Serial killer who murdered 10 women executed in Fla.
STARKE, Fla. — A serial killer who terrorized Florida with a 1984 spree that claimed the lives of 10 women was executed Thursday.
Inmate Bobby Joe Long was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. Thursday after a lethal injection at Florida State Prison, authorities said.
The killer terrified the Tampa Bay area for eight months in 1984 as women began showing up dead, their bodies often left in gruesome positions. Most of the victims were strangled. Some had their throats slit. Others were bludgeoned.
Law enforcement had few clues until the case of Lisa Noland. Then 17, Noland was abducted by Long outside a church that year. He raped her but ultimately let her go free. She left evidence of his crimes on the scene and gave police details that lead to his capture.
Long confessed to the crimes, receiving 28 life sentences and one death sentence for the murder of 22-year-old Michelle Simms.
Noland became the victim Long let go. The day before her abduction, she’d written a suicide note, planning to end her life after years of sexual abuse by her grandmother’s boyfriend.
But she ended up making heroic use of that history.
“At the time he put the gun to my head, it was nothing new to me,” she told The Associated Press.
She said she knew from her past abuse that if she fought Long, it would further enrage him.
“I had to study this guy,” she said. “I had to learn who he was, what made him tick. If I did the wrong move, could it end my life? So literally, the night before I wrote a suicide note out, and now I was in a position where I had to save my life.”
Investigators were baffled by the trail of bodies Long left in the Tampa Bay area. Artiss Ann Wick was the first woman killed, in March 1984. Nine victims followed.
Law enforcement had few clues until Noland told her story.