“Listen, it's unfortunate how we met, but I can be your girlfriend. I could take care of you and no one has to know about it, ”Lisa, still blindfolded, assured her kidnapper. After 26 hours of torture and rape, the teenager used her imagination to convince that sexual predator to let her go. She made it. Those words of hers were so credible that the man decided to release her and spare her life.
What the little girl did not know at that moment was that the rapist had several crimes behind him and that her testimony would allow the authorities to put an end to his carnage. It was the only way for Bobby Long, a serial killer with a rare genetic condition, to stop compulsively and sadistically raping and killing.
Robert Joe Long, better known as Bobby Long, was born on October 14, 1953 in Kenova, a city in the west of the state of Virginia (United States), although shortly after he moved with his mother to Florida to start a new life.
After the separation of his parents, the little boy began to live only with his mother, Louella, towards whom over time he developed an unbridled animosity and anger. It all started after the woman was absent to work as a waitress in a place where she had to wear few clothes. This not only made Bobby uncomfortable, it also made him extremely angry because her men did not stop courting her.
In addition, Louella had romantic relationships with different lovers and brought them home, which the little boy didn't like either. A reaction that the woman took as her typical childish jealousy: Bobby felt displaced and was no longer the center of attention. And it is that they had gone from sleeping together in the same bed for years, to each having her own room. From there, the relationship between mother and son deteriorated rapidly.
In addition, Bobby never forgot an episode that almost cost him his life and for which he always blamed his mother: the day he was about to drown in the sea while Louella flirted with a date instead of watching him. That rage grew even more during his sexual awakening at the height of puberty.
The adolescent began to feel sexually attracted to his mother, which caused him mixed feelings of shame and anger. An amalgamation of unknown and involuntary sensations that made him uncomfortable. Not to mention the genetic condition that was discovered in him: Klinefelter syndrome.
This is that males are born with an extra X chromosome. That is, she had an XXY chromosome and grew breasts in an overtly feminine shape. For this reason, he had to undergo surgery to remove them. But, until he arrived at that moment, Bobby was the center of all the taunts from his classmates.
To also understand the change in Bobby's behavior, we must add the numerous accidents he suffered since childhood and which caused him noticeable brain damage. He fell from a swing and almost lost an eye, he was the victim of a hit-and-run causing head injuries, he developed a malformation on his chin due to orthodontics...
All these factors, according to the experts who later examined Bobby, would have caused the birth of a latent hatred towards women. However, that did not stop the teenager from having his first romantic relationship with his high school sweetheart, Cindy, whom he married in January 1974.
Until that moment, Bobby was a nice, funny and affectionate boy with his girl, not so with his classmates and friends towards whom he was violent, aggressive and intransigent if there was an argument in between. However, the young man's personality also changed drastically with his wife two months after the wedding.
Bobby had a very serious motorcycle accident when a car hit him until he was thrown into the air about thirty meters. The force with which his head struck the road caused irreparable brain damage and an obvious transformation of his personality.
We are referring to the clear appearance of hypersexuality: he suddenly increased sexual activity to the point of becoming uncontrollable and needing to masturbate several times a day during his recovery period in the hospital. Once healed from his injuries, Bobby began to physically abuse his wife, whom he constantly demanded to have sex with.
That compulsiveness became dangerous because sex became an obsession: the only way to get aroused was by using violence against Cindy, whom he tied to the bed and strangled. She also went on to have sexual fantasies with friends and family, whom she imagined in orgies where humiliation prevailed. This sexual drive turned into sexual sadism after her divorce.
If Cindy had not abandoned her husband before, it was because of the two children they had together, but after the last beating that took her straight to the hospital, she decided to stand up. The night she came home, she grabbed a shotgun and headed to the bedroom where Bobby was sleeping. "Go ahead, bitch, you don't have the guts," she told him when he woke up.
"Maybe I should have killed him then," Cindy said years later, "I forgave him for what he did to me, but I can never forgive him for what he did to my daughters and those poor girls." Immediately afterwards, the woman left with her children and Bobby moved to Tampa. It was 1980.
Thereafter and for the next four years, Bobby became a serial sexual predator, dubbed by the media as the classified ad rapist. His modus operandi consisted of reviewing advertisements for furniture sales whose contact was a woman.
When he went to the home as an interested client, he assaulted the victim and raped her before fleeing. In this way he managed to attack almost fifty women.
His only arrest for rape occurred in 1983, but the reason why he was finally released on parole is unknown. Shortly after, Bobby began to run an area of prostitutes called the Strip, thus initiating his particular carnage. Every two weeks and for eight months, the police found the bodies of murdered women.
Bobby's procedure for attracting his potential victims was always the same: he approached one of the girls in his car to hire her services and, once inside, he took them to his apartment where he tied them up, tortured and raped them. The murder was just a consequence to avoid being ratted out.
Lana Long, 20, was his first victim: a stripper and prostitute from a Strip bar whom he had abandoned in the middle of the street. The young woman appeared naked, face down, with her legs wide open, her hands tied behind her back and a thin rope around her neck. Cause of death: strangulation.
At the crime scene, investigators collected two key pieces of evidence. On one side, a tire track, and on the other, a red nylon fiber on Lana's corpse. However, neither of them led them to the author.
A second murder, that of another prostitute named Michelle Simms, put authorities on the hunt for a sexual predator in the area. The young woman had appeared naked and tied up in a similar way to Lana, although Michelle had had her throat cut and not strangled. As for the tests, they also collected similar ropes, red nylon fibers and the same brands of tires. The coincidence was undeniable.
However, as soon as the case hit the news, Bobby perfected the technique and modified the modus operandi to mislead investigators. Elizabeth Loudenback was left in an open field with no restraints, fully clothed and no sign of strangulation; with Vicky Elliott she used scissors; Chanel Williams, a black prostitute, was shot in the back of the head by him; Karen Dinsfriend and Kimberly Hoops were strangled and left in a ditch.
Red nylon fibers and the aforementioned tire tracks were found in all the corpses, but none of the six murders managed to shed light on the investigation. The police were hitting the blind. Until the kidnapping of 14-year-old Lisa McVey.
On November 3, Bobby assaulted the teenager in the middle of the street as she was returning home on her bicycle: he took her to her apartment and, once there, he tied her up, blindfolded her and began 26 hours of ordeal. During all that time, the girl suffered unimaginable abuse and torture, but she was also able to gather all the information possible in case she got out of there alive.
Lisa managed to see under the blindfold both details of the interior of the vehicle and of the house, as well as some features of her kidnapper. “He had pockmarks, a small mustache, small ears, short, well-cut hair, somewhat stocky, but not overweight; a big guy, ”she said about the description of him and assured that he had a high-pitched and characteristic voice.
During the hours that she was kidnapped, the teenager took the opportunity to leave her fingerprints on the bathroom tiles. She knew that if she died, the police would find out that she had been there. On the other hand, Lisa was also able to get into the mind of the criminal making him believe that she was not a bad person and that they could be a couple.
His empathy reached a point where Bobby said to him, "What am I going to do with you?" At that moment, the teenager convinced him to let go and take her back home. Once free, Lisa ran for help and related her story to the police. However, no one linked this assault to the crimes of the six prostitutes.
Meanwhile, Bobby killed two more women, Virginia Lee Johnson and Kimberly Swann, within a week of each other. Once again, the researchers found the same red nylon fibers and tire tracks. Now, when the result of the analysis of the clothes of Lisa, the kidnapped teenager, arrived, everything made sense: the fibers collected were similar to those found in the eight murdered prostitutes.
One of the detectives in charge of this investigation questioned the minor again, who provided crucial information about the serial killer and his vehicle. In addition to physically describing the man, she specified that the car was red-orange, with white leather seats and red floor mats and a cushion with the word "Magnum" on the passenger seat.
Within hours, the agents learned the make of the car, a red Dodge Magnum, and the owner's name, Bobby Long. As soon as Lisa saw the photograph of the man, she had no doubt: he was her kidnapper.
A surveillance operation was immediately set up that took them to a cinema. There, while the serial killer was watching a movie, several officers checked the vehicle's prints. They matched the ones at the scenes of all the crimes.
Bobby Long was arrested on November 16, 1984 after eight months on the hunt. Calm and without resisting, the murderer arrived at the police station willing not to confess, but after pressure from the interrogators they managed to incriminate him.
He talked about Lisa, about the ten murders that had taken place, and about fifty-plus rapes in the last few years. Her collaboration reached such a point that she pointed out on a map where she had abandoned two of the victims who were still missing. “I guess you got me right... Yes, I've killed them... All the ones in the newspaper. I killed them all,” she stated with a smile on her face.
The experts who interviewed and analyzed this serial killer confirm the psychopathic and narcissistic personality of the defendant, characterized by his deep hatred of women and incapable of feeling compassion for his victims.
On September 24, 1985, a popular jury found Bobby Joe Long guilty on all counts and he was sentenced to 26 life sentences without the possibility of parole and another 7 with a minimum serving of 25 years. A few months later, the killer received a death sentence for the crime of Michelle Simms.
During the 34 years that Bobby Long remained on death row, he gave interviews to the media in which he assured that he was not proud of his actions, but where he came to blame the victims for his end.
"I don't want to say that they deserved to die, but they weren't saints either," he said, referring to the fact that these women practiced prostitution. "I'm sick. I am not a murderer, not like the other guys here in the corridor, ”he explained.
The execution came on May 23, 2019 before the eyes of twenty witnesses including authorities, the media and Lisa, the only survivor of this serial killer. She “she wanted to be the first person she saw. I represent the voice of all the victims who cannot speak,” said the woman. And, after enumerating all the victims, she addressed the murderer, thanking him.
“I have forgiven you for what you have done to me. If I had not forgiven you, I would be in my own prison, without walls. God has shown me that the only way to be truly free is total forgiveness. My life changed forever, and for the better. I chose not to remain a victim, I chose to live ”, he concluded.
During his speech, Bobby did not open his eyes, even when he was given the lethal injection. He died without saying a word in the Florida state prison. It was 6:55 in the morning and he was 65 years old.
Currently, Lisa works as an agent of the Florida Police specialized in sexual crimes, whose main mission is to protect, help and teach other children and young people who are victims of attacks and abuse to know how to react to this type of sexual predators. Her motivational talks at schools have become an inspiration to her community.
