Christian Longo Biography

Christian Michael Longo was born on January 23, 1974. His parents were strict Jehovah's Witnesses, and the family lived in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, U.S. In his younger days, Longo was active in the church. He took training in the door-to-door ministry that Jehovah's Witnesses are known for.

He met his future wife, Mary Jane Baker, who was part of the same congregation, in the parking lot of the church. Longo was 19 and Mary Jane was 25 at the time of their marriage.

Christian Longo had a habit of making excessive expenditures, which often landed him and his family in financial troubles. For a while, he worked as the manager of a company which distributed The New York Times. Back then, he read a lot of articles by The New York Times writer Michael Finkel. Following his stint at the company, Longo tried to launch his own construction subcontracting company. However, the company was a financial disaster and deluged him and his family with more debts.

To cover his increasing debts, Christian Longo resorted to criminal activities and tried to make money using dishonest means. He started making counterfeit checks from client checks, created fake addresses to reroute bill collectors, and made fake driving licenses for test drives to steal cars. Meanwhile, with all the wealth he had acquired, Longo bought expensive cars and went on extravagant vacations. He was finally caught and charged for making counterfeit checks and given a light sentence of probation and restitution.

As his unethical activities piled up, he was thrown out of the church for a long list of offenses, which included cheating on his wife. Apparently, his wife had found e-mails that proved Longo’s infidelity. A couple of months after this, Longo claimed that he wanted to start afresh with his family. By then, he had three children: his 4-year-old son Zachary; his 3-year-old daughter, Sadie; and his 2-year-old daughter, Madison. He relocated with his wife and children from his Michigan home to a warehouse in Toledo, Ohio.

The investigators looking for Longo went to the Toledo warehouse but found it abandoned. Soon, Mary Jane’s cell phone line was cut off, following which a missing persons’ report was filed by her sister. On December 19, 2001, Zachery’s lifeless body was found floating in a marina in Waldport, Oregon. An extensive search followed, and after 3 days, Sadie’s body was found. Sadie had been weighed down underwater. Eight days later, the bodies of Mary Jane and Madison were discovered in two suitcases which were floating close to the apartment of the family in Yaquina Bay. The only missing person was Christian Longo. The investigators eventually placed him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List in connection with the murder of his wife and three children.

It was later discovered that on the day of the discovery of Mary Jane and Madison’s bodies, Longo had boarded a plane and fled from the United States to Cancun, Mexico, impersonating as Michael Finkel. While Longo was on the run, hiding in Cancún, using Finkel’s identity, he was identified by an American tourist at a hotel there on December 27, 2001. The following day, a federal arrest warrant was issued against Longo in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon in Lincoln County, Oregon. Charges against Longo included multiple counts of aggravated murder and unlawful flight.

On January 7, 2002, Longo left the hotel. However, he was caught after 6 days, in the small town of Tulum, Quintana Roo. He was then extradited to the United States by Mexican officials, and before boarding the flight, Longo signed a waiver of rights. He was taken into U.S. custody at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, on January 14, 2002.

During his trial, Christian Longo claimed that the ongoing financial distress of his family had taken a toll on his wife, Mary Jane, and that she had killed Zachary and Sadie in a fit of rage. He added that as a reaction to this, he had then killed Mary Jane and their youngest child, Madison. The jury ultimately found him guilty for all four killings, and on April 16, 2003, Christian Longo was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Although capital punishment is still legal in Oregon, since 2011, there has been a moratorium on executions there. Longo is presently imprisoned on death row at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Years after his conviction, Christian Longo wrote a letter to KATU-TV, a Portland, Oregon-based TV station, in which he admitted to being a narcissist. In the letter, he said that a psychologist had concluded that Longo was suffering from narcissistic personality disorder and that he thought that the psychologist was right. Reportedly, Longo admitted in 2011 that he had killed his family.

While undergoing trial, Christian Longo was visited by Finkel, who later wrote a memoir on his relationship with Longo. It was titled True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa and was published in 2005. It was also adapted into an American mystery–drama film called True Story. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2015, and released theatrically in the U.S. on April 17 that year, marking the directorial debut of Rupert Goold. It explored the relationship that had developed between Finkel and Longo after the former began meeting Longo in prison. The movie featured James Franco as Longo and Jonah Hill as Finkel.