Meeting after 35 years: the maniac and the victim who killed him met at the execution

When the American maniac Bobby Joe Long was executed, Lisa McVeigh Noland sat in the front row, wishing to personally witness his death. Long couldn't help but see her, much less recognize her. After the time 35 years ago when he regretted and released 17-year-old Lisa, they saw each other many times at confrontations and identification. Noland was the only victim of the monster who knew him by sight and it was she who led him to the couch for lethal injections.

Lisa Noland, a 52-year-old deputy at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, didn't come to Bobby Long's execution because she wanted to see her tormentor die. "I wanted to be the first person he would see in this room," she later explained to reporters.

Perhaps she was disappointed – in the last few minutes before the lethal injection, the killer looked completely calm and gave nothing away when he saw Noland Vredi present. To the traditional question of whether he had something to say at the end, the condemned man answered briefly - " No." On May 23, 2019, Joe Long died and no one has ever found out exactly why the most ruthless maniac saved the life of one of his victims who might have recognized him.

Bobby Joe Long was born on October 14, 1953 in Kenova, West Virginia, USA. The tendency to violence began to manifest itself in Joe Long as a child. The boy was born with a genetic disorder that caused his breasts to grow as a teenager. His peers laughed at Long and he took out his impotence and anger on the animals and younger children.

In his youth, Joe had an operation and removed his physical disability, but this was no longer able to fix the inner world of Long, who hated everyone around him. Later, problems with girls began and, after experiencing two difficult breakups, the guy gave up trying to start a family. Later, his mother recalled how after the last breakup, he called her and said:

To complicate matters, Joe suffered a severe head injury when he fell off a motorcycle. In 1981, a young man had his first fantasies about murder, and very soon he began to realize them.

Joe Long had trained as an X-ray technician, but he had no desire to work in his specialty, preferring to live on welfare. In 1983, he settled in Tampa, Florida and it was here that he began to kill. In total, the maniac has 50 rapes and 9 proven murders, but only the criminal himself knew the exact number of victims.

The maniac abducted 17-year-old Lisa McVeigh on November 3, 1984. The girl worked in the cafe until 3 o'clock in the morning and was sure that this was the last shift in her life. When Lisa left the cafe, she had a farewell note in her pocket: she was planning suicide.

Lisa McVeigh

For the past three years, Lisa had been corrupted by her grandmother's lover, and life seemed meaningless and disgusting to young McVeigh. The girl had barely managed to ride away from the place of work on a bicycle when a strong hand grabbed her by the neck, and the barrel of a gun rested on her temple. "God, do whatever you want, just don't kill me," she said to her attacker, immediately forgetting that just a moment ago she had chosen the method of suicide.

Long dragged the girl into his car, a red Dodge Magnum, tied her up, and brought her home. There, Long raped his victim for more than a day, and since he did not hide his face, it was obvious that leaving the girl alive was not part of his plans. When asked by the victim why he chose this path, Long simply replied, " I punish women."

The girls who died at the hands of Bobby Joe Long

Lisa later recalled that Long constantly complained that people were unfair to him, and that women were trying to humiliate and insult him. To soften the maniac, the girl came up with a story that she was the only child of a seriously ill mother and it worked. For some unknown reason, Joe Long got into it, and the next day, at dawn, he pushed Lisa back into the car with a blindfold over her eyes and dropped her off at the side of the highway.

The girl got home and told her grandmother and her roommate about what had happened, but they did not believe her, thinking that she had spent all this time in the company of friends. But the police were willing to listen to Lisa McVeigh, because the rapist and killer was one of the most serious problems of the district in the last few years.

Before that, the cops had very little information about the killer. They knew that he found his victims late at night or at night outside cafes and bars, raped them in bushes or alleys, strangled them, and hid. The only clue was the red lint particles that remained on the victims ' bodies. McVeigh became a valuable witness, because she told the make and color of the car, and also knew the maniac by sight.

Tampa police checked hundreds of Dodge Magnums, and while the search was underway, Long killed two more women. But on November 16, 1984, the police arrested another owner of a red Dodge with red velour seat covers at the exit of the cinema, and Lisa identified him.

When the investigators asked him why he had spared the life of a valuable witness, Joe either kept silent or gave a new reason each time. The most plausible is what he said after the trial, already sitting on death row:

Whether it's true or not, we'll never know. Anyway, Deputy Lisa Noland had a reason to thank Long – not only did he not kill her, but he gave her the will to live. After a miraculous rescue, the girl tore up her suicide note and thoughts of suicide never visited her again.

This story is unusual, but much more strange is the story of a swineherd killer and a transgender investigator, whose confrontation lasted for many years.