Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of assault and murder. Please proceed with caution.
Bobby Joe Long was a serial killer. Long himself wasn't that special. He presents the typical profile of a serial killer (as typical as a serial killer can be): he raped and murdered 10 women and confessed to raping and assaulting many more. He claimed that he had a bad break up with a girlfriend and as a result hated women, which doesn't speak much to his emotional maturity.
Serial killer and rapist Bobby Joe Long in court. COURTESY OF YOUTUBE
My interest in this case is a little bit late, if I'm going to be honest. I planned to write on this about a month ago when it was still current, and I had a whole few pages of notes on it, and then I started a full time job and my passions fell to the wayside. But now, settled into my new routine, I've found some time to write.
At 65 years old, Long was executed for the murder of Michelle Denise Simms, a promising beauty pageant contestant from California. Simms' body was found in May of 1984, near the Interstate 4 overpass by Plant City. She had been bound and her throat had been cut. Though Simms was the only murder he was sentenced to death for, she was not his only victim. Long confessed to 10 murders and sexually assaulted many more women. In the end he plead guilty to eight murders:
Nguen Thi "Peggy" Long, 19 years old, Michelle Denise Simms (22), Elizabeth Loudenback (22), Vicky Marie Elliott (21), Chanelle Devon Williams (18), Karen Dinsfriend (28), Kimberly Kyle Hopps (22), Kim Marie Swann (21).
He was also sentenced to death for the murder of Virginia Lee Johnson (18) in Pasco County, however the Florida Supreme Court overturned that sentenced and acquitted him upon appeal. He confessed to the murder of Artiss Ann Wick (20), who was the first woman he murdered, though it does not seem he was convicted for that crime. Ultimately Long received 28 life sentences and 1 death sentence for his crimes.
Long's victims. COURTESY OF FOX13
During Long's time as a killer he would drive around in areas known for prostitution, and would frequent bars where women were often found alone. He claimed that his victims would be the ones to approach him, and then they would make their way together to his vehicle where he would then drive them back to his apartment. He would bind his victims in various ways, sexually assault them, kill them, and then dump their bodies. Their bodies were often left in gruesome positions, with most of them being strangled.
Of the ten women he murdered, five were identified as known sex workers, two as exotic dancers, and the final three were a factory worker, a student, and an unknown occupation.
Lisa Noland was one of the few women that survived his capture. Noland, who's last name was McVey when she was abducted, was biking home from her job at Krispy Kreme when she was grabbed. Long trapped her in his apartment and began to rape her repeatedly for 26 hours. Noland had already survived a long history of abuse; she had dealt with years of sexual trauma at the hands of her grandmothers boyfriend. Observing Long, figuring out what made him tick, was the only way she was going to survive. Noland finally decided that appealing to Long's empathy was her way out, and it worked. She made up a story about being the only caregiver to a sick parent. Long fell for it and he let her go. She was 17 when this all took place.
Lisa Noland speaking to press after Long's execution. COURTESY OF CNN
Long was arrested on November 6, 1984, after Noland was able to give a description of her attacker and kidnapper once she made it to the police. He had committed crimes over almost a year of time, and his victims were about to receive justice. His interrogation is where things get a little tricky though.
As someone interested in true crime I would hope that justice was as black and white as we would like it to be. "An eye for an eye" as they say. But the process of justice isn't as morally clear as many people would hope for. If you think about it, the process of sentencing a murderer to death is similar to the process of the murderer deciding who to kill. They are by no means the exact same processes at all; One weighs the motives, evidence, and scale of crimes that a person has done, while the other can be almost entirely arbitrary. But both systems of decision making essentially boil down to: should this person live, or should this person die?
This morally gray area shines into the interrogation of Long in a big way. During his questioning, Long signed a Miranda waiver. For those who don't know, this basically allows the police to start an interrogation without you having any legal representation present. This is why during the statement of the Miranda rights they say "You have the right to remain silent" and "You have the right to an attorney", and so on. So legally speaking, a suspect must voluntarily sign a Miranda waiver before any questioning can happen.
Technically, the waiver must be "knowing and intelligent" and "voluntary", meaning that the person signing should know what signing it means and be willing to sign it. However, many people don't know about Miranda Waivers. I didn't even know about Miranda Waivers before looking more into this case, and I've been writing about true crime for a year now.
What many people don't know is that once you sign a Miranda Waiver, any post-waiver assertion of a suspects Miranda rights, the right to an attorney for example, needs to be unequivocally clear. If the assertion of your Miranda rights is ambiguous, the police can ask you to clarify or they can ignore you and keep interrogating you.
No, I wasn't entirely sure how that could be legal either.
So, the reason that this applies to Bobby Joe Long is as follows. During his arrest for the kidnapping and rape of Lisa Noland, once he confessed the police moved on to questioning him about a series of unsolved batteries and homicides in the Tampa Bay area. Ideally, this is where you would ask for an attorney. But Long instead said "I'd rather not answer that," which was not a direct assertion of his Miranda rights, so the police continued. They then handed him photos of the victims, to which he responded, "The complexion of things sure have changed since you came back into the room. I think I might need an attorney." No attorney was provided for him.
Again, how can that be legal?
I want to be clear: I am not saying that Bobby Joe Long deserved to be set free because of these morally gray investigation tactics. The state of Florida had a very strong case against him, and even if he didn't murder those women, which is very unlikely when referencing the evidence, he did without a doubt kidnap and rape Lisa Noland.
But if this kind of legal gray area is present in every interrogation, how many people have been sentence to years in prison, or even the death penalty, because they didn't have a complete understanding of their rights during a police investigation? How many people who weren't able to get proper schooling, or didn't speak fluent English, have gone to prison for crimes they didn't commit because they didn't have proper legal representation? One study claims that 1 out of 25 people sentenced to death, or 4.1 percent, are innocent. While a relatively small percentage, it becomes a much greater concern when considering the number of people incarcerated each year in the United States, especially the amount of marginalized peoples that are incarcerated due to targeted law making.
In America we are very divided on the death penalty. It's presented to us as a issue with two clear sides: it's either right or it's wrong. But I think when you learn more about it, when you learn more about anything really, the confusing and headache inducing middle area makes itself more clear. I myself would not wish the death penalty upon anybody, and I think the margin of error in sentencing is too high for it to be an acceptable punishment. But I think about all the dark and gruesome murders that I know about so intimately, and I think about the people who committed them, and I can't help but be glad that they're gone.
Thank you to my sources:
Serial Murderers and Their Victims by Eric W Hickey