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The List
Murders Stun Westfield In 1971
By Kathy Halverson,
February 17, 2001
For The Westfield Leader and The Times
It was right out of a horror movie
– or the type of terrible crime that could only happen
elsewhere. But not in Westfield, N.J. Not in 1971.
In mid-December, the people of
Westfield - and indeed, the entire metropolitan New York City area
- awoke to newspaper headlines of the massacre of an entire family
in the affluent, upper-income community.
Well, almost an entire family: The
dead included Helen List, her mother-in-law Alma List, and
Helen’s three teen-age children, Patty, John Jr., and Frederick.
But one person was missing: John List, the head of the household,
a tall, no-nonsense, often taciturn and personally foreboding
accountant.
Police quickly zeroed in on John
List as the killer. He had, it subsequently turned out, left a
three-page letter to his minister admitting the crime.
The killings had taken place a
month earlier, in November. But List was nowhere to be found.
Days, weeks, and then years went by. The Westfield Police
Department, however, refused to put the case down. Bernard Tracy,
who was later to become the department’s chief, continuously
explored every lead he could muster. Still, John List was not
caught for 18 years, and only then because of the help of a
national TV show – "America’s Most Wanted."
What drove this middle-aged,
college educated, churchgoing man to commit such a terrible crime?
He was in deep financial trouble. He couldn’t make mortgage
payments. His wife , terribly ill, had contacted syphilis from her
first husband, who had died in World War II. List wandered the
streets because he had lost his job. . And he refused to accept
"welfare," even if that meant saving his family.
List was originally from Bay City,
Michigan. He moved his family to Westfield in the mid-1960s. John
bought an 18-room mansion (complete with a ballroom) on Hillside
Avenue. To finance the purchase, John has his mother Alma sell her
house in Bay City, and move to Westfield. The house was never
fully furnished.
John was a devoted churchgoer, but
except for his mother, the rest of his family showed far less
interest. His daughter, Patty, was active in local theater. There
were rumors she was dabbling in witchcraft, which was somewhat in
vogue with young people in the late 1960s and 1970s – a time of
psychedelic music and anti-establishment rhetoric by young people.
John lost his job. Proud to a
fault, he refused to inform his family. He would tell them he was
going to work – and would then stay at the Westfield train
station until it was time to "come home." On Nov. 9,
1971, John had the milk delivery and mail stopped. He told the
schools he was taking the family on an emergency trip to visit
Helen’s "sick mother" in North Carolina. He then shot
his wife at the breakfast table, walked up to the third floor and
shot his mother. He went back downstairs and dragged his wife into
the empty ballroom.
In the afternoon, he picked his
daughter up from school. He killed her when they .arrived home. He
shot the two boys when they each came home in the afternoon. All
were dragged into the ballroom.
John ate dinner and retired to bed.
He disappeared the next morning. It would later be discovered that
he had taken trains to Michigan and then Denver, where he took the
alias "Robert Clark." In Colorado, he married a women he
met at his local church.
When police finally entered the List mansion to discover the
bodies, they found church-like music being played on the intercom.
The FBI caught up with John in 1989
through an anonymous tip. By then he was living in Virginia. The
neighbor had watched an episode of "America’s Most
Wanted," which featured a sculptured engraving of what John
List probably looked like years after the murders. List, a fan of
the show, had missed that episode.
Extradited to New Jersey, List was
convicted and is now serving a life sentence at Trenton State
Prison.
The List case still baffles
criminologists. So many questions remain, from the big ones –
"How could he do it?" – to smaller details, such as,
"What happened to the family’s dog, Tinkerbelle?" The
List house mysteriously burned down sometime after the murders.
Along with the fire went perhaps the biggest irony of all: The
glass ceiling in the empty ball room was a signed Tiffany
original. That alone would likely have paid off all of John
List’s debts. - End |
