Christian Longo

Murders

Longo was a wanted man in connection with the murder of Mary Jane and their three children. After the body of his four-year-old son, Zachery, was found on December 19, 2001, divers located that of his three-year-old daughter, Sadie. Those of Mary Jane and their two-year-old daughter, Madison, were found five days later. After he fled the United States, he was recognized in Cancún on December 27, 2001, at a hotel. The next day, in Lincoln County, Oregon, a federal arrest warrant issued in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon charged him with multiple counts of aggravated murder and unlawful flight. He left the hotel on January 7, 2002, and was captured six days later without incident in the small town of Tulum, Quintana Roo, about 80 miles south of Cancún. He was taken into U.S. custody at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on January 14, 2002. He was sentenced to death in 2003.

Years later, Longo admitted to being a narcissist in a letter he wrote to KATU-TV, a Portland, Oregon, television station. He wrote that he eventually began "studying what a psychologist said I was and came to terms with it, almost totally agreeing that he was right...his conclusion was the narcissistic personality disorder which he called 'compensatory' – basically self-centeredness related to a damaged core sense of self."

When in Mexico, Longo used the name of Michael Finkel, the former New York Times reporter who later chronicled their experiences in his memoir True Story, later adapted into a 2015 film.

Longo is currently incarcerated on death row at Oregon State Penitentiary. Capital punishment is still legal in Oregon, but there has been a moratorium on executions since 2011.