Summer Series 2026 The List Family Murders Part 5

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, welcome to Part five of Summer Series twenty twenty six, The List Family Murders. We are coming up into the meat of the story. Like I said, I do want to go over some stuff that was going on directly with the children leading up to the murders, because I do believe all of this was a catalyst for why John made the decision to take out his entire family. So in nineteen seventy, Patty was a sophomore in high school and she was in that time of figuring out who she was. She joined the Westfield Drama Club and really enjoyed all that came with it. She was very friendly, outgoing. Everybody loved her and she was popular. The group of people that she hung out with very often hung out at a place called Shades, which was a soda parlor that was located in Westfield. At this point in time, too, she started dressing a little bit differently. She was wearing grungey, torn up jeans, she was wearing boots, she was wearing tiedy t shirts. She grew her hair longer and parted it down the middle, and she was excited because she was finally fitting in with those that surrounded her, because for so long she was the odd man out. She didn't fit in with any of her friends. It was also around this time and that Patty decided that she wanted to start doing things with her friends more regularly, so she moved her stuff from the room that she had at the List family home to one of the empty bedrooms near the back staircase of the house, so that way she could sneak out of the house without being detected. She was also now at the age where boys were starting to notice her, and she was starting to notice them back. She would spend a lot of time with her friends at a local deli, and for the first time in her life, she felt like she belonged. But it was only when she was out with friends that she felt comfortable to be herself. When she was at home, she tried to keep as low of a profile as possible. So at this time, Johnny, the middle child, was attending Roosevelt Junior High and he was also kind of a loner. He didn't have many friends, and he would often eat lunch by himself and either read books or do homework or study while he was eating. He did, however, have a friend name Bob Canfield, who he had first met when they were doing a Westfield Township Little League baseball team back when they were younger, and Bob recalls many times when John list would come pick him up to take him to games or take him to school one thing or another, and they would often talk about baseball and John would try to give him advice on baseball. He described John as friendly, very quiet, and very meticulous, and a lot different than his father, who was a lot more outspoken and louder and disciplinary. He said he never imagined that john could ever even discipline his kids because he was just not that kind of person. He was very meek and very mild. At this point in time, Johnny often talked about going to the Big League's aka the MLB, and that was his ultimate dream. Freddie would occasionally play baseball with his bread and dad, but he never played on a team. He didn't have a lot of friends and mostly just spent time at home with the family dog, who was named tinker Bell. He didn't have a lot of interaction with anybody outside of the house and pretty much just kept himself and like I said, his best friend was his dog, Tinkerbell. So the summer before the murders, Patty had gone away to a two week program in Pennsylvania for counselor training, and there was a gal there named Paula. She was twenty four years old and she was the head of the program and Patty took a liking to her, and Paula took a liking to Patty. So one night they were chatting and Patty had confided in her that she felt like something wasn't right and didn't really know what she was feeling, but said that she felt like something bad was going to happen, and she also confided in her that she felt like she was going to die. Paula, of course dismissed this. She tried to reassure her that's not going to happen, and Patty was adamant that it was going to be happening soon. Paula then proceeded to ask Patty about the pentagram that she had found drawn in the hallway on the floor and asked if Patty was the one that drew it, and Patty said that it was and that it was a symbol for witches. And Patty then went on this rant about how the world is going in the wrong direction, and she confided in Paula that she was really tired of praying before every meal, praying after every meal, and going to church every Sunday. She told Paula that she thought there was a dark side to religion and everything that stemmed from the dark side had to do with satan and witchcraft. And there Patty further explained to Paula that her father had given her a book about the devil, and then she went on to research it more, and then she went and got another book out of the library, and this book had everything to do with the devil and worshiping the devil, and Paula was astonished and even asked her if her dad really did give her that book, and Patty said that he is the one who told her that you can't believe in God without also believing in Satan, and that is when he gave her the book. Patty then would continue to talk about the covenant of witches that were living in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Paula very much tried to just talk her off of the ledge and tell her, you're a teenager. Teenagers say and think wild things. You're going to grow out of all of this. Patty did not believe this. Patty thought that this was just going to be the way that she thought these things had been placed in her head and she was trying to figure things out on her own, and she didn't think that she was going to go out of it. And then Patty went on to reiterate the thoughts that she had about how she was going to die. Paula also reassured her that this wasn't going to happen, but truly, looking back the way that Patty kind of predicted her own death is insane. The fact that she told somebody about it, and that person was able to come forward after the fact and talk about that conversation. It's truly wild that this poor girl was dealing with so much. She was a teenager, which was hard enough, her family was wacky, and she was trying to figure things out on her own, and somehow or another, she predicted her own death. Once Patty returned home from the two week camp, she found herself feeling a little more rebellious than she had before. She would often go into her mom's room and take her clothing while she was asleep. Patti also had a boyfriend at this point in time, so sometimes she would sneak out to go meet him, or sometimes she would sneak out to go meet two of her other best friends. One night, at two o'clock in the morning, the phone rang and it was the Westfield Police Department, and they spoke with John and told him that Patty had been picked up for roaming the streets in the middle of the night. John begrudgingly got his stuff together and went to pick her up, but not before he put on a business shirt, a suit, and a tie. By the time he arrived at the police station. It was about two thirty in the morning. Patty had been with one of her friends that evening, and both girls were seated on chairs at the police station. When John arrived, he was instantly upset seeing Patty sitting there with her friend Elaine and basically Elaine's father and John just went back and forth at this point as who was influencing who in this situation. John blamed Elaine and Elaine's father blamed Patty. As they were leaving the police station, John told Patty that she would never be able to see Elaine again. Patty, of course, tried to reassure John that this wasn't Elaine's fall, so John questioned her, well, that means it was yours then, and Patty obviously didn't know what to say. On the way home, he proceeded to tell her that these are dangerous times that they were living in. There was a great deal of temptation all around, and that she needed to be strong. In the back of his mind, he was already a little upset with Patty because the reverend at their church had found a book that Patty had called The Treasury of Witchcraft. Patty had been over his house, babysitting his kids, and I guess she brought the book out, and Reverend ray Winkle was really upset by this, confiscated the book and immediately went and told John that this was not acceptable behavior. So between this book that she had and now her getting caught by the police, he just truly hated the times that they were living in. He hated everything about it. He hated the news, he hated the fact that there was a va non war going on. He hated hippies, he hated quote unquote flower children. He hated the marches, he hated the different protests. He hated marijuana, he hated LSD, he hated assassinations. He just hated everything. And he couldn't get a handle on how he was feeling about living in a world where everything that surrounded him was just evil. In his opinion, all he wanted to do was sit on his own and read his Bible. That is the only time he ever felt peace. He was also still very much struggling financially at this point in time, and everything was starting to add up. His gross income was less than three thousand dollars a year. Alma had also began talking about how much she missed Base City, and John was concerned that maybe she would attempt to get into her savings account and leave Westfield and go back to Bay City. But little did she know that there really wasn't much left in her savings account because John had been borrowing from it for such a long time, unable to replenish any of it, and there really wasn't much left in there. So it was at this point in time that John knew he had to find a way out. Now. Of course, he was very worried about the money, but there was also more going on in his life. He was really more worried about his family and their moral disintegration. He was very angry at his family at this point in time. He thought they were all intentionally trying to hurt him, and the money thing was just the icing on the cake and the cherry on top. He calculated, recalculated, reevaluated all of the money in his budget book, and in March of nineteen seventy one, he borrowed more money out of his mother's account to buy a two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars life insurance policy on himself. We are now in October of nineteen seventy one, and Patty had decided that she wanted to show off her house a little bit and have a Halloween party in the ballroom at the List family home. So she had told her siblings that she was going to ask her dad if they could have a Halloween party there. Johnny warned her against this because he told her that Dad would not let her have a party, and then she just proceeded to say that she was going to ask her mom instead then, and Johnny said it would cause a big fight between the parents and they would be caught in the middle again, and Johnny just very much tried to discourage her asking for this party. Pattie expressed to Johnny how tired she was of living like this. She was so tired of them always fighting, and she was tired of always being put in the middle. And at this point she realized that her family was just so far from normal. She was over right then and there. And as they were having this conversation, she pulled out a what was initially thought to be a cigarette and proceeded to light it up, but it actually turned out to be marijuana. Johnny had a friend over that day and they were both very curious about what was going on, what was Patty smoking, and she ended up offering it to them, and Johnny surprisingly took her up on the offer and tried it, and between the two of them they ended up finishing the whole thing. Then all of a sudden, they hear John's car pull into the driveway, and they did everything they could to try and conceal the smell and get rid of the evidence that they had been smoking marijuana in the house, because this actually would have destroyed John List's life, because drugs were horrible and bad and a sin, and it would have completely pushed him over the edge. So John got out of the car with groceries in hand and walked into the back door by the laundry room, into the kitchen and proceeded to unload all of the groceries. As he was unloading all of the groceries, he was thinking about how much his family was ruining everything. He didn't like the fact that his children were being raised in a heathen world and the world around him was just collapsing. He hated every bit of it. But also at this time he had secretly taken out two more mortgages on the house. One for seven thousand dollars and one for eighteen hundred dollars. On October fourteenth of nineteen seventy one, he went to the Westfield Police Department to get a gun permit, and they ended up doing all of the necessary fingerprinting and told him that he could come back in two weeks, which he ended up not doing because he remembered that he had packed away his father's guns in a box in the basement, and because these guns were in his possession, he technically didn't need a permit to have them or use them. This was really the beginning of the end for On. He was having a really hard time with his job. He worked mostly off of commission and he was not able to get any more clients. And at this point he realized he had less than one thousand dollars of equity in the house that he had lived in for six years, and his income had only reached a little over five thousand dollars. Everything was coming to a head. He began to get warnings that they were going to have to repossess the house soon, so he knew that the walls were closing in One night, he ended up walking through the house room to room and just saw signs of the house crumbling down around them. Everywhere he looked, there was exposed beams in the ceiling in the kitchen and dining rooms, and all of the ceilings had started to fall down because there was plumbing problems that they never were able to fix. The house had nine bathrooms, which was just so excessive, and it just didn't make any sense to him that they had ever purchased this house to begin with, and he was angry at himself for letting Helen call the shots and make him purchase this house. Despite the house falling apart around the List family, he always made sure that everything on the outside of the house looked great. He always wanted to make sure his lawn was neat, He raked the leaves, he made sure everything was very neat and orderly at all times. And anytime he did do yard work, he did it in a suit and tie. And if you remember back to episode one where I talked about the environment that John was raised in and how his father was always so meticulous about the yard work and he would get out there with scissors and make sure that it was all even and everything was perfect. This is how John was raised so this is not something that was out of the ordinary for him. He was also raised to always dress neat and professional, hence suit and tie for all occasions, so this was normal. But John was having an emotional breakdown. Nobody knew about it because he always tried to keep himself together. He was very good at internalizing everything, but inside everything was beginning to fall apart. His family failures, his professional failures, the failures of his wife, the failures of his children, his career, the house, the fact that they had no more money. Everything was piling up on him and he felt that he had let the family down and at this point he decided their best welfare was to be served through death, and he thought that if they couldn't live by faith, then they would have to die by it. At this point in time, financial ruin was only a few more weeks away, and he needed to make a decision about what he was going to do. John examined the guns that his father had. He had an American twenty two cult revolver, and he knew that his dad had always carry that revolver with him whenever he was taking large amounts of money from the store that he owned to home. There was also a semi automatic nine millimeter that dated back to World War One, and John knew that it had been a long time since he had fired a gun and he wanted to go to the range and do some target practice, just to get familiar again with the guns and make sure that they were still functional and that he still knew how to shoot. He had experience with shooting from being in the army, but it had been a long time and he wanted to make sure that he knew what he was doing. And in the midst of this him going to the gun range basically planning to kill his family, he decided that he was going to let Patty have her Halloween party, which is shocking considering who John was, but maybe in the back of his mind he realized that he was going to be ending her life soon and maybe one final party to make her happy wasn't a bad idea. Patty and Patty's friends were shocked that John was actually going to let her have a party, but she was so happy about it. She told Johnny about the party, and Johnny had expressed to her that he didn't want to come down for the party, but Patty was very much trying to encourage him about coming down for the party because it was going to be at their house in the ballroom, and it was rare that John let them do things like this, so they needed to take advantage of it. Johnny always felt the need to defend his father and his father's actions and how strict he was, and Patty said John was such a strict parent and way too strict for her liking, and Johnny felt that he had to because that was just who he was as a person. He was raised that way and he really had no other choice but to be strict, and he also cared a lot. And Johnny said to his sister that one day he would be able to grow up and help John with the family and everything, but for now everything was resting on john shoulders, and as siblings, they needed to be united and helping their father and making his life a little easier versus making it harder with rebelling against him and his authority. On Halloween night, less than two weeks before they were murdered, Patty had a party at the List family home, and Patty very much dove in to the witch element of Halloween. She wore a witch's hat, a mask, and a costume. At least fifty teenagers showed up that night for the Halloween party in the ballroom, and they all had been dressed as different ghosts, devils, angels, goblins, and witches. Most of the kids that attended were from the Westfield Drama Department, and the party ended up being a huge success. They danced, they played around, they they drank, and Patty was so thrilled with this party. And Helen even came down momentarily for the party and very much seemed to enjoy herself. She seemed to get along really well with everyone, and she was laughing and having a good time. She even put on a Halloween mask and stayed down there for a total of two whole minutes. But in those two minutes, Patty could tell that it seemed like she really did enjoy herself. During the party, Patty could very much feel that John was watching over her and watching over everything. John of course was sorry that he had agreed to this party. He had to kick one of the boys out of the party for trying to make out with one of the girls, and of course this incident upset Patty because I think she realized her dad was a little off his rocker and knew that if people didn't behave at the party that John was going to lose his mind. So she I think went to all of the attendees and told them that they needed to behave themselves, and she was upset that this behavior had happened and caused John to kick one of the boys out. Freddie and Johnny ended up not coming down for the party after all. They stayed up in their rooms. But despite this, Patty was overall very happy with how the party had went and surprised that her dad even let her have one. Two days later, Freddie's beloved dog, tinker Bell, wandered off and disappeared somehow got out of the house. Freddie was obviously so upset by this, but simultaneously Johnny was trying to reassure him that if tinker Bell did run away, he was probably living with the new family and had a good life. During this conversation, john interjected and told all of the kids that they were going to be taking a trip to North Carolina to visit Grandma Morris, who is Helen's mom, because she was sick and likely was not going to pull through. Freddie was excited about going to North Carolina, but was also very worried about finding Tinkerbell. Since they were going to be out of town, he wanted to try to find her before they left. That night, John attempted to have a conversation with Helen and they were reminiscing about their past and Helen said she didn't want to fight anymore. She said she didn't have the strength left in her body to fight, and at this point in time, John was basically just trying to get her to agree to have a pastor come out to the house because he wanted his pastor to come out and speak with Helen and maybe talk with her a little bit about what she was going through. And Helen said she didn't want him coming to her home. That was his pastor, not her pastor. And she officially wanted her name formally dropped from the roles of the church, and she didn't want to be Lutheran anymore. She said there was nothing wrong with her being a Baptist and that the Lutheran Church was just a church full of hypocrites. John was extremely upset by this and knew that the time to do what he had been planning had finally come. This was the last and final straw, Helen asking him to drop her name from the church really irritated him and made him realize that he needed to start his plan and start it soon. We are now getting in to the day of the murders, and I do want to give a trigger warning. I am going to be going into detail. As written in the Thou Shall Not Kill book. I think the details of the murders in this case are very important because I'm trying to paint the picture of the kind of person that John List was and the extreme measures that he took to eliminate his family. So well, there are going to be graphic details during the murders that I'm going to be talking about. I did want to make sure that I issued a trigger warning because these are details that are very disturbing, especially when it comes to the last murder, which is the murder of Johnny, his first son. So I just wanted to put that out there before I get into this part. But this is the part where everything ultimately comes to a head. It's November ninth of nineteen seventy one. At seven thirty am in the morning. It was a typical morning for the List family. John awoke and got dressed in his suit and tie as he typically would and was preparing for a normal day. And he had basically spent the night before planning and thinking about everything, how things were going to go down, and how everything had to happen perfectly and the chain of event had to unfold just so that everything would go according to plan. Patty, Johnny, and Freddy all finished their breakfast in the kitchen before they set off for school. John took some time to notice how everything in the kitchen was so dirty. Everything was covered in layers of dust. The wallpaper in the kitchen was super faded, and these were not things that he had ever really noticed before. Freddy and Patty were having a conversation about going to work after school because they both had picked up part time jobs as clerical clerks working at K and B Associates, which was a real estate firm, and John was very approving of this because it gave them something to do in their free time so they weren't off getting into trouble. John told them that he wasn't going to be able to take them to school that day and they would either have to take the school bus or they would have to walk because John wasn't going to be able to drive them. John told Freddy that he needed to zip up his coat more before going out into the dropping temperatures of November in Westfield, New Jersey. He then turned to Patty and told her that she had entirely too much makeup on. Patty pushed back on John and told him that all of the kids wore their makeup the way that she was wearing her makeup, and he responded back to her that she wasn't the other kids, and proceeded to tell her that she needed to wipe off her makeup, especially her lipstick. And Patty, although she had been rebelling a little bit, new when she could push her father a little bit and when she couldn't, and this morning she just got the feeling that she shouldn't push him too much, so she took a paper napkin from the table and proceeded to wipe off her lipstick. John then proceeded to ask Johnny if he was going to be home right after school, and Johnny told him that he had sot her practice until six o'clock. John had originally planned on carrying out the murders on November first, which was all Saints' Day, and he thought also since it was a Christian holiday, that it was a good day to carry out the murders. He also had thoughts that maybe November two was a good day because that day was All Souls Day, but he ended up having to ultimately change the day to November ninth because he had a lot of things that he needed to plan out and make sure everything was in order before he carried out the murders. Johnny and Freddie left the house together and John went back through the kitchen. He went into his office and he went to close the curtains, which were actually the only curtains in the entire home. And this was a huge, massive home, as you know. Around a twenty am, all three of the kids were gone and the only three people left in the house were John, Alma and Helen. John walked down and got the mail and of course there was nothing but bills and side of the mailbox, and there was another item from the First Federal Savings and Loan Bank, which he knew was another notification about the foreclosure of the home. He had deep regrets about buying the home. He knew that he shouldn't have bought the house He knew that even if he hadn't lost his job shortly after buying the home, that he never would have been able to keep up on the payments of the house as well as the maintenance. Helen had been feeling a lot better in recent weeks, and she was in a moment where she was functional and had even been coming downstairs for breakfast, which John was very happy about because he didn't want to have to go up to her bedroom and kill her there, and she often never left her room, so the fact that she was actually coming down to the kitchen was a miracle. So everything in John's mind was lining up. While he waited on Helen to come downstairs. That morning, he was prepping things. He wrote a letter to the milkman and asked him to stop the deliveries and put it in the refrigerator that was located in the butler's pantry where the milkman would always come and place the list family's order. Obviously, he was concerned that there was going to be this milkman coming into the home. He was scheduled to come that day, and John was concerned that he was going to come in after the murders occurred, so he was very much hoping and praying that the milkman was going to arrive before Helen came downstairs. He was still waiting for Helen at this point, so he was kind of fiddling around with the different guns and he knew in his head that all of this had to go perfectly. He knew that in order for everything to be executed properly, that he also had to be a really good shot, which he knew he was because he had done shooting in the army. He had also gone to target practice, and he was a good shot. He just needed to make sure he planned everything perfectly. At that point in time, John heard the back door open and was relieved to see that it was in fact the milkman. His prayers had been answered and he realized that everything was going to work out and this was a sign. The milkman came in. And actually thought that there might be a one hundred and eighty four dollars check waiting for him, because that is what the List family owed this milkman for his services, but instead he found the note that was in the refrigerator that was left for the milkman, basically canceling the milk order services. Indefinitely. At eight forty am, Helen awoke and after getting ready and popping her pills for the day, she carefully made her way downstairs to the kitchen. When she walked in, she saw that there was butter and milk still on the table that were left over from when the children had their breakfast. She didn't know where John was, nor did she care. John had started working from home with his recent job, and it seemed like he was always around, and as we know, Helen hated her husband, so the fact that he was always around really bothered her. Helen poured herself a warm cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. She did feel a little unstable and very shaky, and as always anytime she felt like this, she always wondered how she was going to make it back upstairs to her bedroom because she just was at this point in time, still so weak. She took a bite out of a piece of toast that was sitting left over on the table. The last thing that Helen heard was somebody quietly shuffling behind her. Before she could turn around, John shot her once in the back of the head with the nine millimeter pistol. She ended up falling forward, hitting the table, and then slipped backward onto the floor. Her head hit the cold, dirty linoleum floor, and some of the toasts that she had been eating at the time she was shot flew out of her mouth. The other piece of the toast that she had been eating a lodge in the back of her throat. Everything happened very, very quickly. John worried about how loud the gunshot was and was hoping that his mother didn't hear it, and he went ahead and went behind the arch of the butler's pantry, looking up towards the stairs to make sure that Almah wasn't going to peek her head out to see what was going on. So he stood there for a while and everything seemed to be pretty quiet, so he ended up going back to the kitchen. John looked at Helen, who was lying awkwardly on the kitchen floor, and thought to himself that this was a good thing, because she was no longer in pain and she was officially out of her misery. He went to the downstairs closet where the children stored their sleeping bags, and he pulled one out and took it to the ballroom that was in the back of the house. The ballroom was relatively empty. All that was in there was a desk and Patty's guitar with some sheet music that laid on top of a chair. There was a mini pool table to the right of the fireplace, a vase with some flowers, and there was some toys, but there really wasn't much else. So he placed this sleeping bag in the ballroom and opened it up. He then went back into the kitchen and grabbed Helen by the ankles and dragged her body down the back hallway, past the main staircase, through the main living rooms and into the ballroom. He was surprised by how much blood. He didn't expect all of this blood from Helen, and then he proceeded to place her on top of the sleeping bag. And then he went and got the other sleeping bags out of the closet and set them on the floor, side by side in a row. Then he knew that it was time to clean up the scene and prepare for his next murder. At nine twenty five, am Alma had awoken and was in her third floor apartment. Initially, when she woke up, she wasn't really in the mood to eat breakfast, but she always would force herself to get up and get ready for the day because she knew how important it was for herself to have a routine. She eventually decided that she needed to eat, so she slipped a little piece of toast into the toaster, and before she knew it, she was hearing a very small explosion. She didn't really know where the sound had come from or what it possibly could have been, but she didn't go and investigate. Shortly after that, John made his way up to his mother's room and knocked on the door. Alma asked him what the noise was and John responded that it was nothing. Alma did notice that John had his right hand kind of behind his back, but didn't really think much of it. At this point in time, Alma was still waiting on her toast to pop out of the toaster, and all of a sudden, she saw John pointing a gun at her from across the room, and it was a gun that she had recognized. She recognized it as the gun that John's father once owned. She was obviously very terrified by this because her son was pointing a gun at her from across the room, and John told her not to be afraid, and she proceeded to tell him that he needed to put the gun down, and before she knew it, he had already pulled the trigger, but Alma had quickly moved out of the way because I think she knew what was coming. So this bullet that was intended for Alma ended up missing Alma and crashing through an open door. And of course Alma screamed and attempted to run and hide because she was terrified her son was basically coming after her with this loaded gun and trying to shoot at her, so she ran into a storage room to try and escape. She turned to the right of a water tank that was basically in the middle of the room. And I can't imagine what was going through Almah's head at this point in time. She's elderly, she's in her eighties, and this crazed man, her son is chasing after her with this gun. So she ended up coming, unfortunately, face to face with him in an attempt to get away. He fired the gun at close range several times in rapid succession. A single fatal bullet hit her above the left eyebrow. She fell to the ground, and her body At this point basically had just crumbled because she was so elderly, and despite being in pretty good shape, she was still old and very brittle. John went behind her and tried to lift her up by the shoulders. He very much wanted to bring her down from the third floor to the ballroom next to Helen, knowing how much they disliked each other. I think I think this was, in my opinion, his one final fu to his wife, because he knew how much his wife hated her mother in law Almah. But in trying to lift her, he realized that she was too heavy to carry down the stairs and through the halls. And he also knew that if he went this route that he would have a lot to clean up, and he realized that cleaning up blood was a lot harder than he thought, so he decided just to keep her up there in her third floor apartment. He hated how much of a mess it was up there and how bloody everything had gotten. It made him very, very uncomfortable. He did his best to kind of clean up the area as much as he could, and he said a silent prayer for her soul. I know that all of that was really really graphic, and I hate talking about these murders in detail, but I think it's important to, like I said, paint the picture of what an evil human this individual was. And it's going to get worse, unfortunately, because we're now going to get into the murders of his three children. And I think despite everything we know about John, you can see that he was obviously raised in a not great way. He was married to a woman who absolutely hated him and constantly put him down and compared him to her first husband and made him feel inadequate, and nothing was ever good enough. But two things can be true at once. John could have been raised in a not so great way by not so great people, he could have been married to a woman who absolutely hated him, and he could still also be an awful human and make really, really poor choices. So I think it's important in this story to realize that Alma had her faults and Helen had her faults, but they never ever ever served this horrific ending to their life by the one person that was supposed to protect them. And when it comes to the children, they obviously are super super innocent parties in all of this because they were brought into this family that had all of this dysfunction, and they were raised in a weird environment by weird parents who did nothing for them, and it's really tragic that this is the way it all unfolds. Around ten am, John was thinking about his plans for the rest of the day, so he did work from home on occasion, but he also worked out of the East Orange, New Jersey office for the insurance company where he was working. So that morning he had actually a scheduled conference with his boss, and he knew obviously that he had to cancel this because he was in the midst of murdering his whole family. So he called into the office and wanted to pass a message along to his boss that he wasn't feeling well and was not going to be able to make the meeting and he would call later to reschedule. At eleven thirty am, John caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and saw all of the blood stains on the front of his shirt, and the wrists of the shirt because it had been long sleeved, were also stained with blood. So he proceeded to go into Helen's room and sit on her bed, and he took off his shoes and when he got up, he noticed there was bloodstains that were left on the sheets of the bed, and then he proceeded to take off the remainder of his clothes and wash up and put on a fresh close, and he prayed to himself silently. He felt a lot better now that he was clean and back in working order and presentable. He made a mental note to make sure that he needed to treat the other clothes for the stains, because he didn't want the blood to be permanently saturated through the clothes. At this point in time, his priorities are way way off, so he had this checklist in his mind of things that he needed to do, and he was crossing things off one by one. First on his list was to kill Helen. Second was to kill Almah. The third item was canceling the conference with his boss. And now he needed to call his reverend, Reverend Ray Winkle. So he proceeded to call the reverend and told the reverend that he had just placed all of his family on a plane to North Carolina because they were going to be go seeing Helen's mom, who was severely ill, and he would be joining them in the coming days as soon as he took care of some last minute things at the house, so he was very much setting the scene for the family not to be around. That way, nobody would miss them and question where they were. He very carefully and methodically plotted and planned this entire thing. The fifth item on the list was for John to write notes to the kids different schools to tie up any of the other important loose ends as to why the kids weren't going to be at school. His plan was for after the murders of the children, to go to the kids' school in the evening and slip the letters in the mailbox so nobody would see him do so. John then canceled the daily newspaper, and he made the conscious decision not to cancel any of the phone or utilities because he didn't want anyone calling the house and realizing that the phone had been disconnected. And he also wanted to make sure that the lights were able to stay on at the home because he wanted it to look like there was people there so people wouldn't question things. Even though I think this is a stupid decision because he's literally telling everyone that the family is going to be out of town, so why would the lights be left on but who am I to question the sanity of John list? At one twenty pm, John left and went to Suburban Trust Company, which was located off of Elm Street and East Broad Street in the center of Westfield, and at one thirty seven pm he entered the vault where he ended up withdrawing the remainder of all of Helen's bonds from their safety deposit box, which totaled a little over two thousand dollars. John was stamped out of the vault at one fifty seven pm and he signed all of the necessary documentation that he needed to. He then proceeded to fill out a withdrawal slip and emptied his own checking account, and then he did the same for his mother's checking account. And get this, after everything that he had taken out of her checking account over the last few years, the last little bit of money that was left in Alma's checking account was seven dollars and ninety four cents. He had drained all of that money out, so after withdrawing all of the money, he had about twenty eight hundred dollars in cash, so he felt like he was doing pretty well for himself. So the next item on the list was to go to the post office, and this one, for me is so weird. So he goes to the post office with this envelope that has a key in it. The key goes to a filing cabinet that is located in John's office. This is where he's going to leave the guns and the letter basically explaining why he did what he did. It also contained a key to the house because he knew eventually that law enforcement was going to discover the bodies, but he didn't want them to break in. So this letter essentially was going to be sent to the list family home and that is what they would use to get inside so they wouldn't have to break down the front door. He just isn't rational at this point in time, because that is his main concern, is that they're going to break down the front door instead of using the key. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And also at this same time, he decided to let the post office know to stop delivering mail to the Hillside Avenue address because he and his family were going to be going out of town and he wasn't sure when they would be back, so he wanted everything canceled. Indefinitely. So to me, this doesn't make sense because he's sending a letter out to his own address but also canceling mail to his own address. I don't really understand the premise of that. I don't think he was rationally thinking. I think that's fair to say, but this is an interesting extra step that he took to try to make sure that everything went as planned. At two thirty pm, he went home again and he noticed that there were still some bloodstains in the linoleum in the kitchen and he wanted to try to clean it up a little bit more, but he had other stuff to do and he needed to write some letters. He didn't know what to write, but he knew he needed to write to a few people to explain himself. So he wrote a letter to Jean, who was Helen's sister, He wrote a letter to Helen's mom, and he wrote a letter to Almah's sister, who was his aunt, Lydia. He then attempted to finish cleaning up and grabbed a mop from the laundry room area and started to mop up some of the blood. As he was cleaning up, the telephone rang, and it very much startled him because he was on edge because he was murdering his family, and he picked it up and it was Patty. She had left school and asked if he could pick her up because she wasn't feeling well. He proceeded to ask her if she was sick, and she said that it wasn't anything serious, but she just didn't feel good and she wanted to come home. Of course, he was frustrated because she wasn't at school and proceeded to ask her if she got permission to leave, which she said yes she did, and she told him she was going to be at a sub shop in town. He said he would be right there to pick her up and just to wait patiently for him. I honestly don't know what it was about Patty, but this girl is intuitive as all can be. She had this premonition that she was going to die, and I truly think that day, once her mother was murdered, she had a gut feeling that something was wrong. And I don't know personally if she feared for her life at that moment when she made the phone call, but I think in her gut, her intuition was telling her that something was wrong, and I think she never thought that her dad would take these drastic steps to eliminate the whole family. So I think in her head she felt something was wrong and she wanted to go home so she could be safe. Not knowing that, she literally called her killer and had him come pick her up. That day, at three seventeen pm, John got into his car and drove down towards Duke's sub Shop, where Patty was standing in front of the side shop with one of her friends from the Westfield Recreation Center. They hugged and said their goodbyes. Once inside the car, everything was pretty silent, but Patty had this overwhelming feeling that something was wrong and proceeded to ask John if her mom was okay. John responded back, yes, she's okay, and the car carrying John and Patty slowly turned on to Hillside Avenue and into the driveway. At this point, she noticed that John seemed like he was angry about something. His face was very red and blotchy, but she couldn't quite place her finger on what was going on. She just knew in her head that she wanted to try to get out of the house, go off to school, live a normal life, and get away from this family who was literally sucking the soul out of her body. John ended up getting out of the car before Patty, and she ended up gathering her sub and her school books from the car. John unlocked the back door that led into the laundry room and then would proceed to go into the kitchen, and she ended up following him into the kitchen as normal. He kind of stood to the side and waited for her to enter behind him. The moment that Patty turned her back to place her books down on the counter, he raised the gun, which was just inches from her, practically touching her, and pointed it straight to the back of her head. He squeezed the trigger once and at that exact moment, Patty began to turn around, so the bullet ended up catching her in the left cheek. She was still fully dressed in her winter coat, as she hadn't even had a chance to take it off yet. Once the shot struck her, she immediately fell to the floor. Then he proceeded to drag her into the ballroom the same path that he had drug Helen just hours earlier, and he placed her on the sleeping bag that was closest to the fireplace. He prayed for the soul of his daughter, and he began to mop up her blood. He discovered that newspapers were better and more absorbent than paper towels, and then he also brought the mop out again to try and clean up some of the blood as well. The phone in the pantry rang again, and this time it startled him, and Freddie had called and asked if he knew where Patty was, because she was supposed to be at work that afternoon and she hadn't shown up. John thought very quickly on his feet and asked if he had gotten a message about there being a family issue, and Freddie said that he hadn't received any message, but there was a family emergency, so John was going to come and get him. Freddie insisted that he could walk home and John didn't have to leave the home to come get him. But John wanted to have control over when these murders happened, because he knew if Freddy had decided to walk home that it would probably take him a long time. He might get distracted by something and end up arriving back home at the same time as Johnny, and he knew that he didn't want them both there at the same time. When he was planning on them all arriving separately and killing them one at a time, because he knew if they were both there it might be too much for him to handle. Before he left to pick up Freddie, he needed to make another phone call, and this was to two of the people that had been working within the school production of a streetcar named Desire, because Patty had been cast as an understudy for the main role, and he knew that if she didn't show up for rehearsals that they would be trying to call figuring out what was going on. So he made a call and told them that she wouldn't be able to participate and said that they were going to North Carolina to visit relatives and they would be gone indefinitely. He wasn't sure how long they were going to be gone. So the play ended up wrapping on November twentieth, and Patty never got the chance to participate, and this was something that was her dream, and the whole time that this play was in production and going on, nobody ever realized that Patty had been lying dead in the house since November ninth, which is just terrible. John ended up driving to KMV, which was also located on Elm Street to pick up Freddy. Freddy was, of course on the way home still on the lookout for his little dog, tinker Bell, and on the way home, he also realized that he had forgot to feed the fish that were in the fish tank the day before, so this is very much on his mind, tinker Bell and the fish. Freddy knew that he wanted to try and find tinker Bell before the family went on their trip to North Carolina. They arrived home and John unlocked the back door. It was very common for them to go in through the back door and go through the laundry room that led directly into the kitchen. This was a normal habit for them and this is what John was planning. But that day, Freddy went straight ahead toward the main center hallway. John called out for him as he went in the direction of the fish tank. He told his dad he needed to feed the fish and he needed to get to them asap. John waited silently by the closet by the back hallway. John hoped that he wouldn't turn into the ballroom to make his way back to the kitchen. Freddie proceeded to pour extra fish food into the fish tank to make up for the day before. The fish tank actually had belonged to Helen, but she never remembered to take care of them, so it was something that Freddy had taken on himself. He carried his books in his hand and walked through the hallway through the butler's pantry towards the kitchen. Freddie he walked in the kitchen and saw his dad standing there at the table waiting for him. He went by him and went into one of the bathrooms and used the restroom and washed his hands, and then returned to the kitchen. Freddy expressed that he was hungry and went to drop his school books on the table. All Freddie was really doing at this point in time was wondering where Patti was and thinking about eating dinner. John pointed the barrel of a gun at the back of his head and pulled the trigger on the nine millimeter, and Freddy was killed instantly. He then proceeded to drag his body to the ballroom to lie next to Helen and Patty. He knew that he had time to try and clean up everything because Johnny was still at soccer practice and was going to be there until six, so he proceeded to take a rest and he prayed. Little did john know that Roosevelt Junior High School had decided to run their soccer practice indoors that day because it was extremely cold out and the temperatures were rapidly dropping, so half of the students had been excused to go home, and Johnny just happened to be one of those students. Johnny wasn't happy about this, but he went home anyway. Johnny's friend's mom dropped him off that day, and john was taken aback and not ready when he heard a car pull up and Johnny was coming inside. He had no idea why he was home so early, because he was planning on him being home after six, so he had to hurry to get everything ready to go to murder his last child. He hadn't even reloaded the gun yet, so he was frantically trying to do all of this as Johnny was walking inside. At five point forty five pm, Johnny walked in and knew something was wrong immediately. He put his blue and white Westfield gym bag on the counter next to a fire extinguisher and a blunder, and he also placed his two textbooks next to it. He noticed that there were stains on the floor next to the table, and his mind began to race because he knew that his father had been not in a great headspace and he was worried that John might have ultimately harmed his family. He kind of felt something behind his right shoulder and turned around and saw John standing in the corner of the room and realized he had a gun. He asked him what he was doing, and this obviously took John by surprise because besides Almah, everyone else had not seen him approaching. And he hated this because he wanted everything to be over as quickly as possible. He didn't want there to be a struggle, and it infuriated him. The gun that was in his hand went off and the bullet ended up going through the ceiling. John and Johnny ended up struggling on the floor and two more shots were fired, both that went into the laundry room door. They were at this point basically fighting for the gun and Johnny was fighting for his life. There were multiple shots that were fired, a lot of them went into different areas of the kitchen. Johnny then started to run and John got up and went after him. He pulled himself together and took another aim at Johnny. One bullet ended up piercing the back of Johnny's neck behind his left ear, and the other one hit him on the right side of his head. Johnny attempted to get back up after this and then ended up crawling towards the small hallway that led to the main part of the house, and then he simply couldn't go anymore. John was very frustrated that this did not go well and that Johnny was basically fighting for his life, so he walked over to him stood over him, and at this point Johnny had rolled himself from his stomach to his back, and John then stood over him and shot him again directly between the eyes. Shockingly, Johnny was still alive and gasping at this point in time for life. John was so frustrated that he was still alive, so he shot him again multiple times, again and again and again and again, which is the worst thing. And I don't honestly know what type of monster John list has turned into at this point in time that he's able to stand over his son who is fighting for his life and just shoot him multiple times without any remorse or thought behind it. John was upset because he didn't understand the reason why Johnny was fighting so hard. He felt that this was disrespectful of his son and it was basically his fault because he made him go that route of overkill, which he shouldn't have had to do that. He then proceeded to take Johnny by the ankles and violently dragged him to the ballroom and placed him onto the sleeping bag. After everything was complete, it took a long time for john to finally calm down, and he knew he needed to clean the kitchen up yet again, and this time there was a lot of blood left behind because of Johnny's death, so he had a lot of work to do to try and clean everything up. He proceeded to clean up all of the blood the best he could with the newspapers and throw them in trash bags. There was a lot of blood spattered on the walls and he attempted to clean it up, but realized it was too much for him to handle and eventually gave up. There was also bullet holes everywhere, which also he wasn't going to be able to fix. He also knew at this point that he didn't really need to hide very much because there was going to be no other family members coming to the family home. He took a kitchen towel and placed it over Helen's face. He left the children as they were all still dressed in their winter coats, and he decided he didn't want to look at their faces, so he also proceeded to cover them with kitchen cloths. He mocked up a little bit more and then dropped them off in the laundry room sink. The floor surrounding the area of the bodies was wet, so he placed a small fan on the floor on the opposite side of the fireplace in the ballroom and proceeded to turn it on. Everything that he had planned for for such a long time was finally done at six forty five pm. John proceeded to write a letter to Reverend Ray Winkle. John then called the Westfield Police Department and let them know that they were going to be going away on vacation and asked them if they could keep an eye on his house. They asked John how long he was going to be gone, and he said he wasn't exactly sure, but asked them to please keep an eye on his house, which was so insane considering his family was dead inside of this home. At seven ten PM, he left the house and drove to the schools to leave the notes in the mail slots for the principles, letting the kids' schools know that they were not going to be there. The temperature that evening had dropped from forty degrees to twenty degrees, so it had gotten really cold outside. John was concerned about having enough oil to continue to heap the home, but he couldn't deal with that because he needed to buckle down and write the letter to his pastor. And in the letter that was five pages long, he wrote to his pastor why he had done what he did. He placed the letter in the filing cabinet in his office and entitled the letter to Reverend Ray Winkle. And then he knew after this letter was written that he could go to bed, and he slept great that night in a house with the bodies of his whole family, he slept great. I think that tells you everything you need to know about the type of person was. I am going to read the letter now. It was discovered later on in the investigation, of course, but I'm going to read the letter because I think this is a really good point to insert the letter, and we are going to go through it all. The letter is dated eleven nine of nineteen seventy one. Dear Pastor Ray Winkle, I am very sorry to add this additional burden to your work. I know that what has been done is wrong from all that I have been taught, and that any reasons that I might give you will not make it right. But you are the one person that I know will not condone this, will at least possibly understand why I felt that I had to do this. Number One, I wasn't earning anywhere near enough to support us. Everything I tried seemed to fall to pieces. True, we could have gone bankrupt and maybe gone on welfare. Two, but that brings me to my next point. Knowing the type of location that one would have to live in, plus the environment for the children, plus the effect on them knowing that they were on welfare was just more than I thought that they could and should endure. I know that they were willing to cut back, but this involved a lot more than that. Number Three, With Pat being so determined to get into acting, I was also fearful of what that might do to her, Continuing to be a Christian. I'm sure it wouldn't have helped. Four. Also, with Helen not going to church, I knew that this would harm the children eventually in their attendance. I had continued to hope that she would begin to come to church soon, but when I mentioned to her that mister Jutsy wanted to pay her an elder's call, she just blew up and stated that she wanted her name taken off of the church rolls. Again, this could only have given an adverse result for the children's continued attendance. So that is the sum of it. If an any one of these had been the condition, we might have pulled through. But this was just too much. At least, I'm certain that all have gone to heaven now if things had gone on, who knows if that would be the case. Of course, mother got involved because doing what I did to my family would have been a tremendous shock to her at this age. Therefore, knowing that she is also a Christian, I felt that at best that she'd be relieved of the troubles of the world that would have hit her. After it was all over, I said some prayers for them all from the hymn book. That was the least thing I could do. Now, for the final arrangements, Helen and the children have all agreed that they would prefer to be cremated. Please see to it that that happens and the costs are kept low even in their death. He's worried about things being kept low. He's insane for a mother. She has a plot at the Frankenmuth Church cemetery. Please contact mister Herman and root for Vasser Michigan. He's married to a niece of mothers and knows what arrangements are to be made. She always wanted Reverend Hermann Zeidler of Bay City to preach the sermon, but he is not well. Also, I'm leaving some letters to your care. Please send them on and add whatever comments you think appropriate. The relationships are as follows, Miss Lydia Meyer, mother's sister, Miss Eva Norris, Helen's mother, Gene Seifert, Helen's sister, Fred and Clara Johnny's sponsor, Herbin Ruth Fred sponsor and Marie Pats sponsor. Also, I don't know what will happen to the books and other personal things, but to the extent possible, I like for them to be distributed as you see fit. Some books might go to the school or church library. Originally I had planned this for November first, All Saints' Day, but travel arrangements were delayed. I thought it would be in a appropriate day for them to go to heaven. As for me, please let me be dropped from the congregation roles. I leave myself in the hands of God's justice and mercy. I don't doubt that he is able to help us. But apparently he saw fit not to answer my prayers the way I had hoped they would be answered. This makes me think that perhaps it was for the best. As far as the children's souls are concerned. I know that many will only look at the additional years that they could have lived. But if finally they were no longer Christians, what would they have gained? As I'm sure many will say, how could anyone do such a horrible thing? My only answer is it isn't easy and was only done after much thought. Pastor Missus Morris may possibly be reached at eight thirty two Pleasant Hill Drive, Elkin, home of her sister. One other thing, it may seem cowardly to have always shot from behind, but I didn't want any of them to, even at the last second, know that I had to do this to them. Johnny got hurt more because he seemed to struggle longer. The rest were immediately out of pain. John didn't consciously feel anything either. There's no way of him to know that. That's annoying. Please remember me in your prayers. I will need them whether or not the government does its duty as it sees. I'm only concerned with making my peace with God, and of this I am assured because of Christ dying even for me. Ps mother is in the hallway in the attic, third floor. She was too heavy to move. Signed John. The next morning, John got up and had a light breakfast and was ready to leave the house for good. He proceeded to move the thermostat to its lowest setting at fifty degrees, because he thought it was better to keep things cool in the house. He had a couple of more things to do before he left the house for good. He wanted to select music for the occasion, and he ended up selecting a music that was going to be played continuously on an automatic record player that was located in the back hall closet. He then went about the rest of the house and turned on all of the lights on all three floors so they would continue to be on long after he was gone. He went to the ballroom one last time, dropped to his knees and prayed for his family souls on the ballroom floor. He didn't feel pain or remorse and was glad that everything was done once and for all. He was grateful for what had happened because he thought in his mind that he had saved his family. He grabbed his Bible and a few other personal belongings. He grabbed the money that he had withdrawn from the bank and the brown paper bags that had his blood stained clothes in them, and he trashed them on the way to Kennedy Airport, where he would leave his car and take a bus to penn Station. He was done once and for all, leaving the Westfield House behind. He not only left behind the life that he had shared with his family in that house for the last six years, he left behind everyone that was left inside. He also left behind his class ring, his driver's license, his ringcoat, his umbrella. He got into his car and drove out of the long Westfield House driveway for the last time. He then proceeded to burn his passport and every other photograph of himself that he could possibly find. The moment that he pulled out of the Hillside Avenue driveway, John emil List no longer existed and he was able to take on a whole new identity for the next eighteen years. And that is what we are going to get into in next episode. So join me back for episode six, where we are going to be going into the aftermath of the mass murder of his family and where he turned next and all of the events that unfla following everything that has just happened. It is going to be a very wild ride, so buckle up for that. I will see you guys next week for that one. Have a good one and I am sorry this episode was so so heavy. Bye.