John Emil List | Update
by Miss Poppy Dixon

"Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven."

On February 20, 2002, Connie Chung's interview of John Emil List was aired on ABC's 20/20 Downtown. List was convicted of murdering his family of five in 1971. These were supposedly his first ever public comments about the crime, though he left a five page confession, and was tried publicly in 1989. The segment lasted about 40 minutes, with only about five minutes of List himself. The rest was sensationalistic filler, commentary from experts, and closeups of Chung aghast in disbelief. When List mentioned that after killing his wife and mother he cleaned the blood from the kitchen floor and sat down to lunch, Chung, incredulous, exclaimed, "You ate lunch?!"

List replied, "I was hungry."

The interview centered more on Chung's shaken sensibilities than on List's flat recollections. List was vacant and spoke in a timid monotone, which explained why the bulk of his interview was cut. ABC padded the segment with enough emotive display to make it watchable for their bloodthirsty audience. 20/20's bumbling attempt at "news" partially explains ABC's decision to soon replace the show with a Disney drama.

BACKGROUND
John Emil List was a good Lutheran, a Sunday School teacher ostensibly concerned with the threat of worldly encroachments on this family's religious commitments. In truth List was saddled with a domineering mother, a sick and dying wife, three children, three onerous mortgages, and a looming bankruptcy. His previously lucrative career as a CPA had evaporated, and he left the house each morning with his briefcase on his way to a non-existent job.

List briefly considered suicide but was convinced that suicides don't go to heaven. His second best option, to his warped thinking, was to kill his family, leave town, and assume a new identity. He knew he could ask God for forgiveness for the murders and that God must forgive him.

After killing his family List was on the lam for 18 years, eventually married again, and resumed activity in the Lutheran church. After his story was aired on "America's Most Wanted" he was recognized and arrested. For more details of the crime please see Making a List, Checking it Thrice.

LIST'S INTERVIEW
List recounted his crimes to Chung as if he'd only just brushed up on them from clippings found in the prison library. The sense that he had no real recollection of the murders, no visceral sense of having committed them, was hard to miss. When Chung questioningly echoed a word or statement of List's he would offer a different word or statement, waiting on Chung's approval before continuing. Thus Chung led List through the interview spinning his story in a way that would distance herself and her audience from the fears of their own rage and despair.

List spoke of being reunited with his family in Heaven. I sensed that List was not fully cognizant of his mother's, his wife's, or his children's deaths. It almost seemed by murdering them he had stopped time, and preserved them in a perpetual state of presumed innocence. There was no remorse, and only a cursory admission of having committed the crimes. List seemed himself only when returned to the prison library to pour over his numbers.

Watching List I realized that he was emminently dull, and outside of his crime, had nothing of interest or value to offer the world, which is not to say that this is required or even desired of anyone. A life well lived might leave behind it nothing but the pleasant memories of those whose lives he touched. Popular Christianity, however, posits two ideas at odds with a life well lived - that this world is to be spurned, and that through the sinner's prayer we ourselves can become important to the supreme ruler of the universe.

While these ideas usually do little more than rob the people who hold them of the full enjoyment of life, they offer the mentally disturbed a pathological grandiosity that can result in antisocial behavior, and sometimes murder. List dressed his crimes in religious purpose, but this purpose is belied by the psychosexual way that he displayed the corpses of his wife and mother. Both had their dresses lifted above their waists to expose their sex. His twisted sense of propriety required, however, that he cover their faces with rags.

What interests me about this crime is its religious angle. Though I don't believe religion to be causal in these crimes it did present an avenue for List to deny his responsibilities. List tempted God to forgive him, not fully understanding that this in itself is a sin (Deuteronomy 6:16, "Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God").

I have often heard Fundamentalists question atheists on the source of their morality. Popular Christianity holds that all good rests on God's laws, so even an atheist's sense of right and wrong is based on a denied belief in God. The alternative is that atheists cannot have a moral sense because they reject God - the source of all good. I have argued that an adopted code of morals, as with popular Christianity, can only ever be obeyed or disobeyed, but never integrated, whereas a morality based on the successful experience of self in society instills a sense of rightness in a person's heart; that this morality becomes part of one, and the issue of obedience is moot.

To John List morality consisted of a superficial compliance with a church-mandated order. Membership in this contrived society was based on appearances. The loss of his career, of his house, his daughter's involvment in acting all translated as sin. List had to destroy the sin. He had no inner morality based on the love of others.

In truth the religious angle was List's justification, but had little to do with the commission of his crime. His motives were selfish. Having hectored God for God's forgiveness, the appearance of morality was restored and List felt justified in partaking of the sacrament of marriage and rejoining the church. Society's forgiveness was, as with most popular Christian criminals, of no import whatever.

Afterword
In 1993, after List was caught and imprisoned, a made for TV movie about the crime, Judgement Day, was produced. List was played by Robert Blake who was born in Nutley, New Jersey, just 17 miles from Westfield - where List murdered his family. Blake's own wife was murdered in May 2001, shot once in the head. No one has been charged with the crime.

Special thanks to an anonymous editor for correcting facts, and bringing to my attention grammar, and spelling errors.