Lisa McVey was 17 when Bobby Joe Long raped her while keeping her locked up in his home in Tampa, United States.
The story of Lisa McVey (55) is literally a horror movie. The American lived a difficult childhood and an even worse adolescence, but she managed to upset her fate thanks to the most terrible event that could happen to her.
When she was 14, her mother suffered from drug addiction problems and was left in the care of her grandmother.
The old woman not only did not want to take care of her, but she left that her boyfriend abused the young woman whenever he could. At just 17, Lisa McVey studied in the afternoons and worked at night at the “Krispy Kreme” donut shop located in Tampa, Florida, United States.
A recreation of the story was known through the film “Kidnapped: The Truth of Lisa McVey”.
The worst 26 hours of your life
It was two in the morning on Saturday, November 3, 1984, when Lisa left work and, like every day, tried to get on her bicycle to go home.
The young woman was very depressed and tired of the abuse she suffered at home. The night before her, distraught, she had written a letter in which she announced her desire for her to die.. He thought that a bullet in the head would end his suffering once and for all.
Suddenly a man pushed her off the bike and caught her: thus began the hardest 26 hours of his life.
that man was Long Bobby: He had a gun in his hand and she could only think, “God, whatever you do, don’t kill me,” according to the Washington Post.
The man dragged her into his car, a Dodge Magnum, where he ordered her to take off her clothes and blindfolded her to take her to his apartment. There he tortured and raped her repeatedly.
During the hours that Lisa McVey was held captive, she devoted herself to gathering information that would be essential to Bobby Joe Long’s arrest.
In the midst of this situation, Lisa has found a reason to fight for her life.. The man repeatedly raped her for 26 hoursbut it was the previous outrages that allowed him to remain calm and not panic.
“I had to take all the abuse I had suffered and reach it once again, in the pit of my stomach, and use those survivor skills to overcome it psychologically,” Lisa explained years later in the American media.
Ingenuity was essential
In her captor’s apartment, Lisa was concerned about leaving fingerprints everywhere. When she asked her to go to the bathroom, she tapped the tiles, the mirror and in various places.
When it was 4 am the next day, kidnapper Bobby Long released her after the young woman made up a story in which she cared for her father who was very sick. This touched Bobby and was instrumental in letting her go.
Once released, she ran home, where she told her grandmother and boyfriend, who didn’t believe her, what happened. So she went alone to the police.
Lisa, desperate to stop Bobby from killing her, came up with the idea of proposing to her kidnapper that she be his “secret girlfriend”. Photo: “Kidnapped: The Truth About Lisa McVey”.
Lisa, when Bobby kidnapped her, looked under the blindfold for all the details she could and remembered the car he had brought her in because she had seen it before she was kidnapped.
In his account, he indicated that the vehicle had a red carpet, which immediately attracted police attention: many of the victims of a serial killer who terrorized Tampa showed up with red fibers on their clothes.
Thanks to the information provided by the young woman, the police began looking for the owner of the vehicle, until they found Bobby Joe Long, who was captured on November 16, 1984, after a 36-hour surveillance operation.
Who was “Bobby Joe”
Since 1981, Bobby Long has committed more than fifty rapes. The press did not know who he was, but he was still baptized as “The rapist of classified ads”. Long reached out to women via Penny Saber, a free Tampa newspaper.
The ten murders he was charged with occurred over an eight-month period in the year 1984. He tied up, raped and killed, then left the bodies in sexually explicit positions.
A picture of Bobby Long with his daughters.
Thanks to data provided by Lisa, Long was arrested on November 16. The fibers that had been found on the bodies were examined and it was found that they came from Long’s car. The defendant asked to call his former partner Cindy, to whom he confessed that he was the killer of all those women in Tampa.
On September 23, 1985, Long pleaded guilty to the crimes. He received eight life sentences and, in July 1986, was sentenced to death for the murder of Michelle Denise Simms.
Lisa’s story has arrived on Netflix
Lisa McVey’s story changed dramatically after she went to the police to tell her story: the amount of detail she provided helped solve the case of one of the most wanted serial killers of that time.
After the traumatic situation, Lisa went to live for a few years with her aunt and uncle, ending up working in Tampa as a police officer specializing in sexual offenses.
Lisa today: She became a police officer, specializes in sexual offenses and has given motivational speeches in schools
Her story helped her to write a book, give lectures and it was even the inspiration for a film about her life: “Kidnapped: The Life of Lisa McVey”, released in 2018 and today on Netflix.
Thomas Fernandez Cruzado
Source: Clarin
