Motive Monday- John List
“To save their souls, I had to kill them.”
John List was the kind of man who looked respectable on paper. A devout Lutheran. Army veteran. Father of three. Crisp suit. Accounting degree. But on one quiet November day in 1971, he lined up the members of his family like dominoes and knocked them down one by one. His wife. His mother. His teenage children. Each murdered in cold blood inside their Victorian home.
Then he disappeared.
He didn't vanish in a panic. He planned it. Wrote letters. Canceled deliveries. Turned off the lights. Played classical music over the intercom. Even adjusted the thermostat so the bodies wouldn’t decompose too quickly. Then he walked out the door and lived under a new name for 18 years.
His motive?
John List said his family was falling away from God. His daughter wanted to be an actress. His wife was depressed and alcoholic. The bank account was dry. He couldn’t bear the thought of the family being on welfare or public shame. So in his mind, killing them was an act of mercy, a way to “save” them before the world corrupted them further.
In reality, it was cowardice masked as righteousness. He didn’t ask for help. He didn’t confess. He reinvented himself and remarried while five caskets gathered dust in a ballroom that no one entered until a month later.
When the FBI finally caught him, thanks to America’s Most Wanted and a creepily accurate forensic bust, he barely blinked. No remorse. No apology. Just a chilling logic that somehow, in his mind, made sense.
Discussion Prompt: Was List’s motive truly religious, or was it rooted in pride and entitlement?
Is this a case of delusion — or pure selfish control masked as martyrdom?
The case file’s open. The blood’s long dried, but the questions haven’t. Sound off, truth doesn’t talk unless you make it.
🕵️♀️💚
