Summer Series 2026: The List Family Murders Part 3

Welcome to summer series twenty twenty six, The List Family Murders. In this series, we are uncovering the story behind what happened behind the doors of the infamous Westfield, New Jersey mansion. We'll be discussing John List taking the. Lives of his whole family, his mother Alma, his wife Helen, his sixteen year old daughter Patty, his fifteen year old son John Frederick, and his thirteen year old son Frederick. Let's unpack it all and dive into the inner workings of a man who wanted to erase his whole life and start anew and for eighteen years he was able to do so. Let's go. Okay, guys, welcome to Part three of The List Family Murders Summer Series twenty twenty six. When I left you last week. John had just lost his job and had decided to take another job that was going to relocate them to Rochester, New York, and he had broken the news to Helen that they would be moving yet again. So that is where we are going to pick back up at this moment. We are in nineteen sixty one, so this was going to be the fifth move since Helen and John got married. And Helen was over it. She did not want to move anymore. She also didn't understand why John had to go and get another job, not realizing that he had been fired from his previous one because at this point in time, he hadn't shared that information with her and Helen was struggling with whatever illness she had going on. She did not feel good at all, and she was pretty sure that she had been having recurrences of malaria, with the last one being less than six months before her and John had this conversation about moving again. She felt feverish, she was very frail, and just didn't feel good. She knew that this news was going to cause her illness to get worse and that she would end up back in her room drinking again, and the cycle continues. She kept on asking John why they had to move, and he finally told her that he had lost his job, and she wasn't really surprised, and John didn't really offer much as to why he was let go. He said he did nothing wrong, and Helen told him that he was fired because he doesn't do anything. Any opportunity that she could take to degrade. John, she very much did it. Their whole marriage that is how she was. And again in this conversation, Brenda was placed in the middle because she realizes the two of them are just never going to get along and she often feels like. She has to pick sides. But it's hard because her mom is always sick, she's constantly drinking. John is the one that's always working hard, trying to take care of everybody and keep everything in line, and it's just a lot. So with that, the Liss family packed up and moved to Rochester. They rented a three story house located at one forty Clearbrook Drive in a suburb of Rochester. New York. It was nineteen sixty two and John was thirty five years old. Helen was just a year younger at thirty four, Pattie was six, John Junior was around five, and Freddie was three. Brenda was just about to turn eighteen, and as she had promised herself, the second she turned eighteen, she left home to return to Kalamazoo, where she ended up marrying her boyfriend Wayne. Once they moved to Rochester, Helen was doing a little better. She was feeling better. She had stopped drinking, she wasn't taking as many sedatives, but she did have an episode where she had found herself on the bedroom floor and she had blacked out for about an hour. She didn't have any memory of what had happened, and she woke up and realized that something had happened, and she did see a black and blue mark on her arm and thought maybe she bumped into something and fell, and thought that it was a recurrence of the malaria she had had earlier in the year. But all in all, Helen was doing a lot better. Her mood swings were not as bad anymore, her depression wasn't as bad, and she thought hopefully that she was on the mend and was getting better. As you can see, this is a continuous pattern with Helen. She is always so up and down, and just from reading this book, it seems that whenever they do move, she initially does better. She's feeling better when. They first move, she has interest in doing things around the house, and then as things settle in and become more normal and structured, that's when she seems to go back into one of her episodes. She even felt well enough to accompany John to Mexico during a convention, which she was really excited about. Unfortunately, when they got to Mexico, her illness ramped back up, her depression crept back in, and it was at this point that she became very irritable, started yelling and snapping at John once again. On the way back home from the trip to Mexico, Helen and John had stopped in Kalamazoo to visit Brenda and her husband, and once Helen returned home, she started drinking again and self medicating. And at this. Point in time, she had her hands full at home because Brenda had moved out, so she didn't have any help with the children anymore, meaning that she really had to step up because John was working this new job and there was nobody around to take care of the kids, so she had to. Be the one to do that. John was doing really well at his work with Xerox, but his self doubt started to creep in because he worried ultimately that he was going to be let go again, and he also worried that if it was time for him to be promoted, that there was going to be an issue like last time, that they would think that he wasn't capable of handling a promotion or handling any type of management position. And although Helen had started drinking and self medicating again. She had expressed to John that she really liked it in Rochester and did not want to move. She felt like she was able to actually make some friends there who seemed like they were genuine, and these weren't people that she had met through John's group at the church. Because everywhere that. They moved, they had to find a Lutheran church, and John became enthralled in this church. This was something that was part of his life. He worked, he took care of his kids, and he went to church every single town that they moved to. The Lutheran church was the most important thing. So Helen felt that she was able to make her own group of friends, people that didn't judge her and think poorly of her like everywhere else they had been, and she felt like she finally had something that was hers instead. Of She expressed that this place was the first place she. Had been even semi happy since she left Newport News ten years ago. When her and John first. Got married, Helen had very little to do with the finances, so John was the one who always handled the financial aspect of things, and he was making decent money for the times, but he was also putting out a lot of money to try and overcompensate and make Helen happy and make up for the lack of love in their marriage and their relationship. And this is a theme that is going to continue well into them moving to Westfield, New Jersey, and ultimately I think leading up to the murders. So it's interesting that this was kind of always the dynamic in their relationship. John was staying very busy at work. He was working twelve hour shifts at the Xerox company, and unfortunately at this time Helen was always in bed, always drinking, and Patty at this point in time, even though she was not even eight years old yet, kind of had to step up and assume the role that Brenda had assumed prior, and she would often have to cook for herself and her younger siblings. And again this is a pattern in the list family household. John is the one who's working, Helen is sick and in bed and drinking excessively, and the oldest child that is at the home has to step up and take care of the other siblings. That is a lot of pressure to put on a young person. Brenda had to deal with it, and now it is Patty's turn. About eight months after John had initially started worrying about the security of his position at Xerox, he was made the assistant manager of accounting and by nineteen sixty three he was promoted to director of Accounting Services. And with both of these positions he did get merit increases. He had been working at Xerox for less than two years and was making the most money he had ever made in his life. He had almost doubled his salary from when he had first started. But all of this didn't really ease his fears. It just made his fears worse. He was still very concerned. So around the same time, Brenda and her husband had called John and Helen and expressed that they were very much struggling in Kalamazoo. They were having a hard time making it financially, so Helen took it upon herself to invite them to come move in with John and Helen and the kids, and basically told Brenda that John was going to be able to hook Wayne up with a job at the Xerox company, and he's higher up at the company now, so he'll be able to pull some strings and get Wayne a job. John did not like this because Wayne had no experience in that kind of work. And again Helen was making decisions for the family without even talking to John about them, and just expecting that John was going to be able to give Wayne this job at Xerox. Interesting because when Helen was on the phone with Brenda, she referred to John as being a big shot at Xerox, which is not something she ever did. She never talked highly of John, she never spoke of him in a positive light. So the fact that. She was using this opportunity to speak of him in that way because it was going to be benefiting her, because guess what if Brenda comes back home, She's going to be able to help care for the children again. So Brenda and her husband Wayne come to the house and they move in. With the Lists. It was a lot of. The same old same at the List family household. Helen still wasn't feeling well, so she was spending a lot of time in bed, and she was still heavily drinking. So Brenda ended up taking care of the whole household. She also wasn't allowed to sleep in the same room with her husband and had to sleep upstairs with Patty Brenda's husband obviously did not like this. They were married, so them sharing a room should have been no issue at all, and Wayne felt that Brenda was being taken advantage of and she was basically being put to work yet again in the house. He also didn't like the job that he had at Xerox and really didn't want anything to do with it. He didn't like having to work around John all day and then come home and be around him, understandably, so after six months of this, he gave Brenda an ultimatum and they ultimately ended up going back to Kalamazoo, and yet again, the responsibility of the household was on John's shoulders, and it fell back on Patty's shoulders as well. By nineteen sixty four, John had nearly tripled his income. He started off at Xerox making nine thousand dollars per year, and now he was making twenty five thousand dollars and he was also getting up to seventy nine hundred dollars in bonuses. So for this. Time in nineteen sixty four, this was really really good money. But this was not enough for John list He wanted more advancements at work, and he made a vow that he wanted to become vice president of the company. Although the money that John was making was nice, it was really. The title that he was after. And honestly, I think a big part of the reason that he chased these titles like he did was because he was always so degraded at home by Helen, and she made him feel like he wasn't good enough. So I think in his mind, the more he chased these titles in these advancements, maybe she would finally accept. Him and be nice to him. But unfortunately, the more money he made, the more money Helen spent. In August of nineteen sixty five, John had made an appointment to speak with his boss in order to bring up getting another promotion and possibly being in the running for the vice president of the company position, and his boss turned him down initially and said that he didn't feel that he was ready for that, and John was just astonished by this and spoke back to his boss and expressed that he didn't think that he could stay in a company that didn't appreciate. What he had to offer. Basically, I think hoping that his boss would change his mind. Because John was a very important part of Xerox at this point in time. But his boss basically told him, if that's how you feel, then I guess you need to find another job. And they went back and forth a little bit. Ultimately, John ended up losing his job that day because he had no. Ability to manage his feelings. And I think in his head he thought that if he fought enough, that his boss would give him a chance. But that is the exact opposite of what happened. So this of course pushed John over the edge. When he returned home that day, he was very upset, yelling, and he was very angry. He blamed Helen because she was constantly making a fool out of him in front of his coworkers and his boss, and that was the reason that he thought that they thought he couldn't handle a vice presidency position. All the yelling and bickering and screaming really scared the kids because although John and Helen fought often, it was normally Helen doing all the yelling, and this time it was John. The children could hear glass breaking and intense fighting between Helen and John. John told Helen that he didn't want to hear about Marvin ever again, and this time I think John had officially snapped. He had really had it and was letting it all go on Helen because he normally just took whatever she dished out and just sat there quietly and wouldn't really ever stand up and defend himself. The next day, Helen's sister Jean called to console her and check on her sister, and this was the first time that John actually expressed his frustrations to anyone and told Jeane that Helen was an. Alcoholic and all of this was her fault. The reason that he lost his job is because she got a little too drunk at a company party and made a fool out of him, and basically everybody that worked with John lost all respect for him after they saw how she was acting. Jeane, of course defended her sister, and John let her know that he was going to be leaving town and going to New Jersey for a potential new job, and he had asked Jane if she could come and stay while he was gone, and Jeane was willing because she wanted to go and see Helen for herself. So Jeane ended up coming out to Rochester while John went to Jersey City to interview for his job. And by the time he returned to Rochester, he was elated because he had in fact landed the best job of his career. And by the time he got back, Helen was looking a lot better. She is on one of her highs now she had stopped drinking and Jean had taken away her sedatives and she was actually sleeping normally without these sedatives. John shared with Gene and Helen that he had landed a position with the First National Bank of New Jersey in Jersey City with the title of vice president. He was going to be making twenty five thousand dollars a year and John was so encouraged by this and knew that he was going to be able to do great things with this company and he was going to continue to get better and better and better. But it unfortunately, at this point was time to tell Helen that they were going to have to move again because the job was in New Jersey. And this is another example of Helen's highs and lows. If you remember, recently, Helen had expressed that she didn't want to leave Rochester because she had finally made friends and she felt like she belonged. Well, this time, she. Doesn't really care about leaving Rochester, and she is excited to move to New Jersey and even made a comment about New Jersey is probably going to be a little warmer than Rochester, so that's one of the pluses of moving. To New Jersey. So she is just all over the place mentally. She is always changing her mind on everything. It seems very back and forth. Helen said that this time they were going to have to buy a house that goes with the position of vice president and said that they're no longer going to be living in middle class neighborhoods Helen expressed that she felt like she needed to go lay down and rest, so Jean helped get the kids to bed, and once the kids were in bed, Helen was laying down. John shared with Jean that he had found a place to buy a house in New Jersey. It was in Union County, and he found a town called Westfield, New Jersey that had a wonderful Lutheran church. Jean had expressed to John that she was worried about Helen and said she is really, really sick and that is why she drinks, because she doesn't feel good, so she drinks to mask the symptoms. Jeane also expressed that she noticed how confused Helen would get and how she would also get very paranoid even with Jeane being there. She was getting paranoid about things Jeane was doing or things Jane was saying. It sounds to me like she was having manic type of behavior. She was just all over the place with everything. Jeane even told John that Helen had expressed to her that she thought she might have a brain tumor and that's why her behavior was so erratic and all over the place. At this point, John brushed it off and said that whenever they got to New Jersey, he was going to try to find a doctor for her, and Jeane made him promise that he was going to get her in to see a neurologist because she did think something more was going on with Helen other than just her being depressed and drinking all the time. There was something medically going. On with her. But despite this, the task. At hands stood that they needed to find a home and figure out where they were going to live in New Jersey. So John and Helen had gone and looked for homes and they found a house in Westfield, New Jersey, which was the town in Union county that John had gone to and found the Lutheran church that he really liked. So this home that they found was described as quote one of the grandest houses on one of the grandest streets in Westfield, New Jersey end quote. The house was on top of a hill on a street that was called Hillside Avenue. It was an old Victorian home and had a thirty seven foot long ballroom. Helen said that that was the house that she wanted, and John agreed. There was stained glass overhead, and there was also stained glass that stretched across a window wall opposite of the fireplace, and John thought it looked like a church, so he agreed that that was the house that they. Were going to move into. It was considered a mansion and it had nineteen rooms in it. The real estate agent that was working with John and Helen was very eager to sell this house because back then this house was the best of the best. It was very expensive and the real estate agent didn't think that John and Helen would be able to afford the home. The house had an enormous ballroom that was in the back of the first floor. It had two living rooms, a formal dining room, a huge eating kitchen. And a butler's pantry. It also had a full laundry room, two staircases that led to five large bedrooms and baths on the second floor, and there was also a maid's quarters on the third floor that had been converted into a two bedroom apartment that also had a living room, kitchen. And a storage space. So basically, this house was much more room than John and Helen and the kids had ever had, and despite the house being dropped from eighty thousand to fifty thousand dollars, the real estate agent still didn't think that John and Helen could afford this. In fact, the real estate agent knew that John and Helen could not afford this, so despite wanting to sell the home, the real estate agent very much tried to talk John and Helen out of going through with the sale of the house. But Helen was adamant this was the house that they were going to get, and she even expressed to the real estate agent that it wasn't up to the real estate agent. John was the vice president of a bank and he was an accountant, so he was the one that handled the finances and he should know if they can afford it or not, so they ended up going the route of getting another real estate agent, one that would actually sell them the house and support them, so that is the route that they went, but John still was tasked with figuring out how he was going to pay for the house, because although they very much did want to go through with the sale of the house, John knew deep down that the first real estate agent was right and that he could not afford it. John had also confided in his mom, Alma, about this and the worries with the new home in Westfield, and she basically told him that if he wanted all of this to work out, that he had to get a handle on Helen and all of her overspending, because she was the one that was spending all of his money and this was basically all of her fault. Alma decided from there that the best decision for her and John was that she was going to sell her house in Bay City, Michigan, and that she was going to move in with John, Helen, and the kids so that she could help them financially. She knew that this house had its own separate maids quarters and living space, so she decided that she was going to move to the third floor and she would have her own space and her own privacy, but yet she was still going to be there to help in any way she could. And this was very much a decision she made pretty much on her own in talking with John. Helen was not involved in this decision whatsoever, And I think the main reason that Alma decided to do this was to help John. I don't think it had anything to do with Helen whatsoever. There was some concern from Alma about having to try to navigate up to the third floor because she had never really had to deal with steps before, especially as many as she was going to be having to deal with in the Westfield House because she would be living on the third floor, so she would be having to navigate up and down three flights of stairs. And she was older at this point in time too, so that was a for her. And also one of her close friends that she had confided in about wanting to move into the Westfield Home with John and Helen expressed some concern about her trying to navigate the stairs, but she had already made her decision that this is what was going to be happening. So she talked to John about this and at this point in time, John and Helen were still living in Rochester, and John shared with Helen that Alma was in fact going to be coming to live with them, and Helen obviously was not happy about this situation. John reassured her that she wasn't going to be in their space and or in their way, and she was going to have her own space on the third floor, but Helen did not care. She was adamant that she did not want Almah there. And John basically told her it's already been solidified. She's selling her house. What's done is done. She is coming, And honestly, I think this is probably the first time in John and Helen's marriage that he actually stood his ground and stood up to her. John said that they would not be able. To afford this house without her. She was going to be giving them the down payment for the home, and this is what he had to do to be able to afford the house. Helen clapped back and said she didn't want anything that belonged to Alma, even after she was dead. She wants no part of her or her money. So after this horrible argument, John retreated to the basement to pray about the decision that he had made. And Helen had another episode where she really wasn't feeling well and Patty was trying to care for her. She had fixed a snack and basically forced Helen to eat it because Helen had not been eating, and this snack made Helen sick to her stomach and she ended up vomiting and just was not feeling well. Helen had called her sister Jean and confided to her about how upset she was about everything that was going on with Alma, and she just didn't understand how they couldn't make this work without her and John was just so adamant about Alma moving in, So she was basically not in a good place. Even though they were getting ready to move. She was really excited about the home, her excitement was overshadowed by the thought of Alma moving in and encroaching on her territory because she just was not feeling it. So that evening, John came into the bedroom and was sitting at the edge of the bed and kind of going through everything in his head, thinking about the decision to have Alma move in with them, and Helen starts walking towards him and he notices that she is not looking well. And her gate seemed to be a little bit uneven and unbalanced, and before he knew it, she had passed out, face planted directly on the floor. John was able to get her onto the bed and he got her a wet washcloth from the bathroom for her face, and Helen did come too and realized that she had indeed had another episode where she passed out. And at this point John told her that they were going to figure out what was wrong with her from a medical standpoint, as soon as they got to Westfield. They were going to find the best doctors and find out exactly what was wrong with her, and hopefully they could find a cure for whatever. Was going on. And it was at that moment that Helen said she already knew what was wrong with her. Now, she was kind of in and out of it. At this point in time, she had just awoken from this episode of her passing out, so she was very weak in her delivery of what had been going on with her. And she said that it was the malaria. And she said the malaria was just coming back again and again. Now, like I said, she was kind of in and out of it, very weak at this point in time, but she just kept talking about how they tried to cure her with malaria but it just left her sick with the malaria instead. And then she finally admitted to what had been wrong with her this whole time. It was syphilis. It was a mild case, and she had gotten it from Marvin, her first husband. She had never spoken about it to anybody, not even her sister Gene, who she was extremely close with. They ended up finding a treatment. Plan for her, but it was to give her malaria in order to treat the syphilis and cure it. So, like I said, she was kind of in and out of it at this point in time, spilling all of her secrets that she has kept for so many years to John, and he was having a hard time figuring out exactly what was going on, exactly what she was saying. But this is the gist of it. In nineteen forty eight, she contracted syphilis from Marvin. She was sent to the Walter Reed Army Hospital for treatment. Now, at this point in time, penicillin was available, but it was only kept for military. There was very little available for treatment as far as it went to regular civilians. And at this point in time, they didn't really know if penicillin was even effective for the treatment of syphilis. So in nineteen forty eight, when Helen contracted syphilis, the standard treatment was basically to inject the patient with malaria through the blood of another patient who either had had malaria or had had syphilis, just as if a mosquito were to transfer blood from one person to another, and this was supposed to cure the syphilis. However, there would be other symptoms that accompanied this method of treatment, so every few days the patient's temperature would rise and that would obviously make the. Patient not feel well. So this is what was keeping Helen sick all of these years. John had expressed some concern about if she was cured or not, and she said that she was cured. And then when he asked about the children, are they safe? Have they been exposed to this? And she said that she had taken gamma globulin every single time, and that was a preventative so that the children didn't get syphilis. So this is why this. Woman had been sick all of these years, and she was also self medicating with alcohol and sleeping aids. In John's mind, he really didn't know how to process all of this because, first of all, the man that Helen had always spoken so highly of and compared him to Marvin, her first husband, had indeed given her syphilis. In the moment, John had expressed to Helen that he was grateful that she had taken preventive measures for the children, and at this point in time, Helen was so relieved that she had finally confided in someone about something that she had carried alone for all of the years. And at this point in time she felt really really close to John and asked him if he would just sit with her until she fell asleep, which she fell asleep shortly thereafter. John was very grateful that he and the children had not been affected with the syphilis, and he decided that at this point in time he was just not going to think about what had just been shared with him, and he was going to pretend it wasn't there. And that, honestly, is something that John list always did when things got difficult. He just prayed about it, pretended that it didn't exist, and kind of put everything on a back burner. And this is something that ultimately will in the end and finally. Catch up with him. And that is where we are going to end episode three. In episode four, we are going to be full fledged in Westfield, New Jersey, where the saga of where we end up begins. In the next episode, we're going to be getting into the unraveling of the List Family over the next six years, which leads to that faithful day in nineteen seventy one where John decides to take the lives of his whole family, completely, erase his passed and start anew Join me back next week as we unravel all that is involved in the List family murders. I hope you guys have a great week ahead and I will see you next Sunday. Bye.