Running Head: JOHN LIST 1

John List: Family Annihilator

by

Natalie Piganelli

BA Program in Forensic Psychology

Mansfield University

for

CJA 3380-190 Violent Criminal Behavior

Professor Emily Wheeler

May 9, 2021
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JOHN LIST
John List: Family Annihilator

John Emil List was born on September 17, 1925 in Bay City, Michigan. He was the only

child of John and Alma List. List did not show early signs of psychological problems, but he was

not very active socially growing up. The situational factor of note was the fact that he was raised

by strict Lutheran parents, but List agreed with this religion and continued it throughout his life

(Cole, 2020). In 1943, List enlisted in the United States Army and served during World War II as

a laboratory technician. After being discharged, he enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann

Arbor. He completed a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in

accounting. During the Korean War, List was called to duty again and served as a second

lieutenant in Virginia. This is where he met his future wife, Helen. A few months after they

started dating, Helen became pregnant. List proposed very quickly after that, and they were

married in December of 1951. After they were married, Helen revealed that she was not actually

pregnant. She also began to reveal her alcoholism. John and Helen still went on to have three

children. List struggled to hold down a job for very long because his coworkers and bosses found

him to be “off-putting” (Lusky, 2020). This would be the first true sign in his life that something

was “off” about John List.

Eventually, List took a job as vice president of a bank in New Jersey in 1965. He then

moved his entire family to Westfield, New Jersey. The family consisted of himself, his wife,

their three children, and his mother. They settled in a Victorian mansion called “Breeze Knoll”

(Cole, 2020). The house contained 19 rooms including a ballroom with a signed Tiffany skylight.

To the outside world, they were a well-off, normal family. However, things were actually

heading south.
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John List ended up losing his job at the bank, again because of his strange demeanor.

People that knew him described him as meticulous, methodical, hardworking, but also “off”

(Lusky, 2020). List viewed himself as a failure to provide for his family and refused to tell them

that he lost yet another job. He continued to act as if he was going to work every day but spent

his days at the train station. In addition to this, his wife’s alcoholism had only gotten worse, and

they found out that she had contracted syphilis from her previous marriage. All of this began to

weigh over List’s head. As we learned in class, murder can often be brought on by low

socioeconomic status and interpersonal arguments (Wheeler, 2021, Homicide). Both of these

were happening in the List household.

On November 9, 1971, John List sent his three kids off to school. He then proceeded to

shoot his wife, Helen, in the back of the head. Then he went upstairs and shot his mother in the

head. List spent the rest of the hours until the children came home going to the post office to

cancel their mail, calling the schools to tell them his kids were not going to be attending for some

time, dragging his wife’s body on a sleeping bag into their ballroom, and preparing himself some

lunch (Cole, 2020). When his oldest child, Patricia, and his youngest child, Frederick, came

home from school, List shot them both in the head right after they walked through the door. List

then went to attend his middle son, John Jr.’s soccer game. It was said that John Jr. was the

favorite. Despite this claim, List shot his favorite son multiple times in the head and chest when

they got home from the game. He proceeded to move all of the children’s bodies to the ballroom

to lie with their mother. He did not move his mother because he claimed she was “too heavy”

(Lusky, 2020). John list then cleaned up the crime scenes, cut his picture out of all the

photographs in the house, wrote a letter to his pastor in which he confessed to the killings, turned

on some music to play over the house’s intercom, turned every light in the house on, and left.
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Some speculate that he actually stayed one more night in the house and left the next day. Either

way, List fled to Colorado and remained on the run for 18 years.

It took 29 days for someone to realize the List family was not where they were supposed

to be or doing what they were supposed to be doing. It was actually Patricia’s dance teacher that

came to the house looking for her. He was looking through windows and neighbors ended up

calling the police to say a man was looking into their neighbor’s home. It was only then that the

police found the gruesome scene that John List had left for them. Meanwhile, List assumed a

new identity in Denver, Colorado as Robert Clark. He even went on to marry another woman.

After 18 years, the case was covered on America’s Most Wanted. A forensic sculptor made a bust

of how John List would look like aged almost 20 years (Lusky, 2020). America’s Most Wanted

aired across the country and caught the attention of “Robert Clark’s” former neighbor. This

person called in and John List was finally caught, arrested, and eventually convicted of five

counts of first-degree murder. At his sentencing, List argued that he should not be held

accountable because of his mental state at the time. The judge was not convinced and said, “John

Emil List is without remorse and without honor” (Grim Happenings, 2018). It is because of

List’s lack of remorse and the fact that he went undetected for 18 years that he received five life

sentences to be served consecutively, the maximum sentence possible for these crimes. He filed

appeals and claimed that the letter he wrote to his pastor was inadmissible because it was

between himself and a spiritual leader, and he claimed he was not in the right mental state at the

time of the murders due to post-traumatic stress disorder. Although he did seem to have issues

with mental health, he was declared unimpaired at the time of the murders and these appeals

were denied. List died in prison on March 21, 2008 at 82 years old.
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John List could be classified as a family annihilator and mass murderer. According to

ABC News (2002), List “says he wanted to spare them the shame of losing their New Jersey

mansion and to make sure they got to heaven.” This leads me to believe his mass murder

typology is loyalty. He claimed he wanted to save his family and the loyalty typology is when

the killer has “a warped sense of love and wants to save their loved ones from misery and

hardships” (Wheeler, 2021, Multiple Murders). As for his mental state, I want to say he is a

psychopath, but his behaviors do not completely match up to the ones we learned in class.

Criminal psychopaths are often more persistent and more brutal (Wheeler, 2021, Psychopathy).

However, I do think John List was a narcissist. Clarissa Cole, a forensic psychologist that studied

List, agrees with this. She also says that List could be considered obsessive-compulsive as well.

Cole speculates that List’s narcissism, fear of failure, and rigid belief system are what led him to

do what he did. After being caught, List was asked why he did not kill himself like a lot of other

family annihilators do. His response was this: “It was my belief that if you kill yourself, you

won’t go to heaven. So eventually I got to the point where I felt that I could kill them. Hopefully

they would go to heaven, and then maybe I would have a chance to later confess my sins to God

and get forgiveness.” (Cole, 2020). That rigid belief system of his influenced not only what he

did, but also what he did not do.

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References

1971 Family Killer BreaksSsilence. (2006, January 6). ABC News.

https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=132646&page=1

Cole, C. (2020, June 17). John List – History, Crime and Psych Profile. The Criminal Code.

https://www.thecriminalcode.com/index.php/2016/06/17/john-list-history-crime-and-

psych-profile/

John List Biography. (n.d.). The Famous People.

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/john-list-10634.php

John List – The Bogeyman of Westfield. (2018, February 2). Grim Happenings.

https://grimhappenings.com/john-list-the-bogeyman-of-westfield

Lusky, B. (2020, March 16). Was John List the nastiest mass murderer of all time? Film Daily.

https://filmdaily.co/news/john-list-mass-murderer/

Wheeler, E. (2021). Homicide, Assault & Intimate Partner Violence – Chapter 9. [PowerPoint

Presentation].

https://mansfield.desire2learn.com/d2l/le/content/3065278/viewContent/24937201/View

Wheeler, E. (2021). Multiple Murders – Chapter 10. [PowerPoint Presentation].

https://mansfield.desire2learn.com/d2l/le/content/3065278/viewContent/25027557/View

Wheeler, E. (2021). Psychopathy – Chapter 7. [PowerPoint Presentation].

https://mansfield.desire2learn.com/d2l/le/content/3065278/viewContent/24851401/View