didn’t want any of them to know even at the last second that I had to do this to them. John got hurt more because he seemed to struggle longer. . . . Please remember me in your prayers. I will need them whether or not the government does its duty as it sees it. I’m only concerned with making my peace with God and of this I am assured because of Christ dying even for me. P.S. Mother is in the hallway in the attic—3rd floor. She was too heavy to move. John.”
He wrote to Burton Goldstein at State Mutual Life thanking him for his support, and listing the four “best prospects for a quick sale . . . maybe Paul Greenberg can follow up on some.” All the letters, the two guns, an envelope with the unused bullet, went into the filing cabinet into locked drawers labeled TO PASTOR REHWINKEL, BURTON GOLDSTEIN AND ADMINISTRATORS and GUNS & AMMO. He taped a note to the top of his desk:To the Finder: 1. Please contact the proper authorities.
2. The key to this desk is in an envelope addressed to myself.
3. The keys to the files are in the desk.
Walter reviewed List’s extensive documentation of the reasons that led to the massacre. It was an extraordinary record to be left by a killer. And it’s all bullshit, he thought to himself.
Walter felt he knew the killer better than the murderer knew himself. That evening List quickly grew tired. He’d had a long day. He made a light dinner and once again ate at the table where he’d murdered his wife that morning, then washed the dishes and put them in the drainboard. He slept in the billiard room in the basement, beneath his murdered family. Though there was no information on it, Walter wagered that he’d slept very soundly. He said that for List, “It had been a wonderful day.”
In the morning List packed his suitcase with two days’ worth of clothes and a briefcase with an assortment of motor club maps, and tidied the house as if preparing for vacation. He turned the thermostat down to fifty degrees and put three supermarket bags stuffed with bloodied papers and cloths neatly by the back door. He switched the lights on in every room except for one, the ballroom crypt. Finally he turned the radio to the only station he had allowed the children to listen to. Classical music, good for the soul, filled the house as he drove away.
Ten days after the murders, a policeman writing parking tickets at JFK airport found List’s old Impala, but the abandoned car raised no red flags. List had planned the murders so meticulously that nobody realized something was wrong at Breezy Knoll until police discovered the five bodies on December 7, almost a month later. The headlines trumpeted THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY. Overnight, List entered the upper echelons of twentieth-century mass killers that the media tracked like a home run contest.
Walter took a sip of cold black coffee and rubbed his eyes to focus. The newspapers described a massive, international manhunt for List that became an embarrassment to law enforcement.
No wonder they couldn’t find him, Walter thought. They didn’t know what they were looking for.
The FBI spent more than $1 million pursuing reported sightings of List across all fifty states, Europe, and South America. New Jersey police and prosecutors interviewed dozens of potential witnesses. The police catalogued more than 150 pieces of evidence. But the investigation went nowhere. Detectives resorted to black humor to overcome the shame. Vacationing police sent postcards to the department from Florida, Barbados, and elsewhere: Wish you were here. Your good pal, John Emil List. Having a ball. Nice to finally have a vacation without the kids! John E. List. The trail had long gone cold. The last significant evidence was the car discovered at the airport eighteen years before. In the police evidence room, mold grew on the dried blood on the victims’ clothes, and the garments were discarded.
Walter looked up from the yellowed newspapers, his concentration broken. He heard Bender’s voice and the voices of two women. It had only been an hour, but it felt like days had passed since he’d immersed himself in the case.
“How’s it going?” Bender appeared at the kitchen table.
“Quite well.”
The sculptor’s eyes gleamed. “What else do you need?”
There was a lot of digging Walter could do. He could talk to the police and FBI investigators who spent years on the case.