True Story of a Family Annihilator : The Christian Longo Case

As always, thank you for hanging out and remembering Mary Jane, Zachary, Sadie, and Madison with me today.
In December 2001, Christian Longo killed his wife, MaryJane Longo, 34, and their three children, Zachery, 4, Sadie, 3, and Madison, 2, after the family relocated to the Oregon coast while he was facing escalating debts, fraud allegations, and financial pressure. The victims’ bodies were discovered over several days in coastal waters and inlets around Newport, Oregon, near Christmas.

Evidence established that Longo strangled MaryJane and two-year-old Madison, then disposed of their bodies in suitcases in the water. He initially claimed that MaryJane had killed the two older children, Zachery and Sadie, before he killed her in retaliation, but prosecutors argued and the jury found, that Longo alone murdered all four members of his family.

After the killings, Longo fled to Mexico, where he assumed the identity of New York Times journalist Michael Finkel and attempted to start a new life. He was arrested in Mexico in January 2002 and returned to Oregon to face prosecution.

At his 2003 trial, Longo pleaded guilty to murdering MaryJane and Madison, but a jury convicted him of aggravated murder in the deaths of Zachery and Sadie. The jury then sentenced him to death for all four killings; Oregon’s Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and sentence in 2006. In December 2022, Governor Kate Brown commuted Oregon’s 17 death sentences, including Longo’s, to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.