THE QUESTION OF THE LETTERS
The five pages that John List wrote to his pastor, Reverend Eugene Rehwinkel, constitute one of the most unusual documents in the history of American criminal cases. They were produced by the killer, addressed to a specific recipient, and delivered with the apparent expectation that they would be read and would serve some purpose.
What purpose, exactly, is difficult to determine. List did not need to write the letters. He was leaving. He could have simply left, and the investigation would have had to determine from physical evidence what had happened. The letters gave investigators something they might not have otherwise had: his own account of his reasoning.
That account — religious, financial, framed as concern for his family’s spiritual wellbeing — was not the kind of account that investigators or prosecutors needed for the purposes of the case. The physical evidence from the crime scene established what had happened in terms sufficient for prosecution. The letters were not necessary to establish the killings.
What the letters seem to represent is something more like a psychological necessity. John List needed to explain himself. He needed to put on record his version of why he had done what he had done. He needed, perhaps, to believe that the explanation would be understood, or at least received, by someone he considered an authority on the theological matters he was invoking.
The letters were addressed to the pastor — the religious authority whose judgment on these matters List apparently cared about. The letter was not addressed to investigators, or to the public, or to some general audience. It was addressed to the person whose understanding and absolution would have mattered most to John List as he understood himself.
Whether Reverend Rehwinkel found the letter comprehensible as an explanation — whether he could make sense of the theological framework List had constructed around five killings — is not part of the public record. He turned the letter over to investigators. What he made of it personally is not documented.
The letters have been quoted selectively in various accounts of the case, and the specific language attributed to them varies somewhat across sources. The general content — the religious framing, the financial concerns, the expressed belief that the killings were protective — is consistent across the accounts that refer to them. The specific language should be treated as approximation in any account that does not have direct access to the authenticated originals.