# 3 Disturbing Murder Cases: John List, Kyelonna Smiley and Sonny Kim

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 18 Aug 2025, 27 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1094700170.mp3

Join me as we discuss 3 disturbing murdering cases with shocking twists. Chapters: 0:00 John List 11:39 Kyelonna Smiley 17:13 Sonny Kim 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472

## Transcript

[0:00] A grand Victorian mansion in Westfield, NJ stood eerily
[0:03] silent in late 1971, It's lights blazing day and night with no
[0:08] sign of the family who lived there.
[0:11] Neighbors grew suspicious as mail piled up, as if the family
[0:15] living there had just dropped off the face of the earth.
[0:18] When police finally entered the home, they found a ghastly
[0:22] scene. 5 bodies, a mother, three children and their elderly
[0:27] grandmother were laid out on sleeping bags in the ballroom.
[0:32] A religious hymn played softly on a radio that had been set to
[0:36] a Christian station and the houses air conditioning was
[0:39] cranked up high to slow decomposition.
[0:43] On a desk lay A5 page letter confessing to the acts and
[0:46] offering a disturbing justification.
[0:50] The author of that letter and the man responsible for the
[0:53] carnage was John List, a church going accountant and father who
[0:58] had been regarded as a pillar of the community.
[1:03] To everyone in Westfield, John Liszt appeared to be a model
[1:07] family man. Born in 1925 and raised by
[1:11] strict Lutheran parents, Liszt was devoutly religious and
[1:14] taught Sunday school, embodying an image of piety and
[1:18] discipline. He was an Army veteran and a
[1:21] college educated accountant who by the mid 1960s had secured a
[1:25] position as a bank vice president.
[1:28] In 1965 he moved with his family to a 19 room mansion named
[1:34] Breeze Knoll in the affluent suburbs of Westfield, complete
[1:38] with an elegant ballroom. Outwardly, they were the picture
[1:42] of suburban success and propriety.
[1:48] Yet behind the facade, John List was under immense pressure.
[1:52] By 1971, he was in serious financial trouble, as he had
[1:57] lost his job as a bank executive and was secretly struggling to
[2:01] find work while debt mounted. Every morning he pretended to go
[2:06] off to his office, maintaining the routine so his family
[2:09] wouldn't know he'd been laid off.
[2:12] In reality, he spent his days at the train station or job
[2:16] hunting. Too prideful to admit his
[2:18] failure, he began siphoning money from his elderly mother's
[2:23] bank accounts to keep up with the mortgage payments on the
[2:25] mansion. At the same time, Helen List's
[2:31] health and behavior were deteriorating.
[2:34] She had a number of chronic illnesses, including
[2:37] complications from syphilis and alcoholism, that made her
[2:41] increasingly unstable and often LED her to publicly ridicule
[2:45] John. The once orderly household was
[2:48] fracturing under financial strain and personal tensions.
[2:55] John lists Strict religious beliefs compounded his
[2:58] desperation. A devout Lutheran, he feared
[3:02] that the hardships of poverty would cause his family to stray
[3:05] from their faith. In his warped reasoning, he came
[3:09] to see only two possible outcomes for his family's crisis
[3:13] except public assistance and downsize or slay his family to,
[3:17] quote UN quote, save them from the worldly evils of poverty.
[3:23] By late 1971, the 46 year old Sunday school teacher had
[3:28] convinced himself that the latter option was a tragic
[3:31] necessity. Or at least that's how he would
[3:34] frame it. And given the horrific acts he
[3:37] committed, I'm not quite sure this is someone whose word we
[3:40] should be taking at face value. On the morning of November 9th,
[3:46] 1971, John List put his plan into action.
[3:51] It seemed like a normal Tuesday at the List household.
[3:54] He saw his children off to school as usual, but once alone
[3:59] in the big house, he went out to the garage and retrieved 2
[4:02] handguns he had stashed. He then returned inside the
[4:06] mansion and headed for the kitchen where his 46 year old
[4:09] wife, Helen was sipping her morning coffee.
[4:12] Without warning, John raised one of the guns and shot Helen in
[4:15] the back of the head at close range, eliminating her
[4:19] instantly. He dragged her body on a
[4:21] sleeping bag into the home's cavernous ballroom, leaving a
[4:25] trail of blood that he carefully mopped up to hide any sign of
[4:28] violence. Upstairs, his elderly mother,
[4:34] Alma, had heard the commotion. John climbed the stairs to the
[4:38] third floor apartment where Alma lived, found her waiting in
[4:41] confusion at the threshold. There he shot his 84 year old
[4:45] mother just above her left eye again, apparently to save her
[4:49] from the horrors of poverty. And yeah, if you couldn't tell,
[4:55] that was a bit of sarcasm, since I don't really believe a word of
[4:58] this guy's confession. He then attempted to bring her
[5:03] into the ballroom but found that she was too heavy for him to
[5:06] move down the stairs, so he left her there.
[5:12] With his wife and mother dead, List had a few hours before his
[5:16] children would come home from school.
[5:18] In a remarkably composed manner, he went about cleaning the crime
[5:22] scenes. He scrubbed the kitchen floor
[5:25] where Helen had fallen and disposed of blood stained rags.
[5:30] He then fixed himself a sandwich for lunch and sat down at the
[5:33] kitchen table to eat, waiting calmly for his children's
[5:37] return. I'm going to spare you the
[5:39] details of what happened next, but he ambushed the kids as they
[5:43] all came home at different times.
[5:46] Disturbingly, evidence would show that while two of the
[5:49] teenagers didn't know what happened to them, one of them
[5:52] fought back and knew full well what his father had done.
[5:59] Before he left the house, John Lis took a few final steps to
[6:02] delay the discovery of the crime.
[6:05] He gathered and cut his face out of every family photograph in
[6:08] the home, ensuring police wouldn't have a recent picture
[6:11] of him to release. He turned the thermostat as low
[6:15] as possible and left the radio tune to a religious music
[6:19] station. He hoped the chilled air and
[6:22] continuous hymns would mask the odor of decay and make it seem
[6:26] like someone was still living in the house.
[6:31] Days earlier, he had already put his plan in motion by contacting
[6:35] the children's schools to say that they would be away for the
[6:37] next couple weeks. He had stopped the mail, milk,
[6:41] and newspaper deliveries to the mansion as best he could, though
[6:45] some mail would eventually start trickling through.
[6:48] All of these preparations worked.
[6:51] Not a single person realized anything was wrong at the list
[6:54] home for nearly a month. The bodies of his family lay
[6:58] decomposing for four weeks under the blast of the air
[7:01] conditioning while religious music drifted through the empty
[7:05] halls. It was not until December 7th,
[7:10] 1971, almost 29 days after the slayings, that police were
[7:15] finally called to investigate the list residence.
[7:19] Officers entering through an unlocked window were met with
[7:21] the overwhelming smell of death. They discovered 4 bodies in the
[7:26] ballroom and Alma's upstairs, along with John's confession
[7:30] letter detailing the motive for the slayings.
[7:34] By then, Liszt was long gone and all that remained was a mystery,
[7:40] a family annihilator who had vanished into thin air, leaving
[7:44] a community in shock. In the meantime, Liszt had
[7:50] assumed a new identity and began to live a different life.
[7:54] Under the highly generic name of Bob Clark, List managed to
[7:58] obtain new documents, including a Social Security card, and
[8:03] restarted his life as if he were an entirely different person.
[8:08] Living quietly in Denver, John List continued working in
[8:11] accounting, the same profession he'd had before he joined a
[8:16] Lutheran Church community there, blending in as a congenial
[8:19] middle-aged man. By all accounts, he kept a low
[8:23] profile and avoided trouble with the law, which helped him evade
[8:27] detection. He even met a woman at a church
[8:30] gathering, and they got married in 1985, all while she believed
[8:35] she was in a relationship with Bob Clark.
[8:40] By the late 1980s, it seemed John List might indeed get away
[8:44] with his atrocious crimes. He had built an entirely new
[8:49] life, and even those close to him had no idea who he really
[8:53] was. However, law enforcement and the
[8:56] public had not forgotten the list slayings.
[8:59] In 1989, a popular television program gave the cold case new
[9:04] life. America's Most Wanted ATV Show,
[9:08] dedicated to profiling fugitives, decided to feature
[9:11] the John List case during its first year on air.
[9:15] On May 21st, 1989, the show aired A segment recounting
[9:19] lists, crimes and his disappearance.
[9:22] The authorities received hundreds of tips, most of which
[9:26] were baseless. However, one of these tips came
[9:29] from a friend of the wife of a quiet religious accountant named
[9:33] Bob Clark. On June 1st, 1989, nearly 18
[9:40] years after John List had vanished, federal agents arrived
[9:43] at the accounting office where 63 year old Bob Clark worked.
[9:48] They found Liszt at his desk and arrested him on the spot.
[9:51] At first, the man insisted he was not John List at all, coolly
[9:55] maintaining his Bob Clark persona.
[9:58] But the charade didn't last long.
[10:00] Faced with fingerprint evidence and the mounting proof of his
[10:03] true identity, John List eventually admitted who he
[10:07] really was. He showed no remorse, and one of
[10:11] the FBI agents who brought him in eventually described him as a
[10:15] husk of a human being. In 1990, John List finally faced
[10:22] justice in a New Jersey courtroom.
[10:25] He went on trial for the five slayings and, not surprisingly,
[10:29] was found guilty on all counts. At sentencing, the judge noted
[10:34] the calculated nature of the crimes and the lack of remorse
[10:39] and imposed the maximum penalty, five life terms in prison.
[10:46] In the years that followed, John List gave a few interviews from
[10:50] prison that provided A glimpse into his still twisted mindset.
[10:55] In a 2002 interview, List expressed a degree of regret,
[11:00] saying he wished he hadn't done it and had prayed for
[11:03] forgiveness. Yet, disturbingly, he still
[11:07] reiterated his disgusting reasoning for committing the
[11:10] acts. And perhaps most chillingly of
[11:13] all, when he was asked why he didn't finish himself off, he
[11:16] stated that doing so would have barred him from entry into
[11:19] heaven. John List died in prison in 2008
[11:25] at the age of 82 from complications of pneumonia.
[11:29] He spent his final 18 years in a New Jersey State prison, where
[11:33] he was reportedly a quiet, unremarkable inmate.
[11:40] On a warm August morning in 2025, residents of a quiet
[11:45] senior living community in West Phoenix woke to a horrifying
[11:49] scene. Inside one of the complex's
[11:52] apartments lay the body of a teenage girl, 15 year old
[11:56] Kelowna Smiley, dead from a gunshot wound.
[12:00] The setting was shocking. A retirement complex for
[12:04] seniors. Hardly a typical place for
[12:06] violent crime. Immediately, questions swirled
[12:10] about what had brought this young girl to such an unlikely
[12:13] place and who could have harmed her.
[12:16] The mystery deepened when just days later, the man identified
[12:20] by police as the prime suspect, a 67 year old resident of the
[12:25] community, was found dead by his own hand.
[12:31] Kelowna Smiley was an ordinary 15 year old girl with a vibrant
[12:35] personality and a bright future. She was about to start her
[12:38] freshman year at Trevor G Brown High School in Phoenix.
[12:42] Her mother, Fiona Austin, described her as outgoing and
[12:46] outspoken, a teenager with a big personality and a caring heart.
[12:52] In the summer of 2025, Kelowna was enjoying her last days of
[12:56] vacation before high school, but sadly, those days would be her
[13:01] last. In early August 2025, Kelowna
[13:07] left home on Friday, August 1st, planning to stay over at a
[13:11] friend's house for a couple of days.
[13:14] When she didn't return home as expected on Monday, her worried
[13:18] mother filed a missing persons report with the Phoenix police.
[13:22] At that point, Fiona Austin was anxious but hopeful that her
[13:27] daughter would be found safe. Little did she know that by the
[13:32] time she reported Kelowna missing, the worst had already
[13:35] happened. On Monday morning, August 4th,
[13:41] 2025, around 9:40 AM, Phoenix police officers responded to an
[13:47] apartment at a senior living complex.
[13:50] Inside, they discovered a female victim with an apparent gunshot
[13:53] wound. She was pronounced dead at the
[13:56] scene. At first, officers assumed the
[13:58] victim was an adult because of the setting, but later that
[14:02] week, authorities confirmed the deceased was actually Kelowna.
[14:06] A teenager had been killed in a place meant for retirees, a
[14:10] scenario that baffled both investigators and residents of
[14:14] the community. Police secured the area and
[14:19] immediately launched an investigation into the slaying.
[14:23] From the outset, there were far more questions than answers.
[14:27] Detectives couldn't determine what had led up to the shooting
[14:30] or how Kelowna ended up in that apartment.
[14:34] Kelowna didn't live at the complex and her mother confirmed
[14:37] she had no known reason to be there.
[14:40] There were no immediate witnesses and the elderly
[14:43] residents were just as confused as the police.
[14:46] The question on everyone's mind was how and why a 15 year old
[14:50] girl had come to be the victim of a shooting in a senior
[14:53] community. Phoenix detectives worked
[14:58] quickly to identify a suspect in the days after the attack.
[15:02] Before long, they focused on one of the complex's residents, 67
[15:07] year old Nohe Prado. Morelia.
[15:10] Police haven't revealed exactly what evidence linked Morelia to
[15:13] the crime, and it remains unclear if he had any prior
[15:16] connection to Kelowna. However, her family knew of no
[15:21] link between them, essentially making him a stranger to her.
[15:26] Nevertheless, he rapidly became the prime suspect in Kelowna's
[15:30] death. When investigators attempted to
[15:34] locate Morelia for questioning, they discovered that he had
[15:37] already disappeared. On Friday, August 8th, four days
[15:44] after Kelowna was slain, officers responded to a call at
[15:47] a business area in Phoenix. There, miles away from the scene
[15:51] of the crime, officers found Morelia's body, and it was
[15:55] evident that he had intentionally checked out.
[15:58] This development meant that police would never be able to
[16:01] interrogate Morelia about the crime.
[16:06] In the aftermath of Morelia's death, detectives continued
[16:10] working to confirm that he was indeed the killer.
[16:13] A police press release later stated that evidence established
[16:16] Morelia as the person responsible for Kelowna's
[16:19] slaying and no other suspects were involved.
[16:23] Authorities announced that the case was considered solved and
[16:26] was being closed. However, one crucial piece
[16:30] remained missing. The motive.
[16:35] Investigators acknowledge that the motive for the killing
[16:38] remained unknown. Even Phoenix's police chief
[16:41] admitted that the investigation was still very preliminary and
[16:45] that he knew of no further details.
[16:47] Yet with the suspect gone, any explanation for his actions
[16:52] remains elusive. Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here.
[16:59] Just reminding you to click like and subscribe and to check out
[17:02] the YouTube membership and the Patreon.
[17:05] Also, remember to check out my podcast Lazy Chill True Crime by
[17:10] clicking the link in the description.
[17:15] Just days before Christmas 2016, a quiet Georgia home erupted
[17:20] into chaos. Nicole Brazil was settling into
[17:23] bed when she heard a series of pops she assumed were
[17:26] firecrackers. Instead, she found her 23 year
[17:30] old daughter Ashley bleeding on the living room couch and her 16
[17:35] year old son standing over her with a weapon.
[17:39] In a flat, eerily calm voice, Sonny Kim told his mother that
[17:44] Ashley was dead. While Christmas decorations hung
[17:47] in the room as a macabre backdrop to the unimaginable
[17:50] scene. Sonny Kim's case is as
[17:55] perplexing as it is tragic. He was, by all accounts, a
[17:59] brilliant nerd, a quiet, brainy teen with an IQ near genius
[18:03] level and a deep love of computers and books.
[18:07] He was shy and far more comfortable with gadgets and
[18:10] games than with crowds of people.
[18:14] Sonny and Ashley were both exceptionally smart and they
[18:17] would playfully tease each other about who was the bigger nerd.
[18:20] He built his own PCs and landed a part time job at a local
[18:24] computer shop while barely a teenager.
[18:27] Sonny graduated high school early and was taking college
[18:30] classes by 16. Nothing in his upbringing or
[18:34] past behavior suggested violence, which made his actions
[18:37] in December 2016 all the more shocking and difficult to
[18:42] comprehend. On the evening of December 20th,
[18:47] 2016, Ashley Kim was back home in Martinez, GA for the
[18:52] holidays. She had been living in Colorado
[18:54] and was eager to spend Christmas with her family.
[18:58] The family spent the night sharing laughs and enjoying each
[19:00] other's company. There were no fights, no
[19:03] outbursts, nothing to foreshadow what was about to happen.
[19:08] Sometime around midnight, Sonny retrieved a 45 caliber pistol,
[19:13] shockingly the very gun he had purchased as a Christmas gift
[19:16] for his stepdad and secretly unwrapped early.
[19:20] Then he walked quietly into the living room and without a word,
[19:24] he raised the weapon and opened fire on Ashley as she relaxed on
[19:27] the couch. He shot her eight times at point
[19:31] blank range, ensuring that there was virtually no possibility
[19:35] that she could survive the storm of lead.
[19:40] Hearing the shots, Nicole and her husband eventually burst out
[19:43] of their bedroom to see what exactly was happening.
[19:46] They were greeted by a ghastly sight, Ashley sprawled on the
[19:50] sofa and Sonny standing over her with a firearm.
[19:54] When Nicole cried out in confusion and terror, Sonny
[19:58] responded with an emotionless declaration that her daughter
[20:01] was already gone. Sonny then turned the weapon
[20:07] toward his stepfather and mother, apparently intent on
[20:10] cutting them down as well. He later admitted to
[20:13] investigators that he had planned to slay his entire
[20:16] family and then himself, though he couldn't articulate any
[20:20] logical reason why. As Sonny aimed at James and
[20:24] Nicole, fate intervened. The weapon either jammed or ran
[20:28] out of ammunition. After the burst of shots at
[20:31] Ashley, James seized the opportunity to tackle the
[20:34] teenager and wrestle the weapon away from Sonny.
[20:38] With Sonny subdued, James dialed the cops while Nicole tried in
[20:42] vain to tend to Ashley. Paramedics arrived within
[20:46] minutes, but 23 year old Ashley was beyond help and was
[20:50] pronounced deceased at the scene.
[20:55] Investigators soon observed that Sonny's demeanour was oddly calm
[20:58] and detached for a boy who had just slaughtered his sister
[21:03] during a videotaped interrogation.
[21:05] He was cooperative and polite and spoke in a cold and detached
[21:09] manner. When asked the burning question,
[21:13] why did you do this, Sonny had no clear answer.
[21:18] He insisted it wasn't out of anger or any dispute.
[21:22] In essence, he claimed he just did it without fully
[21:25] understanding why, and this baffling lack of motive would
[21:29] become a central issue in the case.
[21:34] In the wake of the attack, Sonny's family and the community
[21:37] struggled to make sense of the senseless.
[21:40] Nicole Brazil was convinced that something had gone terribly
[21:43] wrong in her son's mind. She knew Sonny adored Ashley and
[21:47] had never shown a violent tendency before.
[21:51] Mental health experts did, in fact, find serious issues
[21:54] underlying Sonny's shocking act. Psychologists who examined him
[21:58] in jail diagnosed Sonny with Asperger's syndrome and noted he
[22:03] showed symptoms of a schizophrenia like psychosis.
[22:07] In plain terms, it appeared he may have experienced a sudden
[22:10] break from reality, a psychotic episode that led to the extreme
[22:15] violence. Sunny himself later described
[22:19] feeling as if he wasn't in control, and he expressed fear
[22:23] that he could snap again without warning.
[22:25] This understanding offered a possible explanation, albeit an
[22:29] unsettling one. The brain that made Sunny so
[22:33] intelligent and unique also harboured A latent darkness that
[22:37] erupted unpredictably. Legal proceedings against Sonny
[22:43] moved slowly. As a 16 year old charged with a
[22:46] slaying, he was held in juvenile custody and then transferred to
[22:51] adult court. There were delays as public
[22:54] defenders came and went, and as attorneys weighed how to handle
[22:58] his mental state. Ultimately, nearly three years
[23:01] after the disturbing act, Sonny Kim pleaded guilty to the
[23:05] slaying of Ashley and related charges in July 2019.
[23:10] By accepting A plea deal, he avoided a trial and possible
[23:14] additional penalties, and he spared his parents the ordeal of
[23:17] reliving the tragedy in court. At the sentencing hearing, the
[23:22] emotional weight of the case was on full display.
[23:25] Sonny, then 19, apologized and accepted responsibility in his
[23:30] own quiet way while his mother addressed him with a mix of love
[23:35] and anguish. The judge sentenced Sonny to
[23:38] life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30
[23:41] years, with a strict condition that he receive ongoing mental
[23:45] health treatment while incarcerated.
[23:50] In practical terms, this means Sonny will be nearly 50 years
[23:53] old before he can even be considered for release.
[23:57] In delivering the sentence, the judge emphasized that addressing
[24:00] Sonny's mental health was crucial, implicitly recognizing
[24:04] that this crime was born from illness as much as intent.
[24:08] Outside the courthouse, the Kim family was left to grapple with
[24:12] heartbreak. They had lost Ashley forever,
[24:16] and in a sense, they lost Sonny, too, to the prison system.
[24:22] An unexpected twist to this story emerged a couple of years
[24:25] into Sonny's life behind bars. In late 2021, true crime
[24:31] followers were surprised to discover that Sonny Kim had
[24:34] surfaced on Reddit, apparently using a smuggled cell phone from
[24:38] prison. Posting in the subreddit R Slash
[24:41] Prison, a user believed to be Sonny shared photos of a prison
[24:45] cell that looked more like a geeky college dorm.
[24:49] The walls were adorned with hand drawn fantasy and furry style
[24:52] art, and shelves were stacked with paperback novels and
[24:56] role-playing game manuals. In follow up comments, the
[25:01] inmate answered questions from other Reddit users in a
[25:04] surprisingly friendly and upbeat tone.
[25:07] He joked about staying positive and said he would remain a nerd
[25:10] until the day he dies. He even recounted witnessing a
[25:14] grisly incident, an inmate stabbing his own bunkmate and
[25:18] hiding the body on a top bunk with a disturbing detachment, as
[25:23] if it were an everyday anecdote. The idea of someone convicted
[25:29] for such a crime casually chatting online and showing off
[25:32] his hobbies from prison was jarring to many.
[25:35] Some Reddit readers were fascinated by the glimpse into
[25:38] an incarcerated person's daily life, especially one with such a
[25:42] nerdy intellectual bent. However, many others were
[25:46] disturbed. Commenters pointed out that
[25:49] behind the post was a man who had slain his own sister, and
[25:53] they criticized any responses that seemed to flatter or
[25:56] humanize him. As of 2025, Sonny Kim remains
[26:03] behind bars in Georgia, undergoing treatment and living
[26:06] out his days in a prison cell filled with books and drawings.
[26:10] He will be a much older man before he has any chance of
[26:13] release, and it's uncertain what kind of person he'll be if that
[26:17] day comes. What is certain is the lasting
[26:22] impact of his actions, a beloved sister's life cut short and a
[26:27] family that must carry the weight of an unfathomable loss
[26:30] of two family members in one tragic, disturbed incident.
[26:39] Wow, I'm tired. Why do I feel this way?
[26:43] Is it my new prescription? I did have a couple beers and
[26:47] then I think I smoked. No, that can't be it.
[26:51] I feel weird Tony wants to hang out at his place.
[26:55] I shouldn't drive. Time to sleep this off.
[26:58] Double check yourself before getting behind the wheel.
[27:01] Driving impaired is deceptively dangerous.
[27:04] Paid for by the NDOT Highway Safety Office.

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