- 5 months ago
Experience the gripping 1984 investigation into Bobby Joe Long, a serial killer who terrorized Florida. This documentary details how detectives, with critical support from the FBI, began to piece together a horrifying puzzle. Watch as subtle forensic clues, like unusual red carpet fibers and distinctive tire tracks analyzed by FBI experts, become the key to connecting disparate crime scenes. The breakthrough moment arrives with the abduction of Lisa McVey, a young woman whose incredible courage and sharp memory provide police with vital information about her captor. Follow the intense manhunt, the crucial surveillance operations, and the dramatic arrest of Long, a direct result of FBI collaboration.
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Short filmTranscript
00:01It was Mother's Day, May 13, 1984, a warm spring afternoon near Tampa, Florida.
00:09After spending time with their moms, two boys raced off to fly parachutes made from plastic bags.
00:15It was the perfect way to spend a Sunday.
00:19But soon, the wind brought a foul smell.
00:24They went off to investigate and found a sight they would remember for the rest of their lives.
00:54In 1984, in South Florida, a rapist and murderer was on the loose.
01:07The killer was a ruthless and terrifying predator, the newest member of an infamous group known as serial killers.
01:15He kills just for the sake of it.
01:17And though his acts at first seem random, his choice of victims is fiercely selective.
01:23A woman's occupation or even her hairstyle may be enough to make her a target.
01:29It takes time, at least two kills, before the patent emerges.
01:35I'm Jim Kallstrom, former director of the FBI's New York office.
01:40The serial killer's world is a delicate balance.
01:43On one side is the threat of capture.
01:46On the other is his overwhelming need to publicize his crime.
01:50Our job is to use everything at our disposal to tip the balance in our favor.
01:56What the boys found was the body of a new woman lying in the roadside woods.
02:08The medical examiner determined she'd been there for about three days.
02:14The wrists were bound behind her back, and a rope with a trailing extension was tied around her neck like a leash.
02:26Bruises, blisters, and insects covered her body.
02:31But it was the position of the corpse that told detectives this was not a typical murder case.
02:39Major Gary Terry, then Lieutenant Terry, had just been appointed head of the Hillsboro County Major Crimes Unit when he got the call.
02:47But the unique thing about the body to me was the fact that her legs were spread about five foot, five foot one inches apart from heel to heel.
02:55A scene that I'll never forget, and a scene that I've never seen before.
02:59The pose was so grotesque, the body seemed to have been positioned that way deliberately.
03:05Had the killer meant to shock whoever found it?
03:09Time scene technicians photographed the body and measured its distance from the road.
03:17They carefully packaged what little evidence was left.
03:20Some cloth tied in a knot.
03:26Detective Pops Baker of the Hillsboro County Sheriff's Department also found tire tracks.
03:34He worked that night to make plaster casts.
03:38Tire casts can reveal the make and size of tires to help experts deduce the size and type of car a criminal is driving.
03:47They can also link him to a crime scene.
03:53Meanwhile, the body was brought to the medical examiner's office with the ligatures in place for him to study and find.
04:07The medical examiner determined the victim had been raped, then strangled to death.
04:20The brutality of the crime brought a sense of urgency to the investigation.
04:26Fearing this would not be an isolated case, Lieutenant Terry immediately contacted the FBI's forensics lab in Washington, D.C.
04:40Terry had a detective hand carry the evidence to the FBI lab.
04:45He had learned during an earlier case that doing so expedited the processing of evidence and brought the FBI in as an immediate active partner.
05:01The FBI lab is one of the foremost forensics laboratories in the country.
05:07There are experts on every type of evidence, from bullets to fibers to vehicle parts to knots.
05:18The FBI's knot expert analyzed the ligatures from the tamper victim's wrists and throat.
05:25They had been removed intact in hopes they'd tie the killer to his deed.
05:32They might also say something about his past.
05:38Specialized knots might reveal that he had been a merchant marine or in the military.
05:43But the ligatures turned out to be tied in granny knots.
05:53Simple, functional knots that anyone might have tied.
05:56An FBI fiber expert analyzed the fabric found near the body.
06:16He brushed particles from the cloth onto a sterile sheet.
06:19What traces had the killer left behind?
06:28The analyst scanned the particles with a magnifier, but he didn't expect to find much.
06:33Such evidence is easily lost through weather or other contamination of the crime scene.
06:38In fact, the rule of thumb for fiber evidence is in four hours, 80% is lost.
06:44In 48 hours, it's 96%.
06:46After three days, the chance of finding anything is almost nil.
06:54So he was amazed when he found a small speck of red nylon fiber.
06:58It was trilobal, meaning it consisted of three lobes and had a lustrous or shiny coating.
07:05From its size, type and shape, he guessed it was a carpet fiber, maybe from the killer's car.
07:11The fact that it was there at all was a minor miracle.
07:16The analyst from the FBI lab told the Hillsborough detectives to keep the discovery secret.
07:24If this were a serial killer, publicizing fiber evidence could make him change his pattern or his vehicle, so he'd be harder to find.
07:31The FBI's tire lab also scored.
07:38From the tire casts, they determined the tires were of two different brands.
07:44All were well-worn and mounted reversed, with the black walls facing out.
07:51An irregularity like that could be powerful, incriminating evidence.
07:57Back in Tampa, police identified the victim from the fingerprints the day after her body was found.
08:10She was Lana Long, a 20-year-old Laotian woman, a popular exotic dancer in Tampa's red light district.
08:20Her boyfriend had recognized her from a newspaper photo and had called police.
08:24He became the prime suspect.
08:27Officers questioned the girls on the strip but received no information implicating the boyfriend or anyone else.
08:38They were stopped.
08:41Okay, I'll meet you up here at the table.
08:47Then, just two weeks later, the calm of another holiday weekend was broken.
08:51On Memorial Day Sunday, Detective Pops Baker and Lieutenant Gary Terry of Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office were called to a second murder scene,
09:04again in an isolated rural area off an interstate.
09:08Young female, late 18, 1920 range.
09:12Like Lana Long, this victim was female, in her late teens to early 20s, and nude.
09:27She was also bound at the hands and throat, and had a knot at her neck with a leash-like extension.
09:33But this knot was different.
09:35It was a hangman-style noose.
09:39I can remember driving all the way to the crime scene and saying to myself,
09:43please don't let this victim be bound.
09:45In 1984, we very rarely had homicide victims bound.
09:50That's the first thing I asked the officer protecting the crime scene when I drove up.
09:54Is she bound? And he said, yes, sir, she is.
09:56So we've gone from very rarely having victims bound to within two weeks.
10:00So we knew we had a problem.
10:03This woman had not been dead long.
10:05She's still warm.
10:06Because the crime scene was fresheth on the last, more evidence remained.
10:17Detectives found a man's olive green t-shirt and some strands of hair,
10:21which they determined were not the victims.
10:26Hanging from a bush a few feet away from a woman's head were her white pantyhose and white jumpsuit,
10:31both covered with blood.
10:36From the brutality of her wounds, detectives knew she had fought for her life.
10:40And that it had been a savage struggle.
10:42She had been raped, strangled, beaten, and her throat had been cut almost from ear to ear.
10:53The medical examiner reported three causes of death, asphyxiation, head injuries, and a lacerated throat.
11:05As before, Baker found tire tracks.
11:12Casks were taken for analysis and comparison to the ones found at the first murder scene.
11:20Once again, the crime scene evidence was hand-delivered to the FBI lab in Washington.
11:24Analysts found the same red lusted tri-lobal carpet fibers as at the first scene.
11:38And this time, there were red tri-lobal delusted fibers too, with the shiny coating absent.
11:43It said fiber evidence is the silent witness.
11:50But this match seemed to scream that the cases were linked.
11:56Lana Long's boyfriend could not be tied to the second murder, and he was cleared as a suspect.
12:04The items found at the scene also provided other clues.
12:07The green t-shirt was a size large, suggesting a person of medium build and chest size.
12:16The head hairs were medium brown, from a male Caucasian.
12:20These two pieces of information began a physical evidence profile,
12:23which are shared with other law enforcement agencies.
12:26FBI tire expert Sandy Wersima analyzed the tire impressions and made another match.
12:44The tracks were the same as those from the first murder scene.
12:49Now she knew the position of each tire on the car,
12:52and that they were mounted on a mid-sized vehicle.
12:58The advantage of having a cast over the photograph is that I can actually pick the cast up,
13:05I can light it from different angles and different directions,
13:08and hopefully if there are any cuts or nicks or rocks that are caught in the tire,
13:17I'll be able to see that in the cast.
13:19But perhaps the best clue came from what she didn't know.
13:24She knew two of the tires with a common Goodyear Viva brand,
13:29but a third wasn't on the FBI's extensive reference list.
13:34One of the tire impressions they could not identify from their files,
13:38but what they did was gave us the name of a tire expert, a manufacturer out in Akron, Ohio.
13:43And we actually flew a detective, Corporal Baker flew out there personally with the tire impressions,
13:50met with the old salts out there at the tire factory,
13:53and they actually were able to identify that tire for us.
13:56And that was the Vogue tire.
13:58And in 1984 was a handmade tire that comes as standard equipment on Cadillacs.
14:02We had never even seen a tire like that before.
14:06Back here over to the left.
14:07We're going to walk back here.
14:09Police were told that if they found the car with that tire mounted black walls out,
14:13it would be as positive an ID as a fingerprint.
14:18Analysis of the victim's knife wound revealed that the killer had a knife with a three-inch blade.
14:22Now we've got two victims, both bound and both connected forensically.
14:27So we knew we had a serial killer on our hands at that time.
14:30It's just a gut feeling without gut.
14:32Lieutenant Terry began to track the killer's strikes on a map,
14:36hoping they'd reveal a pattern of behavior.
14:38He put out the word to patrol officers,
14:44look for a white male with brown hair of medium build,
14:48driving a mid-sized car with the tires reversed.
14:50He may be carrying a knife with a three-inch blade.
14:54Following the FBI's recommendation, Terry didn't mention the fiber evidence or the ligatures.
15:00From a composite drawing released to the media, the second victim was identified.
15:0722-year-old Michelle Sims had a criminal history of prostitution.
15:12She'd been reported missing the day before.
15:14A key member of the Hillsborough County investigative team was Detective Randy Latimer.
15:29At this point, though, we realized we're dealing with a serial killer that looked like he was probably preying on prostitutes.
15:35So we went out into the areas of the known prostitute areas and then started contacting the girls and let them know what was going on,
15:43giving them our business cards that if they saw something strange to contact us, let us know. We're looking for information.
15:47We were frustrated that we couldn't, we couldn't get any leads, we couldn't get anything to go on.
15:56Hey, Bob, what do we got?
15:58Well, I've got a body down here.
15:59Then on June 24th, another Sunday, Terry, Baker and Latimer responded to a third murder scene.
16:08A worker had found a body in an orange grove.
16:16It was another female.
16:18But the pattern seemed different.
16:19This one was fully clothed and there were no ligatures, so there was no reason to believe it was linked.
16:28Well, as you can see.
16:31But detectives didn't rule it out.
16:34Looks like it's been undisturbed for quite a while.
16:39They delivered the victim's clothing to the FBI lab, just in case a connection could be found.
16:45This time, the fiber expert they had worked with before was not available, and someone else was assigned.
16:58He wasn't asked to compare the new evidence to the old, so he didn't.
17:03Nor did he begin the analysis immediately.
17:05The body was so badly decomposed, it only weighed 25 pounds, including clothes.
17:15It took some time to get an ID.
17:19And when it finally came, the victim's lifestyle didn't fit the pattern either.
17:2522-year-old Elizabeth Ludenback of Tampa was a shy assembly line worker who lived with her family.
17:30She had no criminal history and was not a prostitute, although she did frequent bars on Tampa's strip.
17:41A note in Elizabeth's room said to find her boyfriend if anything happened to her.
17:48So detectives ordered a polygraph test.
17:50I'm gonna ask you a series of questions, and you just need to answer yes or no to those questions. Do you understand?
17:57Yeah.
17:58Did you know Elizabeth Ludenback?
18:12Yes.
18:13Did you have a relationship with Elizabeth Ludenback?
18:27Yes.
18:32Did you ever harm Elizabeth Ludenback?
18:34No.
18:42He failed the polygraph test, making him the prime suspect.
18:46It wasn't until mid-September, three months after the discovery of Elizabeth's body in the Orange Grove, that the results came in.
19:01Yeah?
19:02The FBI had a match.
19:03They found red carpet fibers identical to those found in the first two murders.
19:08Looks like Ludenback is ours.
19:09Good.
19:10They found red fibers that connected up.
19:12Now they had three related killings.
19:16Terry entered the new scene on the map.
19:19Any kind of significant difference?
19:20Every detective on the homicide squad was working the case.
19:25The nature of the investigation began to change.
19:29Instead of focusing on boyfriends and neighbors, detectives pursued an unknown killer terrorizing the women of Tampa.
19:37We've taken the entire homicide unit now, are concentrating on these cases.
19:41And we're running down leads, we're getting telephone calls about different people, and we're checking those leads out.
19:47We're doing a background investigation of these particular victims, and we're coming up to empty.
19:52And all we have to do is, unfortunately, wait, and then there's another victim that's discovered.
19:57And that is victim number four.
20:05After a lull of more than three months, the calm of yet another Sunday was shattered.
20:10On October 7th, a worker found a body near the entrance to the K-Bar Ranch in Northern Hillsborough County.
20:18This time, Detective Steve Cribb was assigned to help process the scene.
20:21He, Terry, Baker, and Latimer didn't have to look far for the first grim piece of evidence.
20:29The victim's bra hanging from the entrance gate.
20:36The nude body of a young black woman was nearby.
20:41Her clothing was beside her.
20:42Most of the detectives ruled her out as a serial victim.
20:50She had been raped, but unlike the others, she had been shot, not strangled, and there were no ligatures.
20:56Also, she was African American, and usually, serial killers don't cross racial boundaries.
21:02To get her into a controlled environment, we'd be able to really inspect.
21:07While the FBI analyzed the evidence, detectives identified the victim from fingerprints.
21:1318-year-old Chanel Devon Williams had just recently been released from jail on a prostitution arrest when she disappeared.
21:24She was last seen working the red light district along Nebraska Avenue with a friend, another prostitute, a few days before.
21:33She had been dead about six days.
21:42The FBI's hair and fiber analysis revealed it was the work of the serial killer.
21:51Both types of red fibers were found on Chanel's clothing, along with a brown Caucasian pubic hair.
21:57By crossing racial bounds and using a different weapon, the killer had changed his routine.
22:03Shifting from a pattern is very rare in serial killers, and would make this one more difficult to capture.
22:09Chanel was added to the map near the Pasco Hillsborough County line.
22:17With four dead, detectives were desperate to find the killer, and obsessed with the case.
22:25You don't work these cases. You live and breathe these types of cases.
22:30You go home at night, and you dream about this case.
22:34You eat and sleep it.
22:35And sleep it.
22:36I would go home at night, and just look at the telephone, waiting for it to ring.
22:42Every Sunday. For some reason, the first series of bodies were discovered on Sunday.
22:46On Sunday, I didn't plan anything. I sat at home.
22:49Indeed, the Sunday after Chanel's body turned up, Terry, Baker, Latimer, and Crib were called to another murder scene.
23:01This one was near Lake Thanotasasa, northeast of Tampa.
23:04A couple of amateur archaeologists had uncovered a morbid find.
23:11At the side of the road was a woman's body, wrapped in a gold-colored bedspread, tied with a blue jogging suit.
23:21Thank you. We need that.
23:29Inside, her lower legs and ankles were bound with common white string.
23:38Her hands were tied in front of her with a red bandana.
23:42She had been bound, raped, strangled, hit on the forehead, and dragged through the dirt.
23:47It seemed the killer was back to his old pattern.
23:54The woman was quickly identified from fingerprints as 28-year-old Karen Din's friend.
24:00Raised in an affluent suburban household, she had died a drug-ravaged prostitute.
24:06She was last seen alive in the early hours of the day she was killed.
24:09As if there weren't enough to link the killer to the crime, investigator Steve Cribb actually saw red trilobal carpet fibers on Karen's body.
24:21By now, he'd developed a sixth sense for them.
24:24When you know what you're looking for, they almost look like glow worms on the victims.
24:31But for the average person to walk up and find them, even the other investigators who weren't looking for this type, they wouldn't see them.
24:39But they became such a key point of the investigation that when we went to a crime scene, that's one of the first things we would look for were the carpet fibers.
24:48At the FBI lab, the fiber expert compared these fibers to the ones from the other crime scenes.
24:56They matched.
24:58There were now five cases linked to a single killer, but there was still no name, no face, and no one under arrest.
25:05It becomes very frustrating that you know someone else is going to die because you haven't stopped the suspect.
25:14You have enough information to know that he's doing it, but not enough information to pick him out of the crowd if he were to bump into you walking down the mall.
25:26Because you have to remember in this series of cases, our concern is that if we don't stop this guy, if we don't find him today, he's going to kill somebody tomorrow or the next day.
25:34And in fact, he did.
25:39Two weeks later on Halloween, another victim emerged.
25:44A contractor digging a ditch found the mummified remains of a woman's body.
25:48Terry, Baker, Latimer, and Cribb arrived at the scene.
25:59The medical examiner estimated the body had been there for about a month.
26:04The body was badly decomposed. An ID would require special measures.
26:08The FBI lab needed to soften the skin on the hands in order to get fingerprints.
26:21As hard as the victim was to identify, detectives instantly recognized the killer.
26:28The body had been completely mummified. The head had been separated by animal activity.
26:32There were no ligatures attached. No clothing.
26:37And again, you just look at the body and you realize it's him again.
26:43You just have that feeling, by now, of the crime scenes, of seeing body after body after body,
26:49that it should be the same killer. And in fact, it was.
26:52Then, at 7.30 a.m., on Sunday, November 4th, a call came in to Tampa police that seemed unrelated.
27:06A man reported his daughter had been abducted and raped.
27:0917-year-old Lisa McVeigh was leaving work at a Krispy Kreme donut shop on her bicycle.
27:20It was around 2.30 a.m.
27:25A man snatched her off her bike, threw her into his car, and drove off.
27:29He held her at gunpoint, reclined her seat so no one would see her, and told her to remove all of her clothes.
27:40He took her to his apartment, bound and gagged.
28:03She'd been sexually abused before, and she knew how to read the moods of an abuser.
28:09Lisa sensed resistance might send this man into a rage, so she quietly did what he wanted.
28:24Lisa memorized all she could about her surroundings.
28:30At first, she peeked out from beneath her blindfold.
28:33Then, when he uncovered her eyes, she saw everything, including his face.
28:41She was certain that now, he'd never let her leave alive.
28:44He took her to his bedroom and repeatedly raped her for 24 hours.
28:53Sometimes he slept, but she knew he was armed, and that he'd kill her if she tried to leave.
28:58After a full day of captivity, the man told Lisa to take a shower.
29:13Then he gave her some clothes, and made her a sandwich.
29:18To her amazement, he said he would take her home.
29:20At around 3 a.m., they drove toward her neighborhood.
29:36On the way, he stopped at a 24-hour teller machine to withdraw money to get gas.
29:43Peeking under her blindfold, Lisa continued to memorize details.
29:50The Howard Johnsons. Road signs. The word Magnum on the dashboard of his car.
29:57He finally released her near her home.
30:04After Lisa's adoptive father reported the abduction, she was interviewed by Tampa police officers.
30:20I want to ask you everything that happened the night when you left work, and I'm going to record you.
30:28They were amazed by her almost total recall and fierce resolve to catch the rapist.
30:34I always leave work about 12 o'clock.
30:37Although Lisa had not been killed, there were many similarities to the Hillsborough cases.
30:42The abduction, the rape, the man's build and hair color, and even the red interior of his car.
30:47Tampa police sent Lisa's sweater to the FBI lab.
30:53We were inundating the FBI lab with things to compare for fiber samples.
30:59Rape cases, assault cases, anything sexually related, any violent crime,
31:04we were sent to the FBI lab for fiber comparison.
31:08Meanwhile, just a week after the last body was found,
31:12Pasco County detectives were called to another murder scene.
31:14On November 6th, 1984, a woman's body was found on the same road as the fourth victim, Chanel Williams.
31:22Only this time it was to the north, in neighboring Pasco County.
31:27Pasco detectives called Hillsborough detectives to a vacant lot near a mobile home park.
31:32The body was in a different county, but the ligatures and fibers were all too familiar.
31:42Although the body had decomposed to mainly bones, the tell-tale leash was still attached around the neck.
31:52There was another ligature on an arm bone.
31:59Near the body were the woman's tattered blouse and panties, and some jewelry.
32:07The bones were scattered over almost an acre.
32:10When the medical examiner pieced them together, they seemed to belong to a young, white female.
32:17She was later identified as 18-year-old Virginia Johnson.
32:21Ginny divided her time between Connecticut and Florida, where she worked as a prostitute.
32:25She disappeared on her way to buy cigarettes about three weeks earlier.
32:34After all that time, it seemed impossible, but the FBI lab found a single red lustrous light of a missile.
32:53a single red lustrous fiber in Ginny Johnson's hair.
32:59Within the week on November 12th, another jurisdiction fell prey to the killer.
33:05A body was found on an incline off North Orient Road within Tampa city limits.
33:11When Terry and Baker arrived, they found a young white woman, nude but for knee-high stockings.
33:19She was face down.
33:23When they turned her over, police knew from her bloodied face
33:27that she had been savagely beaten and that she had struggled.
33:32There were ligature marks on the front of her neck and on both wrists and arms, but no rope was found.
33:39Her wadded up blue jeans and flowered top were near her body.
33:43Detectives Baker and Cribb immediately saw something stuck to the blue jeans, tiny red fibers.
33:49In the pocket of the jeans was the victim's driver's license.
33:54Kim Marie Swan was a 21-year-old part-time student who sidelined as an exotic dancer.
34:00She was last seen leaving a convenience store near her parents' home the previous afternoon.
34:05It seemed the killer had pulled off the road and thrown the body out of his car.
34:13There were faint tire impressions in the grass near the roadway.
34:16They would match the casts made earlier.
34:19The killer was picking up the pace of his killings and the body count stood at eight.
34:25Terry and Baker were desperate.
34:29They drove to Atlanta to meet with a detective who helped crack the case of Wayne Williams,
34:33a serial killer believed to be responsible for 27 murders.
34:38Because something we didn't really want to share publicly in 1984,
34:41what do you do when you're 10 bodies, 15 or 20 bodies down and you don't have the suspect in custody?
34:47What do you do?
34:49We were sitting down in their office discovering and during the course of that conversation the
34:53telephone rang and the telephone call was from the FBI in Washington and the FBI lab says we
35:01had just had a match on a piece of fiber evidence submitted from a rape case.
35:07That case turned out to be the abduction and rape of Lisa McVeigh only a week earlier.
35:12Tampa police had rushed Lisa's clothing to the FBI lab and experts there had found matching red
35:18tri-lobal carpet fibers on her sweater. It was the break they'd been waiting for.
35:25Terry flew back to Tampa immediately. He formed a task force of officers from the
35:29Hillsborough and Pasco County Sheriff's Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,
35:35and the FBI along with the Tampa police detectives already working the rape case.
35:40Then he divided them into teams, each with a different assignment.
35:45They initiated a massive manhunt. Patrol cars fanned out across North Tampa. They were looking for the
35:52killer's apartment and his red Dodge Magnum. The information from Lisa McVeigh is their road map.
36:04The additional personnel and resources brought in by the task force stepped up the search for Lisa McVeigh's
36:09abductor. Because the perpetrator used an ATM, one team of investigators subpoenaed the November 4th
36:18bank records for all local automatic teller machines.
36:24Another team subpoenaed a select list of all the Dodge Magnums in Hillsborough County, almost 500 cars.
36:30Then they compared the bank records and the list of Magnum owners looking for a name that matched.
36:39And the unique thing when you looked at both lists is that one name jumped out at you,
36:44is Robert Joe Long. He had a money transaction from the money teller machine,
36:49early morning hours. He also was a registered owner of a Dodge Magnum.
36:54In addition, earlier that day, a task force team from Tampa spotted a red Dodge Magnum on Nebraska
37:04Avenue, the killer's hunting ground. The detectives stopped the car. They told the driver they were
37:12looking for a robbery suspect. From his license, they identified him as Robert Joe Long.
37:19They photographed him and wrote up a field report.
37:30He was cooperative, but wouldn't let them search his car.
37:36Of course, they contacted the task force headquarters when they made the stop. And we told them go ahead
37:43and stay with it at that particular time, stay with the car once it left. And we put a surveillance
37:47team together then to stay on him.
37:52At that time, a photo pack was assembled, a lineup of photographs, which he was placed in that photo
37:58pack. That photo pack was shown or displayed to Lisa. She looked at it and said, that's the guy that
38:04kidnapped me. She pointed out Bobby Joe Long.
38:09Lieutenant Terry had his man, but he couldn't risk making a mistake with a quick arrest.
38:14He needed time to obtain warrants and organize his team. To ensure public safety, Terry ordered
38:21non-stop surveillance at Long. Units followed Long's every move in unmarked cars.
38:31Maybe he sensed they were on his trail because he started cleaning house. Officers cleaned up right
38:37behind him. Even when he vacuumed his car, police seized the vacuum. They retrieved everything Long
38:48thought he was destroying.
38:55After months of tracking a phantom killer, the task force was not about to let him slip away.
39:00Less than 24 hours after Lisa McVeigh identified Bobby Joe Long, the arrest plan was firmly in place.
39:08The task force moved in.
39:14They had followed Long to a movie theater.
39:16As he watched the film, undercover detectives watched him. Long seemed unaware he was surrounded.
39:30We're sitting at the war room we had constructed down at the operation center.
39:34And everything is just going 90 miles an hour.
39:36We have a surveillance team on the inside of the theater watching it. There's a surveillance
39:41team outside watching the car. And that nagging doubt comes to you. Is this really the guy you've
39:46been chasing for eight months? Is this really the guy that has been killing these women? So we tell
39:51the surveillance team outside, listen, whatever you do, get up to his car. I don't care if you have
39:57to low crawl, whatever you have to do, get to the car and tell us what kind of tires are on the car.
40:07And the surveillance team came back and said, hey, there's, there's Goodyear Vever tires on the car.
40:13They're all black wall. And he said, there's some oddball tire here named Vig, Vogue, something like
40:17that on the car. As soon as he said that, we knew. When we pulled up and saw the car, saw the tire,
40:24the Vogue tire that had been described from one of our, uh, tire impressions. When we saw the seat
40:29that were, that revolved, that, that laid back, the red carpet fiber, there wasn't a doubt in our mind that
40:34we had the right suspect. Terry gave the order to arrest.
40:41Detectives followed long as he left the theater.
40:47He was never out of their sight.
40:49They didn't know if he was armed, so as he approached his car, they jumped him and brought
41:02him to the ground.
41:08He didn't resist.
41:09He was on the ground when I walked up to him and placed my badge next to his face and identified
41:19myself as a deputy sheriff, advising him he was under arrest.
41:27They took Long's car to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's office garage.
41:30Steve Cribb immediately tore out a piece of carpeting and rushed it to an FBI fiber expert
41:41flown in from Washington.
41:51Statement from you.
41:52All right.
41:53Meanwhile, Randy Latimer and members of the task force interviewed Bobby Joe Long,
41:58who had declined his right to an attorney.
42:00I heard when they arrested you out on the street that you got some cuts and stuff on your hands
42:02and arms. Did they take care of all that for you?
42:04Oh yeah.
42:07They were well prepared, having consulted the behavioral science unit at the FBI academy
42:11on how to conduct the interview.
42:13Detective Price.
42:15Um, just where you want to start.
42:18The game plan was to start by addressing only Lisa McVeigh.
42:22Long confessed immediately.
42:23Well, I went down there and, uh,
42:28after he admitted to the rape and adduction of Lisa McVeigh, and we talked about, uh,
42:32why he let her go, uh, and what went through his mind and what went on.
42:37Um, I, I rolled into questioning him about, uh, prostitutes.
42:41Have you ever picked up any prostitutes?
42:43Um, he told me he had in Miami.
42:45I asked him about here, um, and, and he said, well, he might have.
42:49Then they began talking to him about the murders.
42:52He initially denied it, committing any of the murders.
42:58As the interview continued, the FBI fiber expert examined the carpet for Long's car.
43:07He compared this sample to the others.
43:09As soon as they looked, put him on the comparison microscope,
43:17the FBI agent called back and said, bingo, it's a match.
43:35The carpet fiber from the car matches the carpet fiber from the different homicide scenes.
43:41It's probably helping me out at this point.
43:47Excuse me.
43:47Terry told Latimer the news.
44:00Then Latimer explained it to Long.
44:02I mean, we just got information.
44:03He told him about the fibers and their significance,
44:06and about Long's brown head hair found at the crime scene, and the Vogue tire.
44:11Latimer let Long know that by the time they found the second body,
44:14they were already on his trail.
44:19What can I say?
44:23The evidence was overwhelming.
44:25And he looked down, he had his legs kind of, his knees spread apart,
44:29and he looked down between his feet, and I said, yeah, I did it.
44:32I said, did what?
44:33He says, I killed him.
44:34You killed who?
44:35He says, I killed all those girls.
44:36All those girls in the paper, I killed.
44:37And then we just started going through them one by one after that.
44:44Long described each murder in a taped confession.
44:47The interview lasted five and a half hours.
44:51Bobby Long showed no emotion, no remorse.
44:55It was just an everyday conversation like you and I are having here.
44:59At the end, I don't know if it was myself or Bob Price had asked him why he did it,
45:04and he said that that was his secret and he was going to take it to the grave with him.
45:10During the interview, Long also confessed to a ninth murder.
45:17When detectives found her remains, they also found more of the tiny red carpet fibers.
45:23The victim was identified through dental records as 21-year-old Vicki Elliott, a waitress.
45:30Long also helped identify his sixth victim,
45:33whose body had been found on Halloween.
45:3622-year-old Kimberly Hopps was known by the street name of Sugar.
45:40She was last seen by her boyfriend getting into a maroon Chrysler Cordoba,
45:45probably Long's red Dodge Magnum.
45:49I'd like to thank the members of the press corps.
45:51Late that night, Lieutenant Terry called a press conference.
45:54The multi-agency task force has for months been investigating a probable serial killer.
45:58The media thought police would announce yet another body.
46:01In Hillsborough County, Pasco County, we have a suspect.
46:03They were shocked by the arrest.
46:06How long have you had this suspect?
46:07Bobby Joe Long, and he's presently been charged with 10 homicides that have occurred over the
46:12course of the past six months within Hillsborough County, Pasco County, and the city of Tampa.
46:18Is he in custody?
46:19He was arrested without incident and has subsequently confessed to several of the homicides under investigation.
46:24Do you have evidence of all the homicides?
46:26Yes, sir.
46:27Open fire.
46:35In the coming days, Hillsborough detectives learned they weren't the only ones tracking Long.
46:42Task Force member Charles Troy, a Pasco County detective, stumbled upon the truth.
46:48He realized that Long fit the description of a man who had raped a Pasco woman months ago.
46:57He found a photo album filled with photographs of nude women, including the rape victim.
47:12In jail, Long confessed and bragged about the crime.
47:20Detectives had also found clothing and jewelry from Long's other victims.
47:24It's a common quirk of serial killers to keep photos or other trophies of those they kill.
47:34Detectives soon realized that Long was the classified ad rapist named for his M.O.
47:40He canvassed the classifieds for women selling beds and other furniture.
47:44And when they let him in, he brutally raped them.
47:47He had never been apprehended.
47:48Long may have raped more than 50 Florida women in the 1970s and 80s, some even during his murder spree.
48:01Now with Long finally in jail, detectives reflected on lessons learned.
48:05It just shows the importance of physical and trace evidence.
48:10Shows the importance of the cooperation with the laboratory and what they can do for you.
48:15And the effort that you have to put in a crime scene.
48:21The hours you need to spend there, you can't rush.
48:23You just have to be deliberate and take your time and be professional in what you're doing.
48:28Because oftentimes the answer is sitting right there in front of you.
48:31In the smallest speck, the smallest little piece of information may be the one key that breaks this case.
48:40As detectives got ready for the Thanksgiving weekend,
48:43they thought the horrifying eight-month string of killings was finally behind them.
48:48They packed up the boxes of evidence and hoped some semblance of normalcy would finally return.
48:55But even then, a quiet holiday seemed to evade them.
49:01On Thanksgiving Thursday, a couple out walking found a skull, bones, and some clothes.
49:11As well as three pieces of rope, including a leash-type ligature.
49:14What he really enjoyed was the pain, the torture, and the torment,
49:20and the control he exercised over these victims.
49:23You can see that in the early crime scenes with the leader of the leash-like attached to their neck,
49:28where he choked them out of consciousness.
49:31Then the victim wakes up, and he's still there astride her, raping her, torturing her.
49:35That's where Mr. Long got his enjoyment, his kicks.
49:38Killing, just eliminate a witness.
49:41He could do that without any compunction, without any trouble at all.
49:47When a forensic dentist linked the body to a missing persons report, Long confessed.
49:54The victim was Artisan Wick, an 18-year-old bride-to-be who had vanished from a northeast
49:59Tampa street corner on March 28th.
50:02She had been missing for eight months.
50:08Ironically, Wick was the first victim taken, though the last one found.
50:14She brought the known death toll to 10.
50:16But Terry has always believed there were more.
50:19I'm confident he's killed other women, other people.
50:24Are we going to find those bodies or discover those other cases?
50:26I don't know that we ever will.
50:30Bobby Joe Long was never convicted in the classified ad rapes,
50:34in part because the statute of limitations had expired by the time he was caught.
50:38He did receive six life sentences in 693 years for attacks on women in 1984 and 85.
50:47For the Hillsborough murders and the rape of Lisa McVeigh, Long received 33 life sentences.
50:55He was sentenced to death for the killings of Virginia Johnson and Michelle Sims.
51:01After sentencing, Long left the courthouse whistling a tune.
51:05Mr. Long is a killing machine.
51:11He became very proficient at what he was doing, very skillful at it.
51:17And if Mr. Long ever sees the light of day, all you're going to have to do is follow the trail
51:21of his other bodies, of his other victims, because he will kill again. He enjoyed it.
51:27Long remains on Florida's death row with no date set for his execution.
51:35Sounds good.
51:45kilowatt-
51:59Transcription by CastingWords
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