Thou Shalt Not Kill

Ever wonder what is it that creates a monster? Genes? Environment? Life situations? This book presents arguments on many sides in an attempt to come up with an answer. This is the true story of John List, who, in 1971, methodically, coldly and with great exacting premeditation killed his entire family, suited their bodies into sleeping bags and then lined these up in a row on his ballroom floor, turned the radio on high to a religious station and then fled his New Jersey home. No one missed the kids at school -- he'd taken the precaution of alerting their schools that they'd be out of state for a while. No one saw mail piling up outside the front door -- he'd stopped all mail delivery. The bodies lay decaying on that floor with only the neighbors questioning the eerie music emanating from the house at all hours and the lights within flickering and going out one by one over a period of an entire MONTH. In a month's time, there's a lot of hiding someone can do. John List eluded capture for eighteen years and were it not for the popular TV series AMERICA'S MOST WANTED that ran a piece on him, he might never have been found. List was OCD and it was the pattern of perfectionism and inflexibility that drove him to be excessively moralistic, intractable, scrupulous and judgmental of others. He was a religious zealot raised in a dysfunctional household with an upbringing that caused him to seek and maintain a manic control over everything and everyone. Add to this brew, an inability to relate to people and job instability thereof so repeated unemployment, financial woes and stress of not being able to provide for his family and you see a man at odds with himself and the world. He was viewed an eccentric even by his neighbors and left alone. He married a woman suffering from syphilis she contracted from her former husband and had three children with her. The wife was domineering and strong willed and butted heads with List's mom who ultimately came to live with them to help out financially. There was always tension between the two women and John resented it. He resented that his wife didn't do more around the house, despite that she was sickly. He felt overwhelmed with obligation and despair. By 1971, his wife's syphilis was in her brain and she was suffering irreversible brain damage. John List felt trapped in a life that he saw as hopeless. He believed ruin was only a few weeks away with a mortgage due, bills he couldn't pay, no money in the bank and a family he felt was falling apart. His children were teenagers with independent minds that were straying from their strict religious upbringing. List had gone through all his mother's savings and there was no hope of salvation. He considered suicide but as a Lutheran, suicide was not an option so he devised to murder his entire family to save them from financial and moral ruin. This way, they'd all go to heaven and be saved the impending suffering he perceived for them on earth. He reasoned he might me

Ever wonder what is it that creates a monster? Genes? Environment? Life situations? This book presents arguments on many sides in an attempt to come up with an answer. This is the true story of John List, who, in 1971, methodically, coldly and with great exacting premeditation killed his entire family, suited their bodies into sleeping bags and then lined these up in a row on his ballroom floor, turned the radio on high to a religious station and then fled his New Jersey home. No one missed the kids at school -- he'd taken the precaution of alerting their schools that they'd be out of state for a while. No one saw mail piling up outside the front door -- he'd stopped all mail delivery. The bodies lay decaying on that floor with only the neighbors questioning the eerie music emanating from the house at all hours and the lights within flickering and going out one by one over a period of an entire MONTH. In a month's time, there's a lot of hiding someone can do. John List eluded capture for eighteen years and were it not for the popular TV series AMERICA'S MOST WANTED that ran a piece on him, he might never have been found. List was OCD and it was the pattern of perfectionism and inflexibility that drove him to be excessively moralistic, intractable, scrupulous and judgmental of others. He was a religious zealot raised in a dysfunctional household with an upbringing that caused him to seek and maintain a manic control over everything and everyone. Add to this brew, an inability to relate to people and job instability thereof so repeated unemployment, financial woes and stress of not being able to provide for his family and you see a man at odds with himself and the world. He was viewed an eccentric even by his neighbors and left alone. He married a woman suffering from syphilis she contracted from her former husband and had three children with her. The wife was domineering and strong willed and butted heads with List's mom who ultimately came to live with them to help out financially. There was always tension between the two women and John resented it. He resented that his wife didn't do more around the house, despite that she was sickly. He felt overwhelmed with obligation and despair. By 1971, his wife's syphilis was in her brain and she was suffering irreversible brain damage. John List felt trapped in a life that he saw as hopeless. He believed ruin was only a few weeks away with a mortgage due, bills he couldn't pay, no money in the bank and a family he felt was falling apart. His children were teenagers with independent minds that were straying from their strict religious upbringing. List had gone through all his mother's savings and there was no hope of salvation. He considered suicide but as a Lutheran, suicide was not an option so he devised to murder his entire family to save them from financial and moral ruin. This way, they'd all go to heaven and be saved the impending suffering he perceived for them on earth. He reasoned he might m

This book is based on the true story of John Emil List, a mild-mannered accountant and religious zealot who cold-bloodedly slaughtered his entire immediate family execution style in 1971. The author states that she "novelized" this book and that is obvious. But the facts are shown albeit with a lot of "padding", information she couldn't possibly have known, such as conversations within the family, etc. Still, having researched the story, I found this book to be truly entralling. List was a Mama's boy of the first degree. Born to a woman who married her own cousin's father, they were devout Lutheran German immigrants who lived in their own world in Michigan. Mother List, (it was her maiden name AND her married name), never let young John, her only child, be a boy or a man, for that matter. His dysfunctional childhood and upbringing almost certainly played a large part in what he did to his family. His wife, who had been married before to a soldier who died in the Korean war, had contracted syphilis from him. She met John as a lonely and very bereaved widow. She was John's first and only love. They married and had three children together, Patricia, John Jr. and Freddie. Helen, (John's wife), had a daughter, Brenda, from her first husband. She was very unhappy, especially when Mother List lived with them, and Helen knew how much her mother-in-law disapproved of her. Helen slowly began to lose her health and her mind due to syphilis of the brain. In this book, she is portrayed as a pretty much worthless person, bad wife and mother. But the woman was very ill. John would mow his lawn in a suit and necktie. An extremely eccentric man, his neighbors soon learned to just let them alone. He was a veteran of World War 2 and Korea, he was highly educated and intelligent. But he lost job after job, because of his inability to have relationships with people, he was truly a "cold fish", almost a robot. When they bought an old mansion in Westfield, N.J., (with the help of his mother's money), he continued to get fired from his jobs. He held the position of vice-president of a major New Jersey bank for a while, but lost that too. Faced with three teen-agers in the age of Aquarius he felt he had lost all control, and control was something John List had to have. He couldn't control his wife, who was going insane, he couldn't control his 16-year-old daughter, who was taking acting lessons, dressing as a hippie and embracing the occult, and he had gone through all his mother's considerable amount of money, (she was living on the third floor of the dilapidated mansion),he came to the conclusion that to save them all from the certain entrance to eternal hell, he made a plan and kept it. He shot his wife in the head in the kitchen as she drank her morning coffee. Then he went upstairs and shot his 85-year-old mother. As his children returned home from school, one by one, he executed them as well. He was very methodic, made extrodinary plans, such as having the mail an

I read Mary Ryzuk's book some years ago, but seem to have lost it, and want to find another copy. This was a really interesting book about John List and his family, the murders J. List committed, his escape for almost 20 years, and the final apprehension due in large part to a tip given on "America's Most Wanted," the TV show. I'd definitely recommend this one.