Suspect’s life grew dark over four years

The war within Robert Aaron Long was evident for years.

A unitary theory about what brought Long — now facing charges in the slayings of eight people, six of them Asian women — to three Atlanta-area spas on a chilly Tuesday evening is as elusive as the explanations the 21-year-old repeatedly sought for his troubles. What is clear is that those who spent time with Long in recent years often saw a life in severe disruption.

That wasn’t always the case. At Sequoyah High School in Canton, Ga., Long, who went by his middle name and graduated in 2017, kept a low profile. He played the drums, carried a Bible and attended meetings of a Christian student club. Outside of school, he hunted for deer, played video games and traveled with his church youth group.

But over the past four years, Long’s life turned toward the tumultuous. He started college classes and left after one year. He believed he was straying from his faith, telling friends that he was fixated on sex to the extent that he thought he was addicted. His relationship with a girlfriend collapsed after she found out that he frequented massage businesses, according to his roommate. His bond with his parents frayed; on the night before the shootings, they threw him out of their house, according to police.

Long grew up in a onestory gray ranch-style house in Woodstock, about 30 miles north of downtown Atlanta.

They “come across as a good Christian family,” said Mary Morgan, 88, who lived near Long’s parents and younger sister.

The family was active at Crabapple First Baptist Church, where Long’s father, Robert “Buddy” Long, was a valued lay leader. Aaron Long and his parents attended Sunday services, afternoon group activities and Wednesday evening meetings, church members said.

Church officials initially declined to comment but on Friday issued a statement confirming the family’s membership and expressing grief over the attacks and sympathy for the victims.

Long lived for about six months at Maverick Recovery, a 12-step transitional housing facility in Roswell, Ga., about 13 miles from home. He was also frequenting massage spas, one of his friends said — including, according to Atlanta police, the same Atlanta spas where this week’s slayings occurred.

Long sought treatment for his pornography habit and penchant for buying sexual services at massage facilities, according to his parents and Tyler Bayless, a roommate at Maverick from August 2019 through at least January 2020.

Residents at Maverick were encouraged to hold each other accountable, the roommate said, and on at least three occasions, Long called Bayless into his room to hear him confess his sins.

Long blamed his troubles on pornography, Bayless said: “He hated the pornography industry. He was pretty passionate about what a bad influence it was on him. He felt exploited by it, taken advantage of by it.”

To wean himself off porn, Long set strict limits on his use of the internet, didn’t own a smartphone and deleted his Facebook account, Bayless said.

Long would occasionally report to Bayless that he’d had sex or that he had been “masturbated by” workers at massage businesses.

The men who lived at Maverick with Long would ask him why he sought out massage facilities rather than paying for a prostitute, and Long said he believed the spas were safer, Bayless recounted.

But why Asian spas in particular, the men asked.

“We said ‘Why, is it, like, an Asian thing?’” Bayless said. “The response is always no. It’s hard to know now, of course.”

On one occasion, Long came back from a massage spa and called Bayless in to say he was having suicidal thoughts. He was “living in sin” and “walking in darkness,” he told his roommate.

Bayless said he urged Long to seek psychiatric or psychological care, but Long insisted on sticking to spiritual counseling.

“He was uninterested in therapy that was not specifically related to the church,” Bayless said.

After leaving Maverick, Long transferred to an intensive inpatient addiction facility, HopeQuest Ministry Group, which specializes in treating sex and pornography addictions and the traumas that fuel them, using counseling “integrated with Christian principles,” according to the group’s website.

HopeQuest’s Woodstock facility is 1 mile from Young’s Asian Massage, where the first shootings took place Tuesday.