Career
He and his family often encountered financial trouble due to his spending habits. After the body of his four-year-old son was found on December 19, 2001, divers located the body of his three-year-old daughter. The bodies of Longo"s wife and two-year-old daughter were found five days later.
After he fled the United States, Longo was recognized in Cancún on December 27, 2001, at a hotel.
The next day, in Lincoln County, Oregon, a federal arrest warrant issued in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon charged him with multiple counts of aggravated murder and unlawful flight. Longo left the hotel on January 7, 2002, and was captured six days later without incident in the small town of Tulum, Quintana Roo, about 80 miles south of Cancún.
He was taken into United States. custody at the Houston airport, Texas, on January 14, 2002. Longo was sentenced in 2003 to death.
He has asked to be buried in his boots.
Years later, Longo admitted to being a narcissist in a letter he wrote to KATU-television, a Portland, Oregon, television station. He wrote, in his letter, that he eventually began "studying what a psychologist said I was and came to terms with it, almost totally agreeing that he was right.. his conclusion was the narcissistic personality disorder which he called "compensatory" – basically self-centeredness related to a damaged core sense of self."
When in Mexico, Longo used the name of Michael Finkel, the former New York Times reporter who later chronicled their experiences in his memoir True Story. This was later made into the 2015 film of the same name.
Longo is currently incarcerated at Oregon State Penitentiary.