Death Sentence, Joe Sharkey
Death Sentence, Joe Sharkey
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Death Sentence
The Inside Story of the John List Murders

Author: Joe Sharkey

Narrator: Shawn Compton

Unabridged: 9 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/19/2019


Synopsis

Until 1971, life was good for mild-mannered accountant John List. He was vice president of a Jersey City bank and had moved his mother, wife, and three teenage children into a nineteen-room home in Westfield, New Jersey. But all that changed when he lost his job. Raised by his Lutheran father to believe success meant being a good provider, List saw himself as an utter failure. Straining under financial burdens, the stress of hiding his unemployment, as well as the fear that the free-spirited 1970s would corrupt the souls of his children, List came to a shattering conclusion.

"It was my belief that if you kill yourself, you won't go to heaven," List told Connie Chung in a television interview. "So eventually I got to the point where I felt that I could kill them. Hopefully they would go to heaven, and then maybe I would have a chance to later confess my sins to God and get forgiveness."

List methodically shot his entire family in their home, managing to conceal the deaths for weeks with a carefully orchestrated plan of deception. Then he vanished and started over as Robert P. Clark. Chronicling List's life before and after the grisly crime, Death Sentence exposes the truth about the accountant-turned-killer, including the details of his high-profile trial.

About Joe Sharkey

Joe Sharkey was a weekly columnist for the New York Times for nineteen years. Previously, he was an assistant national editor at the Wall Street Journal and a reporter and columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer. The author of four books of nonfiction and one novel, Sharkey is currently an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Arizona. He and his wife live in Tucson.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joey

4.0 stars— Rating true crime books has always been a little more difficult for me than fictional books because you can’t really criticize the story or the plot twist you didn’t like. I try to instead rate how well th author researched the book, how much dramatic license the author takes and whether......more

John List is the Lutheran father who decided to kill his whole family because he couldn't afford to support them anymore. Also to send them to Heaven before they turned into heathens. He planned their execution perfectly and had a month head start before the bodies were found. John List aka Bob Clar......more

Goodreads review by Theresa

This is a well-written true crime story of a religious zealot who methodically killed his entire family over the course of an otherwise normal day: His wife, three teenage children, and his mother, and then got away with it for 18 years. I’m hoping it couldn’t possibly be that easy to assume a new i......more