After extradition to New Jersey, he was convicted on five counts of first degree murder and sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment, making him ineligible for parole for nearly 75 years.

[2] List gave critical financial problems, as well as his perception that his family members were straying from their religious faith, as his motivations for the murders.

At Fort Eustis in Virginia, he met Helen Morris Taylor, the widow of an infantry officer killed in action in Korea, who lived nearby with her daughter, Brenda.

[4] After completion of his second tour in 1952, List worked for an accounting firm in Detroit, and then as an audit supervisor at a paper company in Kalamazoo, where his three children were born.

[6] In 1960, his stepdaughter Brenda married and left the household, and List moved with the remainder of his family to Rochester, New York, to take a job with Xerox.

After driving John Frederick home, List shot him repeatedly because, as misfire evidence showed, his son attempted to defend himself.

In a five-page letter to his pastor found on the desk in his study, List claimed that he saw too much evil in the world, and he had killed his family to save their souls.

[11] Westfield, which had few violent crimes recorded since 1963, received national attention as the site of one of the most notorious felonies in New Jersey since the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. A nationwide manhunt was launched.

[16] Destroyed along with the home was the ballroom's stained glass skylight, rumored to be a signed Tiffany original, worth at least $100,000 at the time (equivalent to $730,000 in 2023).

While his name is still occasionally mentioned in Cooper articles and documentaries, no direct evidence implicates him, and the FBI no longer considers him a suspect.

[24][17] The segment featured an age-progressed clay bust, sculpted by forensic artist Frank Bender, which turned out to bear a close resemblance to List's actual appearance.

[25][26] On June 1, less than two weeks after the broadcast, List was arrested at a Richmond accounting firm after a Denver neighbor recognized the description and alerted authorities.

[29][30] At trial, List testified that his financial difficulties reached crisis level in 1971 when he was laid off with the closure of the Jersey City bank.

According to trial testimony, Helen had pressured List into marriage by falsely claiming that she was pregnant, then insisted that they marry in Maryland, which did not require the premarital syphilis test mandated in most other states at the time.

By then, progression of the disease combined with her excessive alcohol consumption had, according to testimony, "transformed her [into]... an unkempt and paranoid recluse"[31][33] who frequently – and often publicly – humiliated List, comparing his sexual prowess unfavorably with that of her first husband.

[34] A court-appointed psychiatrist testified that List suffered from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and that he saw only two solutions to his situation: accept welfare, or kill his family and send their souls to heaven.

"After 18 years, five months and 22 days, it is now time for the voices of Helen, Alma, Patricia, Frederick and John F. List to rise from the grave."

[36] List filed an appeal of his convictions on grounds that his judgment had been impaired by post-traumatic stress disorder due to his military service.

[41] In 2008, John Walsh, the host of America's Most Wanted, donated the age-progressed bust by Frank Bender that played a pivotal role in List's apprehension to a forensic science exhibition at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment in Washington, D.C., whose collection was later moved to Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.