Righteous Carnage: The List Murders

The 1971 slaying in New Jersey of five members of his family went unresolved for 19 years until the apprehension and sentencing of John List to five consecutive life terms. List, a Michigan native raised in a German-American community, was the only son of parents who were relatively old when he was born. Growing up isolated from other children and furiously overprotected by his mother, he was also indoctrinated into the most conservative, rigid sort of Lutheranism. As a consequence, argue novelist Benford and psychologist Johnson, he turned into an obsessive-compulsive with no ability to deal with people, a defect that led to failure in job after job. He married a widow who had syphilis (but hid that fact) and became an alcoholic. Apparently believing that he was doing what was best for them, List killed his wife, their three children and her mother. He then disappeared, assuming another identity, but was identified through the TV program America's Most Wanted . A full-length and riveting portrait of an anomalous killer. (Aug.)