On November 9, 1971, in a mansion in Westfield, New Jersey, accountant John List killed his wife Helen, his 84-year-old mother Alma, and his three children: 16-year-old Patricia, 13-year-old Frederick, and 15-year-old John Jr. He left notes explaining his reasons, arranged the bodies, and did not try to hide anything inside the house.
He then canceled the milk and newspaper deliveries, notified the schools that the family would be traveling, and disappeared. No one suspected a thing. Nearly a month passed before anyone found the family. By then, List was already another man.
He called himself Robert Clark. He moved to Colorado, then to Richmond, Virginia. He married again, to a woman who never imagined who was sleeping beside her.
For 17 and a half years, no one found him. Until in 1989, the program America’s Most Wanted decided to reconstruct his face as it would look with age. Forensic sculptor Frank Bender did not have a recent photo to copy. He had to guess how a fugitive would age. He calculated the baldness, the wrinkles, even the type of glasses a man like List would choose twenty years later. He chose round ones, bought at an antique store. On May 21, 1989, twenty-two million people saw that clay face on television. A neighbor in Richmond recognized him immediately. On June first, police knocked on Robert Clark’s door. He was wearing the same round glasses Bender had imagined. The fingerprints confirmed what the clay already knew: it was John List. He was convicted of five murders and died in prison.
