Mother who was dying from cancer killed husband and two of their children in New Hampshire, police say
A New Hampshire mother has been accused of shooting dead her terminally ill husband and two of their children before turning the gun on herself, authorities say.
New Hampshire State Police were called just after 8:20 p.m. Monday to a home on Moharimet Drive in Madbury, where they found the bodies of Emily and Ryan Long, 34 and 48, and their two eldest children, Parker, 8, and Ryan, 6.
Emily Long allegedly took a handgun from the home and opened fire at her husband – who was reportedly battling an aggressive form of brain cancer – and two of her three children, according to New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella. She “then took her own life immediately thereafter,” he added.
All four sustained gunshot wounds and each was pronounced dead in the home, authorities said. Police found the couple’s youngest child, aged three was found unharmed inside.
Autopsies revealed that both children died from a single gunshot to the head, while Ryan Long succumbed to multiple gunshot wounds, Formella said. Emily Long also sustained a single gunshot wound to the head, he added.
Days before the suspected murder-suicide, Emily Long discussed feeling “lonely” and “anxious” as she weighed going to a therapist on her TikTok account, which has been made private.
She garnered more than 170,0000 followers keeping a “digital diary” on the platform of her life as a self-styled “Brain Cancer Wife,” speaking candidly about her husband’s treatment for glioblastoma, including his seizures and struggle to find the proper regimen of medications.
“I feel very, very lonely. I feel so anxious,” she said in one clip, according to the Daily Mail. “I know that I need to see a therapist, I know that I need to ask for help.”
In the same video, the mom-of-three said she could feel herself “withering away.”
As her husband’s condition worsened, Emily Long appeared to become overwhelmed at the possibility of one day becoming a single parent.
“Where I’m doing all three bedtimes alone, and then I shut the door to the final kid and I’m totally by myself and I have no one to talk about my day with,” she said.
In another clip posted by The Sun, Emily Long said she was “trying to get myself out of the rut.”
“Our kids are definitely struggling, and now I’m starting to notice some changes in our 3-year-old,” she added.
The Longs’ neighbor, Bevy Ketel, shared her shock at the family’s passing.
“It was a perfect family as far as we knew,” she told CBS Boston.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Ryan Long worked as a school psychologist in the Oyster River Cooperative School District. Emily Long was an operations director for Wing-Itz, a restaurant group in New Hampshire, though her profile showed an “open to work” status.
Ketel described Ryan Long as a pillar of Madbury, as the small community an hour and a half north of Boston mourned his loss.
“He certainly touched a lot of lives. He was part of the fabric of the community and his family goes along with it,” she said.
