THE EIGHT MONTHS OF DENIAL
Between his arrest on June 1, 1989, and his admission of identity on February 16, 1990, John List occupied a peculiar legal and psychological position.
He was charged as John Emil List. He was identified as John Emil List by fingerprints. He was almost certainly being told by his attorneys that the evidence against him was conclusive. And he continued to present himself as Robert Clark.
What was driving the denial is not fully documented in the public record. Several possibilities present themselves, none of which can be stated as fact.
One possibility is pure legal strategy: keep the denial going as long as possible, explore every possible avenue for challenging the identification or the extradition, create as much time as possible for the defense to build whatever case it could. A defendant who admits identity forecloses certain procedural options; a defendant who maintains denial keeps those options technically open, even if they are ultimately unavailing.
Another possibility is psychological: the identity of Robert Clark had been John List’s operative reality for nearly eighteen years. The idea of admitting to being John List — of reattaching himself to the person he had been in Westfield, to the murders he had committed, to the warrant that had pursued him — may have been genuinely difficult to confront, beyond the strategic calculation of a criminal defendant.
A third possibility is simpler: he was hoping for something to change. Some legal development, some challenge to the extradition, some procedural opening that might change his situation. As the months passed and nothing changed, and as February 1990 approached with the trial scheduled, the denial became untenable.
He admitted his identity. He was extradited to New Jersey. The trial began.