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The Accountant's Deadly Secret · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So how does a man methodically execute his entire family,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: leave his 19-room Victorian mansion fully lit with religious music
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: echoing through the empty halls, and then just vanish into
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: thin air for 18 years?
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Right. Only to be brought down by a literal lump
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: of clay. Exactly.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Deep Dive. I'm glad you're here. I
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: want you to hold that specific image in your mind
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: because today we are doing something a little different with
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: our sources.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: We really are. We're looking at a stack of investigative
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: materials covering two completely separate, incredibly chilling cold cases.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the 1971 Westfield family massacre, which I just mentioned,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and the 1986 Lemon Grove murder. But our mission today
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: isn't just recounting true crime, you know. We are here
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to dissect time.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Because we usually think of time as just this
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: passive background element in an investigation. You know, the clock
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: just ticks.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Right. It just passes by.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but in the sources we're looking at today, time
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: is this highly active, incredibly volatile participant. We're examining how
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the passage of decades can, on one hand, erase physical
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: evidence and weather away memories.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But on the other hand, it paradoxically builds the exact
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: tools needed to catch a killer.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. What ties these disparate sources together is the evolution
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: of justice.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: We're going to examine how shifting technology, incredible advancements in
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: forensic art, and just the heavy, grinding weight of human
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: conscience over periods of 18 to 30 years finally broke
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: both of these cases wide open.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this, because if you're looking at these
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: two cases side by side, you're probably wondering how they
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: connect at all. I mean, the physical contrast here is staggering.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: On one hand, you have that sprawling Victorian mansion in
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: New Jersey... dripping with old money aesthetics, but hiding an
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: unimaginable horror. And on the other hand, you have a dusty,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: forgotten dirt road in San Diego County.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Two completely different worlds.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Two very different eras and wildly different perpetrators. Right.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: But they share this one vital thread. So what happens
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: when a killer's greatest ally, which is time, suddenly becomes
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: their worst enemy?
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: That is the pivotal question we have to answer. Time
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: gives a fugitive this false sense of security. You know,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: they acclimate to their freedom.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: They build a whole new routine. Right. But while they
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: are resting on their laurels, the world around them is innovating.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: The scientific method is advancing. And quietly in the background,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the psychological burden on witnesses and the emotional endurance of
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: the victims' families, they're shifting the landscape entirely.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Let's start by walking into the macabre stage play of
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Hillside Avenue. I want to paint a vivid picture for
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: you because the atmosphere here is so essential to understanding
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the crime.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: It really sets the tone.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: It is December 7th, 1971. We are in Westfield, New Jersey.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: And this is a wealthy, quiet, well-to-do suburban neighborhood.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: The kind of place where high-powered executives commute to the city.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Where the lawns are immaculately manicured and where, frankly,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: mass murders simply do not happen. It's an enclave of safety.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: It's an environment defined by order, expectation... And a very
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: specific kind of mid-century social contract. You know your neighbors,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: but you also respect their privacy. Right.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: You don't pry. But there is this one specific three-story
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Victorian mansion, a massive white house with green shutters, that
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: is breaking all of the neighborhood's unspoken rules.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the list house.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: For an entire month, all the lights in this 19-room
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: house have been burning, day and night, just blazing out
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: into the street. But there is absolutely no sign of
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: anyone home.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: No cars moving. No curtains twitching.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Nothing.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Nothing at all. The visual of that alone is deeply unsettling.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: A brightly lit, empty house acting almost like a lighthouse.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: But instead of offering safety, it's signaling that something is
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: profoundly wrong.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It really creates a creeping dread for anyone living nearby.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And it gets so much worse.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: A woman finally calls the police on a dark, rainy
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night at 10.10 p.m. She tells dispatch she hasn't
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: seen any activity at the house for a few weeks,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: which is odd even for a family on vacation.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Right, because of all those lights.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So the police arrive, they force entry, and they
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: step inside. And the first thing they notice isn't a
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: smell or a sight. It's a feeling.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: The temperature?
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The thermostat has been intentionally dropped. It is freezing
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: inside the house. And echoing through the empty, frigid halls,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: playing over the house's built-in intercom system, is classical religious music.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the deliberate curation of the environment.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: The killer didn't just commit a crime and flee in
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: a panic. He sculpted the aftermath.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: He really did.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: By dropping the thermostat, he was engineering the temperature to
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: preserve the scene, slowing down the natural processes of decomposition.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And he provided a literal soundtrack.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's highly theatrical. He's managing the sensory experience of
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: whoever eventually walks through that door, which points to a
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: very specific, controlling psychological profile.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Theatrical is exactly the right word, because what they find
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: when they walk into the ballroom on the main floor
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: looks like a horrific, curated art installation.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: It's a grim scene.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: The police discover the bodies of 46-year-old Helen List, 16-year-old Patricia,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: 13-year-old Frederick, and 15-year-old John Jr.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: But they aren't just lying chaotically where they fell.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: No, they are laid out, almost ceremonially, on sleeping bags.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Helen is in a dressing gown, and all three kids
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: are still wearing their heavy winter coats. They've all been
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: shot dead.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: The placement on the sleeping bags is a crucial forensic
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: behavioral marker. It shows this bizarre level of care, or
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: at least a desperate desire for order post-mortem.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: The killer is managing the bodies, attempting to contain the
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: chaos and the extreme violence he just inflicted. He is
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: trying to make a slaughter look neat.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And there is a fifth body. Up on the third
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: floor in the hallway, they find 85-year-old Alma, the grandmother.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: She lived in her own separate quarters on the top
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: floor of the mansion.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: The forensics show she was shot in her bedroom, her
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: knees buckled and broke as she fell, and then she
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: was dragged out into the hallway and left on a
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: carpet runner.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: And there is a detail in the sources that really
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: stuck with me.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: The toast, right? Yes.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: The police find two pieces of bread sitting in the
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: toaster of her kitchenette.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Which is a brilliant piece of deductive evidence for the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: crime scene investigators.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: It really is. When you are looking at a cold scene,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: you are desperate for an anchor. Those two slices of
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: untoasted bread allowed police to immediately anchor the timeline.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Because it strongly suggested her murder took place in the morning,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: violently interrupting her daily breakfast routine.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: So the only person missing from this sprawling, freezing, music-filled
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: house is John Emil List. He is the 46-year-old father,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: an accountant by trade, and the patriarch of the family.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: And he left something behind to explain all of this.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In a filing cabinet, police find two handguns and
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: a five-page letter, handwritten on yellow lined paper. It's addressed
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: to the pastor of their Lutheran church, Reverend Eugene Riewinkel.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: The letter is a full letter. detailed confession.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: And the most terrifying part? It's dated November 9th, one
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: full month before the police walked through that door.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: A 30-day head start. I mean, in 1971, giving a
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: fugitive a 30-day head start is effectively giving them a
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: ghost-like status.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just gone.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: The trail isn't just cold, it has ceased to exist entirely.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the architect of this tragedy, John List.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: The sources lay out the exact timeline of that day,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: November 9th, based on his confession and the forensic reconstruction.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: And honestly, it reads like a chilling corporate schedule.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It really does. It's like he was crossing items off
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: a morbid daily planner.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: The methodology is exactly what you would expect from someone
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: whose entire professional life is built around spreadsheets and accounting.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: It was sequential, it was compartmentalized, and it was entirely
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: devoid of heat or passion.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Hold on, let me stop you right there. You're calling
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: it task-oriented and devoid of heat, like he was just
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: suffering from profound dissociation.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, from a clinical perspective.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: But isn't that just a fancy way of saying he
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: was a cold-blooded psychopath who literally didn't care about his family?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Why are we giving him the psychological out of dissociation
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: instead of just calling it what it is?
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: It's a fair challenge. It really is. But we have
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: to look at the clinical difference between a psychopath and
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: what John List was experiencing. Okay. A true psychopath generally
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: lacks empathy from birth. acts impulsively, and has a long
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: history of antisocial behavior. John List had zero history of violence.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: He was a Sunday school teacher, a former bank vice president.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: What he was experiencing wasn't an inherent lack of empathy,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: but rather a rigidly constructed catastrophic delusion. He had to
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: completely compartmentalize his emotions to execute what he genuinely delusionally
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: believed was a necessary task.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: That requires dissociation. He had to detach from the reality
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: of his family as humans and treat them as line
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: items on a ledger that needed balancing.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, when you frame it like that, it makes
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the timeline even more disturbing because he starts in the morning.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: He takes two handguns out to his car to load
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: them so no one hears the click of the metal.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: A 9mm that he bought as a World War I
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: souvenir and a. 22 caliber Colt revolver.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: He walks.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: back inside and he shoots his wife, Helen, in the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: side of the head while she is just sitting at
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: the kitchen table drinking her morning coffee.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: The ultimate betrayal of a domestic safe space. She didn't
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: even see it coming.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: He drags her body into the ballroom and places her
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: on a sleeping bag. Then he literally gets out cleaning
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: supplies immediately and cleans up the blood in the kitchen because,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: according to the sources, he doesn't want the kids to
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: see it when they get home from school.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: He wants to protect them from the visual horror of
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: what he's about to do to them.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: It's so twisted. Next, he walks up two flights of
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: stairs and shoots his mother, Alma, while she's making toast.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Now, she is too heavy to carry down two flights
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: of stairs. He actually notes this logistical problem in his
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: confessional letter. So he drags her onto a carpet runner
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: in the hallway.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Notice the grim, practical problem-solving at play here. He cleans
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: the blood to manage the environment for the next victims,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: ensuring they don't panic and try to run.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: And he leaves his mother upstairs strictly because of his
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: own physical limitations. It is entirely, frighteningly, task-oriented.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: And then he goes out to run errands. He goes
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: to the post office to put a stop on the
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: family's mail. He goes to the bank and cashes in $ 2, 100
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: worth of his mother's savings bonds.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Which was a lot of money then.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He comes back to the mansion and he makes
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: himself a sandwich for lunch because he's hungry.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: You made a sandwich between murders.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I just, I mean, how does a human brain compartmentalize
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the chewing and swallowing of a sandwich with the bodies
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: of your wife and mother cooling in the next room?
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Because in his warped framework, eating a sandwich wasn't a
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: callous celebration of what he had done, you know? It
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: was simply the next required physical action to maintain his
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: blood sugar and energy for the rest of the day's tasks.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: That is just wild.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: If you view the murders as administrative duties, then eating
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: lunch is just taking a break at the office. It
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: is the banality of evil in its purest form.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: After his sandwich, he sits down and writes notes to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: the children's schools, stating that the family's going on a
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: holiday to North Carolina for a few weeks to visit
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: a sick relative. officially excusing them from classes.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: He's buying time.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Then he just waits in the house. 16-year-old Patricia
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: is the first to arrive home from school. She walks
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in the door, still wearing her winter coat. He shoots
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: her in the head.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Then 13-year-old Frederick arrives next. Same exact fate.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: And this is where his frictionless, perfectly controlled plan finally
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: hits a snag. Right.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: The oldest son, 15-year-old John Jr.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: He was named after his father, and reportedly he was
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: List's favorite child. When John Jr. gets home, there is
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: a physical struggle.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Whether the boy saw something, tried to fight his father,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: or tried to run away, we don't know for certain.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: But List unloads on him.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: The sources show he fired 10 slugs into the boy's
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: head and chest, emptying both the 9mm and the. 22
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: caliber revolver.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: That physical struggle, the expenditure of 10 rounds... is the
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: only moment of genuine chaos in an otherwise sterile, methodical execution.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the only deviation from the plan.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: And yet, even after that horrific adrenaline spike, even after
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: physically wrestling with his own namesake, List immediately forces himself
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: back down to his baseline.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: He really does. Because as evening approaches, he drags the
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: kids onto the sleeping bags. And then he sits calmly
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: at his desk and drafts that five-page confessional letter on
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: yellow lined paper.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: To the pastor.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: And?
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: He sleeps in the house that night.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: He goes to bed with his entire family dead in
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the ballroom below him.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: The next morning, he wakes up, turns on all the
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: lights in the house, drops the thermostat, turns on the
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: religious radio station over the intercom, and walks out the door.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: If we step back and look at the broader context
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: of this tragedy, we have to ask why. I mean,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: how does a Sunday school teacher, a man who was
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: once a bank vice president, arrive at the conclusion that
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: annihilating his entire family is the most logical next step?
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: The sources dive deep into the financial and societal pressures
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: he was under, and it is a steep, steep cliff
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: he was falling off of.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Really steep. Back in 1965, he bought this $ 90, 000 mansion.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And remember, in 1965, $ 90, 000 bought you a 19-room estate
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: with a Tiffany skylight, marble fireplaces, and a literal art gallery.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: He was a bank vice president, and then he worked
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: for a photographic corporation.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: The sources state he was making a massive salary that
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: gave them a $ 235, 000 lifestyle, which the sources note is
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: equivalent to a $ 160, 000 salary today.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: The specific economic math of the era aside, the core
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: psychological issue is the dramatic, humiliating loss of status and income. Right.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: He was riding the crest of an economic wave, keeping
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: up appearances with the other high-powered executives in Westfield.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: But the economy took a nosedive. He lost that high-paying job.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: By 1971, he's working for a life insurance company making
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: exactly half of what he used to make.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: And he is carrying three separate mortgages on this crumbling mansion.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: just to keep the lights on.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: He is so broke that he starts systematically skimming money
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: from his 85-year-old mother's bank account. The sources note she
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: had $ 200, 000 in savings, which was a massive sum back then.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: He's quietly draining it just to put food on the table.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: And here we have to look impartially at the intense,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: unyielding psychological framework John List was operating within.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: It is crucial to understand his specific background. He was
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: raised in a very strict German Lutheran household in Michigan.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: with a highly domineering mother. He completely internalized a very
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: rigid post-war Protestant work ethic and strict mid-century gender roles.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: In his worldview, the man of the house is the
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: absolute provider and the infallible protector. Exactly.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: The sources are crystal clear that his psychology was deeply
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: reflective of the time. To show weakness, to admit failure
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: to your family was absolutely forbidden.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: It wasn't an option.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: By November 1971, He isn't even going to work anymore
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: because he lost the insurance job too. He is taking
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the commuter train to the station every morning and just
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: sitting there all day, reading the newspaper and napping, letting
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: his family believe he is still a successful executive heading
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: into the city.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: He is trapped in a prison constructed entirely of his
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: own pride. To list, the social disgrace of declaring bankruptcy
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: or the ultimate unthinkable humiliation of going on state welfare
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: were fates literally worse than death.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: He could not process the idea of his family surviving
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: in poverty and looking at him as a failure.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: And he justifies this horrific act with his religious beliefs.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: In the letter to the pastor, he explicitly explains his
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: twisted logic.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he felt the family was slipping away from their
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Christian roots. Patricia wanted to be an actress, which he
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: thought was an inherently immoral profession. Helen had stopped going
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: to church entirely.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: So his rationalization was, if I kill them now, while
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: they still have some faith, Before they stray too far
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: into sin, I can send them directly to heaven. Right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: If they live through the coming poverty and turn away
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: from God because of it, they will go to hell.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: So in his mind, he is literally saving their souls.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: It is a textbook, albeit extreme, example of fatal altruism. Yeah.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: We are reporting this impartially, just looking at his mindset.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: He twists his religious convictions into a grotesque moral loophole.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: He convinces himself that the murders... are an act of
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: paternal salvation.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: He even asks his family, casually, at the dinner table
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: five days before the murders, what they think should be
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: done with their bodies after they die, whether they prefer
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: burial or cremation, just to get their input.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Which is horrifying. It shows deep premeditation, yes, but also
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: this warped sense of familial duty and logistics.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: But there is a massive, hidden, underlying pressure cooker in
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: that house that goes way beyond just the money. And
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: this detail... absolutely blew my mind when I read the sources.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: It's a huge revelation.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Helen, his wife, was harboring a 22-year-old secret that was
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: tearing her apart from the inside out.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: A medical secret that heavily dictated the toxic, deteriorating dynamics
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: of their marriage.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: In 1947, years before she even met John, Helen was
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: married to her first husband, who tragically died in World
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: War II. But before he died, he gave her syphilis.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: And the medical history here is fascinating.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: In 1947 and 1948, she spent six months at Walter
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Reed Hospital trying to get cured. And the doctors gave
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: her an accepted military treatment at the time. They intentionally
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: injected her with malaria.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Which sounds completely barbaric and counterintuitive to modern ears. You
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: have a bacterial infection, so doctors give you a potentially
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: lethal parasitic disease.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Right. It sounds crazy.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: But we have to understand the medical theory of the time.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: The idea was that the extremely high violent fever induced
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: by the malaria parasite would literally cook and kill the
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: bacteria that causes syphilis.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: It was called pyrotherapy. And the doctor who invented it
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: actually won a Nobel Prize for it.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: So they give her malaria. She suffers through these agonizing
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: cooking fevers. And then they cure the malaria with quinine.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: But it failed.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: The malaria ran its course. But the syphilis survived and
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: continued to spread through her system.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: It became dormant, meaning she was no longer contagious to partners,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: but it was still alive in her body, slowly, insidiously
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: attacking her internal organs. and, eventually, her brain.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: And this is where the deception that poisoned their marriage
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: comes in. Because when she meets John List in 1951,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: she never tells him about her condition.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: She actively, meticulously hides it.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Most states back then required a premarital syphilis blood test
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: to get a marriage license. So, knowing she would fail,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: she insists they drive down and get married in Maryland
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: because Maryland had a legal loophole and didn't require the
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: premarital blood test.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: She successfully hides this massive medical time bomb from him
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: for 22 years until 1969 when her health completely and
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: undeniably deteriorates.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: By the time they are living in the Westfield mansion,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: her syphilis has advanced to the tertiary stage. This stage
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: is can take 10 to 30 years to develop, and
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: the symptoms are catastrophic.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it causes widespread organ failure, severe neurological damage leading
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: to dementia and paralysis.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: She was completely blind at a right eye by 1971.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: The neighbors thought she was an extreme recluse. The neighbor
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: across the street told police she hadn't seen Helen outside
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: the house once in the five years they lived there.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Helen was drinking heavily. likely trying to self-medicate the pain
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: and the neurological symptoms, and was completely overwhelmed by her
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: condition and the stress of raising three teenagers.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Add to that the fact that John's domineering mother, Alma,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: lived right above them on the third floor and openly,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: vocally despised Helen, constantly calling her an unfit wife and mother.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: It's an absolute nightmare scenario. Imagine the daily reality inside
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: that house.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: The mother upstairs hates the wife. The wife is suffering
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: from the agonizing neurological decay of tertiary syphilis and dementia.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: The husband is secretly bankrupt, stealing from his mother and
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: sitting at a train station all day, hiding it from
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: all of them.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: It is a massive powder keg waiting for a spark.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: And John List, armed with his spreadsheet mentality and his
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: warped sense of salvation, decides the only way to defuse
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: the powder keg is to destroy it completely.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: So he executes his family. leaves the classical music playing
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: over the intercom, drops the thermostat to buy himself time,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: and walks out the door.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the great escape. This is the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: part of the story that feels like a ghost in
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the analog machine.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: The sources detail how incredibly effective his exit strategy was,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: because he understood exactly how the systems of 1971 operated,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: by meticulously stopping the milk delivery, stopping the mail, and
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: writing the school notes, he ensures that the normal societal
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: tripwires aren't triggered.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: No one looks for them.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: He even personally calls Patricia's high school drama teacher, Mrs.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Barbara Sheridan, and calmly tells her he just put his
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: wife and kids on a plane to North Carolina to
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: visit a sick relative. So Patricia will unfortunately miss her
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: upcoming rehearsal.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: He bought himself immense amounts of time by manipulating the
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: implicit social contracts of his community. If a respected, well-to-do
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: father in a suit says his family is out of
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: town for a family emergency, people believe him. They don't
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: demand proof.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: By the time the drama teacher finally gets suspicious because
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: they haven't returned and the neighbors finally call the police
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: to check on the dark house, a full month has passed.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: On December 10th, three days after the bodies are found
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: in the ballroom, police finally locate John List's blue four-door Chevy.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: It's parked 40 miles away at John F. Kennedy International
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Airport in Queens, New York. And it has a parking
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: ticket sitting right there on the windshield dated November 10th,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the very day after the murders.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: This is where we have to deeply consider the technological
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: landscape of 1971. Because it explains exactly how he got away.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: If a suspect abandons a car in one of the
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: busiest airports in the world today, we have a massive
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: digital footprint. We have high-definition CCTV, facial recognition software, credit
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: card pings, cell phone location data, and instant digital flight manifests.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: We know exactly what flight they got on before they
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: even land.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: But in 1971, the sources point out that this was
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: before airlines used centralized computer databases to track flights and reservations. Everything,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: and I mean everything, was done on paper.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: To figure out where John List went, authorities would have
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: had to manually check the paper passenger logs for every
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: single person who flew out of JFK over a 48-hour period.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: We are talking about thousands and thousands of handwritten or
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: typed carbon copy paper tickets, physically stored in filing cabinets
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: across dozens of different airline offices.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: It was an insurmountable, almost mathematically impossible task. The police chief,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: James Morin, flatly called it an impossibility.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: List exploited the massive blind spots of an analog world
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: to vanish entirely. He understood that the sheer physical volume
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: of paper at an international hub would effectively swallow his trail.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: And it did. He never actually got on a plane.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: He used the airport as a decoy. He took a
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: bus from the airport into New York City and then
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: traveled overland to Denver, Colorado.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: By 1973, he has successfully surfaced with a brand new identity,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Robert Peter Clark.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And notice the fascinating psychology of his reinvention here. He
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: doesn't adopt a flashy persona. He doesn't flee to a
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: tropical island.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: No, he intentionally blends into the beige background of middle America.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: He gets a new social security number. He starts working
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: menial jobs, like a fry cook at a hotel. But eventually,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: he gravitates right back to his comfort zone. He gets
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: a job as an accountant at H & R Block.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: He joins a local Lutheran church congregation in 1977.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: He meets a widow named Dolores Miller at a church function,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: and in 1985, they get married. They move together to Richmond, Virginia.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: He literally rebuilt the exact same structural life he had
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: just annihilated. An accountant? a devout Lutheran churchgoer, a husband
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to a widow.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: He didn't flee his fundamental identity. He just changed the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: zip code and the names on the ledger.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: It's an astonishing display of compartmentalization. He truly believed he
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: had closed the books on John List, locked them away,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: and successfully opened a brand new, clean ledger as Robert Clark.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: It's hard to even wrap your head around that level
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: of cognitive dissonance. He's just going to church potlucks and
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: neighborhood barbecues in Virginia while his former Westfield mansion is
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: a morbid tourist attraction back in New Jersey.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: People were driving by it for years. Kids were sneaking
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: in on dares to steal souvenirs.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: The house actually mysteriously burned down a few months after
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the murders, and the cause was never determined. But the
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: ghost of John List haunted law enforcement for 18 agonizing years.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: The FBI poured massive resources into it. They had over
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: 20 agents working the case over the years. They chased
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: hundreds of dead-end leads.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: They sent sketches to hundreds of Lutheran churches across the country.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: But as time passes, the public naturally forgets a face.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: The trail doesn't just go cold. It freezes solid. The
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: momentum of investigation relies on fresh information, and List wasn't
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: generating any.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: But here's where it gets really interesting. Because just as
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: time helped John List hide by eroding memories and burying
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: his paper trail, time also allowed for the creation of
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: the exact technological tools needed to catch him.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Enter the year 1989. The producers of a relatively new,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: groundbreaking television show called America's Most Wanted are contacted by
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: the Union County Prosecutors' Homicide Unit. They want to feature
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the List murders on national television.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: But there is a glaring, seemingly insurmountable problem for a
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: visual medium like television. The most recent photograph of John
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: List is nearly two decades old. Right. Broadcasting a picture
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: of a 46-year-old man from 1971 isn't going to help
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the public catch a 64-year-old man in 1989. People age.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Their faces change drastically.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So the show's host, John Walsh, brings in a
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: forensic reconstruction artist named Frank Bender. Bender's job is quite
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: literally to sculpt time.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: He needs to age John List's face by 18 years
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: in three dimensions. And the sources detail how he did this,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: and it is mind-blowing.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: This is a master class in the intersection of art
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: and forensic anthropology. Bender doesn't just draw arbitrary wrinkles on
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: a face. He studies the underlying architecture.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Right. I was reading how he did this. He studies
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: old family photos of Liszt's parents to look at hereditary
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: aging traits.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: He researches Liszt's past eating and drinking habits to determine
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: how his weight would fluctuate and how gravity would pull
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: on specific fat pads in his face over 18 years.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: He literally calculates the physics of aging skin on a
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: specific bone structure.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: It's an incredibly precise science. As we age, bone resorption occurs,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: our cartilage continues to grow slightly, causing the nose and
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: ears to lengthen, and the skin loses elasticity. Bender's modeling
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: all of this in clay.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: He even uncovers a medical record showing that List had
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: a surgical scar underneath his right ear, and he researches
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: how that specific type of scar tissue would age, stretch,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and droop over 18 years.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: And to make sure he gets the psychology right, Bender
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: teams up with a forensic psychologist named Richard Walter.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: They want to get inside List's mind to predict how
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: he would present himself to the world as an older man.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: That psychological profiling is what transformed the sculpture from a
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: medical model into a living, breathing prediction. They gave him
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: a receding hairline, sagging jowls, and a mouth turned down
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: at the corners, reflecting his rigid, unhappy personality.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: But the absolute masterstroke, the detail that caught him, was
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the wardrobe and accessories.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: They dressed the clay bust in a conservative suit and tie,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: because that's what an accountant like him would naturally wear.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: But the glasses. The glasses are incredible. Bender believed that
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: List's ego would dictate his eyewear. He would favor glasses
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: that projected an air of authority and importance to compensate
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: for his internal feelings of failure.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: He looked at dozens of pairs and chose a very
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: specific pair of dark, heavy, thick-rimmed frames to put on
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: the clay bust.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: It was a deeply intuitive, brilliant leap. Bender understood that
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: List's pride was his defining characteristic. He would choose eyewear
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: that acted as both a physical shield to hide behind
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: and a status symbol to project authority.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: So on Sunday, May 21, 1989, 22 million people tune
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: in to watch America's Most Wanted. They broadcast the image
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: of the clay bust.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: And the studio phone bank receives 125 calls within two hours.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: But there is one specific call that finally breaks the case.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Out in Aurora, Colorado, a woman named Wanda Flannery is
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: watching the program with her daughter.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: She sees the bust, and she immediately recognizes her former neighbor,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Robert Clark, the quiet accountant, the churchgoer, the man married
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: to her good friend Dolores.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: The sources mention that Wanda was an avid reader of
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: supermarket tabloids. And two years earlier, she had actually pointed
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: out a tabloid story about John List to Dolores, saying
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: how much this fugitive looked like her husband Bob.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: But Dolores, understandably, completely refused to believe her husband could
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: be a mass murderer. But now, seeing that highly accurate
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: clay bust on national television.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Wanda has her son-in-law call the tip line. She tells
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: the operators that Robert and Dolores recently moved to Richmond, Virginia.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: It highlights how incredibly delicate a fugitive safety net really is.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: List thought he was safe for 18 years, but it
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: just took one observant neighbor connecting the dots of a
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: forensic sculpture to completely unravel nearly two decades of careful deception.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Five days later, FBI Special Agent Kevin August drives to
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: a modest, quiet bungalow in a planned community in Midlothian, Virginia.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: He knocks on the door and finds Dolores Clark home alone.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: He shows her a wanted poster featuring an old sketch
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: of John List. her hands immediately start to tremble.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: She goes into the other room, digs into a drawer,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: and brings out her 1985 wedding photo to show the agent.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: And the agent is stunned. Robert Clark and John List
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: are undeniably, obviously, the same exact person.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: And when the FBI agents walk into the Richmond accounting
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: firm where he works, nine days after the broadcast aired,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: they are met with an utterly uncanny sight.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: He is sitting at his desk, And he is wearing
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: glasses that are virtually identical to the ones Frank Bender
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: put on the clay bust. It is spine-chilling. They nailed it.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: The agents approach him, and he refuses to acknowledge he
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: is John List. He goes quietly. He doesn't fight. But
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: he sticks stubbornly to the script.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: At the police station, they fingerprint him, and they check
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: behind his ear and find the exact surgical scar Bender modeled.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: His fingerprints are a 100% match to a gun permit
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: application List filled out a month before the murders in 1971.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Yet his commitment to his false reality is absolute. The
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: science is incontrovertible, but his psychological defenses refuse to yield.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Even when they extradite him back to New Jersey a
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: month later, he refuses to identify himself as John List.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: He actually signs the official extradition document as Robert Clark.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, Think about the sheer arrogance of that.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Even when the literal science of fingerprinting proves exactly who
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you are to a microscopic certainty, you just double down.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: It's a profound psychological defense mechanism. The psychiatrist who examined
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: him before trial, Dr. Stephen Simring, noted that List showed
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: no evidence of anything approaching genuine remorse.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: He called him a cold, cold man.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: List had constructed this alternate reality to survive his own conscience.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Admitting he was John List meant admitting to the annihilation
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: of his family. He couldn't integrate those two realities without
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: breaking completely, so he clung desperately to the fiction of
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Robert Clark.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: At his trial in 1989, his defense team tried to
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: throw everything at the wall. They tried to argue he
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: suffered from PTSD from his service in World War II
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: and the Korean War, or that he was going through
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: an extreme midlife crisis.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: But the prosecution released his five-page confessional letter, The timeline
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: of him making a sandwich between the murders came out
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: in court.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: The jury saw right through the defense's arguments. The judge
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: sentenced him to five terms of life imprisonment to be
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: served consecutively, calling him a man, quote, without remorse and
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: without honor.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't until 2002, when he was 76 years
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: old and serving his time in prison, that he finally
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: spoke publicly about the crime in a televised interview with
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Connie Chung.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: He told her that he felt he was letting his
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: family down, and that in his mind, if you are
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: not a success, you are a failure, and that is
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: not a good thing to be.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: But his twisted logic about heaven and hell was still
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: completely intact decades later.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: He said, and I am quoting the sources exactly here, quote,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: It's just like D-Day. You go in, there's no stopping
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: after you start.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: He maintained his twisted sense of duty to the very end.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: He viewed the murders not as a crime, but as
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: a necessary, tragic military campaign.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: John List died in 2008 in police custody from severe
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: pneumonia and a massive blood clot. He was 82 years old.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And get this final detail. After he died, no one
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: stepped forward to claim his body.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Dolores couldn't be reached and had long since moved on.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: The man who cared so deeply about his family's status
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: and outward appearance ended up completely alone, an unclaimed body
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: in a prison morgue.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: He used time and the analog blind spots of 1971
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: to hide his face and his sins. But ultimately, the
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: evolution of media reach and forensic science caught up to
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: him and exposed exactly who he was.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: We just saw how a meticulously planned escape, exploiting the
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: limits of paper trails, allowed a man to hide for
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: 18 years. But what happens when the crime itself is
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: totally chaotic? The killer makes zero effort to hide. The
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: witnesses know exactly who did it. And they still get
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: away with it for 30 years.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: That takes us across the country to San Diego. This
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: raises an important question. What happens to a murder investigation
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: when the entire law enforcement system around it is literally
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: breaking under the weight of an epidemic of violence?
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: How does justice survive when the apparatus meant to deliver
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: it is failing?
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: It's October 11th, 1986. We are in San Diego County,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: specifically a small, somewhat rural city called Lemongrove. It's just
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: after 7 a.m. on a quiet Saturday morning.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Someone is walking along a desolate stretch of dirt road
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: and they stumble upon a body.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: The victim is a young man and the scene the
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: detectives arrive at is deeply troubling and confusing. The sources
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: describe a very bizarre scene.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: The victim has been stabbed several times and his throat
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: is deeply cut. That is the likely cause of death.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: But the presentation of the body is what immediately throws
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: the detectives off. He's wearing pants and socks, but his
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: shoes are entirely missing. More strangely, his shirt has been
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: pulled all the way up over his head, completely covering
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: his face.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Detectives immediately recognize the signs of a body dump. The
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: location where the body is found is not where the
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: murder actually occurred.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Right, because despite the horrific bleeding wounds, there is a
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: distinct lack of arterial blood spatter or pooling at the
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: dirt road scene. And there is dirt on his clothes,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: indicating he was dragged by his shoulders and head to
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: this specific spot.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: The shirt pulled over the face is a fascinating psychological
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: marker for investigators. Often, if a killer knows the victim intimately,
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: they will cover the face post-mortem because they have some
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: residual conscience or guilt.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: They physically don't want to look at the eyes of
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the person they just destroyed.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: And then there is the strangest detail of all. Placed
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: right above the victim's arms, just lying there conspicuously in
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: the dirt, is a single black motorcycle glove.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: It's not on his hands. It didn't fall off in
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: a frantic struggle. It's just, you know, placed there, almost deliberately.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: They find no wallet on the body, no ID. The
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: missing shoes make them think initially that maybe it was
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: a robbery gone wrong, but the tire impressions nearby and
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: the sheer lack of blood confirm he was killed somewhere else,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: loaded into a vehicle, and dumped here.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: The victim is eventually identified through fingerprints as 20-year-old Cyrus Jefferson,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: and his background is heartbreaking in its innocence and optimism.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: He was brand new to San Diego. He had just
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: driven across the country from Louisiana.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: His younger sister, Sidra, had just gone off to Louisiana
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: State University on a scholarship, and Cyrus wanted to figure
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: out his own path in life. He had been working
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: hard at a pizza joint back home, saving his money meticulously,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: and bought a reliable Honda Civic hatchback.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: He called his aunt, who lived out in San Diego,
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: and said he wanted to come out to California and
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: see what opportunities were there for him.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: He arrives after a long cross-country drive, reunites with his aunt,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: gets settled, and then tells her he's going out to
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: get his car washed. It's a mundane, everyday errand for
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: a young guy proud of his car. But he never
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: comes back.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: On his very first day in town, this optimistic 20-year-old
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: crosses paths with a local man named Stacy Littleton. And
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: this sets off a chain of events that is incredibly messy, chaotic,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: and tragic.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: The timeline the sources provide is like watching a car
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: crash in slow motion, where every single person makes the
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: wrong decision.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: It's a chaotic narrative, fueled entirely by youth, intoxication, and
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: terrible compounding decisions.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Cyrus meets Stacy, and Stacy invites him to hang out.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: They go to a local motel room where Stacey's girlfriend
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Echo is staying with her one-year-old infant.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Echo's friend Lori is also hanging out there. According to
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: the women who were later interviewed, it's just a typical
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: motel party. 20-year-old kids drinking beer, smoking weed, playing cards.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Nothing nefarious at first.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: But as the evening approaches, the dynamic in the room shifts.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Stacey and Cyrus leave the motel together.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: The women don't know where they are going, and frankly,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: they don't care. because another guy, Michael, is coming over
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: to the motel, and Echo is interested in him.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Which, as the sources note, is convoluted, since she is
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: supposedly dating Stacey, but they are all young and the
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: relationships are messy.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: But about three hours later, Stacey comes back to the
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: motel room. He is driving Cyrus' Honda Civic hatchback. But
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Cyrus is nowhere to be found.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: When asked about Cyrus' whereabouts, Stacey casually claims Cyrus just
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: let him borrow the car to run an errand.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Michael arrives at the motel. Stacey decides he wants to
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: take his girlfriend Echo down to the beach to party
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: some more.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: It's like one in the morning at this point. And
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: this is where things spiral completely out of control. While
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: they are hanging out at the beach, Stacey pulls out
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: a joint for them to smoke. But he doesn't tell
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: them the joint is laced with PCP, angel dust.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: We need to pause and explain exactly what PCP does
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: to the human brain. Because it dictates the rest of
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: the night. PCP is a powerful dissociative anesthetic.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: It was actually originally developed for surgery, right?
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, but was discontinued for human use because patients woke
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: up violently agitated and delusional. It acts as an NMDA
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: receptor antagonist, which means it completely disconnects the brain's perception
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: from reality.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: It causes extreme visual and auditory distortions, paranoia, and crucially,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: it can induce severe, violent psychotic breaks, giving the user
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: a temporary feeling of superhuman strength and invulnerability.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Echo had never smoked it before.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: And it hits her hard. She literally loses her mind
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: on the beach. She is frantic, screaming, making a massive
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: uncontrollable scene at 4 or 5 in the morning.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: People hear the screaming, the police are called, and Echo
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: is taken into custody for her own welfare and brought
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: to a local hospital for an emergency psychiatric evaluation.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: So now the party is completely over. The police have
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: been involved, and the paranoia among the group sets in heavily.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Stacy wants to go visit Echo at the hospital to
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: see what's happening. He suggests that Lori and Michael come
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: with him in Cyrus' car because they still have Echo's
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: baby with them at the motel.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Lori and Michael agree. They get in the car and
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: they drive to the hospital. Stacy goes inside. Lori and
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Michael are left waiting in the Honda.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: And while they are sitting there in the dark, they
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: start to notice dark spots. Blood spatter. It's on the
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: headliner of the roof and on the back seat.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: They are coming down from whatever they were using. They
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: are terrified by Echo's arrest, and now they are sitting
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: in the dark, surrounded by blood.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: They start talking about the blood spatter. Michael gets curious
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: and starts looking around the hatchback. He looks in the
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: far back cargo area, and there is a massive pool
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: of fresh, wet blood covering the spare tire.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: It suddenly dawns on them. Cyrus is missing. The only
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: person who was with him was Stacey. And Stacy just
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: drove back in his car.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: The horrific realization hits them that they are currently sitting
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: in a mobile crime scene.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: When Stacy comes back out to the car from the hospital,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Lori is incredibly nervous, but she finally works up the
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: courage to ask him, what is all this blood?
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: And Stacy casually responds, maybe someone got killed.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: A chillingly flippant response that is designed to terrify Lori
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: and Michael into absolute silence. He is implicitly threatening them.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: And it works. The sources spell out exactly why they
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: zipped their lips and didn't scream for the police right
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: then and there.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: They were drunk. They had been doing drugs. They were
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: scared of Stacey. And they didn't want to call the
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: police because they were now physically inside a blood-soaked car
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: and feared they would be blamed for the murder.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Stacey drops the baby off with a relative, and then
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: he does something totally unexpected. He offers to just give
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: the bloody car to Lori.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: She doesn't have a job. She has drug issues. She
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: needs transportation. So, incredibly, she takes it.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: He's passing off the most incriminating piece of evidence to
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: a vulnerable person. He knows she won't go to the
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: cops because she's holding the bag. I mean, talk about
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: a terrified game of hot potato.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Lori drives the car out to East San Diego County
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: to meet back up with Michael. They are both freaking out.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: They decide they need help figuring out what to do,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: but they absolutely refuse to go to the police. So
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Michael reaches out to his friend, Henry, who he considers a, quote,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: logical stand-up guy.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: They drive the bloody car to Henry's house. They pop
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: the back hatch and show him the massive pool of blood.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Henry's first instinct is the only correct one all night.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: He immediately threatens to call the police. But loyalty and
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: fear muddy the waters.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: Michael begs Henry to listen. He explains the whole twisted night.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: The PCP, the hospital, Stacy's threat. And then, bizarrely, Michael
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: offers Henry the bloody spare tire and the tools from
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: the back of the car.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: And Henry, who works in construction, takes them. Why didn't
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: anyone just go straight to the cops immediately? I mean,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: this isn't a broken taillight. This is a butchered car.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: It speaks to the deep systemic mistrust of law enforcement
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: among marginalized or drug-involved youth during that specific era. In
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: their minds, involving the police when you are high and
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: holding a murder weapon doesn't make you a witness. It
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: makes you the prime suspect.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: They were all trying to protect each other from being
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: implicated by an authority they didn't trust.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: But Henry's conscience, or perhaps his profound fear of being
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: caught storing murder evidence in his own garage, eventually wins out.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: He stews on it, feels deeply uneasy, and finally calls
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: the sheriff's department a few days later.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: The police finally get the tip. They track down the
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Honda Civic. They tow it into evidence. They pull in Echo, Lori, Michael,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: and Henry and interview all of them.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: They get a search warrant for Stacy's house. They seize
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: his clothes. and they take him into custody.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: But when they question him in the interrogation room, Stacy
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: just plays dumb. He claims Cyrus had a paycheck from
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: the pizza place for $ 125, and he was just helping
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: him go cash it.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: He claims Cyrus then generously just gave him the car
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: to borrow. He denies knowing anything about the blood in
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: the back or the murder.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: And here is where the grim reality of 1986 forensic
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: science creates an impassable roadblock for the detectives. They have
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: a bloody car, yes, but DNA testing as we know it,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: the ability to definitively match a drop of blood to
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: a specific person, does not exist yet in standard police work.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: They can match blood type, but that's not enough for
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: a conviction.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: The sources explain this legal and scientific hurdle perfectly. The
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: detectives know Stacey did it. The motive seems incredibly clear,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: stealing the paycheck and stealing the car.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: But to make an arrest, police only need probable cause,
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: which means a reasonable belief that a crime was committed.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: But to actually get a conviction in court, the district
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: attorney has to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: 12 jurors.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: And look at what the DA has to work with.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Circumstantial evidence provided by a group of highly intoxicated, unreliable
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: witnesses who all admit to passing a bloody car around
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: like a party favor.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: It is a defense attorney's absolute dream scenario. They would
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: tear Lori and Michael apart on the stand.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Plus, the system itself was completely breaking down. Imagine a
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: hospital emergency room built to handle 10 patients a day
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: suddenly receiving 100 trauma victims all at once.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: The doctors don't stop being good doctors, but they have
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: to start doing brutal triage. They only treat the gaping
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: chest wounds first.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: The sources highlight that from the mid-80s to 1995, San
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Diego County saw a massive unprecedented spike in homicides and
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: violent crime, climbing way above the national average.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: It was directly linked to the booming meth epidemic and
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: rival gang violence over territory. The homicide detectives were completely flooded.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Exactly. In 1986, Cyrus Jefferson's murder, with its messy, drug-addled
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: witnesses and lack of definitive physical evidence tying Stacey to
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: the knife, wasn't a gaping chest wound for the DA.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: It was a sprained ankle.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: When a system is overwhelmed, cases that require deep, time-consuming
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: investigation are cases that are risky to take to trial.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: simply get shelved. Detectives didn't have the bandwidth to do
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: exhaustive follow-up interviews or chase down every tiny thread.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: So the DA makes the brutal choice to reject the
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: case against Stacey. They let him walk free out the
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: front door of the station.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: And then the crushing bureaucratic blows happen.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: Because no official charges are filed, Echo's mother goes down
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: to the police station and formally requests all the evidence
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: collected from Stacey's house during the search warrant. She wants
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: it back.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: And the police, following standard protocol for uncharged property, release
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: it back to her. His clothes. Everything. Gone.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: It's an egregious administrative tragedy, likely born from the sheer
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: chaos of an overworked evidence department trying to clear shelf space.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: And it gets even worse. Because there is no pending trial,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: Cyrus' bloody Honda Civic, the primary crime scene, sits in
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: a storage lot until the county eventually just... sells it
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: at auction to a towing company to recoup storage fees.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: And the towing company destroys it. The primary crime scene
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: is literally crushed into a metal cube. The case goes
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: ice cold.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Stacey Littleton thinks he has won. He has successfully manipulated
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: the system, relied heavily on the terrified silence of his friends.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: and benefited immensely from the lack of forensic technology and
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: an overwhelmed police force.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: But time is a relentless force. It doesn't stop. Fast
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: forward 31 years to the year 2017. We meet rookie
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: cold case detective Troy Dougal.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: He is challenged by his lieutenant at a Thanksgiving dinner
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: to find a cold case and get it solved. And
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: he gets handed the dusty 1986 murder file of Cyrus Jefferson.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: And the specific reason he gets this case out of
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: hundreds of others is a testament to the sheer power
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: of human persistence.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Cyrus's younger sister, Sidra.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: For 30 straight years, she called the Cold Case Division
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: at least once a year. She refused to let her
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: brother be forgotten in a filing cabinet. So Detective Dougal
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: promises her he will do everything in his human power
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: to solve it.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: He goes down to the crime lab and pulls all
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: the remaining physical evidence. He finds that because the car
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: was crushed into a cube, and the clothes were given
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: back to Eccles' mother, he has almost nothing to work with.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: But he approaches what little he has with completely fresh
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: eyes and out-of-the-box thinking. He doesn't look at what he
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't have. He looks deeply at what he does have.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: He reviews the original crime scene photos from the dirt
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: road in Lemongrove. He focuses on the placement of the body.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: The shirt pulled over the head, indicating the killer knew
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Cyrus and felt that twinge of guilt, not wanting to
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: look at his face.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: And then he focuses on the one oddity that was
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: never fully tested or understood in 1986, the single black
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: motorcycle glove left in the dirt right above Cyrus's arms.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: Ducal forms a brilliant, historically contextualized hypothesis. In 1986, criminals
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: weren't worried about leaving DNA because it wasn't a threat.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: They were solely worried about leaving fingerprints.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: He deduces that the killer likely wore that specific motorcycle
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: glove to avoid leaving prints on Cyrus's clothes or skin
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: while physically dragging the heavy body out of the hatchback
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: and into the dirt.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: He sends the glove off for touch DNA testing, which
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: feels like a total shot in the dark after three decades.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: And we should explain how touch DNA works because it's incredible.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: When you wear a leather glove and you exert physical force,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: like dragging a body, you sweat. The friction causes microscopic
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: epithelial skin cells to slough off your hand.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Those cells get trapped deep inside the porous leather and
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: the microscopic stitching of the glove.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Modern crime labs use a process called PCR, or polymerase
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: chain reaction, to take those tiny, invisible 30-year-old fragments of
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: DNA and amplify them by copying them millions of times
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: until they have a readable profile.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: It is a scientific miracle compared to 1986. And while
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Dugal waits for those lab results, he realizes the original
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: witness interviews from 86 were incredibly brief, only about 20
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: minutes long, because the detectives were so rushed.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: So he decides to track every single one of them
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: down and re-interview them.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: Which is a monumental task. 30 years later, people are
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: scattered to the wind. He actually has to track Lori
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: down to a tent in a homeless encampment.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: But as he sits down and talks to them, he
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: discovers this fascinating phenomenon of time's effect on the human conscience.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the investigation?
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: It means the psychological armor they all wore in 1986
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: has completely rusted away. Back then, They were scared kids
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: trying to protect each other from the police and from
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: a murderer who was walking free.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: But three decades changes a person. Henry sits down with
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Dougal and admits that he completely lied in his original
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: interview to protect Michael. Right.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: Because 30 years later, Henry hasn't even seen Michael in decades.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: His loyalties to that friend group have faded to nothing.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: His conscience has been weighing on him. He is a
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: grown man with his own life. And he tells Dougal
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: the absolute truth about the bloody spare tire. Lori's memory
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: is much bolder and clearer, too.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: In 86, she told police that Stacey mumbled, maybe someone
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: got killed, leaving it ambiguous. But in 2017, she explicitly
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: tells Dougal that Stacey looked at her and told her
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: flat out, somebody got killed.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: The circumstantial evidence is finally strengthening, thanks to the clarity
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: that time brings. But Dougal still knows he needs that
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: physical perspective. golden nugget to get past the DA's strict
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: threshold of reasonable doubt.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: And in April 2017, his phone finally rings. It's the
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: crime lab. 30 years after it was left in the
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: dirt on the Lemon Grove Road, they pulled invisible DNA
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: out of the inside stitching of that black motorcycle glove.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: And it belongs, undeniably, to Stacey Littleton.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Checkmate. The physical science finally bridges the massive gap left
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: by the circumstantial witness statements.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: Dougal goes to the San Diego County Central Jail, where
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Stacey is actually already serving time for an unrelated drug
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: possession charge. He sits him down in an interrogation room.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Dougal notes that in the 1986 booking photographs, Stacey had
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: intentionally posed with his hands pinched together, actively trying to
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: hide an injury.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Dougal looks at his hand and asks him about a
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: distinct scar on his pinky finger. Stacy casually claims he
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: got it in a bar fight years ago. Dougal leans
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: in and asks, was that fight during the murder of
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Cyrus Jefferson?
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: And Stacy, completely caught off guard by hearing a name
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: from 30 years ago, stammers and says, I don't know.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: He doesn't offer a strong defense. He offers confusion. His
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: lies are rusty. And then Dougal springs the final trap
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: about the glove.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: Stacy vehemently denies ever wearing a glove, ever seeing a
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: black glove. says it absolutely wasn't him. But Dougal has
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: the DNA report sitting right there in his folder. He
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: caught him in the lie.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: They arrest him and charge him with murder. They take
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: it to trial in July 2018. It takes two full
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: weeks of trial testimony and 11 hours of jury deliberation.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: But a jury finally, finally convicts Stacey Littleton of killing
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Cyrus Jefferson.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: He gets 25 years added to his sentence and he
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: eventually dies in custody a few years later.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Justice was severely delayed, but it was not ultimately denied.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: And as Detective Dugal noted, this case was solved purely
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: because of timing.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: The evolution of touch DNA testing finally caught up to
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: the tiny fragment of evidence that was inadvertently preserved. And
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: it was driven forward by the relentless love of a
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: sister who refused to stop calling.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: It is incredibly powerful to see it all come together.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Both John List and Stacey Littleton thought they had completely
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: outsmarted the system.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: They relied heavily on the specific blind spots of their
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: respective eras. List with his analog paper trails and the
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: lack of computerized flight tracking. And Littleton with the overwhelmed
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: triage mode police units and the complete lack of DNA technology.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: They both believed that the passage of time was burying
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: their sins deeper and deeper into the ground, hiding them forever.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: But the ultimate takeaway from examining these sources together is
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: that while physical evidence might degrade, and while a primary
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: crime scene like a Honda Civic might be crushed into
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: scrap metal, the forward march of human innovation has a
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: much longer lifespan than any criminal's luck.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: The evolution of science, whether it's Frank Bender painstakingly sculpting
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: a face out of clay to predict the future of
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: a man's bone structure, or A crime lab using PCR
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: to pull invisible, microscopic DNA out of a 30-year-old leather glove,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: paired with human persistence, is an unstoppable force.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate synthesis of advancing science and an unyielding
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: human conscience.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a final thought to
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: mull over as we wrap this up. Consider how both
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: of these men lived for years right out in the open.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: John List was attending church potlucks in Virginia, shaking hands
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: with his neighbors. Stacey Littleton was roaming the streets of
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: San Diego, continuing his life.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: They both woke up every single day believing their secrets
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: were permanently, safely buried. But did the very passage of
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: time that gave them that false sense of security actually
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: make them careless?
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Did their arrogance in believing the diagnostic muddy waters of
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: their eras would hide them forever ultimately set the stage
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: for their own undoing when the technology finally inevitably caught up.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: A chilling and incredibly necessary thought to end on. Thank
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: you for joining us on this deep dive. Until next time,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: keep looking deeper.