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June 7, 1989

THE TALK OF WESTFIELD; Old Crime Held Town In Thrall

By H. ERIC SEMLER, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

In this quiet, relatively wealthy town, the arrest la= st week of a man said to be John Emil List was the biggest news, some residents say, since he disappeared almost 18 years ago.

''Westfi= eld is basically an uneventful town,'' said Charles H. Brandt, the Town Attorney for 12 years and a former member of the Town Council. ''That's why people l= ive here. They don't want the turmoil.'' It was in 1971 that Mr. List, an accou= ntant, vanished and his family was found slain in their 19-room mansion at 431 Hillside Avenue. Over the years, the murders and flight continued to fascinate this Union County suburb. And when the F.B.I. arrested a man identified by the authorities as= Mr. List last Thursday in Virgini= a, the feelings built up during the long wait were unleashed.

''I don't think anything ever moved the spirit of the people in this town as that murder did,'' said Jack J. Camillo, a 68-year-old lawyer who grew up here.

Relief - even glee - has swept through its spotless s= treets and colonial mansions; the current residents on the property where Mr. List= 's mother, wife and three children were shot to death in November, 1971, say t= hey are planning a party to celebrate the arrest. A few of the 32,000 residents jokingly suggested renaming the town Listfield.=

Even though the case has been declared solved, the po= lice station buzzes with calls from people offering leads. In the police station today, one caller insisted that John List was also D. B. Cooper, the missing hijacker who parachuted from a Boeing 727 as it flew over the Pacific Northwest in 1971.

''Everyone in the office has gotten calls like this,'= ' said Detective Sgt. James T. Schneider, who was a senior in high school when Mr. List disappeared. ''We get them all the time.'' Doors Still Left Unlocked <= o:p>

In the years since the List murders, Westfield has changed only slightly, lo= ngtime residents say. The police say drugs are more prevalent; houses are more expensive (the average home is worth nearly $300,000), and more companies h= ave moved into the 279-year-old town.

''It's more of a middle-class town today,'' said Robe= rt C. Wood, one of Westfield's few taxi drivers. ''Most of the old-money snobs are gone and they've been replaced by young professionals.''

Crime has increased a bit over the years, but it has = never reached alarming proportions here. The last reported murder occurred five y= ears ago, when a man used a boulder to bludgeon a woman to death.

For the most part, the town has always viewed the List murders as an aberration, not something to shake their sense of civic self-assurance. Even today, some residents say they leave their doors unloc= ked at night.

It is the younger generation, who grew up with consta= nt talk about the murder, that seems most affected = by it.

''When you're a young kid, it makes you kind of wonder what's going to stop your own father from doing it,'' said Lee Clarkson, a 17-year-old senior at Wes= tfield High School. ''It's= a freakish thing to think about.''

No one in this suburb, which is 11 miles southwest of= Newark, knows what to make of two other recent murde= rs in Union County. Last week in nearby Springfield, a 24-year= -old man who graduated with the highest honors from Yale University was charged with stabbing to death four people, including his mother and a brother. Two weeks earlier, in the neighboring town of Scotch Plains, a woman and a man killed a taxi driver after refusing to pay their $175 fare from Manha= ttan.

''I think it shows that the everyday pressures of soc= iety are spreading to suburbia,'' Sergeant Schneider said.

Still, tension in this town is difficult to detect. T= oday, the part-time mayor was out of the office - he generally comes to the Municipal Building only for night meetings -= and the town's administrator spent the afternoon playing golf. Running Out of R= oom

Not that Westfield is free of conflict. When commercial growth generated a need for more parki= ng in the small downtown area, a group of merchants and the Chamber of Commerce proposed that the town build a multi-million dollar garage. Opponents, including several members of the Town Council, fear that a garage would att= ract more traffic to the already crowded streets.

Traffic congestion has created problems for the town,= where Route 22 and the Garden St= ate Parkway intersect. The town has considered way= s to divert some traffic from downtown, but no solutions are in sight, Mr. Brandt said.

Probably the most nettlesome issue facing the 6.5-square-mile town is the development of low-income housing. In 1986, the State Council on Affordable Housing, which monitors compliance with the New Jersey Fair Housing Act, assigned Westfield a quota of 414 new units of low- and moderate-income housing. But the town claims it hardly has room for the housing because 99 percent of its land has already been developed, Mr. Brandt said. A similar argument has been advanc= ed by many other North Jersey suburbs.

Two years ago, a group of developers sued Westfield for the right to construct new units, including low- and moderate-income housing. Both sides are waiting f= or hearings on the case to begin later this year in state Superior Court in Elizabeth. <= /o:p>

''We're just expressing a feeling that is shared by a= lmost any town our size,'' Mr. Brandt said. ''People just don't want multi-family housing next to them.'' Note to the Dead

Near the edge of the town, completely silent except f= or the distant sound of a buzzing lawnmower, is Fairview Cemetery. Among the 23,951 people buried there are John List's wife and three childre= n. A nondescript, three-foot high slab marks their graves.

Soon after the arrest in Virginia, a wallet-sized card appeared= at the edge of the family's tombstone with a handwitten message: ''Now you can rest in peace.''

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