Robert Joseph Long Essay

Robert Joseph Long was born in Kenova, West Virginia on October 14, 1953. He resented his mother due to her being a cocktail waitress who brought men home often. He later moved with his mother to Miami, where his resentment leading to his negative view towards women began. Long was born with an extra X chromosome due to a genetic disorder called Klinefelter syndrome. This caused him to be bullied at school when he developed breasts upon reaching puberty, mainly due to large amounts of estrogen in his glands. Additionally, Long suffered numerous head injuries during his formative years, such as when he fell off a swing at 5 years old, and when he crashed a motorcycle while he was enlisted in the army.

His struggles in childhood would eventually

His final victim of these crimes was in West Virginia, where he fled to Tampa due to his fear of being caught. In September of 1983, Long was found guilty on the assault charges stemming from that last incident that had driven him to West Virginia. Long was notoriously stubborn in the legal system, as he wrote numerous letters to his judges, demanding new trials. Long later found himself charged with another crime, being accused of sending an obscene letter and photographs to a 12 year old girl in Tampa. Officials had traced phone calls Long had made to the 12 year old, receiving a sentence of two days in jail and six months in probation. Long’s true reign of terror started in 1984, when he murdered his first victim. Over an 8 month period, 10 women would end up missing or dead from an unknown perpetrator who evaded capture every time. Tampa law enforcement suspected that these crimes were committed by a serial killer, since these murders happened around once every other week with the same forensic evidence at the scene. The victims were consistently placed in different body positions with rope, had a tied white scarf placed underneath them, and had red nylon carpet fibers on their body.

In addition, he had a second trial for the murder of Michelle Simms in Hillsborough County, Florida, where he was again sentenced to death. As mentioned earlier, Long was stubborn in his legal issues, so he appealed to the state many times demanding a new trial for both cases due to his trial’s various mistakes. He took advantage of the appeals process to keep him in the Florida State Prison for 34 years during his appeals of the death penalty. After he got 4 rejections on both trials, he eventually kept appealing collateral to delay his execution for decades after his conviction. Ultimately, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant on April 23rd, 2019. One month later, 65 year old Robert Joseph Long was executed by lethal injection on May 23rd, 2019 after 34 years in