John List

But, uh, it's a good thing in the end, I guess.

Let's go to John in Long Island.

John, how you doing?

Okay, Mark.

Thank you.

[laughs] That's true

...

the example I used in my book was John List.

A lot of these guys will turn around and hide or, you know, become parts of their church.

One of the most famous cases I remember is John List.

who was a New Jersey guy who went home and systematically murdered his entire family, neatly, carefully placed them in the basement and left the house and disappeared.

And he shows up somewhere in the Midwest under an assumed name with a new family.

Was that John List? John List, yeah, that's who I said.

That one's amazing to me.

Murdered his whole family and vanished.

And most times they're pretty close about how they would look like, you know, OK, this is him at 30, but we haven't seen him since then.

In suburban New Jersey in late 1972, the cultural underbrush was bone dry.

Just ten months earlier, in November of 1971, the neighboring town of Westfield had been rocked by the John List murders, where a mild-mannered accountant slaughtered his mother, wife, and three children inside their mansion and vanished into thin air.

The collective psyche of Union County was already on edge.

People were primed to believe that unspeakable, incomprehensible evil was lurking right next door to them.

They're one of my favorite like true crime podcasters, Ash and Elena.

And they just recently did an episode on John List, who was a family annihilator.

And it's just when people are showing you, I'm not saying like, I don't know, when people are showing you who they are, you need to believe them.

Jax has shown us year after year after year, not only he is a liar, He's a cheater.

He had a probably annoying family, huh? At least he didn't kill them like Robert List, he just left, right? That's a good point.

John List.

Sorry, John List.

Yeah.

Yeah.

At least you would presume, right? Or he just wanted- Sure ...

to get away and start new.

That's what John List wanted.

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's Megyn episode.

Today we are bringing you every episode of our MK Confidential series, The Annihilator, on the horrifying killings in suburban New Jersey by family annihilator John List.

We get into the crime itself, how List was able to escape authorities and start a new life for 18 years, and how it took John Walsh and America's Most Wanted to finally bring him to justice.

I love this one.

You're going to love this here.

I, I had never heard of John List prior to doing this, and it was my favorite up until we did DC Snipers.

That's now my favorite.

I don't know, maybe I just like every one that we're working on at the moment, but you're going to love John List.

We did it at 9:00 and so many of you joined and we had great exchanges about the MK Confidential series we've been doing on crimes, and we talked about this.

But this, we just featured two weeks ago, the case of John List, who was a family annihilator in New Jersey.

And John List, in 1971, killed his wife, he shot her in the head.

He went upstairs to the third floor, killed his mother, who was living with them, shot her in the face, then waited th- until the school day was over, and as his children started coming home, killed each of them one by one.

And one of the main things that was driving him when he was killing the children was, "Well, now I've killed their mother, and they, so they have to go.