been in shot the kitchen before being dragged to the ballroom.

In searching the rest of the home, police found Alma List shot to death in her third-floor apartment.

Autopsies showed the victims had been dead for approximately one month.

Family Annihilated

On the desk in John List’s study, police found a note stating the murder weapons could be found in a desk drawer labeled ”guns and ammo.” In the so-marked drawer lay two guns, List’s own nine-millimeter Steyr 1912 semi-automatic handgun and his late father’s Colt .22 caliber revolver.

Ballistics tests showed they were the weapons used in the murder of the family.

The Fired Weapons Are Filed

Sitting on a desk was a letter signed by John List addressed to the family pastor. Dated November 9, 1971, it was the family patriarch’s confession and his rationale for killing his family.

The Beginning of List’s Letter

List, a devout Lutheran, wrote that his family was turning away from God and that his murdering them would save their souls before they completely abandoned the almighty creator. He bemoaned his overbearing mother for constantly degrading him and scorned his wife for drinking alcohol and having contracted syphilis from her first husband, Marvin. The children were no better; at school, Patricia was in drama and dance while John and Freddie were playing sports, activities the elder John considered immoral.

List believed he had sent his family on the highway to heaven and wrote that he looked forward to reuniting with them . . . but not for a while.

In List’s View, He Killed His Family To Save Them

List had graciously sent his family into eternal happiness, but for him, heaven could wait. He believed annihilating his family would not prevent him from ascending to heaven but suicide would. God would decide when to call John List home, but John List decided when his family would leave this Earth.

John List had not left this world, but he had left town, and he had a month’s head start. Tracking the killer proved a frustrating endeavor.

After Leaving The Letter

List Leaves Town

One month later, on December 9, two days after the discovery of the bodies, List’s 1963 Chevy Impala sedan, was found at New York City’s JFK Airport. The date on the parking voucher was November 10, the day after the date on List’s letter confessing to the murder of his family.

Investigators, however, found no evidence that List had boarded a flight.

Car Is Found

But The Killer Is Long Gone

The murder of the List family was probably New Jersey’s most notorious crime since the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. thirty-nine years earlier. The manhunt for the mass murderer was also the Garden State’s most intense since the hunt for the infant’s killer. To investigators’ chagrin, this manhunt would last considerably longer.

Reported sightings of List poured in from across America throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, but none could be confirmed.

FBI Wanted Poster Of John List

As the years passed, the FBI created aged-enhanced drawings and computer-aged images of the fugitive, but the renderings also failed to produce clues to his whereabouts.

No Trace Of List

In desperation, the Westfield police turned to the popular new reality television crime show America’s Most Wanted.

AMW decided to take the age enhancements one step further by enlisting the services of Frank Bender, a forensic sculptor renowned for his facial reconstructions of the unidentified dead. In studying a deceased persons’ skeleton, Bender, working with clay and then casting his pieces in plaster and painting them, created sculptures depicting how decedents may have looked. Many of his sculptures were uncannily accurate and succeeded in putting names to people.

America’s Most Wanted asked Bender to apply his talents in a different format. The forensic artist adept at creating renderings of the dead was asked to create a sculpture of a man responsible for five people being dead.

Bender had not done this procedure, but he was not one to back down from a challenge. He created a sculpture of how he believed John List would look after over seventeen years in hiding.

AMW  Host John Walsh And Forensic Sculptor Frank Bender

Revealing Bender’s Bust Of An Aged John List

In creating his sculpture of an aged John List, Bender studied every photo of him though the most recent ones were nearly twenty years old. He also studied photos of List’s parents at various ages to see how their appearance changed over the years. In addition, he read every newspaper article about the fugitive and consulted forensic psychologists in an effort to develop a psychological profile of the killer.

Frank Bender had done his homework. His test came on the evening of May 21, 1989. His grade would be an A+.

The Facial Sculpture Of John List

Shortly after America’s Most Wanted broadcast Frank Bender’s bust of John List, the AMW telephone lines lit up with calls from Denver, Colorado. Several viewers said the bust looked exactly like a man who had recently moved from Denver to Richmond, Virginia.

The callers insisted the man they knew as Bob Clark was a carbon copy of the John List bust, and to the authorities he certainly sounded like John List. While in Denver, the man had worked as an accountant and was an active member of the Lutheran church.

Bob Clark was again working as an accountant when he was located in Virginia. Investigators agreed with the Denver tipsters that he looked virtually identical to Frank Bender’s sculpture of John List.

When confronted, the look-alike denied being the fugitive. His fingerprints, however, were obtained and found to match those John List had submitted for a gun permit over twenty years earlier. The gun was one of the weapons used in killing his family.

                                    Bust of John List      “Bob Clark”

On June 1, 1989, John List, the family murderer who had vanished without a trace for over seventeen years, was arrested eleven days after being profiled on America’s Most Wanted.

Frank Bender’s aged-enhanced sculpture was amazingly accurate. He had correctly depicted List’s receding hairline, the jowls around the mouth, and the further developing of a scar behind List’s ear.

A Remarkable Rendering

Bender had cast List in a suit and tie, believing that was the attire mostly worn by the conservative killer. When arrested, List was clad in such clothes, which acquaintances confirmed he wore on most occasions.

In addition, List was wearing the same model thick-rimmed framed glasses as shown on Bender’s bust.

Bender Even Dressed The Killer

At his trial, John List testified he was too ashamed to tell his family had lost his job at the Jersey City Bank several months before the November 1971 murders. To make ends meet and to avoid defaulting on his mortgage, he skimmed money from his mother’s bank account. At the time of the murders, List said his mother was suspicious of his financial peril and he was faced with possibly having to put his family on welfare, which he considered immoral.

A court-appointed psychiatrist testified List suffered from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCD), and that he saw killing his family and sending their souls to heaven as a more acceptable alternative than welfare because he feared that would expose the family to ridicule and violate his authoritarian father’s teachings regarding the care and protection of the family.

List Tries to Rationalize His Actions . . . 

The jury was unsympathetic. On April 12, 1990, John List was convicted of five counts of first degree murder. At his sentencing hearing he denied direct responsibility for his actions, saying, “I feel that because of my mental state at the time, I was unaccountable for what happened. I ask all affected by this for their forgiveness, understanding and prayer.”

The judge was also unmoved, imposing a sentence of five terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

. . . But He Is Convicted  

A Korean War veteran, List appealed his convictions on grounds that his judgment had been impaired by post-traumatic stress disorder due to his military service. He also argued that the letter left at the crime scene, essentially his confession, was a confidential communication to his pastor and therefore inadmissible as evidence.

A federal appeals court rejected both arguments and affirmed the murder convictions.

Appeals Rejected

In a 2002 prison interview, List expressed a degree of remorse for murdering his family, saying, “I wish I had never done what I did,” and “I’ve regretted my action and prayed for forgiveness ever since.” He also reiterated, however, he believed he would, when God called him, be reunited with his family in heaven.

List Expresses A Modicum Of Regret

John List died of complications from pneumonia at age eighty-two on March 21, 2008, while imprisoned at the St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey. No one can say for certain, but, if you believe in a Christian afterlife, the chance of List’s soul gaining admittance to heaven seems unlikely.

Not Likely In Heaven

The amazing accuracy of John List’s likeness led Frank Bender to create more sculptures of fugitives who had been at large for many years. Several of these busts also led to captures.

The man who helped capture John List also continued producing sculptures to help in the identification of John and Jane Does. The adept forensic artist was also one of the founding members of the Vidocq Society, a group of specialized individuals who attempt to solve cold cases.

Frank Bender died of mesothelioma in 2011 at age seventy. The likelihood of his gaining entry to heaven, one would think, are a little better than those of John List.

More Likely In Heaven

John List’s murder of his family is similar to another family annihilator case I have covered.

Brad Bishop is charged with bludgeoning his family to death in 1976, four-and-a-half years after List annihilated his family. Both List and Bishop murdered five people; their mothers, wives, and three children. Each had a head start before the victims’ bodies were discovered, giving them time to disappear.

Frank Bender also did age-enhanced busts of Bishop. Unlike his sculpture of List, the rendering of Bishop did not lead to his capture. Over forty-eight years after murdering his family, Brad Bishop remains at large.

Here is the link to the write-up on Bishop.

Bishop’s Sins

On November 24, 1971, fifteen days after the List family murders in New Jersey, a man hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft across the country in the airspace between Portland and Seattle. The man, who registered as Dan Cooper but who was mistakenly reported in the press as D.B. Cooper, jumped from the airborn jet after extorting $200,000 in cash. His identity and fate has never been determined.

The fugitive John List was proposed as a suspect in America’s most famous air piracy case.
He somewhat resembled a composite drawing of D.B. Cooper and was questioned by the FBI after his capture. He denied being Cooper and while he is still occasionally mentioned as possibly being the unknown hijacker, the FBI no longer considers him a suspect.

                                      “D.B. Cooper”            John List

On August 20, 1972, ten months after the murders, the List home was destroyed by arson. No one was ever arrested for the burning and the crime remains unsolved.

A new home was built on the site in 1974.

An Unknown Arsonist Destroys The List Home

As he began his fugitive life in Denver in 1971, John List, alias Bob Clark, became active in the Lutheran Church. Through his church work, List met and began a relationship with Delores Miller. The two married in Denver in 1985 and moved to Richmond, Virginia, in 1988. List, alias Clark, told Delores his first wife had died from cancer and that they had no children.

Delores divorced “Bob Clark,” her husband of four years, after John List was convicted of murder.

Delores Miller Clark

The 1993 made-for-TV movie Judgment Day: The John List Story was a largely fictionalized account of the murders. In an eerie irony, List was portrayed by Robert Blake, who was later tried for the murder of his second wife, Bonny Bakley, in 2005.

Unlike List, Blake was acquitted of his wife’s murder, although he was found liable for her wrongful death in civil court.

Of All the Actors 

To Portray John List

A member of my Facebook group sent me this high school picture of John List.

Young John List

The family annihilator John Emil List is not to be confused with University of Chicago Economics Professor John August List. They are not related.

The Other John List

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23081/helen-list

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23082/patricia_morris_list

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23084/john_frederick_list

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23083/frederick_michael_list

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23085/alma_marie_barbara_florence_list

• Denver Post
• Los Angeles Times
• Richmond Times-Dispatch
• New York Times
• Washington Post