P.S. Just as the kids entered from the main door, he shot both of them in the heads as well. Another way of characterising them might be to state that he was sick of his mad wife (who some sources say was a public embarrassment to him by getting publicaly drunk and remarking on his lack of sexual prowess, etc), was indifferent to the children, had embezzled the mothers money and needed to off her, was losing the house, and had no job. We found his mother up in her third-floor apartment. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription. Delores Miller Clark (m. he met an Army PX clerk named Delores Miller and married her in 1985. By 1971, he was still leaving for work every morning, but unknown to his family he was unemployed and unable to pay the bills. John had a very normal childhood and he did not show any signs of psychological troubles. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Does Flanery have any regrets about turning in Clark? Moran said the first two killings occurred sometime in the morning. Occasionally, Mr. Clark and Mr. Stefano played a board game on a battle theme, and Mr. Clark ''always took the German army,'' Mr. Stefano said. I rode in that old car lots of times, going to baseball practice with John Jr., Robert Compton, now a Westfield police officer, recalled. I agree he wanted a fresh start. Ten days after a creepy, glass-eyed bust of John List was shown on Americas Most Wanted, Westfield residents had not heard of a single promising lead. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Dr. Steven Simring, a psychiatrist who examined List after his arrest years later, told Downtown his "sense of neatness" was the result of a compulsive personality. Maybe not. Based on information gleaned from dozens of interviews and hundreds of pages of police and FBI documents, Father Wants Us Dead is an in-depth and chilling narrative from two reporters with more than 25 years of combined experience. He married Helen and raised three children with her, while working as an accountant in many places, such as New York and New Jersey. The List murders were among the most grisly and puzzling in modern American crime because of the quiet methodical way that List killed his wife, mother, and three children in a day-long ritual of slaughter all because he was deep in debt and feared the family would break up under the burden of his financial woes. When asked about his family, ''he would make some allusion to Michigan or Minnesota,'' Mr. Bassler added. The Second Move Fertile Field For Tax Work. What a sorry attempt at humor using President Trump at the end. Both were quiet, reserved people devoted to the Lutheran faith. Abcarian: Mask mandates? ''Delores said it wasn't Bob,'' Mrs. Flanery recalled. John List was on the run when they met in 1985 after having murdered his family members about 14 years before. The good news is, they *are* all in Heaven no doubt. And he yelled, 'Put that thing down before your eyeball falls out.' Now, in his first-ever public comments about the 1971 crime, the 76-year-old former Sunday school teacher says he is waiting to be reunited with them in the hereafter. After her husbands arrest, Delores Clark told the FBI she couldnt believe he was a murderer. All the pieties in the letter masked his real motives, both for the public and in his own mind. RR. About a year ago, he and Mrs. Clark made a $12,000 down payment on a $76,000 slate-blue single-story three-bedroom house in the planned community of Brandermill, in the southwestern suburb of Midlothian. Little is known of Peggy, who stopped talking to her father in 1975 and hasnt spoken out about him since. Miller is not in business there, and there is no evidence it ever existed. And like Judas I gave her a kiss . If things had gone on who knows if that would be the case," he wrote. He spent his days at the train For all I knew, Delores was in danger. But as listeners heard in episode 7, when his second wife, Delores Miller Clark, came to visit him in the Henrico County Jail after his arrest, List admitted who he This weeks postwilltake a look athow Lists predicament compares with the kind of woe that affects homeowners in the new millennium and particularly after thesubprime mortgage crisis. A deeply tragic case. A devout Christian. List then killed his kids one by one as they returned home from school. who writes: In 1895, he bought twenty-two acres of land a few miles northeast, and built a grand Victorian house atop a gentle knoll .. Wittke called his estate Breeze Knoll. Its not a good read.full of his BS and tons of grammatical errors and misspellings. Bob West, said Clark became a pillar of the church during the 11 years he attended, and even served on the board. LOL. To much rationalizing. He defended himself saying that he was not mentally stable. A few months earlier, the couple had moved in together, staying in Miss Miller's two-bedroom apartment at the Somerset Village condominiums in nearby Montbello. Taking a Course and Doing Tax. In interviews in the last week, many new details have emerged about Mr. Clark's life over the last 20 years in Colorado and Virginia. Mrs. Flanery did not call the police, however. The pastor, the Rev. Flipping through his tenant file, she said: Ive never seen anything like this in all the years Ive been here. Authorities said that he had been living a quiet life--active in his church, puttering in his yard on weekends--and that he had no problems with the law while a She said she really didnt want to leave Denver, but Bob had been out of work since shortly after they were married and he had finally found this job in Virginia.. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, 11-year-old reads aloud from 'pornographic' book he checked out from library at school board meeting, Influencer refuses to switch business class seats so family can sit together, Chicago's top cop quits one day after woke mayor lost re-election bid, Family raises 250-pound 'dog' for 2 years then realizes it's a bear, RHOA star Drew Sidora accuses ex Ralph Pittman of cheating, mental abuse, Original Gone With The Wind script reveals secret war over slavery, cut scenes, Drake regrets disrupting someones life by name-dropping exes in his songs, Kanye West and 'wife' Bianca Censori look surprisingly happy on dinner date. Now you come in List with your perverted religious interpretations and go hog wild. He insinuated that it had been a bad experience.''. Your email address will not be published. Photographs of Mr. He took out the last $2,000 on the day of the killings, said Moran, who found the withdrawal slip while searching the house. John Sr. drove over to his school and watched him playing in a soccer game. After cashing in his mothers savings bonds and pocketing the money, heskipped town. '', Although he hesitated before placing Mr. Clark in the Roberto job, ''I couldn't come up with a reason to say no,'' Mr. Oldson said. Fact cannot be objected to unless its status as fact is contested. "It's just like D-Day, you go in, there's no stopping after you start," he said. But he has to pay for what he did. He joined the Army in World War II and later attended the University of Michigan. All had been shot in the head. Way roomy. Then he apparently did some errands while waiting all day long for the children to come home. As of 2018, Peggy, Dolores, and Connie are still alive. '', Mr. Clark formed his own consulting firm, Robert Clark Services. List had sent word to school that he was taking his children to visit relatives, Moran said. Finally, with the prospect of foreclosure threatening to expose his financial failure, List made his terrible decision to kill his family but not himself. '', Mr. Clark is deeply religious and law-abiding. He had been fired from all his jobs due to his cold demeanor and his inability to be social with his co-workers. Bob didnt have a car at the time so I helped him move out of the trailer park into an apartment a few blocks east of the motel, he said. If Lists religiosity were authentic, rather than an effect of his psychopathy, hed have appreciated that Christ on the cross was a failure (in worldly terms), and advocated that the last (the poor; the failures) are in fact first in His Kingdom all standard Christian teaching that List must have known (if not believed). They got him down in Virginia.. His father-in-law had heard from the county sheriff: After nearly 18 years, List had been caught. Keep the politics out of it, dude. The years at All Packaging appear to have been tranquil. I dont buy the pious excuses in Lists confession letter at face value. He died in prison as a result of pneumonia. Records from All Packaging indicate that he married Miss Miller a few months before leaving the company, in November 1985. ''I let it go.''. Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. The Downturn Laid Off and Late With the Mortgage, Gradually, Mr. Clark became less and less of an asset to All Packaging. Anyway, theres no rationalising the psychopathic mind which is why the bail-out stuff that RR mentions probably wouldnt have made a jot of difference to him or the situation. The Lindbergh Kidnapping: Forensic Files Lost Episode, Dawn Fehring: A Missionary Dies Too Young, Ron Gillette: An Air Force Man Who Didnt Exactly Aim High. Heleft the house everymorning,pretending to go to work when he was really whiling away time reading or sleeping in the train station. As always, a great & engaging read. Once, when Wetmore asked his friend if he had a family anywhere, it touched a nerve. He went on to wed again, join a new family and live in peace and anonymity for nearly two decades. and I shot her in the head just like the others, he says. Delores called me on this past Mothers Day, Flanery said. John Lists friend wrote a book where it mentions they divorced and she was living in poverty. He took the name Robert Clark, eventually got an accounting job, and remarried. I guess I was thinking, well Ive started, now Ive got to finish it.. But public officials who use lies to incite violence should have to answer for their words and actions. Over the years, the John List murders have been featured in films such as Judgment Day: The John List Story and The Stepfather. List finally was tripped up after nearly two decades in hiding because his new persona was made in his old image--that of a wimpy, bespectacled accountant whose life centered around the Lutheran Church. Info about the house is hard to come by. To the left are cowbells on a leather strap hung from a nail. Born In: Bay City, Michigan, United States. She turned pale and kept looking at it, saying, Oh, my! I dont think he was a psychopath. Required fields are marked *. I was in despair, List says. The familyhad bought the house for around $50,000 in 1965. Anyone can read what you share. Any murderer is a hero to people like the writer of this post. I said, Thats Bob, Flanery recalled. I told my son-in-law to call the FBI and give them Bob and Delores address in Virginia.. Ive done heaps of research on this property and can only seem to narrow it down to early 1900s. List was a member of the U.S. Army during the Second World War. He took the name Robert Clark, eventually got an accounting job, and remarried. Your email address will not be published. What an absolute tragedy for a family that died because of a religious zealot. I actually do try to keep this blog politically neutral we all need a break from partisanship. I was going to subscribe and refer until I saw that swipe at Trump. Delores Miller Clark lived a simple life in Denver before she met and married John List, who then went by the name Robert Peter Bob Clark. Dolores Sheeran is now Dolores Miller, 55, a former medical secretary and a realtor, according to her Facebook page. I didnt meet him until he moved in.. "I was perspiring like anything," he remembers, but said his wife did not seem to have recognized him. But their love story came to an end within 14 months. There are no complaints in his file, no notices, no record of repairs, no nothing.. John List (murderer) (19252008), American mass murderer. Clark had told her that he had been married previously but that his wife had died of cancer before he came to Denver, she said. JOHN List the quiet New Jersey accountant who murdered his entire family in 1971, took on a new identity and a new family and went undetected for 18 years says the killing were merely his assignment for the day., In his first TV interview since the infamous murders, tonight on 20/20 Downtown, List tells Connie Chung: Eventually I got to the point where I felt that I could kill [his family], hopefully they would go to heaven, and then maybe I would have a chance to later confess my sins to God and get forgiveness.. On June 1, 1989 he was arrested at a Richmond accounting firm after a Denver neighbor viewed the The man called at the insistence of his mother-in-law, who was a friend of Mr. Clark's wife, Delores, and had kept in touch with the Clarks after their move to Virginia. Mrs. Clark has been reluctant to answer questions since the arrest. However, the marriage was not very good. She was preceded in death by her husband, Raymond; sons, Larry, Jim granddaughter, Gayle Ballow; siblings, Joyce Clark & Mildred Miller. Eventually, he took a decently paying job with a paper company at Kalamazoo, Michigan, and settled there with his family. Bustthe case. While List wouldnt meet the legal threshold for madness, he was unquestionably deeply disturbed: mass murder as well as a later life of lies and deceit. He began living with a new identity in Virginia, where he was spotted by a local and got arrested. Investigators found that List, then a 45-year-old accountant with an annual salary of $12,000, had two mortgages on the house, totaling $40,000. The pastor, the Rev. He had told her he had no children. They'll either have forgiven me or won't realize, you know, what happened," List told Downtown's Connie Chung in an interview at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, where he is serving five life sentences. The FBI says that Clark is the alias List developed when he fled to Colorado after the Nov. 9, 1971, slayings in Westfield, N.J., an affluent suburb 15 miles west of New York City. He says he wanted to spare them the shame of losing their New Jersey mansion and to make sure they got to heaven. Delores never told me about Bob, said Wanda Flanery, Millers neighbor in Denver. In April, 1986, Clark was laid off. ''I had had a cataract operation, and the doctor told me not to do any heavy work for a while. ''There were just some certificates hanging on the wall from a staff accountant we used to have, but who is now deceased,'' Mr. Joyner said. There were more problems. '', By contrast, Mr. Clark would later tell his friend in Richmond that his first wife had been an alcoholic and a spendthrift who had died of cancer and that he had a daughter who ''was somewhat uncontrollable. He told Steve Reed, a vice president of the agency, Richmond Placements Inc., that he wanted to live and work in a more vibrant economy. John packed off his children to school and loaded both of his handguns. Although Mr. Clark admitted nothing after his arrest, fingerprints and scars have led investigators to conclude that he and Mr. It was so methodical, so cold-blooded, Moran said. He took a new identity and also joined a Lutheran church, where he met his second wife, Delores Miller. Not sure what youre saying here. Although Helen reportedly suffered from the effects of syphilis contracted from her previoushusband, the family appeared stable and high-functioning to their friends and neighbors. His wife wasnt a good mother. Why are we still having these debates? Clark moved in with Miller in November, 1985. After gruesomely murdering his entire family, John List had begun living a normal life again. Superior Court Judge William LE. Mr. Clark started doing work on the side for H & R Block. He was a religious man. I have all the books written on this case but can only put my hands on the one written by Joe Sharkey an excellent read btw! He stayed around the house, and ''Delores told me a couple of times that if Bob didn't go out and get a job, she'd go crazy or leave him,'' Mrs. Flanery recounted. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. He believed that it was his failure as a man to be unable to provide for his family. He was stationed at Ft. Eustace, Va., when he met the woman who would become his wife. To the right of the Chinese red front door is an Amish plaque inscribed, ''Bless This House.'' They married in 1985. He went on to wed again, join a new family and live in peace and anonymity for nearly two decades. Mr. Reed put Mr. Clark in touch with Charles S. Joyner, one of the two partners in the accounting firm of Maddrea, Joyner, Kirkham & Woody in Richmond. However, today we are not here to talk about the legendary singer but about his son Tamon Pendergrass. In the 12 hours he spent in the house post murders, he probably relished seeing the deceiving, syphilitic bitch who ruined his life dead. He snapped at me, No family! Wetmore recalled. In an interview, he stated that he did not kill himself because suicide prevents one from going to heaven. List are unquestionably the same man. It especiallybothered him that his eldest, 16-year-oldPatricia, was interested in becoming an actress. If anyone knows what yearBreeze Knoll was built, please advise. Marion Delores Clark Miller was born to Paul and Ada(Tuttle)Clark on September 25, 1937 in Moody County, South Dakota, where she was raised on several On their cul-de-sac, the Clarks were described as pleasant but distant. Even now a chill runs through James Moran, Westfields retired police chief, when he recalls the scene in the sparsely furnished, 18-room mansion List had bought for $50,000 in 1966, using money from an inheritance. Executives at All Packaging said they had a reference on Mr. Clark from Roberto Distributing. Ann: Theres an issue of cause and effect here. ''The sign says, '35 miles an hour,' his foot comes off the pedal,'' the friend added. John fled the house after putting all the bodies on sleeping bags, turning the house lights on and putting on some classical music. He had planned the murders so meticulously that even after many years of the incident, the police and FBI found no trace of John. We became friends, you might say.. Obituaries can vary in the amount of information they contain, but many of them are genealogical goldmines, including information such as: names, dates, place of birth and death, marriage information, and family relationships. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. First, a recap of theForensic Filesepisode The List Murders with some additional research from the internet. meticulously murdered his mother, wife and three kids. ''He did everything by hand,'' the executive said. Little is known of Peggy, who stopped talking to her father in 1975 and hasnt spoken out about him since. Until next week, cheers. God would deny heaven to a suicide, but not to a mass murderer? I dont wish death on the CIC. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Id argue that religious zealotry was the EFFECT of a prior cause: mental illness. I am devoted to him.''. Mr. Joyner relied on the employment agency to verify Mr. Clark's resume. Out of the marriage that he despised, out of the family responsibility, out to a new life. Mr. Oldson said he did not remember Mr. Clark's having references. Mr. Clark took with him no furniture or personal possessions other than boxes of tax materials, a neighbor said. Born in an extremely strict Lutheran family, John was raised as a single child. But even if it's all true, this is still not a man with a history of murder, but a man with a murder in his history. Quiet and Simple Life, In a telephone conversation with his closest friend in Richmond this week, he said only that he was ''sorry for any embarrassment he put me through or put his friends and relatives through. He was vice president and comptroller of a nearby bank, and his family lived in an 18-room mansion with marble fireplaces and an elegant ballroom. I thought I was being real clever," he said. Spooky landmark. 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Or Minnesota, '' Mr. Bassler added St. Paul 's Lutheran church in Denver, not... News is, they * are * all in heaven no doubt may be reached at reverett @ njadvancemedia.com sent! Be the case, '' the friend added, however Ive got to heaven they. In danger to do any heavy work for a family that died because of a prior cause mental. Spoken out about him since regrets about turning in Clark like D-Day, have... Dolores Miller, 55, a former medical secretary and a realtor, according to father! Former medical secretary and a realtor, according to her father in 1975 and hasnt spoken about! '' he said Miller and married her in the letter masked his real motives, both for the children visit! People like the others, he shot both of them in the letter masked his real,. As well an issue of cause and effect here Flanery did not the!, Gradually, Mr. Clark is deeply religious and law-abiding identity and also joined Lutheran. 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