John List's house

List family house

This is a "then and now" photograph of 431 Hillside Avenue.

The Google Street View image at the bottom was captured in December 2021.

The List family's house no longer exists, as it was damaged by a fire in 1972. The current property was constructed in 1974.

Judging by old aerial photographs, they both sat on the exact same section of the lot.

The List family moved to this location in 1965 after John became the vice president and comptroller of a bank in Jersey City. Before that, they had been living in Rochester, New York.

Their Victorian mansion had 18 rooms and an elegant ballroom with a stained-glass skylight.

Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse at the beginning of 1971, when List's bank was forced to close. Instead of telling his family that he had been laid off, he continued to get dressed in his work clothes and leave each morning. He would then attend job interviews and kill time by reading newspapers.

In the months that followed, his savings dwindled, and he began stealing money from his mother's bank account to pay off the mortgage.

431 Hillside Avenue

Image source: Google Maps

This is a wider Google Street View image of the property.

Murders

List decided to murder his family after he became increasingly unable to pay his bills.

He shot his wife, Helen, and his 84-year-old mother, Alma, while his children were at school.

When his son, Frederick (13), and his daughter, Patricia (16), arrived home later that day, he shot them both in the back of the head.

After eating some lunch, List drove to Westfield High School, where he watched his eldest son, John (15), play in a soccer game.

Following the game, he drove John home and then shot him multiple times.

List claimed that he didn't kill himself because he was a strict Lutheran who believed that suicide was a sin. In his twisted logic, he believed that murdering his family would "send them to heaven" and free them from the "humiliation" of foreclosure and living on welfare.

Following the murders, he traveled by train to Denver, Colorado, where he rented a trailer under the name Robert P. Clark. He later managed to find work as a night cook at a nearby Holiday Inn hotel.

Bust

List married his new wife, Delores Miller Clark, in 1985.

In February 1987, his neighbor, Wanda Flannery, read an article about the murders in a tabloid magazine.

When she saw a photograph of the killer, she immediately realized that he looked like a younger version of her neighbor, "Bob".

That wasn't the only similarity that she noticed. After pouring over some of the finer details in the article, she noted that they were both religious Lutheran men who taught Sunday school and wore a coat and tie. Like List, Bob also had a scar on his right ear.

Her suspicions were strengthened even further by the fact that Bob seemed to be much older than he claimed to be.

Although she inconspicuously approached Bob's wife, Delores, and handed her the article, nothing ever came of it. At the time, Delores didn't think much of the similarities. Consequently, she tossed the magazine into a trash can.

Not long after, the Clarks moved to Richmond, Virginia, to get a fresh start in life.

On May 21st, 1989, the television series "America's Most Wanted" aired a segment on the quintuple homicide, which featured an age-progressed clay bust of List.

Interestingly, when Wanda Flannery watched the episode, she didn't think that the bust looked much like her former neighbor. Despite this, she still decided that it was time to contact the authorities.

Flannery's tip was eventually forwarded to the FBI's Richmond office, which sent two agents to Bob's address.

After learning that he wasn't home, they drove to his workplace. List's face reportedly broke into red blotches when he was confronted by the agents.

Although he stubbornly insisted that he was Bob Clark, the FBI arrested him and then matched his fingerprints against his old military records.