“We’re here to arrest Robert Clark.”
Now why would you arrest some poor old accountant like Bob? Sandra thought. Maybe he had embezzled at his previous job.
“For what?” Sandra said, and the reply nearly caused her to fall off the chair she was leaning back in.
“Homicide.”
Her mouth was agape as the agents brushed past and headed into the office. She quickly joined them. Bob was just down the hallway, coming back from the Xerox machine with some papers in his hand. He practically collided with August as the agents turned the corner into the hall.
When his past finally caught up with him, Bob Clark was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and a necktie that was loosened. He had on tan pants. His suit jacket hung on a rack near his desk. Two of the agents moved into position at his side, just past the reach of peripheral vision. August stood facing him. Bob’s face didn’t show surprise or fear. It showed contempt.
“Mr. Clark,” he said, his badge flashing in the light. “We’re with the FBI, and we need to confirm your identification.”
The badge could have belonged to a meter reader for the electric company for all the scrutiny Bob gave it. He just stood there with the papers in his hand as the agents sized him up and relaxed a little when they realized that this aging suspect didn’t pose much of a physical threat to three trained cops in fairly good shape. There was no sign of aggression about to spring. His attitude was more that of a schoolteacher awaiting a student’s explanation of himself.
August began, according to the book.
“Would you tell us your name please?”
“Robert Clark.”
“We need to ask you a few questions, Mr. Clark. Do you have a scar behind your right ear?” August could see very well that he did.
Bob turned his head slightly to show it.
“Have you ever had an operation for a hernia?”
“Yes.”
“Were you born in Michigan?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re an accountant?”
“Yes, I am.”
There was a pause.
“Are you John Emil List?” August said.
“No.”
The agent was surprised. There had been no hesitation in the response, that was one thing. But there wasn’t a hint of surprise. And most interesting, there wasn’t any sign of annoyance. August figured that his own response, whether he was or was not the man in question, would have been an angry, “Who in hell is John List?”
The three agents had closed in past the physical space borders of incidental conversation.
“Do you mind if we search you for weapons?” August said. It wasn’t a request.
Bob shrugged. “Okay.”
August told him to place his arms out at full length and lean against the wall. He complied without any objection whatsoever.
When the pat-down was finished, August addressed him: “You’re John List, aren’t you?”
“I know who I am,” the man said, seeming to force indignity into his voice. “I’m Robert Clark.”
Standing off to the side watching this unfold, Sandra had to move away when Bob gave her the mournful look of a man who believes he has been betrayed. Red blotches, she noticed, had broken out on his face.
The officers were prepared for any sudden move, but Bob just stood there impassively, waiting for the external world to act on him.
“Then you won’t mind coming down to the police station for fingerprints?” August asked. He had the cuffs out. Passively, Bob held out his hands and let August lock them on. August read him his Miranda rights.
Sandra jumped at the clank of the cuffs being snapped shut. She and the other accountant in the office, Les Wingfield, were standing off to the side and they both looked at the clock at the same time when they heard the cuffs go on. It was eleven-ten A.M.
“Uh-oh,” Les said in a low voice to Sandra, as if he had just finally figured out what was going on. “Looks like Bob’s going to jail.” He gave a soft whistle. Les had never liked Bob, who had impressed him as one very cold fish.
Bob, unprotesting, head bowed, was hustled out without further ceremony, and, Sandra noticed, without his suit coat.
The federal agents helped Bob into the back seat of August’s car. One man got in beside him. In the driver’s seat, August was mildly perplexed. He had arrested literally hundreds of people, and never encountered one like this. This guy hadn’t even asked what the charge was. Forget about the innocent ones. Even the guilty suspects asked that! It was a little nerve-wracking, in fact. Before he started the car, August looked over his shoulder directly at Bob, who hadn’t said a word since being handcuffed.
August felt a little silly as soon as he’d said it: “If you are John List,” he told the suspect sternly, “you did a terrible thing by killing your entire family.”
The suspect didn’t reply. But as he started the car, August did think he had seen a tear faintly glistening in Bob’s eye.
They took him first to Richmond police headquarters for fingerprints. A few blocks away, the magnolias were in bloom on the neatly groomed grounds of the state capitol. Young men and women on their lunch hours from state offices relaxed and mingled in the cool shade.
At police headquarters, it took a while for the fingerprint expert to finish taking Bob’s prints and making the comparisons. When he did, he walked out to where the agents were waiting and gave the thumbs-up sign.
“That clinches it,” August said.
After almost eighteen years, the authorities had at last made an arrest in the murders of Helen, Alma, Patricia, John, and Frederick List. The suspect was booked on the federal charge of being a fugitive from prosecution for homicide. He was booked under the name John Emil List.
At two o’clock, after a brief wait in the lockup at the federal courthouse, the suspect, handcuffed again, was readied for his first hearing.
Among the affidavits and other statements he had signed was one swearing that his name was Robert P. Clark; another was a financial disclosure statement to make application for a court-appointed attorney.
The suspect walked into the courtroom from the lockup area accompanied by two federal marshals. They took off the cuffs and seated him alone at a table. The marshals withdrew to the sidelines.
As a standard safeguard against a suicide attempt, his tie and belt had been taken from him. So had his eyeglasses, and this made him appear slightly disoriented. He squinted toward the blur as U.S. Magistrate David G. Lowe strode in and took the bench.
The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney N. George Metcalf, who explained the charge to Lowe and asked that the suspect be held in custody without bail pending arraignment and further hearings.
The judge addressed the suspect. “Mr. List?” he began.
“Yes, sir?” the suspect responded.
This was not taken as an admission of anything but an obsequiousness in the face of authority, however. The magistrate elicited from the suspect the concession that he had been informed of his rights, and then took a few minutes to review those rights for him. The magistrate then asked the suspect if he could afford a lawyer.
“No, I cannot.”
“Would you like court-appointed counsel?” the magistrate asked.
“I would appreciate it, yes.”
Lowe, who had in front of him the application the suspect had already filled out, had him go over his personal finances for the record.
The suspect said he earned about $2,000 a month in salary at the accounting firm. He said he had recently received a check of $3,000 from H&R Block for part-time work during tax season. He said his wife was unemployed.
Was there any additional income?
“Well, interest on a savings account,” said the suspect. “Maybe $50.” He declared that the balance in that account was about $1,000.
“Anything else?” the magistrate asked.
The only other assets the suspect could think of were a 1981 Ford Escort, estimate
d value $800, and the $20 he recalled having in his wallet when he was arrested that morning. “We are purchasing a home,” he said helpfully, “but it is in my wife’s name.”
Monthly fixed bills were $650 for mortgage and taxes and about $200 for utilities. “Various credit cards debts,” the suspect added, totaled about $5,000. “I pay about $150 a month on those.”
Clearly, the man was living close to the edge of his income if not beyond it. But close isn’t enough under federal guidelines. His application for a court-appointed lawyer was denied.
Lowe then ordered the suspect held without bail and scheduled a bond hearing for Monday, with a preliminary hearing to follow a week later.
“You will be given every opportunity to contact a lawyer to represent you at those proceedings,” the magistrate said.
Later, when he was led outside in handcuffs for the drive to the Henrico County Jail, the suspect had his first taste of what was to come. Reporters and photographers were waiting to pounce, pressing in from all angles with their microphones and flashing cameras, demanding, again and again until he was inside the car and it pulled away: “Are you John List? Are you John List?”
Early that same afternoon, Wally Parsons got the most shocking phone call of his life.
“Wally!” a distraught Delores Clark was crying. She sounded desperate for help.
“What’s the matter, for God’s sake?” he asked.
“Bob has done been arrested.”
“What for?”
“Murder,” she wailed.
When he recovered from his shock, Wally moved fast to help. The reporters were already calling Delores’s house, so he had her come to his place, where she took refuge in the room that Bob and she had shared. First, they arranged for a local lawyer, David P. Baugh, to represent her husband.
At the lawyer’s suggestion, they began drafting a statement to respond to the clamor from the press, which was growing louder as the story broke in New York, where it generated big headlines in the daily tabloids and even made the front page of The New York Times. By the dozens, reporters and television crews were scrambling onto planes for Richmond and looking for people to interview. Already, photographers and camera crews had set up a virtual camp outside the Clarks’ house in Brandermill.
Wally and Delores consulted with Delores’s pastor and several of her relatives, and then stayed up long into the night composing the statement, which Wally suggested they give first to the Richmond News Leader, in an attempt to take some wind out of the sails of the out-of-town press. When he spoke with a reporter for the local paper, he prefaced the statement with this personal assurance: “You can be a hundred percent absolutely sure that this lady knows absolutely nothing about anything in Bob’s past.”
In the written statement, Delores asked the press to “respect my right to my personal privacy during this very dramatic and uncertain time.” Delores said she was making the statement “reluctantly,” and that it would be her final comment on the matter.
“I was shocked to hear about Bob’s arrest and what he is charged with,” her statement said. “This is not the man I know. The man I know is kind, loving. A devoted husband and dear friend. He is a quiet yet friendly man who loves his work and people he works with.
“He loves our new home and loves working in and out of it and around it. We both enjoy going to church. Bob is a man of devotion and faith. I find this hard to believe. I hope somehow this is not true, and if it is, he was so stressed out that something snapped.
“I am devoted to him. I hope that somehow God will see us through this.”
Delores had been turned away when she tried to visit her husband on the afternoon of his arrest. The next day, Friday, she and her pastor from the Church of Our Savior, the Reverend Joseph M. Vought, came back at noon and were allowed in.
Bob was being kept by himself in a two-man cell in the isolation area of the county jail. The cell had frosted reinforced glass windows, not bars. There was a toilet, a sink, and two bunks. The minister was allowed into the cell itself with the prisoner. Delores had to peer through the glass and speak with her husband on a telephone. She could hear that Bob was crying, too.
The minister realized that Bob hadn’t slept. He looked shaken and exhausted. “There seemed to be some relief about him,” Vought told reporters outside the jail. “Whether that was reflective of the fact that he didn’t have to put up the front anymore, I don’t know.”
Delores went back alone to visit her husband the next day, Saturday. When she got back to Wally’s, she told him they had “a very pleasant conversation, reminiscing about our life together.” They did not discuss specifics of what he had been charged with, she said.
Bob Clark had been less well known than Delores at the Church of Our Savior, where Sunday services were dominated by buzzing about the arrest. A large number of reporters showed up at the church, but they couldn’t find many people who had any but the most general impressions of the quiet, well-mannered man. The minister had warned congregants from the pulpit to be wary of speaking about Bob Clark publicly, because, Vought said, “people’s lives are hanging in the balance here.”
Speaking himself to reporters, Vought said before services, “The man police say is John List is not the man we know.
“We are continuing to minister to Bob and Delores Clark,” the minister lectured the news media, whose interest was in a mass murderer, not a congregant. “We pray that falsehood and sensationalism will be replaced by truth and compassion.”
After a weekend in Henrico County Jail, the suspect didn’t forget his manners. Sandra Silbermann was at the office on Monday morning when she picked up the phone and the operator asked if she would accept a collect call from a Bob Clark.
She did. “Bob? Bob?” she said, wondering if someone was playing a mean joke.
But it was him, all right. She recognized the deep monotone.
“I’m sorry I was picked up at the office,” he said. “I’m sorry if I caused any inconvenience.”
“Bob?” she said, “are you all right?”
He said he was fine. He asked if she would gather his suit coat and the few personal belongings from his desk. He had hired a lawyer, who was sending someone by to pick them up, along with his car, which was still parked in the lot outside. Sandra told him that his things, mostly mail and little personal effects like a letter opener, were packed in a box. A large container hadn’t been needed. He kept no pictures in the office, and on the wall behind his desk, some certificates belonging to a former employee still were hanging.
The conversation didn’t last much more than a minute.
The defendant waived the Monday hearing. The next court appearance came on Thursday, a week after the arrest. The defendant entered a plea of not guilty. Magistrate Lowe took note of that before setting bond at $1 million.
The suspect allowed himself a small, tight smile when he heard how much bail he was worth.
The suspect appeared surprised as the federal prosecutor then moved to drop the fugitive charge. But any sense of good fortune was quickly dispelled when he realized that this was merely a way to expedite allowing him to be taken into custody by the state of Virginia to await extradition to New Jersey on the five counts of first-degree homicide. U.S. marshals escorted the suspect out of the federal courtroom and turned him over to a Virginia state police officer and a Henrico county detective, who accompanied him back to the county jail. That afternoon he was taken before a county district judge and remanded into state custody pending an extradition hearing to show cause why he should not be returned to New Jersey for trial.
In the courtroom as observers during that proceeding were Captain Marranca and an assistant county prosecutor from Union County who had flown to Virginia the night before to begin preparing for the trial.
As the suspect was led in and out of court during the day, reporters noticed that he was carrying with him a paperback book. He wore the same suit—now reunited with its jacket—that he had on
when he was arrested. He kept his head down and ignored the question that was still being shouted at him: “Are you John List?”
The same afternoon, in another attempt to put an end to the clamor for information about her life with Bob Clark, Delores held a news conference outside her lawyer’s office on Oregon Hill, a part of town that overlooks a bend in the James River.
Looking frantic, Delores repeated her belief that her husband was not John List. “I do not believe it. I love my husband very deeply,” she said. “I do not believe this is the same man.” As the reporters and photographers pressed in, she began weeping. But she stayed with it for twenty more minutes.
“People who know Robert would agree he has a great desire to do well and to maintain good relationships with others,” she said in a halting, frail voice, reading from a prepared statement which trembled in her hands. “My husband has many sincere and dedicated friends. He has always been very helpful and kind to those in need. Robert is an exceptional man. He has great faith and loves God.
“I have never known Robert to be anything but a sweet and gentle man of good character. We have had a happy marriage filled with mutual respect and love.”
After she read her prepared statement, the questions were shouted at her. She seemed to recoil from each one as she answered waveringly.
Didn’t he show you any pictures of his previous wife who died? Weren’t you curious?
“Well, no,” Delores said uncomfortably.
Did that lady in Denver show you the newspaper article about John List and say she thought it was your husband?
“She did come over and show me the paper. I dismissed it because I felt it was not true.”
Are your finances sound?
“No. I would not say so.”
How can you continue to believe in your husband in face of all of the evidence that he is in fact John List?
“I do not know. I have not seen that report or anything. I do not know.”
Baugh leaned near to her and said in a stage whisper, “How much longer do you want this to continue?”
“Whatever it will take to get them away.”
What Delores Clark did not understand, and would not comprehend for some time, was that they were not going to go away, and not because of any vendetta against her privacy. Most reporters, in fact, tried to respect that as best they could under the circumstances. With prosecutors assuring them that there was not a single doubt that Bob Clark was John List—the fingerprints matched, the mastoidectomy and hernia scars matched, every physical characteristic matched, and had Bob Clark even tried to come up with a shred of evidence that he had existed before November 1971, when he arrived full-grown in Denver?—the interest was virtually uncontrollable. With the suspect out of touch in jail, his wife was the next closest news source available. She was not as much a victim of the news media as, like so many others, another victim of John List.
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