It was a crime that rocked a nation, a manhunt that turned cold only to reignite almost eighteen years later and hundreds of miles away. With all the makings of a blockbuster, a family slaughtered, the suspect vanished into thin air, and a last-ditch effort to bring the man responsible to justice, the story of the List family murders seems like something that could have only been solved on a television show. Yet with the hard work of police, the talents of an amazing artist, and one observant neighbor, the police were able to solve what could have been the perfect murder.
On December 7th, 1971, police in Westfield, New Jersey received a call from the concerned neighbors of the List family. According to the report, the house’s lights had been on all day and night for almost a month with no sign of anyone inside. When responding to the initial reports, police checked around the outside of the house but found nothing amiss. There were no newspapers stacked up, no signs of any unusual activity, and according to the schools and offices of the List family they were on an extended vacation. Since nothing was found on their perimeter search, police soon left, only to be called back later that night. The caller this time was the drama instructor for the oldest of the List children, Patricia. He managed to convince police that something was amiss and this time they entered through an unlocked window into the basement. As they entered the mansion’s ballroom, they were greeted by four forms laid out on the floor. Upon closer inspection, police were shocked to discover that the forms were the bodies of Helen List and her three children, Patricia, Frederick, and John Jr, all wrapped up in sleeping bags. As they searched the rest of the house, they located the body of Alma List, the children’s grandmother, upstairs in the attic. Yet as they continued their search, it became increasingly clear that one person was missing, the patriarch of the family, John List, along with any photographs of him in the house.
Almost instantly, a manhunt was launched to find List. However, as police soon realized from notes left behind and the last contacts people had had with the victims, List had an almost month head start on them. List had been thorough with his murders, shooting each member of his family one at a time on November 9th, 1971, before moving all but his mother into the ballroom. After doing so, he canceled his newspaper, mail, and milk delivery so that the growing stacks over the weeks wouldn’t give away the fact that there was no one alive to pick them up. He then sent notes to his children’s’ schools and his wife’s job and told them that the family was going on vacation and wouldn’t be back for a few weeks. With that taken care of, List proceeded to clean up the crime scene and remove his picture from all the family photographs around the house so the police would have no good references to use when they did start searching. He then drove to the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City and vanished. There was no evidence that he ever boarded a flight there, nor was his body ever found. Despite the national attention that this crime garnered, no signs of List could be found anywhere. It was almost as if he had vanished from the face of the earth.
For obvious reasons, John List falls into the category of killers known as family annihilators. The majority of these family annihilators, like List, are white men in their 30s who kill their entire family and sometimes themselves. The motives for these crimes can vary from person to person, but will generally fall within one of four categories: disappointed, paranoid, anomic, and self-righteous. In the case of John List, at first glance his motives fall into all of these except for the self-righteous, as this category seeks to punish the mother of the family. According to the notes that he left behind for the police, his pastor, and his remaining family members, List stated that he was afraid for the future of his family. His family was unaware of the fact that he had recently lost his job and, consumed by this failure, he had no desire for his family to face poverty. He also stated that he was afraid for the children’s future and believed they were turning from God, especially his daughter who had started acting in school plays. While the religious motivation and wanting to save them from hell falls into the paranoid category’s motivation, wanting to save his family from a worse fate, according to forensic psychologist Richard Walter, was simply a cover. With his daughter, we see the disappointed family annihilator, wanting to punish his family for not living up to his ideals. However, John List falls mostly until the anomic category, those who see their family as social symbols. When he lost his social status his family just became accessories to a lifestyle he no longer had. This becomes even more abundantly clear due to his behaviors in the years between the murders and his capture.
For the next seventeen years, the case went cold, the search for John List turned up zero leads, and investigators were stumped. While some resorted to dark humor, sending their partners postcards “from” the killer, most simply let the case fall into the back of their minds, dooming it to remain on the cold case shelf. And it no doubt would have, the perfect crime with List getting away without consequences, if it hadn’t been for America’s Most Wanted and Frank Bender. First airing in 1988 and hosted by John Walsh, who had dedicated his life to catching criminals after his own son was kidnapped, the show led to many people coming to justice. During the show’s 25 seasons, it aired episodes about thousands of wanted fugitives and led to the capture of 1200 wanted men and women. In 1989, the show reached out to Frank Bender, a forensic artist who had worked with the U.S. Marshals in the past on fugitive cases, and asked him to do an age progression bust on John List for their upcoming segment on the murderer. While Bender had done age progression busts before, helping catch two other fugitives with busts before this, this would be the first case where he had so little to work with. The only photographs that Bender had available were grainy shots that only showed List’s face, a far cry from the mugshots he had worked with previously that showed the sides of the head as well. With the help of Richard Walter’s psychological profile for List, Bender sat down and created an age progression bust of what List would look like almost twenty years after he had murdered his family. At the same time, the FBI had created their own image using their computer software, but when informed that American’s Most Wanted wanted to use Bender’s bust as well, they refused to have theirs on the show. On May 21st, 1989, the episode aired on televisions across the country, and investigators could do nothing but sit back and wait.
They didn’t have to wait long. Of the more than three hundred calls that came in from around the country, one came from Wendy Flannery of Denver, Colorado. She stated that the bust looked almost eerily like her old neighbor, Bob Clark, who, like List, was an accountant with a mastoidectomy scar behind his right ear. Clark was married to a woman named Delores and the couple had recently moved to Virginia. When the FBI followed up on the call, they met Delores at her house, who agreed the picture looked like her husband. Later that afternoon, while at his accounting firm in Richmond, Bob Clark was arrested. While he adamantly denied he was John List, the scar behind his right ear matched, as did his fingerprints. After seventeen years, six months, and twenty-three days, John List had been caught. While there was no way to bring back the lives so brutally cut short that day in 1971, thanks to the efforts of the police who never stopped looking, an artist with amazing skill, and a television program, their killer was finally brought to justice. Convicted for five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to five consecutive life sentences, List spent the remaining years of his life behind bars, passing away in 2008 at age 82.
