The Hunt for John List (Part 1)

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alina and this is Moabid! This is morbid. I guess what? It's pop day! Alina's book came out today. It did August 11th. I was gonna say August 11th if you're listening to this it's like past later or two weeks later. We just wanted to be prepared. Yeah, we had to get ahead of it. Yeah, so you can get the butcher legacy now. Hell yeah, you can get it at stores. You can get it online. You could download the audio book. Yeah. There's a new actor. There is a new actor. Carrie Height plays great detective one and only John LaRue. Hell yeah, he's so good. He has a great fucking dose. Like nailed it. It's like butter. The butter. The butter. I'm excited. We have tour coming up. Yeah, a little mini book tour. A little mini book tour this week. Take a little time off after that. Yep, we're gonna isolate after that. But you guys won't know because we already were like pre-recordings. Yeah, you'll be fine. So you'll be good, you won't feel it. In fact, you'll be listening to John List. Yeah. John List, which we're gonna start today. Which what a case. It really is. What a case. 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, um, what was that? I think it was the watcher house. Did you ever watch that? Yeah, I didn't watch it. I liked part of it. I personally didn't enjoy it very much. No. But they do like a take on it in the beginning. Which is interesting to like mesh those two stories. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. It's a show. It's a show. Yeah, it's a production. It's a production. Yeah, it's not really true to the story. Yeah, I think it's more for entertainment. Yeah, you know, that makes sense. But we're going to tell you the real story today. Let's go. Um, and this is going to be two parts. I'm horrified, but let's do it. Let's get into it. So to the people living on Hillside Avenue. And West, I just said Avenue. We're really off to the story. You know, we're tired. 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. Damn. 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. I'll give them how friendly and social everybody was with each other. The list 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." Wow. He just laid that out. Brother what? Wow. I missed 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. I was like, thank you so much. Well, and also, I think it's weird to not like, like I'm not a super sociable person. No, I don't always want to be around people. No. I love my neighbors. And I also love that we all have like a little community there that works out for each other. That's the thing I'm kind of like doing. New and my neighbor had said I'm not everybody just yet, but like, I would never open the door and be like, "I'm not friendly, fuck off." Well, and that's, and you know what you're doing there? You're being like, don't, if you see something happening at my house, 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 going to be like, "Hey, so fuck off, and we don't care about neighbors, and we hate you, we don't want to be friends." It's like, all right, well yours is house, I won't look up for them. Yeah, like, why would you ever want that? 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. Oh my god. We're going to get you. We're going to ingratiate you. We're going to make you like us. They attended to not be total dicks, I guess. Wow. But for most people on the block, it would be the first and last time they ever saw the list socially. That's crazy. Which I'm just like, how do you function that way? I would feel so strange. Yeah. 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." Hey, 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, Junior, 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. So who was invited? 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 sports teams friends were invited, but it's unclear because that was my. I was like, you're like, who came? Was it just you guys? Was that a family party? Yeah. 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. Patelist friend Dana said, Pat wouldn't talk about her family, and we didn't ask questions. It's a house that says we have secrets in this house. Yeah. It's usually a dark place. A dark place, I would say. 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. Wow. 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 kind of like rumour. Patie's friend's perception of her home life was shared by the neighbors, though. According to neighbor Betty DeVo, Patricia cared for the home and acted as the true mother for the family. How does that breaks my heart? Yeah, the 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. Yeah, she had a tough, but yeah. 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. Yeah. I wish you meant to see the face that Elena gave me. She just like lowered her eyes. I was like, I was not going to say anything about that comment. You do what you do. Yeah, live your life. 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. That also just doesn't feel very churchgoer. Churchgoer to like not aren't. Isn't like love thy neighbor part of like most, you know? I'm not familiar. I don't know about Lutheran. I'm not familiar with the Lutheran church, but I think that's pretty across the board. Like love thy neighbor. I feel like that's also just kind of like a nice. Yeah, it's a nice moral thing to instill, you know? I don't know what his issue was with his neighbors. I think it is part of Lutheran beliefs. I think it's, I think you read it up. Because I think it's part of a lot of religions across the board. Yeah, because I think Lutherans like it's, they have like this, they flow through like. It's like God to them, you know? Like almost kind of thing. I don't know a lot about it, so I'm not going to like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I know that that is a core value that is supposed to. Yeah. To go through, and it's like, well, you're not teaching your kids the values that you are saying you believe in. Which is strange. So I think they had a lot of secrets. I think John was a disturbed man. I don't know the level of mental illness that I would say. I mean, obviously he's mentally a little bit higher family. I was going to say I was going to be disturbed. But I don't want to give him like that excuse, you know what I mean? No. So it's a strange dynamic. Well, just the fact that he was like nasty to his neighbors, but then went to church and was like, "No, I'm a churchgoer." Yeah, and then was like. And my kids are going to be rigid and like have to have all these rules. But I'm not going to teach them like the nice parts like of thy neighbor and be kind to other people and, you know? Later on, his Reverend said that like. And we'll get to it. The Reverend basically said like. He knew the. The. Testaments, like the tenants? The tenants, yeah. But he didn't understand them clearly. He knew what they said. But he could recite them, he could recite them exactly. And like he thought he was living by them. But they weren't hitting him on a real level, you know? Yeah, clearly. So again, regardless of his popularity at church, both personas seemed pretty harmless. Like he was just kind of a grumpy asshole. Yeah. In the neighborhood and then the great at church. Yeah. But because he seemed so harmless, that's what made his actions in the winter of 1971 so shocking. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Late one night in November, Harry Devlin was having trouble sleeping. So he got out of bed and just kind of looking at 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. Hmm. To Harry, it seemed out of character for the notoriously thrifty John List to waste electricity and money that way. but a lot of what John listed was unusual. So he was just like, oh, well, here, there he goes again, yeah, 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 going to notice right away. Right. Like, right now, it's like, for how long the neighbors were like, well, we don't see them anyways or like, yeah, or like, and keeps his house dark. One, it's like, who wants to get involved with that? Like, I want to piss off John. It's like, that doesn't help you in your family. It's not just you living in that house. You have kids. He didn't really care about that. You want other people looking out for your family. 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. And it's like, no, it's nice to have a community, man. And you go to church. Have you heard? That's like the core value of a church. It's like community. It takes a village, babe. It absent. My fucking does. Yeah. So I love my little neighborhood watch. Yeah. We all know what the fuck is going on in our house. I love it. I think it's great. Something seems a little out of a place where like, you guys good. You got like a chain going. Yeah. Well, a week later, when Harry sent Ryan 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 while about. Yeah. And he asked to send 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. Oh my goodness. He meant it to be funny. Yeah. But the second he said it, neither of them laughed. They were like, oh, like as soon as the words came out, it was like, oh, 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. Yeah. When you really piece him out. Yeah. It's like a day to day or probably like out whatever like he's harmless. He's just grumpy. But then when you like piece it all out, you're like, oh, yeah. That's a scary realization. Like he might have done that. Yeah. So the neighbors weren't the only ones that thought the list, sudden absence, was strange. Paddy's drama teacher Edwin and Ilyano had started to wonder where they had gone because Paddy's missing class now. At the beginning of November, the schools all received notes from John List informing them that because we're going to be out of school for a little bit because they're visiting a sick relative. But several weeks had then passed and they still hadn't returned. And that wasn't the only thing that a concerned teacher. Just a few days before the family supposedly left to go visit the sick relative, Paddy 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. I'm sorry, what? My father is going to murder me and my family. And no one did anything? Well, to Edwin, it seems like the kind of thing that a father would jokingly say to a kid if like no Edwin, yeah, no, yeah, no. My dad never said jokingly that he was going to murder our entire family. No, yeah. I mean, some people do speak hyperbolicly and they're like, Jesus Christ, I'm going to kill you all like, but if your child is saying to a teacher with no hint of sarcasm or humor, my father is going to murder my entire family. You need to tell someone. You got to call somebody. Yeah. Sorry, that's I don't get that. Well, I don't get that. And you all start to remember the time frame of this. It's like people didn't get involved in other people's business. What the fuck? I'm fortunate. I 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 and that kind of setting holy shit. And he's also her drama teacher. So he's like, is this my place? Yeah. So he said, you know, he thought maybe Paddy 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 Paddy begging him to come over to the house. 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 that's happening. People do allege that, but obviously she didn't have a father. She didn't have a father. And they would also practice at the, they would like run rehearsals at the list house because there was the big ballroom. So it worked for drama practice. So the kids would come over. Yeah, like anybody in the drama, you know, production or plus would come over. Private. No. Okay. That's the thing. So I don't just making sure. I don't know all the logistics about their relationship, but from what I know, it doesn't seem like too weird. Yeah. Just worth mentioning. Yeah. Right. Wow. Yeah. So he got a call from Paddy 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. I'm sorry. Maybe I'm, he should have called someone. I know. I'm sorry. I know. That's it. I'm sorry. It's this is no one's fault, but Johnless. Exactly. I'm just saying you, you got to make moves when this kind of shit if a child is calling and it's just brought in his already said my father's gonna kill my entire fit. Maybe I'm just being like overly. Well, I think I would have called someone. I think when you have two close events like this that like she's clearly upset. She's clearly distraught. Something's going wrong. We can't just wait for the third thing. We can't wait for the for something really bad to happen. We got to. And it's like I can understand like one thing maybe brushing it off. You got to call after the second one. I know. You got to do something and be like, you know what, overreact. Yeah. If you overreact and you look silly, whatever. At least it's true. Nothing has happened. 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. That's horrific. 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. Me too. By the end of November, Edwin 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 hopes soon turned to a feeling of dread upon subsequent drivebys 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. At least somebody's trying to do something. 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 of this house. I am thinking from a 2026 lens. And it's, yeah, I have to put myself back there. And it's hard to sometimes put yourself back there because I'm like, right now, why would you not like, but I'm like, you won't that you don't have the resources that you have now to contact someone. And two, they were just much more laxable with this shit. Like they were just like, uh, well, I'm really what would they do knock on the door and be like, hey, you're going to kill your kids? It's like, yeah, unfortunately. And I think, you know, people didn't want to call the police back then. They didn't want to get involved with people shit. Yeah. But now he was. And they were doing anything. Yeah. 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've remembered seeing a police car drive by the house and stopped 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, yeah, 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. So how'd it not been for the other kids and Edwin Ilyano's drama workshop? The mystery of the missing list family could have gone on forever. But after weeks of nowhere 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 going to 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 for breaking into the house. He was like, you're going to get in a lot of trouble for that. So maybe don't do that. Yeah. And I'll go and understand though that I would probably be the same way. Yeah, this has been this kids involved. They've been gone for almost a month, you know? And these are her friends. So he was like, I'm going to 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. And they got to the Westfield Police Department and demanded to speak with the captain, Alvard 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 Alvard, our about that bar 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 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, but when there still hadn't been any action taken by 10 p.m., 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, Ilyano, 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 Zleznick and Charles Holler approached the group standing in list driveway, they introduced themselves and Edwin Ilyano, Barbara Sheridan, and the next door neighbor, Dr. Bill Cunick, 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 maybe she had fallen in needed help and that's why the lights were just going off and staying on. I think they were, I think they had worse feeling. I think this was just the best way to get. This was the easiest way to get somebody there. To do something, exactly. So the officers stepped onto the porch and they rang the bell, but they obviously got no response. 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. 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. 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 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. Just an empty fucking house where the lights are slowly going off in every room and church music is playing over the entire house. 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. It is a Mike Flanagan movie. It's scary. Yeah. In the living room, there are four large fish tanks that were lined up against the wall and only a single goldfish had survived 28 days without food. But their flashlight's 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. 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 Lesnick 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. Now officers Lesnick 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 night gown 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. She had been facing her killer and the killer had shot her in the face just above her left eye. After shooting her, Alma's killer stuffed her body in a small closet and closed the door. Wow. Now back at the police department, Captain Vardales overheard the call that came through from Zalaznik. 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 officers' plea for help was met with nearly every detective the department had, rolling out of there into the list house. Yeah. Even the captain jumped in his car and rushed to the scene. 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. Peace. The officers were being led through the house by Edward and Barbara Sheridan, who are 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 Ilyano admitted that he and Barbara hadn't heard the house before 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. This gets weirder and weirder. Yeah, I didn't never know that detail. I didn't know that. Yeah. Damn. 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 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. Yeah. 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. Well, that that'll fuck up time of death for the pathologist. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It could have been weeks earlier, or just that night, yeah, be like based on how they were. For all they knew also, the killer could have still been in the house. Yeah. Like how fucking scary is that? That's a huge house. It's a huge house. And it just, you know, maybe he's sitting up there DJing the fucking church. Yeah, literally. Like terrifying. So officers, the Leznic 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 going to come around the corner with an axe. Yeah. It just gives you such a read on what that scene was like. It makes my stomach churn. Yeah. It wasn't just the darkness, the death, and the church choir blurring 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 Ileano 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 going to find out the reason for John List absence. Sure were. 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 Rowankel. 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, well, at least possibly understand why I felt I had to do this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He had faith. Oh, yeah. Reverend, you'll understand. What? Spoiler alert. Reverend is not understanding. I'm very glad to hear that. Yeah. What the fuck? I'm sorry to add this additional burden to your work. To call family annihilation an additional burden on the church. It's bonkers. 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 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. They weren't doing exactly what I wanted them to do and they weren't being perfect little robots that I'd program them to be. Exactly. As for his mother, her murder was according to him a sort of act of mercy since the killing of the family would "be a tremendous shock to her at this age." I always love when these pieces of shit frame something like a mercy killing like, "Well, you know, I murdered the whole family so like that wouldn't bummed her out." It's like was it really killed her to save her from that? Was it really that kind of you to look her in the face and shoot her and over her eye after murdering her entire family? And also a shock to 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. I don't think it's age-related. I don't think so. I think you're just a piece of shit. I do too. But there it was. John List had murdered his entire family to avoid the supposed shame and embarrassment of poverty. That's horrific. He shot them all on the head and left their bodies to rot in a basically empty mansion that he never really could have afforded in the first place. No. The search of the list house finally wrapped up that night or that morning around 4 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 cult revolver, and a 9-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. Yeah, where's John List? 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? Yeah. How? Literally, how? Why had the police not checked on them sooner? School super intended, 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 had done nothing. Which it's like, again, was anything going to happen even when people were like, hey, his daughter's saying he's going to murder his whole family? Were they going to do anything then? Seriously? Or were they just going to get to it when they got to it? You guys heard of a welfare check? Like, my god. Seriously. Now, just as important as what the press was saying was what they were not saying. And 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. The only problem with that is guns make noise. Yeah. You shoot one. The other ones are going to hear a gun. Well, he had a plan for that. Okay. 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. All MoList 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. Yeah. 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. Oh, so Johnless is just a cowardly little fuck. Yeah. And I love that he claimed to like to spare them. It's like, no, I mercy killed my mother and I spared my children. No. The terror of knowing I was going to shoot them in the head. Not at all. No. When you find out exactly how methodical he was with this and the way that he could have stopped at any time, 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. Wow. 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. Yeah. This wasn't like a, no, it sounds like you had a plan. Yeah. There was a fully laid out plan. 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. No. 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. Okay. So she, you didn't kill her as a mercy killing. No. You killed her because you heard you. Exactly. Alma was likely dead before her body even hit the ground. John then stuffed her body into the closet and closed the door. His mother. So merciful. Yeah. In the hours that followed, investigators believed that he attempted to clean up the blood in the kitchen and 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. Wow. 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 going to be back. Wow. With the school day nearing its end. So he had a full day. He killed talent in his mom that morning and then had a full day of little errands and all this out little jobs he felt he had to knowing he was going to kill his children. So he sent it up so that no one would ask for a while. Yep. So as the school day was approaching its end, he started strategizing for how he would deal with the children, which is pretty same. Yeah. That afternoon John had a soccer game, a John junior and wouldn't be home until later. And Patty and Fredrick were going to be working a few hours out there 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. Wow. For him, it solved the problem of how to deal with Patty and Fredrick at the same time. So he eagerly agreed to go pick up his sick daughter from work. Wow. 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 head now. 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. Fredrick was at work when his boss told him Patty wasn't going to 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 Fredrick to be out front ready to meet him. Oh, yeah. Don't make me wait. Nope. To kill you. No. 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 Fredrick'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 Junior came home from a soccer game earlier than expected and that caught his father off guard. John Junior entered through a side door of the house, placed his gym bag on a shelf in the foyer and then walked into the kitchen. 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. But he had to, you know, to the reverend. He's a church goer. So you think lying to your reverend is pretty top tier on the list of sins? No. No. Okay. No. Well, he didn't think killing his whole family was. Yeah. No. With the last of his family members dead, Lister dropped 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. And 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 in the boxes once the bodies were discovered. You think anyone wants to ship from that house? And what is the thought process there? That's like what? I just killed my whole family, but let me make sure that I make good on this. I just put a thank you down here. My little borrowing that I did. What? The priorities of where he places his morality. Yeah. is insane. Truly insane. He's like, "gotta write out this thank you, note. Why the fuck would any, what do 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, and he had a little thank you note for you. Thank you for letting me borrow these. I'd be like, "You can, that's a cursed object. I'm just like, I don't even know how to handle knowing this information." Literally, I'm even willing to know that that was a thing. After that, he drove to the bank where he took out the remaining money and his accounts and the little of what remained in his mom's account. Mercy, you know? Mercy. 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 and envelope and sent them to himself in a registered letter. Likely assuming investigators wouldn't be able to open the cabinet without keys and wouldn't find the murder weapons. They could, they could never open a cabinet. No, it's crazy. You don't have keys. That's it. I'm like, babe, they have like legitimate tools to do that. Are you fucking kidding me? Wow, he really planned this out. Yeah. He made sure that he wasn't going to. Yeah, he did. I'm good luck with an insanity, please. I'm like, how long were you planning this for? Yeah. And how often had you thrown your family to the point where Patty was telling her teacher? Even things like to stop the mail, to stop the newspaper, like that stuff you wouldn't think of if it was in the heat of the moment. 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 eight fucking dinner everybody. Wow. 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. I get when I get anxious about something, I just can't eat. Yeah, like my style, I just won't eat. No, and he had just killed his entire family, and he sat down for dinner in the house in the very house where all the place where he had done it. And where they all still are. Yeah, like what? Yeah, insane. Wow. On its 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, yeah. After closing and locking the door behind him, he disappeared into the night. Wow. 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. Yeah. Well, the airline 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 man, huh? Yeah. 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. And the days that followed the airlines reported that no John list had boarded a flight out of JFK that night. Interesting. Well, we'll have our answers later on. On December 11th, the list family relayed 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? Oh, that's so sad. 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 any time day or night. Unsurprisingly, the police to John, John's emotions got no response. Yes, because I don't think he has 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 and absentia on five counts of first degree murder. The entire session lasted no more than 45 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 1972, 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 28 day head start and had left no clues or even the slightest indication as to where he would have gone. 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. Oh, my God. Part two is horrific. Part two, we kind of go into a little bit more of his background and he's gone for a long time. Oh, yeah. He's like, this isn't like they're going to get him after a week. No, he's gone for over a decade, but yeah, that's a decade, manhunt. This is what I'm going into. It's like one of the most notorious manhunts, if not the most notorious manhunt. But they got at least in US history, but they got him. Well, let you know that they got him. So don't worry about that motherfucker getting got it's got. Fuck that guy. Yeah, he's a piece of real dog shit. Fuck that guy. And honestly, this is, I don't know. I don't know this whole thing. I'm like those poor kids. Yeah, because you just have to think like, first of all, the end they were met with and leading up to the end, they all seem to know that something was awful and yeah, and approaching. And just hearing that like Patricia like patty was like the woman of the house, like essentially having and missing school to have to be, you know, the lead of the caretaker, yeah, and that like he was obviously horrific to them. Well, like he was obviously telling them he was going to kill them because why else would she say that exact and she was like upset and she knew what was coming the night before she had called Edwin to say like what was going on tonight or flipping out what was happening that night exactly obviously she was upset. 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 or were killed. They didn't have to be here, man. I hate that. I hate like they didn't ask for this. No. And here you do, you bring them into the world and you treat them like shit, give them a shitty life. Like leave that's if you can't handle it and they'd be better off with a word leave, but he didn't think so. He thought it was he was supposed to protect them and he had failed. So so leave. Yeah. You failed. 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, than murdering them all and leaving them literally like he did horrific like his brain is not your brain or my brain is really fucked. Yeah, that's so yeah, we'll tell you more in part two, but you have a fun fact. Oh, or do you have a fucked fact? This is like a this is a good like a survival fact. Okay. The scariest sound you will ever hear when you're in the wilderness is no sound silence. 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. So if you go silent, you're in fucking trouble. Yeah. And honestly, at that point, you don't have a lot of time died. That's why I don't fuck with the wilderness. Yeah, I don't fuck with the wilderness. And then indoorsy kind of. I'm not out here fucking. I think that's punch bomb episode where he's like indoors. That's us. Alright, well, we will see you back for part two. We hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you venture into the middle of the forest and it goes silent. You have no time to hide. Yeah. Happy spooky scary. That is spooky scary. Bye. [Music] 1/3"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5"/5 [Music]