The Voices of Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  During the early course of the Bobby Joe Long homicide investigation, several FBI agents worked up a profile of the unknown killer’s probable background and personality traits. I have selected FBI Special Agent Flowers’s profile, shown below, and based on the known facts:The victims had to depend on others for transportation.

  The victims were essentially nude when found.

  The victims had been similarly bound, while one (Ngeun Thi Long) was posed.

  They had been picked up in Tampa.

  They had been left near interstate highways in rural areas.

  There were similar tire impressions at the first two crime scenes.

  They were found at quite a distance from where they had last been seen alive.

  Red carpet fiber confirmed the relationship of the crimes.

  It may seem obvious, but from these suppositions, one is able to determine that the killer used a specific vehicle. Whether he owned the car or it was one that he had borrowed or rented was unknown; nevertheless, it was unlikely to be a rental because the vehicle was fitted with three different tire tread patterns. We know it was a car, not a truck, because the Vogue tire was exclusively made for Cadillacs.

  The leash-like hangman’s-noose-type rope ligatures around the victims’ necks and the brutal beatings that exceeded what was required to kill them were overkill. This showed an enhanced type of sexual deviance. Furthermore, it seemed highly likely that the victims had been randomly selected because they were easy prey, rather than women known to the killer. Unfortunately, of course, history tells us that prostitutes fall easy prey to serial murderers.

  Agent Flowers went on to say:He [the killer] was deemed to be a white male, in his mid-20s, gregarious, extroverted, and manipulative. In general, he seemed to be what they classify as “organized.” He would operate normally in society, but he would be argumentative, self-centered, and exhibit little or no emotion—all common traits of the psychopath/sociopath. Being narcissistic, he would want to be the center of attention. He would also be impulsive, albeit not sufficiently so to risk being caught. It was likely that he lied easily and had a macho self-image. He might even have tattoos to that effect, and carry a weapon as a statement of his manhood.

  The Florida Department of Corrections’ file on Bobby Joe Long does not indicate whether or not Mr. Long has tattoos, but in every other respect Agent Flowers is almost on the button:At best, he’d have a high school education. If he’d even tried college, it was likely that he’d had trouble adjusting to the discipline and would have dropped out. He would be intelligent but have issues with authority. He may have been a truant and disruptive. In keeping with his self-image, he would probably take masculine jobs where his manipulative skills would be useful. He probably had trouble holding down a job and would have had multiple short-term employments.

  As a child, he probably was delinquent and difficult to control, and exhibited resentment toward efforts to impose discipline. He may have a history of bedwetting, arson, and animal cruelty.

  If he had served in the military, he would have joined a masculine unit, such as the Marine Corps. Even here, his issues with authority would have gotten him into confrontations.

  However, there is no confirmed history of Bobby Joe Long being a child delinquent or difficult to control. There is no history of enuresis, or truancy.

  Agent Flowers:On the issue of relationships, and in the tradition of organized killers, he probably would have a woman in his life. He would date regularly, but not have long-term commitments. He would brag about his sexual exploits, and probably date younger women. If married, he would be unfaithful, and his chosen type of woman would be dependent and easily controlled.

  His car of choice would be flashy, like a sports car.

  It was also likely that he would have a prison record, or some record of problems with the law. Prior to these murders, he may have committed neighborhood crimes, such as voyeurism or burglary. Yet if he was ever in jail, he would have been a model albeit manipulative prisoner.

  In these crimes, he was sadistic: he probably used some scheme to lure the women into his car, and then proceed to torture them mentally and physically, keeping them alive for some period of time. He would leave little or no evidence behind. In all likelihood, he would kill again.

  As far as offender profiles go, Agent Flowers had more or less hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, before the FBI could find the man who fit Flowers’s description, the murderer killed again.

  Elizabeth B. Loudenback

  Aged 18, shy, bespectacled, dark-haired Elizabeth was employed as an assembly-line worker. Liz had last been seen alive on Thursday, June 7, 1984, when she left the trailer park home that she shared with her mother, stepfather, sister, and brother, in the Village Mobile Home Park.

  Although known to wander around the red light district of Nebraska Avenue and Skipper Road, Elizabeth had no criminal history. Indeed, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has confirmed to the author that she was most certainly not a prostitute. She had never been brought to the attention of police. She was not a drug addict, a hitchhiker, or an erotic dancer.

  On Sunday, June 24, a body was found in an orange grove in Brandon, southeastern Hillsborough County. The corpse was fully clothed and in an advanced state of decomposition—the total body weight, including her clothes, was only 25 pounds. There were no ligatures present and, in this instance, the victim was not found near an interstate highway as the first two victims had been.

  Initially, Elizabeth’s boyfriend became the prime suspect. He failed a lie detector test. And, because the location of the crime scene and the state of the victim differed from the victimology of the first two murders, no attempt was made to submit the evidence to the FBI for comparison purposes until much later. Then, and only then, were red fibers recovered from the victim’s clothing and found to match those found on both Ngeun Thi Long and Simms.

  Bobby Joe Long later admitted that he had offered Elizabeth a ride along Nebraska Avenue. He said that he had pulled out a knife, then ordered her to remove her pants. He tied her up, forced her face down on the reclined front seat of his car and raped her. Then he drove to the orange grove, where he savagely raped her from behind. When he had finished, he did something quite different: he untied her, told her to get dressed, and returned with her to his car.

  Bobby Joe claimed that he had not intended to kill her, but that her incessant crying forced him to change his mind. His patience snapped. He dragged her, screaming for mercy, from the car, and then he strangled her with a rope before heaving the body into shrubs.

  Again he deviated from his usual MO. As he drove away, he searched through her purse, finding an ATM card with the four-digit pin number in an envelope. Over the next few hours, Bobby Joe Long used the card to withdraw cash from several banks before throwing it away.

  Vicky Elliott

  On Thursday, September 6, 1984, the manager of a Tampa Ramada Inn coffee shop became concerned when one of his staff, the habitually punctual 21-year-old Vicky Elliott, failed to turn up for her 11 p.m. shift.

  Two days later, police searched Vicky’s apartment. Here they found an airline ticket indicating that the vivacious young woman had intended to return home to her parents in Muskegon, Michigan, in two weeks. This, of course, suggested to police that her disappearance was not intentional—that something was truly amiss.

  It would be two months before her parents’ prayers that their daughter would return to them safe and well were shattered completely. Vicky’s remains were found floating in a river on Sunday, September 23, 1984.

  Bobby Joe Long would later direct police to the location where he had dumped Vicky’s body. He stated that he had killed her after she had tried to fight him off with a pair of scissors.

  The autopsy revealed that Vicky had suffered a broken hyoid bone. The scissors were still inserted in her vaginal cavity. Police also found red carpet fibers, which, once again, linked her to Bobby Joe Long and the previous murders
.

  Chanel Devon Williams

  Eighteen-year-old black prostitute Chanel Devon Williams was known to frequent a gay bar on Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa. She had last been seen alive on the night of Sunday, September 30, 1984, by another hooker with whom she had been working. The pair had been soliciting in the area of Nebraska Avenue when Chanel’s companion was picked up by a john. They were two-tenths of a mile from the motel where they conducted business, so Williams’s colleague rode back to the motel in her client’s car, while Chanel walked slowly back to the premises to check on her friend’s welfare. She never arrived.

  The Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirms:On Sunday, October 14, 1984, Chanel Williams’s naked body was discovered, by a stockman, near the Pasco/ Hillsborough County line. The remains had been pushed under a barbed wire fence and [were] lying close to the dirt entrance of a cattle ranch. Her bra, which had been tied in a knot, was found hanging from a gate, her panties were draped on a five-strand wire fence. The head was infested with maggot activity and in an advanced state of decomposition—much more so than the remainder of the body. Her wrists and her legs had been tied with a long, thick boot lace.

  Although it was evident that she had been beaten around the head, an autopsy revealed that a gunshot wound to the neck was the cause of death. Chanel had also been raped and strangled.

  FBI lab technicians found two different types of red Triobal carpet fibers on her clothing, a brown Caucasian public hair on her sweater, and semen stains that contained both A and H blood group substances.

  Identifying the body proved a relatively easy task. Chanel had just been released from jail for soliciting, and her fingerprints were on record. She had only just moved to Tampa to escape the mundane life of her nearby town of Bartow, just 56 miles to the west, and with no qualifications to speak of, she saw prostitution as the only means to generate enough money to provide her with the life she had always wanted.

  Bobby Joe Long later told police that he had picked up Chanel. Then he savagely beat her and forced her to lie down on the reclined front seat. He forced her to undress and tied her hands behind her back. He beat her again. As Chanel lay terrified in the car, Long drove ten miles toward Morris Bridge Road, where he stopped and raped Chanel from behind while she was in the front seat. He then attempted to pull her out of the car and strangle her, but she struggled. An athletic girl, she refused to surrender quietly, and Long quickly grew impatient with her spirited fight for survival. Taking out his gun, he shot her in the back of the neck and then pushed her lifeless body under a wire fence.

  Karen Beth Drinsfriend

  During the early hours of the very same day that Chanel Williams’s corpse was found, 28-year-old cokehead and prostitute Karen Beth Drinsfriend was seen soliciting in the area of Nebraska and Hillsborough Avenues in Tampa. Attractive as hookers go and semi-streetwise, Karen was known to police as having a long criminal record for larceny, prostitution, and drug-related offenses.

  The body of the semi-naked white female was discovered in an orange grove, about 30 feet from a dirt road, in a remote area in northeastern Hillsborough County. Crime scene officers believed that she had, in fact, been dragged along the road, the body’s state being consistent with drag marks in the dirt.

  The victim’s yellow T-shirt was pulled up to her neck, exposing a bruised and bloodied torso. The rest of her clothing was scattered nearby. Karen had been wrapped in a gold-colored beach blanket, and a blue jogging suit was tied around it. The blanket had been tied at both ends with ordinary white string. The victim’s hands were bound in front with a red and white handkerchief. Her right wrist and legs were also bound. The ankles were tied with a drawstring arrangement.

  Once again, police found brown Caucasian pubic hairs and red fibers on her clothes. There was also semen indicating A and H blood.

  At autopsy it was determined that she had been struck on the head. Cause of death was attributed to strangulation.

  Kimberly Kyle Hoops

  On Tuesday, October 30, 1984, the nude, mummified remains of yet another white female were discovered by a 71-year-old man who was clearing a ditch near Highway 301 in northern Hillsborough County, just south of the Pasco County line.

  No clothing, ligatures, or any other type of physical evidence was found at the scene.

  Due to the amount of time the body had been exposed to the elements and the fact that the victim was naked, no foreign hairs, fibers, semen, or any other type of evidence was recovered. This victim would not be identified until the arrest of Bobby Joe Long, who referred to her by her street name, “Sugar.” He had strangled her with the black choker she wore around her neck, then rolled her body down an embankment.

  Shortly thereafter the woman was identified as Kimberly Kyle Hoops. The 22-year-old hooker had last been seen alive getting into a 1977 or ’78 maroon-colored Chrysler Cordoba. Hoops would eventually be forensically associated with her killer through a comparison of her head hairs and some found in Long’s car.

  By now, every available police officer in the Tampa area was assigned to the case, with officers patrolling the major streets and highways in an attempt to capture the serial killer. Tension and frustration mounted as officials worked too hard and too long with no results. But on Saturday, November 3, 1984, their efforts would finally be richly rewarded, as Bobby Joe Long got careless. He made a mistake that led the police right to his front door.

  Lisa McVey

  At 2:30 a.m. on November 3, Bobby Joe Long was trolling for his next victim when he spotted 17-year-old Lisa McVey on Waters Avenue, Tampa. She was riding her bicycle home from a donut store where she worked along the two-way highway. The stretch of road was usually packed with traffic during the day but would have been pretty much empty at such an early hour. As he passed her going in the opposite direction, Bobby Joe knew he had found another victim. He spun his car around at the next intersection, followed her slowly and, as he passed her, studied the young woman in his rearview mirror.

  Lisa was slender and athletic with shoulder-length, dark auburn hair. With his uncontrollable sexual urges now overpowering him, Long pulled into the Real Life Church parking lot, 6818 West Waters Avenue, where waited for Lisa to pass. As she did, he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her off her bike.

  Holding a gun to her throat, Long responded to Lisa’s terrified screams by assuring her that he would kill her if she made another sound. He forced her back to his car and ordered her to undress. Long unzipped his pants and forced the young woman to perform oral sex on him as he drove. Before he ejaculated, he ordered her to sit up, at once warning her to keep her eyes closed the entire time.

  Lisa McVey was terrified but equally determined to survive this ordeal. She complied with Long’s every order, knowing that refusal to do so could provoke him, and she had no idea what horrors this man was capable of.

  Long cruised the streets for some time before taking Lisa back to his apartment on East Fowler Avenue, some ten miles east of where he had abducted her. He ordered her to put her clothes on and tied a blindfold around her eyes before they got out of the car. She did not see the red carpeting covering the two flights of stairs Long forced her to climb, nor would she have known the significance: Fibers from the same carpet had been found on several of the murdered women and their clothes.

  Long took Lisa to his bathroom and forced her to undress again. Ordering her to bend over, he attempted to sodomize her, stopping when she cried out in pain. Instead, he took her to his bedroom and raped her. When he finished, he took young Lisa, still blindfolded, into the shower with him. He then dried her hair and brushed it gently, telling her how beautiful it was.

  Long returned Lisa McVey to his bedroom, ordering her to lie down on his water bed. He tied her legs tightly, turned off the light and removed her blindfold. To ensure she continued to comply with his demands, he let her feel the cold steel of his gun barrel against her skin before placing it on a shelf above the bed. They spent the rest of the night and
most of the next day in his bed, where he touched her body and made her do the same to him. He asked her to massage his back and shoulders to relieve the pain caused by some heavy lifting he had done at work. He raped her repeatedly, forced her to perform oral sex on him several times and sodomized her at least once.

  Throughout the entire ordeal, Long spoke to McVey as if they were new lovers spending their first night together. He asked her about her family and work. He called her “Babe” and said that he didn’t know why he had done this. As evening approached, Long realized that she must be hungry and prepared a ham sandwich for her. While she ate, he went into the living room and watched television until the news announced Lisa McVey’s disappearance. He turned the set off and returned to the bedroom.

  Climbing into bed with his victim, Long turned off the light. He removed Lisa’s blindfold again but allowed her to stay dressed. As they lay together in the dark, he nibbled at her ear and neck, telling her how much he liked her and that he wished they had met under different circumstances. Then he made her remove her shirt and caressed and licked her breasts before ordering her to get some sleep.

  At 3:30 a.m., the alarm clock sounded. Long told Lisa to prepare to leave, blindfolding her before the walk to his car. As she climbed in, her head hit the door frame, and he apologized. He leaned down to put her shoes and socks on her feet, and then he kissed her before starting the engine. After a few moments of driving, Long stopped at an ATM to withdraw cash. Alone in the car, McVey dared to adjust her blindfold slightly. Through a tiny opening, she was able to note that the bank was a white building and that the car was red or maroon with a white interior. On the dashboard was a brown strip with the word Magnum in silver letters and a digital clock with green numerals. Long returned to the car, but McVey’s blindfold remained positioned to allow a small line of vision. They drove around a corner to a gas station, after which a ten-minute drive took them to the interstate, where she noted signs for a Howard Johnsons Motel and a Quality Inn.