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431 Hillside Avenue

431 Hillside Avenue

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Westfield, New Jersey. November 9th, 1971. Inside a grand 19-room mansion nicknamed Breeze Knoll, John List murdered his entire family—his wife, his mother, and his three teenage children—one by one. Then he cleaned the crime scene, wrote a five-page confession, turned on organ music over the intercom, and vanished.

For nearly a month, no one knew they were gone. The house remained eerily lit, with mail piling up and the lights burning out one by one. Inside, the bodies lay on sleeping bags in the ballroom. A perfectly staged funeral. A month-long silence.

List wouldn’t be captured for 18 years. By the time he was arrested in Denver, Colorado, under a false name, he had remarried and rebuilt his life. Calm. Ordinary. Unrepentant.

This episode explores the delusions of a man who believed murder was salvation, the months of horror trapped inside a house that never made a sound, and the town of Westfield that learned even the quietest homes can hide something monstrous.

📍 Featured Address: 431 Hillside Avenue, Westfield, NJ
⚠️ Content Warning: Graphic descriptions of familicide, child victims, religiously motivated violence. Listener discretion strongly advised.

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