John List was an American mass murderer, who became infamous in the 1970s for killing his mother, wife and three children. Born in an extremely strict Lutheran family, John was raised as a single child. Following his high school graduation, he enlisted into the American military and worked as a lab technician. He later completed his master’s degree in accounting and worked as an accountant in the military. He married Helen and raised three children with her, while working as an accountant in many places, such as New York and New Jersey. He settled in New Jersey and took a job at a local bank. He murdered his mother, wife and three children in November 1971, due to financial distress and other issues within the family, and fled. He began living with a new identity in Virginia, where he was spotted by a local and got arrested. He was apprehended 18 years later in 1989 and was sentenced to five terms of life sentence. He died in the prison hospital at the age of 82, in 2008.
