Bender nodded.

Walter arched his left eyebrow. “May I be bold and make some predictions? ”

“Sure.”

“List would have settled into a reasonably comfortable life much like the one he left after a period of reinvention,” Walter said. “At first, he would have moved a great distance from the crime to gain a sense of freedom. His first job would probably be a night clerk in a motel-a logical occupation for a bright but underachieving man, good with figures, who wanted a job where he would not be seen and recognized.

“As he grew comfortable, however, List would move up in the accounting profession,” Walter said. “He would rejoin the Lutheran Church, remarry, and eventually move back to within three hundred miles of the murder scene. He would not be able to tolerate the differences of another region that was alien to him. Familiar turf would give him a sense of control. Beneath the veneer of respectability, trouble would still be simmering. He’ll still be living beyond his means. He’ll still have financial problems.”

List would fit in easily in a conventional suburban community, a steady churchgoing man of high intelligence with a serious look, the profiler said. “He’ll be wearing a suit and tie. Given his history and rigidity, I figured the most modern he’d get would be to wear a striped suit. He’d always wear the white shirt and plain tie, probably striped. He’d also wear dark shoes and dark argyle socks. He’ll be wearing thick, black glasses-not wire rims. It will give him an aura of intelligence and authority. He’ll be remarried to a subservient woman who has no clue about his past. He’s just good ol’ John.”

“Rich, this is great.”

“Just so. You’re asking brilliant questions. In the information game, the most important part of the equation is the question, not the answer.”

That evening, Bender put the finishing touches on List. His age-progression bust had a broad, bald pate, deep wrinkles, sunken cheeks, and a stern, unforgiving mouth; the bust included the neck and shoulder line of a dark suit and white oxford collar. He found a pair of old tortoiseshell eyeglasses with a thick rim at an antiques store in the neighborhood, and put them on List.

They looked right.

On Sunday, May 21, 1989, America ’s Most Wanted aired the story of fugitive mass murderer John Emil List. Host John Walsh introduced the segment as New Jersey ’s most famous unsolved murder case. More than twenty million viewers tuned in.

That night in Denver, Colorado, Wanda Flannery thought the bust of John List looked like her former neighbor Bob Clark, who had moved to Virginia. Bob Clark, like John List, was an accountant from Michigan, had a scar behind his right ear from a mastoidectomy, had chronic money problems and trouble holding jobs. Wanda was worried about Delores, Bob’s wife, a shy, pretty woman fifteen years his junior. She was worried her friend’s life might be in danger. She called in a tip, one of more than three hundred that flooded into the show’s hotline from around the country.

Eleven days later, FBI agents followed Flannery’s tip to a ranch house in Midlothian, Virginia, outside Richmond. Delores Clark was vacuuming the living room carpet. Bob wasn’t home, she said. He was at work at the Richmond accounting firm of Maddrea, Joyner, Kirkham amp; Woody. Delores looked at the photo of the bust of mass murderer John List, and reacted with disbelief. Trembling and weeping, she said, “This looks like it could be my husband. But it can’t be my husband. He’s the nicest man in the world.” He was a good husband and neighbor, she said, a member of the Lutheran Church. She went into shock.

Agents arrested Bob Clark at his accounting firm that afternoon. The tall Clark, wearing a bow tie and large glasses, was walking down an aisle with a Xerox, and didn’t resist being led out in handcuffs. He vociferously denied he was John List, but fingerprints confirmed a match. The eighteen-year search for the killer of Alma, Helen, Patty, John Jr., and Freddie List was over.

The next day, Bender and Walter’s brilliant work was national news. The New York Times hailed the dramatic arrest of “one of the nation’s most wanted fugitives” with a front-page story. On page one was also a photograph of the suspect John List and Bender’s eerily matching bust. The List case launched Bender as an internationally known figure in forensics. AMW host Walsh said Bender’s detective work was the most brilliant he’d encountered in his career.

Bender was ecstatic. He called Walter in Michigan to celebrate their triumph.

“Rich, your profile was right on!” As List’s story emerged in court and in the press, the mass murderer’s life read as if Walter had written it. List told of fleeing the crime for the distant haven of Colorado, where he took the name Bob Clark and found a job as a night clerk in a motel. In Denver, he slowly rebuilt his life, finding a job in accounting and marrying Delores, who never questioned his story that his first wife had died of cancer. He rejoined the Lutheran Church in Denver and taught Sunday school. Those who knew “Bob Clark” described him as a friendly, if taciturn, man who always wore a suit and tie, dark shoes and argyle socks, and thick-rimmed glasses. He had recently landed the job in Virginia, so he could be back on the East Coast. His home in Midlothian, Virginia, was 240 miles from his former home in Westfield, New Jersey.

Walter was cautiously pleased with all the attention. “It’s nice but it’s kind of scary,” he told the press. “The issue then becomes ‘How did you do it?’ It’s hard to explain the synergy. It’s both powerful and empowering, but with it come expectations for consistency, so the standard always gets higher.”

On April 12, 1990, about a year after Bender and Walter had helped bring him to justice, List was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder. Though there was no capital punishment in New Jersey at the time, he was sentenced to five consecutive life terms, ensuring he would never make parole. Superior Court judge William Wertheimer said the case reminded society it must defend its bedrock values. “The name of John Emil List will be eternally synonymous with concepts of selfishness, horror, and evil,” he wrote. “He is without remorse and without honor. After eighteen years, five months, and twenty-two days, it is now time for the voices of Helen, Alma, Patricia, Frederick, and John F. List to rise from the grave.” While Bender and Walter were both gratified, Walter said, “Unfortunately he was spared the death sentence he had issued to his family.”

It was a spring of justice and redemption, of joy and celebration for Bender and Walter. They were suddenly an artist-psychologist detective team with few peers, as well as fast friends, bonded brothers, drinking buddies who’d just as soon close down a bar together as open up a cold case. But there came too intimations of a false spring. They fought like brothers, too, and over time, the voice of Bender rose in sharp complaint that Walter was stealing credit for the List case, while Walter, in stunned defense, accused Bender of slandering him and going off the deep end.

Bender and Walter were arguably the most talented detective duo on the planet, it was said in forensic circles-if they could be content with outsmarting psychopaths, redeeming victims, defeating evil, and generally destroying the lives of criminals, rather than each other.