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Florida Executes Bobby Joe Long for the 1984 Murder of Michelle Simms

The 65-year-old, who confessed to a 1984 spree that killed 10 women around Tampa Bay, died by lethal injection. The survivor who led police to him watched from the front row.

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Pinellas County Sheriff's Department booking photograph of Robert J. Long, front view, 1985

Florida executed Bobby Joe Long on the evening of Thursday, May 23, 2019, thirty-five years after a spree that took the lives of 10 women around Tampa Bay. He was 65. Authorities pronounced him dead at 6:55 p.m., after a lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke.

The execution had been set for 6 p.m. and was held back briefly while the U.S. Supreme Court weighed his final appeals. The justices denied them at about 6:30. Witnesses said Long made no last statement and simply closed his eyes as the procedure began. Prison officials said no one had come to see him that day.

The death sentence was for a single murder, that of 22-year-old Michelle Simms. For the other crimes he committed around Tampa Bay over eight months in 1984 he was serving 28 life sentences, and he had confessed to the killings, the Associated Press reported. The first of the 10 women, Artiss Ann Wick, was killed in March 1984. Most were strangled. Some had their throats cut, and others were beaten. Investigators trying to solve dozens of rapes had given him a name of his own, the Classified Ad Rapist: he went through newspaper ads, made appointments to look at items for sale, and raped women who answered the door alone.

In the front row sat Lisa Noland. In 1984, at 17, she was abducted outside a church by Long, who raped her and then let her go. She had left her blood on the back seat of his car and her fingerprints in his bathroom, tracked the direction of the drive and counted the steps up to his apartment, and the details she gave police led them to him. She went on to become a deputy with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, the department she had helped lead to his arrest.

She had wanted to be the first person Long saw, she said afterward, but he never opened his eyes. Another witness wore a shirt printed on the back with photographs of all 10 victims and the words "The Ones That Matter." Noland wept as she left. "The peace that came over me is a remarkable feeling," she said.

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