John List The Murderer

In 1971, as the FBI later discovered, List had traveled by train from New Jersey first to Michigan, then to Colorado. He settled in Denver in early 1972 and took an accounting job under the name Robert Peter "Bob" Clark, one of his college classmates (although the real Bob Clark later asserted that he had never known List). From 1979 to 1986, he was the comptroller at a paper-box manufacturer outside Denver. He joined a Lutheran congregation and ran a car pool for shut-in church members. At one religious gathering, he met an Army PX clerk named Delores Miller and they were married in 1985. In February 1988, the couple moved to a house in the Brandermill neighborhood of Midlothian, Virginia, where List, still using the name Bob Clark, resumed work as an accountant at a small accounting firm, Maddrea, Joyner, Kirkham & Woody.

In 1972, List was proposed as a suspect in the D. B. Cooper air piracy case because of the timing of his disappearance (two weeks prior to the airline hijacking), multiple matches to the hijacker's description, and the reasoning that "a fugitive accused of mass murder has nothing to lose." List was questioned by FBI investigators after his capture, but he denied any involvement in the Cooper case. While his name is still occasionally mentioned in Cooper articles and documentaries, no direct evidence implicates him, and the FBI no longer considers him a suspect.

In May 1989, the 18-year-old crime was recounted on the Fox television program America's Most Wanted during its first year on the air. The segment featured an age-progressed clay bust, sculpted by forensic artist Frank Bender, which turned out to bear a close resemblance to List's actual appearance. On June 1, less than two weeks after the broadcast, List was arrested at a Richmond accounting firm after a Denver neighbor recognized the description and alerted authorities. List continued to stand by his alias for several months, even after his 1989 extradition to Union County, New Jersey; finally, faced with irrefutable evidence – including a fingerprint match with List's military records, as well as evidence found at the crime scene – he confessed his true identity on February 16, 1990.

At trial, List testified that his financial difficulties reached crisis level in 1971 when he was laid off with the closure of the Jersey City bank. To avoid sharing this humiliating development with his family, List engaged in the same routine and dress as when employed, leaving home each morning on schedule and spending the day at job interviews or at the Westfield train station, reading newspapers until it was time to come home. List diverted money from his mother's bank accounts to avoid default on his mortgage. As the year progressed, the family's financial problems became more strained; List encouraged his children to seek part-time work, ostensibly to teach them maturity and responsibility, but in actuality to help keep the family financially solvent.

He was also dealing with his wife's alcoholism and her untreated tertiary syphilis, contracted from her first husband and concealed for 18 years. According to trial testimony, Helen had pressured List into marriage by falsely claiming that she was pregnant, then insisted that they marry in Maryland, which did not require the premarital syphilis test mandated in most other states at the time. Though her health progressively deteriorated, she said nothing to List or her physicians until 1969, when a thorough workup revealed the condition. By then, progression of the disease combined with her excessive alcohol consumption had, according to testimony, "transformed her from an attractive young woman to an unkempt and paranoid recluse" who frequently – and often publicly – humiliated List, comparing his sexual prowess unfavorably with that of her first husband.

A court-appointed psychiatrist testified that List suffered from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and that he saw only two solutions to his situation: accept welfare, or kill his family and send their souls to heaven. Welfare was an unacceptable option, he reasoned, because it would expose him and his family to ridicule and violate his authoritarian father's teachings regarding the care and protection of family members.

On April 12, 1990, List was convicted of five counts of first degree murder. At his sentencing hearing, he denied direct responsibility for his actions: "I feel that because of my mental state at the time, I was unaccountable for what happened. I ask all affected by this for their forgiveness, understanding and prayer." The judge was unpersuaded: "John Emil List is without remorse and without honor," he said. "After 18 years, five months and 22 days, it is now time for the voices of Helen, Alma, Patricia, Frederick and John F. List to rise from the grave." He imposed a sentence of five terms of life imprisonment, to be served consecutively, the maximum permissible penalty at the time.

List filed an appeal of his convictions on grounds that his judgment had been impaired by post-traumatic stress disorder due to his military service. He also argued that the letter he left behind at the crime scene, essentially his confession, was a confidential communication to his pastor and therefore inadmissible as evidence. A federal appeals court rejected both arguments.

List eventually expressed a degree of remorse for his crimes. "I wish I had never done what I did," he told Connie Chung in 2002. "I've regretted my action and prayed for forgiveness ever since." When asked why he had not taken his own life, he said he believed that suicide would have prevented him from going to heaven, where he hoped to be reunited with his family.

List died of complications from pneumonia aged 82 on March 21, 2008, while imprisoned at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey. In reporting his death, the New Jersey Star-Ledger referred to him as "The Boogeyman of Westfield."