That’s right, Simon. I promised you a happier episode, and you can’t even make it through the title without being demonetized. I guess we know who the real villain of today’s episode is.
What even is YouTube’s deal with that nonsense, anyway? True crime is insanely popular, and its popularity is only increasing. The number of true crime novels sold nearly doubled from 2016 to 2018, and it is the most popular genre in many countries. There are entire channels dedicated entirely to true crime. The genre seems to be about 80% of Netflix’s business model. There’s even over 2800 true crime podcasts, with the first series of “Serial” having over 200 million downloads.
Why in the name of fuck would YouTube not want that sweet, sweet true crime money? Yes, we talk about things like rape and murder (or heists if one of the writers is feeling particularly benevolent towards Simon’s mental well being), but that’s what true crime is. I assure you if there was a true crime story about a princess riding a magical unicorn who stole all of a greedy dwarf’s gold that I would absolutely write a script about it, but that isn’t what the real world looks like.
The real world is a cold, uncaring place where people enact horrific acts of violence upon one another, and that is exactly what the people came here for. Yes, today’s story is about a serial rapist and murderer, but it’s really more about one of his victims than it is about him. Besides, it’s not like we’re taking a pro-rape and murder stance, and this isn’t going to mistakenly show up on YouTube Kids, so you’ll forgive me for thinking that context matters and advertisers would be perfectly happy having their products thrust in front of the eyeballs of hundreds of thousands of true crime fans.
Maybe they could even have targeted ads as a sort of cross promotion. Are you watching this show as research for your own crime spree? Check out this advertisement for the Container Store featuring a myriad of human sized plastic containers that won’t dissolve in acid! Were these crimes so horrific you need to erase your memory of everything you just saw? Enjoy Black Death Vodka, once again legal in the United States! The possibilities are endless.
Get your shit together, YouTube. If not for us, for yourselves. If we’re not making ad money on a video then neither are you, and that means nobody wins. Make AdSense great again!
Sorry for that rant, I’m still riding high off the allegedly cocaine fueled energy of the last Science of Science Fiction script I wrote. But enough of that, let’s get on with the rape!
Lisa McVey
Lisa McVey grew up in and out of foster homes. She had a mother, but her mother was a drug-addicted alcoholic who was homeless and not fit to care for her. When she was 14, Lisa’s mother forced her to move in with her grandmother to help take care of her. But her grandmother also had a boyfriend, one who would pull a gun on Lisa while he molested and raped her repeatedly over the next three years.
Enough was enough, and on the night of November 3, 1984, seventeen year old Lisa had resigned herself to committing suicide. She worked late night at the Krispy Kreme where she wrote out her suicide note before finally leaving at around 2 am. Lisa began to ride her bike back to her grandmother’s house where she would end her own life.
As she rode her bike along, she noticed a red car parked in front of a church. It seemed odd to her, but it was more than just odd, it was dangerous. As she got closer a man jumped out of the car and pulled her by her hair off the bike, pulling a gun on her. She was no stranger to rape at this point and did not attempt to fight back.
The man blindfolded Lisa with the gun pressed against her left temple and ordered her to strip. She complied and he bound her wrists and ankles before forcing her in the car and demanding she perform oral sex on him.
Lisa may have been used to this sort of treatment at home, but this was not the man’s first time either. There was already a line of dead bodies in his wake, and there were still more to come. After having made use of her in the parked car, he drove to a nearby apartment. This was something new. The man normally didn’t bring his victims home, but he could tell there was something special about her.
To Lisa’s surprise, the man cut her free and ordered her to put her clothes back on. She wasn’t being let go, it would just be too conspicuous to march a bound and naked minor through his apartment building at gunpoint. She counted her steps as they walked so she could find her way back to the door to identify it if she got the chance. Nineteen steps, then a quick left turn followed by a quick right.
Inside the apartment, the man would continue to rape Lisa for the next 26 hours in every way imaginable. Faced with her imminent death at the hands of someone else, she had a change of heart. She no longer wanted to die, she wanted to live, and she was going to have to try to find a way out of this no matter what it took.
But she also knew that may not be possible. There may not be a way out. She asked to use the bathroom, but the man refused. She insisted that if he didn’t allow her to, she would go all over the bed.
The man allowed her to use the bathroom, and she immediately got to work. She frantically went through the entire bathroom, the mirror, the walls, the toilet, everything. She wasn’t looking for a weapon or a means of escape, she was making sure to leave as many fingerprints as possible. If Lisa was going to die that night, she wanted to be sure that when police finally found the apartment they knew she was one of the man’s victims.
This may not have been the man’s first murder, but there was something different about it and the way he treated her. At one point, he made her a sandwich, a simple kindness he had never offered a previous victim. The radio was on, and as she ate a report about a missing 17 year old girl named Lisa was broadcast. She had lied to her captor and told him she was 19 and named Carol, but hearing herself reported missing on the radio made the nightmare she was living too real.
She began crying, and the man ordered her to stop, telling her that if she didn’t he’d be forced to kill her. Lisa was a smart girl who understood that words have meaning. The man didn’t say he would kill her, he said he would be forced to kill her. Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t want to kill her and she could use this to her advantage.
The man may have been 31, but he seemed almost childlike mentally. Lisa asked why he was doing this to her. He said that due to a recent breakup, he was getting back at women in general. It’s hard to imagine his ex would have let such a high quality guy slip out of her fingers.
But Lisa saw this as an opening. She offered to be his girlfriend, claiming that he seemed like a nice guy (obviously a lie) and that they didn’t have to tell anyone how they met. She then tried to garner sympathy by saying that she was the only child of a sick father that she was the sole caregiver for (also lies as she had a sister and no father in the picture). He told her to get some rest, and that it would all be over soon. Unsurprisingly, she did not sleep.
After the 26 hours of rape, awkward conversations, and even showering together, it was time to go. At around 3:30 am, the man blindfolded Lisa and ordered her back in the car. This time, as he blindfolded her, she clenched her jaw. She hoped that when she unclenched, it would leave the blindfold slightly loose so that she could see out from under it and prepared to make a mental note of every sight, every sound, and every smell so that perhaps they could be used by police to locate her abductor.
They drove around for what felt like ages until finally arriving in the back of an empty parking lot. The man ordered Lisa out of the car and told her to wait there for five minutes. She stood there terrified. Was he watching her?
Was he about to run her over with his car? Was he pointing the gun right at her in case she moved, simply testing her obedience as his potential secret girlfriend? She would get her answer when she felt the barrel of the gun press against her temple again, just before the man pulled the trigger.
Nah, I’m just fucking with you, Simon. I promised you a happy ending, and I know you like when stories of murderers open with the victim that got away. Before telling her to wait five minutes, the man had said to Lisa, “Tell your father he’s the reason I didn’t kill you.” After the five minutes passed, probably longer because of how terrified she was, Lisa finally removed her blindfold.
She was alone. The man had driven off. There was no longer anything in that parking lot to fear. As for what happened to Lisa next, we’ll get to that in a bit.
Early Life of Bobby Joe Long
Robert Joseph Long, aka Bobby Joe Long, was born in 1953 in West Virginia. He had a rare condition known as Klinefelter syndrome, also known as 47, XXY. Bobby was born with an extra X chromosome. The main symptoms are infertility and small, poorly functioning testicles. Unfortunately this was not the case for Bobby and whether his testicles were tiny or not, he wasn’t infertile. He did have one rather noticeable symptom that we’ll mention in a moment.
One less noticeable symptom is that for those with Klinefelter syndrome, it can be difficult learning to read. It does not normally cause intellectual impairment, but difficulty specifically with learning how to read resulted in Bobby failing the first grade.
Then there was all of the physical trauma he suffered. It was all accidental, but there sure was a lot of it. At age 4, he almost drowned. He would later blame his mother for this claiming that she was too busy checking out guys to pay attention to him. At age 5, he fell off a swing and the head trauma knocked him unconscious. His eyelid was also impaled by a stick. At age 6 he flew off his bike into a parked car, knocking out several teeth and suffering a severe concussion.
At age 7, he was hit by a car, knocked unconscious, and hospitalized. Later that year, he was hit by another car which severely damaged his teeth and deformed his jaw. At age 8, yes we’re still going, he fell off a pony and landed on his head. He was left feeling dizzy and nauseous for weeks, probably the result of another severe concussion. At age 9 he fell off a fence and needed to get stitches in his head. This is almost supernatural levels of shit luck.
Bobby was already born a little different, and now we can add on massive and repeated head trauma. What’s next in the Casual Criminalist recipe for a serial killer? We need to add in a dysfunctional family!
At the age of 10, after all of that physical trauma, Bobby’s parents divorced for the second time in his life. He and his mother had to move back into a tiny, crowded house with his aunts and cousins in Florida where he and his mom shared a bed together. Bobby was also in the fourth grade now, where the other students would constantly tease him for his deformed jaw and teeth.
His already dysfunctional relationship with his mother worsened as well. She was working two jobs as a waitress and a bartender, and he was resentful of the skimpy and provocative outfits she would wear to work, leaving him feeling neglected. It was at this age that he began being verbally abusive towards his mother.
When Bobby was 12, his mother was able to buy them their own house. If you’ve lost track and are suddenly very confused, it was 1965, back when home ownership was an attainable goal even for a single mother. No longer surrounded by her entire extended family, his mother was now free to bring home a different “gentleman caller” from work every single night. If Bobby was upset about his mom dressing sexy when she left the house, you can imagine how he felt about her bringing a bunch of strange men back to the bed that he was still sleeping in with her.
Up to this point, it would be hard not to feel bad for the kid. He was born with a genetic abnormality, suffered an entire childhood of physical trauma resulting in a physical abnormality, and he had an extremely dysfunctional home life. But the next year, at the age of 13, he killed his dog by shooting it in the vagina. Sympathy gone; put that kid on a fucking watchlist.
His justification for killing the dog was anger at his mother for feeding the dog filet mignon while only giving him hamburger. This is almost certainly not true and if she was giving the dog steak instead of dog food it was probably 7 bone chuck, the cheapest steak available back then, but kids are stupid and can’t tell different cuts of meat apart.
While Bobby was 13, there were three other major developments. Because of his extra female chromosome, two of those major developments were on his chest. Kids are already stupid and immature, and having failed the first grade he would have been in school with even younger, less mature children. He was endlessly teased for his large breasts and had to get a breast reduction.
The other development was quite possibly the first good thing to happen in his life. He met Cynthia Bartlett. He confided in her and the two became extremely protective of one another. Thanks to their relationship, he even stopped sleeping in the same bed as his mother.
Love and Marriage
High school didn’t go so well for Bobby. He dropped out of the 10th grade twice, then attempted to reenroll when he was 18. He wound up getting expelled, so he enlisted in the military. Throughout this entire time, he and Cynthia had remained together. It seemed nothing was going to tear them apart.
Sure, there may have been a rape allegation when he was 18, but he was let go because the police determined the girl was lying. That’s the shitty, 1970s way of saying there wasn’t enough evidence to press charges.
While in the military, Bobby earned his GED and became an electrician’s assistance. In January of 1974, at the age of 21, he and Cynthia got married on the air force base where he was stationed. Everything was coming up roses, and this pair of damaged, childhood sweethearts were going to have their happily ever after. For about a month.
In February of that same year, Bobby was in yet another accident. He was riding his motorcycle and collided with a moving car. He had to be hospitalized for months due to the severity of his injuries. Not only was there even more massive head trauma, but there was severe damage to his shoulders and his leg was crushed so badly that doctors nearly amputated it, though ultimately decided against it.
Immediately following this accident, something dramatic changed inside Bobby. Though the injuries he sustained throughout his life were always an accident, it should be noted that one of the symptoms of Klinefelter syndrome is poor motor skills. This lack of coordination could explain why he had so, so many accidents. Another frequent symptom of this condition is a lack of interest in sex.
We know that he and Cynthia had been having sex since he was 14, so he definitely had at least some interest in it, but nothing like after his motorcycle accident. Every time Cynthia visited him in the hospital he would request sex with her, and according to the nurses he was masturbating 5 or 6 times every day.
After being released from the hospital, he and Cynthia would have sex twice a day, but this wasn’t enough. Luckily for Bobby, he had a lot of time on his hands. He had been discharged from the military due to his injuries and was unemployed. This left him lots of time to roam the neighbourhood looking for women who were home alone that he could rape.
Bobby and Cynthia had their first child in 1974 and their second in 1975. Their relationship had seemed picture perfect, but even though she tried to hold the family together, it was more than just Bobby’s libido that changed as a result of the accident. It was like he was an entirely different person. He became physically and verbally abusive, and less than a year after their marriage he had already been arrested for battery against his wife.
After six long years of marriage, Cynthia finally filed for divorce in 1980. She had truly loved Bobby, but whoever he was before the accident was gone. Of course, that first rape allegation also happened before his accident, so perhaps this was all inevitable and the motorcycle crash just accelerated it all. Either way, Bobby was now a single man with a dangerously uncontrollable libido.
Classified Ad Rapist
After his divorce, Bobby wound up living with his friend Susan, who he raped. She filed charges which were dropped due to insufficient evidence. Two weeks later they got into a physical fight, and she filed battery charges against him.
Around this time, Bobby began raping local prostitutes. But like, why? I’m not advocating for him to rape anyone, but of all people why prostitutes? They will have consensual sex with you, that is literally their job. Just pay them the money. It was 1981, so how much would that even cost, like $10? I don’t know how inflation works.
Of course, Bobby was having difficulty holding down a job. He had worked as an X-ray technician previously, but lost that job. He got another X-ray tech job in 1983 where he was described as a good and polite worker…at first. Two months after he started he got fired for making women needlessly remove their clothing before the X-rays.
He was eventually convicted for the assault of his former friend Susan, but he kept writing letters to the judge extolling his innocence and pleading for a new trial. For reasons unknown, the judge granted a retrial and he was acquitted. Yay criminal justice system.
That was not the only legal trouble that Bobby wound up in whilst raping prostitutes with seeming impunity. It is unclear how they even met, but Bobby was charged with mailing nude photographs and a sexual explicit letter to a twelve year old girl. The police even had phone records proving that Bobby had called her from his house. He pleaded no contest to the charges and received two days in jail plus probation. I’m sure at the end of those two days he was fully rehabilitated.
After years of raping random prostitutes he found on the street and also sending dick pics to children via snail mail, in 1984 he was ready for his first premeditated rape.
When I first saw that Bobby had been given his nickname by the media, I assumed it was something like the Craigslist killer. Before the interwebs, newspapers had a classified section where you could post “BBC seeks PAWG for NSA” or whatever you wanted. If you wanted sex, that seems like the sort of classified ads you should be looking at, but Bobby went a different route. He was more interested in ads that read “Oakwood Bureau for $30 OBO.”
Bobby would browse through the local Penny Saver to find houses or furniture for sale with female names listed as the contact. He would visit those people and chat the woman up to find out if she lived alone. If she did, he would ask to use the bathroom where he would take out his “rape kit”. He would then proceed to rape and rob the woman. He committed at least 50 rapes in Florida, starting in 1974, but it was probably many, many more than that.
In 1984, after beginning his classified ad rapes, Bobby began not only raping but murdering the women as well. The women he murdered were not those he visited at their own homes. They were normally prostitutes or other women he saw on the street that he would politely offer a ride to so they wouldn’t have to walk.
In each instance, the method was the same. He would pick the women up, rape them in his car or on the side of the road, then murder them either by strangulation, bludgeoning, or stabbing. The bodies were then dumped on the side of a rural road and dragged into the woods, often not being found until they were already in a highly decomposed state. The murders were all similar so there’s no need to try to go into the too many details of each individual one, but we should still address the victims.
The Victims
In the span of 8 months, Bobby murdered at least 10 women before being caught by the police. Authorities knew that the murders were related due to fibers found on the bodies that would later be identified as having come from Bobby’s car.
His first murder victim was 20 year old Artis Wick. She was a prostitute that he had only intended to rape, but afterwards he still wasn’t satisfied and decided to strangle her to death. This must have done the trick for Bobby since he continued to kill, and at such a rapid rate.
Next was “Lana” Ngeun Thi Long, a 19 year old girl who had just quit her job as a stripper. When the body was found on the side of the road, she was fully nude with legs spread extremely wide, her feet 5 feet apart.
Michelle Simms was the next body found. She was a 22 year old prostitute and cocaine addict. At the scene of her body the police found the fibers we mentioned as well as human hair, a bare footprint, and semen. Despite not being careful at all, this evidence would not help the police find him, it would only solidify his guilt.
The first victim to break the pattern of prostitutes and strippers was 22 year old Elizabeth Loudenback. After having his way with her, Bobby ordered her to put her clothes back on and get back in the car. He had planned to let her go, but strangled her to death because he couldn’t handle her incessant crying. She was the first clothed victim he had dumped.
He found her ATM card and pin number in her wallet and withdrew money from her account at several banks within the hours immediately following the murder. When her body was found 17 days later, it only weighed 25 pounds.
Simon, prepare to lose your shit. After the fourth murder, Bobby found himself in court for sentencing yet again. While he was committing these crimes, he had also tried to abduct a woman, Mary Hicks, at gunpoint while she was driving her Jaguar. He had entered her car and was trying to direct her, but she deliberately crashed her car so she could run away.
Now Bobby has already been accused of rape multiple times, charged with beating his wife, charged with assaulting Susan, and charged with being extremely inappropriate with a 12 year old. He had managed to get the assault conviction against Susan overturned, but he was still on probation for the underage girl. How long should a person who is already on probation go to jail for pulling a gun on someone and trying to kidnap them?
If your answer was anything higher than zero days, then you would make a terrible judge in America’s legal system. Bobby was charged $1,500 for the damage to Mary’s Jaguar and given 3 years of probation.
Bobby took his probation seriously, which is why he waited an entire month and a half before killing again. His next victim was Vicky Elliot, a 21 year old who worked at a coffee shop inside a Ramada Inn. Her body would not be found for over 2 months.
Chanel Devon Williams, an 18 year old prostitute was his next target. She was athletic and strong, making it difficult to kill her while she was fighting back, so Chanel was the only girl he murdered with his gun.
A week later, the same day that Chanel’s body was found, Bobby struck again. This time his victim was a 22 year old prostitute named Kimberly Hopps.
Less than a week later, the day before Bobby’s birthday, Karen Beth Dinsfriend, a 28 year old who was known already to the police as a drug addict and thief approached his car offering sex in exchange for the money she needed to support her addiction. After raping and killing her, he was startled by the sound of dogs barking nearby. He waited silently in his car with Karen’s body for the sound to pass before putting her in the trunk and driving to a safer location to dump her body.
Two and a half weeks later, Bobby met Lisa McVey. She may have escaped, but she was not the final victim. Two days after dropping off Lisa, the body of 18 year old Virginia Johnson was found. She was so badly decomposed and dismembered from the elements and wild animals that her date of death could not be determined.
One week after he had kidnapped Lisa, Bobby murdered his final victim, 21 year old stripper Kimberly Swain. He saw her driving drunk and signaled for her to pull over. He offered a ride to go get a drink with the intent of raping her, but the two argued in the car and she began vomiting from already being so intoxicated, so he skipped straight to her murder.
That is 10 murder victims that we know of, and at least 50 rapes. The second number is certainly higher, and in interviews with the police Bobby alluded to more murder victims, but he never gave details so we’ll never know for sure. But now it’s time for our story to end back where it began.
The One that Got Away
The first thing Lisa saw when she removed her blindfold was a big, beautiful oak tree. As she stared at it she thought to herself that she was going to have a new life, and it would be better. She also told herself that even though she only survived because of the years of sexual abuse she had already suffered, she would never let anyone do that to her again.
Lisa began running. It was about 4:30 in the morning, and after making her way to her grandmother’s house, terrified that every car that passed was Bobby coming back for her, she started banging on the door to be let in. The thing is, her grandmother’s boyfriend wasn’t any less of a piece of shit that morning than he was any other day. He opened the door, grabbed her by the hair, and threw her to the ground.
For the next five hours, the man beat Lisa while interrogating her, demanding to know where she had been and why she was cheating on him. Her grandmother apparently was totally cool with everything that was happening, because she called the Tampa police to tell them not to worry about the missing girl, that she was home and making up some story about being kidnapped. Lisa was ready to kill herself again, save for the fact that the police insisted on conducting an investigation.
At the police station, Lisa was calm, coherent, and unwavering in her story. She knew the type of car she was in. She could describe the man that had kidnapped her. He never fully let her see his face, but she had caught glimpses from under her blindfold and at one point in between sessions of abuse he had kissed her and put her hand on his face, foolishly letting her feel his facial features. She knew he had a small moustache, a snub nose, pockmarks on his skin, was clean, had small ears, and more.
She also knew much of the route that had been taken on. She saw buildings she recognized and could tell they were on the highway based on the sound of the wind outside the car. In short, Lisa was the last person anyone should have ever kidnapped. Aside from that brief moment when she heard the announcement of her own missing person’s report, she had kept her composure the entire time, carefully logging every single detail for this very moment when she could finally tell the police her story.
And the female detective she was talking to didn’t believe a word of it. She asked Lisa to go over everything again and again, refusing to believe someone who went through this ordeal could be so calm and remember so many details despite being blindfolded. Lisa began getting angry, and upon being asked to repeat it again, she finally told the detective, “No, bring in someone more intelligent.” Seriously, do not fuck with this girl.
The detective brought in Sgt. Larry Pinkerton, the head of sexual crimes for the Tampa police department, to talk to her. He sat down and took out his wallet, pulling out a picture of his daughter. He explained to Lisa that he had a daughter that was her age and that he would do anything to protect her, and he was going to protect Lisa too. When he said this she started crying, but she went through all of the details about Bobby and her abduction again.
Larry was amazed. He had never before seen a victim of a violent crime able to recall so many details of the perpetrator and their surroundings, let alone one who could do it so calmly. When he walked out of the room, Lisa heard him tell one of the female detectives, “I believe her. Call the FBI.”
On November 15, 1984, Bobby was pulled over by the police based on the description Lisa had given of his car. He described himself as feeling relieved, believing that he was finally caught. The police photographed him, but to his surprise they let him go. He had not immediately confessed, and they could not yet link him to any verifiable evidence. What they could do, now that they had found the car, was immediately put him under 24 hour surveillance.
The next day, he was arrested outside of a movie theatre and charged with the rape and kidnapping of Lisa.
Interrogation and Trial
Bobby was both a sloppy criminal and relieved to have been caught. Because he was not a bright criminal, his first orders of business upon being brought in for questioning were to sign a formal document waiving his Miranda rights and to consent to being questioned.
It didn’t take long for the detectives to get a confession for the assault and kidnapping of Lisa, so their questions quickly turned to the murders, for which they had a mountain of evidence. He initially answered these questions by simply stating “I’d rather not answer that”, but the detectives pressed forward.
They showed Bobby pictures of his murder victims, at which point he said, “The complexion of things sure have changed since you came back into the room. I think I might need an attorney.” These were detectives, not the thought police, so he was free to think he might need an attorney all he wanted. Thinking it is different than explicitly asking for one, so the interrogation continued without a lawyer present. He confessed to nine of the murders.
Before going to trial, his public defender was able to get him a plea bargain. On September 24, 1985, Bobby pled guilty to eight of the murders and the abduction and rape of Lisa McVey. As per the agreement, he would be sentenced to 26 life sentences without the possibility of parole, 24 to be served concurrently with two more to run consecutively after those. He was also sentenced to seven more life sentences with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Simon, you asked this in a previous episode, and you may find yourself asking once again, “where’s your yee-haw now?” It’s right here: in addition to the agreed upon sentencing, the state reserved the right to seek the death penalty for the murder of Michelle Simms. Bobby was found guilty and in July of 1986 was sentenced to death.
He would also be convicted for the murder of Virginia Johnson and receive another death penalty, but that one was overturned on appeal. Fortunately, the original death sentence still stood.
Where Are They Now?
After vowing to herself never to be raped again, Lisa left her grandmothers and moved into a runaway center. When she was going to age out of the shelter, she was asked if she had any relatives she could live with. The staff found her mother in a crack house, and she wanted nothing to do with her daughter. Probably for the best. Lisa wound up moving in with her aunt and uncle, the only people who had ever showed her love and affection.
From then on, Lisa’s life only got better. She got married, had kids, and was working as a secretary for the Hillsborough County Department of Parks and Recreation, which unless television has lied to me is an amazing and hilarious job.
One day, she had to report a break in at the office. The deputy that arrived said she had the attitude to be a cop and asked her if she had ever considered it. The answer was yes, she had, but she had a 7 year old daughter and didn’t want to risk getting shot and killed.
As luck would have it, four years later she got transferred to the sheriff’s office to be a dispatch operator. Once she was there, she decided to become a reserve deputy to see if the job would be a good fit for her. Once again, the answer was yes, so she put herself through the police academy and became a sheriff’s deputy in 2004.
She is now working in the same department that arrested Bobby, where she specializes in combating sex crimes and working to protect children. She also works as a school resource officer at a middle school where she uses her story to teach children how to protect themselves if they ever wind up in dangerous situations.
And what about Bobby? On April 23, 2019, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant, just three months into taking office. All of the subsequent appeals were denied. Exactly one month after the death warrant was signed, Bobby received his last meal at 9:30 am.
He had requested who cares with a side order of I don’t give a shit. I’m happy that we still have the custom of providing death row inmates with their choice of last meal, but I’m much happier that at 7:00 pm that night he was pronounced dead from lethal injection. Yippee ki-yay, mother fucker.
And I’m not the only one happy he’s dead. Lisa McVey sat in the front row for his execution, stating that “I wanted to be the first person that he saw.” Also in attendance was Linda Nuttall, a woman who was 33 at the time that Bobby raped her in her home during his spree of classified ads attacks.
Wrap Up
So was this was a happy story? Of course not, this is fucking true crime. Unless it’s a heist, there’s not a lot of happy stories to be had. But as far as the ending goes it’s about as happy as it gets. A murderer was captured thanks to one of his victims after she was able to trick him into letting her go. Not only did she escape and make sure he saw justice, but she was able to completely turn around her otherwise completely shitty life as a result.
She went on to become a police officer for the very department that arrested him, specializing in investigating and preventing the exact time of crime she fell victim to, and she got to sit front row to watch him be executed by the state. If there has to be a story about murder, I can’t think of much of a better ending.
Key Takeaways
- Lisa McVey survived 26 hours of captivity by deliberately leaving fingerprints and memorizing details to help police identify her abductor.
- Bobby Joe Long committed at least 50 rapes and murdered 10 women in Florida during an eight-month killing spree in 1984.
- Long targeted women through classified ads for furniture and homes, then raped and robbed them, later escalating to murdering prostitutes and strangers.
- McVey’s detailed testimony led police to Long; she later became a sheriff’s deputy specializing in sex crimes and child protection.
- Long was executed by lethal injection in May 2019, with McVey attending and stating she wanted to be the first person he saw.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Bobby Joe Long and what was his nickname?
Bobby Joe Long, born Robert Joseph Long in 1953 in West Virginia, was a serial rapist and murderer known as ‘The Classified Ads Rapist.’ He committed at least 50 rapes and at least 10 murders in Florida during 1984.
What medical condition did Bobby Joe Long have?
Bobby Joe Long had Klinefelter syndrome, also known as 47, XXY, meaning he was born with an extra X chromosome. Symptoms include infertility and small, poorly functioning testicles, though he was not infertile. He also had difficulty learning to read and developed large breasts, which required reduction surgery.
How did Bobby Joe Long select his victims for the classified ads rapes?
Bobby Joe Long would browse through the local Penny Saver newspaper to find houses or furniture for sale with female names listed as the contact. He would visit those women, chat with them to find out if they lived alone, and if they did, he would ask to use the bathroom where he would take out his ‘rape kit’ and then proceed to rape and rob them.
Who was Lisa McVey and how did she survive her abduction?
Lisa McVey was a 17-year-old girl who was abducted by Bobby Joe Long on November 3, 1984, while riding her bike home from work at Krispy Kreme. She survived by using psychological manipulation—offering to be his girlfriend, claiming she was caring for a sick father, and noticing that he said he would be ‘forced’ to kill her rather than wanting to. She also gathered crucial evidence by leaving fingerprints everywhere and memorizing details about her captor and surroundings despite being blindfolded.
What details did Lisa McVey remember that helped identify Bobby Joe Long?
Lisa McVey remembered the type of car, described the man’s physical features (small moustache, snub nose, pockmarks, clean, small ears), counted her steps to the apartment (nineteen steps, then a quick left turn followed by a quick right), recognized buildings and highway sounds during the car ride, and deliberately loosened her blindfold by clenching her jaw to see out from under it.
What happened to Bobby Joe Long after his arrest?
Bobby Joe Long was pulled over on November 15, 1984, based on Lisa McVey’s description of his car, photographed, and released, but put under 24-hour surveillance. He was arrested the next day outside a movie theatre. He waived his Miranda rights, confessed to Lisa’s kidnapping and rape, and eventually to nine murders. On September 24, 1985, he pled guilty to eight murders and Lisa’s abduction and rape, receiving 26 life sentences without parole plus seven more with parole possibility after 25 years.
He was also sentenced to death for the murder of Michelle Simms in July 1986. He was executed by lethal injection on May 23, 2019.
What did Lisa McVey do after her abduction?
After her abduction, Lisa McVey moved into a runaway center, then lived with her aunt and uncle. She got married, had children, and worked as a secretary. After a deputy suggested she had the attitude to be a cop, she eventually became a dispatch operator at the sheriff’s office, then a reserve deputy, and finally a sheriff’s deputy in 2004. She works in the same department that arrested Bobby Joe Long, specializing in combating sex crimes and protecting children, and serves as a school resource officer using her story to teach children self-protection.
How many murder victims did Bobby Joe Long have and who were they?
Bobby Joe Long murdered at least 10 women in the span of 8 months in 1984: Artis Wick (20), Lana Ngeun Thi Long (19), Michelle Simms (22), Elizabeth Loudenback (22), Vicky Elliot (21), Chanel Devon Williams (18), Kimberly Hopps (22), Karen Beth Dinsfriend (28), Virginia Johnson (18), and Kimberly Swain (21). He alluded to more murder victims in interviews but never gave details.
What was unusual about Bobby Joe Long’s treatment of Lisa McVey compared to his other victims?
Unlike his other victims, Bobby Joe Long brought Lisa McVey to his apartment rather than killing her immediately. He cut her free and let her put clothes on, made her a sandwich (something he had never done before), and ultimately released her. He told her, ‘Tell your father he’s the reason I didn’t kill you,’ suggesting he was manipulated by her fabricated story about caring for a sick father.
What prior criminal history did Bobby Joe Long have before the murders?
Before the murders, Bobby Joe Long had multiple accusations and charges: a rape allegation at age 18 that was dismissed; arrest for battery against his wife Cynthia in 1975; charges from friend Susan for rape (dropped) and battery; inappropriate conduct with female patients as an X-ray technician leading to firing; conviction for assaulting Susan that was overturned on retrial; and charges for mailing nude photographs and a sexually explicit letter to a 12-year-old girl, for which he received two days in jail plus probation. He also received only probation and a $1,500 fine for attempting to abduct Mary Hicks at gunpoint while on probation.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: Bobby Joe Long: The Classified Ads Rapist
- Hero image source by Frankie Fouganthin / openverse, by.
