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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 6: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 7: The true accrowd of the man who murdered his family
Speaker 7: in their New Jersey mansion and eluded a nationwide manhunt
Speaker 7: for eighteen years. Until nineteen seventy one, life was good
Speaker 7: for mild manner to accountant John List. He was vice
Speaker 7: president of a Jersey City bank and had moved his mother, wife,
Speaker 7: and three teenage children into a nineteen room home in Westfield,
Speaker 7: New Jersey. But all that changed when he lost his job.
Speaker 7: Raised by his Lutheran father to believe success meant being
Speaker 7: a good provider, List saw himself as another failure. Straining
Speaker 7: under financial burdens, the stress of hiding his unemployment, as
Speaker 7: well as the fear that the free spirited seventies would
Speaker 7: corrupt the souls of his children, List came to a
Speaker 7: shattering conclusion. It was my belief that if you kill yourself,
Speaker 7: you won't go to heaven, Lis told Connie Chung in
Speaker 7: a television interview. So eventually I got to the point
Speaker 7: where I felt that I could kill them. Hopefully they
Speaker 7: would go to heaven and then maybe I would have
Speaker 7: a chance to later confess my sins to God and
Speaker 7: get forgiveness. List methodically shot his entire family in their home,
Speaker 7: managing to conceal the deaths for weeks with a carefully
Speaker 7: orchestrated plan of the set. Then he vanished and started
Speaker 7: over as Robert P. Clark, chronicling lists life before and
Speaker 7: after the Grizzly murder. Death Sentence exposes the truth about
Speaker 7: the accountant turned killer, including his revealing letter to his pastor,
Speaker 7: his years as a fugitive with a new name and
Speaker 7: a new wife, his eventual arrest, and the details of
Speaker 7: his high profile trial. Revised and updated. The book they
Speaker 7: were featuring this evening is Death Sentence, The inside story
Speaker 7: of the John List Murders, with my special guest journalist
Speaker 7: and author Joe Sharky. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 7: you very much for a Greenness interview. Joe Sharky, Hi, Dan,
Speaker 7: my pleasure. Thank you very much. First off, tell us
Speaker 7: when this book was originally published and tell our audience
Speaker 7: how you came to be in a position to write
Speaker 7: this book and want to write this book.
Speaker 2: Originally published in nineteen ninety by Signet. I had been
Speaker 2: a an editor at the Wall Street Journal, and I
Speaker 2: lived in that part of New Jersey, not far from
Speaker 2: in the New York City suburbs, not far from Westfield,
Speaker 2: and was just fascinated by the fact that this guy
Speaker 2: had I was mostly fascinated by how he managed to
Speaker 2: disappear into thin air basically after committing this heinous crime.
Speaker 2: So I sort of I sort of just threw myself
Speaker 2: full time into kind of finding out who in the
Speaker 2: world journalist was. And I got to say, I'm sort
Speaker 2: of an outlier on the on the consensus about why
Speaker 2: he did what he did. He uh the Connie Chung interview,
Speaker 2: which by the way, he did from she did from
Speaker 2: his prison after he'd been convicted, UH, really allowed him
Speaker 2: to spatter off about this, uh, this religious I'm gonna
Speaker 2: want to send my family to heaven, which I always
Speaker 2: thought was bologna. I think I had this guy's number
Speaker 2: in that he was he was.
Speaker 8: He was a greedy, he.
Speaker 2: Angry guy who the nineteen sixties in the early seventies
Speaker 2: sort of threw him into a rage about the way
Speaker 2: that his world had changed. And his daughter, who was
Speaker 2: sixteen and by all accounts a nice kid, a bright kid,
Speaker 2: who had ambitions to be in the theater. Every time
Speaker 2: Patty List came in the door, she brought the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties in with him. And I think that really, that
Speaker 2: really triggered John List. He decided he'd been fired from
Speaker 2: the series of jobs, good jobs. You know, he was
Speaker 2: apparently a good accountant, but nobody liked him, and eventually
Speaker 2: he wore out his welcome at every job he had,
Speaker 2: so in the job in New Jersey, he was fired,
Speaker 2: and he tried to act as if the world was
Speaker 2: against him, but he also hid the fact that he
Speaker 2: was unemployed. He was draining his mother's bank account. His
Speaker 2: mother was he was a mama's boy, and you know,
Speaker 2: and by the end he had drained the bank account,
Speaker 2: the house was about to be foreclosed on, and I
Speaker 2: just think all these things came together and he decided
Speaker 2: to wipe his slate clean. And you know, I guess
Speaker 2: his religious I really think the religious beliefs are overstated.
Speaker 2: Although he was he was he was an evangelical religious guy.
Speaker 2: But I think, you know, it lays a lot on
Speaker 2: religion to blame it, but to allow John List to
Speaker 2: get away with that, With that that excuse, he left.
Speaker 2: He left a note for his pastor at the crime scene.
Speaker 2: Now weirdly and I was also fascinated by this when.
Speaker 8: He left us out his nineteen.
Speaker 2: Room sort of dilapidated mansion in Westfield, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: is the town that Charles Adams the cartoonist used as
Speaker 2: his model for the Adams Family settings, a lovely suburban
Speaker 2: town when he got a when he left, he sort
Speaker 2: of he had planned these murders, which he executed one
Speaker 2: by one as the kids came home from school over
Speaker 2: the course of a horrible day. And then he murdered
Speaker 2: his mother, and he'd already killed his wife in the morning.
Speaker 2: He left the house, he turned on all the lights,
Speaker 2: he turned down to thermis that he turned on the
Speaker 2: radio high to a classical music station out of New York,
Speaker 2: and then off he went.
Speaker 8: And he disappeared.
Speaker 2: Three weeks three and a half weeks went by, and
Speaker 2: the teenage girls friends Patty's friends in high school she
Speaker 2: was in a drama class, were increasingly frantic over the
Speaker 2: fact that she wasn't around, She wasn't going to school.
Speaker 2: Liz had left a couple of phone calls saying that
Speaker 2: the family was going out of town on a somebody
Speaker 2: had died and they were going out of town. But
Speaker 2: after three weeks or so, it was clear that something
Speaker 2: was wrong in this house, and the kid I think
Speaker 2: there were maybe ten of them in the high school
Speaker 2: drama class, finally desperate, they knew that something was wrong
Speaker 2: at Patty's house, that she was terrified of her father. Desperate,
Speaker 2: they broke into the house one night in December of
Speaker 2: nineteen of nineteen seventy one, and they found the bodies,
Speaker 2: which was a horrible, defining experience for these kids. But
Speaker 2: that's the weird part about this story. And I think
Speaker 2: my book Above Suspicion is the only one that has
Speaker 2: this aspect of it, that it was the kids who
Speaker 2: found the scene. You know, the bodies were lying in
Speaker 2: the ballroom of the house where it list had arranged them.
Speaker 2: The mother was dead upstairs in her apartment, her atic apartment,
Speaker 2: and the kids didn't know what to do. They knew
Speaker 2: that they shouldn't have been in the house, so they
Speaker 2: created enough of a ruckus that neighbors called the police,
Speaker 2: and that always managed to in the trial, all was
Speaker 2: papered over the fact that it was the kids who
Speaker 2: found the crime scene, and then the cops, of course
Speaker 2: were on Were the cops uh as good responding to
Speaker 2: the scene, as some other accounts had made it, I
Speaker 2: don't think so. I think the Westfield Police Department at
Speaker 2: that time, they came charging into the scene. The crime
Speaker 2: scene was disturbed. Too many people were there. There was
Speaker 2: the problem with the fact that the kids had found
Speaker 2: had found the bodies, The kids were in the house.
Speaker 8: It was a bit of a mess.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, all that you know was occurring in
Speaker 2: Westfield while John List had disappeared, he'd gone west and
Speaker 2: he ended up he went to Denver where he just
Speaker 2: sort of re emerged as a person. And it interested
Speaker 2: me because in that time, I think was probably then
Speaker 2: the last time in America that.
Speaker 8: You could disappear without trace.
Speaker 2: You could you could go go and find a new life,
Speaker 2: start over. Not many questions asked if he were clever
Speaker 2: and cunning, which he was, and he managed to start
Speaker 2: this new life, which also fascinated me enormously so, and
Speaker 2: he lived that new life sort of the same way
Speaker 2: he lived his old life, although without the baggage of
Speaker 2: what he thought of the baggage of his family. For
Speaker 2: eighteen years, he married some poor woman who didn't know
Speaker 2: his background and who sort of was credulous about him,
Speaker 2: and you know, he got away with it for eighteen years.
Speaker 2: He had a pretty good life as far as he
Speaker 2: defied it for eighteen years until finally the boom got
Speaker 2: lowered on him. So that's that's by fascination with John List.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about a little bit about John Lyst's upbringing,
Speaker 7: because you talk about this, you talk about his religiosity,
Speaker 7: and then the excuse that he had to you know,
Speaker 7: kill them so that maybe they could go to heaven.
Speaker 7: Some didn't sound like much of an excuse. It didn't
Speaker 7: make any logical sense for a guy that's very logical.
Speaker 7: But the importance, the importance of the Lutheran Church is
Speaker 7: very important to this story. From the upbringing that John
Speaker 7: List had from his father, which was a devout evangelical
Speaker 7: Lutheran member.
Speaker 8: Of the church.
Speaker 7: You also talk about his odd and this comes up
Speaker 7: in this book from all kinds of people, the unusual
Speaker 7: behavior of John List as a young man. Instead of
Speaker 7: playing outside, John List had other activities. So tell Us
Speaker 7: a little bit about the relationship he had with his
Speaker 7: mother and his father, which were very odd and definitely
Speaker 7: contributed to his upbringing, which was strange to the.
Speaker 2: Making of John List. I agree the father was a
Speaker 2: task minister. Let's not blame the poor Lutherans for this.
Speaker 8: But he grew up.
Speaker 2: In a Lutheran evangelical environment in the Midwest, uh decidedly
Speaker 2: German uh uh oriented Lutheran evangelical sector, and that was very,
Speaker 2: very conservative. A household where he was expected to h
Speaker 2: to make himself very make himself small.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: The mother was overprotective. He Uh, he was known as
Speaker 2: a kid.
Speaker 8: Even to somebody.
Speaker 2: He'd be wearing gloves in you know, in in May.
Speaker 2: He didn't go outside much. And I don't mean to
Speaker 2: imply that that that he was, you know, a total nerd.
Speaker 2: I mean he he was drafted into World War Two.
Speaker 2: He served at the end of World War two in Germany.
Speaker 2: I mean he was he had been a you know,
Speaker 2: he was a World War two soldier. And when he
Speaker 2: got out, Uh, he he met.
Speaker 8: The woman who became his wife.
Speaker 2: And she was different from him. She was she was
Speaker 2: she was a drinker, she was lusty, she she was
Speaker 2: by all accounts, somebody you kind of enjoyed being with
Speaker 2: a party. He very much, you know, had been. It
Speaker 2: was in his makeup to just to really be against
Speaker 2: that that that kind of openness.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: But he was a mama's boy. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: know how to define that except except by John List.
Speaker 8: He was weird.
Speaker 2: And when he you know, don't forget he eventually ends
Speaker 2: up away from the Midwest and in a progressive, small,
Speaker 2: medium sized town in New Jersey where he stands out.
Speaker 2: I mean he mows his lawn in a suit and tie,
Speaker 2: and I mean that makes you stand out in a
Speaker 2: place like westchil.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 2: But he was active, he was in the I think
Speaker 2: he was a he was a cub Scout leader.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because
Speaker 2: because of his religiosity in a place where you know,
Speaker 2: the town of the you know, a tound of churches.
Speaker 2: But but not like uh, overtly devout, if you know
Speaker 2: what I mean.
Speaker 8: He was. He was in a different culture.
Speaker 2: The kids were not. The daughter particularly was was thriving
Speaker 2: in this new environment and you know, in the New
Speaker 2: York suburbs with with a plan. Uh, she really had
Speaker 2: an idea that she'd be in the theater. She was
Speaker 2: apparently pretty good, uh, in various local plays, and he
Speaker 2: he just simmered about that. He thought that was there,
Speaker 2: there is where his really religiosity came, and he thought
Speaker 2: he thought the kid was headed for a decadent lifestyle.
Speaker 2: The wife, at this point, it would been, had been
Speaker 2: sick for a long time.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 2: I think when he when he decided to murder everybody,
Speaker 2: I think the you know, the the the targets where
Speaker 2: the wife and the daughter, the others. And he actually
Speaker 2: in prison, he looked up with some uh x c
Speaker 2: I agent and he in this x c I age
Speaker 2: and his name was Austin god Rich got together well.
Speaker 2: Blist was in prison and wrote a book that they
Speaker 2: self published called Collateral Damage. And he referred to the
Speaker 2: to the kids and the wife and the family as
Speaker 2: collateral damage. But I think he was really talking about
Speaker 2: the two sons he killed, the two teenage boys and
Speaker 2: the mother as collateral damage, because I believe firmly that
Speaker 2: he meant that it was the wife and the daughter.
Speaker 2: The emerging sexuality of the daughter in particular, I think.
Speaker 8: Was one of the triggers.
Speaker 2: The journalists he was sexually repressed. He was not the
Speaker 2: kind of guy you would want as a neighbor, although
Speaker 2: you know you didn't expect him to do what he did.
Speaker 2: So that was the journalist as I as I kind
Speaker 2: of saw him to this.
Speaker 8: Damn.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's been what's been thirty years. I'm so
Speaker 2: angry when I think of John List.
Speaker 8: I mean, the guy just bugs me.
Speaker 2: And particularly bugged me that he wrote that he self
Speaker 2: published this self serving book, that nobody read it. It was
Speaker 2: badly it was badly published, and it's got full of typos.
Speaker 8: But you know, he makes.
Speaker 2: These excuses, and then he trotted out an excuse of
Speaker 2: PTSD from World War Two. And I look carefully when
Speaker 2: I want to do the new edition of the book,
Speaker 2: I wrote a new epilogue. Particularly in the book, I
Speaker 2: look carefully at his military record and his claims to PTSD,
Speaker 2: and it really doesn't stand up. He was in a
Speaker 2: very very very slight combat situation. I just think the
Speaker 2: guy was he was just full of bocus excuses for
Speaker 2: what he did.
Speaker 7: When you when you write about his father, though just
Speaker 7: near the beginning of the book, you talk about his
Speaker 7: father when he was a young boy, thought that Halloween
Speaker 7: was a Satanic event, and so that he was ridiculed
Speaker 7: and humiliated. I think that's really important, this humiliation in
Speaker 7: his story, and that he was humiliated and they called
Speaker 7: him trick or treat Johnny So, and then this idea
Speaker 7: that he spent time instead of playing with other boys.
Speaker 7: He didn't just hang out with his mother. He read
Speaker 7: the Bible with his mother, discussed the Bible and read
Speaker 7: the Bible, and that continued through his life. So not
Speaker 7: to disagree with you about the religiosity being affront it's
Speaker 7: in how important it was to these murders. But seriously,
Speaker 7: his religion was. He took it very very seriously, and
Speaker 7: that created all kinds of conflict with his wife and
Speaker 7: his daughter and really didn't let him make relationships with
Speaker 7: other people because of his staunch beliefs. Let's even go ahead,
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, let's talk about his wife though, because aggressively
Speaker 7: he realizes that no matter what he does for his wife,
Speaker 7: no matter what he tries to provide, and he really
Speaker 7: does try to provide anything that she might want, tell
Speaker 7: us the situation in terms of her in her mind,
Speaker 7: because she was a widowed woman at all, only been
Speaker 7: widowed six months when she met John List. So, as
Speaker 7: you write in the book, what are some of the
Speaker 7: things that John found out about his wife and and
Speaker 7: about the relationship itself.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, again we're into his uh, his his
Speaker 2: repressed and kind of angry sexuality. The wife had been married,
Speaker 2: uh to a guy, uh an their do well guy
Speaker 2: who was a soldier in Uh I think Korea. I
Speaker 2: forget yeah, Korea, I think, and uh was killed UH.
Speaker 2: And one of the one of the themes that's that's
Speaker 2: very uneasy in this story is that she evidently uh
Speaker 2: got syphilis from from the first husband. And syphilis, you know,
Speaker 2: is something that after the first stage, you can live with,
Speaker 2: and then in the final tertiary stage, it creates uh
Speaker 2: something very close to uh sinility, and you know, the
Speaker 2: symptoms are Helen List was suffering from from advanced syphilis,
Speaker 2: which doesn't show up again until you until you're you know,
Speaker 2: in your late middle ages, which which happened to her.
Speaker 2: That that obviously was part of what was driving this
Speaker 2: guy kind of to the brink. Uh. He was the
Speaker 2: daughter was was assuming the role of of mother, and
Speaker 2: the house she was cooking meals. He I think, you know,
Speaker 2: to his if I give him any credit for anything
Speaker 2: he did. As you say, he did try to provide
Speaker 2: for the wife. She got more and more cranky and angry.
Speaker 8: She was difficult.
Speaker 2: I mean, she deserving murdered because you know, she was
Speaker 2: a difficult woman and he was. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: understandably she that was a bit difficult with him. But
Speaker 2: you're right, he did. Journalists thought that he deserved to
Speaker 2: be in the upper middle class, affluent and you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of the suburban stereotype of the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: and into the sixties. And he, you know, he did
Speaker 2: everything he could with his limited abilities and his limited social.
Speaker 8: Ability.
Speaker 2: He did every good everything he could do. This he's
Speaker 2: always in debt, he was always owing money, and you know,
Speaker 2: and that all sort of just came to a climax
Speaker 2: in the you know, by nineteen seventy.
Speaker 8: He was he was just a sad case people in Westfield.
Speaker 2: I mean, you want to go back to the father.
Speaker 2: There's a key of that, because the father was weird,
Speaker 2: you know, was a religious crank. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: what you might say, and don't forget in this enclave
Speaker 2: in the Midwest, and when you transplant that son to
Speaker 2: a pretty rested place like Westfield, New Jersey. You know, genuinely,
Speaker 2: it's the kind of town I mean, it's the time.
Speaker 2: You see it all the time on TV commercials because
Speaker 2: they shoot TV commercials in Westfield, as the exemplar of
Speaker 2: a small town America is right across the river from
Speaker 2: New York. Even among the you know, the Evangelical Lutherans
Speaker 2: in town, he stood out as kind of a crank.
Speaker 8: They were, you know, they were.
Speaker 2: The pastor was very it was close to him, but
Speaker 2: a lot of people in the congregation are like, wow,
Speaker 2: this guy is really weird.
Speaker 8: You know, he was.
Speaker 2: He was considered rigid and judgmental. And you know, back
Speaker 2: to the father. The father had been like nuts about
Speaker 2: Halloween some recent Halloween. The father saw Halloweens as demonic,
Speaker 2: which is you know, kind of amusing in twentieth century America.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen seventy one, the daughter had a Halloween
Speaker 2: party in the basement of their house. And part of
Speaker 2: the trigger I think was, you know, kids came, you know,
Speaker 2: kids came dressed as hippies and as devils and as witches,
Speaker 2: and you know, this sort of in the background, in
Speaker 2: the in the darkness that watched this party and sort
Speaker 2: of took that in. I don't think it was you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think it was the precipitating event, but it
Speaker 2: was part of it. He saw the daughter as becoming
Speaker 2: is reflecting a kind of satanic influence in society. So
Speaker 2: that was part of John list, But I don't think
Speaker 2: that that was the driving part.
Speaker 8: I just think he was greedy.
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Speaker 8: You do?
Speaker 1: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
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Speaker 7: You also write, though, that Helen is complicated in that
Speaker 7: she wants to get married and she tells them that
Speaker 7: she's pregnant, and knowing his religious you know, religiosity, he
Speaker 7: is proud to have slept with anyone, it seems, and
Speaker 7: proud to have this pretty woman, This is an attractive woman,
Speaker 7: and wants everybody to know about it. Tell us what
Speaker 7: happens about the pregnancy.
Speaker 3: She has.
Speaker 2: She has a kid, and he adopts the kid. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a you know, there's a part of John Liston
Speaker 2: in that stage of his life that is not entirely wicked.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: He tries to be a good father. I think by
Speaker 2: some accounts he is. Don't forget the mother, his mother
Speaker 2: is always on the scene. The you know, the wife,
Speaker 2: I don't want to say she's a trophy.
Speaker 8: Wife, but she's somebody. You know, he's proud of her.
Speaker 2: But very early on the the wife becomes a source
Speaker 2: of anger to him because she's she's flirty at parties.
Speaker 2: I mean they socialize in in in Michigan, and she's
Speaker 2: she's flirty with other men. She's you know, she's kind
Speaker 2: of just a vivacious person. And he he very early on,
Speaker 2: presents that. And I think that marriage was it was
Speaker 2: marked by by his jealousy of his wife that then
Speaker 2: eventually evolved into just anger and resentment of her. And
Speaker 2: I think that I think then, you know, once the
Speaker 2: daughter who we're now in Westfield, New Jersey, and once
Speaker 2: the daughter began emerging sexually, I just think he combined
Speaker 2: those those rages and boom.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about the economic situation. He's a talented do
Speaker 7: what you're told accountant. At one time, he goes from
Speaker 7: a modest job to twenty five thousand dollars a year
Speaker 7: to start. Then he gets then he loses that job,
Speaker 7: and then he goes to Xerox, and by the time
Speaker 7: he gets to Westfield again, it looks like that he's
Speaker 7: got a good job, it's got a good future. But
Speaker 7: tell us what his economic situation is many many of
Speaker 7: the times, and especially when he gets the Westfield what
Speaker 7: is he trying to keep secret concerning his financial.
Speaker 2: Don't forget that in the nineteen fifties, you know, I
Speaker 2: say this as a as a member of the baby
Speaker 2: booming generation. But in the nineteen fifties that you know,
Speaker 2: my parents' generation, Uh, it was it was fairly easy
Speaker 2: to get a job. I mean, you know, the economy
Speaker 2: was booming, and company Xerox was, you know, a new company,
Speaker 2: and and John List benefited by that.
Speaker 8: He was.
Speaker 2: He was I don't want to say he was smart,
Speaker 2: because if you had to deal with him, you quickly decided,
Speaker 2: this guy's a bit thick. But he got he got
Speaker 2: fairly good jobs. He was a competent, He was competent
Speaker 2: with numbers. But step by step by step he would
Speaker 2: get a good job and and his his his bosses
Speaker 2: would decide, this guy can't adapt. He was he was
Speaker 2: unable to h you know, to change with with with
Speaker 2: with a rapidly changing economic environment in the as the
Speaker 2: fifties you know, became the sixties. I think Xerox is
Speaker 2: a good example. He had a pretty good job at Xerox,
Speaker 2: but Xerox was becoming like a major, major company at
Speaker 2: that time, and he wasn't able to adapt, and he
Speaker 2: was he was let go when he got to New
Speaker 2: Jersey again. You know, we're talking a fairly booming economy.
Speaker 8: In the New York area.
Speaker 2: Banks were i mean, the houses were being built and
Speaker 2: you know, the housing market was hot, and so a
Speaker 2: bank in Jersey City he managed to get a job
Speaker 2: as a vice president. Now he wasn't a top executive.
Speaker 2: You know, bank like that has a lot of vice presidents.
Speaker 2: And eventually he just wore out as welcome. He was
Speaker 2: he's not somebody who wanted to work with and that
Speaker 2: was the end of the road for him. When he
Speaker 2: was the excuse me, no longer able to bring home
Speaker 2: a salary. He pretended that he had a job. He
Speaker 2: would dress up in the morning, leave this dilapidated mansion
Speaker 2: and and sort of hide. He went into New York
Speaker 2: City some days and watered around Times Square and you know,
Speaker 2: went to i think visited peak shows in Times Square.
Speaker 2: And he sometimes he just sat in the railroad station.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he sat at the bus station and read the
Speaker 2: New York Times and then came home at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, which was he was deeply embarrassed about
Speaker 2: not being a part of the you know, the the
Speaker 2: economic success all around him, and he had this you know,
Speaker 2: this this house, this weird house, nineteen room mansion. I
Speaker 2: mean it was you know, I hate to use the
Speaker 2: word mansion imprecisely, but.
Speaker 8: You could call it that.
Speaker 2: It was a part of an a state that had
Speaker 2: been built, you know, in the earlier part of the century,
Speaker 2: that that had fallen into disrepair. He and Helen managed
Speaker 2: to buy it thanks to the money that was the
Speaker 2: down payment available from the mother. It was cheap, but
Speaker 2: the deal was that his aging mother had to come
Speaker 2: along with them, and she lived upper in the attic
Speaker 2: apartment of the.
Speaker 7: House you talk about. He had power of attorney over
Speaker 7: his mother's money, but she was up and near so
Speaker 7: it would make sense that her only son would take
Speaker 7: care of those kind of details in the end. But
Speaker 7: what did he use his power attorney for at that
Speaker 7: time when he was having financial problems and what did
Speaker 7: he plan to do with this these finances well, the
Speaker 7: mother had when they moved to Westfield in the late
Speaker 7: nineteen sixties, to this house that.
Speaker 2: The mother had enabled his mother had enabled them to buy.
Speaker 2: She had two hundred thousand dollars in her savings account,
Speaker 2: which was transferred to a bank in Westfield and she
Speaker 2: was in she was well into her eighties. Then he
Speaker 2: he had he had access to her bank account, and
Speaker 2: little by little, partly with her awareness, and then again
Speaker 2: and then later you know, without her awareness, he was
Speaker 2: draining that bank account to even when he was employed,
Speaker 2: I mean, he was draining it to uh, you know,
Speaker 2: to buy stuff, things that you know, were beyond his
Speaker 2: ability to buy otherwise. And by the end he had
Speaker 2: he had drained that that bank account over I guess
Speaker 2: the period of three years, up to four years maybe,
Speaker 2: and it was down to a I think a couple
Speaker 2: of eighteen hundred dollars. But she then and at the
Speaker 2: last stage when he was when he was carefully planning
Speaker 2: this day of murder, he uh, he took the money out.
Speaker 8: Of the bank and that was his that was his stake. Uh.
Speaker 2: He emptied the bank account shortly before he murdered everybody,
Speaker 2: and that basically was his stake. He traveled cheap, I mean,
Speaker 2: to to Denver to start his new life. He didn't
Speaker 2: have much money. He uh he went by bus and
Speaker 2: everybody thought he might have floiled somewhere. He left his
Speaker 2: car att JFK Airport and then and then took a
Speaker 2: bus back into into New York City and took a
Speaker 2: bus west. He he said he always wanted to see
Speaker 2: the mountains. And so he ends up in Denver with
Speaker 2: not much money, but he quickly finds uh he has
Speaker 2: enough money to rent a cheap trailer in a trailer
Speaker 2: park on the inn near the Interstate UH, adjacent to
Speaker 2: a holiday and where he manages after he's uh set
Speaker 2: himself up in this new environment, manages to get a
Speaker 2: job as a kitchen helper at the holiday and and
Speaker 2: eventually he's apparently a good cook, so that that is
Speaker 2: eventually to become the assistant cook at this place. And U,
Speaker 2: you know, bit by bit by bit, John List re
Speaker 2: emerges in this new life. And that always fascinated me,
Speaker 2: like a like a photograph in a trade being developed
Speaker 2: here and here he is and it's John List. It's
Speaker 2: the guy you know, nobody found him.
Speaker 7: It's interesting at that time, like we alluded to or
Speaker 7: spoke of before, is that it was a time when
Speaker 7: you could get one piece of identification and from there
Speaker 7: get a driver's license and build this incredible new identity.
Speaker 7: That that's correct.
Speaker 2: It only took one or two pieces of I D.
Speaker 2: And it was then. I don't know how it is now,
Speaker 2: but it was. I'm sure it's not true now. It
Speaker 2: was then easy enough to get a Social Security card.
Speaker 2: That was the piece of That was the piece of
Speaker 2: paper he needed. And he planned that so that he
Speaker 2: could get a Social Security card under the name of
Speaker 2: Robert Clark Uh. That that's basically what he needed. And
Speaker 2: he was he was, well, okay, here's here's where he
Speaker 2: was smart. He was smart enough to know that step
Speaker 2: by step at that time, you could build a new identity.
Speaker 2: So you go from a social Security card to a telephone.
Speaker 2: You've got a telephone in your trailer, so you've got
Speaker 2: a telephone bill. You now have a couple of pieces
Speaker 2: of paper, and bit by bit by bit, you've you've
Speaker 2: established yourself in the West where the West was being
Speaker 2: you know, Denver was being flooded with with with people
Speaker 2: who had moved west to find a new life. And
Speaker 2: so it wasn't unusual for a guy like John Less
Speaker 2: to show up in a place like this as Robert
Speaker 2: Clark Uh had to very carefully.
Speaker 8: But I mean it was he wasn't a genius.
Speaker 2: If it wasn't like he was a James Bond.
Speaker 8: Or anything about this.
Speaker 2: But at that time you could do it. You have
Speaker 2: a bank you have a you know, you have a
Speaker 2: uh SO security card, you have a bank account, you
Speaker 2: have a phone bill. You can really you could then
Speaker 2: re esta publish yourself as a person. Now there was
Speaker 2: of course a nationwide manhunt out for this guy, and
Speaker 2: he didn't change his identity. He wore the same glasses,
Speaker 2: the same you know, black frame classes. If you if
Speaker 2: you encountered him and you know him, you would have said,
Speaker 2: that's John List. And I was always fascinated by this.
Speaker 2: Then when eventually, at eighteen years goes by, you know
Speaker 2: a long time, he just lives his life as he
Speaker 2: had lived it before, although in reduced circumstances he's back
Speaker 2: in the church. Why they didn't why the FBI didn't
Speaker 2: go didn't press evangelical Lutheran churches across the country about
Speaker 2: John List, like if this guy shows up quaus is
Speaker 2: a big question. And I think it's because at the
Speaker 2: time the FBI was under tremendous criticism for its nefarious
Speaker 2: activities in against the anti war movement, and they were
Speaker 2: very reluctant, I think to become involved and you know,
Speaker 2: pressing churches to find to find a guy who they
Speaker 2: I mean, that's where you would expect he would turn
Speaker 2: up pretty quickly, is in a church like that, and
Speaker 2: he did. I mean, okay, eighteen years goes by, and
Speaker 2: he and his wife, who really has no clue.
Speaker 8: She thinks he's a widower. She's a little.
Speaker 2: Unhappy with him because he's a he's an annoying person.
Speaker 2: His patterns are the same, although he didn't kill her.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: He lives next door in this Denver convo condo to
Speaker 2: an old Irish lady who doesn't like him. Her name's
Speaker 2: Wanda Flannery, and Wanda is a friend with his wife,
Speaker 2: de Laura Dolores. But Wanda is not at all amenable
Speaker 2: towards Dolores's husband, Robert Clark. You know, he doesn't beat
Speaker 2: her or anything, but he you know, he's just somebody
Speaker 2: she doesn't like. She didn't try, and she has her
Speaker 2: eyes on him. She has no reason to believes, you know,
Speaker 2: he's a murderer. But one day in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: Wanda was an avid reader of supermarket tabloids, which she
Speaker 2: read for amusement. She was kind of you know, I talked,
Speaker 2: I went out there and talked to her and she said,
Speaker 2: you know, she felt silly reading them. It wasn't like
Speaker 2: she believed in all this stuff. But in the Weekly
Speaker 2: World News, which was then a supermarket tabloid, there was
Speaker 2: one of these articles, like you know, every so often
Speaker 2: they would run articles and whatever happened to And they
Speaker 2: write an article and whatever happened to, you know, sort
Speaker 2: of an anniversary article about the List murders and with
Speaker 2: a you know, with you know, details about the murder
Speaker 2: and a picture of course of the family and John
Speaker 2: List picture of John List in the page seventeen of
Speaker 2: the Weekly World News, and Wanda's reading it, but you know,
Speaker 2: with casual interest. And she happens to look out her
Speaker 2: window and she sees her disliked neighbored Robert Clark taking
Speaker 2: on a trash and Wanda goes, holy moly, that looks
Speaker 2: like John liston. Then she starts to that guy looks
Speaker 2: like this guy, and she starts to compare characteristics like rigid, uh,
Speaker 2: self righteous, judgmental, et cetera, et cetera, and she she decides,
Speaker 2: I think that's John List. So she goes over once
Speaker 2: the List goes out to the store or something and
Speaker 2: talks to the new wife, Dolores, and she's Doloris shows
Speaker 2: shows the newspaper article and says, I think this is
Speaker 2: your husband.
Speaker 8: I think this is Bob.
Speaker 2: And Dolores is astonished and horrified, but she pooh poohs
Speaker 2: that it's an interesting psychological moment. I think in the
Speaker 2: book where Dolores, I mean it kind of slams into
Speaker 2: this woman. Oh my god, this guy has a background
Speaker 2: here and maybe maybe you know, is this guy?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 8: But Das shrugs it off.
Speaker 2: Wanda feels a little silly, goes, you know, goes back
Speaker 2: to her house and you know another.
Speaker 8: What is it two years past? A year and a half. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, back in Westfield, New Jersey, the young cops who
Speaker 2: had grown up with the John List case on their
Speaker 2: you know, on their minds uh, decide that a new
Speaker 2: TV program called America's Most Wanted They're going to take
Speaker 2: the John List case to America's Most Wanted, and they do, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, with with some energy. They try to convince
Speaker 2: America's Most Wanted to do a program on on the
Speaker 2: John List case. Now that's old, uh, And the producers.
Speaker 8: Of America's Most Wanted are like.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's a really old case. You know, we don't
Speaker 2: want to get involved. But the cops, to their credit,
Speaker 2: the young cops, to their credit, do push, and they
Speaker 2: finally managed to persuade America's most wanted to do to
Speaker 2: develop a program on the on the John List murders.
Speaker 2: And you know, they developed the drama as they used
Speaker 2: to I don't know if it's still on the air
Speaker 2: as they used to do. You know, they they re
Speaker 2: enacted and they find an actor. But they also hire
Speaker 2: a forensic sculptor out of Philadelphia who works with police
Speaker 2: departments in sculpting images of the cold case, in cold cases,
Speaker 2: images of the perpetrator. And he sculpts an image a
Speaker 2: bust of John List, puts the glasses on it, and
Speaker 2: it's a reasonable facsimile of John List. Anyway, that's sort
Speaker 2: of the highlight of the program. And here's what John
Speaker 2: List would look like today. Wanda, who's already been back
Speaker 2: in Denver, Wanda who has already been robuffed and basically
Speaker 2: told that she told me, she said, the you know,
Speaker 2: the laws made me feel like a silly old woman.
Speaker 2: Wanda is watching this program, you know, with some interest,
Speaker 2: because she's still fairly persuaded that that's John List next door.
Speaker 2: And she sees the bust and Wanda says, now that
Speaker 2: doesn't look like it's not that good of an image.
Speaker 2: But nevertheless, there's a teeth. There's a telephone number, the
Speaker 2: phone number on the on the screen to call because
Speaker 2: there's every reward. And Wanda's daughter and UH and a
Speaker 2: son in law are with her at this at this time,
Speaker 2: watching this show, and they persuade her to make the
Speaker 2: phone call.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, I forgot you know. Meanwhile, about a year before that,
Speaker 2: Robert Clark a k A. John List and his wife
Speaker 2: had moved to Virginia because he got a new job
Speaker 2: in UH in Virginia and at a small accounting for
Speaker 2: so they've moved across the country. Against Wanda calls America's
Speaker 2: Most Wanted. Hundreds of calls come in because when they
Speaker 2: do these programs, UH, the actor, the actor actor who's
Speaker 2: in the in the recreation often reminds them of somebody
Speaker 2: they know, and quite often the actors themselves get get
Speaker 2: collared like theirs. Now just the actor of the show.
Speaker 2: But anyway, there are hundreds of calls come in. The
Speaker 2: one from Wanda, UH seems reasonable enough to check out
Speaker 2: because she's you know, she has a specific sighting that
Speaker 2: she knew the guy. The FBI checks it out, turns
Speaker 2: up at the accounting firm where List is working in
Speaker 2: mid Lothian, Virginia, a suburb of Russia of Richmond, and
Speaker 2: sure enough there's John List who denies being John List.
Speaker 2: He's Robert P. Clark, but you know it's Clark's John List,
Speaker 2: and they haul him back to New Jersey, where the
Speaker 2: jig is now, and of course it becomes a major
Speaker 2: news story. John List at last has been found after
Speaker 2: eighteen years. He denied it and denied it and denied it,
Speaker 2: had a public defender, and then at at the trial,
Speaker 2: I think that his claim with post traumatic stress disorder
Speaker 2: was was basically discounted. At the time, he's convicted bom
Speaker 2: five murders and he's sent to prison for the rest
Speaker 2: of his life and he dies in prison.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: After establishing this friendship with his crazy at the I
Speaker 2: C I A x C I A agent, he dies
Speaker 2: in prison. And two that's an a.
Speaker 7: It's interesting too you talk. You read about that he
Speaker 7: kept his name Robert Clark to the new friends that
Speaker 7: he had established in his new life and and wrote
Speaker 7: all kinds of letters like he was in a fairly
Speaker 7: good mood. And it kept in contact wish people their
Speaker 7: happy birthday on that that special day. Yeah, very interesting too.
Speaker 7: What Dolores does. Does Dolores stick by.
Speaker 2: Her husband Delaorus after the after he's uh, after his arrested.
Speaker 7: During during the well, during after the rest and during
Speaker 7: the trial.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean I.
Speaker 2: Was so I felt so bad for Dolores.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 2: I went to visit her after he got arrested in
Speaker 2: uh uh you know, in this suburban community in Virginia. Uh,
Speaker 2: And I you know, she answered the door. She didn't
Speaker 2: want to talk, but she just looked like she looked
Speaker 2: like a trapped She just looked trapped and destroyed. And
Speaker 2: my heart went out to her, and I thought, well,
Speaker 2: you know, okay, Delores, Uh, I know, you don't want
Speaker 2: to talk. She kept insisting publicly that that that she
Speaker 2: didn't know that you know that this guy was Robert B.
Speaker 8: Clark and John List.
Speaker 2: She was she was distraught. I think she was destroyed
Speaker 2: by this because she was kind of another innocent victim
Speaker 2: of this this clown.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: Was she unaware?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, should she have been more aware? But she was,
Speaker 2: you know, she was a lonely woman, a divorce a
Speaker 2: who John List.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: I think they met, as I recall it, at a
Speaker 2: church function in Denver. He was, he was you know,
Speaker 2: he was the best offer she was going to get,
Speaker 2: and she she married him, and uh, you know, I
Speaker 2: just felt profoundly sorry for for Dolores. I just thought,
Speaker 2: you know, she was just a bias and another more
Speaker 2: collateral damage in his term. She eventually just faded.
Speaker 8: Away, you know.
Speaker 2: She h She publicly stuck with him for I think
Speaker 2: it was only a few weeks and then Dolores just
Speaker 2: faded out of the picture. To her credit, she didn't
Speaker 2: do any like media, and I kind of like respected
Speaker 2: her for that.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: She was just just, you know, a sad, sad.
Speaker 8: Corollaria. The John the John List case.
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Speaker 7: We haven't mentioned the stepdaughter after all of this, Brenda, Yeah,
Speaker 7: what were a lot of information? Crucial information came from
Speaker 7: her about her father's behavior and explained a lot of things.
Speaker 7: Tell our audience a little bit about Brenda after all
Speaker 7: of this.
Speaker 2: Brenda, the helen List's daughter, who John you know, charitably
Speaker 2: adopted and he was by any account, he was a
Speaker 2: decent father to her and for a long time to
Speaker 2: his other to his actual biological children until he until
Speaker 2: he murdered them. Brenda, who I think it's dead now,
Speaker 2: sort of spun off. She wasn't part of After a while,
Speaker 2: Brenda went off on her own and she lived.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 2: The big question is after the murders, the journalists contact Brenda.
Speaker 8: I think I think.
Speaker 2: I made a case that he did. I talked to Brenda. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, another another victim, Brenda, you know, another bystander
Speaker 2: in this because Brenda wasn't wasn't part of this milia
Speaker 2: at the time.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 2: And she you know, she provided a lot of information
Speaker 2: about John, list about you know, you try to build
Speaker 2: this guy's character as as as you apparently are. I'm
Speaker 2: fascinated by what made this guy, What does his makeup?
Speaker 2: Because it's a complicated person. It's not just a raving.
Speaker 8: Murderer.
Speaker 2: He there were there was textured this to this character.
Speaker 2: And she, you know, she had she had good memories
Speaker 2: of him, I think birthday parties, and I think he
Speaker 2: took her to you know, she she had a fairly
Speaker 2: good memory of him as a father. Of course, she
Speaker 2: knew nothing about about the murders until children that she
Speaker 2: read in the paper. Helen had a sister in Oklahoma
Speaker 2: who I think reached out I talked to when I
Speaker 2: was Oklahoma, talked to the sister as well. Uh. The
Speaker 2: sister also it had been around when when when John
Speaker 2: married Helen. I think he first tried to woo the
Speaker 2: sister uh and uh, and then went and then you know,
Speaker 2: went with Helen instead when the sister didn't didn't didn't respond.
Speaker 2: She was kind of, I thought, weirdly uh sympathetic towards John.
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, I spent some time with her,
Speaker 2: and she was a bit disapproving of her sister and
Speaker 2: a bit more uh you know, warmly supposed to her.
Speaker 2: John Wish fascinated me kind of a lot, because I thought,
Speaker 2: how can you be at this? You know, it was
Speaker 2: well known, you know, the murders had occurred.
Speaker 8: He'd been caught.
Speaker 2: When I talked to her, and though she was oddly
Speaker 2: sympathetic toward him, she she thought she understood why why
Speaker 2: he went, why he went off the deep end.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 2: She just added, you try when you when you write
Speaker 2: a book like this, to try to you try. You know,
Speaker 2: you're you're confined to what the actual facts in front
Speaker 2: of you are and what you could find out. And
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, well I'm gonna you know, she's in
Speaker 2: the book. I think she's she's at the the end
Speaker 2: before before the new epilogue that I wrote in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: She's at the at the cemetery in New Jersey. She
Speaker 2: was the one, uh, the sister was the one responsible
Speaker 2: for picking up the pieces at the house. It's you know,
Speaker 2: after the murder, and she's she's kind of she's kind
Speaker 2: of missed algic about John. And I thought, okay, what
Speaker 2: for for what it's worth, here she is, you know,
Speaker 2: I pressed her and pressed her and pressed her about it,
Speaker 2: and she just, uh, what what you what?
Speaker 8: What? What she is is what you get in in
Speaker 8: the book.
Speaker 7: It's interesting too that the reader believes that that she
Speaker 7: wants and she does want. She says, she wants to
Speaker 7: know why she wants to confront John List in prison.
Speaker 7: So she goes with her husband, Jean, And this is
Speaker 7: Helen's sister, so you think that they would be filled
Speaker 7: with this. She would be outraged at this, this man,
Speaker 7: and yet the first thing they do she does is
Speaker 7: hug him, and there's talk of forgiveness and again understanding
Speaker 7: there on friendly terms. Very very very surprising to.
Speaker 2: Me, you know, And uh, it would have been a
Speaker 2: better ending to the book if she had been in
Speaker 2: a rage and confronted him.
Speaker 8: But you know, you.
Speaker 2: Know true mc campodi and in cold blood sort of
Speaker 2: cooked up the ending his book and it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's the perfect ending, but he kind of cooked that up,
Speaker 2: and you know, I was I was left with this
Speaker 2: is who she was, this is what she did. They
Speaker 2: had kind of a poignant meeting in you know, in prison,
Speaker 2: and I know John List had done that to my sister.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't I wouldn't have forgiven him, but she did. Uh,
Speaker 2: So very have it complicated. When an evil man, in
Speaker 2: my opinion thoughly evil. If you want to have definition
Speaker 2: of evil, I think John Lyst is your boy.
Speaker 7: What we haven't talked about, and this is the most
Speaker 7: vivid and disturbing part of the book, and a very
Speaker 7: disturbing book as it is, But the actual murders in
Speaker 7: the planning and the letter to the to his reverend,
Speaker 7: to his reverend, and so what exactly? And again this
Speaker 7: is crucial because if the defense, if his defense was
Speaker 7: successful in having that letter suppressed, that confessional letter to
Speaker 7: his reverend. But tell us just a little bit of
Speaker 7: the Again, they said this is premeditated. It showed vast
Speaker 7: evidence of that. Tell us about the key and the
Speaker 7: letters and the things that he did in preparation, and
Speaker 7: the actual murders. What he did. And then post murder,
Speaker 7: you say that the bodies were look like they were
Speaker 7: formed into the form of a cross. So tell us
Speaker 7: what he writes to the reverend and what does he
Speaker 7: do and the actual murders of his own family, his
Speaker 7: own children, and his wife and his mother.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're now at November. Let's go to October of
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one. The daughter is very much in his
Speaker 2: sights because, as I said, she brings the nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: and early nineteen seventies through the door every time she
Speaker 2: comes home. He's facing destitution. He decides to do this horrible,
Speaker 2: horrible deed. He plans, He puts things into into place,
Speaker 2: He makes sure that his uh, that his gun is working.
Speaker 2: He I think at this time is when he started
Speaker 2: to get his new Social Security identity. As I recall,
Speaker 2: he decides that he's going to do it on All
Speaker 2: Souls Day, which is November one or two, whatever that
Speaker 2: was in that year, and for some reason he has
Speaker 2: to not deal with any doesn't. A week later, he
Speaker 2: one of the weird things is that and I got
Speaker 2: this from the kids and from his drama UH, from
Speaker 2: Patty's drama coach, who was deeply involved in this.
Speaker 8: UH.
Speaker 2: He tells Patty and the two boys that they're gonna
Speaker 2: die around this period of time. And they know this
Speaker 2: guy well enough to think, oh boy, you know, they're
Speaker 2: terrified because they think he needs it. I mean, you
Speaker 2: could tell you can tell it, I'm going to kill you.
Speaker 2: And it's one thing, but when you sit your kids
Speaker 2: down and say you're going to die, and I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be the instrument of your death. That
Speaker 2: you know, that's something that boys on a child's mind.
Speaker 2: And the girl who's now sixteen tells people, you know,
Speaker 2: she seeks counsel with her drama teacher. The drama club teacher,
Speaker 2: a guy named ed Iliano who was close to her
Speaker 2: and I think perhaps too close to her. He was,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that theme is in the book.
Speaker 2: I developed that as much as I could. I don't
Speaker 2: think he ever molested this kid, but he was too
Speaker 2: close to enough. Yeah, it's a factor. So she's by
Speaker 2: the time, by the time Halloween nineteen seventy one comes around,
Speaker 2: she's resigned to the fact that her father's going to
Speaker 2: kill her. The Halloween party in her house is kind
Speaker 2: of her last hurrah with with the kids, and it's
Speaker 2: a gate it's a it's a happy occasion. But he's
Speaker 2: in the background watching, and he by now is a murderer.
Speaker 2: He definitely has become a guy planning to murder his family.
Speaker 2: He uh, you know, he makes his plans he uh
Speaker 2: on the day of the murder. That it's a cold
Speaker 2: November day, I think sleeps he he gets up in
Speaker 2: the morning us as usual, makes He's now planning to
Speaker 2: spend the day murdering his family. He makes his coffee,
Speaker 2: sits at the kitchen table. Helen comes down in her bathrobe,
Speaker 2: and he says to him, what where is the You
Speaker 2: know he always reads the paper in the morning. You know,
Speaker 2: didn't the paper company, he said, I He says, I
Speaker 2: stopped it.
Speaker 8: And then while.
Speaker 2: She's making coffee, he gets his gun and he you know,
Speaker 2: he approaches her and boom, he kills her.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: Then the day, the day of horror has started. At
Speaker 2: this point, it's early in the morning. Still he goes
Speaker 2: bounds upstairs. I mean it's a you know, a big place,
Speaker 2: and the mother's attic, the mother's apartment is in the
Speaker 2: top part of the house. He bounds up there and
Speaker 2: the mother, you know, answers her doors. She's up having breakfast,
Speaker 2: and you know that she still has a thick German accent,
Speaker 2: and she's like, Johnny, what was the what was that noise?
Speaker 2: And he says it's it was a back the car,
Speaker 2: backfiring probably, And as she turns to go back into
Speaker 2: her apartment, boom, he murders her. He shoots her in
Speaker 2: the head. He then, I mean we know this from reconstructor. Obviously,
Speaker 2: you know he didn't tell me this.
Speaker 8: Uh. He then uh.
Speaker 2: Watches her with some fascinations as she lies bleeding out
Speaker 2: on the you know, on the at the entrance to
Speaker 2: her apartment. Uh. He decides she's too happy to move downstairs,
Speaker 2: so he leaves her there. He then goes down and
Speaker 2: moves his wife, Helen, who's dead on the kitchen floor.
Speaker 2: He drags her into this ballroom. And it's an actual ballroom.
Speaker 8: In this old house.
Speaker 2: It's empty now, has no furniture set, the broken down
Speaker 2: kitty pool table. You know, I think a chair, but
Speaker 2: it's basically it's got a big fireplace.
Speaker 8: It's empty.
Speaker 2: It's a you know, it's a it's a vestige of
Speaker 2: what that house used to be. He puts Helen in
Speaker 2: front of the fireplace on a had They had boy
Speaker 2: scout sleeping banks, so he uses one of those to
Speaker 2: drag her and to leave her in front of the fireplace.
Speaker 2: He then lifts her her nightgown up so that she's
Speaker 2: exposed from the waist down, leaves her dead there, goes
Speaker 2: back calmly to his day. It's now whatever. It is
Speaker 2: nine o'clock in the morning, you know, early in the morning.
Speaker 2: Still the kids are at school. Uh, you know, they're
Speaker 2: about they're going about their normal day. But these kids
Speaker 2: are distraught, particularly the girl. She's you know, she's just
Speaker 2: in Ah, she's terrified. She comes home from school early
Speaker 2: because I think she didn't feel I'm trying to. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to.
Speaker 7: She wasn't feeling. Yeah, she wasn't feeling.
Speaker 2: Well, so she wasn't feeling She comes home early. I've
Speaker 2: set his plans a bit because he expects her. Two
Speaker 2: hours later. She comes in the door in her winter coat,
Speaker 2: comes into the into the back door, into the kitchen,
Speaker 2: and he's lying. He's standing there with his gun and
Speaker 2: will almost no notice whatsoever he bowed me. He shoots
Speaker 2: her in the head. She's dead, and he drags her
Speaker 2: into the ballroom, Uh perpendicular, leaves her body perpendicular to
Speaker 2: her mother.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then each of them. Yet we now have two
Speaker 2: more uh children to account for. One. One by one
Speaker 2: they come home.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: The youngest one comes home, same thing, into the kitchen,
Speaker 2: there's John list in wait. Boom, he executes that one.
Speaker 2: The older kid is a bit of a fighter. The
Speaker 2: the older kid not a fighter. I mean, the older
Speaker 2: kid is not as easy to push around as the
Speaker 2: younger kid. He comes home, he spots the the father
Speaker 2: waiting for him with the gun, and he fights. He resists,
Speaker 2: and this triggers John gun List into a wild rage.
Speaker 2: He shoots this kid multiple times and then he fires
Speaker 2: the gun. Why you know, I'm trying to think how
Speaker 2: many bullets he had, but he fires widely. That the
Speaker 2: gun has a recoil and uh, into the a couple
Speaker 2: of bullets into the into the wall. That kid's dead,
Speaker 2: he says to that kid. And and this is in
Speaker 2: his confession letter. He says, you would you know, uh uh.
Speaker 2: He tells his pastor in his confession letter that he
Speaker 2: would have died more peaceful if.
Speaker 8: He hadn't fought. But he fought.
Speaker 2: But he thought that this kid went to went to
Speaker 2: heaven and didn't suffer, you know, which is the bass.
Speaker 2: Of course, the kids suffered. He drives him in and
Speaker 2: now we got three but four bodies in the ballroom,
Speaker 2: and we have them arranged in kind of a you know,
Speaker 2: a kind of across. The mother's at the top, she's
Speaker 2: the crossbar and the three teenage children are are are
Speaker 2: are you know, arranged below the mother. He's now done
Speaker 2: his his his deeds.
Speaker 8: He's now killed them all the mother.
Speaker 2: His mother is upstairs, too heavy to drag down the
Speaker 2: steps and arrange in the ballroom. His his attitude toward
Speaker 2: his mother was that he he'd killed her in order
Speaker 2: to prevent her anguish from seeing what what what else
Speaker 2: he had done, which struck me.
Speaker 8: As as just ludicrous. Yeah. He now he now has
Speaker 8: the full day. I mean, he's got most of the
Speaker 8: afternoon left.
Speaker 2: He he's us down at the kitchen table.
Speaker 8: He has his lunch.
Speaker 2: Uh, he'd had his lunch.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: He sits at the kitchen table in this now empty house.
Speaker 8: With you know, with with.
Speaker 2: With five dead people uh in it. Uh, he composes.
Speaker 2: He calls the kids schools one by one, and you know,
Speaker 2: he basically, this is mister list and Patricia won't be
Speaker 2: in classes for a while because my wife's mother in
Speaker 2: uh in South Carolina, I think it was, is ill
Speaker 2: and is dying, and the kids will be out of school.
Speaker 2: All the kids were good, good students, So there's no
Speaker 2: alarm set up in the in the schools. Each one
Speaker 2: of the school. He calls each one of the kids
Speaker 2: schools and leaves a similar message that they'll be out
Speaker 2: of school for a while. Uh, and no particular alarms
Speaker 2: because we're you know, we're approaching the holiday season now
Speaker 2: and these are.
Speaker 8: All good kids.
Speaker 2: Patty is a uh, you know, an a student, and
Speaker 2: everybody he knows that Patty's reliable. I mean, they make
Speaker 2: evidently there there's some assurance that Patty will be able
Speaker 2: to get her her homework assignments.
Speaker 8: Uh. So he does that. He then composes a.
Speaker 2: Letter to his pastor, who was also his confessor at
Speaker 2: the Lutheran Evangelical church in Westfield where he where he
Speaker 2: has you know, established himself and his family, and where
Speaker 2: Helen has has refused to attend. She's dropped out of
Speaker 2: the church, part of the participating anger at her. And
Speaker 2: in the letter, it's a long letter, handritten letter in
Speaker 2: which he makes this to me. It was just I
Speaker 2: was furious when I when I finally read this letter
Speaker 2: after he was caught about I couldn't I couldn't, you know,
Speaker 2: support my family in a way that I thought I
Speaker 2: was was appropriate. And uh and Helen, Uh, his wife,
Speaker 2: Helen was no longer going to church and uh, and
Speaker 2: Patricia was involved in the theater and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I forget the exact wording of the letter, but she
Speaker 2: was she was headed for if I'm overstating this, but
Speaker 2: she was headed for damnation. And he thought that the
Speaker 2: boys would follow. And uh and and mother upstairs, the
Speaker 2: poor mother, Uh, we had she had to go because
Speaker 2: he didn't want to observe her unduly.
Speaker 8: About about this.
Speaker 2: And I thought this guy is just a piece of work.
Speaker 2: When I finally read this, and it was this, this
Speaker 2: whole catching, this whole thing, and this religiosity of I
Speaker 2: know that I've sent them to heaven, and I know
Speaker 2: what I did was wrong, but I.
Speaker 8: Expect that at some point God will forgive me.
Speaker 2: You know, yours truly, John Johnny listen. He leaves the
Speaker 2: letter UH on the kitchen table so it can be found.
Speaker 8: Uh. You know what when the uh, when the bodies
Speaker 8: are found.
Speaker 2: He has no idea. I don't think that it's gonna
Speaker 2: take almost a month for these bodies to be found.
Speaker 8: But one of the things he does.
Speaker 2: Is uh, uh it's cold. It's remember, and it's a
Speaker 2: cold it's a cold day, it's a cold month. He
Speaker 2: turns the thermostat down you know, to and turns it off.
Speaker 8: I guess.
Speaker 2: Uh, he leaves all the lights in in in the
Speaker 2: in rooms in the house. On Uh he Uh, he's
Speaker 2: already stopped the newspaper. He stopped the milk delivery. This
Speaker 2: is back in the days when when milk was delivery
Speaker 2: in the house. Uh and uh, off you go, and
Speaker 2: you know, he packs his bag, spends the night in
Speaker 2: the house with these bodies, you know, in his in
Speaker 2: his bedroom. The next morning, comes down, makes himself a
Speaker 2: nice breakfast, and off he goes into the into the
Speaker 2: mists and he disappears. But he had he really doesn't
Speaker 2: have any He thinks that the the bodies will be
Speaker 2: found fairly shortly. He has no idea that almost a
Speaker 2: month will go by.
Speaker 8: And I don't know.
Speaker 2: Once he's out in Denver, as he sort of re
Speaker 2: emerges as as a new as as this new in
Speaker 2: this new identity fairly quickly. Uh, you know, he's looking
Speaker 2: at the papers. He figures that the uh you know,
Speaker 2: this is when you know, a local newspaper like the
Speaker 2: Denver the Denver papers had a lot of international news
Speaker 2: in him as well. And he, you know, he looks
Speaker 2: and He looks at it and he doesn't see any
Speaker 2: any indication that that that this, uh, these bodies have
Speaker 2: been found in in New Jersey. He's just amazed at that.
Speaker 8: And in the meantime, I mean.
Speaker 2: Here, here's where it got I think it got harry
Speaker 2: in town. Because almost a month, let's say, three weeks
Speaker 2: have gone by. Uh, the kids, Patty's drama club friends
Speaker 2: and her teacher, her drama club director at Illiano are
Speaker 2: getting really sort of antsy and about well, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: this is too long. There's something weird about here, and
Speaker 2: you know they're they're starting to you know, put together
Speaker 2: some idea. It's almost like incredible for them to think
Speaker 2: that something awful had happened. Uh. And there's there's pressure
Speaker 2: on among the kids. There's peer pressure. We got to
Speaker 2: go up to the house and see what see what's
Speaker 2: going on here. Neighbors are and some of the other
Speaker 2: accounts have made I think too much of this, are
Speaker 2: noticing that some of the lights are burning out, you know,
Speaker 2: in the.
Speaker 8: Rooms of the house. That that makes it.
Speaker 2: Kind of spookier than than the house was spooky enough.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that that was all that important, although
Speaker 2: it was occurring after you know, three weeks occasionally a
Speaker 2: bubble burn burnout. Ah. Here's here's where this is where
Speaker 2: I got deeply into this and where it struck me
Speaker 2: as weird, as even more weird, and.
Speaker 8: Nobody else had this.
Speaker 2: Uh. I think the cops had to discount this because
Speaker 2: it would have been a problem at the trial. Eventually,
Speaker 2: the drama club teacher, who was very close to Patty,
Speaker 2: who's guilty, I think about his closeness to her, although
Speaker 2: I really don't. I spent a lot of time pressing
Speaker 2: him on it. I took him, I took him over
Speaker 2: and over and over these accounts on you know, multiple occasions.
Speaker 2: Did you ever touch or know? But it was clear
Speaker 2: he was obsessed with this girl. I think that was
Speaker 2: part of what was driving the strange decision by these
Speaker 2: kids and him to go to the house one night.
Speaker 2: We're now into December of nineteen seventy one. And first
Speaker 2: they looked around, they looked, you know, they checked the
Speaker 2: doors and looked in.
Speaker 8: The windows.
Speaker 2: And found that the back door there was some access
Speaker 2: to through a back door. Uh, with the drama club,
Speaker 2: by his account and by some of the kids accounts,
Speaker 2: with him kind of leading the way, they go into
Speaker 2: the house and it's like, okay, everything, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like they've they've gone on vacation or their way. But
Speaker 2: then they go into the ballroom and there's, you know,
Speaker 2: there's an issue of it's still cold, so the bodies
Speaker 2: haven't decomposed the way they might have been expected to.
Speaker 8: But there's you know, there's there's.
Speaker 2: An odor and now there's a mist. And I think
Speaker 2: that the most horrifying scene of the murders themselves is
Speaker 2: when these kids in their their high school, when their
Speaker 2: drama club teacher walk into the ballroom and they're the
Speaker 2: bodies uh in it, you know, it's it's it's at night,
Speaker 2: it's dim that they can clearly see that the bodies
Speaker 2: are there. They're of course horrified. They don't know what
Speaker 2: to do because they're now they've breaked. They're they're guilty
Speaker 2: of breaking and entering. So they managed to create enough
Speaker 2: commotion they go back outside and they now have this
Speaker 2: horrible secret. They managed to create enough commotion that the neighbors,
Speaker 2: who are already the neighbors are worried what the heck's
Speaker 2: going on over there, that the neighbors.
Speaker 8: Called the cops.
Speaker 2: The cops show up, we now have a crime scene.
Speaker 2: And in my opinion, and here's where I depart from
Speaker 2: the accounts in which the Westfield Police are given a
Speaker 2: lot of credit for cracking this case. The crime scene
Speaker 2: is a mess. The cops are, there are reporters who
Speaker 2: are in the house, and so every protocol of how
Speaker 2: to secure a crime scene is not followed. So the
Speaker 2: crime scenes kind of polluted. No big problem, because we
Speaker 2: know who did it. He left his confession letter. But
Speaker 2: the problem with you know, once you go to trial,
Speaker 2: everybody knows Johnalists did it. I mean, the jury knows
Speaker 2: he did it. I got a confession letter. But it's
Speaker 2: a problem to you know, to account for this messed
Speaker 2: up crime scene. First of all, the kids found the bodies,
Speaker 2: and uh, I think I understand. I talked to the
Speaker 2: you know, the district attorney at the time, and I understood,
Speaker 2: you know, why they kind of did what they did.
Speaker 2: None of this stuff came up at the trial. The
Speaker 2: drama club teacher was and he was a very nervous guy,
Speaker 2: and he was guilty of his What he thought of
Speaker 2: was what he knew was his closeness to this girl.
Speaker 8: He made too much of it. I think.
Speaker 2: On the stand. He seemed to be an unreliable witness,
Speaker 2: and they basically told him, okay, fine, you're we can
Speaker 2: see that you're not. You're not the good witness, and
Speaker 2: coffee went. So then every got brought up at the trial.
Speaker 2: He had a public defender.
Speaker 8: They tried to.
Speaker 2: You know, they did what they could. I think, but
Speaker 2: the guy is guilty. Is clear, he's guilty. Uh So
Speaker 2: he's convicted five five counts of where there was no
Speaker 2: death penalty in New Jersey, and he's convicted of five
Speaker 2: counts of the first Gray murder.
Speaker 7: He goes, it's interesting too. The ed Iliano, the drama teacher.
Speaker 7: You write this very dramatic scene where he gets a
Speaker 7: phone call and and Patty's telling him, listen, my father
Speaker 7: is going to kill me. And he says, well, what
Speaker 7: do you mean by that, you know? And she says no.
Speaker 7: He said he's going to kill me. He's going to
Speaker 7: kill my brothers, Like, are you stupid? This is what
Speaker 7: he's going to do. And his wife was there, and
Speaker 7: he knew he was over. He was frightnizing where he
Speaker 7: shouldn't be as a teacher, and so he said, listen,
Speaker 7: I've got a busy schedule, which must have again must
Speaker 7: have had.
Speaker 2: A lot. He was an intense guy, very neurotic, but
Speaker 2: you know, really a good a drama club.
Speaker 8: Teacher for these kids.
Speaker 2: I mean they adored him, and he was I think
Speaker 2: they were doing they had done Little Abner as a
Speaker 2: as a musical. Uh and and John thought John saw
Speaker 2: that he was at that performance and he was like
Speaker 2: horrified because the daughter played the bombastic babe in Little
Speaker 2: Abner in a bathings and he thought that was just scandalous.
Speaker 2: And he saw that and he was Ileana was developing.
Speaker 8: Tennessee.
Speaker 2: Williams played street Carnage.
Speaker 8: Desire that Patty was going to be in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's consumed with guilt. And she had told him like,
Speaker 2: my father's going to kill me. And he basically had everybody.
Speaker 2: All parents say that about their kids. It's part of
Speaker 2: what the makeup of that Iliano. After this event, horrible
Speaker 2: event occurred, and I must have talked to him twenty
Speaker 2: spent twenty different times with him. We'd meet in a
Speaker 2: bar in Jersey City and he would just pour his
Speaker 2: heart at about this. And the thing I really wanted
Speaker 2: to get at was ed, you know, how close were
Speaker 2: you to this girl? And he was obsessed with her.
Speaker 2: He was, you know, but he was sexually repressed enough
Speaker 2: himself that he didn't There was nothing physical he did.
Speaker 2: Maybe it would have become that, but I don't think
Speaker 2: he was a molester. He was just inappropriate about it.
Speaker 2: And you know, I made that clear to him that,
Speaker 2: you know, I was going to present him as he
Speaker 2: as I could, and I suppose that comes out clearly
Speaker 2: in the book, but you know, I was again restricted
Speaker 2: by what by the facts I could I could I
Speaker 2: could gather. He was very upfront with me.
Speaker 7: It's yeah, you you the two real heroic characters in there,
Speaker 7: like we had mentioned, was Wanda Flannery, but also the
Speaker 7: person that pushed and pushed for Frank Maryanka, and he
Speaker 7: basically got a rebuff from America's Most Wanted. They said, well,
Speaker 7: we're not really interested. He went to extraordinary levels. His
Speaker 7: friend had said, listen, I'm going to a conference and
Speaker 7: the guy, the producer of America's Most Wanted is going
Speaker 7: to be speaking there, and so Americana said, I'm going
Speaker 7: with you, and he brought all the files and then
Speaker 7: they he says, well, we approached him. He says, we
Speaker 7: collared him, We made sure that he got this information.
Speaker 7: They took him up into hotel room and he presented
Speaker 7: all the details and he said, wow, that's a fascinating story.
Speaker 7: It's not so new, because that's the excuse they gave before.
Speaker 7: It was too old the case. So without Frank, Americana,
Speaker 7: without Wanda, and America's Most Wanted once again comes to
Speaker 7: the rescue, America's Most Wanted, incredible program. Yeah, things going.
Speaker 2: It turned out too much, much differently because this was
Speaker 2: a dreurnal this you know, this is now eighteen years later,
Speaker 2: so this wasn't the cops, uh who were who responded
Speaker 2: to the murder. So this is a new generation of
Speaker 2: cops who lived with this. I mean they're they're local
Speaker 2: kids who became cops. And you know this this story
Speaker 2: was everybody, everybody in Westfield knew this story. And they
Speaker 2: were all kinds of rumors that you know, the devil worship,
Speaker 2: et cetera. You know, the kind of bs that that
Speaker 2: comes up in an event like this. But uh, you know,
Speaker 2: those cops eighteen years later made a real effort because
Speaker 2: they were just determined to uh to try to crack
Speaker 2: this case, that that that had cold case. And they
Speaker 2: they did press America's most wanted. They got rebuffed, and
Speaker 2: the guy uh Melanca, uh, you know, makes an extraordinary
Speaker 2: effort to uh to basically to pitch this this case
Speaker 2: to America's most wanted. And you know, I don't mean
Speaker 2: to in any way diminish the importance of America's most
Speaker 2: wanted in these events. I just kind of don't agree
Speaker 2: that you mentioned in a conjunction with Maranca the cop Wanda,
Speaker 2: the old Irish lady next to her in Denver. That's
Speaker 2: an interesting combination. I wish they had met, because those
Speaker 2: were the two they basically they cracked the case. But
Speaker 2: Wanda was the first one on his case. And you know,
Speaker 2: Mirca didn't know Wanda and wanted didn't know him.
Speaker 8: I think she.
Speaker 2: I don't think she had anything to do with it
Speaker 2: after she dropped the dime on the top. But you're right,
Speaker 2: that's a If this were a novel, I would those
Speaker 2: were those are characters I would have drawn out a
Speaker 2: lot more if I'd had the freedom of of fiction
Speaker 2: rather than nonfiction.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's incredible. And also when you write in the
Speaker 7: end you say that he died in prison, but nobody
Speaker 7: came to claim the body and then you write one
Speaker 7: word at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I quote the old line that you're only
Speaker 2: supposed to say good about the dead. That in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, John Lisz died of a heart attack
Speaker 2: whatever it was, and the last line is good. That's
Speaker 2: sort of all I felt. I really, I really saw no.
Speaker 2: I had no sympathy, and I thought there was nothing
Speaker 2: tragic about him. I just we're best rid of that horrible, evil,
Speaker 2: murderous man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's no no redeeming new qualities to him. He could.
Speaker 7: He certainly had the religiosity this I would say, toxic
Speaker 7: religiosity that he grew up with. But his decision to
Speaker 7: end these people's lives for a person that was intelligent,
Speaker 7: you know, of the nonsensical reasoning for what he did,
Speaker 7: and then justiz as you're right when his own father died,
Speaker 7: which was important to him. He seemed to have no
Speaker 7: feelings and obviously a psychopath like this could go and
Speaker 7: have a new life, reinvent himself, have a new life.
Speaker 7: Very few people ever talked to asked him, Hey, what
Speaker 7: about your past? He said, well, my wife died various reasons.
Speaker 7: But when they said about his children, he just had
Speaker 7: to not talk about it, but he wasn't racked with guilt.
Speaker 7: He rebuilt his life and didn't look back. Fortunately, some people.
Speaker 2: So wanted flattery spot at him. Absolutely, I was so
Speaker 2: bothered wanted. She was gracious when I went out to
Speaker 2: see her Denver, and she just felt she couldn't quite
Speaker 2: comprehend everything that the things that she had said in motion.
Speaker 2: She sat there, as I recall, in her house was
Speaker 2: the the kitten on her on her lap, and just
Speaker 2: sort of uh talked and talked and talked. That I
Speaker 2: grew up in an Irish American culture and my mother
Speaker 2: was an old Irish lady who you couldn't get anything
Speaker 2: past her. If she if she thought you were up
Speaker 2: to something, she was on you. And that Wanda kind
Speaker 2: of reminded me of her in that sense.
Speaker 7: Yeah, tenacious for sure, certainly suspicious.
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 7: I want to thank you very much Joe Pleasure for
Speaker 7: coming on and talking about death sentence, the inside story
Speaker 7: of the John List murders. For those that might want
Speaker 7: to look at other work that you have and if
Speaker 7: there a website or a Facebook page for this, or
Speaker 7: could they just go to Amazon and see other.
Speaker 8: Work of yours.
Speaker 2: Amazon will do it my name Joe Sharky, but Joe
Speaker 2: Sharky dot com, Joe s A j R.
Speaker 8: K e Y dot com.
Speaker 2: Uh, has you know that on my other books, including
Speaker 2: above Suspicion, which is a book that was made into
Speaker 2: a movie staring Amelia Clark that will be released next
Speaker 2: next year, twenty twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: Very very interesting that. Yep, congratulations, Thank you very much,
Speaker 7: Joe Sharky. Pleasure, have a great night.
Speaker 2: All right, you too, all right, goodbye,