Collateral Damage: The John List Story

To anyone who ever knew him, including fellow prisoners, John List comes across as a kindly and gentle man. Deeply religious he never missed church, never swore and never had a woman until just before marriage. But there was something wrong with him. He couldn’t recall anything about the 41 days of combat he experienced in Germany as an infantryman in World War II. He couldn’t seem to hold a job for long and he had trouble dealing with the problems of his teenaged kids. Then in 1971, seemingly out of the blue, List murdered his mother, wife and three children in cold blood, and fled to Colorado to live, work and remarry under an assumed name. Diagnosed as suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, it now appears that both John List and his victims should be listed as collateral damage of war.