The Hunt for John List (Part 1)

In early December 1971, after a month of watching the lightbulbs in the List house slowly burn out one after another, neighbors finally became concerned about the List family and called the Westfield, NJ police to report their suspicions. Acting on the calls, officers arrived at house on the morning of December 7 to perform a wellbeing check, and when no one answered the door, they managed to gain access to the house through a basement window.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Nearly 50 years after Stephen King's Carrie became a cultural phenomenon, Mike Flanagan is reimagining the iconic story for a new generation. After her father's sudden death, Carrie White enters public school for the first time and must navigate a viral bullying scandal, the relentless pressure of the social media age, and the awakening of mysterious telekinetic powers that rise alongside her adolescence. You know, the usual. Carrie is a story about how small acts of cruelty snowball into something catastrophic, a theme that feels as painfully relevant today as it did 50 years ago. I feel like maybe even a little bit more because we are all hooked on social media and we all know that can be a terrifying place, but not quite as terrifying as the prom scene. Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video.

• 0:47Speaker 00

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• 2:47Speaker 00

  Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  And I'm Elena.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  And this is Morbid.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  This is Morbid.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  And guess what? It's pub day! Elena's book came out today.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  It did, August 11th.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, August 11th. But if you're listening to this, it's like a week later or two weeks later.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  We just wanted to be prepared, you know?

• 3:21Speaker 00

  We had to get ahead of it.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you can get The Butcher Legacy now.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Hell yeah, you can get it at stores. You can get it online. You could download the audiobook. Who had, there's a new actor.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  There is a new actor, Carrie Height.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Who plays great detective, one and only John Larue.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Hell yeah, and he's so good.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  He has a great fucking voice.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Like nailed it.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  It's like butter.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Butter.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  I'm excited. We have tour coming up.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  A little mini book tour.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Little mini book tour this week.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Take a little time off after that.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yep, we're gonna, I'm gonna isolate after that.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  But you guys won't know because we already were like pre-recording.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  You'll be fine.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  So you'll be good. You won't, you won't feel it.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  In fact, you'll be listening to John List, our episode on John List, which we're gonna start today.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Which, what a case.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  It really is.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  What a case.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  So fucked up. And I've seen it, like, I've heard this case so many times and I've seen it in like pop culture things like, what was that? I think it was the Watcher House. Did you ever watch that on Netflix?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't watch it.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  I watched part of it. I personally didn't enjoy it very much.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  But they, they do like a take on it in the beginning, which is interesting to like mesh those two stories.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a show.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  It's a show.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  It's a production.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  It's a production. Yeah, it's not, it's not really true to the story. It's, I think it's more for entertainment.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  You know?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  But we're gonna tell you the real story today.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Um, and this is gonna be two parts.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I'm horrified, but let's do it.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Let's get into it. So to the people living on Hillside Avenue in West, I just said Avenue. We're really off to a good start.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  You know, we're tired.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey. The List family had always been something of a strange mystery. When John and Helen List moved their family into the massive 19-room mansion.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  The area was a safe and friendly place to raise a family. Neighbors got together on the weekends. They'd get together and go bowling. They'd play cards. They'd hold block parties and cookouts. It was like this really close-knit community. Now, given how friendly and social everybody was with each other, the List's immediately stood out for being the very opposite of that when they arrived to the neighborhood in 1965. When a neighbor literally just stopped by with a pie to welcome them to the neighborhood, John looked at the neighbor and said, "We're not friendly people and we don't like to get involved with neighbors socially."

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Wow. He ju, he just laid that out?

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Brother, what?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  I missed, um, one of my neighbors like bringing cookies by and I felt like a piece of shit. So I like wrote, I literally ordered like cute little cards and like wrote a card and was like, "Thank you so much."

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Well, and also I think it's weird to not like, like, I'm not a super sociable person.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Nor am I.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  I don't always wanna be around people.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  No.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  I love my neighbors and I also love that we all have like a little community there that like looks out for each other.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  That's the thing, I'm kinda like new in my neighborhood. So I don't know everybody just yet, but like, I would never open the door and be like, "I'm not friendly, fuck off."

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Well, and that's, what, and you know what you're doing there? You're being like, "Don't, if you see something happening at my house, don't, don't call the cops." You know what I mean? Like, it's like, you know, like neighbors do that for each other because you care about each other. But if you're gonna be like, "Hey, so fuck off and we don't care about neighbors and we hate you. We don't wanna be friends." It's like, "All right, well, yours is a house I won't look out for then."

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Like, why would you ever want that?

• 6:42Speaker 00

  You know what was nice though? These neighbors were undeterred because that same week, apparently not taking John's memo at all, they hosted a welcome party for the List. They were like, "We're gonna get you. We're gonna ingratiate you into this neighborhood."

• 6:52Speaker 01

  We're gonna make you like us.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  They attended to not be total dicks, I guess.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  But for most people on the block, it would be the first and last time they ever saw the List socially.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Which I'm just like, how do you function that way? I would feel so strange.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  In the six years that they lived on Hillside Avenue, John's relationship with the neighbors was, quote, "limited to over-the-fence chatting, typically about the garden that he had cultivated in the backyard." Next-door neighbor John DeVoe said, "List and I used to wave to each other when we would be working on our grounds, but after a while, he wouldn't greet me. In fact, he wouldn't even look my way."

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Like, you're just like being a dick. The rest of the List family had an equally limited interaction with the neighborhood around them. When the List children, the three of them, Patricia, John Jr., and Frederick, held a Halloween party the year after moving into the house, none of the neighborhood children were invited and neither were any of their classmates.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  So who was invited?

• 7:45Speaker 00

  I don't know exactly. I know that Patricia was involved in like a drama class outside of school, it seems like. So I don't know if a lot of those friends were invited or like sports teams friends were invited, but it's unclear because that was my, I was like, who came? Was it just you guys then? Was that a family party?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  At school, they did maintain healthier relationships and they even played sports and had some extracurricular activities. But there was always an understanding that some subjects were just not going to be spoken about with the List children. Patty List's friend Dana said, "Pat wouldn't talk about her family and we didn't ask questions."

• 8:23Speaker 01

  It's a house that says, "We have secrets in this house."

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Is usually a.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  A dark place.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  A dark place, I would say.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  From limited conversations that they did have, her friends had inferred that her mother had suffered a mental health crisis in recent years and basically had a nervous breakdown.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  Another friend remembered, "She was absent from school quite a bit and we heard it was because her mother wanted her to cook for the family." We all heard a lot of stories about her mother, but Pat would tell you nothing. It was all kinda like rumor. Patty's friend's perception of her home life was shared by the neighbors though. According to neighbor Betty DeVoe, "Patricia cared for the home and acted as the true mother for the family."

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Oh, that breaks my heart.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, Helen List had a lot of mental health issues and a lot of regular health issues as well that really went untreated for a long, long time.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, she, she had a tough beginning. Now, the relationship that John List and his family maintained with the neighbors was a stark contrast to how they were perceived by their church community. According to one neighbor, "The family's main tie with the community was apparently with the Redeemer Lutheran Church." John was a devout Lutheran. He had been raised that way and he had strong feelings about morality and propriety and he constantly tried to instill those into his children.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  I wish you guys had just seen the face that Elena gave me. She just like lowered her eyes and was like, not gonna say anything.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Comment. You do what you do.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, live your life.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, live your life.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  By all accounts, there were two sides to John List. There was the devout churchgoer, determined to instill very rigid values and principles into his kids, and the grumpy neighbor who was just desperate to avoid even like the nicest social interactions. Regardless of his popularity in church, though.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  That also just doesn't feel very, uh,

• 10:10Speaker 00

  churchgoer.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Churchgoer to like not, aren't, isn't like, love thy neighbor. Part of like most, you know?

• 10:18Speaker 00

  I'm not familiar.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  I don't know about Lutheran.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  I'm not familiar with the Lutheran church, but I, I think that's pretty across the board, like, love thy neighbor.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Like, I feel, and I feel like that's also just kind of like a nice.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  It's a nice moral thing to instill, you know?

• 10:32Speaker 00

  I don't know what his issue was with his neighbors. It's

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I think it is part of Lutheran beliefs.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  I think it's, I think you're right.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  I just looked it up.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Cause I think it's part of a lot of, like, religions across the board.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause I think Lutherans, like, it's, they have like this, they flow through, like, it's like God to them, you know what I mean? Like, almost kind of thing. I don't know a lot about it, so I'm not gonna like.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  But I know that that is a core value that is supposed to,

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  to go through. And it's like, well, you're not teaching your kids the values that you are saying you believe in.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Which is strange.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  So.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  I think, I think they had a lot of secrets. I think John was a disturbed man. I don't, I don't know the level of mental illness that I would say he, I mean, obviously, he's mentally ill.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, obviously, he's disturbed.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  But I don't wanna give him like that excuse, you know what I mean?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  So it's, it's a strange dynamic.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Well, just the fact that he was like nasty to his neighbors, but then went to church and was like, no, I'm, I'm a churchgoer.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  And then was like, and my kids are gonna be rigid and like have to have all these rules, but I'm not gonna teach them like the nice parts, like, love thy neighbor and be kind to other people and, you know?

• 11:40Speaker 00

  Later on, his reverend said that, like, and we'll get to it, the reverend basically said, like, he knew the, the Testaments, I think they're called, the Tenets, yeah. Uh, but he didn't understand them.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Clearly.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  He knew what they said, but he couldn't, he could recite them exactly. And like, he thought he was living by them, but he, they weren't hitting him on like, on a real level, you know?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, clearly.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  So, again, regardless of his popularity at church, both personas seemed pretty harmless. Like, he was just kind of a grumpy asshole.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 00

  In the neighborhood and then great at church.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  But because he seemed so harmless, that's what made his actions in the winter of nineteen seventy-one so shocking.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Now, given how reclusive the family had been since moving in, it makes sense that the neighbors didn't notice anything wrong for several weeks.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Late one night in November, uh, Harry Devlin was having trouble sleeping. So he got out of bed and just kinda looking out the window, and he noticed that all the lights in the List house were on, despite the fact that it was nearly two in the morning. To Harry, it seemed out of character for notoriously thrifty John List to waste electricity and money that way. But a lot of what John List did was unusual, so he did, he was just like, oh, well, here, there he goes again.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Being weird.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  And that's, this is another reason to not be this guy with your neighbors and to actually get to know your neighbors, because when something is wrong, they're gonna notice right away.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Like, right now, it's like, for how long? The neighbors were like, well, we don't see them anyways, or like,

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  he's just grumpy and, and keeps his house dark.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  When it's like, who wants to get involved with that? Like, I don't wanna piss off John.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  It's like, that doesn't help you and your family. It's not just you living in that house, you have kids.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  He didn't really care about that.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  You want other people looking out for your family.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  You would think so. But I think also, like, because of the way that he was raised, he was supposed to be the person who protected and looked out for his family, and it was nobody else's job.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  And it's like, no, it's nice to have.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, community.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  A community, man. And you go to church.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  Have you heard?

• 13:37Speaker 01

  That's like the core value of a church, is like, community.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  It takes a village, babe.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  It absent, it fucking does.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  So, I love my little neighborhood watch.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  We all know what the fuck is going on in all our houses.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  I love it. I think it's great.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Something seems a little out of place. We're like, you guys good?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Got a little text chain going?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  Well, a week later, when Harry's son Brian was home from school for the holiday, Harry pointed out the fact that the List had yet to turn off a single light for like a, a while at that point. And he asked his son what he thought of it. And Brian had quite the answer. He said, Dad, I think old man List killed his family and has taken off.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  He meant it to be funny.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  But the second he said it, neither of them laughed. They were like, oh, that's

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Like, as soon as the words came out, it was like, oh, that

• 14:23Speaker 00

  That could be what happened. Yeah, it occurred to both of them that he was actually the exact kind of person that you would expect to do something that awful.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you really piece him out.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  It's like a day to day, you're probably like, oh, whatever, like, he's harmless, he's just grumpy. But then when you like piece it all out, you're like, oh.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  That's a scary realization.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Like, he might have done that.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  So the neighbors weren't the only ones that thought the List's sudden absence was strange. Patty's drama teacher, Edwin Iliano, had started to wonder where they had gone, because Patty's missing class now. At the beginning of the, of November, the schools all received notes from John List informing them that the kids were gonna be out of school for a little bit because they were visiting a sick relative. But several weeks had then passed and they still hadn't returned. And that wasn't the only thing that had concerned her teacher. Just a few days before the family supposedly left to go visit the sick relative, Patty had seemed deeply upset to her teacher. Without a hint of sarcasm or humor, she said, "My father's going to murder me and my family."

• 15:25Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, what?

• 15:26Speaker 00

  "My father is going to murder me and my family."

• 15:32Speaker 01

  And no one did anything?

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Well, to Edwin, it seems like the kind of thing that a father would jokingly say to a kid if, like,

• 15:40Speaker 01

  No, Edwin.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Nope. My dad never said jokingly that he was gonna murder our entire family.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  No.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. I got, I mean, some people, some people do speak hyperbolically and they're like, Jesus Christ, I'm gonna kill you all, like, blah.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  But if your child is saying to a teacher with no hint of sarcasm or humor, "My father is gonna murder my entire family," you need to tell someone.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  You gotta call somebody immediately. Yeah.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Sorry, that's, I don't get that.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Well, he

• 16:09Speaker 01

  I don't get that.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  And you, you also have to remember the timeframe of this. It's like, people didn't get involved in other people's business.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  What the fuck?

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Unfortunately. And this is like a kind of an upper scale, upper class neighborhood. It's like, people don't get involved in people's business in that kind of setting.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  And he's also her drama teacher, so he's like, is this my place? Like, uh.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  It's, it is.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  He said, you know, he thought maybe Patty misunderstood that her dad was just being hyperbolic. But she also seemed so genuine and was so upset that it was bothering him now that she had been gone for some time. And he was wondering whether something truly bad had happened. So the night before the List were supposed to leave for their supposed trip, Edwin got a call from Patty begging him to come over to the house. Um, I think a lot of people look into this relationship and they're like, why was she so close with her teacher? Like, that's a little bit weird. I don't know if there was anything happening. People do allege that.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  But obviously, she didn't have a father.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  She didn't have a father, and they would also practice at the, um, they would like run rehearsals at the List house because there was the big ballroom. So it worked for drama practices.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  So the kids would come over?

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, like anybody in the drama, you know, production or club would come over.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Private.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  That's the thing. So I don't

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Just making sure.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  I don't know all the logistics about their relationship, but from what I know, it doesn't seem like too weird.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Just worth mentioning.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, wow.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. So he got a call from Patty the night before they're supposed to leave, begging him to come over. He said she was extremely distraught. It was obvious in her voice, but the timing was bad. I couldn't get over there.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, maybe I'm, he should have called someone.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  I know.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  I know.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  That's, I'm sorry, it's, this is no one's fault but John List.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, you, you gotta make moves when this kinda shit, if a child is calling and is distraught and has already said, "My father's gonna kill my entire fam-" maybe I'm just being like overly.

• 18:11Speaker 00

  Well, I think

• 18:12Speaker 01

  I would have called someone.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  I think when you have two close events like this, that like, she's clearly upset, she's clearly distraught.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Something's going wrong in that house.

• 18:21Speaker 00

  Like, we can't just wait for the third thing.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  We can't wait for the, for something really bad to happen. We gotta, and it's like, I can understand, like, one thing maybe brushing it off. You, you gotta call after the second one. You gotta do something and be like, you know what? Overreact.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  If you overreact and you look silly, whatever. At least, nothing has happened.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  It's true. So he explained to Patty, he was like, I can't come over, I'm sorry, but we'll talk in the morning. And that was the last time he'd ever heard from her. He did not get to talk to her in the morning.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  That's horrific.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  He assumed everything was okay and that they'd just gone on their trip, but December was now approaching and there was still no word about their return. So he started to wonder if Patty's comment about her father murdering everybody in the house wasn't so facetious after all.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  By the end of November, Edwin, uh, began driving past the List house on a regular basis, just looking for any signs of life. At first, he was heartened by the light shining in every window, but that hope soon turned to a feeling of dread upon subsequent drive-bys, where it seems like the lights were just left on in general. So no longer sure what he could really do or what he should do, but sure that he needed to do something now, he spoke to the police on three separate occasions, telling them what he knew and that he suspected something bad had happened. Later, he said, "I got the feeling they thought me the village idiot. They just didn't take me seriously. Finally, I asked to see the chief, but I was given some excuse that he was busy."

• 19:43Speaker 01

  At least if somebody's trying to do something.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Well, that's the thing. It's like, I do, I agree with you. I think somebody should have called long before this turned into what it turned into. But also, I don't know that the police would have done anything, because it takes a while to get somebody out to this house.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  I am thinking from a twenty twenty-six lens, and it's, I have to put myself back there, and it's hard to sometimes put yourself back there.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  No, I get that.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Cause I'm like, right now, why would you not like, but I'm like, you, one, that you don't have the resources that you have now to contact someone. And two, they were just much more lackadaisical with this shit. Like, they were just like, eh.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  Well, and really, what would they do? Knock on the door and be like, hey, you gonna kill your kids?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing. It's like, yeah.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, and I think, you know, people didn't wanna call the police back then. They didn't wanna get involved in other people's shit.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  But now he was, and they weren't doing anything.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

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• 22:27Speaker 00

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• 22:47Speaker 00

  It turned out that he wasn't the only one to report their suspicions to the police. By the time December rolled around, several neighbors had called to convey their concerns. A few times, they remembered seeing a police car drive by the house and stop very briefly, but nobody had ever seen an officer go to the door of the List house or even get out of their car. Which it's like, what's your plan here? Now, as neighbors on Hillside Avenue started putting up their Christmas decorations, they watched with increasing dismay as the lights in the List house started slowly going out. Which is just chilling. It started with a porch light, and by December 7th, several of the other rooms had gone dark as well.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  So had it not been for the other kids and Edwin Iliano's drama workshop, the mystery of the missing List family could have gone on forever. But after weeks of no word from Patty or anybody else, her friends just couldn't take it anymore. On the night of December 6th, they called Edwin at home and they were like, "We talked it over and we decided we're gonna go break into the List house to find out what the fuck is happening." Like, what's going on? He managed to talk them down from breaking into the house. He was like, "You're gonna get in a lot of trouble for that, so maybe don't do that." And I'll go to the police. I can understand, though, that... I would probably be the same way. Yeah, this has been, I mean- There's kids involved. They've been gone for almost a month, you know? And these are her friends. So, he was like, "I'm gonna go to the police again tomorrow." So, the next morning, he did like he promised. He went to the police, along with Patty's friend Barbara Sheridan.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  And they got to the Westfield Police Department and demanded to speak with the captain, Alvar Dallas. The drama club actually met in the municipal building at times that also housed the police department. So occasionally, like throughout drama club or drama practice, the kids would wander over and chat with the officers. So Captain Alvar Dallas, can't say that, was actually familiar with Patty. He had met her a few times. He said, "There was the possibility that the elderly grandmother had been left alone in the house. Perhaps if they contacted the police after the family had been missing for only a week, it wouldn't have caused alarm." But this was 28 days. Yeah, that's wild. It is. So he promised that he would go by the house that night.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  But when there still hadn't been any action taken by 10:00 PM, Edwin and Sheridan took it upon themselves to go back to the List house and try to figure out what they could do. By the first week of December, several of the neighbors had seen Edwin's car driving past the List house and even pull into the driveway at times. They didn't know who he was, though, so there was some talk that it might be somebody looking to rob the house. Those suspicions weren't reported until December 7th to the police, when Edwin Iliano and Barbara Sheridan parked in the driveway. It was a call from a neighbor that finally got an officer to the List house. Jesus, guys. Yeah. When officers George Zalesnik and Charles Holler approached the group standing in List driveway, they introduced themselves.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  And Edwin Iliano, Barbara Sheridan, and the next-door neighbor, Dr. Bill Conick, who had made the call to the police, were like, "Hey, we are who we are." We are who we are. Officer Holler said they had stopped by because they were concerned for the well-being of the elderly grandmother, who was believed to have remained home when the other families went on a trip. Barbara had expressed concern that the woman wasn't in the best health, and she worried that, you know, maybe she had fallen and needed help, and that's why the lights were just going off and staying on. Like, I think they were, I think they had worse feeling. I think this was just the best way to get in. This was the easiest way to get somebody there. To do something, exactly. So the officer stepped onto the porch and they rang the bell, but they obviously got no response.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  By then, most of the lights had pretty much burned out, so it was very dark inside. That's so scary. It really is. They shined their lights through the windows into the home, didn't really see anything out of the ordinary, though. And on a walk outside, around the outside of the house, they didn't find anything suspicious. The officers didn't have a warrant at that time, but they did have a legitimate concern that somebody inside might need help, which was significant justification to enter. But unfortunately, all of the doors were locked, and without an obvious need to do so, they couldn't break in.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  But fortunately, on their second trip around the house, they found an open window that led into the basement. So the two officers climbed through, and Edwin called out to them, "Make sure you check inside of the house, especially the ballroom area."

• 27:05Speaker 00

  The interior of the house was not what either officer had expected. The heat appeared to be off, and remember, this is December in New Jersey, so it was freezing. And with only a few lights left on, every room on the first floor was just lit by an like a very eerie glow, and the rest of the rooms were pitch black. Oh, I hate this. This part fucks me up. Oh, no. There was also music playing over the intercom. Filling every room with what Officer Holler described as church-like music. That is fucking horrifying. There aren't even words to convey what that does to my stomach and my brain. I hate that.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Just an empty fucking house where the lights are slowly going off in every room. And church music is playing over the intercom. Through the entire house.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  What? You can't make that up. And this is what seems like, right now, just an empty fucking mansion. It's, that's like something you would see in a movie. Yeah. In the living room. That's a Mike Flanagan movie right there. It is a Mike Flanagan movie. That's scary. Yeah. "In the living room, there were four large fish tanks that were lined up against the wall, and only a single goldfish had survived 28 days without food. With their flashlights guiding the way to the ballroom, both officers noticed dark brown stains on the floor that led directly to an archway into the ballroom, and there was an orange curtain pulled across the doorway." This is the fucking most chilling discovery. It really is. "So they swept the beams of light around the room.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  There was a pool table off to the right, along with some chairs and some other furniture. On the floor by the doorway, there was a brown grocery bag filled with what seemed to be old rags. Officers Zalesnik swept the flashlight beam in the other direction, and it landed on more bags piled up on the floor near the wall. It only took a second for both officers to realize that they were not looking at bags of trash on the floor, but human bodies. Oh, my god. Each one wrapped in a sleeping bag with a rag placed over each one of their faces."

• 29:16Speaker 00

  "Now, Officers Zalesnik approached the four bodies and crouched down near the one closest to him. Later, he said, "It turned out to be the wife. I touched her arm to feel for a pulse, but there was none. It was pretty solid, like squeezing a piece of wood, hard and stiff. She'd been there for a while." While his partner went outside to report the discovery, Officer Holler continued to look over the four victims on the floor. John's wife Helen was dressed in a nightgown and a robe, but the three children were all fully dressed, almost like they were headed to school. Each had been shot in the head, and by the look of things, they'd been there for quite some time. A short time later, the officers discovered the body of John's mother Alma in the attic apartment where she lived.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  She had been facing her killer, and the killer had shot her in the face, just above her left eye. Holy shit. After shooting her, almost killer stuffed her body in a small closet and closed the door. Wow. Now, back at the police department, Captain Vardalis overheard the call that came through from Zalesnik. When the call came in, everyone just heard, "My god, there's bodies all over the place. Send me some help. It's a mass homicide or a mass suicide. There's bodies all over here." That just gave me chills. Yeah. Homicides, mass or otherwise, were very rare in Westfield at this point, so the officer's plea for help was met with nearly every detective the department had rolling out of there into the List house.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Even the captain jumped in his car and rushed to the scene. Now, as they moved through the house, investigators found more evidence of murders. There was blood trails leading down the hall, bags of bloody paper towels, indicating that the killer had obviously tried to clean up as best as he could. The officers were being led through the house by Edward and Barbara Sheridan, or Edwin, excuse me, and Barbara Sheridan, who were familiar with the layout. But later that night, it did occur to the lead-two officers that their guides almost seemed too familiar with certain aspects of the crime scene. It seemed like they were intentionally drawing their attention to certain things, despite the claim that they hadn't been inside since the family left for vacation. Years later, Edwin Iliano admitted that he and Barbara had entered the house before

• 31:25Speaker 00

  the officers arrived, so they knew what to expect inside. What the fuck? So when he said especially the ballroom? Yeah, he said he had already found them. What the fuck? Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  This gets weirder and weirder.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I didn't, I didn't ever know that detail.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Within moments of requesting additional officers at the scene, though, it seemed like the entire police force had arrived at the house and they basically had, including Chief James Moran, who took over the scene, kneeling beside the bodies in the bed, in the ballroom. It occurred to him that there was almost no powerful odor of decay, like you would usually associate with dead bodies. And the remains were all in remarkably good condition, considering.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Although it would turn out this was because John List had turned the thermostat down to 50 degrees. At that moment, it made it impossible for investigators to tell when the family had been killed.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Well, that, that'll fuck up time of death for the pathologist, too.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  It could have been weeks earlier or just that night.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  Be like, based on how they were. For all they knew, also, the killer could have still been in the house.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Like, how fucking scary is that?

• 32:32Speaker 01

  That's a huge house.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  It's a huge house and it just, you know, maybe he's sitting up there DJing the fucking church music.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally, like, damn.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  Terrifying. So Officers Zalesnik recalled, as we moved around the house, I kept thinking about the movie Psycho. I couldn't get the idea out of my head that somebody was gonna come around the corner with an axe.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Which just gives you such a, a read on what that scene was like.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Oh, my god. Makes my stomach churn.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. It wasn't just the darkness, the death, and the church choir blaring over the intercom that made everything so unsettling. It was also the fact that the massive house was so sparsely furnished. It almost looked like they'd been in the process of moving in or moving out. There was a reason for that. After the officers secured the scene and determined that there were no living people in the house, the officers realized that Edwin Iliano and Barbara Sheridan had informed them that six people lived in the house, but they had only found five bodies. John List was missing. That was suspicious in and of itself, but in a very short time, they were gonna find out the reason for John List's absence.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Sure were.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  While combing over each room for evidence, crime scene technicians found five neatly addressed unsealed envelopes taped to a metal file cabinet in John's office, including one that was addressed to the family's pastor, Eugene Rowinkle. Recognizing the pastor's name, Chief Moran grabbed the envelope and opened it carefully before removing the letter inside. John List had written to his pastor, "I am sorry to add this additional burden to your work. You are the one person that I know, while not condoning this, will at least possibly understand why I felt I had to do this."

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah?

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  He, he had faith.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Oh, oh, yeah, Reverend, you'll understand. What?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Spoiler alert, Reverend does not understand.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  I'm very glad to hear that.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  What the fuck? In a, "I'm sorry to add this additional burden to your work."

• 34:25Speaker 01

  To, to, to call family annihilation an additional burden?

• 34:30Speaker 00

  An additional burden on the church.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Is bonkers.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, yeah. Bonkers, indeed. I can't think of any other word. John List, though, went on to explain in the letter that he had run into money problems and wasn't earning anywhere near enough to support his family, and he feared they would have to go on welfare. He also indicated that he was worried about the ways in which social change was affecting his family, noting that his daughter wanted to go into acting as a profession and that his wife was no longer going to church.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  They weren't doing exactly what I wanted them to do, and they weren't being perfect little robots that I had pro, programmed them to be.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  So.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Exactly. As for his mother, her murder was, according to him, a sort of act of mercy, since the killing of the family would, quote, "be a tremendous shock to her at this age."

• 35:15Speaker 01

  I always love when these pieces of shit frame something like a mercy killing, like, they're like, well, you know, I murdered the whole family, so like, that would have bummed her out.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  It's like, was it really?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  So I killed her to save her from that.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Was it really that kind of you to look her in the face and shoot her and over her eye?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  After murdering her entire family?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  And also a shocked, you, it would have been a shock to her at that age. I think your mom would be pretty shocked if you killed your family, no matter how old she was.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  I don't think it's age-related.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  I don't think so.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think you're just a piece of shit.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  I do, too. But there it was. John List had murdered his entire family to avoid the supposed shame and embarrassment of poverty.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  That's horrific.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  He shot them all in the head and left their bodies to rot in a basically empty mansion that he never really could have afforded in the first place. The search of the List house finally wrapped up that night, or that morning around 4:00 a.m., but there would be additional hours spent at the house in the next following days. Among other things, their search turned up critical evidence, including a 22 caliber Colt revolver and a nine-millimeter pistol and a small amount of ammunition. Investigators pretty much had everything they needed to make an arrest, but the only thing they were missing was the killer himself.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, where's John List?

• 36:24Speaker 00

  The next morning, as investigators and crime scene technicians arrived at the List house to just continue work, news of the murders obviously spread across the front pages of newspapers all across New Jersey and New York. The most pressing question on everybody's mind was, how had these bodies just been sitting in this house for nearly a month?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  How?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Literally, how?

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Why had the police not checked on them sooner? School Superintendent Ellie Law said, "After four or five days, the absence was reported to our special services department, which is our usual procedure. A social worker made a routine check of the house and, finding no one home, notified the police of the absence." So it's like, how many people had contacted police and they?

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they had done nothing.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Which it's like, again, was anything gonna happen even when people were like, hey, his daughter's saying he's gonna murder his whole family? Were they gonna do anything then?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Seriously?

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Or were they just gonna get to it when they got to it?

• 37:16Speaker 01

  You guys heard of a welfare check? Like, my god.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Seriously. Now, just as important as what the press was saying was what they were not saying. In his letter to his pastor, John List claimed that he had shot each member of his family in the back of the head to spare them the terror of the impending death.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  The only problem with that is guns make noise.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  You shoot one, the other one's gonna hear a gun.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Well, he, he had a plan for that.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  So this detail was reported in many articles, that he had shot them all in the back of the head to spare them, but it contradicted the autopsy reports and the physical evidence. Alma List had been shot above her eye, which we already know, which meant that she was facing him when he pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. As for Helen, Patty, and Frederick, the angle at which the bullets entered indicated that he would have had to shoot them with his left hand if he had been behind them, which was his non-dominant hand, and he would have had to reach around their head slightly before pulling the trigger, and none of that seemed likely.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Finally, unlike the rest of his family, John Jr. appeared to have put up a fight when he realized what was happening. He'd been shot at least 10 times before finally succumbing to his injuries.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Oh, so John List is just a cowardly little fuck.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  100%.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I love that he claimed, like, to spare them.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  It's like, no.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  I mercy killed my mother and I spared my children.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  No.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  The terror of knowing I was gonna shoot them in the head.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  Not at all.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  When you find out exactly how methodical he was with this and the way that he could have stopped at any ti, he had to leave the house and go pick up the kids at certain points. He had to sit around and wait for others to get home from different activities, like, we'll get into it, it is, he could have stopped himself at any point.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  And that's how, it's like, you're a madman for some reasons, but you weren't a madman in the middle of this.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  This wasn't a, like a?

• 39:06Speaker 01

  No, it sounds like you had a plan.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, there, there was a fully laid out plan.

• 39:20Speaker 00

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• 40:42Speaker 00

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• 41:18Speaker 00

  So after reviewing the evidence and taking in the scene, investigators started piecing together the scenario that led to the deaths. On the morning of November 9th, Helen sent the kids off to school and sat down in the kitchen to drink a cup of coffee. Without any warning, John came in and pressed the nine millimeter pistol to her head and pulled the trigger, which killed her instantly and left a pool of blood on the table and a bullet lodged in the kitchen wall. That's the other thing. He didn't think about ballistics.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  It's like, we know how you shot them. Assuming his mother had heard the noise, like you pointed out, John went up to Alma's attic apartment and upon entering fired one shot in her direction, immediately hitting her in the face.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Okay, so she, you didn't kill her as a mercy killing?

• 41:58Speaker 00

  No.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  You killed her because she heard you?

• 42:00Speaker 00

  Exactly. Alma was likely dead before her body even hit the ground. John then stuffed her body into the closet and closed the door.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  His mother.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  So merciful.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  In the hours that followed, investigators believed that he attempted to clean up the blood on the, in the kitchen in the attic, before the kids returned from school. When he was done cleaning, he went to the basement to get the sleeping bags, using one to drag his wife's body into the ballroom and he placed the rag over her face. After cleaning the drag marks in the hallway the best he could, he sat down in his office and gathered some papers and photos of the house together in front of him. And then started writing those five letters that he had left behind on the filing cabinet.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  When he finished his letters, he placed several calls to the kids' schools and to his employer, telling them a family member was gravely ill and the family would be traveling to North Carolina immediately. And they weren't quite sure when they were gonna be back.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 42:52Speaker 00

  With the school day nearing its end, so he had a full day. He killed Helen and his mom that morning and then had a full day of little errands.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Planning all this out.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  Little jobs he felt he had to do.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Knowing he was gonna kill his children, so he set it up so that no one would ask for a while.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  Yep. So as the school day was approaching its end, he started strategizing for how he would deal with the children.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Which is pretty sane.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. That afternoon, John had a soccer game, John Jr., and wouldn't be home until later. And Patty and Frederick were going to be working a few hours at their after school job, but they would arrive home together, which presented an increased risk to his success, if he had to overtake two people. To his surprise, though, Patty called to say that she wasn't feeling well and asked if he could pick her up and bring her home.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  For him, it solved the problem of how to deal with Patty and Frederick at the same time. So he eagerly agreed to go pick up his sick daughter from work.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  As soon as they arrived home, he shot Patty with the 22 caliber pistol. The bullet entered through her jaw, passing through her brain and lodged in the wall above the washing machine in the laundry room, killing her instantly. But again, not in the back of the, no. After shooting her, John dragged Patty, or put her body on top of a sleeping bag and dragged her into the ballroom, placing her next to her mother and covering her face. Frederick was at work when his boss told him Patty wasn't gonna be going in because she was sick and that his father called and said something about a sick family member and a quick trip to North Carolina. He was on his way to the office and wanted Frederick to be out front, ready to meet him.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Don't make me wait.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Nope, to kill you.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  John and his son entered the house through the kitchen, where he immediately pulled out the revolver and shot his son through the left temple. The bullet lodged in the wall not far from the one that had killed Helen that morning. After dragging his son's body into the ballroom, it must have occurred to John that he only had three sleeping bags. So he opened the sleeping bag that contained Patty's body and laid it out flat, placing Frederick's body underneath it next to his sister and covering his face. Based on what they gathered from witness interviews and evidence at the scene, investigators theorized that John Jr. came home from his soccer game earlier than expected and that caught his father off guard. John Jr. entered through a side door of the house, placed his gym bag on a shelf in the foyer and then walked into the kitchen.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  It's unclear whether he saw something that frightened him or if he simply felt like something was off, like he was in danger. But there was obvious evidence of a struggle in and around the kitchen. He ultimately, John Senior, shot his son several times in the body and the head before finally killing him. So no, he did not shoot most of his family in the back of the head to spare them.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  But he had to, you know, to the reverend. He's a churchgoer after all.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  Don't you think lying to your reverend is pretty top tier on the list of sins?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  No?

• 45:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Well, he didn't think killing his whole family was either, so. With the last of his family members dead, List wrapped his son in the very last sleeping bag, placed him next to his brother and sister in the ballroom and then started cleaning for the last time. In the weeks that followed, investigators managed to piece together his movements after killing his family. Once he finished cleaning up the scene, he gathered some books and other items that he borrowed from a neighbor and placed them on the dining room table with a thank you note, presumably hoping that somebody would return the items in the boxes once the bodies were discovered.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  You think anyone wants shit from that house?

• 46:22Speaker 00

  And what is the thought process there?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  That's like, what?

• 46:26Speaker 00

  I just killed my whole family, but let me make sure that I make good on this.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  I gotta put a thank you note on here.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  My little borrowing that I did.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  What?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  The priorities of where he places his morality.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Is insane.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Truly insane.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  He's like, gotta write out this thank you note.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Why the fuck would any, like, what? Can you imagine if you had lent him a couple of books? And they just sat in the house for 28 days while his entire family?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  And he had a little thank you note for you. Thank you for letting me borrow these.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  I'd be like, you, that's a cursed object.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I'd be like, I don't even know how to handle knowing this information.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  Literally, I would even wanna know that that was a thing. After that, he drove to the bank where he took out the remaining money in his accounts and the little of what remained in his mom's account.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Mercy, you know?

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Mercy.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Mercy.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  From the bank, he drove to the post office where he stopped the mail and newspaper deliveries. He also dropped the keys to his filing cabinet in an envelope and sent them to himself in a registered, uh, registered letter, likely assuming investigators wouldn't be able to open the cabinet without keys and wouldn't find the murder weapons.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, no. They could, they could never open a cabinet.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  No, it's crazy.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  You don't have keys, that's it.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  I'm like, babe, they have like legitimate tools to do that. Are you fucking kidding me?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Wow, he really planned this out.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  He made sure that he wasn't gonna.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, he did.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Good luck with an insanity, please.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  I'm like, how long were you planning this for?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  And how often had you threatened your family to the point where Patty was telling her teacher?

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Even things like to stop the mail, to stop the newspapers, like that stuff you wouldn't think of if it was in the heat of the moment.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no way. Now, back at the house, he went through the rooms, grabbing personal items like photographs, important documents, and then he packed himself a bag. He sprinkled fish food into the tanks downstairs, turned on all the lights in the house. And then he sat down at the dining room table and ate fucking dinner, everybody.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  He had killed his whole entire family, cleaned up the aftermath of that, went around town, making sure that all his arrangements were in place to get the fuck out of there, but had one last dinner in his home, while the bodies of his entire family were either stuffed in an attic closet or gathered in a strange way in the ballroom. Like while his family just sat in the, in the ballroom, arranged in sleeping bags with their faces covered after he had shot them, some multiple times.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  I get, when I get anxious about something, I can't eat.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Like my, I just won't eat.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  No.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  And he had just killed his entire family and he sat down for dinner in the house.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  In the very house where all of.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Where he had done it.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  And where they all still are.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Like, what?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  Insane. Wow. On his way out the door, he stopped and turned that thermostat down to 50 degrees because as he would later say, "There was no reason why the bank, which would come to own the house, should be paying for the heat that nobody needed." Oh, yeah. That makes sense, John. After closing and locking the door behind him, he disappeared into the night.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Now, the first break in the case came a few days later, when John's car was found in the parking lot of John F. Kennedy Airport on Long Island. On the windshield, there was a ticket dated the evening of November 9th, indicating that after leaving the house, he went straight to the airport. The interior of the car was clean and empty, but in the trunk, investigators did find a tire jack and a few roadmaps, but nothing that would really indicate where he had gone.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  While the airlines started pulling passenger manifests for all the flights leaving New York, investigators contacted law enforcement agencies in Michigan, Arizona, and North Carolina, all places where John had relatives. They also contacted the FBI to request assistance on what they knew was basically going to be an international manhunt.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  The US passport office, though, had no record of a passport ever having been issued to John List. But it was possible he could have obtained one under a fake name and boarded an international flight. In the days that followed, the airlines reported that no John List had boarded a flight out of JFK that night.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  We'll, we'll have our answers later on. On December 11th, the List family were laid to rest in New Jersey and Alma's remains were shipped back to Michigan to be buried beside her husband. After the funeral, a press conference was held during which John's stepdaughter Brenda, from Helen's first marriage, spoke directly to him. Hoping that some kind of emotional appeal might get through to him, she said, Daddy, you're all I have left. Will you please call me?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  That's so sad.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  It really is. The pastor made an equally emotional appeal, saying, "John, as your pastor, I am still very much your friend, who will always support you and help you. Please contact me when you can, anytime, day or night." Unsurprisingly, the pleas to John, John's emotions got no response.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think he has emotions.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  I was just gonna say, I don't think he is capable of emotions. Now, it's rare that a crime of this magnitude, obviously, would be solved so quickly. But with all the evidence left behind and his confession letter, the district attorney had no trouble convincing a grand jury to indict John List in absentia on five counts of first degree murder.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  And the entire session lasted no more than forty-five minutes and required almost no testimony. But despite the straightforward nature of the case and the fact that investigators did, again, have everything they needed to prosecute John List, the investigation into his whereabouts quickly turned cold and deeply frustrating. Union County Prosecutor Carl Ash told reporters in late February of nineteen seventy-two, "As far as we're concerned, there's no more to do on the case. There aren't any more local clues." In a sense, he was right. The investigation quickly turned up everything they needed, including a clearly stated motive and a confession in his own handwriting. So there was nothing more to do until they could locate John List. But the problem was, he had a twenty-eight day head start

• 52:25Speaker 00

  and had left no clues or even the slightest indication as to where he would have gone.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Investigators turned to his past, hoping they might find a name or a place that they hadn't already checked. And that is where we will end part one.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Part two is-

• 52:43Speaker 00

  That is horrific. Part two, we kind of go into a little bit more of his background and-

• 52:48Speaker 01

  And he's gone for a long time.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Like, this isn't like they're gonna get him after a week.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  No, he's gone for over a decade, babe.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a decade manhunt.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  This is-

• 52:57Speaker 01

  That we're going into.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  It's like one of the most notorious manhunts, if not the most notorious manhunt.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  But they got him.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  At least in US history.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  They got him.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  But they got him. We'll let you know that they got him.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  So don't worry.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  That motherfucker gets got.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  He gets got. Fuck that guy.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's a piece of real dog shit.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Fuck that guy. And honestly, the- I don't know. I don't know. This whole thing, I'm like, those poor kids.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because you just have to think, like, first of all, the end they were met with and, and leading up to the end, they all seemed to know that something was awful and-

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  And approaching.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  And just hearing that, like, Patricia, like Patty was like the, the woman of the house, like essentially having and missing school to have to be, you know, the lead of the house.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  The caretaker, yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  And that, like, he was obviously horrific to them.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  Well, like, he was obviously telling them he was gonna kill them, because why else would she say that?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. And she was, like, upset.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  And she knew it was coming.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  The night before, she had called Edwin to say, like-

• 53:58Speaker 00

  So what was going on the night before?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Flipping out what was happening that night.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Obviously, she was upset.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you just have to think, like, he wasn't friendly ever to neighbors or anything like that. Helen had a lot of mental health issues and really just wasn't a present mother. So it's like, what were those kids' lives anyway, up to the point until they died?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  And they didn't ask-

• 54:19Speaker 00

  Or were killed.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  They didn't ask to be here, man. I hate that. I hate, like, they didn't ask for this.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  No.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  And here you do, you bring them into the world and you treat them like shit, give them a shitty life.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Just like, leave.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  That's the thing.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  If you can't handle it and-

• 54:32Speaker 01

  They'd be better off without you.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  You're so worried, leave. But he didn't think so.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  He thought it was, he was supposed to protect them and he had failed, so-

• 54:39Speaker 01

  So leave.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  You, you failed.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  It's, it's so wild, though, because we'll get into it, like, with his own words and what he says, but he, knowing what he says, he would have thought that that was a bigger sin against his family, leaving, than murdering them all and, and leaving them in the house, like he did.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Horrific.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Like, his brain is not your brain or my brain.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Clearly.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  It's fucked.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  That's fucked up. Yeah, well, we'll tell you more in part two, but you have a fun fact?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Or do you have a fucked fact?

• 55:10Speaker 01

  This is like a, this is a good, like, a survival fact.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Uh, the scariest sound you will ever hear when you're in the wilderness is no sound.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Silence.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Uh, that's when everything stops making noise, it means a predator is around and everybody else is already hiding and you're out in the open.

• 55:27Speaker 00

  You better hide.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  It goes silent, you're in fucking trouble.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  And honestly, at that point, you don't have a lot of time to hide.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  That's why I don't fuck with the wilderness.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't fuck with the wilderness.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  I'm an indoorsy kind of gal.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Not, not out here fucking with that shit.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  That SpongeBob episode where he's like, indoors.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  That's us.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  All right, well, we will see you back for part two. We hope you keep listening.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  And we hope you-

• 55:50Speaker 00

  Keep it weird.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  But not so weird that you venture into the middle of the forest and it goes silent and you have no time to hide.

• 55:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  That'd be spooky scary.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  That is spooky scary.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Bye.

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