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[ Dramatic music plays ] -Northern
Tampa, Florida, 1984 -- 17-year-old Lisa was abducted.
00:00:14
The teenager was subjected
to a terrifying 26-hour ordeal by a sadistic sexual predator.
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Unlike his other victims,
she was the only one to survive. -A sexual sadist, a man
who thought nothing of abusing,
00:00:31
mutilating, stabbing women. He was a man who had
a ferocious hatred of women. -At his peak, the bodies
of the killer's victims
00:00:42
were discovered at a rate of one
every other week. The evidence revealed
that a depraved serial killer
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was on the loose. -Each crime scene was like
somebody crazed, not even somebody, some thing,
monster type, you know?
00:00:59
It was just terrible. -That monster was
31-year-old Army veteran and divorced father
of two Bobby Joe Long.
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-I don't know if I was blind
or, you know, but I never imagined
in a million years
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that he was capable of doing
the things that he's done. He was an animal, you know?
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And, I mean,
this is somebody that I loved. -Long became one of the most notorious serial killers
in U.S. history.
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During his 8-month
sadistic killing spree, he murdered 10 women in Florida, making Bobby Joe Long one of
the world's most evil killers.
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♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Tampa, Florida,
23rd of September, 1985 -- At the 13th Judicial
Circuit Court,
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Bobby Joe Long
only pleaded guilty to the murder and kidnap
of eight women and seven counts
of sexual battery
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in and around
the Tampa Bay area and to the abduction
and sexual battery of Lisa,
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his only surviving victim. -When in a single spree,
he killed 10 young women and not only killed them,
abducted them,
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subjected them
to dreadful abuse. He was without question
one of the most dreadful,
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depraved killers in recent times
in the United States. -During the months of March
to November 1984 in Tampa Bay,
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young women were disappearing
in and around an area called the strip. Their bodies would later
be found
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dumped in remote locations. Discarded
and exposed to the elements, some were posed grotesquely
in humiliating positions.
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-They were all women
who were out and about on Nebraska Avenue
or around that vicinity.
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Now, this was quite a notorious
area of the red-light district, so this suggests
that this is somebody
00:03:21
who was targeting people who
they believed to be sex workers. -He would haunt
the red-light districts.
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He would target, focus on women,
whom he knew could be tempted into his car
with the offer of money.
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They were the classic
serial killer victim. -Anna Flowers recalls
the impact the murders had on
the local community at the time.
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-When he started
killing prostitutes, the flamboyant strip
was full of fear. Prostitutes
knew they could be next,
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and they were very scared,
and girls just out partying, they knew they could be next,
and it was absolute terror.
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-The first body was discovered
in May 1984. She was 20-year-old
exotic dancer Lana.
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-What's happened to her
is that Bobby Joe Long has picked her up, driven her to a remote location
and killed her.
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Here's somebody who
was literally just plucking women
off the streets. He's identifying his victim
as somebody
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he thinks he's entitled to,
as somebody he thinks that he can just pick up
and use and discard.
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-On the 13th of May, 1984,
Lana's body was discovered. When police examined
the crime scene,
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they immediately knew
they were dealing with an extremely
dangerous individual. -It is almost impossible
to imagine the terror
00:04:57
that Lana must have suffered
at the hands of Bobby Joe Long. There's no suggestion that
he raped her after her death.
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He raped her
and then strangled her. He had tied her hands
behind her back. I think that was Long trying
to humiliate his victims,
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to humiliate women. -This killer's story
begins in 1953. Bobby Joe Long was born
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on October the 14th
in Kenova, West Virginia. His parents divorced
when he was 2 years old.
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Bobby Joe's teenage mother
had dreamed of moving to Florida one day, and after her divorce, she left
West Virginia with her son
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and headed for
the Sunshine State, where she struggled financially
to support them both.
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-So Bobby Joe Long's mother
used to work in bars. She was single. She was on her own with him,
and she had to go out and work.
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She was the breadwinner.
-As a child, Long suffered many accidents,
head injuries that caused
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several periods
of unconsciousness. Some were minor,
like falling from a swing. Others were more serious --
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falling down stairs
and being thrown from a horse. One of his most serious injuries
occurred at the age of 7
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when he was hit by a car. The accident left him
with a deformed jaw and teeth. -And the kids would bully him
to death about that,
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and he finally had an operation
on that as well. He wore those scars,
you know, all of his life.
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-With money scarce, they lived frugally
in a one-bedroom apartment, even sharing a single bed
until Bobby Joe was a teenager.
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Bobby Joe confided in
his ex-wife, Cindy, about his relationship
with his mother.
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-He would tell me
that certain nights that she would come home
with a boyfriend,
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that he would get woke up
and put on the couch while the boyfriend
spent the night with her.
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-Long slept with his mother, which often angered him
when she brought home a man,
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of which there were a string, and I think
it's in there somewhere that the genesis of Long's
loathing for women began.
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-When you look at how he speaks
about his mother and what he thought about her, he held her in quite a lot
of contempt and disdain.
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He said some very offensive
things about her. He criticized the fact
that she worked as a barmaid,
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that she wore revealing outfits,
and that, for me, says that he's got
some incredibly fixed
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and very conservative views
about women, who they are,
how they should behave. They should look after
their husbands,
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look after their children. He's got a very fixed idea of men as breadwinners
and women as caregivers.
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-Long harbored a grudge
against his mother for not looking after him
or paying him enough attention.
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-He had a horrible resentment
towards his mother, and to be very honest with you,
had I ever heard that he,
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you know,
had harmed his mom, I probably wouldn't
have been surprised because he really did have
a hate for his mother.
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-And as time went on, the more time she paid to men,
the more he resented it, and psychiatrists have said
that that's part of his problem,
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that he was actually killing
his mother again and again. He hated women. -Long had also been born
with a condition
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that would later in life prove
a challenge to his masculinity. -He had Klinefelter syndrome,
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which meant that he had
two X chromosomes and one Y. Now, one of the symptoms of that
is it gives a young boy,
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as he grows into adolescence,
significant extra estrogen. -High levels of the female
hormone can result in men
00:08:54
developing enlarged breast
tissue, called gynecomastia. -This happened to Bobby Joe Long
to his great embarrassment
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and I think also heightened
the fact that he loathed women. -Age 13, Bobby Joe Long
00:09:10
underwent surgery
to remove his breasts, leaving ugly scars
that made the young man
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very self conscious
about his body. -When were kids, you know, we were always swimming down
in the Keys and everything.
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He would always keep a shirt on because he was embarrassed
of the scars from the surgery.
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-By his early teens,
this cocktail of anger at his anger and his own
physical self-loathing
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was already beginning
to turn Bobby Joe Long into an angry young man. ♪♪ -Bobby Joe Long's mother
had moved to Miami, Florida,
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with her young son. By waiting on tables in bars
and restaurants, she was eventually able
to provide them
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with a better life
in the Miami suburbs. Age 13, Bobby Joe was a student
at Hialeah High High School
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in Miami-Dade County, where he became close friends
with a young girl called Cindy.
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-Our childhood was great. You know, we used
to go to the movies. We'd go fishing.
We'd go hunting.
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We'd go to the Keys
scuba diving. It was a very normal childhood
for the South Florida area.
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-Long didn't excel
in high school. Went he left, he got a job as an electrician's assistant
at a firm.
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Age 19, he used his newly
acquired trade and joined the Army. On January the 25th, 1974,
he married Cindy,
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his childhood sweetheart. -So, yeah. He swept me off my feet
really hard, and I don't know.
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I guess I just fell madly
in love with him, you know, and thought
that in the fairy-tale world
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that this was going
to be my husband, and we were going to live
together forever.
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-But Cindy's fairy-tale
marriage was short-lived. Not long after the wedding, alarm bells began to ring
about her husband's temperament.
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-If there was another guy that
would talk to me or anything, he would just have
a fit about it.
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A few times, he accused me of,
you know, messing around with people,
which I had not.
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Controlling, he would me
what I was going to eat. He hated the smell of popcorn
for whatever reason,
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so, you know,
that was always something that he would just have
a fit about, if I was eating popcorn,
or garlic.
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He didn't like garlic. And, you know, I mean,
it was just like you were basically his puppet
on a string, you know?
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And that should have been
a red flag to me, but, you know,
I was young. I was in love.
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-On March the 14th, 1974, Long sustained another
serious head injury in a motorcycle accident,
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and his behavior
changed dramatically. -I think that if possible,
the motorcycle accident
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just kind of knocked
the screw loose that was holding everything
together at the time.
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-The long-term effects
of a head injury, some people will be fine. Others, it can seriously
affect personality.
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If your brain is damaged,
particularly at the front, you can almost become
a different person.
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-Whilst in the hospital,
the nursing staff noticed that he masturbated
constantly.
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Long was released 5 months
later, but when he returned, Cindy found that he became
violent towards her.
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He also became obsessed with sex
and demanded she have intercourse with him
at least twice a day.
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-There was no doubt that Long
developed an overt, compulsive and dangerous sex drive
when he was a young man.
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It turned him into
this hypersexual being that flicked the switch,
if you like. -So brain injuries,
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particularly to
the frontal lobes, they can affect impulse control. They can make you
sexually disinhibited,
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and I think in Long's case, we certainly can see
some suggestions that that injury
has changed who he was.
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-Long was discharged from
the Army on medical grounds and retrained as a radiologist.
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The couple had
two children together. -My son was born in 1974, and then when he was
6 months old,
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we discovered I was pregnant
with our daughter, who was born in 1975, so it was almost like
having twins around,
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but he was always
a good father to them. He absolutely loved them. He was very strict with them,
but, you know, he loved them.
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He would do things with them
and everything, so he was never violent
towards our kids.
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-Despite the abuse,
Cindy stuck by her man. -They always have the knack
to turn it around to,
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you know, make it your fault,
and you, as the victim, you, you know,
you believe it is your fault,
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so you're constantly
walking around on eggshells trying to please this person, and, you know,
you can't please them.
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He used to have a habit
of getting on top of me on the bed or the couch, and he'd put his knees,
like, right here,
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where I couldn't
move my arms, and he would just sit there and,
like, smack me in the face.
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Then that became a habit of
when he was, you know, very upset with me. -In the wake of the motorbike
accident,
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something had definitely
changed within him, and he had always
been short-tempered,
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but then he became increasingly
violent towards his wife, and by implication, she feared
for her son and daughter.
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-After the birth of their
second child in 1975, 22-year-old Bobby Joe
started going out more often
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and refused to tell Cindy
where he was going. -He was leaving the house
at night time, telling me
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that he, you know, just needed
to go out and clear his mind and get away from the kids
and myself and everything.
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And, you know, in my heart I felt like he was
probably seeing somebody. -Bobby Joe Long
didn't have a lover.
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He had a secret
sadistic hobby -- raping women. -Well, when we look
at serial killers,
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they very rarely go
from being normal, average, non-criminal individuals
to killers overnight.
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-He set out on a scheme
by answering ads, classified ads,
in the local paper. He specifically targeted
bedroom furniture,
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but even if it was something
in the kitchen or something in the front room,
he went to the house.
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If he discovered that the woman
was on her own, he would rape her
and then leave her.
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-At night he was a rapist,
sexually assaulting women he found in the classified ads
section of the local paper,
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and when he returned home,
his violent behavior continued. In June 1980, following
a particularly severe beating,
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Cindy required urgent
medical treatment. In the emergency room, Cindy lied about how
she'd sustained her injuries.
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Staff believed she was a victim
of domestic violence and called the police, but she continued
to lie to them.
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-I have walked around
for the last 30-plus years regretting the fact that I never
did have him arrested.
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-On returning home, Cindy decided to take matters
into her own hands. -I came home that night
00:16:40
and I loaded
a double-barreled shotgun, and I sat there until his alarm
went off with it at his head,
00:16:46
cocked, trying to get the nerve
to pull the trigger. I was so humiliated from being
at the hospital,
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and the police officer
knowing I was lying and the doctor
knowing I was lying, and I was tired
of being his punching bag.
00:17:01
-But she couldn't
pull the trigger. -The only reason that I never
pulled the trigger that night,
00:17:09
I'm sorry,
was because of my kids. I kept thinking, you know,
"Who will raise them?
00:17:15
He's going to be dead.
I'm going to be in jail." I mean, this is how demented
he had my mind to. [ Sniffs ]
00:17:23
♪♪ -Over approximately 10 years, Long sexually assaulted at least
50 women across Florida.
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These were completely
random victims and were impossible to connect. The unknown offender
became known
00:17:40
as the classified ad rapist. With no evidence to link
Long to the attacks, he was free to continue his
assaults on unsuspecting women.
00:17:51
-It was a consistently dramatic
way of discovering victims. He didn't go searching for them
on the street.
00:18:01
He wasn't hiding in the bushes
or waiting in the park. He was a perfectly ordinary
bloke answering a classified ad,
00:18:11
and saying, "Oh, I'd like to see
the item you've got for sale." -Cindy had no knowledge of
Bobby Joe's sadistic hobby,
00:18:20
but in 1980, she plucked up the
courage and filed for divorce. -He was an animal, you know?
00:18:27
And, I mean, this is somebody
that I loved. I mean, when I tell you
I loved him,
00:18:32
I loved him, you know,
your first true love, you know? And how could I have been
so blinded?
00:18:40
-Bobby Joe eventually left
the family home and moved to the Tampa Bay area. -When we first got divorced,
we, you know,
00:18:48
weren't very kind
to each other because there was still
so much animosity, but we still had
to contact each other
00:18:53
because we had the two children. So probably around 1982 or '83
we started where we could be civil
to one another, and, you know,
00:19:05
I had forgiven him
for what he had done to me, just with the understanding that, you know,
he's a sick individual.
00:19:12
-By the time
they finally divorced, I think Long had decided
that his only true satisfaction
00:19:21
would be in a great many
sexual partners. -Bobby Joe Long had a fresh
hunting ground of Tampa Bay
00:19:29
where just raping and abusing
women was no longer enough. He would go from being
the classified ad rapist
00:19:36
into a serial killer. ♪♪ Divorced from his wife, Bobby Joe Long began
his sadistic murderous spree.
00:19:47
Preying on vulnerable
young women in the red-light district, his need for sexual
gratification was insatiable.
00:19:55
On the 10th of May, 1984,
exotic dancer Lana had arranged to meet
her boyfriend after work
00:20:02
and was walking along the strip. -Lana was an Asian,
and she was a pole dancer in a bar on the strip.
00:20:11
She had relocated
from California, and she had a boyfriend. She was often asked
to be taken home,
00:20:18
but she didn't usually do that even though
that was extra money. Bobby Joe Long came along
in the car,
00:20:26
and he stopped the car and
asked her if she'd like a ride. She got into the car,
and that was his first
00:20:34
known victim
in that killing frenzy period. -Lana's body was found
three days later
00:20:42
by two boys near
East Bay Road, Tampa. She'd been brutally raped,
strangled, and her body grotesquely posed.
00:20:51
-She had the hangman's noose
around her neck, and she was cut while
all that was going on.
00:20:56
It was out of control. The ligatures showed signs
of a knife, and he just left her
in the field.
00:21:06
-This was one of those cases where you have
this first murder, and the individual
who's been killed
00:21:15
is associated
with the sex work trade, is somebody who's seen
as less deserving.
00:21:21
And very often, these murders
don't get the same attention, don't get the same kind
of investigation as others,
00:21:28
so very often these first
murders are real opportunities to apprehend a serial killer
before they kill again.
00:21:35
-On the 26th of May,
Long struck once again. He picked up 22-year-old sex
worker Michelle on the strip.
00:21:45
-Michelle was a beauty queen
at one time, and she was very pretty,
but she was a drug addict,
00:21:51
and so she did that
to support her habit. -After she got in the car Long drove to Park Road,
known as the local Lover's Lane.
00:22:02
He tied her up, beat her
and viciously raped her, and then threw her
out of the car,
00:22:08
but Michelle was still alive. -This victim has got spirit, and she puts up
a fantastic fight,
00:22:18
which makes him extremely angry,
so angry, indeed, that not only does he try
and strangle her,
00:22:26
he then goes on
to cut her throat viciously. -So he cut the throat
of one victim.
00:22:33
He really didn't care. He wanted to get his pleasure,
have his fun and then just simply
dispose of these women.
00:22:40
-When you're getting to
that level of brutality, we're beyond
simply ending a life.
00:22:46
We are into cruelty. We are into doing things for
Long's own perverted pleasure,
00:22:56
and that, to my mind, is evil. -Strangulation and the use
of ligatures became Long's
killing trademarks.
00:23:05
He used ropes and a series
of knots to create a collar
like a hangman's noose. -With strangulation you're
very physically close,
00:23:16
and you have complete control. You have ownership of that
other person while you're strangling them,
00:23:22
and you know you have
power of life and death literally in your hands. -Michelle's body was found
a day later
00:23:32
in an isolated area
of Hillsborough County by a construction worker. There was no indication
00:23:38
that Long selected women
of a physical type, but during his 8-month
killing spree
00:23:44
all of his victims
were young women, and the majority
were sex workers. -They were the classic
serial killer victim.
00:23:54
How often have we talked about
how vulnerable prostitute sex workers
are to a serial killer?
00:24:01
Bobby Joe Long falls
into the stereotype. I think he made a conscious
decision in early 1984
00:24:11
to start killing, and once he started,
he simply could not stop. -On the 8th of June,
he picked up factory worker
00:24:21
and 22-year-old Elizabeth, who had been in the red-light
area of Nebraska Avenue.
00:24:27
-He doesn't look
like a monster. He's incredibly charming. He's incredibly charismatic,
and he's good-looking,
00:24:33
so he's able to disarm
you quite easily. -Like his other victims, Elizabeth felt safe enough
to accept a ride from him.
00:24:43
-But what he concealed
was this volcanic temperament hiding beneath the surface that gave him
this extraordinary drive
00:24:56
to be incredibly
violent towards women. -She got in the car
and went through the same MO --
00:25:05
raped her violently
on the front seat of his car, took her to a remote place and continued to rape
and torture her.
00:25:16
-Long strangled Elizabeth
with rope, stole her cash card and later
emptied her account.
00:25:22
Her body was found 16 days later
in an orange grove in Brandon, approximately 10 miles
from Nebraska Avenue.
00:25:31
-The line between rape
and murder is extremely thin. This is a man
who is now addicted,
00:25:39
obsessed, to rape and murder. -In two months,
law enforcement agencies had discovered three bodies,
but they had no witnesses
00:25:49
and no tangible leads that could
help them identify a killer. -When we look at Long's
motivation for murder,
00:25:57
I think here's somebody
who felt that they were entitled
to kill these women. He had a very
black-and-white outlook.
00:26:04
There were women
who were respectable, and there were women
who were not respectable,
00:26:08
and he felt that he was the one who could decide which ones
lived and which ones died,
00:26:13
and I think if he was honest, and you asked him why did
he commit these murders,
00:26:18
because he wanted to,
and it's as simple as that. -It's not about simple killing,
00:26:23
it's about the power
and control over women. That was exactly what
Bobby Joe Long
00:26:29
was demonstrating --
"I have ultimate control." -As the number of deaths rose, the community in Tampa
were left terrified.
00:26:41
-The killer had a particular
appetite for prostitutes, and they knew that
they could be killed anytime.
00:26:51
And after the one girl that was
not a prostitute was murdered, anyone could be a victim,
and they knew that,
00:26:57
and terror was prevalent
all over the city. -Long's lust for killing
was insatiable.
00:27:06
On the 7th of October, the body
of 18-year-old sex worker Chanel was discovered
lying by the entrance road
00:27:13
of a cattle ranch
near the Pasco-Hillsborough county line in Florida. She'd been shot in the neck.
00:27:21
-Chanel was the only black girl
that he killed. A troublesome teenager,
but she wasn't particularly
00:27:29
a professional hooker
at that time, but she was just beginning
to go back into the business.
00:27:36
But this night, she just got
in the car with the wrong man, and she was murdered
in the same way --
00:27:44
tortured, raped. -Police were at a loss. They still had no evidence
to lead them to the perpetrator.
00:27:52
Bobby Joe Long was free
to kill again. Just 1 week later, police made
another grim discovery.
00:28:00
On the 14th of October, 1984, the body of 28-year-old
sex worker Karen was found in an orange grove
in Hillsborough County.
00:28:10
The victim's hands and feet
were bound. She had been struck
on the forehead and strangled.
00:28:16
-Karen was from a very upper
middle class family in St. Petersburg,
was an excellent student.
00:28:22
She had it all, but in high
school, she got hooked on drugs, and it just turned
her whole life around
00:28:29
because she lost her ambition
to succeed at anything but just support her habit.
00:28:35
-By mid-October, 1984, investigators had collected
forensic evidence from the crime scenes
and bodies of five victims,
00:28:45
but the elements
were working against them. -Long left his victims out
in the Florida heat.
00:28:52
You've got temperature
degrading that body. You have predators. You have animals.
00:28:59
If that body isn't found
quickly, it is going
to severely interfere with the forensic
pathological investigation.
00:29:07
It's almost like you're working
against the clock. -But what they did find
suggested
00:29:13
that the victims were likely
linked to a single killer. -Among the things they found
were some distinctive red fibers
00:29:21
and also some
very distinctive tire tracks. -And they were tire tracks
that belonged
00:29:26
to a specific type of tire. It was custom-made
for use on Cadillacs, so that was quite unique,
00:29:33
so those were some
common denominators. Those were some pieces
of the puzzle, and eventually,
they would get put together.
00:29:42
-Deputies had begun patrolling the perpetrator's
hunting ground, Nebraska Avenue
and West Kennedy Boulevard.
00:29:49
Investigators also created
a profile of the murderer to help narrow
down their search.
00:29:56
-He had the injuries
from youth, head injuries, birth defects, all of it. They had about a dozen things
00:30:05
that serial killers
had in common. Bobby Joe Long had them all. He was a profile poster child
of serial killing.
00:30:14
-On October the 31st, in an isolated area
of Hillsborough County, police discovered
their sixth body,
00:30:21
that of sex worker
Kimberly Hopps. The authorities hunting
the unknown killer desperately needed
a breakthrough
00:30:29
in the investigation. Little did they know that Long himself
was about to hand it to them.
00:30:37
At around 2 a.m. on the night
of November the 3rd, 17-year-old
Lisa was cycling home
00:30:43
from her job at a donut shop
in northern Tampa. Long pulled her
from her bicycle at gunpoint,
00:30:50
dragged her into a car
and blindfolded her. She was made to remove
all her clothes,
00:30:57
and he bound her hands,
wrists and feet. He then forced Lisa
to perform oral sex on him.
00:31:06
-But this time,
he doesn't drive into some neglected field
or other place. This time, unusually,
he takes her to his apartment.
00:31:17
-In the apartment,
he rapes her, and then he took her into
the shower and washed her hair.
00:31:24
Lisa remained calm and complied
with her tormentor. -And then he shifted,
like lightning,
00:31:32
and dragged her out
of the shower and raped her, and then he would talk to her,
sweet talk,
00:31:39
you know, "I'm sorry,"
apologizing. "I'm sorry we had
to meet like this. You seem like a nice girl.
I really like you,"
00:31:47
and then a simple request from
her might be denied violently. -Now until this point,
Bobby Joe Long's victims
00:31:57
have always
been terrified, killed... raped, killed immediately. But this is not the case
with Lisa.
00:32:07
-Lisa's survival instincts
kicked in. In the apartment, she touched
as many objects and surfaces
00:32:13
as she could,
especially in the bathroom. After hours in captivity,
she had gained Long's trust.
00:32:24
Still blindfolded, he allowed
her to touch him intimately. -He let her touch his face,
and she would be able to say,
00:32:34
"Oh, he's got pockmarks," or, "He's got a little mustache,"
or this or that. And just enough of seeing
00:32:42
under the blindfold
would identify other things. -Later that night in the dark,
he removed Lisa's blindfold.
00:32:51
-She convinces him that
she will do whatever he wants, that she is no threat to him.
00:32:57
He can do whatever
he wants to her. She is somehow malleable
in his hands. I think Bobby Joe Long kind of
fell for her in a sort of way,
00:33:12
but I think something else
was going on as well. -Then Long did
something unexpected.
00:33:19
-But the next morning, he said,
"It's time to go." And she thought,
"Is he going to let me go?"
00:33:26
And he did. -After driving for a short
while, Long stopped to withdraw cash
at an ATM near his apartment.
00:33:36
With Long out of the car,
Lisa adjusted her blindfold. She made a mental note
of everything she could see.
00:33:44
-Lisa remembered several
details about her ordeal. She remembered that she'd been
picked up in a red car,
00:33:51
which was a Dodge Magnum. She remembered the word Magnum
being on the interior of the car
00:33:57
and on the seats. She remembered what
Bobby Joe Long looked like. She also recalled that
they'd stopped at an ATM.
00:34:05
-At approximately 4 a.m., Long dropped Lisa off
in a parking lot in North Tampa.
00:34:12
-I think Long was beginning
to think that this spree
of killing women, this rape and murder spree
in Tampa Bay,
00:34:23
was probably coming to an end. It is one of the most
extraordinary facts of his case
00:34:32
that he chose to let
a victim go, and as he did so, he knew he was actually signing
his own death warrant.
00:34:39
-Lisa walked home
and woke her father, who immediately called Hillsborough County
Sheriff's Office.
00:34:46
She gave a detailed description
of her abductor, his red Dodge Magnum car
and the ATM they had stopped at.
00:34:53
Her clothes were also submitted
to the FBI forensic lab. Investigators quickly began
circulating details
00:35:01
of the suspect among law enforcement
departments in Florida. -So there were these really
crucial pieces of the puzzle
00:35:09
that investigators
could put together, and they could narrow
down a suspect list.
00:35:13
They could find out
who owned cars like this. They could find out who
conducted transactions at ATMs,
00:35:19
and that was a really
valuable starting point. -Lisa's testimony
was effectively
00:35:24
the break in the case. At that point,
no one knew or even suspected
that Bobby Joe Long
00:35:31
had indeed killed a number
of women in the Tampa area. -As Lisa's case
was an abduction,
00:35:38
it wasn't initially connected
to the previous six murders, but in the following 8 days,
two more bodies were found --
00:35:45
one in neighboring Pasco County and the other
in Hillsborough County. The first was 18-year-old
waitress Virginia,
00:35:53
and the second was 21-year-old
student Kim Swann. -Many of Bobby Joe's victims
were decomposed,
00:36:02
so it was more complicated
for them to put together the details
when they had six bodies,
00:36:09
but now they have
Lisa's testimony, and they find Kim's
body and Virginia. -On the 13th of November,
00:36:17
police finally received
a breakthrough when the forensic test results
came back from the lab.
00:36:24
-The authorities took
considerable pains to examine the crime scenes. Among the things they found
were some distinctive red fibers
00:36:33
and also some very
distinctive tire tracks. -The same red carpet fibers
that had been found
00:36:40
on the bodies of seven
of the eight other victims matched the fibers that had been
discovered on the clothing
00:36:46
Lisa was wearing
during her abduction. -It was revealed that they had
the red carpet fibers.
00:36:53
They had all of these pieces
of the puzzle coming together. -With such strong evidence
connecting Lisa's attacker
00:36:59
to the other Florida murders, the police knew they had
to identify the killer fast.
00:37:06
-So they started to put
together the evidence that Lisa McVey had provided. They looked through records
of ATM transactions.
00:37:14
They looked through records
of car ownership, and they honed in
on a range of suspects,
00:37:21
and one of them
was Bobby Joe Long. -With forensic evidence,
the tire marks and the make
and model of the car,
00:37:28
their net was closing in
on Bobby Joe Long. -On November the 14th, Hillsborough County
Sheriff's Office
00:37:35
formed a task force with four
other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI in Florida,
to catch the suspect.
00:37:44
-You have a full-scale
task force at work absolutely determined to nail the man
who's been committing
00:37:54
all these foul rapes
and murders. A surveillance team is put
on Bobby Joe Long. They follow him everywhere.
00:38:03
-The following day
on November the 15th, Long's red Magnum was spotted
driving down Nebraska Avenue.
00:38:11
-Now, they needed to make sure
that this was their guy, so they pulled him over
in his car one day
00:38:17
under the guise of looking
for a suspect in a robbery, and they took a photograph
of him and then let him go.
00:38:25
-Lisa, Long's only
surviving victim, was shown the photograph
and was able to positively
00:38:31
identify Bobby Joe Long
as her abductor. On the same day, bank machine
records for Hillsborough County
00:38:38
confirmed Lisa's testimony. Long had used an ATM
at approximately 3 a.m. near his apartment
the morning he dropped her off.
00:38:48
Still under surveillance
and with a warrant for Long's arrest, the task force
seized their chance.
00:38:55
-The net is closing
very quickly around Long. -They were not going to let
this guy commit
00:39:03
yet another murder, and they followed him
to a movie theater one day, and he went in,
and he watched a film,
00:39:11
and the police waited outside
for him to come out. -On November the 16th, 1984, Long was arrested outside
a movie theater.
00:39:20
His Dodge Magnum was seized, and a sample of the red carpet
from the vehicle was immediately submitted
to the Florida Department
00:39:28
of Law Enforcement
crime lab. When questioned about
the abduction and rape of Lisa,
00:39:33
he quickly confessed. But when he was interviewed
about the eight murders, he denied all knowledge of them.
00:40:13
Within hours of sending
the carpet sample from Long's car
to the forensics lab, the results were back.
00:40:20
The fibers were an exact match
to the ones found on the victims and on Lisa's clothes.
00:40:26
-There is no doubt whatever
that those red carpet fibers were the link among
a number of the killings
00:40:34
and identified Bobby Joe
as the serial killer. -So they tell him about
the carpet fibers,
00:40:40
and he realizes
that the game is up. So what he's doing here is, he's trying to get back
in control,
00:40:47
so he confesses
to the murders. He said, "Yes, it was me." -While being interviewed,
00:41:01
Long made another
shocking admission -- He revealed the location
of another victim,
00:41:06
21-year-old waitress Vicky
in Hillsborough County. -But by that point,
he was well aware
00:41:12
that the scales of justice were
certainly tipping against him. As if to dot the Is
and cross the Ts,
00:41:18
Long drew them a map of
where he dumped Vicky's body. If there was a final nail
in his coffin,
00:41:24
that was most certainly it. -So he called me,
and when I answered the phone, I could tell right away
00:41:33
something was wrong
in his voice. And he said, you know,
"The girls, I killed the girls in Tampa."
00:41:38
And I said, you know,
"You're not funny. Don't mess with me like that." And then Bob asked me,
he said to call his parents
00:41:45
and tell our children that he was killed
in a car accident, and I said, "I'm not going to lie
to our kids,"
00:41:53
you know,
and I couldn't lie to them. -But just 6 days
after his arrest, another body was found in rural
southern Hillsborough County,
00:42:03
that of 18-year-old Artis,
a prostitute Long picked up in March 1984. He confessed to her murder,
00:42:11
and it's believed
that Artis was his first victim. Long had now claimed
the lives of 10 women.
00:42:19
On April the 22nd, 1985,
in Dade City, Pasco County, Florida, Long was tried for the murder
of 18-year-old waitress
00:42:27
and sex worker Virginia. He was found guilty and was sentenced to die
by electric chair.
00:42:34
-I think he's accepted that basically
he is facing the death penalty. Now, what brought about
the change of heart?
00:42:43
Probably the overwhelming weight
of evidence that was being thrown at him. -On September the 23rd, 1985,
Long pleaded guilty
00:42:54
to eight accounts
of first-degree murder, eight counts of kidnap
and seven of sexual battery.
00:43:01
He also pleaded guilty to the
charges of sexual battery and kidnapping of Lisa. After several appeals,
the death penalty he received
00:43:10
for the murder of Virginia
was revoked. He's currently incarcerated
in a high-security prison,
00:43:16
serving at least four 99-year
sentences, 28 life sentences, one 5-year sentence
for aggravated assault
00:43:25
and one death sentence for the murder
of his third victim, Michelle. But more than 30 years after
his brutal murderous spree,
00:43:33
Bobby Joe Long has yet
to be executed. -There's quite a bit of
to-ing-and-fro-ing after this,
00:43:40
when you look at the trial,
when you look at his appeals, so he wants to withdraw
his guilty plea,
00:43:47
and then he wants
to reinstate it, and what's happening here is, he's enjoying pulling
other people's strings.
00:43:54
So when he's in prison, there's very, very little
that he's got control over, but one of the things
that he can control is his plea,
00:44:01
and he's using that
to his full advantage. He really is a puppet master. -Convicted of nine
brutal murders
00:44:09
and the abduction
and rape of one, Tampa Bay's mass murderer is
suspected of taking more lives,
00:44:16
and that makes Bobby Joe Long
one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪