Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents (19 page)

By May he couldn’t stand being ostracised any longer, and persuaded MaryJane to move with him and the children from their home in Ypsilanti to a warehouse in Toledo, Ohio, an hour’s drive away. They told no one of the move in a bid to outwit the police and their creditors.

Temporarily unemployed, Chris Longo made money by stealing goods and selling them and by pawning his diving equipment. He also continued to forge cheques. When the police impounded his stolen van and boat, he went on the run with his family in a rental truck. Cruelly, he released their dog, Kyra, on a piece of wasteland – animals which are abandoned in this way suffer terribly. When Zachery asked what had happened to his beloved pet, he said that the dog was on holiday just like they were and was staying with a kindly farmer. The four-year-old accepted this. But MaryJane was soon worn down by trying to keep the children happy as they missed their pet, were often hungry and no longer had a stable routine.

Eventually they reached Yachats, a little hamlet on the West Coast, and rented a holiday chalet there. By now, Chris was so broke that he had to pawn their television set in order to buy food. But he didn’t have enough money to pay the rent for the chalet for more than a few days, so the family went on the road again.

The Longos drove on to Newport, Oregon, where, by washing windows, Chris raised enough for a room at a travel lodge. With five of them cramped in one small motel room, the family survived on noodles and cereal.

Chris’s lack of education made it difficult for him to find well-paying work so he took a part-time job at a coffee shop in the hope that someone else would leave and he’d been given
more hours. He refused to walk to work, believing that arriving in his truck gave him status, but when he ran out of money for petrol, he simply filled up his vehicle at a garage then drove off. Meanwhile, MaryJane and the children spent most of their days at the children’s section of the local library.

In December 2001, Chris moved his family into a much more expensive condominium hotel in Newport, despite the fact that one month’s rent equalled one month’s salary. He knew that he’d never be able to pay the second month’s rent, but spent a few days living in relative luxury, even inviting another couple, whom they’d recently befriended, over for a meal.

As a single man he could enjoy such bonhomie on a regular basis – but, with four other mouths to feed, his life would remain cumbersome. A rational adult would have claimed welfare benefits or simply jumped ship, but he had been brought up to believe that the man of the house had to appear strong and capable, the provider. To leave his family would make him seem weak and immoral, but if
they
appeared to have deserted
him,
he would be viewed sympathetically…

During the third week of December 2001, Chris Longo told his co-workers that his wife had left him and gone to Michigan, taking the children with her. He appeared to be coping well with his unexpected freedom, arriving at a Christmas party at a local restaurant in a brand new car which he’d stolen hours earlier from a car showroom. He laughed and joked with other revellers and they assumed that he was putting a brave face on things. He also began to make use of a nearby gym.

On the 19th, his four-year-old son Zachery’s body was washed up on the shore: it had been weighed down with a pillowcase containing a rock but had slipped free of the material. There was no identification on the body. Three days
later, three-year-old Sadie’s body was discovered by divers with a pillowcase tied around her ankle. She too had been weighed down with a rock.

As he worked out at the gym, Chris Longo heard the news that two unidentified children’s bodies had been found in local waters. For a man who apparently believed that his offspring were in Michigan with his wife, he had a sudden inexplicable urge to leave town and drove to San Francisco, sleeping in the stolen car and later spending two nights at a youth hostel, though he kept a low profile for such an extroverted man.

A woman who had babysat for the Longos, and who saw artist’s sketches of the children on television, sadly identified the two bodies and police began searching for the rest of the family, though they feared the worst.

The search ended on 27 December when divers found a large suitcase in the water close to the Longo’s condominium. It contained the nude body of MaryJane Longo who had been battered about the head and strangled. A second weighted suitcase contained the corpse of two-year-old Madison who had been murdered in the same way. Most spouses and children who become homicide victims have been killed by a member of their family, so police were now very keen to locate Christian Michael Longo, who had abruptly left his job at the coffee shop.

On 27 December, unaware that his wife and youngest child’s corpses had also been found, Chris Longo took a flight to Dallas and another on to Mexico. Broke as per usual, he used a stolen credit card to pay for both flights. Arriving in Cancun, Mexico, he took the identity of journalist Michael Finkel as he’d previously enjoyed the man’s features in everything from
National Geographic
to
Skiing
magazine. (Finkel would later
write an absorbing book,
True Story,
about this identity theft and his later correspondence with Longo.) On 11 January 2002, Christian Michael Longo was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

Meanwhile, he socialised in the sun with other tourists and found that many of the female holidaymakers were attracted to him. By his second week in Cancun, he started dating a German photographer and they became lovers. He told her that he was divorced but had never had children, that he was journalist Michael Finkel and that he was in the region to research travel articles. Together they went hiking and scuba diving and visited a monkey sanctuary.

But by now Longo’s photograph had appeared all around the world and a tour guide told the FBI’s fugitive program in Mexico City that the family killer was living in Cancun. On 13 January he was arrested without incident in his modest cabin. The following morning he boarded a plane to Houston, handcuffed to an FBI officer. The officer would later allege that he asked Longo why he’d killed his children and that he’d replied ‘I sent them to a better place.’

He was flown from Houston to the Lincoln County Jail where detectives questioned him about the murders. Longo wept copiously but did not admit to being the killer. He said that he believed that his wife and children were in a better place, though he didn’t describe it. He added that he wasn’t yet ‘right with God’ so hadn’t attempted to join them by committing suicide. He explained that Witnesses believe that people are only sleeping in the grave, that everyone will be resurrected someday by Jehovah, and if they pass a test they’ll be sent to a kind of Paradise.

Detectives noted that he referred to MaryJane as ‘the wife,’ objectifying her rather than using her name. And in letters to journalist Michael Finkel, he wrote of his wife and children in
the third person, noting that ‘a much loved family was suddenly no more.’ (Criminals often do this to disassociate their violent acts from themselves, saying ‘She was hit by a bottle’ rather than the more honest ‘I hit her with a bottle.’) Still sociable, he made friends with the men in the neighbouring cells on the maximum security wing, a Wiccan and a Seventh Day Adventist. He also read prolifically.

For the first time ever, he had time to contemplate his life and wrote to Finkel that ‘I’m grateful for the holding pattern that my life is in now. If I wasn’t in here, there’d be much more to stress about.’

A psychologist hired by the defence found that Longo had narcissistic personality disorder, that he had an above average need for love and attention and tended to present everything in a positive light. He desperately needed the approval and admiration of others and was preoccupied with daydreams of unlimited success. Ironically, MaryJane had cherished, approved of and admired him, yet he’d killed the thing he loved…

Initially, at his arraignment, Longo’s attorneys said that he was ‘standing mute.’ This essentially meant that he had pleaded not guilty without stating that he wasn’t guilty. It would allow him the option of later changing his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. But, at a plea hearing in early 2003, he said that he was not guilty of the murders of Zachery and Sadie but guilty of the murders of MaryJane and baby Madison.

The trial for the murders of Zachery and Sadie began on 10 March 2003 in Oregon. The prosecution alleged that Longo had murdered his wife then all three children and disposed of MaryJane and baby Madison’s body in Yaquina Bay, which was adjacent to his condominium. Unfortunately for Longo, he had broken a pipe on the dock with one of the weighted
suitcases, causing a continuous water spray which made it easy for the authorities to identify the dumping site.

Putting the other two children in his vehicle, the prosecution alleged, he drove for 15 minutes until he reached Lint Slough Bridge, where he dropped them into the water. At 4.30am, a lorry driver saw a man resembling Longo parked on the bridge and asked if he needed help but the man replied that he was fine.

Prosecutors also noted that, six months before his family died, Chris Longo had downloaded an instruction book on murder from the internet. He also owned a book on changing your identity and had obituaries of dead men that he’d cut from newspapers, plus details of their social security numbers, which he’d obtained by fraudulent means.

A few days before the murders, he’d started to dispose of the family’s photograph albums, which suggested premeditation. After the murders, he’d thrown out five rubbish bags filled with his family’s clothes, shoes, scrapbooks and mementoes. Within a few hours, the man who’d claimed that marriage and fatherhood were everything had transformed himself into a carefree bachelor.

He’d told an acquaintance that MaryJane had been having an affair for years and had left him for another man. (No one who knew her well would have believed this defamatory statement – she was devoted to Chris and saw marriage as a lifelong commitment.) The acquaintance had believed Longo’s version of events and had pitied him until Zachery’s body was fished from its watery grave.

The court was shown photographs of the four corpses and MaryJane’s injuries were particularly shocking, her face and neck bruised purple, her body forced into a suitcase. Michael Finkel, who attended the trial, later wrote ‘it was the graphic images of MaryJane that eliminated any notion I’d had that the killings
were somehow motivated by love or compassion. MaryJane’s murder was clearly a violent and frenzied act.’ Longo wept when Zachery’s body was described as being ‘in amazing condition,’ despite the time that it had spent in the water.

The defence had a difficult case, given that Chris had already admitted to murdering MaryJane and baby Madison. They noted that no blood had been found in the Longos’ condominium, the alleged murder site, then they let the defendant take the stand.

Longo spoke at length about his childhood, his relationship with MaryJane and his employment history. He talked of their last journey together, how they’d even pawned her engagement ring to survive. He’d felt ashamed at having to take a part-time job in a coffee shop because he believed that he had the potential to be a journalist or an entrepreneur so he’d told his co-workers that he was from a wealthy family, ran an online business and was merely working in Starbucks to get life experience. In reality, he and his family were living in a $20-a-night room in a travel inn, subsisting on noodles and bread.

He said that he’d bought a book about changing one’s identity because he was wanted by the police and needed a new name to apply for a job with prospects, so that he’d apparently have a clean record when employers ran background checks. He also said that he’d downloaded a hit-man book in order to have content for a website about forbidden knowledge which he’d launched. But after a mere eight people had paid the $12 membership fee, he’d had to shut down the enterprise and go on the road.

Longo admitted that, by Sunday 16 December 2001, the family had been in the condominium for two-and-a-half weeks but still hadn’t paid any rent. He’d lied to MaryJane, saying
that he’d been promoted and that his salary increase was covering all the bills – but in reality, he knew that they were going to be evicted the following morning and had no money to rent anywhere else.

According to Longo, he told MaryJane the truth in the early hours of the morning, admitting to various frauds and thefts. He said that she’d slapped him and he’d left the marital bedroom and gone to sleep with the two older children in the lounge. The following day, she’d driven him to work and picked him up again at night. He said that she’d been acting oddly and that when they returned to the condominium she had become hysterical. It was then that he’d noticed Madison was dead.

Longo continued on the witness stand with his unlikely version of events. He said that he’d shaken his wife a few times, hitting her head against the wall, as he tried to establish the whereabouts of his other two children. He alleged that she’d said ‘they’re in the water,’ whereupon he’d choked her to death.

He crushed her body into a suitcase and began to do the same with Madison, then said that he realised that the little girl was unconscious but breathing. Believing that she was too far gone to be saved, he had squeezed her throat until she expired, then put her in a second case. He carried both cases outside to the docks and dropped them into the bay then threw all of the children’s clothes and photo albums in a dumpster. He said that he’d had no idea what had happened to Zachery and Sadie until he was arrested in Mexico.

It’s unclear how Longo thought that this ridiculous story would bolster his defence. MaryJane had been an exemplary mother who was breastfeeding Madison and had bonded completely with the baby. She was so devoted to her little ones that she even took them with her when she picked Chris up from his work at night rather than leave them alone for a few
minutes in the motel. She had not been disfellowshipped from the Kingdom Hall so various family members would have accommodated her and the children if she’d chosen to end her marriage to a pathological liar.