Death Sentence

by Sharkey, Joe;

  The first phase had gone well, essentially according to plan, virtually like clockwork. But there wasn’t much room for adjustment or deviation in the next phase, the delicate part, which required contact with outsiders. John knew that the rest of his life could depend on remaining dispassionate and orderly throughout the rest of the day.

  Outside, there was no sign that any neighbor or passerby had heard a disturbance. Hillside Avenue wasn’t the sort of street that strangers had any reason to stroll along. And the neighbors tended to stay on their own grounds when they weren’t in their cars. Most of the houses on Hillside were big; not many were as large as the List house, but they all had space and ample ground separating one from the other. The crack of gunfire inside a house with thick masonry walls, a house set back away from the street and the neighbors, wouldn’t carry far on a cold November day when people were at work, or at school, or snug inside their homes.

  The sun hadn’t warmed things up much yet. By nine-thirty the temperature had inched only two degrees above freezing. At other houses storm windows were secured fast in place, keeping the heat in and keeping most intrusive sounds out. On Hillside Avenue, nothing moved except the occasional automobile and the brittle leaves sifting down from bare branches.

  At ten o’clock, he was due for one of the monthly meetings he had with Burton Goldstein, the branch manager at State Mutual Life, for whom he sold insurance from his house. Even once a month, getting out to Jericho, a ninety-minute drive that managed to combine the worst commuting headaches of New Jersey, New York City, and Long Island, was a chore. He had no intention of making the trip today.

  Not wanting to leave open the opportunity for any inconvenient rescheduling of appointments, he waited until that morning to call Goldstein, and phoned the office just before Goldstein’s usual arrival time to get the answering service. He left a message canceling his appointment and saying he wouldn’t be able to reschedule for some time because his wife’s mother was very ill, and he was taking his family to North Carolina to be with her.

  The next details to tend to involved the children’s absence from their schools, Westfield High for Patty and Roosevelt Junior High for the boys. At his desk, he wrote notes of explanation:

  Westfield High School

  Our daughter Patricia is a student in the 11th grade at Westfield High.

  She will be out a few days since we had to make an emergency trip to North Carolina. We left after the school was closed so I’m sending this to you to explain her absence.

  John E. List

  431 Hillside Ave.

  Westfield

  Roosevelt Junior High

  Our sons John and Fred, 9th and 8th grades, attend Roosevelt. They will be out for several days as we had to make an emergency trip to N.C. This happened after the school was closed.

  John E. List

  431 Hillside Ave.

  Westfield

  He also wrote a similar note to KMV Associates, the insurance office where Patty and Fred worked after school. After addressing them, he put them aside on his desk.

  This done, he had a little time to relax. With nothing pressing to do for a while, John decided to go out and rake the leaves one last time. A neighbor happened to be outside when he did. She would recall the exact date a month later because she remembered that the temperature had broken the record low for November 9. She recalled that John pretended not to see her as he strode up and down his lawn with his rake, in his overcoat and dark tie, dressed as if he was going to church. When he came back in, he fixed himself a sandwich for lunch.

  The first unwelcome deviation in his agenda of murder occurred just after noon when the phone rang. It was Patty, who wasn’t due back till after five o’clock. She said she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to come home right after school rather than going to work. There wasn’t a ride available. Would he mind picking her up?

  John was annoyed at this hitch. But he got in the car and drove to Westfield High. Patty, looking pale and unhappy, thanked him for coming. They rode in silence on the short drive home.

  John parked the car in the usual spot out back, and hurried to get inside the house first. Patty collected her books from the back seat and followed a minute or so later, coming in through the laundry room to the kitchen. She never even saw the hulking figure waiting in the corner behind the door. John leveled the pistol and shot her once, at close range, in the back of the head.

  Like her mother and grandmother, Patty died facedown on the floor. When she lay still, he dragged her by the feet through the kitchen, across the hall and into the ballroom, where he tugged her onto one of the sleeping bags open on the floor beside her mother’s body. There were now parallel paths of blood that looked like railroad tracks from the kitchen to the ballroom.

  Around one o’clock, he washed and changed his clothes again to begin the day’s errands. He drove downtown, stopping first at a drive-in branch of Suburban Trust Company, where he cashed a personal check for $85 drawn on his joint checking account with Helen. Neatly he entered the balance, $24.14, in the front of the checkbook.

  Then he went to the post office and made two transactions at separate windows. At the first, he mailed a special delivery letter, addressed to himself, inside which was a blank sheet of paper folded over a small flat key. At the other window, which he chose as if he had forgotten something during his initial transaction, he filled out a standard form asking that the List household mail be held at the post office for a full thirty days, effective immediately. On his way out, he mailed the letters to the children’s schools.

  After this, he drove back to another window at the drive-in bank branch and cashed a second personal check, this one for $200, the balance in a joint account he shared with his mother. Next he drove three blocks away and parked outside the main office of Suburban Trust. Besides the checking accounts, Suburban Trust held two of the three mortgages currently in force on the house, the last of which, for a paltry $1,800, he had taken in June in a pathetic attempt to stay afloat until something came up. The bank also held what remained of his mother’s savings, which John had access to because she had granted him power of attorney when they moved to Westfield.

  After he first began using it, John had actually repaid the small sums he borrowed, a few hundred here and there to pay bills or buy things for Helen or the children. Then he tapped in more frequently, to hold off insulting calls from bill collectors and several times to pay the overdue mortgage. He wasn’t returning the money by then. He kept meticulous records, however. Over the years, and without her knowledge or consent, he had borrowed—embezzled was the word some would use, but he told himself that it was to be his money anyway at some point—a total of more than $50,000 from the money his father had left his mother. All the old woman had left on the day she died, in fact, was a stack of mature U.S. Savings Bonds that John stored in a safe-deposit box. Having just murdered the woman and crammed her body into a hallway, he now was going to steal the last of her money.

  There were only a few people waiting at the windows in the lobby. A teller, Gay Jacobs, led him back to the vault where the safe-deposit boxes lined the wall. The time on the access slip he signed was stamped 1:37 P.M. Besides Alma’s bonds, the box held a few decent pieces of jewelry he had given Helen in Rochester, but there wasn’t much John could do with that. He was interested only in easy liquidity. He was uncomfortable but calm as he cashed each bond—all told, they yielded just over $2,000—under the watchful eye of the teller. She thought it odd when he was through that he made a point of asking her to make a list of the bonds and their value “for his mother’s records, so his mother would know what the value was.” She complied, however, and initialed and sealed an envelope with the cash, all but $200 of which was in hundred-dollar bills. The teller had also noticed how blotchy the customer’s face had looked as he stood there shifting his weight from one foot to the other and signing his name. He signed out of the vault at 1:57 and headed back to Hillside Avenue, where three people l
ay dead.

  Young Fred showed up for work as usual at KMV Associates at three o’clock, and employees there, who were genuinely fond of the diligent little boy with the blond hair, noticed that he seemed dismayed when he learned Patty had called in sick. Immediately, Fred phoned home. A secretary, Margaret Koleszar, never forgot what she heard the boy say to his father on the phone.

  “What happened to Patty?” he demanded.

  Shortly afterward, John made another unplanned trip, this time to pick up Fred, who told his employers he needed to go home early. As he had with his daughter, John hurried into the house first and grabbed the gun he had left in the corner just behind the kitchen door as he heard his son enter the laundry room just inside the back entrance. Like his sister, the boy never even had time to take his coat off. He died with a single bullet wound to the head.

  Again the grisly trek was made to the ballroom. The father pulled his son’s body onto the sleeping bag beside Patty. Fred’s head was positioned so it just barely touched his mother.

  Then there was yet another unexpected change in schedule. It was such a cold day that young John’s soccer team couldn’t practice outside. So the boy also was done for the day earlier than expected. When he happened to see John sauntering up the drive around four o’clock, swinging his gym bag as he walked, his father had to scramble to get into position behind the door.

  Indeed, young John may have heard this scurrying because he didn’t come into the kitchen as unwarily as the others. He saw his murderer coldly level the gun at him. For the boy managed to dodge; the first bullet caught him not in the head, where it was aimed, but in the back. The next shot didn’t kill him either. The boy wouldn’t die! With a pistol in each hand, his father began firing wildly. The brawny teenager tried to crawl across the floor to safety, but it was hopeless. He was on his knees, with his back to his murderer. But the gunman was in control of the situation, firing now with the .22. The room thundered with gunfire. The boy refused to die quickly. Again and again his father fired the .22 until it clicked empty.

  Finally the boy stopped moving. He lay still on the floor, still wearing his winter gloves.

  John had not wanted any of them to suffer, and anyone could see that this one had died in agony. But it was done now. He dragged his fifteen-year-old son along the bloody trail to the ballroom, where he positioned him on the far end of the grim tableau atop the unfurled sleeping bags that John List and his two boys had once shared happily in the woods, on camping trips where they lay to sleep, father and sons, listening to crickets chirp in the summer darkness beyond the fading embers of a campfire.

  Ever meticulous, John put the finishing touches on his terrible display. Still clad in their winter coats, his children’s bodies now reposed side by side, face up. John tugged at the sleeping bags until their edges all met neatly. He bent down to move Helen’s stiffening arm carefully so that it rested on Freddy’s shoulder, in what appeared to be a futile gesture of protection. From ten feet away, the bodies appeared to be arranged in the form of a cross. In the waning light of day, their murderer knelt on the ballroom floor beside them to pray in the name of Alma, Helen, Patricia, John and Frederick:

  Almighty, everlasting and most merciful God, Thou who dost summon and take us out of this sinful and corrupt world to Thyself through death that we may not perish by continual sinning, but pass through death to life eternal, help us, we beseech Thee, to know and believe this with our whole heart, to the end that we may rejoice in our departure and at Thy call cheerfully enter into Thine everlasting kingdom; through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

  To which John added, on his own authority as worldly protector of their departed souls:

  Depart in peace, thou ransomed souls, in the name of God the Father Almighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, who redeemed thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who sanctified thee. Enter now into Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in heaven. The Lord preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and forevermore. Amen.

  In the dusk just before five o’clock, the doorbell rang, shattering the deathly stillness in the house. The intrusion caused John the only real panic he had felt all day. Except for the single light at his desk, the house was dark. He made his way carefully into the parlor and peered through a part in the curtain.

  It was the mailman with, obviously, the special delivery letter John had posted to himself that morning. Who would have thought the post office would take this particular day to be so efficient? He stood frozen as special delivery notice slid under the front door and only took a breath when the postman sauntered back to his truck. John left the notice on the floor where it lay.

  Calm gradually returned. Around seven o’clock, John stirred to make a telephone call to his pastor, the Reverend Eugene A. Rehwinkle, at Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church. The chat was brief but friendly; the minister thought John sounded tired and worried, but he attributed this to the concern over the consuming troubles in his life. John lied to Rehwinkle, saying his family was already on a plane for North Carolina and that he would join them soon. He said he wouldn’t be available to teach his Sunday School class for at least the next week. Rehwinkle, who considered John a personal friend and was very fond of the two boys—Fred was a member of the church’s current confirmation class, in fact—said he understood. The pastor advised him not to worry, and promised to remember the family in his prayers.

  Now only a few details remained. One of them was to head off Patty’s friends at the drama club. He didn’t want any of that crowd nosing around. At about seven-thirty, he dialed the number Patty had given him for Ed Illiano. Barbara Sheridan, Ed’s assistant, answered.

  Barbara thought the man sounded agitated on the phone, but she had never known John well—he had only attended one or two productions—so she didn’t make much of it. He was calling to say that Patty would miss workshops and rehearsals for “a while,” though he didn’t estimate how long. It could mean that she wouldn’t be able to continue understudying in Streetcar, which was scheduled to open November 20.

  “I just put my wife and family on the plane for North Carolina,” John said. “My mother-in-law is very sick, and they’re going to visit her.”

  In her room, Patty had kept a copy of the script for A Streetcar Named Desire on her nightstand. It was there when she died. She had been studying it every night for over a month, whispering the lines to herself over and over long into the nights when the rest of the household was asleep.

  In the evening, John wrote letters. At his desk, he took out a memo pad, each page of which had a logo printed at the top in green letters: “A Few Words From John E. List, Career Builder” He had ordered the stationery for the consulting business he was trying, with little success, to get going. The first letter was to his mother-in-law, the woman whose illness was providing him with the excuse for his family’s sudden disappearance. This was a touchy one. Eva Morris was in fact quite ill in North Carolina. A kidney infection had caused her to postpone a visit that would have brought her back to the List house for the entire month of November. John didn’t mention what would leap out as being terrifyingly obvious to the woman when she later read his letter:

  Mrs. Morris

  By now you no doubt know what has happened to Helen and the children. I’m very sorry that it had to happen. But because of a number of reasons, I couldn’t see any other solution.

  I just couldn’t support them anymore and I didn’t want them to go into poverty. Also, at this time I know that they were all Christians. I couldn’t be sure of that in the future as the children grow up.

  Pastor Rehwinkle may add a few more thoughts.

  With my sincere sympathy,

  John E. List

  To Helen’s sister Betty Jean Syfert he wrote:

  Mrs Jean Syfert

 
; By now you have heard of what happened to Helen and the children. I’m sorry that it had to go that way but when I couldn’t support them I couldn’t let them go on welfare etc.

  Please accept my sincere sympathy.

  John

  To Alma’s sister, Lydia, in Frankenmuth, he wrote:

  Mrs. Lydia Meyer

  By now you know what has happened to Mother and the rest of the family. For a number of reasons this was the only solution that I could see for the family. And to save Mother untold anguish over that result I felt it best that she be relieved from this vale of tears.

  Please accept my sincere condolences.

  John

  Despite what he had done during the day, John still managed to devote attention to pending business. His next letter was for Burton Goldstein at State Mutual. In it, he made suggestions to follow up on sales prospects:

  Hello Burt

  I’m sorry that it all had to end this way but with so little income I just couldn’t go on keeping the family together. And I didn’t want them to experience poverty.

  I want to thank you for everything that you did for me. You treated me better than any associate I’ve ever dealt with and I am sorry that I have to repay you in this way.

  The files are marked so that they can be turned over to you.

  Maybe Paul Greenberg can follow up on some.

  The best prospects for a quick sale are:

  Douglas Moe

  Edward Varga

  Odendahl

  Also be sure to contact Charles Jacobson CPA. I worked with him on the Swokenden thing and that worked real good.

  Also don’t fail to follow up with Harvey. He may be just about ready.

  Best wishes,

  John

  John then composed a separate message to Goldstein concerning a $500 loan his boss had advanced. “This is a lawful debt which the administrator is to pay to you,” John wrote. “Included should be a payment of interest at 6 percent per year. John E. List.”