Motherhood, Chris noted, seemed to have imbued MaryJane with “a positive sense of purpose.” She no longer seemed as introverted or fatalistic. For Chris, his career was secondary to his family. “Real life began for me when I got home from work,” he wrote. Some of the passion between MaryJane and him had faded, as happens, but they were still best friends. “She was everything to me,” he wrote. “I needed her, & was afraid to be w/o her.”
During this road trip, MaryJane discovered that she was once again pregnant. Several months earlier Longo had scheduled a vasectomy, but the appointment landed on the same day as Fireplace & Spa’s customer-appreciation golf outing—an event at which Longo, as a new employee, would meet many of his future clients for the first time. It became a widespread joke among the Longos’ friends that MaryJane was pregnant because Chris chose to play golf. Soon after the Mexico vacation, Longo rescheduled the operation, and made sure not to miss it.
Madison Jeanne Longo was born on October 19, 1999, seven weeks premature and suffering from severe respiratory problems that required a month of hospitalization. For the first time in a while, the Longos found themselves in financial straits. Health insurance covered most of Madison’s care, but Longo’s income from Fireplace & Spa, much of it based on commission, never came close to expectations. The family’s spending habits had not changed accordingly—they hadn’t changed at all—and it wasn’t long before their savings were depleted and their credit cards maxed.
Just before Madison was released from the hospital, Longo was awakened one morning by loud noises in his driveway. From the window, he saw MaryJane’s car, a Ford Taurus, being towed away. It had been repossessed. Until this point, MaryJane had acted as household accountant. Forced to choose which bills to cover, she had sacrificed her own car payments to keep paying Chris’s car loan and the mortgage on the house.
Longo required a car for his job, so MaryJane was left at home with three young children and no transportation. There weren’t any funds available to purchase even a junker car. MaryJane, wrote Longo, “was her usual emotionless self” about the situation. The two of them had their first real argument as a married couple—a “confrontation,” Longo called it. Longo was upset about his wife’s handling of their finances, and felt embarrassed that the neighbors may have seen their car hauled off. “I was also mad at myself,” he wrote, “for not providing sufficiently to maintain our lifestyle.”
The job with Fireplace & Spa, Longo realized, was not going to pan out. He was in a precarious position financially, and didn’t know what to do. “With nothing higher than a high school education,” he wrote, “in a town full of college grads, the likelihood of finding a job that paid the sixty-plus thousand a year that we would require was minimal.”
Longo solved this problem cleverly: He started his own business. He’d learned, in the course of selling fireplaces to building contractors, that there was a huge demand for cleaning crews—people who could prepare homes after construction by shampooing the carpets, washing the windows, and generally making the places presentable for sale. One of his fireplace clients told Longo that they were desperate for such a crew. Longo phoned a friend named Joel Foster, an elder at his Kingdom Hall, and discussed the idea with him.
Foster was intrigued. The labor was nontechnical and relatively easy; the initial investment was minor; and the potential for profit was high. “Maximum yield for the minimum output” is how Longo described the idea. MaryJane, he said, fully endorsed it.
By Longo’s twenty-sixth birthday, in January of 2000, Final Touch Construction Cleaning, Inc. was a full-fledged business. It was an immediate success. Within weeks, there was too much work for Longo and Foster to handle, and they hired their first employee. Soon after, they hired several more. Longo felt, he wrote, a “sense of euphoria.” Everything essential to him—his wife, his children, his work, his spirituality, his morals—seemed perfectly aligned. This was the moment, Longo later admitted, that his life may have reached its high point.
The building industry is notoriously slow-paying. A month after Final Touch was launched, thousands of dollars’ worth of labor had been billed, but not a single check had been collected. At the same time, Final Touch’s growth, while thrilling, also required significant infusions of cash. Longo’s policy was never to turn down work, but to clean homes efficiently and profitably, the business needed equipment, like forklifts and dumpsters, that neither Longo nor Foster could afford out-of-pocket. Final Touch, wrote Longo, was “rising at an alarming rate &…beginning to feel the effects of the lack of oxygen.”
Then, in February, while Longo was driving to meet a home builder in the Detroit suburbs, his Dodge Durango broke down. The engine had seized, and the repair estimate was more than $5,000. Longo didn’t have a thousand to spare, let alone five. The family’s only other car had been repossessed. He had little choice but to rent a vehicle. The Durango sat on blocks, waiting to be fixed, while Longo covered the basics: house payments, food bills, car-rental fees, and Final Touch expenses.
Longo knew that his company had astounding potential. Once the checks started rolling in and there was a steady stream of capital, he’d have the resources to clean homes for several of the major builders in Detroit. He had run the numbers over and over. He was sitting on a gold mine. Soon enough, he figured, Final Touch should be profiting $2 million a year—a million for him and a million for Foster. He’d be able to retire, set for life, by age thirty.
But Longo also realized that his company was new, its legs still wobbly, and that something as insignificant and unlucky as a blown engine could bring the whole thing down. There was no way he would allow that to happen. “I refused,” he wrote, “to let a feasible business opportunity, virtually an overnight success, concede to failure just as quickly.” He often worked all night, picking up nails and scrubbing floors until sunrise, then slept fewer than three hours before heading off to the next job.
The labor seemed worth it. If Final Touch folded, he might be stuck selling fireplaces for the rest of his life, stuck with his high-school education, stuck with his mid-tier salary. This was, he felt, his big chance to break out of a cycle of mediocrity. He’d already boasted to everyone at Fireplace & Spa that his business was booming. He’d bragged to his parents. He’d informed MaryJane that he was going to be named Entrepreneur of the Year.
When the Durango died, Chris told MaryJane that he’d buy her a new car. Any car she wanted. She said she dreamed of owning a minivan, maybe one of those fancy types with the television in the back. Longo guaranteed he’d fulfill that dream.
Since the day MaryJane’s car had been repossessed, Chris had been in charge of the family’s accounting. He’d told MaryJane about the invoices Final Touch had sent out but failed to mention that none had been paid. Their money troubles would soon be over, and Longo figured there was no reason to subject MaryJane to undue stress by admitting they were broke.
Also, he wanted her to believe that he was a brilliant businessman. In truth, he knew, the company was dangerously undercapitalized and on the brink of bankruptcy. He’d promised his wife an expensive new van when he could scarcely afford a one-week rental. He’d told his friends that the Durango breakdown was nothing more than a hiccup in his plans. He needed to think of something, quick.
On the morning of Wednesday, February 16, 2000, he came up with a plan. It was one, he thought, that might solve his problem in a couple of hours. He began by scanning his Michigan driver’s license into his home computer. Using Paint Shop Pro, he erased all the data and filled in the blank spots with false information. He selected a random name out of the phone book—Jason Joseph Fortner—and a random address. The photo he left untouched.
He printed the new license and drove his rental car to an office-supply store, where he purchased a laminator. He plugged the laminator into the car’s lighter-socket power converter, ran his fake license through, and cut it to the same size as his real one. The only obvious difference between the two was that the
laminate on the fake license was not embossed with small holograms of the state seal of Michigan.
Longo walked back into the office-supply store and returned the laminator. He wanted to save the fifty bucks. Then he drove south, over the state line and into Ohio, to a row of car dealerships where, he hoped, the salespeople wouldn’t notice the missing holograms on an out-of-state license.
He’d rented his car from Enterprise, and there was an Enterprise branch on the dealership row. It wasn’t the one from which he’d hired the vehicle, but he was able to return it there anyway. This left him with no car, thereby increasing his resolve. Longo walked across the street to a Toyota dealership. This, he promised himself, in order to calm his nerves, was just a trial run. He feigned curiosity about a new car and was asked by a salesperson if he’d like to drive it. All that was necessary, he was informed, was a copy of his driver’s license. No thanks, Longo replied. He said he’d return later with his wife.
He walked to an Oldsmobile dealer. There he spotted a nice minivan and mentioned to a saleswoman that he was interested in a test drive. She asked his name, and he said, “Chris.” Only after he handed over his fake license for the woman to photocopy did he recall that the name on it was “Jason.” He worried that he was about to be arrested. But apparently the saleswoman didn’t notice, for she returned to the showroom and handed Longo his license and a car key. Longo sat in the driver’s seat, and then—this was something he hadn’t counted on—the saleswoman climbed into the passenger seat. They drove around for a few minutes before Longo said that he wasn’t interested.
He tried again at a Pontiac dealer. In an outdoor lot, he saw a dark red Montana minivan, loaded with options, including a rear-seat video monitor. The sticker price was $34,000. A saleswoman approached, and they went through the routine of photocopying the license. This time, though, the woman came back and said, “Here you are, Mr. Fortner,” and gave Longo a set of keys and a license plate. She said to put the plate in the minivan’s rear window. Longo asked if it was okay to drive fifteen minutes to his wife’s office, and she said, “Take all the time you need.” He drove off the lot and never returned.
“When I came home w/ the van,” Longo wrote, “MJ was ecstatic.” It was exactly what she’d wanted, right down to the color of the leather interior. He said it was a gift to mark their seventh anniversary. She named it the Witness Wagon.
He’d stolen the vehicle, he wrote, “in order to keep up the appearance of success & to not halt the progression of our company.” He convinced himself that it wasn’t even a real theft—once Final Touch was flourishing, he’d be sure to send payment to the dealership and charm his way out of having any charges pressed. “No one was the wiser,” he wrote. “The van issue was seamless to all but my own weighted conscience.”
MaryJane, however, was somewhat skeptical. Three months previous their car had been repossessed, and now they’d bought a topof-the-line minivan. When, she wondered, had their fortunes changed? Chris explained that Pontiac was offering a payment plan that included a ninety-day grace period, so they wouldn’t owe anything until spring, by which time Final Touch would be thriving.
And what, she questioned, was the rationale for removing the license plate from the broken-down Durango and attaching it to the Montana? That was only temporary, Longo answered. He then purchased a new vanity plate for his Durango—one that read KIDVAN. When the plate was mailed to him, registered to the Durango, he simply hung it on the Montana.
Another time, MaryJane wondered where all the junk mail was. When they’d previously purchased cars, she said, there was always a flood of mail from the dealership. They’d received some, Longo told her, but he’d thrown it away. And, he added, because he’d set up an online payment plan, most of the junk mail was actually junk e-mail. Later, on his computer, he forged a document that seemed to be from Pontiac and mailed it to himself. He showed it to MaryJane. After that, he said, she had no more questions.
Final Touch continued its wild growth. Longo and Foster hired a dozen employees, then another dozen, then a third. Money finally began to trickle in, enough so that Longo could fix the Durango, and the family once again had two vehicles (one of them stolen and with a misregistered plate; the other with a canceled plate).
Best of all, Longo’s dad got involved. His parents had moved back to Indiana several years earlier, and his relationship with Joe and Joy had never fully thawed. Ever since he’d left home, he’d been trying to prove that he could make it on his own. Now Joe agreed to invest several thousand dollars in Final Touch and launch the company’s Indianapolis branch. This, Longo said, was one of the proudest moments of his life.
Even with Joe’s help, though, the business was unraveling as fast as it was growing. Huge profits always seemed to be just around the corner. Final Touch soon had sixty employees; the payroll came to more than $15,000, due every other Friday. Joe Longo added additional money—eventually he invested a total of $80,000—but it still wasn’t enough. “Elation quickly turned into frustration & stress along w/ fear,” Longo wrote. “Desperation was setting in.” He didn’t tell his wife how he felt, and he didn’t tell his father. “I would not let anyone else see the turbulence that I was going through,” he wrote.
Frantic for cash, he called the builders that owed him money. They all made excuses. Foster, according to Longo, was too busy with church obligations to devote the time needed to tend to the company’s troubles—sometimes he wasn’t billing for a job until a month after its completion, further delaying income. “I was livid,” Longo wrote. He felt as though he were doing all the work and suffering all the stress.
Many of Final Touch’s employees were Longo’s friends and fellow Witnesses. He couldn’t ask them to delay their salaries for a few months, but he couldn’t afford to pay them. He couldn’t return the forklifts he’d purchased and the dumpsters he’d rented without stalling operations. And he couldn’t fold the company. He couldn’t even think of that. “To me it was a matter of pride & self-worth as much as anything else,” he wrote. “It would be a failure, my failure.” He’d be disgraced in front of his friends, his church, his family, and his father.
With the next payday approaching and Final Touch’s bank balance at zero, Longo knew that something had to give. He was prepared, he wrote, “to do just about anything to plow through the impending roadblock.” First he got rid of Foster, dissolving the partnership and agreeing to pay him as a consultant. Then, the type of thinking that had come over him when he’d stolen the Montana van cropped up again. He had two days to procure $15,000, and legally or not, he was going to do it.
And finally, in the midst of all of this, his life became more complicated. Way more complicated. He fell in love with another woman.
TWENTY-SIX
IN THE MONTHS leading up to his trial, Longo met several times with a clinical psychologist named Stephen S. Scherr. Dr. Scherr, based in Portland, Oregon, was hired by Longo’s attorneys in hopes that he would provide fodder for the defense. As it turned out, his evaluation was of little help. After talking with Longo at the Lincoln County Jail for fifteen hours and administering six psychological exams, including the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale III and the Rorschach inkblot test, Scherr issued a report in which
he expressed no doubts that Longo was guilty of all the murders.
Longo mailed me his copy of this report. In it, Scherr noted that Longo was clearly a smart man—“and it seemed important to him,” the psychologist added, “that I know that.” According to Scherr, Longo exhibited “a stronger-than-usual need for affection and attention” and “a tendency to present himself in a positive light.” Longo scored extremely well on the intelligence test, above the ninety-ninth percentile in vocabulary and reading comprehension, and nearly as high on the memory sections. His vocabulary, Scherr said, was “irritatingly” good.
As for the inkblots, Longo’s responses demonstrated “notable evidence of self-centeredness” but “did not show evidence of a think
ing disorder or psychotic disturbance.” (When I asked Longo what he’d seen in the blots, he told me, “They all looked like a factory spewing out great clouds of pollution.”) “Christian’s primary diagnosis,” Scherr concluded, “is narcissistic personality.”
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV), an individual with narcissistic personality disorder often has a grandiose sense of self-importance, is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, and can display extreme reactivity to criticism or failure. Such a person, notes the DSM-IV, may “compare themselves favorably with famous or privileged people”—perhaps someone as privileged as, say, a reporter for the New York Times.
I paid to have additional psychological work performed on Longo, in an indirect way. Without informing Longo of my plans, I hired three doctors—Joe W. Dixon, a forensic psychologist and trial consultant based in North Carolina; Karen Franklin, a forensic psychologist affiliated with Alliant International University in San Francisco; and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, a psychoanalyst on the faculty at Columbia University in New York—to study a large sample of the letters Longo had sent me. None of the three doctors was aware that I was consulting with any of the others, and none had access to Scherr’s report. I told them about my book project and the crimes Longo was accused of. I sent them some background materials, in which I did not disguise Longo’s biographical details but did hide his identity by blacking out his name on press clippings. I asked the psychologists for any general opinions they could glean from his letters.
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