“Quite.”
They sat in a riverfront park crowded with its Saturday morning population of Frisbees, romping and sniffing dogs, young professionals, and homeless men. Walter lit a cigarette. Bender’s eyes wandered to a tall blond woman chasing a black Labrador, and came back into focus.
“Do you think he’s very religious? How will that alter how he looks or behaves?”
Walter frowned. “This has nothing to do with religion. Many terrible things are done in the name of God. It’s just a cover. Behind his Caspar Milquetoast churchgoing facade, he was a pure psychopath all about power. He was fed up with his dominating wife and mother, the little brats who wouldn’t listen to him, and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. He wanted a new life and he wanted it on his terms.”
The thin man’s eyes shone with excitement. “This is the typical personality type of a man who destroys his family. It’s a man who chooses a stronger, older woman who criticizes him so he will never have to take responsibility for himself. They can become quite pathological about it.”
“So he’s crazy.”
“Oh, no, not at all. He’s
Bender took a deep breath. “So what pushed him over the edge?”
Walter gave a dark smile. “It’s typical to have a strong matriarchal figure, like his mother, a wife who is aggressive and pushy and also status-seeking. Controlled, structured men who feel they are being pushed too far can seethe. That turns into anger and righteous indignation. He doesn’t face challenges and own up to his failures like a man; all his failures are because of ‘that bitch wife.’ He’s losing power, control, becoming more isolated. The threat increases when his daughter enters puberty. He is able to justify the killings in his own mind. He felt his family was demanding too much.”
The thin man removed an old newspaper story, yellow and creased into a permanent fold, from his suit pocket. “Notice the corpses of his wife, mother, and three children. He covers all their faces with rags or rugs or towels. I’ve seen this many times. The killer can’t let the victim’s eyes reproach him, and he can’t let the victim’s eyes see egress. It’s the final trump card of rage and power. All the drama and the over-killing—he pumps ten bullets into his oldest son, shoots his mother and then breaks her kneecaps—is how he sates the rage that drove him to kill in the first place. When the rage is satiated, he feels an instant wash of relief and triumph.”
“So is there anger in his face? Have anger and guilt worn him down over the years?”
Walter laughed out loud. “Guilt? Are you kidding me? He doesn’t know what the word means. He doesn’t feel anything at all, except for relief and triumph. He was thrilled with what he did! Thus he could coolly sit and call his pastor and his daughter’s drama coach, eat lunch and dinner in the kitchen where he killed his wife over breakfast. The lack of guilt would allow him to disappear and adjust to a new life without any awkwardness. The following day to him was just that, the next day, except it’s a great relief.
“You want to talk about guilt?” Walter continued. “List stalked his victims. It’s very typical with this type. Note his conversation at the dinner table the week before, quizzing his children on how they would like to die.”
Bender nodded.
Walter arched his left eyebrow. “May I be bold and make some predictions? ”
“Sure.”
“List would have settled into a reasonably comfortable life much like the one he left after a period of reinvention,” Walter said. “At first, he would have moved a great distance from the crime to gain a sense of freedom. His first job would probably be a night clerk in a motel—a logical occupation for a bright but underachieving man, good with figures, who wanted a job where he would not be seen and recognized.
“As he grew comfortable, however, List would move up in the accounting profession,” Walter said. “He would rejoin the Lutheran Church, remarry, and eventually move back to within three hundred miles of the murder scene. He would not be able to tolerate the differences of another region that was alien to him. Familiar turf would give him a sense of control. Beneath the veneer of respectability, trouble would still be simmering. He’ll still be living beyond his means. He’ll still have financial problems.”
List would fit in easily in a conventional suburban community, a steady churchgoing man of high intelligence with a serious look, the profiler said. “He’ll be wearing a suit and tie. Given his history and rigidity, I figured the most modern he’d get would be to wear a striped suit. He’d always wear the white shirt and plain tie, probably striped. He’d also wear dark shoes and dark argyle socks. He’ll be wearing thick, black glasses—not wire rims. It will give him an aura of intelligence and authority. He’ll be remarried to a subservient woman who has no clue about his past. He’s just good ol’ John.”
“Rich, this is great.”
“Just so. You’re asking brilliant questions. In the information game, the most important part of the equation is the question, not the answer.”
That evening, Bender put the finishing touches on List. His age-progression bust had a broad, bald pate, deep wrinkles, sunken cheeks, and a stern, unforgiving mouth; the bust included the neck and shoulder line of a dark suit and white oxford collar. He found a pair of old tortoiseshell eyeglasses with a thick rim at an antiques store in the neighborhood, and put them on List.
They looked right.
On Sunday, May 21, 1989,
That night in Denver, Colorado, Wanda Flannery thought the bust of John List looked like her former neighbor Bob Clark, who had moved to Virginia. Bob Clark, like John List, was an accountant from Michigan, had a scar behind his right ear from a mastoidectomy, had chronic money problems and trouble holding jobs. Wanda was worried about Delores, Bob’s wife, a shy, pretty woman fifteen years his junior. She was worried her friend’s life might be in danger. She called in a tip, one of more than three hundred that flooded into the show’s hotline from around the country.
Eleven days later, FBI agents followed Flannery’s tip to a ranch house in Midlothian, Virginia, outside Richmond. Delores Clark was vacuuming the living room carpet. Bob wasn’t home, she said. He was at work at the Richmond accounting firm of Maddrea, Joyner, Kirkham & Woody. Delores looked at the photo of the bust of mass murderer John List, and reacted with disbelief. Trembling and weeping, she said, “This looks like it could be my husband. But it
Agents arrested Bob Clark at his accounting firm that afternoon. The tall Clark, wearing a bow tie and large glasses, was walking down an aisle with a Xerox, and didn’t resist being led out in handcuffs. He vociferously denied he was John List, but fingerprints confirmed a match. The eighteen-year search for the killer of Alma, Helen, Patty, John Jr., and Freddie List was over.
The next day, Bender and Walter’s brilliant work was national news.
Bender was ecstatic. He called Walter in Michigan to celebrate their triumph.
“Rich, your profile was right on!” As List’s story emerged in court and in the press, the mass murderer’s life read as if Walter had written it. List told of fleeing the crime for the distant haven of Colorado, where he took the name Bob Clark and found a job as a night clerk in a motel. In Denver, he slowly rebuilt his life, finding a job in accounting and marrying Delores, who never questioned his story that his first wife had died of cancer. He rejoined the Lutheran Church in Denver and taught Sunday school. Those who knew “Bob Clark” described him as a friendly, if taciturn, man who always wore a suit and tie, dark shoes and argyle socks, and thick-rimmed glasses. He had recently landed the job in Virginia, so he could be back on the East Coast. His home in Midlothian, Virginia, was 240 miles from his former home in Westfield, New Jersey.
Walter was cautiously pleased with all the attention. “It’s nice but it’s kind of scary,” he told the press. “The issue then becomes ‘How did you do it?’ It’s hard to explain the synergy. It’s both powerful and empowering, but
