WARNING: EXPLICIT MATERIAL

The Family of John List

Birth Name:

Death Date:

November 9, 1971

Place of Death:

431 Hillside Avenue, Westfield, New Jersey

Cause of Death:

Murdered - gunshot wounds

Cemetery Name:

Fairview Cemetery

Claim to Fame:

Crime and their Victims

John List was a narcissistic mass murderer who suffered from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder who systematically murdered his mother, his wife and three children on November 9, 1971. Fired from his accounting position at a paper company in Detroit and again at Xerox in Rochester, in 1965 List accepted a position as vice president and comptroller at a bank in Jersey City. Borrowing money from his mother, List moved with his wife, children, and mother into Breeze Knoll, a 19-room Victorian mansion at 431 Hillside Avenue in Westfield. In 1971 he was fired from the bank, deep in debt and with a nearly empty bank account, List would leave the house each morning, pretending to go to work when in reality he parked at the Westfield train station and read the paper until it was time to go home. With the prospects of filing for bankruptcy, going on welfare, losing his mansion and believing his wife and children would all go to hell because of all the evil in the world, List planned the murders for months. On the morning of November 9th in 1971, John drove his children to school and upon returning home, calmly walked up to his wife as she was sipping coffee and shot her in the head. He then walked up to the third floor, kissed his mother on the cheek, and when she asked what the noise was, shot her in the head. And then made a sandwich and drove to the bank to withdrew his mother's account of $250,000 in cash. He then picked up his daughter Patricia (16) and youngest soon Frederick (13) from school and as they entered the home he shot both of them in the head. He then drove to Westfield High School to watch his elder son John Frederick (15) play in a soccer game. After driving John Frederick home, List shot him repeatedly because his son attempted to defend himself. He then arranged all the bodies (except for his mother who was too heavy to bring downstairs) in the once ornate grand ballroom under sleeping bags, turn the temperature down and played classical music over the loudspeakers. The next morning he turned all the lights in the house on and disappeared for 18 years without a trace.

How John List Was Found

With notes sent to the school explaining the children’s absence, milk deliveries stopped and mail deliveries put on hold, it wasn’t until December 9th that be bodies were discovered. Neighbors had noticed that all the lights were left on day and night without any hint of activity at the home. As the lights went out one by one his next door neighbor suspected something was wrong as he knew John, a strange, compulsively neat individual, would have changed the lights as they went out. When over have the house was unlit a month later, he called police to investigate.

List left for New York, then traveled to Denver, where he began a new life under the name Robert P. Clark, working first as a hotel fry cook and later as an accountant for H&R Block. He joined a local Lutheran church and, in 1985, married a widow named Delores Clark, with whom he moved to Richmond, Virginia

In 1989, possibly the most-watched true crime show, America’s Most Wanted, featured John List and a forensic sculptor’s impression of how he would look then, 18 years after the murders – all the way down to the distinctive glasses. List sat in front of the TV and watched the show with his wife, unaware that she was married to the infamous John List. “I was perspiring like anything,” he remembers, but said his wife did not seem to have recognized him. Interestingly enough Delores Clark’s family did see the resemblance and urged her to contact the local authorities. But she couldn’t believe that her “Robert P. Clark” was capable of such a heinous crime.

But back in Denver, his former neighbors and colleagues from work did recognize him, and called police. He was arrested 11 days later, and, after a jury rejected his diminished capacity defense, convicted and sentenced. In a three-sentence statement to the court, he said he was sorry for “the tragedy that happened in 1971.” He did not mention his wife, his mother, or his children.

When John List died in 2008 at the age of 82, he never showed an ounce of remorse for the murders of his family.

Cemetery Information:

Final Resting Place:

Fairview Cemetery

1100 East Broad Street

Westfield, New Jersey, 07091

USA

North America

Map:

Map of Fairview Cemetery in Westfield, New Jersey

Grave Location:

Arborvale, List Family Plot

Grave Location Description

As you enter the main entrance of the cemetery, continue straight through the middle of the cemetery until you come to the intersection of Glenside Avenue and Lansdown Avenue (the names are printed in the curbs). Directly across from the Arboretum Section, 6 spaces from the intersection and two rows from the road you will find the final resting place of Helen (mother) and her three children – Patricia (16), Frederick (13) and John (15) List.