John E. List, a former Sunday school teacher who was on the run for more than 17 years after killing his family in 1971, has died. He was 82.
List died Friday, four days after being taken to St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton from New Jersey State Prison, said Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections. He died of pneumonia complications, Mercer County spokesman Pete Daly said.
List, of Westfield, was arrested in Virginia just days after being profiled on television’s “America’s Most Wanted” in 1989. He was living under the name Robert P. Clark.
List spent about a decade of his time on the run living in Denver, between the late 70s and 1987.
Here, he worked as a cook and an accountant, married his new wife, and lived in a red brick home in Montbello at 47th and Peoria.
List was convicted in 1990 of murdering his wife, Helen, 46; mother, Alma, 84; and three teenage children by shooting them in their Westfield home on Nov. 9, 1971. He left town and due to meticulous preparations by List, it was more than a month before the bodies were discovered in the 18-room mansion.
In a letter he left for the pastor of his Lutheran church, List said he shot his victims from behind to spare them knowledge of what was happening until the last moment.
After the slayings, investigators found that List had two mortgages on his house, was failing as a financial consultant and had been siphoning money from his mother’s $200,000 savings account.
He was arrested in June 1989 in Midlothian, Va., a Richmond suburb, where he had been working as an accountant.
