Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003182364
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ELIZABETH, N.J. LENGTH: Long
Keen interest will focus during the trial on a five-page note left in 1971 on List's dining room table for his Lutheran pastor. Police found the letter when they discovered the bullet-pierced bodies of List's wife, mother and three children in their large Westfield home.
"It's been categorized over the years as a somewhat detailed diary of events," said Lt. Bernard Tracy, the latest in a long line of Westfield detectives handling the case.
Police found the letter, but List had vanished and good leads were scarce.
Investigators kept the case alive, and periodic articles about the macabre scene maintained fascination with the Sunday school teacher, described by neighbors as a bland accountant who mowed his lawn in a suit.
Newspaper accounts detail how religious music played from a radio when police entered the house, how each child was successively shot to death as they came home from school, how neighbors called police when they saw light bulbs burning out, how the thermometer was turned low to slow decomposition of the bodies.
The abandoned 18-room List mansion, which became a landmark for thrill-seeking teen-agers in the suburban town of 32,000 about 25 miles from New York City, burned to the ground in equally mysterious circumstances a year after the bodies were found.
List, arrested June 1 after a tipster saw a bust of him on a television anti-crime show, wants to exclude from trial the letter and other evidence seized at the house.
His attorneys argue that the search was illegal and that the letter was protected by the "priest-penitent" privilege. Confidential communications with a pastor can be held privileged under New Jersey rules governing trial evidence.
Even before the routine pretrial arguments are made, however, Superior Court Judge William L'E. Wertheimer said he will choose a jury, with selection to begin Tuesday. Once they are sworn in, the jurors will be sent home with instructions to ignore publicity about the case.
Wertheimer imposed the unusual schedule - usually pretrial motions are decided before jury selection - specifically to reduce the exposure of prospective jurors to news accounts.
Wertheimer said he then will decide pretrial matters, including the letter. The document has never been released, although authorities have discussed some of its contents.
List felt his family was failing in their religion and that he had to kill them for their own good, according to interviews with police. List also was reportedly distressed at his worsening financial condition.
Officials now decline to talk about evidence on the eve of trial, but in a previous interview, Assistant Prosecutor Ed Johnson, who no longer has the case, said List considered the slayings his family's salvation.
"Basically, he felt they were falling away from the values and beliefs he felt were important to their salvation," Johnson said in an 1986 interview. "He was in fact saving them by killing them. Their extra years of life wouldn't have mattered."
Police also have said that List apparently was upset that his 16-year-old daughter, Patricia, wanted to be an actress. Whether the letter is that specific is unclear.
List allegedly at first planned to kill his family Nov. 1, All Saints' Day, when some Christians honor saints. Then he thought to do it on the next day, All Souls' Day, when prayers are offered for all those who have died. But something delayed his plans, police have said.
Found dead on Dec. 7, 1971, were Patricia, List's wife Helen, 45; his 85-year-old mother Alma; and sons, John Jr., 15, and Frederick, 13. Investigators estimated they had been dead about a month.
Helen List's daughter from a previous marriage said in an interview shortly after the crime that her mother's increasing drinking was another source of distress for List.
List's attorney, Elijah Miller Jr., has declined to discuss any aspect of the case. The state opposes his rare motion under the "priest-penitent" privilege.
"It does not meet the requirements of the evidence rule," said Assistant Prosecutor Eleanor Clark, declining further comment.
Opening arguments are expected to begin in early April. The trial is expected to last less than two weeks.
A key development came last month, when for the first time the defendant conceded the state's claim that he is in fact List instead of Robert P. Clark, the identity he had assumed in his second life.
Miller said the concession was necessary for legal reasons in order to file the evidence motions.
As List waits for trial, he spends time reading the Bible and other religious works, said Warren Maccarelli, warden of the Union County Jail. Visitors are infrequent for the 63-year-old inmate, who is segregated from the general population for "safety concerns," Maccarelli said.
Others are praying for him.
"We continue to have him on our prayer list," said the Rev. Joseph M. Vought of the Lutheran Church of Our Saviour in Richmond, Va., where List was a member for several years before his arrest.
Parishioners there and in Denver, where List attended St. Paul's Lutheran Church from 1975 to 1986, have exchanged letters with List, said Vought and St. Paul's pastor, the Rev. Robert A. West.
Aside from the letter left on the dining table, the state will introduce the usual fare of murder trials: ballistics reports, medical and fingerprint evidence, and testimony by the officers who came upon the bloody scene, said Clark.
Those pieces of evidence, even without the letter, are enough to bring List to trial, said Tracy.
"I think there are five real important pieces lying on the ground with bullet holes in them," he said.
by CNB