Lisa McVey survives serial killer Bobby Joe Long

After its initial 13-episode run, mainly in the fall of 1996, Forensic Files was back in October of 1997 with its second season. And they kicked this new season off with a bang by featuring the notorious Florida serial killer Bobby Joe Long. Some of the hallmarks from the first season were carried forward, such as the briefly unnarrated opening with the scene's location-and-date title superimposed. But season two saw other enhancements that would last the remainder of the series. These included the formatting of subjects' name and details, along with a more comfortable framing (read: less extreme close-ups) of the interviewees.

Some of the more explicit content was still noticeable in this season two opener. While there wasn't the graphic content seen in Insect Clues (s01e10) which profiled Ronald Porter's assaults and murders, there was the bare butt of the actress portraying the murdered Lana Long shortly after this episode's opening credits. The reenactment follows two boys chasing a rocket and discovering the bound and partially decomposed body of who was portrayed as Bobby Joe Long's first victim: Ngeun Thi "Lana" Long. I remember this very clear shot of the actress' derriere was being blurred out when I watched this show on cable several years ago. Hopefully YouTube doesn't flag it as "Adult Content" and prevent sites like this from embedding the episode.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Also relevant to the Sandra Cwik case in Insect Clues, a portion of that episode's recurring guitar lick can clearly be heard when scenes of Tampa's seedier side of town are portrayed around the 9:55 mark. I haven't done the official survey yet, but I believe our season two opener is among the last episodes to use full-screen title cards as the episode's closer. Soon the pattern of an interviewee's closing remarks become each episode's de facto outro (pun intended). And Insect Clues' eerie closing music is used once more in this episode.

Boys will be boys

The scene of the boys playing on the abandoned highway with their model rocket held a bit of nostalgia for me. My buddy Jeff and I were those boys, only we took our rockets to the neighboring middle school's open field. We seldom had a 'kit' rocket to launch, but we built other missile-shaped aircraft with anything remotely cylindrical we could get our hands on. The two boys in the reenactment were closer to their launchpad than Jeff or I would've ever been comfortable with. Looking back, I'm surprised the local hobby store sold powerful, semi-explosive rocket engines to young boys like us. But chasing a parachuting rocket on a windy day rang very true with me.

Tampa is on the west coast of Florida, across the state and a few hours north of our Fort Lauderdale stomping grounds. Most cities have their troubled areas, and it was indicated that Tampa's was "along Nebraska Avenue". Jeff nor I ever sought our city's version of this area, but a large portion of Bobby Joe Long's murder victims seemed to work in the 'oldest profession'. First known as the "Classified Ad Rapist", Long's standard practice was to find women who were offering items for sale in the newspaper. He'd contact and then visit these sellers. If there wasn't a man around, Bobby Joe Long would attack, sexually assaulting the women. It was believed that Long may've accumulated as many as 50 victims of this type of attack. But when Long's murders began in 1984, he found an even more vulnerable population: Prostitutes. And why were the majority of these women working in the sex trade? Almost invariably to support a crippling drug habit. So sad.

Lana Long and Bobby Joe Long

When Lana Long went missing, it was odd that her live-in boyfriend John Corcoran did not report her missing for three days. If he was hoping to avoid being suspected in her disappearance, this was the wrong way to stay off police's radar. But it was stated that Corcoran and Long had something of a bumpy relationship. John Corcoran was upset that Lana had been getting so many phone calls at home from men asking her out for dates. In 1984, these calls were coming to the couple's home – no cell phones, which means Lana had been giving her home phone number to practical strangers she'd meet at the Sly Fox Lounge. It's no wonder Corcoran was bothered.

Bobby Joe Long victimized several women before he met his match in the 17-year-old named Lisa McVey. Long strayed from his pattern of targeting more vulnerable women when he leapt from behind a van at 2:30am, knocking McVey off her bike. Our episode stated that Lisa was taken to an apartment and kept there for 24 hours where she was repeatedly assaulted by Bobby Joe Long. I wondered which apartment this was, and whether or not Long had a job or a family at the time.

Research revealed that Bobby Joe Long had married a high school girlfriend in 1974 (just the year after I was born), and after having two children, the couple divorced in 1980. It was around this time that Long's string of brutal rapes began in the various areas around south Florida he called home. What made Bobby Joe Long transition from rape to murder in 1984 is unknown, but it seems his appetite for killing was insatiable.

Serial killers typically have a cool-down period between murders, and even the more prolific ones take years to amass the killings attributed to Bobby Joe Long. But rather than years, Long's twelve murderous assaults (ten murders in total) each took place in 1984, all in about a nine-month window. In certain months, it was believed Long likely targeted three different victims. This rapidity in homicidal attacks is essentially unheard of.

It speaks to some of the dysfunction known to exist in Bobby Joe Long's life. Born with an extra X chromosome, Long's body was flooded with extra estrogen when he was younger. This led to female traits including the development of breasts for which Bobby Joe was teased. He was thought to have shared the bed with his mother until he was a teenager. And Long suffered multiple head injuries over the years as the result of various accidents. After a motorcycle accident as a teenager, Long was believed to have a voracious sex drive. During his recovery, he'd masturbate as many as five times in a day. During his marriage, this appetite persisted, and Bobby Joe would typically copulate with his wife twice a day. And it still seemed this wasn't enough.

Good thing most criminals aren't too smart

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Whether they consider it or not, criminals end up doing things that make them stand out. They set themselves apart and make it easier to identify and catch them. Note the case of Diana Haun's murder of Sherri Dally from the episode Sign Here (s08e04). The car Haun rented to complete her disguise and abduct Sherri Dally wasn't exactly 'ordinary'. Rather than rent a common, easy-to-miss car from Budget, Diana Haun ended up with a distinctly teal-colored Nissan. This was easily recalled by an eyewitness who saw a woman (Dally) being handcuffed and bullied into its backseat.

I'm not sure Bobby Joe Long could have made his Dodge Magnum's tire configuration more distinct if he'd tried. Not only did he have three different tires on the car, two of them were mounted backward on the rims. And one was the expensive Vogue tire, typically only found on a Cadillac. This impossibly distinct arrangement of tires would simply never be repeated on another car.

Lisa McVey: Surviving a serial killer

Once Long and his car were identified, these tires and their tracks linked him to the dump sites of some of his other victims. But Lisa McVey's awareness helped police zero in on Bobby Joe Long. She is a genuine survivor, and certainly street-smart as stated in our episode. Peering under the blindfold to see the distinct "Magnum" emblem on the dashboard narrowed down the suspect list to just under 500. Cross-referenced against ATM users on the night in question quickly pointed detectives to Bobby Joe Long.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Additional research suggests that Long was already in police's sights before McVey was abducted. And there's another aspect of the 17-year-old that makes the story all that more compelling. It seems McVey was depressed and had been contemplating suicide up to and even on the night of her abduction. She told Bobby Joe Long that she was the sole caregiver for an ailing parent. This may've been true, or it may've been a play to gain Long's sympathy. Ultimately, Lisa McVey made the decision that she wanted to live. In her appearance on the series I Survived, McVey stated, "When he released me and drove off, I took off my blindfold and saw this amazing oak tree. I had wanted to die before and now I wanted to live."

So why did Bobby Joe Long decide to release Lisa McVey? It's possible he believed that he'd kept her sufficiently blindfolded. It was true that she was not able to identify Long from a police lineup. McVey was clever to comply with Bobby Joe's demands, and I think her appeal to his sensibilities ultimately humanized her in his eyes. Long had murdered similarly young victims before. But I think his perception of their station in life allowed Long to see them as less significant and unworthy of living.

Bobby Joe Long's victims

Our episode mentioned just six of Long's victims, including survivor Lisa McVey. But additional research puts these into a longer list – I've included all of them here in chronological order with the best timeframes available:

1. *Artiss "Ann" Wick, 20: Killed on March 27, 1984
2. Ngeun Thi "Peggy" & "Lana" Long, 19: Found naked and bound on May 13, 1984
3. Michelle Simms, 22: Found stabbed and bound on May 27, 1984
4. *Linda Nuttall, 33: Assaulted in May 1984; survived
5. *Elizabeth Loudenback, 22: Last seen on June 8, 1984
6. *Vicky Marie Elliott, 21: Vanished on Sept. 7, 1984
7. Chanel Williams, 18: Last seen on September 30, 1984; found on October 7, 1984
8. Karen Dinsfriend, 28: Found on October 14, 1984
9. *Kimberly Kyle Hopps, 22: Last seen mid-October 1984
10. *Virginia Lee Johnson, 18: Vanished in late-October 1984
11. Lisa McVey, 17: Abducted on November 3, 1984; survived
12. Kim Swann, 21: Last seen on November 11, 1984

* indicates the victim was not mentioned in this episode

Proud of our boys in blue

Along with the tire impression evidence, the carpet fibers found with many of Long's victims were crucial in associating the related cases. The red, trilobal fibers from the carpet of Long's car were distinctive. The episode did an excellent job describing the scientific tools and processes used to match these tiny, physical clues. The scanning electron microscope, melting-point apparatus, and reflected light measurement showed the fibers to be indistinguishable, including being colored red from the same dye lot. Pretty sophisticated for 1984.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

I've brought up the idea of "hold-back evidence" in prior cases, including Earl Bramblett's murder of the Hodges family from Private Thoughts (s08e16). In that case, details known to investigators were withheld from the public in hopes the perpetrator would inadvertently reveal the information that only someone at the crime scene would possibly know. But the hold-back evidence in Bobby Joe Long's case served a different purpose. The distinct tire configuration and carpet fibers were withheld from the media to keep the perpetrator from knowing what the police had learned. If Long knew police were seeking a suspect who owned car with an odd grouping of tires and red carpet, he would've likely changed his methods. Major Gary Terry references the case of the Atlanta Child Murders: After information about the latent evidence recovered on Williams' victims was revealed in newspapers, the serial killer began disposing of his victims' bodies in rivers to wash away trace evidence.

And finally, it should be regarded that Hillsborough County police were clever enough to find match records among the area's 1978 Dodge Magnum owners and ATM users in the early morning of November 4, 1984. Hundreds of records were manually cross-referenced to find Bobby Joe Long – and without the use of a computer.

Memorialize the victims, not the killer

Personally, this memorable and captivating episode had one flaw. I was disappointed with the diatribe shared by Bobby Joe Long near the end. I included his words in the quotes above, but his disposition and lack of responsibility irritates me. He says, "It's sad, what happened to them." Happened? This passive word choice minimizes his direct, cognizant involvement in these victims' brutal murders. He seems very dismissive overall that each of these women were individuals with families with loved ones, and his callous, selfish actions were the direct cause of each of their deaths. Are we supposed to feel bad when he opines, "And the worst thing is I don't understand why"? Whether or not you know why isn't important when you're choosing over and over again to victimize innocent people. If you know you're sick and know you have an imbalance that compels you to cause harm to others, it's a societal responsibility to turn yourself over to authorities. Not to abscond and dodge responsibility – to cover your tracks so you can remain free to reoffend again and again. I don't buy his 'self-aware' bullshit.

On a positive note, Lisa McVey went on to become a Sherriff's Deputy with the Hillsborough Country Police Department in 2004. Seems poetic.

Where is Bobby Joe Long now in 2024?

Bobby Joe Long was apprehended on November 16, 1984. He was charged with numerous felonies including kidnapping, sexual assault, aggravated battery, rape, and murder. In a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, Long was convicted of eight murders and of the rape offenses against McVey. In 1985, he was given the almost silly sentence of 26 life terms without parole. In a subsequent trial, Bobby Joe Long was also found guilty of the murder of Michelle Simms, and he was finally given the death penalty. Long remained in jail for over 30 years before his execution was finally carried out on May 23, 2019 by lethal injection. He was 65 years old.