With the industrial revolution, people flocked to cities in search of industrial jobs–in factories, on assembly lines, in power plants. The promise of good pay and a steady job lured millions, but the influx of city-dwellers brought problems–crime, pollution, crowding and illness to name a few. But with ever-increasing access to the automobile post-World War II, we could commute to work and living in the city was not necessary anymore. We began to move to the suburbs with comparatively clean air, low crime, and the personal space we craved… yards, parks, and good schools for our kids.
On the surface, the attitude seemed to be, we’re moving to the ‘burbs because things there are as they should be. Yards are green. Picket fences are white. Our gardens are productive and our kids are safe. Suburbia was considered a haven, the kind of place Steven Spielberg has made a career of depicting… to this day, if I happen to see ET, or Poltergeist, or Close Encounters as I’m channel hunting, I stop to watch, at least for a little bit, and smile. The scenes of Elliot and his siblings having a late-night pizza party in their middle class neighborhood, or kids in a cul-de-sac in Cuesta Verde, California using a remote control car to have some fun with a neighbor carrying a 6-pack of beer on his kids’ bike. There’s an earnest truth to the way the suburbs are depicted. Spielberg can make you yearn for it… that childhood, that life.
In the suburbs, if we fear anything, it’s outsiders… others. Someone who might come into our peaceful neighborhood with nefarious plans and menacing intent. These people who live here with us… they’re not to be feared. My neighbor, in this place some would describe as Pleasantville, would never harm me. It’s strangers we’re afraid of.
Unfortunately, even in the suburbs, our neighbors are sometimes strangers, and the horror we dread is often just beneath the surface, waiting to be exposed, like a cemetery where they moved the headstones, but not the bodies.
On more than one occasion, Westfield, New Jersey has been just such a place.
Tales of True Crime, episode 18:
Who is The Watcher?
Westfield is a historic community just a short drive southwest of New York City, the kind of place where the Colonial homes have names. In 1971, in a home known as Breeze Knoll, the lights had been on for weeks. The neighbors had noticed, the lights were just… on, all over the house, day and night… but nobody had seen the family that lived there in weeks. They were a husband and wife, their three children, and grandma, too… a big family in a big house at 431 Hillside Avenue, with a ballroom, multiple fireplaces clad in marble, a third-story apartment for grandma, and an original skylight signed by Tiffany. The lights were on, seemingly in all 19 rooms, but nobody was seen moving within.
If anybody approached Breeze Knoll in that time, and we don’t know if they did, they would have heard organ music playing within. On December 7th, 1971, suspicious neighbors alerted the police who discovered the women and children murdered in their home. They were the List family, and John List had killed them.
John List was a devout Lutheran, active in his church, a veteran, an accountant by trade. He had made quite a life for himself and his family financially, but he secretly struggled. List was sometimes described as arrogant, socially-awkward, and had trouble making friends and keeping jobs. He had been raised by a stern, self-reliant father and a doting mother who gave him nearly everything he wanted.
When his girlfriend, Helen, told him she was pregnant, he did what was considered the right thing in those days and married her. After the wedding, she revealed she had not been pregnant after all. Did John List feel misled? According to at least one published account, he did. Soon after, Helen really was pregnant and the family bought the huge Breeze Knoll estate in a posh Westfield neighborhood. List was by that time the Vice President at a local bank, but didn’t really have the resources for such a sprawling estate, so his mother Alma loaned him the money and moved into the attic apartment.
Things were good for a time but in 1971, John List lost his job. Nevertheless, he got up every day, dressed for work and left the house, his family none the wiser. Where did he go? The bus station. He would sit all day, read the newspaper, then return home as if he had been at work all day. Some have said it was because his father had instilled a sense of self-reliance in him and he feared the shame of admitting he was unemployed and that the family might soon have to accept government assistance. Others have said he wanted desperately to run away, just disappear, but the bus station was as far as he could bring himself to go. Whatever the reason, he was digging himself a hole he would not be able to climb out of. He had been skimming money out of his mother’s bank accounts, his home was approaching foreclosure, and the deception could not be maintained forever.
On a November morning in 1971, he saw his children off to school like any normal day, and when they were gone, he approached Helen List from behind and shot her in the back of the head while she ate toast at the kitchen table. List then went to his mother’s attic apartment. “What was that noise?” she asked. He kissed her, “Like Judas,” he would later say, and shot her too.
Downstairs, List went to work cleaning up Helen’s blood, so when the children arrived home from school, they wouldn’t suspect what was going on.
He spent the rest of the morning preparing for his getaway. He went to the bank and cashed in his mother’s savings bonds, visited the post office and put a hold on the mail, canceled their newspaper deliveries, then returned home, wrote a handful of letters, and made phone calls to the children’s schools and their carpool driver. He said they would be going to North Carolina for vacation and that the children would be out of school for several weeks.
He ate lunch, at the same table where he killed his wife, and waited for the time to arrive when he would kill his children. One-by-one, he shot each of them, and laid them on sleeping bags next to their dead mother in the ballroom.
With his family dead in the ballroom, John List sat down and wrote one more letter, to his church Pastor, and explained his reasoning for murdering his family. He rationalized his own evil acts. He believed the 1970s were going to be a dark decade, and that his family was losing their commitment to the church. His eldest daughter wanted to be an actress. His wife was reportedly an alcoholic and suffered from mental illness. He said he believed his only option was to ensure their salvation and entrance into heaven by killing them. He couldn’t kill himself, however, because then he wouldn’t get into heaven.
John List went to bed, slept in the same house where his family lay dead on the floor in the ballroom. The expression “How do you sleep at night?” comes to mind. Most of us have experienced a fitful night’s sleep because we had an argument with a family member or watched a scary movie before bed, but it’s hard to imagine the nightmares that would come from murdering your entire family in cold blood and then attempting to sleep in the same home where their bodys lay. Perhaps it is a sign of John List’s deviant nature that he slept just fine, and when he rose in the morning, he set a record player to blast music through the home’s intercom system on a repeating loop, meticulously cut his face from every family photo in the house, and vanished.
A month later, alerted by neighbors who had reportedly been watching Breeze Knoll as light bulbs burned out one-by-one, the police entered and found the women and children dead. John List was long gone.
The List family was no more, but the authorities were unable to find John. His car was found at Kennedy Airport, but there was no record of him catching a flight to anywhere. Rumors were rampant. A couple weeks after List fled Westfield, before the police had even discovered his crime, a person now known as DB Cooper hijacked a place in Washington State, and the description of his physical appearance was so similar to John List that people believed they might be one and the same. As the news spread, people reported sightings of List all over the country, but none of the tips panned out. Less than a year later, the vacant Breeze Knoll manor burned in a fire of suspicious origin, and the scene of the crime vanished almost as quickly as the man.
For eighteen years, nobody knew where John List was, or even if he was still alive. Then, in 1989, a new TV show went to air. It was called America’s Most Wanted. The List case was featured in an early episode, during the first season, and an age-progressed bust of John List created by forensic artist Frank Bender was shown on the show.
Within days, a Denver resident called the authorities, certain that John List had been his neighbor, using the assumed name of Bob Clark. Clark had recently left Denver and moved to Richmond, Virginia. On June 1st, 1989, the FBI arrested Bob Clark at his Richmond accounting job and presented him with overwhelming evidence that they knew his true identity, but it would be February, 1990 before the man admitted he was John List. He had been living under the name Bob Clark (the real name of an old college classmate) for years, had remarried, but had told nobody, not even his wife, of his real identity.
When List murdered his family in 1971, it was the talk of Westfield, New Jersey. When he was captured in 1989 and tried in the spring of 1990, the man one local newspaper dubbed “The Boogeyman of Westfield” was again the object of conversation in Colonial Westfield.
At his sentencing, List attempted to argue he was unaccountable for his actions due to his mental condition at the time, an argument with zero validity since List was able to painstakingly plan and execute his crime, getaway, and new life under an assumed name. Whatever mental condition he claimed to have, it did nothing to absolve him of his hideous acts. The judge knocked down List’s deflection, saying “After 18 years, five months and 22 days, it is now time for the voices of Helen, Alma, Patricia, Frederick and John F. List to rise from the grave.”
John List got five life sentences, one for each victim, to be served consecutively.
He served the rest of his days in prison and died of pneumonia in 2008, and one more time, John List was the talk of Westfield.
#####
Just six years later, in 2014, the Broaddus family bought the house at 657 Boulevard, a 1905 Dutch Colonial on an extra large lot, less than two miles from where the List family home once stood. It was described as a 6 bedroom 3 bath manor with high ceilings, fireplaces and elegant foyers. To say it was a home with a lot of history would be an understatement.
William H Davies, Mayor of Westfield in the 1930s, lived in the house, and residents of 657 Boulevard populated the society pages with regularity over the years. The subsequent owners, the Dillard Bird family, were once prominently featured in the Bridgewater Courier News as they departed for a trip to Bermuda aboard The Queen of Bermuda cruise ship in the 1950s.
In 2014, the Woods Family, both retired scientists, received multiple offers above their asking price for the home, but the Broaddus family, Derek, Maria and their three children, won out with a purchase price of 1.3 million dollars.
Before they even moved in, during renovations in June of 2014, they received a letter.
Dearest new neighbor at 657 Boulevard, allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood.
Sounds friendly enough, right?
How did you end up here?
Did 657 Boulevard call to you with its force within?
657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now and as it approaches its 110th birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out.
It might have started friendly, but it sure took an odd turn.
I see already that you have flooded 657 Boulevard with contractors so that you can destroy the house as it was supposed to be. Tsk, tsk, tsk … bad move. You don’t want to make 657 Boulevard unhappy.
You have children. I have seen them. So far I think there are three that I have counted.
It goes without saying, when someone claims to have been observing your children it’s going to raise alarm.
Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. Was your old house too small for the growing family? Or was it greed to bring me your children? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them to me.
Who am I? There are hundreds and hundreds of cars that drive by 657 Boulevard each day. Maybe I am in one. Look at all the windows you can see from 657 Boulevard. Maybe I am in one. Look out any of the many windows in 657 Boulevard at all the people who stroll by each day. Maybe I am one.”
Welcome my friends, welcome. Let the party begin.
The letter was signed, “The Watcher.”
The envelope had no return address. Derek Broaddus immediately called the police, who didn’t know what to make of the letter. They asked if Derek had made any enemies, but there were no obvious suspects. That night, they sent an email to the previous owners, John and Andrea Woods, and they confirmed they too had received a letter from “The Watcher” a few weeks before they moved out. They said their letter also mentioned someone who had “watched” the house for generations, but they just found it odd and threw it away without another thought. The Woodses said it was the only time in their 23 years in the house they had ever heard from “The Watcher.”
The Watcher had clearly been close enough to see what was going on at the Broaddus house, and had been watching closely enough that, even though they did not yet live there, he could see them whenever they were there.
The Woods accompanied Maria to the police station, where detectives told Maria not to mention the letter to any of her soon-to-be new neighbors.
Over the ensuing weeks, the Broadduses continued their modest renovations on the house while keeping their heads on a swivel. And two weeks later, when Maria stopped by the house to check the mail and approve paint colors, there was a card in the mail.
She recognized the lettering on the envelope and immediately called police.
Welcome again to your new home at 657 Boulevard. The workers have been busy and I have been watching you unload carfuls of your personal belongings. The dumpster is a nice touch. Have they found what is in the walls yet? In time they will.
I am pleased to know your names now and the names of the young blood you have brought to me. You certainly say their names often.
It seemed not only was the Watcher close enough to see the Broaddus family, but he could hear them. As detailed by Reeves Wiedeman in a story for New York Magazine’s The Cut, as the renovations progressed, the kids had spent time playing in the backyard, and Maria had called to them by name on a number of occasions. Derek and Maria soon came to believe that The Watcher had been within earshot, learned the children’s names, and even their birth order.
One of the Broaddus daughters had spent some time painting on an easel on the porch, and The Watcher inquired about her specifically.
Is she the artist in the family?
If you’re a parent, you can imagine how Maria Broaddus must have felt. Her young daughter, who had been painting alone on the porch, was under observation. The Broadduses would later note, the porch where their daughter had been painting could not be seen from the street due to a railing and some tall shrubbery. They theorized that the only people who could have seen her were neighbors with the right angle to view the porch, and that severely limited the scope of suspects.
The letter continued.
657 Boulevard is anxious for you to move in. It has been years and years since the young blood ruled the hallways of the house. Have you found all of the secrets it holds yet? Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone. I would be very afraid if I were them. It is far away from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs you would never hear them scream.
Will they sleep in the attic? Or will you all sleep on the second floor? Who has the bedrooms facing the street? I’ll know as soon as you move in. It will help me to know who is in which bedroom. Then I can plan better.
All of the windows and doors in 657 Boulevard allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house. Who am I? I am the Watcher and have been in control of 657 Boulevard for the better part of two decades now. The Woods family turned it over to you. It was their time to move on and kindly sold it when I asked them to.
I pass by many times a day. 657 Boulevard is my job, my life, my obsession. And now you are too Broaddus family. Welcome to the product of your greed! Greed is what brought the past three families to 657 Boulevard and now it has brought you to me.
Have a happy moving-in day. You know I will be watching.
Understandably, the Broadduses interpreted the letters as threats and began to wonder whether they could actually move in. Many of us would be tempted to say “I would never let some malcontent scare me out of my new home with a letter,” but you have to consider the Broadduses situation. What’s the point of moving into a big new house if you don’t feel safe letting your kids play in the yard?
With few options, they involved the police and even hired private investigators to determine who was writing the letters.
As their renovations wrapped up, just as they should have been moving into their new home, they began spending less time there. Then came a third letter.
“Where have you gone to? 657 Boulevard is missing you.”
After a contractor’s yard sign was ripped from the ground overnight, Derek Broaddus took The Watcher’s advice literally.
Look at all the windows you can see from 657 Boulevard. Maybe I am in one.
Derek spent a night inside the home at 657 Boulevard, with the lights out, peering out the windows with binoculars, scanning the neighborhood and the surrounding homes’ windows, looking for someone who might be watching.
The family went to extraordinary lengths to determine the Watcher’s identity. They staged an open house for their neighbors, had everyone sign a guest book, and then compared the handwriting to the letters from The Watcher. No luck.
In 2015, they filed a legal complaint against the Woods’ for not disclosing the letter from The Watcher prior to the sale. They hoped for a quiet settlement, but a local reporter picked up on the complaint and the national media soon caught wind of the story. The drama which had been playing out in private was now public.
Conversation on The Watcher mystery was frequently not flattering to the Broaddus family. There were accusations from strangers and neighbors alike. Some questioned the Broadduses good fortune in being able to afford a home as grand as 657 Boulevard. Others alleged the Broaddus family may have staged The Watcher controversy for a number of reasons, publicity or profit.
At one point in the investigation into the identity of The Watcher, the Broaddus family and their team of investigators zeroed-in on the family next door, the Langfords. Mother Peggy Langford was in her 90s and she had several adult children who lived with her, including her son, Michael, who was described by a neighborhood resident as a reclusive Boo Radley-type character.
The Langford’s home was in the right spot to see the Broaddus girl painting on the porch, and they had lived there long enough for the elements of The Watcher’s letter about watching the house for generations to fit.
Detective Leonard Lugo called Michael Langford into the police station for questioning, but he denied any knowledge of The Watcher or his letters.
With the national news media shining a spotlight on the case, Barron Chambliss, a veteran detective from the Westfield Police, was brought in to investigate. His investigation did not support the allegation that Michael Langford had written the letters. Although he had once been diagnosed with schizophrenia and sometimes alarmed people with his odd behavior, most did not believe Michael was capable of writing The Watcher letters.
Perhaps most surprising, Chambliss’ investigation included DNA analysis which seemed to indicate the person who licked the envelopes in which the Watcher’s letters arrived was likely… a woman. As a result, they questioned whether Mi chael Langford’s sister, Abby, might have been the culprit. She was a realtor, and investigators thought she might have been seeking some kind of retribution for not getting the sale of the house next door. They staged an operation with a security guard at a store where Abby Langford worked a side gig to grab her empty water bottle. They recovered a DNA sample… and the profile didn’t match. Soon after, investigators told the Broaddus family they no longer suspected the Langfords at all.
As the mystery of The Watcher played out and more details of the letters became public, many believed the stalker’s identity lay within the letters themselves, that The Watcher could be identified if we just examined the clues close enough.
There were statements that hinted at animosity and motive:
I see already that you have flooded 657 Boulevard with contractors so that you can destroy the house as it was supposed to be.
Was the Watcher someone with an interest in historic preservation, or perhaps just a person who generally objected to change?
Are you one of those Hoboken transplants who are ruining Westfield?
Clearly, someone doesn’t want outsiders… strangers, in the neighborhood.
There were curmudgeonly statements, too:
The dumpster is a nice touch.
You certainly say their names often.
Obviously, somebody didn’t like the look of the construction dumpster in the yard at 657 Boulevard. And maybe their afternoon nap got interrupted by the sound of Maria calling for her kids. It seemed like the Watcher was an elderly neighbor.
Welcome to the product of your greed
Was the Watcher someone who envied the family’s wealth? Or perhaps someone who got outbid by Derek and Maria, someone who didn’t have the same resources?
There were a lot of statements that hinted at the writer’s identity.
My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time
If true, The Watcher could only be someone who had lived in the neighborhood for generations, and that would be a very small number of suspects, right? Well, maybe not.
The house is crying from all of the pain it is going through. You have changed it and made it so fancy. You are stealing its history. It cries for the past and what used to be in the time when I roamed its halls. The 1960s were a good time for 657 Boulevard, when I ran from room to room imagining the life with the rich occupants there. The house was full of life and young blood. Then it got old and so did my father. But he kept watching until the day he died. And now I watch and wait for the day when the young blood will be mine again.
Nobody was sure whether The Watcher was someone who grew up in the neighborhood, or perhaps the child of a former housekeeper or handy man. Whomever it was, the letters seemed to indicate The Watcher had spent time inside 657 Boulevard.
Other theorized suspects included:
- A female neighbor from the block who said “It’ll be nice to have some young blood in the neighborhood,” during a tour of the renovations.
- A young male neighbor on the block who, according to his girlfriend, played dark video games as a character called “The Watcher.” His girlfriend was seen stopped in front of 657 Boulevard at 11 pm one night, and the boyfriend twice agreed to come in for an interview with Chambliss but failed to show.
- A backyard neighbor who was seen sitting in a lawn chair facing the Broaddus house… watching.
- An unknown potential buyer who got outbid by the Broaddus family
- Two child sex offenders who lived in the neighborhood
- The Broadduses themselves, who some suspected might be orchestrating The Watcher as a hoax in an effort to demolish the home, split the lot, and build two homes.
The Broadduses did everything they could think of to identify The Watcher and get some kind of peace of mind, some… justice? The question comes to mind… what exactly is the crime? If the police staged an investigation, there must have been some illegal act, right? I’m not schooled in New Jersey’s criminal code but most places have laws that govern the kind of conduct The Watcher engaged in. Maybe criminal mischief, creating a public nuisance, or disorderly conduct. The potential charges for The Watcher would not be serious, quite likely misdemeanors, but make no mistake, Derek and Maria Broaddus considered many of The Watcher’s statements outright threats to their children.
Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. […] Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them to me.
Anytime someone refers to your children as young blood, any parent considers it a threat, if thinly-veiled, right?
It will help me to know who is in which bedroom. Then I can plan better.
That sounds like someone has a plan to infiltrate the house.
Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone. I would be very afraid if I were them
Why would a stranger imply the children should be afraid of playing in the basement? Again, the statement could be construed as a threat.
Years passed and, with no suspects identified, the police investigation slowed to a crawl. The Watcher’s letters stopped coming, and the Broaddus family bought a different home elsewhere in Westfield. They put 657 Boulevard up for sale, but never received what they considered a fair offer… everybody who inquired about the house seemed to think they could get a discount due to the negative publicity surrounding the house. Eventually Derek and Maria put the house up for rent at a monthly rate that didn’t even cover the mortgage payment.
Two and a half years after The Watcher’s first letter, with a renter occupying the house, another letter suddenly arrived, the most menacing yet.
Violent winds and bitter cold. To the vile and spiteful Derek and his wench of a wife Maria.
You wonder who The Watcher is? Turn around idiots.
Was The Watcher giving clues to her location? Did she stand behind them at a party? Did she live in a home behind theirs?
Maybe you even spoke to me, one of the so-called neighbors who has no idea who The Watcher could be. Or maybe you do know and are too scared to tell anyone. Good move.
I watched as you watched from the dark house in an attempt to find me … Telescopes and binoculars are wonderful inventions.
As Derek spent a night in the darkened house peering into the neighborhood, searching for The Watcher, his stalker had used a telescope and a pair of binoculars to watch him.
And there were more threats, couched in the context of hypotheticals.
Maybe a car accident. Maybe a fire. Maybe something as simple as a mild illness that never seems to go away but makes you feel sick day after day after day after day after day. Maybe the mysterious death of a pet. Loved ones suddenly die. Planes and cars and bicycles crash. Bones break.
Despite the Broadduses choice to move into another home and abandon their hopes to inhabit their dream home at 657 Boulevard, The Watcher still taunted them with menacing letters.
After years on the market, in 2019, they succeeded in selling 657 Boulevard… at a $400,000 loss. The Watcher has never been identified.
#####
Westfield is a beautiful place. Maybe it’s the proximity to New York, Newark, and its location in the northeast megalopolis that brings misfortune and scandal that would be rare in any other city of 30-thousand.
The strangers with evil intent and malicious intentions that we fear, those who might infiltrate our homes and neighborhoods, sometimes succeed. John List was that stranger, and he managed to slip into Westfield disguised as one of their own. By the time he had shown himself, it was too late.
As humans, we remember where we were when monumental things happened. So many of us have said, “I remember exactly where I was when Kennedy was assassinated… or when the Challenger blew up, or 9/11.” It’s called episodic memory, and scientists believe it’s a fundamental part of the way our brain works. What and when is linked to where. Our memories are linked to places.
But are our places linked to memories?
When the Broaddus family bought 657 Boulevard, someone took offense, for reasons we can’t know. It could have been any or all of the reasons we’ve just discussed. Could it also have been a misguided judgment? If The Watcher grew up in Westfield over the generations he or she described, the crimes of John List would surely be a vivid memory. Perhaps a bias about outsiders grew for decades, and something the Broaddus family did triggered a malicious campaign from a neighbor in an effort to drive the strangers out. Send the outsiders back to where they came from.
It makes little sense when you consider The Broaddus family already lived in Westfield. They had two more-modest homes prior to buying 657 Boulevard, and both of them were in Westfield. Maria Broaddus grew up in Westfield, just as The Watcher claimed he or she had. They were not outsiders.
So, we’re left with no sensible conclusion other than to believe that, whatever grievance The Watcher harbored, he or she acted out the worst case of projection in recent Westfield memory, insisting the Broaddus family were others, strangers with malicious intent, when the real enemy was within. The Watcher needs to take a look in the mirror.
If you enjoy Tales of True Crime, please review and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts, sources, credits and some occasional cat pictures, follow me on Twitter at TrueCrimeTroy. I occasionally do some giveaways there, too, sohit that button and follow me right now.
Voices of the Watcher by Jon BC and Jen of the OurTrueCrime podcast.
Image voice by Bonnie Amistadi
[music]
Night Vigil by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5746-night-vigil
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Deep Relaxation Preview by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5726-deep-relaxation-preview
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Additional Music used via Extended License
[credits]
- Feature photo by Two Dreamers via Pexels.com
[sources]
- The Haunting of 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey
- New Jersey home stalked by “The Watcher” sells at a loss after years of torment
- ‘Westfield Watcher’ Letters Revealed: The 10 Creepiest Excerpts
- Infamous Westfield ‘Watcher’ House Has New Owners
- The “Watcher” house in New Jersey is finally sold to new owners
- Wanted – The Lives They Lived – Obituaries
- John List Killed His Family In Cold Blood, Then Disappeared For 18 Years
- Body of killer John List remains unclaimed
- John List: He Committed the (Almost) Perfect Murder
- ABC’s Downtown, interview with Connie Chung, 2002
- Murderpedia John Emil List
- Bridgewater Courier News, Aug 23, 1952
- Bridgewater Courier News, Apr 1, 1932
