Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories
Darren Marlar | Weird Darkness
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FAMILY ANNIHILATORS: John List And The Psychology Of Familicide
In November 1971, John List shot his mother, his wife, and his three children inside their Westfield, New Jersey, mansion, then walked out the next morning and stayed free for nearly 18 years. Criminologists at Birmingham City University later went through three decades of British cases like his and found that most of the men responsible had steady jobs, everything from surgeons to postmen to serving police officers, and few of them had a criminal record. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/FamilyAnnihilators READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckhusk6 FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Weirdo family member, Katie Jo, tells us that as a child she saw something similar to glitter – but in a very supernatural form! (Sparkles) *** An old man opens up to something that happened to him over six decades ago that he has never told anyone before – something that he says ruined his life. (Something Happened 63 Years Ago) *** A woman in bed is startled awake in the middle of the night when she feels someone pull her arm out from under her head – but she’s the only one in her apartment. (Someone Or Something Moved My Hand) *** Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors everywhere. The more mirrors Lucida had the more she could admire herself. She even is said to have made a deal with the devil in order to maintain her youthful beauty. (The Creepy Story of Lucida Mansi) *** Village life in Lemont, Illinois was as peaceful as it could be, and the Willmans farm was one of the collection of typical sleepy homesteads in the region. Until the day the demon came. (The Demon of Lemont) *** Chillingly, statistics suggest that a child is more likely to be killed by a parent than by a stranger and in most cases, the killer takes his own life after the act. We’ll look into the disturbing psychology of family annihilators. (The Psychology of Familicide) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:03:27.691 = Show Open 00:05:43.393 = Sparkles 00:07:29.864 = Someone Or Something Moved My Hand 00:10:27.289 = Something Happened 63 Years Ago 00:30:31.899 = The Demon of Lemont *** 00:41:50.983 = The Creepy Story of Lucida Mansi 00:47:07.041 = The Psychology of Familicide, Part 1 *** 01:05:12.385 = The Psychology of Familicide, Part 2 *** 01:15:38.578 = The Psychology of Familicide, Part 3 *** 01:27:53.923 = Show Close 01:29:46.402 = Bloopers *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast* SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Sparkles” by Weirdo family member, Katie Jo “Someone Or Something Moved My Hand” by Mirandra for Your Ghost Stories: http://bit.ly/37muJPH “The Creepy Story of Lucida Mansi” by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages: http://bit.ly/2DgFrcK “The Demon of Lemont” by Ursula Bielski for Chicago Hauntings: http://bit.ly/2rnR9zG “The Psychology of Familicide” by Fiona Guy for Crime Traveller: http://bit.ly/2rmEOM2 “The List Family Massacre” from All That’s Interesting: http://bit.ly/34itO0I(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.) WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Originally aired: November 2018 LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL Weird Darkness moves from the John List murders and the psychology of family annihilators to a letter-writing demon on an Illinois farm, a Lucca noblewoman's bargain with the Devil, a hidden library in Maine, and two first-hand encounters in the dark. It opens in Westfield, New Jersey, in 1971, where John List, who couldn't bring himself to tell his family he'd lost his job at the bank, shot his wife, his mother, and his three children, left religious hymns playing through the family's mansion, and disappeared for nearly 18 years. From there, a Weirdo family member named Katie Jo remembers the hundreds of colored lights, each the size of a fleck of glitter, that drifted out of the corner of her parents' bedroom in Texas when she was between three and seven, swirling around her arms while her parents saw nothing. Next, a woman named Mirandra woke alone in her locked unit in Australia at 2:12 a.m. on September 4th, 2019, to the feeling of her hand being flung out from under her cheek, and the room had gone cool with every window shut. A 75-year-old man in a small Maine town then tells a story he's kept to himself since 1950, when he discovered an old oak door behind the foreign-language shelves of the public library, followed a spiral staircase down to a secret reading room that smelled of citrus and pine, and on his 12th birthday found a gray-eyed old man in a suit waiting in its empty armchair. After that, letters began falling out of thin air onto the dinner table at the Willmans farm in Lemont, Illinois, in the fall of 1901, ordering the family to leave, and once the cows' milk had turned to cheese and Father Westarp of St. Alphonsus Church exorcised the house, the next letter laughed at them all for kneeling to pray. Then comes Lucida Mansi, a 17th-century noblewoman of Lucca, Italy, who was rumored to have lined a room of her villa with mirrors; legend holds that she sold her soul to the Devil for 30 more years of youth, then drowned when her carriage horses leaped from the city walls into a lake as she fled him. The episode closes with the psychology of familicide: Elizabeth Yardley, David Wilson, and Adam Lynes' research on three decades of British family annihilators, Neil Websdale's "livid coercive" and "civil reputable" killers, young offenders between 14 and 21 who planned the murders of their own families, and cases from Steven Sueppel in Iowa City to Chris Foster in Shropshire and Andrea Yates in Texas.
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