List moved his wife’s arm to rest on Freddie’s shoulder, and as the fading light of late afternoon filtered through the stained-glass dome in a thousand colors, he knelt by his family and prayed for their souls. “Almighty, everlasting, and most merciful God, Thou who dost summon and take us out of this sinful and corrupt world to Thyself through death that we may not perish by continual sinning, but pass through death to life eternal, help us, we beseech Thee…”

Walter studied the grainy newspaper photo of the ballroom crypt. “The accountant in him lined up the children by age,” he said to himself.

It was a busy evening for List, making phone calls and methodically checking off items on his planner.

At seven o’clock, he phoned his Lutheran pastor and good friend Eugene Rehwinkel, apologizing because he would be unable to teach Sunday school class for at least a week. He explained to the director of the high school drama club that unfortunately Patty would have to miss rehearsals for a while, and so would be unable to continue as understudy in A Streetcar Named Desire. On stationery from a failed business enterprise, John E. List, Career Builder, he wrote to Eva Morris, his ailing mother-in-law whom the family was supposedly visiting in North Carolina:

Mrs. Morris,

By now you no doubt know what has happened to Helen and the children. I’m very sorry that it had to happen. But because of a number of reasons, I couldn’t see any other solution.

I just couldn’t support them anymore and I didn’t want them to go into poverty. Also, at this time I know that they were all Christians. I couldn’t be sure of that in the future as the children grow up.

Pastor Rehwinkel may add a few more thoughts.

With my sincere sympathy,

John E. List

Walter scowled at the faded words in the newspaper column. List wrote similar letters to his sister-in-law and to his mother’s sister. By now you know what has happened to Mother and the rest of the family… Please accept my sincere condolences. John. List spent the rest of the evening explaining his logic for killing his family in a blizzard of letters to family and his pastor, but he had outlined his reasons for the murders in the first note to his mother-in-law. He had lost his job at the bank and, consumed by failure, spent his days at the library when he said he was looking for work. Despite his recent efforts as an insurance salesman, the family was in dire straits. The fear of going bankrupt, moving, and putting the children on welfare weighed heavily on him. But his greater burden was the fear his children would go to hell. Helen refused to attend church, and the children were growing cynical about God. Patty’s passion for acting indicated an immoral existence incompatible with a good Christian life. “So that is the sum of it,” he wrote to his pastor. “If any one of these had been the condition we might have pulled through, but this was just too much. At least I’m certain that all have gone to heaven now. If things had gone on, who knows if that would be the case.

“I know that what I have done is wrong… but you are the one person that I know that, while not condoning this, will at least partially understand why I felt that I had to do this.”

It was important to kill his mother, too, he added as an afterthought. “Knowing that she is also a Christian, I felt it best that she be relieved of the troubles of this world that would have hit her… to save Mother untold anguish over that result I felt it best that she be relieved from this vale of tears… Originally I had planned this for Nov. 1-All Saints Day. But travel arrangements were delayed. I thought it would be an appropriate day for them to get to heaven.”

List added one more thing for his pastor. “It may seem cowardly to have always shot from behind, but I 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 amp; 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.