A new documentary will tell the harrowing story of one of America's most infamous serial killers, who murdered and raped women behind his wife and children's back.
US army veteran Bobby Joe Long seemed like a normal, all-American family man to the average person, but he was harbouring another life altogether. In 1984, he was found to be behind a spate of gruesome murders of women, which his wife Cindy and kids had no idea about.
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The next episode of The Killer In My Family - airing tonight at 10pm on Quest Red - tells the horrific tale of how Long hid his dark secret in plain sight.
At 20-years-old in 1974, Long, a military man, married his childhood sweetheart Cindy, and while she says he was never that romantic, his personality took a dark turn after a serious motorcycle accident on his way to work which left him with a head injury.
"He just wasn't himself - before the accident, he treated me like a queen," she tells cameras. "But after the accident he would tell me I was fat or how nobody else would want me." After time, Long even became physically abusive: "He would shove me, or he would grab me by my throat and pin me against the wall."
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In June 1980, Cindy couldn't take any more and left Long, taking their children with her.
However, unbeknownst to Cindy, Long had been leading a double life throughout their marriage. He'd been targeting women in the local newspaper's classified ads page, arranging to meet with them, and brutally raping them.
"Bobby Joe raped anywhere between 15 to 50 different women using this method and he really bragged afterward that he had such a fool proof way of doing it that, he would never have been caught if he had stuck to that," author J.T Hunter says in the documentary.
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After his divorce, Long moved to Tampa where his crimes escalated, resulting in murder. During his reign, he'd even call his wife to subtly brag about the killings, warning her not to go out at night.
Long's sadistic campaign came to an end when one of his rape victims, a 17-year-old girl, convinced him to let her go. After her release, she provided police with vital information that lead them to Long's apartment and evidence linking him to the murders.
After being found guilty for nine counts of first degree murder, sexual battery and rape, Long rang his ex wife to confess. "He said, you know those girls in Tampa, I killed the girls," she recalled.
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Cindy remembers replying: "I knew you were capable of hurting somebody, because you hurt me, but how could you hurt a total stranger?"
"He just kept telling me, 'please tell the kids I was killed in a car accident,'" she says. "I told him there's no way I'm lying to my children".
After nearly three and Half years on death row, Bobby Joe Long executed on 23rd of May 2019.
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The Killer In My Family airs Thursdays at 10pm exclusively on Quest Red, Sky channel 149 and Virgin channel 170.
Topics: Entertainment News, Entertainment, True Crime,