Summer Series 2026 The List Family Murders Part 4

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 all right, guys, we are getting into part four of summer series The List Family Murders. This episode takes us to Westfield, New Jersey in nineteen sixty five. So the home of that the List family moved into was considered a mansion. It had a big wrap around porch, It had a large rooms and high ceilings. It was a farmhouse that was built in eighteen ninety six, a farmhouse with a Victorian flare. The grandson of the guy who built the house actually still lived in a cottage that was behind the home that had previously served as a guesthouse. The grandson, who was named John Wick, had shared photos with John and Helen of the house previously, and John and Helen had dreamed of being able to restore the mansion to what it used to be. When they moved into the Westfield home, John was forty one and Helen was forty. Patty was eleven, John Junior was ten, and Freddy was seven. Alma, who also moved in with them, was eighty years old. From the outside, looking in, it looks like the List family had it all together, But one person who saw through the facade was John Wikey. He had taken note that when the moving a van approached the Westfield Home from Rochester with the List's belongings, they hardly had any furniture in the moving van. There was hardly anything in there at all, and he never saw any new furnishings being delivered after they moved in. He knew in his head that they would never be able to fully restore the Westfield Home like they had dreamed. The home was located at four point thirty one Hillside Avenue, like I said, in Westfield, New Jersey. In present day, the home no longer stands and it has been replaced by a new one. So if you are the type of person that likes to google addresses when they are put into episodes, you will see a completely different house than the house that once stood. As the List family moved in and got settled in, they slowly would start to meet their new neighbors. There was a couple named Michael and Diana Ryan who lived next door to the couple. They were middle aged and they had seven children. They had lived at their home on Hillside for about twenty years. They typically were a very nice and welcoming family and would always welcome a new family in the neighborhood by bringing over a freshly made apple pie. About five days after the family moved in, Mike Ryan went over with a fresh baked apple pie and knocked on the back door. John List opened the door, and he had noticed that Helen and the three kids were kind of standing behind John, but John was in the doorway, basically blocking Mike's view of them. Mike introduced himself and he was able to take note that it looked like all of the furniture that the List had was still stacked up in the kitchen, and he thought that this was odd because they had moved in five days earlier and you would think that they would be getting everything where it needed to be, but everything was just stacked up. Ryan recalls John being very standoffish and not the type that would invite him in and was just not overly friendly. Mike said that he worked from home, so if they ever needed anything, not to hesitate to reach out. Mike explained that they always welcome new neighbors with an apple pie. John took the pie and said thank you and said that they were not really interested in encouraging friendships, and that's a quote. Mike was kind of taken aback by this, but John did say thank you for the pie, and he proceeded to say that he knew that the kids would enjoy it. Ryan then walked back home to his house and told his wife about the weird encounter. Because Mike had never quite experienced anyone like John Lyst before, John less was a special kind of character. A few days later, another set of neighbors of the List family, Hank and Joyce O'Malley, wanted to go introduce themselves as well. Now the O'Malleys had lived on Hillside at Avenue since nineteen fifty four, and although the homes on the street were kind of spaced apart, the neighbors were all pretty close. They were social. They would get together and have events, and they knew that John and Helen had children, and they were excited to invite those kids into the circle of kids in the community because there were seventeen kids between three families that were all in close proximity to John and Helen. So Hank and Joyce went over to the back door of the List family home, which led to the kitchen, and Freddy is the one that opened the door. Hank greeted Freddie and then suddenly heard a gruff voice from within the house asking who was at the door and what are you doing. Hank and Joyce had already entered the home through the laundry room, and at this point in time, they're standing in the kitchen and they were face to face with John List. John was very taken aback when he saw them. They went on to introduce themselves and they were very friendly and talking about all of the different children in the neighborhood and how everyone's kids got along and they were always all at everyone's houses, and he basically said that the neighborhood and the street were like a playground, and he told John and Helen that the kids would fit in perfectly. John and Helen were pretty silent during all of this, and I know John's wheels were turning because he didn't really like children, especially other children, and there's no way he would ever let random children into his house. Joyce and Hank then went on to let them know that the different neighbors in the neighborhood did a lot of get togethers. They have a lot of cocktail parties and barbecues, and John spoke up and said that he didn't think that they would be having time for that kind of thing. Hank of course said let us know if you need anything, and John was respectful and said thank you, but we're fine. So obviously a little stand offish, that's just kind of how John was. He didn't really want to engage much with the neighbors. And it seemed at this point that the O'Malley's and the Ryans did realize that the List family wasn't quite their cup of tea, wasn't going to necessarily fit in with the neighborhood. Vibe and John, on the same hand, made a very conscious effort not to engage with these people because A in his mind, he didn't know them and b they seemed unchristian like to him, and he wanted to hide Helen from any public scrutiny. He didn't want anyone knowing about Helen's past and all that she had been through with her syphilist diagnosis, and he very much wanted to shield her from judgments from outside people, and ultimately, at the end of the day, he wanted to protect his own image. He also felt very out of place, even though they were living in the wealthy neighborhood in area. He felt like he wasn't good enough. This has been a theme throughout his whole life. He's surrounded by very well to do, professional people with great jobs. Even though he has this job as vice president of a bank, he still doesn't feel adequate enough because he's been told his whole life that he is not good enough. So at this point in time, Helen is still suffering from her illness, and the List family didn't have any money to buy furniture for their new huge home, and John realized that the home was actually in a state of disrepair. They noticed that the ceiling in the kitchen and dining room was actually collapsing in and because of all of the money that they had put into this home to actually buy it, there was nothing left for them to fix any of these things that need to be fixed. The only thing that they could really do is sweep up any of the debris that ended up up falling. At this point in time, John really leaned in to his religion and he became ultra religious. He knew that he had to keep his family safe. He had to make sure that they were safe from the evils of the world. They started to pray longer after meals. The only person that John befriended was of course, the reverend of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer named Eugene ray Winkle. And obviously this again is a pattern in John's life. He would always seek out the pastor of the church and they would ultimately become close. And this is the only person in his life that he would confide in the most. Besides his mother, The reverend was always his closest friend. John offered to teach Sunday school and he volunteered to lead the church boy scout troupe, and he even participated in Little League as an assistant coach. Baseball and soccer were the only activities that John let John Junior, and Freddie participate in outside of church related ones. At this point in time, things are not going great at home, and John was very much trying to compensate for the lack of a good home environment. So John would often suggest family excursions when Helen was feeling up for it. Patty was at the age now where she realized what was going on in her family and her household, and confided to her aunt Jean that all her parents did was fight. She gave an example of a trip they took to Coney Island where they had fought so hard that Helen ended up getting sick and vomiting. Patty said that she would often find Helen lying across the kitchen table passed out. And this is the type of environment that these poor children were living in. They never knew anything different. It's horrible. Helen, of course, was struggling. She was so sick most of the time, and she hated the house that she was living in. It was her idea, this was the house that she had picked out. She knew that there was no way that they were going to be able to restore the home, and it was so big, way too much to care for, and she also knew that they had no money. All of the rooms just sat empty, and of course it came with the added gift of her mother in law, Alma, who she also didn't like. Alma had settled into her third floor apartment and this was the only area of the house that actually resembled a home because Alma was able to bring all of her furniture from the home that she had in Bay City, so her living room, bedroom, and kitchen were the only rooms in the home that were fully furnished. Downstairs on the first floor, the two big living rooms and the ballroom on the first floor had no furniture in it. They were practically barren. John ended up taking over the front living room for his office and this also lacked furniture. He had two cabinets in there and a desk that was it. The children's bedrooms didn't even have dressers, which is just terrible. Their clothes ended up being piled up on the floor. Helen continued with her depressive episodes and continued drinking to try and forget that her current life was just not what she had planned. At this point in time, Helen was drinking at least five to six scotches a day and taking as many as five sleeping pills a day. She was also very bothered by the fact that Almah was there, even though she necessarily didn't always see her. Because Alma stayed upstairs, she knew that Almah's presence was there, and she knudy down that she couldn't get rid of it. John continued with playing the role of mother and father to his growing children. Helen helped very little in any way. The home was overwhelming to her and way too big. Anytime Alma had attempted to come downstairs to help, Helen became hysterical and very hostile, So eventually Alma just kept herself upstairs and would only leave her third floor apartment when she would leave to go shopping or go to church. She sadly didn't even interact much at all with the children due to Helen's disdain for her. John was also continuing to lean way more into his religion and it became a lot more important to him. He saw demons everywhere around him, and he was focused very much on protecting his children, and Patty was beginning to blossom into a young lady. His sons were getting older, he knew that he had to protect them. The only people that John let his sons associate with were a family who were fellow parishioners of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, and they were the Bader family. They had sons that were about the same ages as John Junior and Freddie, and John only wanted his kids to ride to school with them. He wanted no part of them getting on the public bus to go to school. So besides that family, John had nothing to do with any of the other neighbors. So it very much surprised the community when John and Helen accepted an invitation to another family on the blocks cocktail Christmas party. John and Helen went, and again, they're awkward in general. They don't really know how to act or what to say. And Mike Ryan is there and all he can think about is an interaction that John had had with a couple of his children in days previous when the kids were cutting across his lawn and he yelled at them and was pretty harsh on them for being in his yard, and the Ryans very much felt like this was an over exaggerated way to treat young kids who really didn't know any better. Other people at the party had never even really seen Helen and were surprised that they even left the house to attend the party. Edith and Jack Reader were a couple that were at the party. They lived several houses away from the lists and didn't really say much about them except that they were very strange. John was very unfriendly, and they just seemed in general like they didn't want anybody to be around them. Alma, on the other hand, was very friendly to her neighbors. She had a great reputation in the neighborhood. She would often bake cookies and bring them over to the neighborhood kids, and everyone seemed to really like Alma. And this is another theme. Anytime Alma was living in the same proximity as John and Helen, nobody liked Helen and everybody loved Alma. And honestly, I don't know this for a fact, but I imagine that's something that probably got under Helen's skin, given the fact that she herself didn't like all me at all. So, of course, like any small town. Rumors quickly spread around that Helen was suffering from some type of nervous breakdown. So at this point in time, Patty was twelve years old and John found her with a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover, which is a nineteen twenty eight novel by DH Lawrence. It was highly controversial and it was widely banned for decades before becoming the subject of landmark obscenity trials. So obviously John was not happy to see that Patty had this book, and he asked where she got it from, and she said that she had gotten it from a friend of hers, and he told her, you can't have that, it's pornographic. And Patty then went on to tell John that her English teacher said that the book was not obscene, and there was a court of Appeals that had ruled as such. John pushed back on this and basically told her that she seemed to know an awful lot about a book that she really didn't know anything about. And this was a time in the nation that was really hard for John to handle. As a whole. He hated the thought of the Vietnam War going on, but he also hated even more that Patty had a peace symbol that was stenciled onto the cover of one of her notebooks. In his eyes, the peace symbol denoted a decade of disobedience and social violence, not peace. He was also disturbed by everything that had happened, the murder of President Kennedy, the murder of civil rights workers. Basically, he thought the world had completely gone mad. He hated that the children of the world were exposed to horrific things week after week, and all of his thoughts and feelings were officially validated when he saw a Time magazine cover on April eighth of nineteen sixty six, and it was titled Is God Dead? And John knew in his heart that God wasn't dead. It was the morality that was dead, virtue that was dead, ethics that were dead. John felt like he was witnessing the beginning of an apocalypse that was brought on about by moral decay. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do to protect his children, but he knew he had to do something. He took the book away from Patty, and Patty was very upset because this book belonged to her friend. So John responded back to her and told her that that girl is not your friend and told her that if she wanted her book back that she would have to come and talk to him. Helen ended up having a another bad fall during a blackout incident, and she had bruised her left ear and her hip. She was taken to Overlook Hospitals that was located in Summit, New Jersey on January twenty ninth of nineteen sixty six. She was admitted to the hospital with this visit. She walked with her eyes closed, bent forward and her knees bent. She could hardly stand, and she was suffering from confusion, was extremely tired and had a headache. She was also not cooperative and did not want to talk to the doctors. All she wanted to do was go home. A neurologist ended up seeing Helen on the day of her admission and he noted that she seemed like she might be of harm to herself. They took her history and it was recorded, and I am going to read that here and again. All of this information is from the Thou Shalt Not Kill Book by Mary Rusik. Unable to walk without assistance because of imbalance and stiffness of the legs, decrease, vision in the left eye, one week and four days of a headache, one week of disturbance. Two days ago, she had fallen uncooperative dehydrated. She moaned and mumbled concerning her medical expenses. Twenty years ago, in nineteen forty eight, the patient reported losing vision in her right eye associated with pain. After three years, vision was completely lost. Visual difficulty started prior to the malaria. Now, like I said, Helen was not cooperative with the doctors. She wouldn't talk to them, so John is the one that had to convey her history to them. They then made further consultations to an ophthalmologist and a psychiatrist. John had told them that when Helen was in Korea twenty years ago, she had contracted malaria and that was treated at Walter Reed Hospital, and he said she was still experiencing frequent episodes of chills and fever and that her last episodisode was about six months ago. He made no mention of the syphilist diagnosis because in his mind, that was irrelevant because that had been cured. John went on to tell the doctor that Helen had a neurological evaluation previously and was recommended to see a psychiatrist, and she did go for several months, but then stopped. This was not something that John liked to talk about because he didn't like to admit that she had a need for any type of psychological intervention. He asked the doctor if he would please reiterate to Helen that she did not have a brain tumor, because that was something that she consistently worried about because her father had died of cancer and this was always a very persistent worry in Helen's mind. The neurologist made the following note patient had trauma and possible fracture at the base of the skull, possible drug toxicity and reaction to medicine causing overall mental issues and gait disturbance acute mental syndrome. On January thirtieth of nineteen sixty six, he wrote the following patient is about the same, but she was in better mental state. Examination of X rays did not show any fracture of the skull. On January thirty first of nineteen sixty six, his note stated that the patient remains relatively uncommunicative. Helen at this point still was pretty uncooperative. She accused the doctor of being in a hurry throughout the examination, even though the neurologists spent a lot of time with her. The neurologist noted that she made odd movements of her face, grimacing, lipsmacking without answering his questions. He continued to note psychotic behavior but noted the need for a continued organic workup. On February first of nineteen sixty six, he noted the patient was found to be a bit more responsive in speech and more rational. Her urine tested positive for barbituates, certainly not a medication that had been ordered during her hospital stay. The ophthalmology and psychiatric examinations were also completed, and the ophthalmologist noted that she had a two week history of complaints of poor vision in her left eye. She was falling more often, She was disoriented, she often didn't know where she was, and her pupils were very dilated. She would only respond very sluggishly, and it was reported that the patient had multiple times fallen out of bed but voice no complaints. Nurses noted that she was having a consistent headache. She seemed more confused and lost her balance easily. She had a poor appetite and was talking consistently on various subjects. On February third of nineteen sixty six, the op homologist noted that she had twenty twenty vision on her left eye and nearly normal affect In her psychological responses, she would answer questions and give a history. The diagnosis was no active pathology, possibly a drug reaction, and possible hysteria. So then we get to the psychological examination that was done on February fourth of nineteen sixty six. The psychiatrists found Helen in bed an alert, talking and cooperative, despite her obvious dislike of seeing a psychiatrist. He noted her speech was excessive and fast, with little pause. She was defensive and had a clinging quality. Her orientation was vague, although her memory did not appear as though it was impaired. Although she wasn't really able to tell him much about her blackouts, she seemed bright as far as her IQ, but her judgment was impulsive. It did not appear that she had any illusions or hallucinations, but there was a slight tinge of paranoia. The psychiatrist found her to be very guarded. She expressed that she was mildly depressed back in nineteen sixty one, but then said she was in a new town. She didn't know anybody. She was very anxious. They had such a big home, and the neighbors didn't like her because the house was so grand, and everything she tried to do just exhausted her. And she went on to express how upset she was that her mother in law lived at the house with them, and that's exactly when her headache started, when Almah moved in, and she said she just can't handle the fact that she is living underneath Almah hanging over her head. She asked for some sleeping pills and said she didn't feel like she was depressed anymore, she was just dealing with a lot. She also denied drinking during this conversation, and the psychiatrist noted that she was all over the place during this conversation. In his notes, he expressed the following schizophrenia pseudoneurotic with inconsistent personality including depressive, compulsive, and hysterical features, no signs of adverse psychosis. I believe the major psychiatric effect here is hysterical aggravation of symptoms due to panic about her eye. This is not to say that organic causes do not have to be rolled out a brain tumor or stroke, recommend librium three times a day, and much reassurance, doubt advisability of involving her in psychotherapy and stirring up her confused unconscious mind. They did X rays of her hip and skull and there was no fracture or any abnormality, so basically the treatment was there was no treatment for this back in the day. She did gradually improve to the point that she could return home, and she was released on February fifth of nineteen sixty six. But this was going to be only one of many of Helen's hospital and missions. Obviously, at this point in time, John had a lot on his plate, but he had other things that were happening in his life. Within one year of John having moved to Westfield, his career as vice president of the First National Bank in Jersey City was officially over. He had been fired yet again, and of course he was stunned. John was not accepting of the fact that this had become a pattern in his career. John had a pattern. As long as he was working alone, he did everything fairly well, but any time that he was put into a position where he had to deal with people on a one on one basis. He consistently fell short of the company expectations. He wasn't able to bring himself to delegate responsibilities, and he would become very easily overwhelmed by the rise in his workload and constantly worried about work, and he was also worried about his entire life. He just didn't understand what these companies wanted from him. Now, management was kind enough to let him know, you are going to be fired, but you have sixty days to find another job, and he could continue coming into work. So that is exactly what he did, and in his mind, he was going to sway them to change his mind and reinstate his employment, but that in fact did not happen. After ten days of John not searching for work, he was called into the office by a supervisor and at that point they told him that they didn't think that this was a good idea for him to say any longer because he has shown no initiative to try and find another job. They told him that everybody at the office knew about his termination, and it was common knowledge around the office. They were very much trying to do him a favor and give him sixty days to look for a new job, but it wasn't going to work out, so they advised him to take his vacation time and leave right away. He cleaned out his desk and realized at this point in time all of his dreams were shattered, except this time, he wasn't going to share with his family that he had been fired. So every single day he got up for work, he dressed in a suit and tie, and every day he left the house for work and he sat at the railroad station reading the classified section of the New York Times until there were no more ads to read. Afterward, he would sit in a corner of the waiting room and he would read his Bible until it was time to go home. Every single day this was his routine. He was constantly afraid to go home. He didn't know where to look for a job. He was afraid to face Helen. He was worried about his mounting bills. He never even told his mom that he lost his job, and he was very close to her. He had lost his job and a month had passed and he continued this routine religiously. All he did was pray for a new job. That one would fall into his lap. His life was literally falling apart at the seams. His wife was sick, she never wanted to go to church, and he felt that his daughter, Patty was slowly drifting away from his parental control. Patty, at this point in time, in his mind, became very rebellious. She seemed like she was resentful of having to attend church every week, and that was just his perception of things. She never outwardly protested going to church, but John just felt that she was resentful and did not want to be there. Patty was also getting older and was making friends and coming into her own and was realizing that the way that her family lived versus how everyone else lived was vastly different. None of her friends prayed after their meals, and they all just lived an overall different lifestyle. So, at this point in time, Patty was too old for the Lutheran Redeemer schools, so she was now attending a public school, which obviously put her in an environment where she was surrounded by people with different ways of thinking and different values. As a second month of John spending time at the railroad station ensued, he didn't know what to do. Patty was thirteen years old, and in his mind he thought that this was a very dangerous age for her. Of all of his kids, she was the one that he worried about the most. A third month passed and then a fourth, and John was growing more and more depressed. He also worried about Helen. The mounting medical bills were piling up and the fact that Helen, in his mind, was demonstrating undisciplined immortality the same as Pattie. John felt that Helen was challenging everything about being Lutheran and had even expressed some remorse that she had converted. And all of this just really grated on John. So all John did was get deeper and deeper into his religion, and with this he realized that everyone around him was not worthy and that is why all of these bad things were happening. He fell deeper and deeper and deeper into depression, sitting in his little corner in the waiting room month after month. At this point in time, he was very troubled. Now, despite feeling this way, John was still the person that would do anything that Helen wanted. Anything Helen wanted to buy, John was the first one to go out and get it. For her. Helen's mom had just returned from a visit and had a conversation with Helen's sister Jean, and she had expressed that she knew that they were living above their means. Had expressed to her husband and her neighbor that their mom even had to cut her visit a little short because everything at the house was so dark. She expressed that John was such a mama's boy and was always up in Almah's third floor apartment every single night. Alma never came downstairs, and the kids would never go up to visit her. Jeane said that Helen was basically all by herself in that big, old house. Jeane also expressed some concern that Freddie was really shy and quiet and didn't have any friends. He was a loner, just like John, and all he did was spend time with his dog. Jeane also went on to say that all their mother saw when she was there was John praying and that it drove her absolutely crazy. She thought that Patty and Johnny were starting to resent their life. Jeane expressed that Helen wasn't getting any better, and for some reason, Jeane had a preministion that something horrible was going to happen now. At this point in time, Helen didn't know that John wasn't working, but she did know that they had very little money coming in. At this point in time, John had ordered the liquor store to stop making deliveries to the house. John continued to do his normal routine of waking up in the morning, getting dressed to go to work, and then going and sitting at the railroad station until the day was over, and he would come back home, go up to the third floor and visit with Almah, and then he would come back downstairs look over the finances. He tracked everything meticulously in a budget book and realized very quickly that everything in his life was spiraling out of control. He secretly began to borrow money from Almah's account in order to keep everything at bay. He promised himself that he would replace all of the money as soon as he got another job. During the six months that John was struggling, he became very harsh. He started to become a verbally abusive with the children, which is not something that he had ever been before. The kids, especially Freddy, became terrified of him. There were times though, that they could see that he was remorseful for how he acted, because he would make up for it by cooking a special meal or offering to play baseball with them on the lawn. John finally got a job with the American Photographic Company as a staff accountant for twelve thousand dollars a year, which was half of what he had been making when he moved with his family to New Jersey, but at least it was something. On February third of nineteen sixty eight, Helen was admitted to the hospital again. This time she had slipped in the bedroom and fell against the bedpost and dislocated her left collarbone. This time, instead of being concerned, John was angry, and he was convinced that the only reason she blocked out was because she drank too much, and at this point in their marriage they had basically stopped talking. Helen was seen by an orthopedic surgeon and he noted that she had fallen about four weeks before she was admitted to the hospital. It took John that long to bring her into the hospital. She was having a hard time lifting her left arm and was very swollen and black and blue. On February ninth, they were able to perform a procedure to excise theclavical in order to provide her with a little relief, and then after that she went back home. Once she got back home, John proceeded to plant trees in between he and the neighbors' homes on both sides. He planted a long series of tiny trees along both sides of his property from front to back, and when asked about it by his neighbor O'Malley, he said that they were trees for privacy, which didn't really make a lot of sense to o'malee because they were little trees, so it would be years before they would grow into anything that would offer any amount of privacy. In May of nineteen sixty eight, Helen had been taking increased dosages of her different prescribed medication and she was continuing not to do well. She was very off balanced physically and there were days sometimes that she wouldn't even get out of bed. The doctors continued to not really know what was wrong with her, and they thought that maybe it was just the alcoholism. Jean and her husband made a trip to Westfield, New Jersey to visit the List family before they headed off to Germany, where Jean's husband was about to serve a two year tour with the Air Force. This was their first official visit to the home. When they arrived at the List family home, they were very impressed by the exterior of the home and noticed how big it was. They knocked on the door and there was no answer. They did figure that John was probably at work and the kids were most likely at school, but they couldn't figure out why Helen wasn't answering. Eventually, Alma had ventured down from the third floor and answered the door and let them in and let them know where they could find Helen. So they went in and they noticed that there was some water that had been leaking from the second floor to the first floor from one of the upstairs bathrooms, and it looked like it had been leaking for a long time. They did find Helen in a bed on the second floor. Helen was dressed in her nightgown and the bedroom was a mess. It also appeared that Helen hadn't bathed for quite a while. She looked dirty. The entire area surrounding Helen was a mess. The bed linens were dirty, the bathroom was dirty, the floor of the bedroom, everything was in complete disarray. And Jeane also noticed that there was a large number of medicine bottles on the night side table next to Helen. Jeane also noticed that there was a can of peanuts and a jar peanut butter sitting on the bedside table Helen and said that is what she had had for lunch. Helen then proceeded to let them know that she was going to call John and let him know that they were in town. So she proceeded to do so, and Helen informed them that John would be home in just a little while, and then she shared with them that John had lost his job and now had a new job. Helen then got the sutted urge to bring Jeane downstairs and show her stuff she wanted to show her around the home. Jane noticed that Helen was very unstable and unsteady when she was walking, but she proceeded into the dining room and brought out several pieces of Waterford crystal from a china cabinet and said that she was really proud of the collection that she had started. And then Helen wanted to show Jean the ballroom, so she took her to the ballroom. Jeane was impressed with the size of the ballroom and told her, it looks like you could fit a whole house inside of this room. Helen wanted to show Jeane more there were things around the house because she knew that Jean loved antiques, but she was just so weak that this was really hard for her. Jean realized how sick Helen was and how bad she really looked from the last time she had seen her, when they were still living in Rochester. Helen was tired from giving Jean a tour of the house and went back to bed. John arrived home around five point thirty and he had groceries with him. He seemed happy to see Jean and her husband. John unloaded the groceries and then proceeded to start cooking dinner. Jeane wasn't surprised by this, because in all of the years that she had known him, he had taken over the roles and responsibilities of Helen, and he never really complained about it. Jeane didn't think that John was capable of being angry, because he never expressed any anger in front of her. Later that evening, after dinner, Jeane did start noticing that the tone that he had taken with the children was a little bit different than he remembered, but then she thought maybe it's just the fact that the children are getting older, and the kids are changing, they're growing up. Pattie was described as a bit sullen and withdrawn. John Junior was very quiet alone and reserved, and Freddie was very shy, and she thought he might have been a little depressed. Jean thought that maybe when her and her husband got back from Germany, that they could take the kids in for a little while, but unfortunately that was still a couple of years away. Jean then expressed some concern about all of the pill bottles that she saw next to Helen's bed, and John reassured her that they were all prescribed medicines. The next day, the kids went to school and John took Jean's husband to see the town of Westfield. Jeane proceeded to help clean up the house a little bit, and all of a sudden, she saw Helen coming down the stairs, and at this point she's fully dressed. Jane knows that Helen was coming down the stairs in a very strange manner. Her gate pattern was just overall, really really strange. She got downstairs and sat down and started speaking with Jeane and Helen said that the doctor thought she might have something called brain atrophy. The phone ended up ringing, so Jean got up to answer it, and it was the Roosevelt School that Freddie attended, and they said that Freddie wasn't feeling well and needed to be picked up. All of a sudden, she heard a thump behind her and turned around and realized that Helen had went to get up and had fallen by the kitchen sing. Blood was gushing from her chin because she had hit it on the counter on her way down. She tended to Helen as best she could. She got a washcloth and tried to stop the bleeding, but she didn't know what to do. She ran up to the third floor to get Alma because she knew she needed help, and Alma, after all, was a former nurse. They were able to manage to get the bleeding under control, and they were able to safely get Helen back to her bedroom. Later that night, Jeane confronted John and asked him what was going on. John reassured her that sometimes Helen falls, this is just what happens, and the doctors haven't been able to confirm anything yet. Nothing is definitive or set in Stone. Jeane said she thinks that Helen should be hospitalized at this point, but given that money was one of the biggest issues in John's life, he said it was too expensive and that they were just going to have to do their best to take care of her at home. Jane, of course, was very concerned. She thought that Helen could possibly be dying. Helen had also shared with Jane that John had left the bedroom that they once shared because she often felt like she couldn't breathe when he was around. He would make her so nervous that she felt like she couldn't breathe and felt like she was suffocating, so he had moved into a different room. So it came time for Jean and her husband to say goodbye to the List family. Helen was visibly upset having to say bye to her sister because Jean and her husband were getting ready to leave for Germany. They weren't going to see each other for two years, and she expressed to Jeane that she thought that this was going to be the last time that she would ever see her sister, which is so sad and eerie considering what we know. Helen's health continued to get worse and worse. John was very anxious with all of her different ailments. She would continue to have dizzy and fainting spells with frequent falling. She would often get sick and vomit next to her bed and John had to clean it up. John even ended up getting a wheelchair for Helen. That way she could go back and forth to the bathroom. On June sixth of nineteen sixty eight, Helen was admitted to the hospital once again. She was observed by the doctors as being very drowsy, but she just blamed it on the dramamine that she took to help with the nausea that she had been having. The doctor that saw her wrote the following widespread organic brain disease with personality change, lethargy and a taxia, possible middle ear problem or chronic brain syndrome or a tumor of the brain. They very much went back and forth on what was going on with Helen. They wanted to rule out that she had any type of blood clot pressing on her brain, so they did different imaging to figure out what was going on. It did show that there was a wasting away in the frontal lobe of Helen's brain. Since Helen had been away, Ama at this point had very much made herself at home. She was doing all of the family's laundry, she often cooked for them, and she even helped Patty make some of her clothes for school. More testing was being done on her Helen, and on June fourteenth, they injected die into the arteries of her brain to see what was going on, and everything seemed pretty normal, except for a slight constriction of the internal carotid artery. All of these tests very much worried Helen and she just wanted to figure out what was wrong with her. They ended up doing a spinal tap to try to get down to the bottom of it. But while Helen was in the hospital, everything at the List home had calmed down quite a bit. Alma was doing all of the cooking, John was doing all of the shopping, and Patty, who was fourteen at this point in time, was doing most of the cleaning at the home. Patti wrote a letter to her aunt Jean, who was overseas in Germany, and said that Helen had been in the hospital and that the doctor made her throw away the medicines that she was taking, and that she was slowly getting better. They did officially diagnose Helen with chronic brain syndrome and atrophy of the brain. She was slowly improving and was discharged from the hospital on June twenty second, but there was no real reason as to why she had this brain atrophy or a treatment, so they sent her home. This time, she had been at the hospital for a total of seventeen days. One night, in mid August of nineteen sixty eight, Helen had been in bed reading when she lost consciousness. By this time, John was very used to Helen's episodes, and although it bothered him, he really couldn't do anything about it because he was too preoccupied with the bills that he felt like he could not catch up on. Following that, there was one point in time that Helen was able to come down to the kitchen where the children were having dinner. Patty had prepared it, and although John wasn't home, she wanted to try to be down there with her family. She sat with them and they seemed like they were very happy to see her. Although she didn't feel like she could eat, she was glad to be down there with them. But then all of a sudden, she felt like she needed to go back upstairs. Then suddenly she felt like she couldn't breathe. The children watched as she gasped for air and her eyes started to bug out of her head. Patty had no idea what to do, so she ended up calling for help. The police came to the house and they realized that Helen had hyperventilated due to an anxiety attack. Although everything seemed to be over, Helen just was lifeless. She made no protest as they took her once again to the hospital. In the police car, John was not happy. He thought, there's no way we're going to have more hospital bills and asked why Patty had called for help. Patty said that she didn't have a choice because mom was having this terrible episode, and John just told her it would have passed on its own. She was in the hospital five more days and they completed more tests. Three and a half months later, on December tenth of nineteen sixty eight, Helen was admitted to the New York Neurological Institute, where she would spend the next forty four days getting an in depth neurological workup. She was omitted because she had been complaining of severe headaches in her forehead area that would last for four or five hours at a time. While she was at the hospital, she was seen by a number of house staff as well as many different specialists. Several doctors listed a series of physical reasons in the brain that they wanted to examine what was going on. They wanted to test for toxo plasmosis, syphilis, tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis, and they wanted to do a bunch of testing to rule all of this stuff out. They ended up doing a skin test for tuberculosis, which was positive. She had had that at some point in time in the past, and she also tested positive for venereal disease. While things were a little bit calmer at the List family home at this time, John was still very much struggling financially and he had still been borrowing money from Almah's bank account, and unfortunately, he got word that the company that he was working for, American Photographic Company, was moving locations out west, and at this point in time, he didn't know what to do because he was going to be unemployed yet again, because there was no way that they could pack up and move right now. On December eighteenth of nineteen sixty eight. As a result of the testing that had been done, one of the doctors, who was the head of the New York Neurological Institute, held a group medical conference and he said that missus List had tested positive for the VDRL and the FTA absorption, and she had changes in the back of her eye. He suggested that two possible reasons for this would be syphilis of the brain or drug toxicity. He also went on to say that some of the tests suggested that she had some liver disease going on that was possibly due to her alcohol consumption. Helen ended up having another fall at the hospital, and when the doctors brought the test results to her, she said she didn't drink and that she didn't have any type of venereal disease. She said she had never taken tranquilizers in her life, and she took her medicine as it was prescribed, and she said all she does is smoke, and then she went on to say that she had malaria once and that was the extent of her medical history. That was it. By January tenth of nineteen sixty nine, some of her nurses had discovered some sleeping pills in her room. They were hidden kind of in several different places in her room. Each time she went out of the room, they counted and saw how many she had left, and they called her on it, and she said that she had been taking them every single day since she got into the hospital. It was then that she finally admitted what had been going on with her. She said that her time at Walter Reed Army Hospital back in nineteen forty seven to forty eight had not been for malaria, it had been for syphilis of the brain, and that the doctors used the malaria to treat the syphilis. Helen then admitted to drinking five to six scotches a day and also admitted to taking the sleeping pills four to five a day, which the doctors very much thought that the combination of the alcohol and the sleeping pills, even without the syphilis diagnosis, would very much impair her balance. The doctors finally knew what was wrong with her due to this revelation, but unfortunately it was too late. She was diagnosed with tertiary syphilis of the brain and it was in its final stages. One evening, John had confided in his neighbor, the one who was a doctor about all of his mounting troubles. He discussed his potential of losing his job because his company was moving, and realized that there was no way that he could move with the company because this was the house that they needed. Helen was having all of her health issues, and he knew that this is where they needed to stay. But it was obviously something that was weighing heavily on his mind because he did choose to confide in his neighbor, the doctor, about all that was going on in his life, and unfortunately, it was about to get a lot harder. The doctors sat John down and went over all of the results of all of the testing that they had been doing with her. They said they had two final diagnoses. One of them was the sleeping pill intoxication with minor addiction, and the other was syphilitic encephalitis, and they then told him that she was in the tertiary stages of syphilis. John listened quietly with little emotion. He was concerned for multiple reasons. One of the main things he was worried about, though, was how was he going to pay for all of this testing that they just did. Was insurance going to cover it all? He asked the doctors why they didn't find out about it sooner, and the doctor said that there was no history given that supported the possibility of her having syphilis, so they didn't dig any further past that, And then the doctor told him that Helen finally told them the truth just yesterday about her syphilis dig noses previously. Now, honestly, John never thought that what was going on with her was related to the syphilis because she had told him that it had been cured. He also had very much put the fact that she had had syphilis out of her mind and basically acted like it didn't exist, which is why he never brought it up to the doctors, and all the different hospitals say she had had. He asked the doctor if she could have been cured if she was diagnosed sooner, and they did say that that was very likely, but at this point in time, the disease had just taken over her body and her brain. Helen was discharged from the hospital on January twenty second of nineteen sixty nine. She had been there for forty four total days. The company that John worked for relocated in late spring of nineteen sixty nine, and John was again out of work. June passed by without him getting any work, then July, then August, and he did not know what to do. He was seriously considering every single option. Helen began getting worse again, and he didn't know if it was her medicine making her worse, was it the alcohol was at the syphilis. He was struggling so much with what to do because he knew that he had to do something. He felt like he needed to get out of the situation that he was in. He didn't want to take his own life. That wasn't an option, but he also felt like he couldn't leave his family behind. He didn't want to leave his kids to be raised by somebody else. Helen was dying and suffering, and Alma had never really lived her life without John, and he didn't want to leave her behind either. He just didn't know what to do. The mounting pressure, the medical bills, the regular bills, along with him being out of work, the walls were literally closing in on John. He especially was worried about Patty because he knew that she was headed down a really, really dark path. She was beginning to go to parties at the Westfield Recreation Center and she would attend Friday night dances at a place called the Dungeon, which was the basement of the church. He did not approve of this. He thought she was way too young for such things. She was starting to wear low cut dresses, she was wearing makeup, she was doing her hair, and he thought that this was the worst thing ever. Helen, although she was sick, was encouraging Patty to go out and live her life, enjoy her youth, and encouraging her basically to grow up. And John couldn't understand this because this is the same issue they had with Brenda, and she ended up getting pregnant at a very young age, and John just couldn't rationalize how Helen thought that this was a good idea, knowing what happened with Brenda. As much trouble as he knew he was in, he didn't want to abandon his family. He thought that that would be way worse than even taking his own life to get himself out of the situation. At this point, he knew that he had to focus on getting a job. He was going to not be so focused on titles and just focus on getting something that could bring in a little bit of money. So he could start replenishing all of the money he had burned through. He often ran in to his doctor neighbor while he was on the train, and he would very much confide in this man. For some reason, he felt comfortable speaking with him, and he expressed to him the need to find a job, but he was going to be going in a different route and even talked about maybe considering insurance sales. In August of nineteen sixty nine, John found a job. He started selling insurance and mutual funds for State Mutual Life Assurance Company of America out of East Orange, New Jersey. With this job, he was getting paid based off of commissions only, and the first year his income dropped at least three thousand dollars and the bill kept piling up. John continued to dip into Almah's account to borrow money from it, and this was something that he never told her about because in his mind, she would not have approved of him doing this to pay for a lot of Helen's medical bills because her and Helen did not get along. And also in his mind, he was going to replenish every single cent that he had taken once he started making money again. At this point, John was becoming more reclusive. He was very quiet, and he was also a lot more compulsive. He started to isolate himself even from family routines. It was at this point in time that he got very into his gardening and he began to meticulously catalog every seed that he had planted in the garden, and he would meticulously document and monitor the growth. That is kind of where his priority was instead of looking after his family, which is something he had always done previously. On March sixteenth of nineteen seventy, John sold himself a life insurance policy on each of his kids for the amount of five thousand dollars each. For his job, he would often take the train from New Jersey to Newark, and he would often run into his doctor neighbor and they would exchange pleasantries and talk about how things were going. He could very much tell that John was struggling and would very often try and give him advice. They would often talk about finances and go back and forth on credit and how credit worked and how it was really easy to get addicted to credit and kind of put all of your finances out of whap because you just kept charging things. And he would go on to say that sometimes people do get desperate. John responded that luckily there was no desperation, but there would have been a lot of complexities if he had to move his family for his other job. That ended up not being a problem now. His doctor Naghbor was kind of surprised that John took this conversation personally because he was just talking about the financial strain of credit in a general sense, and John very much took it as him talking about him and his situation. But at this point in time, John really didn't know how desperation was going to come into his life and what the next year of his life would unfold to be. That is where we are going to end Part four. In Part five, we are getting into the meat of this case, and that is the murders of his whole family, everything that leads up to that fateful day when he decides to take his family's lives, and everything that happens after we are going to get into it. Remember, John List was on the run for eighteen years before he was captured. He created a whole new life for himself with a lot of the same patterns and same routines that we saw in his life and his marriage to Helen. It's going to get very interesting from here on out. Not that it hasn't been interesting so far, but we are about to get down into the weeds of everything that happened in the List family home and everything that John did to methodically plan out what he did to his family. It's about to get real. Stay tuned for episode five and I will see you guys next week for part five. Have a good one bye,