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.
IDENTITY THEFT
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…
COURT
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.
THE DEFENDANT’S TALE
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.
GUILTY
The prosecution understandably had a field day. Why hadn’t he phoned for an ambulance for Madison when he realised that she was still breathing? Why had he driven to a dumpster with the family’s possessions rather than search for his other two children? Why had he stolen a car and gone to a party rather than spend time mourning for his offspring and why had he fled to Mexico when the first of the bodies was found? Longo gave vapid answers to every question and it didn’t escape the spectators’ notice that he finished giving his evidence on April Fools’ Day.
The jury, comprising four men and eight women, took a mere four hours to find him guilty of murdering Zachery and Sadie. He had already admitted to murdering MaryJane and Madison.
The penalty phase included a plea from the defence to let Longo live. They noted that he’d never previously been violent and could serve a useful life in prison – but the image of the four dead bodies and the element of premeditation must have been uppermost in the jury’s mind. On 16 April 2003, after four days deliberation, they returned a death sentence.
Afterwards Chris wrote to Michael Finkel admitting that he’d murdered his entire family. He said that he’d deliberately blackened MaryJane’s name on the stand because he knew that no one would believe him and that the jury would sentence him to death, bringing justice for her family.
In his latest version of events, he said that he’d come home to find his wife suffocating Madison, that he’d strangled both of them and thrown them into the bay, then put his two remaining children in his vehicle, where they’d soon gone to sleep. He’d found that he couldn’t bear to tell them what had happened to their mother and little sister, so had parked on the Lint Slough Bridge, weighed them down with rocks and dropped them into the water. Zachery had remained asleep but Sadie had opened her eyes and screamed.
It’s possible that both children were indeed still alive when they entered the river: Zachery’s autopsy report stated that the cause of death was consistent with drowning as silt from the river had been found in his airway. But it was equally possible that the silt had washed into his airway as he lay, dead, on the river bed.
Currently on Oregon’s Death Row, Chris Longo spends his days exercising, watching television and reading. He also does janitorial duties for the prison. He has many female penpals, several of whom have proposed marriage, as well as various male penpals who apparently felt a bond with him after watching televised excerpts from his trial. As Oregon executes few of its condemned prisoners, he may well die of old age in jail.
JEAN-CLAUDE ROMAND
Jean-Claude was born in 1954 to Anne-Marie and Aime Romand, a housewife and forester respectively, in Clairvaux, France. His mother suffered from ill-health and subsequently had two ectopic pregnancies where the foetus develops outside the uterus. The couple were deeply religious and didn’t want to talk about pregnancy in front of their young son, so he feared the worst when his mother was hospitalised and believed that she was going to die. When she returned home he promised himself that he would be the perfect son who would never give her any cause for alarm.
And for the rest of his childhood he succeeded, being unfailingly polite and always smiling. Deep down, though, he was desperately lonely but only told his boyhood fears to his dog.
Sent to boarding school, he was bullied and pretended to be ill in order to be sent home. He spent the rest of the year living with his introverted parents and rarely saw anyone else. Though he had a high IQ and was a voracious reader, he wanted to be a forester like his father because he loved the woods.
But when he went to university at Lyon he saw that forestry wasn’t a respected career so he switched to medicine. Psychologists later wondered if he did so to understand his mother’s illness. He was also attracted to his distant cousin, Florence, who was studying medicine at Lyon.
DEPRESSION
Jean-Claude’s parents thought that Florence was ideal. She, too, was a Catholic, an old fashioned girl who liked baking cakes for church fetes. Though she wasn’t particularly enamoured of him, he joined her social circle and courted her until their first act of lovemaking when he was 21.
Immediately afterwards, Florence said that she only wanted to be friends and broke off the relationship. Jean-Claude hid his feelings as usual, but the strain took its toll and he slept in and missed one of his second year exams. Shortly after this, he left his friends at a nightclub and returned, blood spattered and bruised, telling them that he’d been abducted by several men and beaten up. In truth, he’d inflicted the injuries on himself to get attention, to feel more alive.
But, failing at his studies, he could no longer pretend that all was well and spiralled into a deep depression where he shut himself away in the apartment that his parents had rented for him. He no longer went to university or cleaned the flat or socialised, and he lived exclusively off tinned food. Eventually one of his friends visited, whereupon Jean-Claude lied and said that he had cancer. In retrospect, both this and the previous lie about being beaten up were a form of Munchausen’s syndrome, where sufferers invent or cause symptoms in order to receive attention and care. The syndrome is more common in men, though Munchausen’s By Proxy, where the sufferer harms their own child or another person in their care, is behaviour that’s much more common in women.
Jean-Claude’s friend tidied up the flat and cooked for him and the young man’s cancer apparently went into remission. He soon returned to his studies at university.
But, unknown to his friend, Jean-Claude never again sat an end of term exam. He went to lectures and read books in the library, even helping Florence (who sympathised with his various illnesses) with her studying. And he lived off the money that his parents gladly gave their student son. Yet each year, when the exams came round, he sent in fake medical certificates explaining that he was ill and must remain at home for the duration of the exam period. He then re-enrolled the following year.
Florence failed her exams and switched to pharmacology, making it easier for him to lie about his ostensibly excellent qualifications. She wasn’t surprised when he told her that he’d landed a good job as a research scientist at the World Health Organisation in Geneva and was trying
to find a cure for heart disease. Impressed by his dedication to his career, she married him and they relocated to Ferney-Voltaire in France, a manageable drive away from Jean-Claude’s supposed workplace just over the border in Switzerland.
A GOOD FATHER
On 14 May 1985, the Romands had their first child, Caroline. And almost two years later, on 2 February 1987, they had Antoine, a son.
Jean-Claude adored his young family and played with them endlessly, also taking numerous photographs. They loved him too. As they matured, he drove them to school every day, and at weekends he took them skiing or to child-friendly restaurants.
In turn, the children wrote proudly in their essays that daddy was a doctor – but this remained a lie. For every day, after taking the children to school, the bogus medic would drive to a service station and sit there reading magazines and scientific journals and drinking tea. Several times a month he drove to the World Health Organisation, his ostensible workplace, and went in on a visitor’s pass. There he would use the bank, post office and facilities so that he came home with WHO stamps. He also brought home the organisation’s free literature and left it lying around the house. When Florence wanted to call him, she simply used his answering service and it beeped him, whereupon he’d call her right back.
Bizarrely, he funded himself and his family by continuing to draw on his parents’ bank account (and by spending money which he and Florence had banked from the sale of an apartment) just as he had as a student in Lyon. Even more bizarrely, they never questioned why a high-earning WHO scientist had to drain their financial resources month after month. Jean-Claude must have been incredibly selfish – after all, he could have taken a job in a nearby town, so providing for his wife and children whilst still maintaining his doctor myth.
Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents Page 20