Criminology - Bobby Joe Long

Episode Date: March 21, 2020

Bobby Joe Long was a serial killer who terrorized the area around Tampa Bay, Florida in an eight-month period in 1984. During that timeframe, Long murdered at least 10 women and victimized many more. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss this sadistic killer whose MO was to abduct, sexually assault, and then murder his victims. Prior to his murders, authorities believe Long was "The Classified Ad Rapist", a man who sexually assaulted women in their homes after they had placed an ad to sell something. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 104 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you today? I'm doing as good as I can be in this kind of new atmosphere, Warren. How about you? Yeah, no, I'm right with you.

I think we're kind of in uncharted waters here. and it's affecting everybody. And I know you and I talked before we started recording. Everybody's feeling it, right? And it's not just in the United States. It's all over the place. And our best wishes go out to everybody out there. We just want everybody to stay safe and kind of hunker down.

And we've got to get through this. Yeah, I hope everybody does their best to stay healthy. And the social distancing thing, that seems to be the way to go. and small gatherings. I know I think you're in the same boat as I am. I've got my wife and kids home for the foreseeable future, so we're all trying to make the best of it. I will say this.

The one thing that really jumped out at me is how quickly everything kind of has happened since the last time you and I recorded. I mean, if you think about, you know, the NBA shutting down, they canceled my favorite, my NCAA, basketball tournament. But then even after that, it was, okay, certain places are, I know in Ohio, they shut down the restaurants. I mean, you can still get takeout, but you can't go in and sit down in a restaurant.

And all of that has happened very quickly. Yeah, I think a lot of people are probably going to be getting cabin fever and that stuck up feeling like if it's a, you know, blizzard, we get a lot of that in the northeast. We get a lot of snow days where you're, you're still. stuck in the house and after a couple days you get to go back and resume everything, but this is going to be different. So hopefully everyone out there goes out and gets, gets some fresh air, goes for a walk, stays sort of socially distant, but still it goes outside and has some fresh air and moves around. Yeah, it's just something, you know, as a collective that we all have to

work through, no doubt about it. Well, as long as we're able to keep going, we'll be here to help people pass that time and put up more episodes. You and I will keep pumping out episodes as long as we can. So more if we had some new Patreon shoutouts, let's go ahead and give those. We had Celine Desjardine, William Boland and Tracy. So we appreciate that new Patreon support. Thanks as always for that support. It means a lot and helps keep the show growing. And if anyone out there wants to support the show on Patreon, they can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. All right, buddy, let's go ahead and jump right into this episode. We are talking about an extremely sadistic serial killer named Bobby Joe Long.

Morph, this was a guy that raped and murdered 10 women, at least in the Tampa, Florida area. A lot of people believe that at least, when it comes to the number of his sexual assaults, it's probably many more than what is actually known. And I think what jumps out at me about Bobby Joe Long is what appears to be, you know, the crimes that he committed happening in a very short amount of time. I think while a lot of his murders are known and documented, there's a possibility that there's a possibility that there's other victims out there that just haven't been linked to him. Yeah, and, you know, I think we find that in a lot of these cases. And it's very scary. Okay, somebody gets captured, you know, they sit down with police.

They know they're caught and they admit to X, whatever X is. I mean, as it relates to Bobby Joe Long, we're going to get into all the details. But that question is always out there. How many more crimes did a person like this commit that police didn't know about. So they didn't question the individual about them. This person's not going to maybe just offer up all of the crimes that he was responsible for. To me, that's a very scary thing. And it makes me think in really, to be honest with you more, most of the cases that we do,

that police just kind of, in some instances, hit the tent. of the iceberg when it comes to the crimes of some of these really bad people. And this is a guy that spent a very long time on death row. And we'll get into those details as well as we explore this killer's evil deeds. Unlike most serial killers, Bobby Joe Long had a surprisingly normal upbringing. His father, Joe Long, was 23 years old when he married 17-year-old Luella Lucas to 1952. A year later, Luella gave birth to Bobby on October 14, 1953, in Canova, West Virginia. The marriage was short. Joe and Luella divorced in 1955. Back then, Canova was a little larger than it is today, with about 5,000 residents. The town is situated on the Ohio River, where Kentucky, Ohio,

and West Virginia meet. Luella hated Kanova's cold winters and longed for the warmth of the Florida sun. As soon as the divorce was final, Luella and two-year-old Bobby hopped on a bus and moved to Dade County, Florida, to make ends meet Luella worked nights as a waitress. Bobby stayed with different families who rented rooms to his mother, but the two were inseparable. On Luella's days off, they went to the beach or they went to visit some of Florida's tourist attractions. Luella and Bobby did make trips back to Konova so that he could see his father. And then in 1960, Joe and Luella remarried. Bobby started the first grade in Florida, but completed the last 72 days of the school year in Canova. But he didn't do so well.

He flunked the first grade and was forced to repeat it. Or repeating first grade in nearby Huntington, West Virginia, Bobby was hit by a car. The accident left scars and protruding teeth that made Bobby very self-conscious. Kids at school often made fun of him, which devastated him. By the time Bobby Joe Long was in the fourth grade, he and Luello were back in South Florida, despite the fact that Luella and Joe were still married. The couple agreed to the long-distance marriage.

Luella's mother and other family members joined her and Bobby in Florida, and the entire family shared a five-bedroom house in North Miami Beach. Luella got a waitress job at Lums restaurant to pay the bills, but it wasn't enough to make ends meet. She earned additional money pouring drinks at Big Daddy's Lounge. But Bobby didn't like his mother working there. He didn't like it one bit. Luella had to work in what she called sexy little outfits and Bobby hated them. He started verbally abusing his mother and really basically more.

treating her like filth. He told her he wanted her to dress like a mother. He was embarrassed by her job and what she had to wear. And I think even more than the embarrassment, it hurt him to see his mother have to do what she was doing. Now, she explained it to him that she didn't have a choice. This is what she had to do to make money. It wasn't long before. Bobby Joe Long turned his attention to someone other than his mother. Around 1966, Luella and Bobby moved to Hialeah, Florida, to a small stucco home in a quiet neighborhood. A girl named Cindy Guthrie lived within walking distance of Bobby's home, and she became

13-year-old Bobby Joe Long's first girlfriend. Bobby and Cindy began spending a lot of time together and became fiercely protective of one another. They were always together. The two of them against the world, Luella once said. And more if I already mentioned it, Bobby didn't do very well in school. He didn't like school. And he ended up dropping out of high school in the 10th grade.

But by that time, he had already started what would become a very long criminal history. In December of 1970, Bobby, who was at that point 17 years old, was arrested for possession of stolen property. A few weeks later, Hialeah police arrested him for resisting a police officer after a friend attempted to steal a car battery. Two years later, in the fall of 1972, Bobby joined the U.S. Army. And six months before his discharge in August of 1974, he married Cindy while stationed in Homestead, Florida, near Miami. not long after being discharged from the army. Bobby was out riding a motorcycle when he got hit by a car.

And during the accident, Bobby was thrown off the bike and hit the pavement with such force that his helmet split open and his legs were crushed. His father Joe later said that he believed Bobby's head injury changed Bobby. Bobby for the worst. So I get that statement by Joe, Bobby's father. I don't think there is anyone that's going to suffer a major head injury like Bobby did in this motorcycle accident that's going to be changed for the better. That's that's probably not going to happen. So the statement is true. But really what I believe he means. And I don't like to put words in people's mouths. But I think what he's saying is this head injury was the beginning of Bobby experiencing some major changes

that we're getting ready to talk about, you know, it's kind of the beginning of what's going to be a downward spiral. And I think it's worth pointing out, we've talked about cases before and heard about cases where different offenders, different killers, have some kind of head trauma sometime in their life before they start committing some of these acts. You have to wonder, is there any part of that at play here? I think it's pretty well documented that a lot of killers, and especially serial killers, have had head injuries or suffered some type of head injuries, usually as a child or in their younger years. That seems to be prevalent in a lot of the research that we do on serial killers. And there are a lot of people in academia that have tried to make the

correlation. To be honest with you, Morph, I don't know exactly what it is. But what I do know is that there's something to it. Now, it doesn't mean that everybody that suffers a head injury is going to go on to kill. It doesn't mean that at all. But you can't discount the fact that when you look at the history of many of these killers. One thing that jumps out at you is the number of head injuries or major head injuries that they experienced. Bobby and Cindy Long had two children together, a son named Christian in 1974, followed by a daughter named Bobby Joe in 1975. The Longs bought a three bedroom cinder block home in South Hollywood, Florida. Bobby's parents, who were now back together for Good in Canova, West Virginia, helped finance the home for the couple. To support their new

family, Bobby worked odd jobs and convenience stores and took radiology classes at Broward Community College while Cindy worked as an office secretary. They left the children in care of babysitters. One teenage babysitter named Joanna Clark, who lived two houses down, later said that Bobby gave her the creeps because he always talked dirty. Sometimes Joanna's sister Lynn would go with her. Joanne was so creeped out. She never went to the Long's house alone. Bobby Joe Long took his first X-ray technician job at Parkway Regional Medical Center in

North Miami Beach in November 1979. But it was just a few months later in June 1980 that Cindy filed for divorce. By this time, the couple had grown apart. Cindy often partied with her friends. while Bobby stayed at home. And this was a life-changing event for Bobby. He lost his hospital job shortly after this, and he moved to Tampa in late 1980.

He never got over this divorce. And I believe more if he truly missed Cindy and the kids. He grew depressed. But the other thing that I believe came out of it was, you know, the sexual fantasy. that he had been having for however long he started to cross over with them from the realm of fantasy to reality. And what we don't really know is, okay, how long had Bobby been having these sexual fantasies?

You know more if they didn't just pop up after the divorce. This is usually something that develops over a long period of time. I think it was the divorce. It was Cindy and the kids being gone. And the fact that he's now on his own. He's alone with a lot of time on his hands that gave him the opportunity to act on the sexual fantasies that he had been having for however long. In October 1981, Bobby mailed three obscene photos and a very obscene letter to a 12-year-old Tampa girl. She had been receiving obscene phone calls that police traced back to the house of Bobby Long. He ended up pleading no contest to exhibiting obscene material and a county judge sentenced him to two days in jail and six months probation for the misdemeanor charge.

This is another thing morph that I have issues with. And it happens in a lot of the cases that we do. I get it. This was a misdemeanor. So the sentence is going to be pretty light. But this is also an adult dealing with a 12 year old girl. Can we not put some more weight on something that is obviously very inappropriate, traumatic to, you know,

this young girl, I'm sure. Now, I think today, if you're talking 2020, this is going to be a much bigger deal. But as we often see back in the 70s and 80s, it didn't seem to be. And it's something that I have trouble with. It is what it is because you can't go back in time and change it, but I'm always floored at how the justice system treated some of these types of incidents. And you can even broaden it a little bit and get into the area of sexual assault and other crimes against women. It's almost as if the emphasis was just not there. Like these are not as bad as something else when they were. They just weren't viewed that way in the eyes of the justice system.

And I think those might be some missed opportunities. Those are warning signs sometimes of more serious. crimes to come and a chance to cut them off before they happen. And it seems like a lot of those opportunities were missed. Yeah, that's a great point. And it's something that I failed to mention because when you look at the lives of a lot of killers, it's not like most of them just popped out of nowhere, right? To begin killing. They had pass. And those pasts included crimes along the way. But it It's almost as if their crimes were not viewed with what, to me, was the right amount of scrutiny or enough emphasis was not placed on those crimes.

So, yeah, they got slaps on the wrist and they did a little bit of time, maybe, possibly. Sometimes they didn't do any time. But what you can see is a progression that is ultimately going to lead up to these people doing really bad things. On the very same day, police traced the obscene calls to Bobby's home. A Tampa woman, who worked as an exotic dancer in a topless bar, accused him of punching her in the face and throwing her out of his house. She also accused Bobby of raping her several weeks before, but there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute at the time. But Bobby was also convicted of battery in a non-jury trial.

He didn't have a lawyer in court, but immediately wrote a letter to clear his name to Hillsborough County Judge, Robert H. Bonano. In the letter, Bobby wrote, quote, I'm no angel, but as I said before, I did nothing criminal. Okay, maybe legally all this doesn't really count. But when she looked so sweet and talked so sweet, I know how it looked to the judge, but that's not the case, and I really got the short end. Judge Bonano ordered a new jury trial in which Bobby Joe Long was acquitted. Bobby traveled back to Canova, West Virginia in January 1982 to visit his parents. While he was there, a man knocked on the door,

spoke politely, and then pulled a gun. Bobby hid in his bedroom while the man and an accomplice tied up Joe and Luella Long and robbed them. This had to have been a harrowing experience for, you know, everyone at the house. Bobby later told his father how, scummy what low lives these robbers were for the tactics that they used. But here's the thing. Bobby himself was...

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and Water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. I would later use very similar methods to rob, rape, and kill. After he left his hometown, Bobby Joe Long moved to California for a six-month training program for commercial scuba diving.

He wanted to get a job on an offshore oil raid. But by the time he finished the program, there were no jobs available, and he moved back to Konova with his parents. On February 22, 1983, Bobby got a temporary job at Huntington Veterans Administration Hospital, where he was considered a good worker. He eventually moved on to the radiology department at Huntington on May 16, 1983. But by his fourth week of work, the hospital had received several complaints from different women who said long instructed them to take their clothes off, telling them it was necessary for the

x-rays. The hospital had enough evidence against him that Bobby didn't fight the termination. Bobby returned to Florida and took a weekend job at Humana Hospital in Brandon. He began dating a string of women over the next year. One night in April 1984, he and a middle-aged woman were standing outside a drugstore and 10,000. Tampa when he started complimenting this woman over her car. It was a Jaguar. The woman agreed to take him for a ride in her car. But when they got in and started driving, Bobby drew a gun on her.

And this woman panicked. She swerved and she flipped the car three times. She was able to get out of the car and she took off running in one direction while Bobby ran in the other direction. But he was caught. He was sentenced in July 1984 to three years probation. And here again, Morph, I'm not going to harp on it, or maybe I am, you pull a gun on someone while you're riding with them in the car and you get three years probation. Is it right? Is it wrong? I mean, you can make that argument. And maybe it just comes out in these cases because of what we know these people are going to go on to do. But what police didn't know was that Bobby Joe Long

had started his crime spree a month before he pulled the gun on this woman. A 19-year-old Pasco woman had been raped and robbed by a polite-sounding man who entered her home and pulled a gun. 19-year-old Peggy Long was a pretty dark-haired woman who rarely used her given name, Wen Tai. She moved the Tampa from Southern California in February 1984. She told Friends back, home she wanted to study art and cinema at the University of South Florida. Instead, she found work as a dancer at the Starlight Lounge, located at 9,700 North Nebraska in Tampa. Peggy liked to visit C.C.'s restaurant on Fletcher Avenue. This was just east of Nebraska Avenue. She always sat by herself in the same seat at the end of the bar, sipping on schnops. She was last seen a

live near Fletcher Avenue and 15th Street after leaving a bar with an unidentified white male. Her body was found by two teenage boys on Sunday evening, May 13, 1984, lying face down in a ditch in Gibsonton. She had been bound, beaten, raped, and strangled. Two weeks later, 22-year-old Michelle Denise Sims met a similar feat. Michelle was a receptionist. at a massage parlor in Fort Pierce. She also had a record of prostitution, and often went by the name, Monique. At 11.15 a.m. on Sunday, May 27, 1984,

Michelle's nude body was found in the woods, northeast of Plant City, a half-mile northeast of the Interstate Ford Park Road Overpass. Her white jumpsuit was found near her body. Michelle was last seen alive in the Kennedy Boulevard area in the early morning hours of May 27th. Like Peggy, she had been busy. bound, beaten, and raped.

But unlike Peggy, Michelle was stabbed to death. Police believed at the time that Michelle arrived in Tampa on May 26th with another woman. According to one source, the two were seen that night standing near a gay bar and a small hotel at the corner of Arawana Street and West Kennedy Boulevard. 22-year-old Elizabeth Loudenbach was last seen on June 8, 1984. Elizabeth was considered a loner. who lived a quiet life. She worked in an electronics factory to pay the bills.

She resided in the village mobile home park on Skipper Road, just east of North Nebraska Avenue, with her mother and stepfather, her 17-year-old sister, and her 13-year-old brother. The family had moved to Florida from Indiana in 1982. A resident of the trailer park saw Elizabeth on the night of June 8th walking out of the trailer park with another young woman whom, you know, this guy had never seen before.

She was later seen walking along Skipper Road with a young man who frequented grandpa's pool parlor just across from the trailer park. Elizabeth Loudenbach was never seen alive again. Elizabeth had recently told this resident that she wanted to move out of the trailer park, but didn't say where she was going. Elizabeth was epileptic and required medicine three times a day. She usually carried a two-day supply with her, but the rest of her medication was at home. On Sunday, June 24, 1984, two weeks after she disappeared, Elizabeth's body was found in an orange grove, seven miles east of Brandon, Florida. She had been raped and strangled.

A few months went by without any more murders. But then on Friday, September 7, 1984, 21-year-old Vicki Marie Elliott failed to show up for her job as a late-night waitress at the Ramada Inn coffee shop, half a block south of the Starlight Lounge. Vicki worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift because the paid differential was 40 cents more an hour.

She lived a mile away in an apartment and usually walk to work. This was late at night, and Vicky started taking precautions. She began carrying a pair of scissors with her, because it happened a lot. You know, there were strange men who would yell at her from passing cars.

On the night of September 7th, Vicky asked a neighbor for a ride to work. But when the neighbor knocked on her door around 11 p.m., there was no answer. and Vicky never showed up for her shift at the coffee shop. Her manager at the coffee shop instantly knew. Something was wrong because Vicky was always punctual, always on time, didn't miss shifts. So it was out of the ordinary.

Prior to her disappearance, Vicki had given her two-week notice. She wanted to move back home to Muskegon, Michigan, and studied to be a, paramedic. She had already bought her plane ticket, which would later be found on her bed, but Vicki's body wasn't found until months later. And by that time, a suspect had already been arrested. On Sunday, October 7, 1984, the body of 18-year-old Chanel Devon Williams was found along Morris Bridge Road near the Hillsborough-Pasco County line. Chanel had been shot in the head and back of the neck. She was last seen on the night of September 30th, standing on the corner of Lambright Street and North Nebraska Avenue. Chanel had a record of prostitution.

She had moved from Winterhaven to Tampa, telling her parents she was living with friends. More if I don't think it was all that hard for authorities to begin to see a pattern with all of these murdered women, the murder victims were between 18 and 28 years of age. They all stood somewhere between 5-2 and 5-6, and they were all taken from basically the same area, somewhere around North Nebraska Avenue. These women were very active at night, right, either working the night shift or known to hang out later at night. they were all found within 24 hours of their deaths.

Police figured out that all of these women were bound with similar types of rope, and they were all found with their clothes piled up near their bodies. Police developed a theory that the killer was out looking for these women, his victims, on a Saturday afternoon or Saturday night, and there was really only one victim that didn't fit the pattern, and that was Vicki Marie Elliott. She was not a nightlife type of person. So police at the time were not convinced that her disappearance was related to the other murders. On Sunday, October 14th, the body of 28-year-old Karen Dind's friend was found in the northeast part of Tampa.

She was partially nude and bound in an orange grove. She had been raped and strangled. Karen was last seen around 3 a.m. on October 14th, standing on the sidewalk in the 6,200 block of North Nebraska Avenue. Karen had a history of drug abuse and a police record for prostitution. In mid-October, 21-year-old Kimberly Hopps was last seen walking with a group of sex workers near the corner of North Nebraska Avenue and Sitka Street. This was just across the street from the Tampa Greyhound track. Kimberly had been arrested once for prostitution. It was on Halloween that Kimberly's body was found near an isolated stretch of US 301 north of Tampa.

So Morph, let's break this down just a little bit. There have been a lot of disappearances and a large number of murders. And what really has been a show. short period of time. By the end of October, around Halloween when Kimberly's body was found, I think police suspected that all of these murders that we've talked about were somehow related. So they formed a special task force to investigate the murders. Around the time Kimberly's body was found, a young woman from Connecticut disappeared from the North Nebraska Avenue strip between Fowler and Fowler.

Fletcher Avenues. Virginia Lee Johnson, who was 18 years old, had been in Florida off and on for two years. She had a history of alcohol and drug abuse. On September 21st, 1984, she was arrested for disorderly conduct. Virginia frequented the Sly Fox Lounge. Her body was found on November 6th in Pascoe County, but she remained unidentified until her friends reported her missing in the middle of November. Authorities used dental records to confirm her identity. 21-year-old Kim Marie Swan had been seen in bars around the Nebraska Avenue strip since she was about 15 years old. She was once a dancer at the Sly Fox Lounge. Kim had a one-year-old son named Robbie, and the two of them lived in a large gray apartment house near the Tampa Greyhound Track.

In the fall of 1984, Kim enrolled in a vocational school program for, medical technicians. Then in early October, she and Robbie moved back in with her parents in their Tampa home. On the afternoon of Sunday, November 11th, Kim was seen in a convenience store at the corner of Erlick and Hutchison Roads. This was just a few blocks from her parents' home. Friends later said that she went to the bamboo lounge, located in a shopping center, next to the convenience store, it was just the next day.

The Kim's body was found in a grassy area east of Tampa near the Cross Town Expressway. She had been strangled. By this time, investigators had formed the special task force and worked around the clock investigating the murders. They began zeroing in on the suspect after a victim survived an attack and contacted authorities. 17-year-old Lisa McVeigh had already suffered emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and was on the verge of ending her life. She wrote a suicide note, but set it aside. Lisa left for her job at Krispy Kreme.

The donut shop was in the same general area where some of the murder victims had disappeared. Not wanting to go home, Lisa pulled a double shift. Around 2 a.m. on November 3rd, Lisa left work on her bicycle. A short time later, a man jumped from behind a van, parked on the street. He grabbed Lisa's arm and yanked her off the bike saying, if you scream, I'll kill you. He pulled out a gun, gagged her with strips of a torn bed sheet, blindfolded her and tied her up. The man forced Lisa into his car and drove for about 30 minutes to a residence during a 26-hour ordeal. The man repeatedly raped Lisa, 26 hours, morph. This was an unbelievably horrific

experience for Lisa, but at certain points, during the 26-hour ordeal, this man seemed almost as if he was compassionate, as if he was trying to help her. He tried to feed Lisa, Ham, sandwich, but she said she couldn't eat. He then tried to get her to try to sleep, but she couldn't do that either. The man explained to Lisa that the abduction was a result of a recent broken romance, complaining that women were always walking all over him. This was his revenge, he said, and he'd done it with other girls. Although she was blindfolded, Lisa collected numerous details about her attacker and eventually gained his sympathy. Surprisingly, at three three, 30 a.m. on November 4th, the man put her back into his car and kept her blindfolded until he

released her at the corner of Hillsborough and Rome Avenues. The next day, Lisa went to police and gave a detailed description of her kidnapper and told them that her attacker's car was red. Police took evidence from Lisa, including carpet fibers that were found on her clothes and ultimately these carpet fibers matched fibers that had been taken from several of the murder victims. And it was really not long after that. 31 year old Bobby Joe Long became a suspect. At the time, he drove a red 1979 Dodge Magnum. Police placed Long under heavy surveillance.

And on Friday, November 16th, 1984, when Long came out of movie theater in a shopping center on North Dale Mayberry Highway, police were waiting there to arrest him. Long had been at the theater to see the Chuck Norse film missing in action. Police planned on charging Long with at least eight murders. And during the arrest, Bobby Joe did not resist. And in fact, he told the police, yeah, I'm the man that you're looking for. Investigators knew Vicki Marie Elliott was missing, and she was from the same area where the other victims frequented. As we mentioned earlier, police weren't sure she was killed by the same person, because unlike the other victims, she didn't go out at night. So she did not seem to fit the pattern.

But Bobby Joe Long confessed to her murder and told police where they could find her body. The murder count was now at nine. Police sealed off Long's apartment on Fowler Avenue and analyzed evidence found that. there and in his car. They believe that at least one victim was killed in his apartment. FBI experts matched the tiny red fibers found on some of the victim's bodies, along with those found from Lisa McVe's abduction to the red carpet in Long's car. Around 9 a.m. on Sunday, November 18th, 1984, Bobby Joe Long stood before a county judge and was formally charged with nine counts of kidnapping, eight counts of sexual battery, eight counts of first-degree murder.

The ninth murder charge, as well as one additional charge of rape and robbery, was later filed in Pascoe County. The courtroom had been cleared of all other inmates scheduled for court appearances that day, but it was jammed full of reporters. But the hearing lasted less than five minutes. By December 1984, Bobby Joe Long's attorney, public defender Charles J. O'Connor, said he might use the insanity plea in Bobby Joe's murder defense. O'Connor requested psychiatrist to examine him to determine whether or not he was fit to stand trial. A successful insanity defense would be one way for Bobby Joe Lowe's. Long to avoid the electric chair, although it was not going to be an easy feat in the state of

Florida. Even if he claimed insanity, he still had to stay in trial. And it would be up to a jury to decide his mental condition. After Bobby Joe Long's arrest, officials in Hillsborough and Pascoe counties were checking to see if he was connected to other crimes. They were able to link him to the March 1984 rape of 20-year-old Linda Nuttall, and he was additionally charged with that rape. Linda told police she was at home watching television when a picture of Long came on the screen, indicating that he had been arrested for crimes in Tampa. She immediately recognized him as her attacker and called the police. In March 1984, Linda and her husband had placed an ad about selling bedroom furniture, and a man called her asking directions to her house. When he arrived,

She took him to the room where the bedroom furniture was, according to the affidavit. Bobby Joe Long pulled out a knife, and he threatened to kill this woman. He bound and gagged her and then sexually assaulted her. He also cut her face with the knife and struck her several times. During this vicious attack, he asked where she kept her valuables. And he stole two rings from her hand and a heart pendant from around her neck. He also stole various pieces of jewelry from her jewelry box. The affidavit also stated that police found stolen items in Long's apartment that matched items

stolen from the victim's house. Bobby Joe Long's first trial began on April 15, 1985, on charges of raping and robbing Lyndon Nuttall in March 1984. A few days earlier, circuit judge Lawrence, Kyo denied a change of venue motion, filed by public defender Rob McClure to move the trial out of Pascoe County. The trial in Virginia Lee Johnson's murder started a week later, also in Pascoe County. Security measures were heightened at both trials after Rourg got back to police that Long was

planning to escape. At Long's trial for the murder of Virginia Lee Johnson, prosecutor said carpet fibers, Long's confession, a shoe lace, and strands of blonde hair conclusively linked Long to her murder. But Long's defense attorneys argued the evidence did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bobby Joe Long killed Virginia Lee Johnson. There were no eyewitnesses to the murder. And according to the defense, the evidence was all circumstantial.

One of Long's defense attorneys cross-examined the Pasco-Panellas chief medical examiner, Joan Wood, and asked her if it was possible that Johnson died from a drug overdose and the shoelace was placed around her neck after death. Wood responded by saying, quote, The sun might not come up tomorrow, but I don't consider it at all likely. It's kind of an interesting answer. more if when you think about it, you know, obviously the defense's job is to introduce the theory of reasonable doubt. That's what they're trying to do. But at a certain point, you know, you get into the

area of, well, anything is possible, right? I mean, when you're talking about just about anything, you could say, well, sure, this is possible, that is possible. I just thought it was a very interesting response to the question. Sure, the sun might not come up tomorrow, but I don't consider it at all likely. So I think they say that attorneys aren't supposed to ask questions that they don't already know the answer to. And in this case, it seems like that attorney asked a question and got a response they probably weren't expecting, which probably made the case against Bobby Joe Long look even stronger. Well, I'm sure what the attorney was thinking was going to happen was that Joan Wood was going to say, sure, it's possible. Anything is possible. But that's not the way she chose to go about it.

The rape trial of Linda Nuttall ended with a guilty verdict, as did Virginia Lee Johnson's murder trial shortly after. In the rape case, Bobby Joe Long was sentenced to a total of 693 years in prison. On May 3, 1985, a judge sentenced longed a death for Virginia Lee Johnson's murder. The Hillsborough County State's Attorney's Office and Long's lawyers with the public defender's office in Hillsborough County reached a plea bargain for the abduction and rape of Lisa McVeigh and the eight murders. According to Howard Troxler of the Tampa Tribune, with Long already under a death sentence, the state chose to forego eight separate murder trials, which would have taken several months in exchange. for one more death sentence for the murder of Michelle Sims and the assurance of keeping long locked up forever. And Morph, I think that's something else that we see in a lot of these cases, especially where a person has committed a large number of murders. It's very expensive to try

all of those cases separately. And at a certain point, when somebody has a death sentence, okay, there are things that can go wrong, right? Things can get overturned, but now they have a second death sentence, which makes it even that much more likely that this guy is going to be put to death. The decision has to be made. Are we going to spend all of this money and all of this time convicting him for X number of murders? Or can we wrap it all up in a moment? much simpler fashion. It sounds kind of cold when you think about it that way, but there are monetary considerations to take into account. I would hope that at a certain point, they would reach out to the victim's families, discuss this with them. You know, some of the victim's families might not be happy,

but they know this guy is at some point either going to die in prison, or be put to death. Yeah, if you can get the same result with a couple court proceedings instead of eight or nine and drag that out, maybe you can put it to bed a lot faster that way and still get the same result and get that ending. I think we see a little bit of that going on with the Golden State Killer case right now. There's talk of how long that's going to stretch out and how much it's going to cost and how many victims there are. I think you hit the nail on the head. it's important to reach out to the families that are involved in those kind of cases, because when they're taking responsibility for one or two murders,

in a way, it might feel that the other victims are not counted as equally. So I wonder how the families felt about that. Yeah, I think that's the downside, right? Of trying to do it this way, you just don't want those victims to go unrecognized for the lack of a better term, right? right? And you mentioned Joseph J. DeAngelo. That case is a freaking nightmare morph. The number of victims alone is staggering. We know it. We did what? 17, 18 episodes. I don't even remember how many now. It's going to be a logistical nightmare in that case trying to figure out what's the right

course of action to prosecute DeAngelo. And that's if they don't come up with some overarching plea agreement, which sounds like it could be a possibility. I think at the end of the day, victims' families want someone to pay, right, for what they did to their loved ones. Now, you can look at it and say, this guy's going to be put to death. Now, I'm back talking about Bobby Joe Long. that may be good enough for some of the victim's families,

but there might be some that say, no, I want a jury or I want him to plead guilty. I want somebody to say in a court of law that this man murdered my loved one. But in this case, right, the case of Bobby Joe Long, the victim's families got that because of his guilty pleas. And it was on Monday, September 23rd, 1985 that Bobby Joe Long received 26 life sentences for eight murders. 24 of the life sentences would run concurrently, but seven of them provided that Long could not

be eligible for parole until he had served 25 years. And then you had two of the life sentences that would run consecutively to the first 24. So I know that's kind of confusing, but that on top of the two death sentences meant what? This guy's never getting out. Yeah, he might be eligible for parole on some of these life sentences after 25 years, but you got all this other stuff that means no way. Not going to happen. You know, they just wanted to make sure they were stacking as much as they could against them.

In December, 1985, convicted killer Bobby Joe. long confessed to a 10th murder in a secret agreement with Hillsborough County prosecutors and law enforcement six days after he was arrested. This was back in November 1984. Police found the body of 20-year-old Artists Ann Wick in a creek bed off Ponderosa Street in the Sundance area of southeastern Hillsborough County. Artists had been reported missing in March. of 1984. It turned out that she was actually Bobby Joe Long's first murder victim.

And authorities had suspected for quite some time that artists was one of Long's victims, but they couldn't prove it. So in order to help solve her case, the state offered up Bobby Joe Long a deal. On Friday, July 18th, 1986, in an 11-to-1 vote,

The Hillsborough County jury recommended Bobby Joe Long die in Florida's electric chair. And on July 25, 1986, a judge sentenced long to death for the murder of Michelle Denise Sims, calling the facts in her rape and murder, quote, so clear and convincing. In December 1986, CBS aired an interview with Bobby Joe Long, in which he described how he killed his victims. The interview was shown at Long's trial. On November 12th, 1987, the Florida Supreme Court on appeal overturned both the conviction and death sentence from the 1985 murder trial of Virginia Lee Johnson. The court also ruled unanimously that Bobby Joe Long's confession of raping and killing the women was inadmissible in court because he had asked for a lawyer, yet investigating. kept interrogating him. Therefore, the courts ruled that his rights were violated and a new trial

was ordered. And it was on October 31, 1988, that the new trial was held in Fort Myers. After a week of testimony, the jury deliberated for only about an hour before convicting Bobby Joe Long. And the jury recommended the death sentence at a hearing on November 10th. A few weeks later, Pascoe County Circuit Court Judge Wayne Cobb upheld the jury's recommendation. So really more if it was a lot of work to get back around to the same exact conclusion. But I get it. That's how the system works, right? You find an error and it has to be corrected.

I think that's one more reason. They try and stack so many things on someone just in case one of them doesn't hold up. they have some other charges that they can fall back on. Yeah, I agree with you 100% because at some point, and we've seen this in a lot of trials, there's going to be some type of error where, you know, on appeal, a judge says, yeah, something wasn't done right. You got to have a new trial or, you know, something like that. On June 29th, 1989, after trial in Daytona Beach, a jury reaffirmed.

Long's death sentence in the murder of Michelle Denise Sims. A little over three years later in October 1992, the Florida Supreme Court held another appeal hearing in Long's death sentence or Virginia Lee Johnson and overturned it saying jurors should not have heard the CBS interview that Long did. In March 1997, the Florida Supreme Court tossed out Long's conviction of the murder of Virginia Lee Johnson and said there would be no more trials. So, Morp, when you think about it, he actually had some very good success. Bobby Joe Long did and his defense team did in getting some things overturned. Now, he wasn't going to walk away. He was never going to be a free man, but they had more success than most in getting some things overturned, getting some new trials,

and getting some convictions thrown out. And maybe that's part of the reason why Bobby Joe, Long spent such a long time on death row because 21 years later in the spring of 2018, the step sister of Karen Dins friend wrote then governor Rick Scott imploring him to put Bobby Joe Long to death. But Scott didn't follow through. And then on April 23rd, 2019, Scott's successor, Governor Ron DeSantis, signed his son. He said his first death warrant. And it just happened to be for Bobby Joe Long. Morp by this point in time, he had spent 34 years on death row. That is a very long time. When you think about the families of these victims, right, they have to live with that fact that, okay, we sat in that courtroom,

we set in multiple courtrooms, multiple juries sentenced this guy to death. But he, here we are, 34 years later, he's still breathing, and our family members have been gone for 34 plus years. He was in jail longer, probably twice as long as some of his victims were alive. Yeah, when you look at it that way, it's really sad. But there was one problem with this death warrant signed by Governor DeSantis. He signed it for a Robert Joseph Long. And, apparently the name appeared eight different times in the death warrant, a letter that accompanied the death warrant referred to him as Robert J. Long. But that's the problem because the man Florida wanted to execute was Bobby Joe Long. And that's the way that his name was listed on his birth

certificate. So when Long's attorneys saw the death warrant, they thought, okay, it doesn't mean anything, it's defective. They filed a written request to have it thrown out. They also requested and were granted a hearing on whether the state's lethal injection drugs would cause long, unnecessary pain. And I think that's one of the arguments that you get in a lot of executions, right? The defense is trying everything. They don't stop. They're trying to stop this execution by any means necessary. But none of it worked because exactly one month later on May 23, 2019, at 6.55 p.m., Bobby Joe Long, who was 65 years old, was executed by lethal injection. Lisa McVeigh, Linda Nuttall, and family members of Long's victims attended the execution.

Bobby Joe Long is also believed to have attacked dozens more women as the classified ad rapist. many of the women tried selling their used furniture through classified ads like Linda Nudall had before being attacked by a man who showed up to look at the furniture. And we talked about it up front and I think this is where this point comes in. More of I think most people believe that Bobby Joe Long committed a very high number of sexual assaults, much higher than he was ever held accountable for. Yeah, I think Predators like, This guy are always looking for different avenues and different inns, so to speak, to find victims.

Well, and it's not just a guess, though, right? I mean, there were a number of women, a large number of women that were sexually assaulted after placing classified ads. So the thought process is, yeah, many of these were most likely Bobby Joe Long. After the execution, Linda Nudall told reporters, quote, I had and continue to have a joyful life. Today, Justice was served. Lisa McVey is now Lisa Nolan, and she's a deputy with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

Lisa told her story about her long, horrific 1984 ordeal with Bobby Joe Long on season two, episode seven of the TV show, I Survived. Bobby Joe Long's crimes have been featured on other television. television shows, including investigation discoveries on the case with Paula Zahn. The story was also depicted in the Lifetime TV movie called Believe Me, the abduction of Lisa McVeigh. In the state of Florida, the name Bobby Joe Long continues to remain infamous to this day. And it should. I mean, this guy was a predator. There's no doubt about it, more of the number of murders, at least 10, right, at least, the number of sexual assaults

very high that were known. Many people believe it's probably more in the area of 30, 40, maybe even more. This guy was an absolutely vicious predator. And if he hadn't been caught, who knows what those numbers could have reached, maybe it would have been like a green river situation. There's always that aspect, right? What if? What if this guy started feeling the heat in the Tampa area and decided, you know what? I'm going to pick up. I'm going to move to Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm just pulling something out of thin air. Could he have gone on for years in another city and another state and kept moving when things got a little too hot. All of that to me is extremely scary.

This is on top of what he did in Florida, which is absolutely horrible, but the thought that killers could move around and do, we know they do, and get away with things for, you know, a large number of years. because I go back to this case and really most of the carnage that Bobby Joe Long created, it happened in a relatively short amount of time. We're talking about what, more if like an eight month period of time. It seems like in a lot of these cases we discuss and unfortunately there's not a shortage of them.

We see an escalation in this shorter times in between attacks. and people like Bobby Joe Long and these other types of killers that are similar to him, they feed off of what they're doing and those attacks come at a faster pace. And if they're not stopped, they will wreck up a lot of victims. Unfortunately, Bobby Joe Long was one of those that was stopped. But here's the question. Could he have been stopped or at least slowed down much earlier on? You know, I go back to the one woman.

that this guy essentially kidnapped. He pulled a gun on her while they were in a car. And what happened to him? A misdemeanor that he walked away from. Was it three years probation versus 20 years in jail? Yeah. Yeah. It would have made a difference.

I think to me that's one thing that continues to floor me in a lot of different cases. The fact that these people did what I view as. horrible things. Now, okay, it's not murder. I get it. But you can't go around brandishing a gun and attempting to kidnap people in a car. There should be some very serious repercussions for that. And it's like, nope, there wasn't. I can see probation for shoplifting or something. Yeah. Maybe get, maybe get into a fist fight over something and, and they reduce it from assault and give you probation. But to kidnap someone at gunpoint, that's, that's pretty serious. seem probation worthy, does it? Now, I think you and I are in agreement, and I think most people

in the audience are as well. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at truecrime diva.com for writing and research assistants in this episode. If you love the show and you haven't done so, please take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating that goes a long way towards helping other people find the podcast. Keep telling your friends, your true crime loving friends about the show. That type of word mouth makes a world of difference. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans.

All right. That is it for another episode of Criminology, but Morph and I will be back with you all next Saturday night with an all new episode. So for Mike. And more. We'll talk to you next week. Take care of everyone. Welcome to another round of drawing board or Miro board. Today we discussed technical diagramming with systems architect Maya. Let's go. First question.

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