Bobby Joe Long

Long was sentenced to death for two of the ten murders. He was executed by lethal injection on May 23, 2019.

On April 23, 2019, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Long's death warrant, this being the first death warrant signed by DeSantis since he took office in January 2019. Long's subsequent appeals were denied and he was executed by lethal injection on May 23, 2019, more than 30 years after his conviction. He ate his final meal at 9:30am local time; he requested roast beef, bacon, french fries and soda. He was pronounced dead at 6:55pm and made no last statement.

On appeal from the Circuit Court in and for Pasco County, in which Long's death sentence was vacated, his conviction reversed, and his case remanded to the trial court with directions to enter an order of acquittal for the murder of Virginia Johnson. On February 24, 1999, Long accused the Capital Collateral Regional Council (the state office defending death row inmates in their appeals) of revealing his private letters to a book author, thus violating attorney–client privilege. He also accused the agency of running a "death pool," betting on the dates on which inmates would be executed, and asked that the agency be removed from his case. An investigation concluded that these allegations were unfounded. Long's petition for a writ of mandamus to require Bob Dillinger, the public defender for the Sixth Judicial Circuit, to relinquish possession and control of his file in State v. Long, was denied.

In addition, the State retained the option to seek the death penalty for the murder of Michelle Simms. In July 1986, the penalty phase of the Michelle Simms trial was held in Tampa. It lasted one week and received extensive media attention. Long was found guilty and was sentenced to die in Florida's electric chair.

The Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office confronted Long with the evidence. The State Attorney and the Public Defender's Office of Hillsborough County reached a plea bargain for eight of the homicides and the abduction and rape of Lisa McVey. Long pled guilty on September 24, 1985, to all of these crimes, receiving 26 life sentences without the possibility of parole (24 concurrent and two to run consecutively to the first 24) and seven life sentences with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

In 1984, while on probation for assault, Long began driving around, in a 1978 Dodge Magnum looking for victims in areas known for prostitution and in bars where women were found alone. Long claimed that his victims approached him, and he would persuade them to enter his car and took them to his apartment. Long would then bind the victims with rope and ligature collars he had fashioned, using a variety of rope knots. Long later confessed that he derived sadistic pleasure from the abduction, rape, and brutal murder of his victims, some of whom he strangled to death.

Long was arrested outside a movie theater on November 16, 1984, and charged with the sexual battery and kidnapping of Lisa McVey. Long signed a formal Miranda waiver, and consented to questioning. After the detectives procured a confession for the McVey case, their questioning focused on a series of unsolved sexual battery homicides in the Tampa Bay area. As the detectives questioned Long about the murders, he replied, "I'd rather not answer that."

Long moved to the Tampa Bay area in 1983. Long’s first victim was discovered in May 1984, when the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office (HCSO) was called to a crime scene where the body of a nude woman had been found.

Prior to the Tampa Bay area murders, Long had committed at least 50 rapes as the "Classified Ad Rapist" in Fort Lauderdale, Ocala, Miami, and Dade County. Starting in 1981, Long answered classified ads for small appliances, and if he found a woman alone at home, he would rape her. Long was tried and convicted for rape in 1981 but requested a new trial, which was granted. The charges were later dropped.

Although Long confessed to raping and killing women, his confession was thrown out. His trial proceeded straight to the penalty phase, which was possible in the 1980s. In early 1985, he received the death penalty.

Robert Joseph Long (October 14, 1953 – May 23, 2019), also known as Bobby Joe Long, was an American serial killer and rapist who was executed for the murder of Michelle Denise Simms. Long abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least 10 women in the Tampa Bay Area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984. He released one of his last victims, 17-year-old Lisa McVey, after raping her over a period of 26 hours. McVey provided information to the police that enabled them to track him down.

Long was born on October 14, 1953 in Kenova, West Virginia to Joe and Louetta Long. Long suffered multiple head injuries as a child. Long also had a dysfunctional relationship with his mother; he slept in her bed until he was a teenager, and resented her multiple short-term boyfriends. Long married his high school girlfriend in 1974, with whom he had two children before she filed for divorce in 1980.