True Story

by Michael Finkel

  The cartoon showed a cat pulling a toy car, in which was seated a mouse. Off to the side was a second mouse, clearly alarmed. He was shouting at the mouse in the car. “For God’s sake, think!” he was yelling. “Why is he being so nice to you?”

  Longo said that the cartoon served as a continual reminder that he had to be wary of others’ kindness. His trust in me, he said, was not merely a leap of faith but what he termed “a life leap.” He said he’d taken an enormous risk by communicating with me, and there was no margin for betrayal. If I abused his trust—say, by speaking with other writers—then I could hurt his case and possibly cost him his life.

  “Well,” I responded, as gently as possible, “why do you think I’m being so nice to you?”

  Longo wanted me to answer my own question. I had the feeling that this was another test, perhaps my final test. Until this moment, much of what I’d said to Longo had a conciliatory spin to it; a hint, perhaps, of placation. I’d told him repeatedly, for instance, that I considered him an innocent man. I’d said this, however, only because he was legally innocent, not because I thought he was actually innocent. I’d mentioned, too, that the main reason I wrote him so many letters was because he was such an appreciative and perceptive reader, as if I were generously giving of my time rather than angling for a reply. Now, though, I decided to drop all my pretenses and explain exactly why I was being so nice to him.

  “It’s selfishness,” I said. “You’re helping me work on a project.” I told him that I was exploiting his tragedy for financial gain and career revitalization and personal redemption. Our friendship certainly had its genuine moments—no one had been better than him, I said, at exposing and analyzing my moral flaws—but these occasions, I admitted, were subordinate to my main goal, which was to wrest from him a story. As I spoke I felt strangely relaxed, as if I’d just given up in an arm-wrestling match.

  Longo liked my confession. He liked it immensely. Right away, I could feel his anger dissipating. He said he’d been fully aware of my intentions all along, and it was good to see that I was finally speaking frankly. I was inspired by this response, so I kept talking. I told him that I’d spoken with Kerry Taylor, and I recounted to Longo the entire conversation I’d had with the investigator.

  “That’s good to know,” Longo said, his voice warm and encouraging. “I appreciate that.”

  I acknowledged that I’d had three psychologists read his letters.

  “I would probably do the same thing if I were in your shoes,” he said, affably. “Don’t be sorry. I understand.”

  I even told him that I didn’t particularly believe in his innocence. “Who else would have done it?” I said. “All roads lead to you.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the honesty,” Longo said. “I’d rather hear it like that than hear a buttered version.”

  By the time our phone call ended, Longo had forgiven me. “I’m keeping the connection with you,” he declared. “It’s not just a connection on the surface. I think it’s deeper than that. I’m trying hard to put a lot of trust in you.”

  Up to this point in our relationship, I had never caught Longo in a lie. I had checked nearly every verifiable fact in his tale and found no solid evidence to contradict a single word he’d said to me, including his insistence of innocence. Conveniently for Longo—or, I suppose, if he were really telling the truth about the murders, extremely inconveniently—it seemed that the only people who could irrefutably confirm or deny his culpability were dead.

  The start date of his trial was creeping closer. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, everyone in the maximum-security wing of the Lincoln County Jail rang in 2003 by simultaneously flushing his toilet. On Super Bowl Sunday, inmates wagered push-ups and envelopes over the game’s outcome. On January 23, two and a half weeks before the beginning of jury selection, Longo marked his twenty-ninth birthday.

  Over this period, Longo’s letters became increasingly heartbreaking and intense. He filled page after page with detailed anecdotes of his family life. He told me about going to zoos, hiking in the woods, and attending the Michigan State Fair. He recalled presents he bought his children—“a safari pop-up for Zack & an indestructable bunny book, complete w/fur, for Sadie.” He listed the names of their favorite stuffed animals: Ribbit, Bun, Raffie, Zoboomafoo. He described popping popcorn, singing lullabies, attending religious services, and jumping up and down on the green leather chair in the living room.

  In one letter, he reminisced about Zachery as a newborn: “I could remember clearly how his little body felt in my arms, how he was quick to wriggle away yet loving to be held, loving me. I recalled the smells of milky breath & light soap & clean diapers & dirty ones, & I missed them all.”

  After four pages of this, he moved on to Sadie: “As I was gazing down she started to stretch, w/ one arm raising while the opposite leg lengthened…. To my joy & surprise her baby blue eyes wererevealed as she looked up at me. She blinked & then she seemed to smile. It was the first time that she had communicated w/ me & I felt like bursting into song.”

  In another letter, he’d described taking Madison to the beach: “Maddy, every time, would bend down on a rock, smack the water w/ an open hand, be shocked by the cold splash in her face & scramble to get as far above the water as possible in mine or MJ’s arms.”

  As I read these passages, I felt a troubling interlacing of poignancy and dread. I believed that every detail Longo mentioned was genuine. Yet at the same time I felt, as I always did with Longo, that he was giving me only part of the story, that he was carefully hiding certain pieces of the truth. The images he provided of his children were all quaint and tender and somewhat fairy-taleish—he never described a temper tantrum, never mentioned disciplining them, never struck a note of unhappiness.

  Longo told me that he had composed these passages to help me with my book. It was essential, he said, to present a feel for what his family was really like. When I told him that I was attempting to double-check all the facts in his letters, Longo seemed elated—so much so that in order to assist my efforts, he mailed me a thick packet of materials that included meticulously annotated contact information for more than sixty of his relatives, friends, acquaintances, and coworkers. He also provided me with transcripts of dozens more police and FBI interviews, most of which were never made public.

  All of this effort on my behalf begged a familiar question: Why was he being so nice to me? Longo’s answer was that he wanted the entire story, in all its intricate detail, to be fully understood. But this response didn’t feel complete.

  Longo also expressed a peculiar eagerness for me to tell him of any misgivings I had about his life story, no matter how minute. “If you have any doubts,” he implored, “bring them up to me.” He said this repeatedly. And whenever I did raise concerns—when I asked for clarification or commented on inconsistencies or pointed out seeming lapses in logic—he was delighted. In his next letter he’d promptly patch them up. It was as though he were challenging me to find the slightest hint of dissonance in his grand saga.

  And then I saw. Or at least, I thought I did. Why was he being so nice to me? For the precise reason I was being so nice to him. It was selfishness; I was helping him work on a project; he was using me.

  Longo was meting out his story, a millimeter at a time, so that it could be carefully dissected. He knew I’d do a thorough job—I’d just wrecked my career and couldn’t afford to make even the tiniest misstep. I’m sure Longo really did want me as a friend; I’m convinced he appreciated the lifeline. But now, I sensed, our whole relationship, almost from the very start, had been much more complex. Until this moment, I thought it had been me who’d been the cat in the cartoon. Now, I grasped, we’d both been toying with each other all along.

  A disturbing feeling swept over me, an angry shock, like the moment you realize your wallet’s been lifted. If the story of his family life passed my scrutiny, Longo was perhaps thinking, then surely it would pass muster with a jury. I wa
s his dress rehearsal. I was his one-man focus group. When the time came to retell his story in court, in a matter of weeks, it would be airtight and polished, edited by his personal writing coach. What I’d unwittingly been doing, in other words, was helping Longo get away with murder.

  TWENTY-NINE

  AT THE POLICE STATION, under interrogation, Longo confessed to the counterfeit-check scam. The charges were serious—for each of the seven checks Longo had cashed, he could be punished with a fourteen-year prison term. Anything close to the maximum sentence was highly unlikely, though, and even the interrogating officer, Detective Fred Farkas of the Michigan State Police, attempted to allay Longo’s concerns. “All things considered,” said Farkas, his comments captured on the tape recorder in the interrogation room, “it’s not homicide.”

  After Longo had been arrested, in front of their house, Mary-Jane had driven the minivan to the police station. The kids were with her. They were all waiting for him when he was released from interrogation. Longo, of course, had not told his wife about the checks—at first she’d been considered a suspect herself, but after a brief interview, it was clear to the officers that she was innocent.

  Longo sat in the police station with his family and explained to MaryJane what he’d done. He insisted that he hadn’t taken anything he wasn’t already owed. “Although she was highly upset, she seemed to not be overly disturbed, or even surprised by the revelation of the crimes,” he wrote. “After open & honest discussion w/ her, she even seemed to understand, if not agree, w/my justifications.”

  While Longo was speaking with MaryJane, police officers searched the minivan. This, said Longo, scared him deeply. Officers inspected every inch of the vehicle, confiscated his remaining counterfeit checks, and even jotted down the vehicle identification number. But they never thought to check if the van itself was stolen. And so Longo was released on his own recognizance, pending a court date.

  Chris and MaryJane came to an agreement. They decided to let this incident pass as quietly as possible. They would not mention it to their friends, their families, or the elders at the Kingdom Hall. Less than a month before, Longo had been reproved by the elders for his affair with Jessica Meadows. If word of the check fraud became public, the elders could condemn him to the ultimate punishment—exclusion from the church, a process called disfellowshipping. There seemed no reason to risk such a penalty. He told MaryJane that he was already remorseful and repentant. His religious beliefs were intact. He assured his wife that he would never pursue such a course again.

  By all accounts, MaryJane was an intelligent woman. One of the pediatricians she once worked for was willing to fund her medical school tuition. MaryJane didn’t accept; her primary goal, it seemed, was to be a model Witness wife. Her own sister, Sally Clark, described her as “a quiet homebody” who offered “unconditional love.” Another sister, Penny Dupuie, said she was “completely devoted” to Longo. Apparently, MaryJane desired more than anything to please her husband, even if a more independent woman might have cut her losses and considered a separation.

  The arrest did seem to chasten Longo. He downsized Final Touch from more than sixty employees to about a dozen. He sold much of his equipment, including one of his forklifts. He gave away his jet skis to pay off his dumpster contract. MaryJane began keeping the company’s books. A few invoices were paid. Longo’s father, still unaware of the check frauds, remained enthusiastic about the business.

  On September 21, 2000, Longo went to court. He pled guilty to four counts of fraud, but due to his fairly clean record—his only previous conviction was a misdemeanor relating to the camera-shop theft, eight years before—he received no jail time. Instead, he was required to meet with a probation officer once a month for three years, to perform eighty hours of community service, and to repay more than $30,000 to the builder in whose name he’d forged the checks. Also, Longo said, the builder never honored any of Final Touch’s legitimate invoices, thereby depriving his company of additional income. Overall, though, Longo was thankful. He’d avoided going to jail and thought he would be able to keep the crimes a private matter. His plan was to forget what he called this “dark spot in our lives” and continue forward with honor, lesson learned.

  The morning after Longo’s conviction, MaryJane was reading the Ann Arbor News when she gasped and said, “Oh, no.” On the second page of the local section was the headline MAN ADMITS TO COUNTER-FEITING CHECKS. Beneath that was a brief story about the crimes. They were clearly not going to be family secrets any longer. Longo had little choice but to phone the elders and arrange a meeting.

  The elders disfellowshipped him. Their decision had immediate and all-encompassing consequences—most Jehovah’s Witnesses cite the second book of John, verses 9 through 11 in the New World translation of the Bible, for guidance on how to treat a person who is no longer “in the teaching”: “Never receive him into your homes or say a greeting to him. For he that says a greeting to him is a sharer in his wicked works.”

  Indeed, as soon as the announcement was made in his Kingdom Hall, no one would say a greeting to Longo. The point of such punishment, according to Longo, is for a person to see the error of his or her ways and want to return to the flock. A disfellowshipped person is still encouraged to attend services, but must sit in silence.

  In a letter, Longo devoted eleven pages to describing what disfellowshipment felt like. “Where I was used to being welcomed w/handshakes & hugs upon entering the Hall I was now invisible. Even a cold ‘Hello’ would have been nice, but I wasn’t even acknowledged w/ eye contact, much less a word of any kind. It was strange that even the kids in the Hall avoided eye contact, all of whom I had a good rapport with, like they’d been coached by their parents. In fact they most likely were.”

  The punishment is not necessarily terminal, nor is it particularly rare—thousands are disfellowshipped each year, out of a worldwide population of more than six million Witnesses. With a proper display of penitence, one can be welcomed back into the congregation, sometimes in a matter of months. Often, though, the sentence is far longer. MaryJane’s mom, Susan Lowery, was disfellowshipped for a decade before she was reinstated. Some never are. Longo said he’d personally known three people who’d committed suicide after being disfellowshipped.

  Longo’s cell phone was abruptly silenced—virtually all of his friends were Witnesses, and no one dared call him. When he was walking through town, he said, people from his congregation literally crossed the street to avoid interacting with him. His father resigned from Final Touch, demanded a return of his investment, and stopped speaking with him. His mother and brother likewise shunned him. The remaining Final Touch employees who were Witnesses also quit. “It was like being placed on another planet by myself,” Longo wrote. “A complete & total obliteration of life as I had known it.”

  He still had MaryJane and the kids, however, whom he called the “bright & glorious light glowing at the end of a very gray tunnel.” By the rules of disfellowshipment, he was no longer the head of his family; he wasn’t even supposed to join them in prayer. But MaryJane, according to Longo, did not obey these edicts. “MJ was undoubtedly embarassed & still hurt, but showed me support nonetheless,” he wrote. “In many ways I feel that MJ saved me from being crushed. I had everything to live for, I was still the king of my castle, I was loved & supported truly unconditionally.”

  MaryJane, seldom comfortable socializing on her own, essentially joined Longo in his isolation. It was too awkward for her to see their friends and pretend that everything was okay. “She seemed to shrink back into the shell of me,” Longo wrote. He assured her that the situation was only temporary. He was already reformed, he pointed out, and therefore sure to be reinstated quickly. The year 2000, he agreed, had been a bad one—the affair, the check fraud, the disfellowshipment. But all they had to do was get through the winter. Come springtime, he promised, they’d once again be hosting barbecues in their backyard with all of their friends.

  As it turned out
, by the spring of 2001, the Longos were basically homeless. The disfellowshipment nearly killed Final Touch. The company limped on with four non-Witness employees, but Longo, desperately in need of money, also returned to delivering newspapers. He often worked all day and most of the night but still couldn’t cover his bills.

  In October of 2000, Chrysler had taken possession of the Durango—the only vehicle Longo legitimately owned—and was demanding $16,000 for defaulting on the lease. The family’s credit-card debt was more than $30,000. Longo was required to pay $980 a month in court-assessed restitution for his forgeries. His father wanted $1,500 a month in repayment for the business loans. He owed back wages to several former Final Touch employees, a total of $12,000. He had a family of five to feed. He had a mortgage to pay. Utilities were due. He was disfellowshipped from his church, shunned by his friends, and forbidden from speaking with his parents.

  Longo responded to the panic in his usual way. In January of 2001, just before his twenty-seventh birthday, he forged his father’s signature on a credit-card application. The card arrived, and his family, wrote Longo, “lived w/o monetary stress for a short period.” Longo decided to purchase scuba gear and diver-certification lessons for himself. He also paid for MaryJane to have laser surgery, so that her vision could be permanently corrected.

  Then, one of Final Touch’s remaining employees, a man named Amir Fawzy, fell off a roof while cleaning windows and broke both his ankles. Longo discovered that he’d allowed his workers’ compensation insurance to lapse, so Fawzy initiated a lawsuit. That was the end of Final Touch.

  When the credit line on the forged card filled up, Longo forged another. The credit-card company eventually located Longo’s parents and warned them of the past-due amount. Joe and Joy agreed to help the credit-card company attempt to bring charges against their son. Between the credit cards and the unpaid loans, Longo now owed his parents more than $100,000.