The Anatomy of Evil

by Michael H. Stone

  John List

  People somewhat familiar with the saga of John List connect his name with evil because of the emotionless way he went about killing his entire family, much as one might swat pesky flies in the kitchen. But there is more. List, with the palpably absurd excuses he later fashioned to explain away his actions, carried hypocrisy to heights even the most corrupt politician could not rival.

  List was born in Michigan in 1925, the only child of a pious Lutheran family. His father was described as rigid, joyless, angry-the neighborhood crank and an ultraconservative religious zealot.20 His mother, Alma, was alternately domineering and overprotective.21 John himself was known in his early days as a priggish "mama's boy" and "neat freak," fastidious and obsessed with books about the military. Worried lest he get sick, Alma did not allow him to go out and play with the other children; "play" consisted instead of she and John reading the Bible together in the evening-a custom he maintained once she came to live with him and his family, until the very end.22

  Though he saw no action during his stint in World War II, he did acquire a knowledge of guns, as well as some actual guns, which figure prominently in his life later on-especially an Austrian pistol he brought back from overseas. Outwardly moralistic, unspontaneous, and detail oriented, List was a caricature of the compulsive personality. He eventually obtained a degree in accounting, but because of his poor social skills and meager executive abilities, he lost many jobs-meantime becoming increasingly in debt. The debt became overwhelming once he moved to a huge eighteen-room mansion in Westfield, New Jersey, with his family, now consisting of his aging mother; his wife, Helen; and their three children. The house was way beyond his means, and the situation was compounded by his wife's progressive mental illness-the result of late-stage syphilis contracted from her first husband.23 There was the added dissatisfaction with his teenage children, especially the eldest, sixteen-year-old Patricia-a fun-loving girl whom he called a "slut" when he had to go to the police one night after she and another girl had been innocently walking together in the late hours.

  It was in this context that he carried out his meticulous plan on November 9, 1971. After kissing his mother a final time, he shot her in the back of the head, and then did the same to Helen. When two of his children, Patricia and Frederick, came home that afternoon from school, he shot them in the same way-all with the old Austrian pistol. The youngest, John Jr., had been playing soccer at school, so John drove over to watch his son in the game, brought him back home-and shot him to death too. For some reason John Jr. did not die immediately, so his father fired off nine more shots to complete his mission. After tucking the bodies of his wife and children in sleeping bags, he prayed over them and then departed. He had ample time to get to wherever he was going, since the family was not missed at first and their bodies not discovered for a month.

  The hypocrisy machinery now moving into full gear, List wrote a letter to his pastor explaining the reasons for the murders. The 1970s were a sinful time, in his opinion, and his daughter was succumbing to temptation, given her interest in an acting career, which List saw as linked to Satan. By killing them all before they had renounced their faith, he had ensured their place in heaven. List changed his name to that of a student he once knew at college, Robert Clark. He began a new life, remarried, and lived free, first in Denver, then in Virginia-until his capture, which did not take place until eighteen years later. The arrest came about through the help of a forensic artist, Frank Bender, who created in clay a bust of what he imagined List would look like at age sixty-four. This image was shown on the television program America's Most Wanted. A week and a half later, someone recognized the face and called the police. List was arrested. On May 1, 1990, List was sentenced to life in prison on five counts of first-degree murder. Far from expressing any remorse for the murders, List was convinced he would rejoin his family in heaven-as he explained during a TV interview in 2002 with Connie Chung of ABC's show Downtown. She asked him why he didn't just kill himself when he saw his debts exceeding what he could ever hope to repay. As he patiently explained, suicide was a sin that would bar him from heaven and thus deny him access to his family. But if he murdered them and then sought forgiveness, they would have forgiven him-or else not even know that he had been the instrument of their deaths, so either way, they could all spend eternity as a family just as before. He also recounted to Chung how he cleaned up the blood from the room where he had shot his wife, and then, at the same table where she had been sitting, made himself lunch-because, as he told her, "I was hungry."

  List's self-serving rationalizations had already moved into full swing long before the Chung interview: in 1995, during a radio interview, List was asking for a second trial because of what is sometimes facetiously called the "orphan's plea"; namely, that he was "suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder" as a result of "killing my family."

  As I emphasize throughout this book, the label "evil" is an emotional reaction, and in a high-profile case like this one, a public reaction. In this light, the Gradations scale represents a method for acknowledging this reaction but then analyzing the case further as more information becomes available. There is the additional aim, as mentioned earlier, to look more closely at the resulting compartments-as a first step in learning whether there are particular background factors and causative elements that occur with special frequency among the persons grouped together in this or that category, or level.

  For most people to consider List's act as evil, it would suffice that he had killed his (aging) mother, his (ailing) wife, and his (blameless) kids. But then there was the icy detachment in his twisting the words of the Holy Book in ways as yet unheard of-to justify getting rid of people in the way. In the manner of the CEO of a failing corporation who knows that you must either increase sales or decrease expenses, the easiest place to start is to cut down expenses. You do this by firing employees who bring in no income: the workers in the mailroom, the human resources personnel. List was not accountant enough to bring in more money-but he knew that one mouth to feed (his) was 83 percent cheaper than feeding six. Simply put: Five had to go.

  Kristin Rossum

  -John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1819

  The inspiration for Keats's famous poem is said to have been a hoax played on his brother Tom, who was deceived in a romantic liaison,24 or perhaps Keats's own conflict over whether to marry a certain Fanny Brawne, of whom his friends disapproved.

  Kristin Rossum fits the image of Keats's mistress well: a beautiful woman without compassion. She did not start out that way, so far as one can tell. The eldest of three children born to Professor Ralph Rossum and his wife, Constance, Kristin had the advantages of beauty, brightness, and balletic talent. After a triumph as the lead in the Nutcracker'25 she seemed headed for a successful career in ballet-but she then sustained a leg injury and was no longer able to dance. This incident set in motion a disastrous sequence of events reminiscent of the old saying "For want of a nail, the kingdom is lost. "26

  As stated in her biography,27 Kristin modeled as a child and excelled at school, but at sixteen she became depressed and disillusioned after the injury. A friend at her Los Angeles high school suggested she share in smoking some crystal methamphetamine. This gave Kristin a "high" in which, as she later explained,"g she felt revved up and energetic and happy. Her personality deteriorated rapidly: she developed an eating disorder, scratched her face, and added cocaine to her drug abuse. Discovering her drug use (and her lying about it), her parents reprimanded her severely. They found their credit cards, personal checks, and camera missing-all used presumably to generate cash for illicit drugs. Kristin cut her wrists, became manipulative, and threatened suicide. She was sent to Narcotics Anonymous and for a time was clean, but she relapsed; she managed to finish high school, but was then expelled from college because of drug abuse. Reverting to crystal meth, she would drive over the Mexican border to Tijuana to get drugs from a dealer.

  Kristin, still only eighteen in
1994, ran away from home and began using crystal meth every day-and became sexually promiscuous. During a chance encounter on a bridge to Tijuana, she dropped her jacket, which was retrieved by a young man from a good family: Gregory de Villers. It was love at first sight for Gregory, who vowed to help her kick the drug habit. For a time it seemed he had succeeded. Her feelings for him were mixed, yet the two remained together and, despite Kristin's wanting to cancel wedding plans at the last minute, they did marry in 1999. Meantime, she had returned to college and graduated cum laude in 1998. Ironically, or perhaps not so ironically, Kristin majored in toxicology and began work in a toxicology lab in San Diego. Her boss, Michael Robertson, was a toxicologist from Australia, older, handsome-and married. By 2000, Kristin was already feeling trapped in her marriage and had begun an affair with Michael, who in turn was cheating on Kristin with yet another woman. Kristin also reverted to her old drug habits and became once again dependent on methamphetamine-this time filched from the lab.

  Greg found out about her infidelity, which she denied. Kristin and Michael exchanged numerous love letters via e-mail, one of which Greg came across and printed out. He became furious. Kristin shredded the letter, which Greg then tried to reconstruct. When Greg threatened to tell the lab higher-ups, Kristin misled him with protestations of "love," all the while still carrying on the affair with Michael. Finally she used her toxicological skills and access to drugs from the workplace to create a deadly cocktail-with which she poisoned Greg to death in November of 2000. One of the ingredients was fentanyl-an opioid analgesic eighty to one hundred times as potent as morphine, and capable in small amounts of causing death from profound respiratory depression. Kristin staged Greg's death to appear as a suicide, with their wedding picture near his pillow and some of her notes nearby in which she wrote of wanting to leave the marriage. These pieces of evidence led the police at first to conclude that Greg simply couldn't live without her.

  But toxicologists from a different lab discovered in Greg's tissues fentanyl levels that were seven times the lethal dose. From this and other evidence accumulated by Greg's brothers two years later, Kristin was brought to trial, convicted, and sentenced to life without parole. She showed no remorse and continued to lie about the murder even while in prison. How her personality would have unfolded without the drug abuse is unknowable. For want of a ballet career-the lost nail in her case-she took to drug abuse, which led to deceitfulness, manipulativeness, promiscuity, absence of remorse, stealing drugs: altogether, the picture of "acquired psychopathy" in someone ultimately driven to murder in order to get her husband "out of the way." The descent into evil actions-such as murder or infanticide-under the impact of powerful drugs like crack cocaine or crystal meth is a story heard all too often by the police and in the courts. This happens more often among those who were neglected or abused as children,29 but it can happen even in those who started out, like Kristin Rossum, with what seemed like every advantage.

  CATEGORY 11: PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS OF PEOPLE IN THE WAY

  The distinction between Categories 10 and 11 lies not in the behaviors of persons in these groups but in the degree and origins of their psychopathic tendencies. Those in Category 11 are more "dyed-in-the-wool" psychopaths, showing signs of conduct disorder or marked antisocial behaviors consistently from age eight or nine all the way through adolescence and beyond. These are the people whom some call early-onset or life-course persistent antisocial offenders .30 A proportion of them later on show the characteristics of full-blown psychopathy.

  Christian Longo

  The elder of two brothers raised originally in a Catholic family, Chris Longo's parents divorced when he was four. His mother, joy, was a teenager when she divorced her first husband after he beat her over the abdomen in an effort to make her abort the child she was carrying. She remarried, this time to Joe Longo, and then converted to Jehovah's Witness when Chris was ten. Joy persuaded Joe to convert also. In this strict religious group parents often avoid contact with the "worldly people," and homeschool their children. Chris wet his bed until he was ten, which is often a sign of emotional instability. He started out in public school, but didn't do well, so he hacked illegally into the school computer in order to hoist his grades. It was at that point, as Chris was about to enter high school, that Joe and joy pulled him out of that school and henceforth homeschooled him.31

  Chris was not allowed to date even when he was turned eighteen. His reaction to that edict was to leave home the following week. Shortly after, he married Mary Jane, also a Jehovah's Witness and seven years older than he. Chris had not graduated high school and had no good skills or prospects. He got a job in a jewelry store, from which he stole $108, resigning after he paid the money back. He was sued several times for nonpayment of other monies he owed. Chris wanted the best of everything-another sign of departure from the Jehovah's Witnesses, who emphasize austerity. He began using false names and stolen credit cards to maintain his lifestyle, and he once drove off in a test car and disappeared, using yet another alias. Forging $30,000 worth of checks to raise cash, he hastily moved his family from Michigan to Ohio. By then, he had three small children, all born between 1997 and 1999. At one point Mary Jane discovered an e-mail between her husband and another woman. When confronted, Chris told Mary-Jane he had stopped loving her when she had all those children, and that she wasn't fun anymore.32

  Mary-Jane, raised to be subservient to a husband no matter what, put up with his infidelity and his scams. Keeping a step ahead of the authorities, he stole a van and moved the family to Oregon, where he was only able to get a low-paying job-necessitating further thefts to feed the family. As the police were finally about to close in on him, he drowned Mary-Jane and the three children, dumping their bodies in different Oregon rivers, after which he fled to Cancun, Mexico. The body of his three-year-old daughter, Sadie, had been weighted down with a rock. Clearly he imagined their bodies would never be found, and he would be free to begin life over under a more favorable star. It was as though he taken to heart Joseph Stalin's famous quip (upon ridding himself of a rival): "No body, no problem."

  Once in Cancun, he assumed the identity of another man, Michael Finkel, who wrote feature articles for the New York Times. He was arrested in Cancun a few weeks later, still in the guise of the well-known journalist, partying and enjoying his ersatz celebrity. His true identity soon uncovered, he was convicted and sentenced to death. He rationalized the murders as his way of sending his family to a "better place"-in keeping with his religious teaching.33 Chris had the outward persona of a Prince Charming, convinced he could talk his way out of anything. One of his wife's sisters had a certain admiration for his talents at charm and deception, commenting that Chris was capable of conning anyone.

  CATEGORY 14: RUTHLESSLY SELF-CENTERED PSYCHOPATHIC SCHEMERS34

  Some of the persons included in Category 14 were, like those we have already met in this chapter, eager to get someone permanently out of the way, whether that person might be a parent, a wealthy stranger, or a spouse. Usually, however, it was a spouse. And because there are many more men willing to kill a wife than there are wives willing to kill a husband, uxoricides (the fancy term for wife killers) greatly outnumber husband killers. But there is something more diabolical, more glaringly premeditated and psychopathic-hence more evil-in the eyes of the public about this type of criminal than those described in the earlier sections. Many had longer criminal careers and a more checkered past than those in the lower categories. Among the six hundred biographies I have relied on for much of this book, the highest percentage of the individuals are found in Category 14-one person in seven. I will have more to say on the topic of wife murder at the end of this section, but at this point it is worth noting how often staging crops up in the stories of spousal murder when it occurs in the educated and the well-to-do. Relative to our focus on evil, there is not only the "regular" evil of murder, but the added evil of chutzpah: the brazen assumption by these killers that they are far more clever than t
he police and thus immune to prosecution. It is as though they believe that, paraphrasing the late Leona Helmsley, jail is for the little people.35 Staging refers to the deliberate alteration of a murder scene to make it look like an accident. The use of a hired hit man-as we saw in the Minns case-is another way a spouse (more often a husband than a wife) may try to feign innocence and elude guilt by distancing himself from the crime. The case that follows illustrates this point.

  Todd Garton

  The younger of two sons from a northern California family of Irish American descent, Todd from his earliest days was addicted to risk and thrill seeking. He was a compulsive weaver of tall tales, embellishing his image with stories of derring-do and accomplishments that were all make-believe. Granted that the con artist has a keen nose for the gullible, Garton's virtuosity at deception put him in a class by himself. He got his friends to believe that when he was only twelve-or was it fifteen?-he was already a mercenary in Belfast for the Irish Republican Army, serving as a "sniper" before "returning" to his home in California. He boasted that he had killed two "bad guys" when he was sixteen and had thrown their bodies in the Columbia River. Garton was actually a fairly competent bass player and headed up a band that enjoyed some popularity in Oregon and northern California-a band that was destined, according to his braggadocio, to become the "next Beatles." He became absorbed with the fantasy of organizing an assassination squad to be known as "The Company." To show that he meant business, Todd would shoot cats, as he walked along with a friend, Norman Daniels, whom he would later recruit into his plan for murder. To Daniels he said that the "Company" was headed by a mysterious Colonel Sean who was "out of Langley" (the headquarters of the CIA) and was into "cover-up stuff."36 Todd also lined up another friend, Dale Gordon, to participate in "justified killings"-in which Todd would portray a certain Dean Noyes as a "scumbag" who "stole money from a hospital group and beat up his wife."37 Dale later said: "I believed him because the stories were very real stories. He [Todd] would give you smells, sights, everything."38