It's hard to imagine what the policemen felt when they entered the List's nineteen-room mansion one afternoon in December 1971. In the ballroom, they found the bodies of three children and two adults lined up next to each other. All the victims were shot and their bodies were in a state of advanced decay. But there was someone missing in this terrifying family portrait. That someone was John List.
John was the child of an American-German couple. Like his father, John Frederick, John jr. he studied well, was obedient, and very faithful. He regularly attended the local Lutheran church with his parents. In 1944 he graduated from Bay City Central High School. He joined the army.
Two years later John was discharged from service. The man took up further education. He obtained a master's degree in management, and he also completed an accounting course. For many years he worked as an accountant. In 1950, during the Korean War, the army demanded him again.
The man was dispatched to Fort Eustis base where he met Helen Morris Taylor, the widow of an infantry officer. The couple began dating, and soon Helen announced that she was pregnant.
John married Helen in 1951, after only two months of dating. Thus, he became not only a husband but also a stepfather to Brenda, Helen's daughter from her first marriage. Soon after, the newlywed wife announced that she was not pregnant. John, however, did not mind.
Terrified by the whole situation was Alma - John's mother. The woman could not accept her son's choice in life. After all, Helen was "out of the way" and she already had a child. The mother-in-law's relationship with her daughter-in-law was therefore not the best, although it warmed up slightly after John's birth.
The family moved several times due to the work on the List for the Army. The man was eventually discharged from service in 1952. Then he started working as a civil accountant. The foliage eventually settled in Kalamazoo, a town in Michigan (USA). It was there that the children of John Sr. and Helen were born: John Frederick, Patricia, and Frederick Michael.
However, the marriage was not a happy one. For years, Helen could not come to terms with the death of her first husband - she missed him very much. John never really loved her, Helen proposed for a prosaic reason: he was turning thirty and wanted to settle down.
John was very religious. He wanted his whole family to attend the Lutheran Church regularly. Helen agreed to it at first, she even changed her religion from Catholicism to Lutheranism. However, with time, she lost her enthusiasm and more and more often crumbled from family visits to mass. Brenda followed her example.
Helen found it difficult to cope with raising three young children. She was exhausted. Oil was added to the fire by a rebellious Brenda, who got married at the age of 18 and moved out of her family home. The tensions between the Letters grew: Mrs. List began to look into the bottle, and she was prescribed antidepressants.
The woman began to behave in a destructive way: she slept during the day, was active at night. John could see what was happening, but he couldn't help. He worked a lot to maintain the huge house in Kalamazoo where the whole family lived (including Alma, John's mother), and to pay for other expensive attractions. The foliage lived well beyond its means.
John expected Helen to be grateful for his hard work, expensive gifts and general dedication. Instead, when he returned home, he found an indifferent woman in bed or on the couch. He had to take care of the children, cleaning and cooking himself. Gradually, his frustration grew.
In the early 1960s, John was fired from his job. The reasons given were the man's inflexibility, his stiffness in thinking and acting. The letter soon got another job. However, this required a move to Rochester. The change of scenery has served everyone. Helen came back to life, she even started going back to church with her family.
But, contrary to appearances, John did not feel well. He asked his sister-in-law about various matters related to marriage and raising children. It showed that he was lost and unable to get along with his wife. On the other hand, the financial situation of Letters improved more and more. The family got used to the lavish life.
The letter expected his career to go up only from then on. So he was surprised when he was dismissed in 1965. But again - he was quickly hired again, this time at the National Bank. The family moved to Jersey City to a vast 19-room Victorian mansion at 431 Hillside Avenue. Alma helped finance the purchase. She set one condition - she would give part of the money for the purchase, if she could live with her son and daughter-in-law.
The Hillside Avenue mansion was monumental but in need of refurbishment. The Foliage teamed up again and worked on a joint venture. However, they did not get rid of the problem. John quickly got into trouble at work. The behavior of adolescent children added fuel to the fire.
John was released. He was not suitable for a director at the National Bank because he did not know how to relate to people. The man, however, pretended that nothing like this had happened. For many days he got up every morning and left the house “to work” with a briefcase under his arm. He spent his time at the train station drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.
He could keep up appearances by withdrawing money from his mother's account. The woman gave him the power of attorney to manage her finances. Thanks to this, the letter paid off the loan for the huge property and financed current expenses. He believed that he was doing nothing wrong. As a son, he would eventually inherit his parent's fortune.
To make matters worse, Helen ended up in the hospital. As it turned out, the woman suffered from syphilis all these years. Her deceased husband infected her with the disease. In addition, Helen was diagnosed with brain problems. Syphilis produced symptoms of dementia. He took Helen out of her life and John did not support her.
John was finding ad hoc jobs to make ends meet, but he knew it wouldn't last that long. Overwhelmed by problems, he became more and more bitter. He also did not work as a father - he did not understand the needs of his own children and their modern lifestyle.
In October 1971, the List family reached its financial bottom. Their debts amounted to $ 50,000. The Victorian villa was pledged. Alma's account was empty. John was earning so little that it was obvious that the catastrophe was only a matter of time. The man applied for a firearms license.
On November 9, John List implemented a gruesome plan to free himself and his family from all problems. That day, when the children left for school, he shot 46-year-old Helen. The sounds of gunfire alerted Alma as she went downstairs to see what was happening. John shot her in the face. The bullet entered the skull just above the left eye.
The letter waited for the children to return from school. Patricia was the first to appear. When she opened the front door, she did not know that her father was standing right behind them, a pistol in his hand. John shot her in the back of the head without a word. The body was dragged into the ballroom and placed next to Helen's. Then he went to the bank, where he paid out all the money he had left and to the post office. He informed that the family was leaving for a while, so he would not receive letters.
John's next victim was Freddie. Father picked up the boy from work and gave him a lift home. Sam went ahead to - as before - lurk behind the door and shoot the unsuspecting son in the back of the head. Everything went according to plan. The letter just had to wait for the last child.
John Junior didn't come home right away. Perhaps he sensed that something bad awaited him there. He noticed his father with the pistol and instinctively dodged the shot. He was injured but managed to escape. John List, however, was determined. He shot the boy until he killed him.
John List laid the bodies of his loved ones in the ballroom of a huge house. He wrote a five-page letter to the pastor of the local Lutheran church. In it, he stated that he had committed murder in order to save the souls of his wife and children from the evil of this world. Then he cleaned the crime scene thoroughly, removed his image from all pictures in the house, turned the radio on to a classical music station, and left the house.
The crime was not discovered until a month later. Finally, the neighbors noticed that there was a constant light in the house, although there was no sign of a living soul in it. Milk and newspapers were still delivered to the door, but no one picked them up. Finally, the police were called to the scene. Officers entered through an open basement window.
Police immediately began searching for the head of the family. John's car was found in the airport parking lot, suggesting that the man had left town. A chase needed to be organized. Information about the macabre crime got to the press, causing an avalanche of denunciations, suggestions and false leads.
The problem was that there were no photographs of the suspect to facilitate his capture. Police have not been able to establish whether John List actually bought a plane ticket and thus fled the city. It was not until much later that FBI agents determined that List boarded the train and went to Colorado to start all over again.
Incredibly, List has managed to create a new life and a new identity in Denver, Colorado. The man introduced himself as Robert Clark - that was the name of his school friend. The murderer took a job as an accountant and joined the local Lutheran church. He quickly gained the sympathy and respect of the faithful.
It was in the church community that he met a certain Delores Miller. The couple got married in 1985. The new girl List didn't have the slightest idea about her chosen one's tragic past. She considered him a good, honest man. She was happy with him.
John List might have thought his crime would never be punished, but he was wrong. In May 1989, a bust was shown on the TV show America's Most Wanted to represent the present appearance of the 431 Hillside Avenue killer. The artist did a very good job. The letter was recognized by a neighbor who reported to the police.
Two weeks after the broadcast of "Robert Clark" aka John List, he was arrested. For a long time, he maintained that he did not know what the policemen wanted from him. He did not confess to his real name. He pretended to be surprised and confused.
In 1990, he was confronted with irrefutable evidence: fingerprints of a former employee were found in the military file. It became clear that Bob Clark was actually John List. Evidence found at the crime scene confirmed that he shot his mother, wife and children.
John List has been psychiatrically examined. He was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. John was supposed to see the world in black and white. Faced with financial problems, he decided that he had two options: go for social assistance benefits, which would condemn his entire family to shame and mockery, or spare them the shame and kill them.
On April 12, 1990, John List was convicted of five first-degree murders. Penalty - five sentences of life imprisonment. The man appealed, but the court rejected it. It was only in 2002 that the condemned man showed remorse. He stated that he regretted his actions and prayed for forgiveness. When asked why he didn't commit suicide, he replied that suicides couldn't get to Paradise, and he was a believer.
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