Between March and November 1984 at least eight women were killed in and around Tampa, Florida, and left in fields, groves and roadside brush. Most had been bound and strangled. The man responsible was Robert Joe Long, known as Bobby Joe, who had already spent years attacking women in their own homes. He was found because of a 17-year-old girl he abducted from her bicycle in the early hours of November 3, 1984, held for about a day and then released. She remembered the car, the word on its dashboard and the sound of a bank machine, and within two weeks detectives had his name.
Long confessed. In September 1985 he pleaded guilty in Hillsborough County to eight counts of first-degree murder under an agreement that spared him the death penalty in every case but one, the murder of Michelle Simms. A jury recommended death in that case, the sentence was set aside on appeal, and a second jury recommended it again. A separate Pasco County case, for the killing of Virginia Johnson, went to trial three times and ended in 1997 with an order of acquittal. Long spent more than three decades on death row and was executed on May 23, 2019, the first execution under Governor Ron DeSantis.
Court records give his legal name as Robert Joe Long. The Florida Commission on Capital Cases lists him as Robert Jo "Bobby Joe" Long, and the docket caption of his first appeal in the Simms case reads "Robert Joe Long, a/k/a Bobby Long." The driver's license he handed detectives in November 1984 was in the name Bobby Joe Long, according to a defense brief. Federal courts, the Florida press and the wire services used Bobby Joe Long.
Long was born on October 14, 1953, in Kenova, West Virginia, a small town on the Ohio River near Huntington. His mother was 17. His parents separated when he was about eight months old, according to the brief his lawyers filed in the Simms case, and his mother took him to Miami. She worked nights as a carhop, barmaid and waitress. Between the ages of two and eight he was left with about a dozen different caretakers, and he changed schools often. He shared a bed with his mother until he was more than ten years old, the brief said. His father later told a sentencing jury that he had lived with his son for a total of about four or five years before Long joined the Army.
Long suffered several head injuries as a boy. His mother testified to them, and his lawyers counted five serious ones, including being struck by a car at about seven, which damaged his face, teeth and jaw. The Herald-Dispatch of Huntington reported in 2019 that he had attended Cammack Elementary School until a car accident, and that he was rarely in West Virginia after that. At 15 he had surgery to remove breast tissue; the doctor attributed the condition to a hormone imbalance. He left school at 15 to do electrical work.
He enlisted in the Army in 1972. In January 1974 he married a girl he had known since childhood, and they had two children. That same year, at about 20, he was thrown over a car in a motorcycle crash in Miami and was unconscious for hours. He spent about a year recovering. His former wife later testified that he came back changed: irritable, sensitive to noise, troubled by headaches, using amphetamines, and violent toward her at times. He received a military disability payment, which she said was about 250 dollars a month and went to support the children. She divorced him in 1980.
After the crash Long earned an associate degree in radiology from Broward College, the Herald-Dispatch reported, and worked as an X-ray technician. In 1983 he worked for about two months at two Huntington hospitals and was fired for what the paper described as "unethical conduct" involving patients. In 1982 he had been charged in Kenova with misdemeanor assault and destruction of property; he was acquitted of the assault and paid 68 dollars for a broken car mirror. By 1984 he had moved to the Tampa area. At the time of his arrest he was on three years' probation for an aggravated assault on a woman.
Before the first killing, Long was already raping women. Investigators trying to solve dozens of rapes called the unknown attacker the "Classified Ad Rapist," according to the Associated Press, because he answered newspaper advertisements for things people were selling, made an appointment to look, and attacked women who were home alone. After his arrest he admitted that he was that man. Investigators later said he claimed to have raped about 40 women in three states. The Herald-Dispatch reported that he was suspected in assaults of the same kind in California but was never prosecuted there.
Only some of those attacks reached a courtroom. On March 6, 1984, he attacked a woman in her home in Pasco County; he was convicted on April 17, 1985, of burglary, kidnapping, robbery and sexual battery. On May 29, 1984, he attacked a woman in her home in Pinellas County after she had advertised furniture for sale; on July 12, 1985, he pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual battery, one count of kidnapping, five counts of armed robbery and one count of armed burglary, and he received a life sentence. Both women survived. Those two judgments became the out-of-county "prior violent felony" convictions on which prosecutors later relied when they asked for a death sentence.
The first woman known to have died was Artiss Ann Wick. The Associated Press, in its coverage of Long's execution, described her as his first victim and dated her killing to March 1984. Families at the execution listed her among the ten women they came to remember. Long was never charged with her death, and no court record sets out the facts of her case. She is attributed to him by investigators and the press, not by a conviction.
On May 13, 1984, two boys found a woman's body face down in a field near the dead end of East Bay Road in Hillsborough County. They told one boy's parents, who called the police. Fingerprints from the body matched prints lifted from a drinking glass, a photograph cover and a perfume bottle in her home, and she was identified as Ngeun Thi Long, who also went by Lana and Peggy. She was Cambodian, about 20 years old, and engaged to be married. Her fiance and the former owner of the Sly Fox Lounge on Nebraska Avenue, where she danced, both testified to who she was.
The associate medical examiner found that she had been strangled with a ligature, and that her wrists were tied behind her back. A crime scene technician made plaster casts of tire tracks near the body. A piece of white fabric collected from under her head would later carry a single red carpet fiber.
Michelle Denise Simms was 22. She had been a beauty contestant, the Herald-Dispatch and WTSP reported, and a Hillsborough detective told a jury in 1988 that she had arrived in Tampa only shortly before she died. Long picked her up on Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa on the evening before her body was found, according to the News Service of Florida and the State's brief.
Long described what followed in his November 1984 confession, which was played at his sentencing. He had put rope and a weapon in his car before he went out. He tied her up, drove her to the Brandon area and raped her, then drove toward Plant City and killed her. He left her body by the road. A knife found in woods near his apartment was, he said, the knife he used.
A construction worker out for a morning walk found her body on May 27, 1984, in a wooded area north of Interstate 4 near Plant City. Investigators made seven plaster casts of tire tracks at the scene. Dr. Lee Miller, the associate medical examiner, testified to the cause of death and said she had been dead about 12 hours. At the 1989 resentencing he told the jury that the killing was "entirely consistent with rage."
Four of the eight murders to which Long pleaded guilty were not described in detail in court, because prosecutors chose to present other cases at his trials.
Elizabeth Loudenback was 22, according to the list the victims' families published at the time of the execution.
Vicky Elliott was 21. Her brother, Jeff Sienko, traveled to Tallahassee in 2018 to ask lawmakers for an end to the long wait, FOX 13 reported. When the death warrant was signed in April 2019 he said his family would be there. "You did this to our family, behind closed doors, now we're going to see it done to you in the public eye," he said.
Chanel Williams was 18, the youngest of the women. She was found shot to death in October 1984, WTSP reported; she was the only one who was shot. Her family remembered her as loving and funny, someone who was always helping other people. Her sister Algalana Douglas said in 2019 that the hardest part was knowing how she died and that there had been nothing the family could do. Their mother, Lula Williams, went to the execution.
Kimberly Hopps was in her twenties, according to the families' list.
On October 14, 1984, two men searching for artifacts near Lake Thonotosassa, east of Tampa, found the body of Karen Beth Dinsfriend in an orange grove. She was 28. She had been bound, and a blanket lay over part of her body. She was identified by fingerprints. The medical examiner found that she had been strangled and had been dead from about 12 hours to a day or more. Red fibers were removed from her clothing, and a hair found on the blanket would be compared in the FBI laboratory.
Virginia Lee Johnson was 18. She had worked as a waitress, a friend testified, and was a natural blonde with green eyes, about five feet five. By the fall of 1984 she was drinking heavily and hitchhiking and working the street along Nebraska Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard, according to the testimony summarized in the State's brief. A woman who had met her at the Alamo Liquors lounge on North Nebraska Avenue had shared a home with her for about a month. Another friend, who let her stay at his house, said she always wore a floating heart necklace. He last saw her when she left early one morning to walk to the Alamo to buy cigarettes. A county clinic nurse saw her on October 15, 1984, and asked her to come back in a week. She did not.
On November 6, 1984, a riding instructor and her student noticed a smell near a dirt road off Brumwell Road in rural Pasco County, north of Tampa, and found skeletal remains in high grass. Shoelaces were found with the remains, and the floating heart necklace was there. Dr. Joan Wood, the medical examiner, gave the cause of death as "homicidal violence, probably garrotment" and estimated that she had been dead for 10 to 15 days. The Commission on Capital Cases gives the estimated date of death as about October 22, 1984. She was not reported missing until November 18, and she was identified through dental X-rays.
Kim Marie Swann was 21. She had a child about a year and a half old. Her father reported her missing on November 11 or 12, 1984, and told investigators that she had developed a drug problem and was sometimes gone for a few days at a time. A Hillsborough detective later testified that she drank heavily but was not a prostitute, and that she had last been seen on Dale Mabry Highway.
On November 12 a man putting up a billboard off Orient Road in Tampa saw her body at the bottom of a steep embankment. Her jeans, with her driver's license in a pocket, lay nearby. The medical examiner found ligature marks across the front of her neck and on her forearms and concluded that she had been strangled, possibly from behind. Her sister, Tammy Kaspi, was at the prison on the day of the execution.
Swann was killed after the 17-year-old girl had been released, while detectives were already working from the girl's description.
Detective Lee Baker of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office worked on the Lana Long, Simms, Dinsfriend and Swann cases. He later told a jury that the women had been accessible and out late at night, that most were connected to the Nebraska Avenue area, where prostitution and drug dealing were common, and that each had been bound and strangled. Each case also produced the same kind of evidence: a red, lustrous nylon carpet fiber with a three-lobed cross section. Baker himself carried the plaster tire casts from the Lana Long scene to the FBI laboratory in Washington. By mid-November the Tampa Police Department and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office had formed a task force on the unsolved killings.
At about 2:30 a.m. on November 3, 1984, a 17-year-old girl was riding her bicycle home from her job at a doughnut shop in Tampa when a man pulled her off the bike, held a revolver to her head and forced her into his car. He blindfolded her for much of the time, took her to an apartment and raped her. He held her for about a day, then drove her back and let her go near the corner of Hillsborough and Rome in Tampa at around 3 a.m.
She had noticed what she could. She told Detective Polly Goethe of the Tampa police that the car was maroon, with a white interior and red carpet, and that the word "Magnum" was on the dashboard. She described the man as white, about 30, with brown hair and a mustache. A description of the car and the man went out to officers on November 6. She also told detectives that her abductor had stopped at what she believed was a bank teller machine, and that through the blindfold she had seen a Howard Johnson's and a Quality Inn.
On November 14 the FBI laboratory reported that fibers from her clothing matched the fibers in the murder cases. Police and sheriff's investigators met that day. Detective Goethe found the one place in Tampa where the two motels stood close together, a bank in the 5800 block of Fowler Avenue, and its records showed a transaction at 3:49 a.m. on the morning she was released. The card and personal identification number belonged to Robert Long. Detective Steven Cribb compared the bank's list with the Dodge Magnums registered in Hillsborough County. On the afternoon of November 15 only one name appeared on both: Robert Joe Long.
In 2019 she told reporters that she would have liked to thank him "for choosing me and not another 17-year-old girl." A 2018 television film dramatized her abduction.
On the morning of November 15, 1984, before the bank comparison was finished, Detectives Charles Wolfe and Carson Helms saw a maroon Dodge Magnum on Nebraska Avenue with a driver who fit the description, and they pulled it over. The driver showed a license in the name Bobby Joe Long. The detectives told him that they were investigating a hit-and-run; Wolfe later admitted under oath that the story was false and was meant to persuade him to consent to a search. Long refused a search but let them photograph him and the car. Through the windows they saw the "Magnum" lettering, a digital clock, the white interior and the red carpet. They let him go and reported to their superiors.
Those observations went into an affidavit, and detectives obtained a warrant for his arrest and warrants to search his car and his apartment. On November 16, 1984, undercover officers arrested him in the parking lot of a movie theater in the Carrollwood area of Tampa. His car was impounded, and Deputy Steve Moore vacuumed it. The next day Detective Cribb removed carpeting from the trunk and molding and took the tires. All of it went to the FBI.
At the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, Detective Randy Latimer and Sergeant Bob Price read Long his rights from a printed form, and he signed a waiver. The form listed only the kidnapping and sexual battery of the 17-year-old. Long talked for about an hour and a half and admitted that he had abducted her from her bicycle and taken her to his apartment. He said he had thrown the gun off a bridge or causeway.
Then one detective left the room, came back, and asked whether Long had ever picked up prostitutes in the area. "I would prefer not to answer that," Long said. The detectives showed him photographs of murdered women. Long said, as the Florida Supreme Court later quoted him: "The complexion of things have sure changed since you came back into the room. I think I might need an attorney." Price told him, "Nothing has changed," and the questioning went on. Long then confessed to eight murders in Hillsborough County and one in Pasco County, that of Virginia Johnson.
That exchange shaped the next 13 years of his cases. The Florida Supreme Court would later hold that the remark about an attorney, though equivocal, allowed the detectives to ask only questions that tried to clarify whether he wanted a lawyer, and that they had not tried. His admissions about the 17-year-old, made before he mentioned a lawyer, were never suppressed.
A Pasco County grand jury indicted Long on December 6, 1984, for the first-degree murder of Virginia Johnson. On November 28, 1984, a Hillsborough County grand jury had already indicted him for the kidnapping, sexual battery and first-degree murder of Michelle Simms, and the other Hillsborough murder cases followed.
The Johnson case was tried first, in Pasco County, in April 1985, before Judge Ray E. Ulmer Jr. Long's confession was used against him. On April 27, 1985, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and unanimously recommended death. The judge found four aggravating circumstances and no mitigating ones and sentenced him to death in May 1985. The Commission on Capital Cases gives the sentencing date as May 3, 1985; the Florida Supreme Court's later opinions give May 10.
The Hillsborough cases were settled by a written plea agreement signed on September 23, 1985. Long agreed to plead guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder, eight counts of kidnapping and seven counts of sexual battery in the murder cases, to the kidnapping and sexual battery of the 17-year-old girl, and to a probation violation. The eight murders were those of Lana Long, Michelle Simms, Elizabeth Loudenback, Vicky Elliott, Chanel Williams, Karen Dinsfriend, Kimberly Hopps and Kim Swann. The Eleventh Circuit, counting the girl's case with the others, later described the pleas as covering eight counts of first-degree murder, nine of kidnapping and eight of sexual battery.
Long gave up his right to contest the use of his statements, the evidence from his car and apartment, and the knife found near his apartment. In return the State agreed to life sentences on every count except the Simms murder, and a five-year sentence for the probation violation. In the Simms case a jury would decide between death and life without parole for 25 years. The State also agreed not to use the Hillsborough convictions as aggravating circumstances in the Simms case, though it kept the right to rely on convictions from other counties. Judge John P. Griffin asked Long whether the agreement was in his best interest, and he said yes.
In December 1985 Long tried to back out. On December 11 he moved to withdraw his pleas, saying that he had counted on a defense psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Morrison, who had become unavailable, and that he had not understood he was giving up his right to appeal the ruling on his confession. "I have no faith in anything in this thing now," he testified. Judge Griffin granted the motion. The next day, after 24 hours to think, Long chose to keep his pleas. When the judge explained the appeal waiver, Long said, "I wasn't aware of that." He would challenge the plea again and again over the next three decades, and every court that considered it upheld it.
News reports at the time of his execution gave his total as 28 life sentences and one death sentence. Other reports gave different figures (see the section on disputed points).
Long changed lawyers. His new lawyer, Ellis Rubin, moved to set aside the plea agreement and to exclude Long's statements, and on July 8, 1986, the court denied both motions.
The penalty trial in the Simms case began in July 1986. Detective Latimer described Long's statements, and the State introduced the knife. Two State psychiatrists, Dr. Arturo Gonzalez and Dr. Daniel Sprehe, found a personality disorder rather than a mental illness, and said Long had not been under extreme mental or emotional disturbance. Gonzalez added that in killing his victims Long was "unconsciously killing his mother by extension." Four defense experts, the psychiatrists Dorothy Lewis and Walter Afield, the psychologist Robert Berland and a criminologist and psychologist, described head injuries from early childhood onward, brain damage, a troubled home and severe mental problems, and said he could not conform his conduct to the law.
On July 18, 1986, the jury recommended death by 11 votes to 1. On July 25 Judge Griffin sentenced Long to death for the murder and to life for the kidnapping and sexual battery. He found four aggravating circumstances: a prior violent felony conviction (the Pasco murder of Virginia Johnson), murder during a kidnapping, a murder especially cruel under Florida's aggravating-circumstance statute, and a murder that was cold, calculated and premeditated. He also found two mitigating circumstances, extreme mental or emotional disturbance and substantially impaired capacity, but held that the aggravating circumstances "far outweigh" them, and that "virtually no reasonable person could differ with this conclusion."
On November 25, 1986, while he was on death row, Long gave a long on-camera interview to Victoria Corderi of CBS News, and CBS broadcast short segments on December 26. Rubin later testified about the interview, and a trial court found that it had been a considered defense strategy over which Rubin had no editorial control.
On November 12, 1987, a unanimous Florida Supreme Court reversed the Johnson conviction in Long v. State, 517 So. 2d 664. Under Miranda v. Arizona and Edwards v. Arizona, the court held, Long's statement that he "might need an attorney" was equivocal, but it put the detectives on notice, and "the only permissible further questioning would be questions attempting to clarify Long's request for counsel." The record showed that the officers had not tried to clarify it. The court said that without that remark it would have found the confession voluntary and admissible. It vacated the conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial.
That ruling unsettled the Simms sentence, which rested in part on the Johnson conviction. On June 30, 1988, in Long v. State, 529 So. 2d 286, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the guilty pleas. It found that Long had made an informed choice to give up his challenge to the confession as part of a tactical bargain, and that his lawyer had not been shown to be ineffective. But it vacated the death sentence, because the judge had relied on a conviction that no longer existed, and the court could not say the result would have been the same without it. It sent the Simms case back for a new sentencing before a new jury.
The State retried the Johnson case. An attempt to seat a jury in Pasco County failed, and the trial moved to Fort Myers, with Judge Wayne L. Cobb presiding. The confession could not be used. Before trial the judge allowed prosecutors to present evidence of four of the Hillsborough murders, those of Lana Long, Simms, Dinsfriend and Swann, as similar crimes, and excluded five others. Testimony began on November 1, 1988.
The evidence on the Johnson killing itself took about four hours. The evidence on the Hillsborough murders took more than three days. Witnesses described the finding of each body and the autopsies. Detective Baker told the jury that Long had pleaded guilty to those four murders. The 17-year-old girl testified about her abduction, and Detective Goethe described tracing the bank record.
The center of the case was the FBI hair and fiber examiner Michael Malone. He testified that two bleached blond hairs from the sweepings of Long's car were consistent with Johnson's hair, and that a single red trilobal nylon fiber found in the mass of hair at her remains had the same characteristics as the carpet in his car. He found red fibers matching the car on Lana Long, Simms, Dinsfriend and Swann and on every item of the 17-year-old's clothing. He found hairs in the car consistent with the hair of Lana Long, Simms, Dinsfriend and Swann, and a pubic hair on the blanket around Dinsfriend that was consistent with Long's. On cross-examination he agreed that hair comparison does not prove identity and that the fiber type was the most common carpet fiber made. An FBI tire examiner, David Attenburger, testified that one of the tires on Long's car was an uncommon Vogue tire and that his tires "could have made" impressions cast at the Lana Long and Simms scenes.
The State also played part of the CBS interview. The defense asked for the whole recording. CBS refused, citing the First Amendment, and went to the Second District Court of Appeal (CBS, Inc. v. Cobb, 536 So. 2d 1067 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988)). CBS eventually handed over about 13 minutes of additional tape, and the judge refused the defense request for the rest. He kept out one line in which Long said he must have "destroyed about a hundred people" as too inflammatory.
On November 7, 1988, the jury found Long guilty of first-degree murder. On November 10 it recommended death by 9 votes to 3. Judge Cobb imposed death on March 2, 1989. He found four aggravating circumstances and no mitigating ones. He dismissed the testimony of the defense sexologist Dr. John Money as having "no value whatsoever" and called it "an obvious and abject example of psychological prostitution." A court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Maher, had found an affective disorder and organic brain impairment, but had also said that Long lied regularly. The State's psychologist, Dr. Sidney Merin, found no significant brain impairment and said Long's main motive was eliminating witnesses. Long had told Dr. Sprehe that removing witnesses was one reason for the killings, and the jury heard about letters in which he discussed escaping and having investigating officers killed.
Pretrial publicity forced the Simms resentencing out of Hillsborough County. It was held in Daytona Beach, in Volusia County, from June 26 to 29, 1989, before Judge Richard A. Lazzara of Hillsborough, with Robert Fraser as defense counsel. Long's own motions to withdraw his pleas were denied in May 1989. The judge barred any mention of the other Hillsborough murders.
The State called Detective Latimer, who described the discovery of the body and played Long's account; on cross-examination he agreed that Long's remark about hitting Simms "so she would not suffer" was open to interpretation. Dr. Miller described the injuries. Two investigators gave hearsay accounts of the Pasco and Pinellas rape cases, over defense objection. Long's former wife testified by videotape. His mother described his childhood and his head injuries.
Dr. Money testified that Long had sexual sadism and temporal lobe epilepsy, that his testosterone was below normal, and that he could not appreciate the criminality of his conduct. Dr. Berland, appointed by the court, measured Long's IQ at 118 and diagnosed bipolar disorder and an organic personality syndrome from brain damage; he said Long knew right from wrong but could not conform his conduct to it, and had killed Simms in a fit of rage. In rebuttal Dr. Sprehe, who had examined Long in 1985 to assess his competency and sanity, diagnosed a severe antisocial personality disorder but no psychosis, and testified that Long had told him he killed Simms "to eliminate a witness." Long disputed that.
On June 29, 1989, the jury recommended death by 12 votes to 0. On July 21, 1989, Judge Lazzara sentenced Long to death, to be carried out by electrocution, and to concurrent life terms on the kidnapping and sexual battery counts. He found four aggravating circumstances: murder during a kidnapping; the statutory aggravator for an especially cruel murder; a prior violent felony conviction; and cold, calculated and premeditated murder. He found both statutory mental mitigating circumstances, listing what he called Long's "mental and emotional afflictions," including atypical psychosis, sexual sadism, bipolar disorder and organic brain damage. The Florida Supreme Court quoted his finding that Long had "a propensity of violence to women" and that the mitigating circumstances did not give him "a license to deliberately stalk and abduct a woman."
The Florida Supreme Court decided both of Long's capital appeals on October 15, 1992.
In Long v. State, 610 So. 2d 1268, the Simms case, the court affirmed the death sentence by a vote of 7 to 0. It rejected his attempt to withdraw his pleas, held that the hearsay accounts of the prior rapes were properly admitted because he had a fair chance to rebut them, and held that Dr. Sprehe could testify in rebuttal because Long had put his mental state in issue. Rehearing was denied on January 26, 1993. The United States Supreme Court denied review on October 4, 1993 (510 U.S. 832). From that date the Simms conviction and death sentence were final.
In Long v. State, 610 So. 2d 1276, the Johnson case, the court reversed the conviction and death sentence again. The four Hillsborough murders "could not be presented at this trial," it held, given the plea agreement, which both sides had understood to mean that the pleas would not be used in later proceedings; and they had become the overwhelming feature of the trial. The jury could hear how the 17-year-old's report led to Long's arrest and the search of his car, but not what was done to her in the apartment or that he had pleaded guilty. Once the State used part of the CBS interview, Long "was entitled to have the entire interview or portions thereof placed into evidence in the interest of fairness." The court sent the case back for a third trial.
The third trial of the Johnson case was moved again, this time to Ocala, and began on January 21, 1994, before Judge Charles W. Cope. Without the confession and without the Hillsborough murders, the State's case rested on the bank record, the car, Malone's two hairs and one fiber, and the CBS interview. The jury heard Long say: "When I saw them walking down the street, it was like A, B, C, D," and "I pull over, they get in, I drive a little ways, stop, pull a knife, a gun, whatever, tie them up, take them out. And that would be it." In another passage he said that they all went the same way until the girl he released came along.
The jury found him guilty and recommended death by 7 votes to 5. At the sentencing hearing in March 1994 the defense presented brain scans: Dr. Frank Wood testified that a PET scan showed sharply reduced activity in part of Long's left temporal lobe, near the amygdala, and Dr. Ruben Gur and Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne supported that reading. Two State doctors said the scan showed normal anatomy. Judge Cope sentenced Long to death, finding three aggravating circumstances and the mitigating circumstance that his capacity to conform his conduct to the law was substantially impaired. The defense brief gives the sentencing date as March 18, 1994; the Commission on Capital Cases gives a verdict date of February 10 and a sentencing date of April 12, 1994.
On March 6, 1997, in Long v. State, 689 So. 2d 1055, the Florida Supreme Court reversed for the third time and did not order another trial. Circumstantial evidence, it said, must be "inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of innocence." Hair comparison could not make a positive identification, and there was no proof that the single fiber could have come only from Long's car. No witness had seen him with Johnson, and the statements the jury heard did not admit this killing. The evidence raised a strong suspicion, the court said, but suspicion was not enough. It held that the girl's abduction was too unlike the Johnson case to serve as evidence of identity, and it directed the trial court to "enter an order of acquittal for this crime." Upholding the plea agreement, the court noted, was what had left the State with so little to use.
Long confessed to killing Virginia Johnson, but the confession was obtained unlawfully, and in law he was acquitted of her death.
Michael Malone's testimony was later questioned in other cases. In a 2017 decision in another capital case, the Florida Supreme Court described a 2014 Justice Department review of his work, which found that some of his statements "exceeded the limits of science and were, therefore, invalid." In September 2014 Long filed a motion arguing that the problems with Malone's work were new evidence that made his guilty plea invalid. The courts disagreed. In Long v. State, 183 So. 3d 342 (Fla. 2016), decided on January 21, 2016, the Florida Supreme Court held that the claim was too late, because Long and his lawyers had learned of the problems in December 2000. It added that, even on the merits, other evidence implicated him and his plea had been a voluntary tactical choice, and it called the motion "a thinly disguised attempt to challenge, for the fourth time, the validity of his plea agreement." The court used Long's case to set out a two-part test for new-evidence claims after a guilty plea.
Long's first motion for postconviction relief in the Simms case was filed in December 1994, denied in August 1995, and withdrawn on appeal so that he could file an amended motion. That motion stayed open for years; it was amended in March 2003, and in 2007 a hearing was set to determine whether he was competent to proceed. An evidentiary hearing was held on May 9, 2011. His original plea lawyer, Charles O'Connor, had died, but O'Connor had testified in February 1989 that he went over the plea form with Long in September and again in December 1985 and was satisfied Long understood it. The circuit court denied relief, and on July 11, 2013, in Long v. State, 118 So. 3d 798, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed, finding that Long "was fully aware of and understood all of the ramifications of the plea agreement."
Long then went to federal court. He filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida on August 9, 2013. The court denied it on the merits on August 30, 2016, and on January 4, 2017, the Eleventh Circuit denied a certificate of appealability.
On January 3, 2017, Long filed another motion, seeking relief under the Hurst decisions on Florida's death penalty procedure. The Florida Supreme Court rejected it in Long v. State, 235 So. 3d 293 (Fla. 2018), and the United States Supreme Court denied review later in 2018 (139 S. Ct. 162).
In March 2019 Attorney General Ashley Moody wrote to Governor DeSantis about Long's eligibility for execution, the News Service of Florida reported. Clemency was denied. On April 23, 2019, DeSantis signed Long's death warrant, the first of his administration, and set the execution for 6 p.m. on May 23, 2019, at Florida State Prison. Long was then 65 and held on death row at Union Correctional Institution. Florida's previous execution had been in December 2018. FOX 13 reported that 344 people, Long among them, were then under sentence of death in Florida.
Long's lawyers filed a third successive postconviction motion on April 29, 2019, raising six claims. They argued that new science on brain injury required a new penalty trial; that etomidate, the first drug in Florida's three-drug lethal injection procedure, posed a particular risk to him because of his temporal lobe epilepsy and brain damage; that more than 30 years on death row made his execution cruel and unusual; that he should have had relief under Hurst; that prison rules for his legal witness were unconstitutional; and that his mental illness and brain injury barred his execution. The circuit court heard evidence on the etomidate claim and denied all of them.
On May 17, 2019, in Long v. State, No. SC19-726, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed. The brain-injury evidence was not new, the court held, because Long had known of the diagnoses since 1989; and it would probably not produce a lesser sentence, since the 1989 jury had heard about his injuries and the judge had found both mental mitigating circumstances. "None of the scientific advances at issue establishes that traumatic brain injury or temporal lobe epilepsy is the sole cause" of crimes like his, the court said, and "the evidence is inconsistent with Long's claim that he could not control his behavior." It credited the State's anesthesia expert over Long's on etomidate. The court had separately denied a stay and a state habeas petition earlier in May, the News Service of Florida reported.
In federal court Long brought a civil rights suit challenging the execution procedure. The district court denied a stay, and on May 22, 2019, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed in Long v. Secretary, Department of Corrections, 924 F.3d 1171, holding that his claims were barred because they could have been raised in his state case and that he had waited too long. The three-drug procedure dated to 2000. "Nineteen years is too long to wait," Chief Judge Ed Carnes wrote.
On May 20, 2019, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops asked DeSantis to commute the sentence to life without parole. "Although he caused much harm, society has been safe from his aggressive acts in the decades of his incarceration," wrote Michael Sheedy, the conference's executive director.
Long had no visitors on the day of his execution. His last meal was a roast beef sandwich, bacon, French fries and a soda. The execution was scheduled for 6 p.m. but was held up while the United States Supreme Court considered his final petitions. The court denied the stay application and his petition for certiorari, in Long v. Inch, No. 18-9356, with no dissent noted in its order.
The injections began at 6:43 p.m., according to WFTS. Asked whether he had a final statement, Long said no. He kept his eyes closed. WFLA reported that the drugs were etomidate, rocuronium bromide and potassium acetate. He was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. He was 65. FOX 13 reported that he was the 98th person executed in Florida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Twenty-six witnesses sat in the viewing room, among them relatives of the women he killed and two women who had survived his attacks. One witness wore a shirt printed with photographs of all ten women and the words "The Ones That Matter." When it was over, family members cried and hugged. Lula Williams, Chanel's mother, said she had wanted to see more pain. "We thank God that this day has come," she said. Chanel's uncle, Eugene Williams, said Long's death had been painless. "What my niece suffered was pain," he said. Chanel's sister, Algalana Douglas, said the families had never thought the day would come, and that the burden had lifted. Kim Swann's sister, Tammy Kaspi, said she had never expected it to take so long.
The woman who had been abducted as a 17-year-old in 1984 sat in the front row. She said afterward that she had forgiven him, because otherwise she would have been living in a prison of her own. "The peace that came over me is a remarkable feeling," she told the Associated Press.
Long's former wife, who had divorced him in 1980, told the Associated Press before the execution that he had become steadily more violent toward her during their marriage. She said that the execution should have happened "many, many years ago," that she had forgiven him for what he did to her, and that she did not think she would ever forgive him for what it had done to their children. "Every one of the victims and the victim's families are in my prayers," she said.
In Huntington, the police chief, Hank Dial, told the Herald-Dispatch in 2019 that he knew of no connection between Long and any unsolved killing or other crime from his time in the area.
Retired Colonel Gary Terry of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, one of the lead investigators, told WFLA in 2019 that no one deserved to die the way the women had died. "Every time you went home at night, you would think about if we don't catch this guy, someone else is going to be murdered," he said.
Proven by final judgment: the murders of Ngeun Thi "Lana" Long, Michelle Simms, Elizabeth Loudenback, Vicky Elliott, Chanel Williams, Karen Dinsfriend, Kimberly Hopps and Kim Swann (guilty pleas, Hillsborough County, September 23, 1985); the kidnapping and sexual battery of the 17-year-old girl (same plea); and the Pasco and Pinellas rape-related convictions of 1985.
Not proven: the death of Virginia Johnson. Long confessed to it, but the confession was obtained after he raised the question of a lawyer and was ruled inadmissible, and the Florida Supreme Court ordered an acquittal in 1997. It is attributed to him by investigators and the press, not by a conviction.
Never charged: the death of Artiss Ann Wick, described by the Associated Press as his first victim, in March 1984. The State listed nine Hillsborough homicides it might use as similar-crime evidence in 1988, one more than the eight in the plea, but the court records do not name the ninth.
The count of rapes: investigators said he claimed about 40 rapes in three states; the Associated Press described "dozens of rapes." Only the Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough cases ended in convictions.
Accounts differ on several details: his birth year (1953 in the Commission on Capital Cases record and the defense brief; 1954 in the Herald-Dispatch); the date of the first Pasco death sentence (May 3, 1985, or May 10, 1985); the dates of the 1994 verdict and sentence; Artiss Ann Wick's age (18 in the 2019 families' list; other ages appear in less reliable accounts); the number of life sentences (28 in most 2019 reports; 33 in an NBC News report; the Herald-Dispatch listed 28 life terms, four 99-year terms and one five-year term; an AP version printed in The Philadelphia Inquirer said 401 years plus 28 life terms); and where Michelle Simms was found (near Plant City in court records; NBC News said "Lake City, a Tampa suburb," which is wrong). The Herald-Dispatch reported that Long was born with an extra X chromosome. The court records do not mention such a diagnosis; the defense brief in the Simms case says only that a doctor attributed his breast growth at 15 to a hormone imbalance.
October 14, 1953: Robert Joe Long is born in Kenova, West Virginia.
Childhood: several serious head injuries, among them being struck by a car at about seven.
1972: enlists in the Army.
January 1974: marries; that year, a motorcycle crash in Miami leaves him with a serious head injury.
1980: his wife divorces him.
1982: charged in Kenova with misdemeanor assault and destruction of property; acquitted of the assault.
1983: works briefly at two Huntington hospitals and is fired.
March 6, 1984: rape and robbery of a woman in her home in Pasco County.
March 1984: Artiss Ann Wick is killed.
May 13, 1984: the body of Ngeun Thi "Lana" Long is found off East Bay Road, Hillsborough County.
May 27, 1984: Michelle Simms's body is found near Plant City.
May 29, 1984: rape and robbery of a woman in her home in Pinellas County.
October 1984: Chanel Williams is found shot to death.
October 14, 1984: Karen Dinsfriend's body is found near Lake Thonotosassa.
October 15, 1984: Virginia Johnson's last known visit to a county clinic.
November 3, 1984: a 17-year-old girl is abducted from her bicycle; she is released about a day later.
November 6, 1984: Virginia Johnson's remains are found in Pasco County.
November 12, 1984: Kim Swann's body is found off Orient Road, Tampa.
November 14, 1984: the FBI laboratory links fibers from the girl's clothing to the murder cases.
November 15, 1984: detectives stop Long's Dodge Magnum and let him go; the bank and vehicle records match.
November 16, 1984: Long is arrested and confesses.
November 28 and December 6, 1984: indicted in Hillsborough (Simms) and Pasco (Johnson).
April 1985: convicted of the Pasco rape case (April 17) and of the Johnson murder (April 27); sentenced to death in May.
July 12, 1985: pleads guilty in the Pinellas rape case.
September 23, 1985: pleads guilty in Hillsborough to eight murders and related charges.
December 11 and 12, 1985: allowed to withdraw his pleas, then chooses to keep them.
July 25, 1986: sentenced to death for the murder of Michelle Simms.
November 25, 1986: interviewed on death row by CBS News; broadcast December 26.
November 12, 1987: Johnson conviction reversed (517 So. 2d 664).
June 30, 1988: pleas upheld; Simms death sentence vacated (529 So. 2d 286).
November 1988: second Johnson trial in Fort Myers; guilty verdict November 7; death sentence March 2, 1989.
June 29 and July 21, 1989: Daytona Beach jury recommends death 12 to 0; resentenced to death.
October 15, 1992: Simms death sentence affirmed (610 So. 2d 1268); Johnson conviction reversed again (610 So. 2d 1276).
October 4, 1993: United States Supreme Court denies review in the Simms case.
January to March 1994: third Johnson trial in Ocala; guilty verdict and death sentence.
March 6, 1997: Florida Supreme Court orders acquittal in the Johnson case (689 So. 2d 1055).
May 9, 2011: postconviction evidentiary hearing in the Simms case.
July 11, 2013: denial of postconviction relief affirmed (118 So. 3d 798).
January 21, 2016: Malone claim rejected (183 So. 3d 342).
August 30, 2016: federal habeas petition denied; certificate of appealability denied January 4, 2017.
2018: Hurst claim rejected (235 So. 3d 293).
April 23, 2019: Governor DeSantis signs the death warrant.
May 17, 2019: Florida Supreme Court affirms denial of his last state motion.
May 22, 2019: Eleventh Circuit denies a stay (924 F.3d 1171).
May 23, 2019: United States Supreme Court denies a stay; Long is executed at Florida State Prison and pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m.