John Emil List

John Emil List (September 17, 1925 – March 21, 2008), sometimes labeled the Bogeyman of Westfield, was a convicted multiple murderer and long-time fugitive. On November 9, 1971 he killed his wife, mother, and three children in their home at 431 Hillside Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey, and then disappeared. He had planned the murders so meticulously that nearly a month passed before anyone noticed that anything was amiss. A fugitive from justice for nearly 18 years who assumed a new identity and remarried, List was finally apprehended on June 1, 1989 after the story of his murders was broadcast on the television program America's Most Wanted. List was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced in 1990 to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment at New Jersey State Prison, where he died in 2008. Born in Bay City, Michigan, List was the only child of German American parents, John Frederick List (1859–1944) and Alma Maria Barbara Florence List (1887–1971). He was a devout Lutheran and a Sunday school teacher. In 1943 he enlisted in the Army and served in the infantry as a laboratory technician during World War II. After his discharge in 1946 he enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's degree in accounting, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the ROTC. In November 1950, as the Korean War escalated, List was recalled to active military service. At Fort Eustis, in Virginia, he met Helen Morris Taylor, the widow of an infantry officer killed in action in Korea, who lived nearby with her daughter, Brenda. John and Helen married in December 1951 in Baltimore, and the family moved to northern California where List served as an Army accountant. After completion of his second tour in 1952, List worked for an accounting firm in Detroit, and then as an audit supervisor at a paper company in Kalamazoo, where their three children were born. By 1959 List had risen to general supervisor of the company's accounting department; but Helen, an alcoholic, had become increasingly unstable. In 1960 Brenda married and left the household, and List moved with the remainder of his family to Rochester, New York, to take a job with Xerox, where he eventually became director of accounting services. In 1965 he accepted a position as vice president and controller at a bank in Jersey City, New Jersey, and moved his wife, children, and mother into a large home in Westfield.