Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
Religious people aren't all good - The John List story
Sat, 01 Feb 2025
John List murdered his family so that they could get into heaven
Chapter 1: Who is John List and what was his life like?
Just because someone is religious doesn't mean they're a good person or even a sane person. Here's an example. So this guy, his name is List and List has a lot going for him. He has a good marriage. He has three kids. He lives in this huge 19 room mansion. I mean, look at that place. Plus, he's got a sweet job as vice president for a bank. So bro is doing well.
Chapter 2: What event triggered John List's drastic actions?
But most importantly, he's very religious. Like he and his family go to church every week. So you know he's a good person. But one day, everything changes because boom, List suddenly gets laid off from his vice president job at the bank. And List, he doesn't know what to do. He can't tell anyone that he lost his good paying job. That would be humiliating. So he decides to not tell anyone.
He doesn't tell his family, he doesn't tell his friends. Instead, he just keeps going. He wakes up every day, he gets dressed like he always does, and he tells his family that he's going to work. But instead, he drives to the train station and he just sits in his car and reads the newspaper until it's time to head home.
Chapter 3: How did John List cope with losing his job?
So that his family thinks he's going to work and they don't ask him any questions. And Lis does this for a few months. He just fakes going to work. I guess he's hoping that during this period, he'll find another gig to keep him afloat. I don't know. It doesn't seem like a very good plan.
Also, because he's not working, he obviously has no income coming in and his bills start stacking up, particularly his mortgage for that 19-room mansion he and his family are living in. So after months of not working, he owes $11,000 on his mortgage. And this was 1971. So today's dollars, he owes about 87 grand. That's a lot of money. So naturally, List starts freaking out.
Like, what's he going to do? Are he and his family going to go bankrupt? Is he going to have to go on welfare? And remember, he's still very religious. So List starts worrying that he's gonna lose everything and that his family is gonna get so poor that they're gonna turn their backs on his religion and then his wife nor any of his kids will get into heaven.
Chapter 4: What was John List's plan to protect his family's faith?
And so this is a big deal for List, like he can't have his family not getting into heaven. So he comes up with this insane plan to make sure his fam doesn't get so poor that they turn their back on his religion. Here's the plan. First, he tells everyone they're going on a big family trip, like a vacation, and he stops all the milk deliveries and newspaper deliveries to their home.
Then, one afternoon, List is at home, and he gets a couple of pew-pews that he owns out of the garage, and he goes back in the house and up to his wife, and he points one of them at her, and blam, he unalives her. Then he goes upstairs where his mom is living, because I guess his mom lives in the mansion with him too, and blam, he unalives her as well.
Chapter 5: What actions did John List take against his family?
Then he goes downstairs to the kitchen and he waits for his kids to come home from school. Once they get home, he takes the pew-pews and blam, blam, he unalives them too. Then he sits down and he writes a five-page handwritten letter to his pastor. And in the letter, he explains in detail that he had to unalive his whole family in order to save their souls and make sure they get into heaven.
Also, in this letter he acknowledges that yeah, he lost his job and he could go on welfare, but then he says he'd have to move out of that 19 room mansion that he loves so much and live somewhere that he refers to as undesirable. So this is not just about saving his family's souls, it's also that he doesn't want to live in a smaller house.
Chapter 6: What rationale did John List provide for his actions?
Anyway, then Lis goes to every family photo in the house and he rips his face out from them so that police won't be able to identify him from his photos. Then he leaves all the lights on in the mansion to make it look like people are still living there. And he packs up some of his stuff and he flees.
And he travels by train from New Jersey over to Michigan and then all the way down to Colorado, and he starts living there. And weeks go by, and back in New Jersey, no one thinks much about List's family being gone. I mean, they were supposed to go on a family trip, so they would be gone. But then about a month goes by and in the house, light bulbs start burning out and turning off one by one.
Chapter 7: How did John List attempt to cover up his crime?
And the neighbors notice like, I don't think anyone lives there anymore. And so the neighbors end up calling the police and police come over and they enter the mansion and they find List's family's bodies and the five page letter he wrote. So they know who did this. Except, there's no trace of him. They don't know where he went. They have no photos to go by, so they basically have no leads.
Meanwhile, List has been in Colorado, living a brand new life. He changed his identity, he changed his name, he calls himself Bob now. And Bob works different jobs, mostly in restaurant kitchens, keeping quiet, keeping a low profile. And eventually he ends up living in Denver and he settles down there and he finds work and he joins a local church because, you know, he's still very religious.
And after about five years, Bob goes back to working in finance again. I guess he does bookkeeping for a carpet business or something. But that same year, he meets a nice woman at a church gathering. And he thinks she is fine. And they hit it off and they start dating and eventually they get married.
Now, Bob obviously doesn't tell her or anyone else his real identity or that he murdered his last family. He keeps that a secret. But eventually, Bob and his wife, they move from Denver all the way over to Virginia. And there, they settle down and they make a nice life for themselves. And at this point, it's been around 18 years since he unalived his other family.
And it seems like the world has completely forgotten about the List murders. And dude is never gonna get caught. Until. All right, now some of you aren't from the US. Well, in the US, there's a long running TV show called America's Most Wanted. And on the show, they talk about criminals and people who are wanted by the feds for various crimes. Well, at this time,
America's Most Wanted is brand new. It's in its first year. So everyone is watching it. And one night, boom, the show airs and they do a segment talking about these unsolved murders of this family that happened back in New Jersey 18 years before. And by this point, they figured out that the killer is List. They just don't know where he is.
Now, despite him tearing himself out of all those family photos all those years ago, they actually did find some images of him. So they know what he used to look like. And on the TV show, they use those images and they get a forensic artist to make a bust of what List would look like now, now that he's aged almost 20 years.
And this freaking bust they made, if you compare it to List, it looks almost exactly like him. Like, look at that. Like, that forensic artist nailed it. And so that night, there's this woman watching the show, and she actually used to be List's neighbor. So she sees this America's Most Wanted segment, and she's like, holy sh**, that's Bob, that's my old neighbor.
And so I guess she calls the police or America's Most Wanted hotline or whatever, and she reports that Bob might actually be this killer, List. And about two weeks later, the FBI shows up to the accounting firm where Bob works, and bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And of course, he continues to insist that, no, I didn't murder anyone, my name's Bob.
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