Shooting suspect attended rehab for sex addiction
21-year-old charged with eight counts of murder
Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old suspect charged with eight counts of murder after three shootings Tuesday at Atlanta-area spas, had been in rehab for sex addiction and was wracked with guilt about his sexual urges, according to two people who lived with him in transitional housing.
Long allegedly shot and killed eight people – six women and two men – at three Georgia spas. While the accounts from Long’s former housemates bolster his claim that sex addiction was the motivation for his attack, they do not preclude something else being a motive in the shootings.
The women were all of Asian descent. Hate crimes against AsianAmericans have been spiking in recent months, and Long clearly targeted Asian-American businesses in his shooting spree.
Long was deeply religious and could not control his desire to visit massage parlors and engage in sexual acts, something that sent him into deep bouts of depression, said Tyler Bayless, who lived with Long for six months in 2019 and 2020 at Maverick Recovery Center in Roswell, Georgia. Long would frequently relapse, then express guilt because of his Christian faith, Bayless said.
“He would say, ‘I’ve done it again’ and it just ate away at him,” Bayless said. “He felt absolutely merciless remorse.”
Especially after his relapses, Long would spend hours in prayer, Bayless said. In weekly therapy sessions he would confess his indiscretions and say how guilty he felt about what he had done.
Bayless’ relationship to Long was first reported by CNN. A call to Maverick Recovery Center was not answered.
Bayless’ account was echoed by another former housemate, Bronson Lillemon,
who said he lived with Long for three months in 2020.
“He felt a lot of guilt, and a lot of shame,” Lillemon said. “I don’t know the specific massage parlors that he went to, but I would assume that the ones he shot up were the ones he went to.”
Both Lillemon and Bayless said they had never heard Long use racist language or disparage people who were not white. Both former housemates said Long spent remarkably little time online, and to their knowledge he didn’t frequent racist internet message boards or websites.
“He didn’t even have a smart phone,” Bayless said.