John E. List, who was a fugitive for 18 years before "America's Most Wanted" helped find him, has died in prison.
List is seen in this family photo with his daughter, Patricia, his wife, Helen, and sons John Jr. and Frederick.
Posted on 04/01/2008 8:28:46 PM PDT by Coleus
John E. List, a former Sunday school teacher who was on the run for more than 17 years after killing his family in 1971, has died while serving a life term for their murders, authorities said Monday. He was 82. List, of Westfield, was arrested in Virginia just days after being profiled on television's "America's Most Wanted" in 1989. He had remarried and was living under the name Robert P. Clark. List died 2:30 p.m. Friday, four days after being taken to St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton from nearby New Jersey State Prison, said Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections.
No cause of death had been determined, pending an autopsy, Mercer County spokesman Pete Daly said. List was convicted in 1990 of murdering his wife, Helen, 46; mother, Alma, 84; and three teen children by shooting them in their Westfield home on Nov. 9, 1971. He left town and due to meticulous preparations by List, it was more than a month before the bodies were discovered in the 18-room mansion. In a letter he left for the pastor of his Lutheran church, List said he shot his victims from behind to spare them knowledge of what was happening until the last moment.
Because of a struggle, List wrote, he had to shoot John List, 15, repeatedly. Police said John was shot at least 10 times by .22-caliber and 9mm handguns. Also killed were Patricia, 16, and Frederick, 13. In a postscript, List wrote, "Mother is in the attic. She was too heavy to move." After the slayings, investigators found that List had two mortgages on his house, was failing as a financial consultant and had been siphoning money from his mother's $200,000 savings account. He was arrested in June 1989 in Midlothian, Va., a Richmond suburb, where he had been working as an accountant. Appeals of his convictions failed, including one asserting that he deserved a new trial because he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from service in World War II.
Some people improve the culture by LEAVING it.
Rot in Hell, you swine.
If this isn’t enough, is there more to this story. Anyone search his ties to the New Jersey favs like— never mind.
What an awful person.
I remember seeing the episode of AMW where they profiled this creep. They took his pictures from 1971 and has a sculptor make a clay model of his head, then age it 18 years to estimate what he’d look like. When they nabbed him a few days later, it was absolutely amazing to see the perfect job that the sculptor did. Nowadays it’s easier to do that type of thing with computers of course, but in 1989, that kind of forensics was a pretty big deal, and done with real clay and tools, not pixels.
}:-)4
The old dog lived a long life after robbing his family of theirs... Oh well... he’s on to the Supreme Court of the Universe for final verdict.
One tragic footnote to this crime - when the List mansion was finally sold, it was discovered that the solarium roof and windows were original Tiffany glass and worth at least $500k - although List’s written reasons for murdering his family were religious in nature, I can’t help but think that a financial windfall like that would have pulled him back from the brink.
I’ve never believed it was religious. I think he was just trying to justify himself - using religion to do it was just a touch more creative than the average thug.
He was in terrible debt, robbing his mother, and then shot his whole family and took off. Made a new life and married another woman. Then he says, ‘I did it to spare them’.
I don’t care how many pages he wrote. Filthy lucre was the motive. There’s not a lutheran sunday school class in the world that teaches its good to murder your family to spare them poverty.
“...he’s on to the Supreme Court of the Universe for final verdict.”
One judge, one juror, one accuser, one lawyer for the defense and no appeal.
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