The suicide note sat on her bed, words still wet with tears she’d shed while writing it.

Lisa McVey, seventeen years old, had made her decision. When she finished her late shift at the Krispy Kreme donut shop in Tampa, Florida, she would ride her bike home one final time. And then, quietly, in the darkness of her room, she would end the pain that had defined her young life.​

It was November 3, 1984, and Lisa had every reason to give up. She lived with her grandmother’s boyfriend—a man who abused her regularly. The trauma had become unbearable. The note she left behind explained everything she couldn’t say out loud.​

But fate had other plans. Because on that bike ride home, something happened that would change Lisa’s life forever—not by ending it, but by giving her a reason to fight for it.​

The Moment Everything Changed

At 2:30 in the morning, Lisa pedaled through the quiet streets of Tampa, the night air cool against her face. She passed a church parking lot, the same route she’d taken countless times before. Everything felt routine, ordinary, safe.​

Then, from the darkness, a man appeared.

He grabbed her by the neck with such force that she fell from her bicycle. Before she could scream, she felt cold metal pressed against her left temple.​

A gun.

“Don’t make a sound,” he commanded, dragging her toward a car parked nearby.​

In that instant, something extraordinary happened inside Lisa’s mind. She had been ready to die just hours earlier. She had written goodbye to a world that had shown her little kindness. But now, faced with someone trying to take that choice away from her, something clicked.​

“I realized that I wanted to live,” Lisa would later say. “When someone else tried to take my life, I suddenly knew that I wanted it. I was going to fight for it.”​

The man shoved her into a red Dodge Magnum. Lisa’s heart pounded, but even in her terror, her mind was already working. She would later tell investigators that years of watching crime shows on television had taught her something crucial: if you’re taken, you have to remember everything.​

Everything.

The First Act of Survival

As the man blindfolded her with rough hands, Lisa did something so subtle, so seemingly insignificant, that he never noticed.​

She clenched her jaw.​

By tightening the muscles in her face while he tied the blindfold, Lisa created a small gap near her nose. When she relaxed her jaw later, that tiny space became a window—a peephole through which she could see fragments of the world around her.​

Through that narrow opening, as the car moved through Tampa’s streets, Lisa saw details that would later prove crucial. She noticed the dashboard, and on it, a single word etched in chrome: “Magnum”.​

She observed the car’s interior—red carpet on the floor, white seats. She felt every turn the car made, counted the minutes they drove, listened to the sounds outside the windows—highway traffic, then quieter residential streets.​

The man—later identified as Bobby Joe Long, a serial killer who had already murdered eight women—drove Lisa to his apartment. He bound her hands. He gagged her. And then, over the next twenty-six hours, he repeatedly assaulted her.​

But while Bobby Joe Long believed he had complete control, Lisa McVey was doing something he never suspected. She wasn’t just surviving—she was investigating.​

The Strategy That Saved Her Life

At one point during her captivity, Long removed Lisa’s blindfold briefly but kept her in darkness. Later, he allowed her to use his bathroom, still blindfolded.​

This was the moment Lisa had been waiting for.

Moving slowly and deliberately, she touched every surface she could reach. She pressed her fingers against the sink, the toilet, the wall tiles, the doorknob—deliberately leaving her fingerprints on as many surfaces as possible.​

“I knew that if he killed me, I wanted to make sure that I left something behind,” Lisa later explained. “I wanted the police to know I had been there. I wanted them to be able to find him.”​

It was a calculated decision made under unimaginable pressure. Most people, blindfolded and terrorized in a killer’s bathroom, would simply try to survive the moment. But Lisa was thinking beyond her own survival. She was gathering evidence. She was building a case.​

But her most brilliant strategy was yet to come.

Becoming Human In His Eyes

Hours into her ordeal, Lisa began talking to Bobby Joe Long. Not begging for her life, not crying for mercy, but actually conversing with him.​

She asked him questions about himself. She listened when he answered. She offered sympathy when he mentioned he had recently broken up with a girlfriend.​

And then, Lisa told him a story.

She said she was an only child. She said her father was very ill and that she was his only caregiver. She said he needed her, that without her, he would have no one.​

None of it was true. But it worked.​

What Lisa was doing—though she couldn’t have named it at the time—was humanizing herself. She was transforming, in Long’s mind, from an object to be used and discarded into a real person with a family, with responsibilities, with people who depended on her.​

Psychologists who later studied the case noted that Lisa’s instincts were remarkably sophisticated. She understood, perhaps unconsciously, that predators dehumanize their victims to justify their actions. By forcing Long to see her as a daughter caring for a sick father, she made it harder for him to see her as disposable.​

At one moment, Long placed Lisa’s hand on his face, perhaps to intimidate her, perhaps to assert dominance. But Lisa used this too. She carefully felt the contours of his face—his snub nose, his small mustache, the shape of his features.​

She was memorizing him, piece by piece, in case she lived to identify him.​

The Television That Changed Everything

Sometime during the second day of her captivity, Long turned on his television. A news broadcast filled the room, and Lisa heard something that made her blood run cold.​

The news was reporting her disappearance. She was classified as a missing person. Her face was on television screens across Tampa.​

For a moment, Lisa felt panic rising. If people were looking for her, if the news was covering her case, surely Long would realize how much attention her disappearance was getting. Surely he would decide she was too risky to keep alive.​

She started to cry.

Long’s response was immediate and chilling: “If you scream one more time, I’ll be forced to put a bullet in your head. Stop crying”.​

Lisa stopped. She couldn’t afford to lose control now. She had come too far. She had gathered too much information. She couldn’t let fear undo everything she had worked for.​

So she took a breath and went back to her strategy: stay calm, stay observant, stay alive.​

The Unexpected Question

After twenty-six hours—longer than any of Long’s previous victims had survived—something unprecedented happened.​

Bobby Joe Long asked Lisa where she lived.​

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. After everything he had done, after the hours of assault and terror, he was asking for directions to her home—not to stalk her family, but to take her back.​

Lisa gave him the address, hardly daring to hope this meant what she thought it meant.​

Long bundled her back into his red Dodge Magnum, blindfold still in place. He drove through Tampa’s streets while Lisa, still using that tiny gap near her nose, watched the world pass by through her restricted view.​

He stopped at an ATM. Lisa heard the distinctive sounds of the machine—the beeps, the mechanical dispensing of cash. She filed this detail away with all the others.​

Then he drove to a gas station. More details to remember. More pieces of evidence.​

Finally, Long pulled into a parking lot behind a business near Lisa’s grandmother’s home. The car stopped.​

“I’m sorry,” Long said—words that seemed impossible coming from someone who had terrorized her for more than a day. “I didn’t kill you because of your father. He needs you”.​

The lie Lisa had told—about being her father’s only caregiver—had saved her life.​

Long ordered her to keep the blindfold on for five minutes after she exited the car. Then the door opened, and Lisa stepped out onto pavement that had never felt so solid, so real, so beautiful.​

She waited. She counted. And when enough time had passed, she ripped off the blindfold and ran.​

The Home That Didn’t Feel Safe

Lisa arrived at her grandmother’s house at approximately 4:30 in the morning, breathless and terrified that Long might change his mind and come back for her.​

What happened next was almost as traumatic as what she had just survived.

When she tried to explain what had happened—the abduction, the assault, the twenty-six hours of horror—her grandmother’s boyfriend didn’t believe her.​

Instead of comfort, instead of calling the police, instead of getting her medical help, he beat her. He interrogated her for five hours, accusing her of lying, demanding to know where she had “really” been.​

Lisa’s story never wavered. Despite the abuse, despite the disbelief, despite her exhaustion and trauma, she told the same consistent account over and over again.​

Finally, hours after she had escaped from a serial killer, someone made a phone call to the police.​

When officers arrived and took Lisa’s statement, they were initially skeptical. A teenager shows up claiming she was held captive by a man for over a day, assaulted repeatedly, then released? It seemed implausible. Cases like that didn’t usually end with the victim walking free.​

But then Lisa started providing details. And the more she talked, the more the investigators realized they weren’t dealing with a typical teenage runaway or a fabricated story.​

The Details That Changed Everything

Lisa described the car in precise terms: a red Dodge Magnum with white interior seats and red carpeting. She described the word “Magnum” on the dashboard.​

She recounted the route they had taken—the turns, the approximate driving time, the sounds she had heard.​

She described her abductor’s physical features in remarkable detail, even though she had been blindfolded for most of her captivity. She talked about his snub nose, his small mustache, the feel of his face under her hands.​

She told them about the ATM stop, giving them a timeframe for when he had withdrawn money.​

And she told them something that seemed almost too clever to be believable: she had deliberately left her fingerprints all over his bathroom.​

Detectives took the clothes Lisa had been wearing and sent them to the forensic lab. What they found would connect her case to something far darker than anyone had initially suspected.​

The Red Fibers

The forensic analysis of Lisa’s clothing revealed something critical: red carpet fibers.​

These weren’t just any fibers. They were synthetic, with a specific dye pattern and manufacturing characteristics. And they were identical to fibers that had been found on multiple murder victims across the Tampa Bay area over the previous months.​

For weeks, Tampa police had been hunting a serial killer. Women—most of them sex workers—had been disappearing, only to turn up dead days later in remote locations. The victims showed signs of sexual assault, restraint, and strangulation.​

The only consistent evidence linking the cases were these red carpet fibers, found on victim after victim. Investigators had theorized they came from a vehicle, but without more information, they had no way to narrow down the suspect pool.​

Now, here was a living witness, wearing clothes covered in those same distinctive fibers.​

Lisa McVey hadn’t just survived an assault. She had survived an encounter with the killer who had been terrorizing Tampa for months.​

And unlike his other victims, Lisa was alive to tell investigators everything she knew.​

The Investigation Intensifies

Detective Larry Pinkerton was assigned to Lisa’s case. He listened carefully to her detailed account and made a decision that would prove crucial: he believed her.​

Based on Lisa’s description of the word “Magnum” on the dashboard, investigators determined that only one vehicle model featured that specific branding in that location: the Dodge Magnum, produced between 1978 and 1979.​

Police pulled records for every registered Dodge Magnum in the Tampa Bay area. The list contained 486 names.​

Then they cross-referenced those names with another list: people who had used ATMs in the specific area Lisa described, during the early morning hours when she said her abductor had stopped to withdraw cash.​

One name appeared on both lists: Robert Joseph Long.​

Bobby Joe Long.

Investigators pulled his driver’s license photo and added it to a photo lineup—a collection of men with similar features.​

They brought Lisa in to see if she could identify her abductor from the photographs. Remember, she had been blindfolded for nearly the entire ordeal. She had never seen his face clearly.​

But she had felt his face with her hands.​

Lisa studied the photos carefully. She looked at the nose shapes, the facial structures, trying to match what her hands had felt to what her eyes were now seeing.​

Then she pointed to one photo: Robert Joseph Long.​

“That’s him,” she said.​

 

The Man Behind The Monster

Robert Joseph Long—Bobby Joe to those who knew him—was born October 14, 1953, in Kenova, West Virginia. His childhood reads like a textbook case of what creates a predator, though understanding is not the same as excusing.​

His mother, Louella, worked as a cocktail waitress and allegedly engaged in sex work. She brought different men home constantly while Bobby Joe was growing up. According to court records, she made him sleep in the same bed with her until he was thirteen years old.​

At school, Bobby Joe was mercilessly bullied. He had a genetic condition called Klinefelter syndrome, which caused him to develop breasts during puberty—a source of endless humiliation from classmates. The rage and shame from those years festered inside him, morphing into a virulent hatred of women.​

In 1974, Long married his high school sweetheart, Cynthia. They had two children together. But the marriage was troubled from the start. Bobby Joe became increasingly controlling and violent. He demanded sex multiple times a day. When Cynthia couldn’t or wouldn’t comply, he became enraged.​

Then came the motorcycle accident that changed everything.

In 1974, Long crashed his motorcycle and suffered severe head trauma. He was in a coma for weeks. When he woke, those who knew him said he was different—more volatile, more aggressive, with explosive anger he couldn’t control.​

Medical experts would later testify that the brain injury may have damaged his impulse control and amplified his already-present violent tendencies. But it didn’t create those tendencies. They had always been there, lurking beneath the surface.​

After his divorce in 1980, Bobby Joe Long’s hatred of women crystallized into something deadly.​

He began hunting.

The Bodies Before Lisa

Michelle Denise Simms was twenty-two years old when she disappeared on May 27, 1984. She worked as an exotic dancer and occasionally engaged in sex work to make ends meet.​

Three days after she vanished, two people driving along a rural road in Hillsborough County spotted something horrific: a nude body lying in tall grass near the roadside.​

Michelle had been strangled. Her hands were bound. She had been sexually assaulted and posed in a deliberately degrading position. The only evidence left behind were tire tracks and those mysterious red carpet fibers clinging to her skin.​

On May 29, just two days after Michelle disappeared, twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Loudenback was reported missing. Her body was found in an orange grove, nude, strangled, sexually assaulted. More red fibers. More tire tracks. The same killer.​

The killings accelerated.

June 8: Chanel Devoun Williams, eighteen. Found in an overgrown lot, nude, hands bound, strangled.​

June 24: Karen Beth Dinsfriend, twenty-eight. Discovered off Memorial Highway, same pattern—nude, bound, sexually assaulted, strangled. Red fibers on her body.​

July 15: Kimberly Kyle Hopps, twenty-two. Body left near Tampa, displaying the same ritualistic elements.​

August 14: Virginia Lee Johnson, eighteen. Found strangled in a field.​

September 7: Kim Marie Swann, twenty-one. Her body was discovered in a ditch.​

October 7: Vicki Marie Elliot, twenty-one. Another dancer, another sex worker, another woman whose life was deemed disposable by a man consumed with rage.​

Eight women dead in less than six months. All sex workers or exotic dancers. All strangled. All sexually assaulted. All discarded like trash in remote locations around Tampa Bay.​

The media dubbed him the “Classified Ad Rapist” because investigators believed he was using newspaper ads to lure some victims. But most of the women were simply picked up off the streets where they worked, vulnerable and alone.​

Police were desperate. They had the red carpet fibers. They had tire impressions. They had DNA evidence. But in 1984, DNA technology was still in its infancy. There was no database to search, no way to match samples unless they had a suspect.​

Bobby Joe Long was hunting freely, and no one could stop him.

Until Lisa McVey climbed onto her bicycle on the night of November 3, 1984.​

The Surveillance That Saved Lives

After Lisa identified Bobby Joe Long from the photo lineup, detectives faced a crucial decision. They had circumstantial evidence—the car, the ATM transaction, Lisa’s identification—but they didn’t have enough for an arrest warrant that would hold up in court.​

They needed more. They needed solid forensic evidence linking Long to the crime scenes.​

So they did something both brilliant and terrifying: they put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance.​

Detective Larry Pinkerton and his team watched Long’s every move. They followed him to work at his job as an X-ray technician. They tracked him to bars, to restaurants, to gas stations. They photographed his red Dodge Magnum, confirming the distinctive tire combination Lisa had described.​

And while they watched, they prayed he wouldn’t kill again.​

But Bobby Joe Long’s appetite for violence couldn’t be sated.

On November 15, 1984—just twelve days after he released Lisa McVey—Long abducted a woman named Artis Ann Wick from a parking lot. The next day, her body was found in a rural area. She had been raped and strangled, left posed in the killer’s signature style.​

Police, watching Long around the clock, hadn’t seen him commit this crime. Somehow, in the brief moments when surveillance teams were changing shifts or he was inside buildings, he had managed to abduct and murder another victim.​

The guilt weighed heavily on the investigators. If they had arrested him earlier, on thinner evidence, Artis Ann Wick might still be alive. But without solid proof, any arrest might have resulted in Long walking free on a technicality—free to kill indefinitely.​

They had to be certain.

The Arrest

On November 16, 1984, police executed a search warrant on Bobby Joe Long’s apartment and vehicle.​

Inside his red Dodge Magnum, forensic technicians found exactly what they were looking for: red nylon carpet that perfectly matched the fibers found on eight murder victims and on Lisa McVey’s clothing.​

In his apartment, they recovered photographs of women who appeared to have been taken without their knowledge—surveillance photos of potential victims. They found ligatures similar to those used to bind the murder victims. They found items of women’s jewelry that didn’t belong to anyone Long had a relationship with.​

In Lisa’s bathroom—the one where she had deliberately touched every surface—technicians lifted her fingerprints. Just as she had intended, she had left proof that she had been there.​

Bobby Joe Long was arrested and charged with the kidnapping and sexual battery of Lisa McVey.​

In custody, faced with overwhelming evidence, Long began to talk.​

He confessed to killing ten women. He provided details that only the killer could know—where he had picked them up, what they had been wearing, where he had left their bodies. He even led investigators to remains that hadn’t yet been discovered.​

One of those was Lana Long, a twenty-year-old exotic dancer who had disappeared on September 24. Her body was found based on Bobby Joe Long’s directions, decomposed beyond recognition, identified only through dental records. She was the ninth confirmed victim.​

Kim Marie Swann, found in early October, was the tenth.​

And there were others he alluded to but never fully confessed—women whose disappearances might never be solved, whose families might never have closure.​

The Question No One Could Answer

In the interrogation room, Bobby Joe Long sat across from detectives who had spent months hunting him. They had one question that haunted them: Why did you let Lisa McVey go?​

Every other woman Long had abducted had died. He kept them for hours, assaulted them, then strangled them and dumped their bodies. But Lisa—Lisa he drove home and released.​

Long’s answer was chilling in its simplicity: “She was different”.​

He said Lisa had reminded him of his ex-wife when they were young. She had talked to him, listened to him, seemed to care about what he said. And when she told him about her sick father who needed her, something in that story had reached whatever small part of his humanity remained.​

It was the lie that saved her life. The fiction about a dying father who depended on her had given Long permission to see her as human rather than disposable.​

But there was something else too, something Long couldn’t articulate: Lisa hadn’t behaved like a victim. She hadn’t begged or cried hysterically or made him feel powerful in the way his rage demanded. She had been calm, conversational, almost friendly. She had disrupted the psychological script he followed with his other victims.​

By refusing to play the role of helpless prey, Lisa had confused his predatory instincts just enough to save her own life.​

Justice, Delayed But Delivered

The trial of Bobby Joe Long began in 1985. He was charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery.​

The evidence was overwhelming. The forensic fibers. The tire impressions matching his vehicle. The DNA. His own confessions. Lisa McVey’s testimony. The photographs and items found in his possession.​

The defense argued diminished capacity due to his traumatic brain injury and childhood abuse. Expert witnesses testified about his Klinefelter syndrome, his head trauma, the damage visible on brain scans.​

The prosecution countered with a simple truth: thousands of people suffer brain injuries and childhood trauma without becoming serial killers. Bobby Joe Long had made choices. He had hunted vulnerable women deliberately. He had refined his methods with each killing. That required planning, forethought, and awareness of right and wrong.​

The jury deliberated for less than five hours.​

Guilty on all counts.

The sentencing phase determined his fate: death by lethal injection for the murder of Michelle Simms, plus 26 life sentences for the other killings and assaults.​

Bobby Joe Long was sent to Florida State Prison to await execution.​

Then began three decades of appeals.

Thirty-Four Years On Death Row

The American criminal justice system moves slowly, especially in capital cases. Bobby Joe Long’s attorneys filed appeal after appeal, arguing procedural errors, new evidence, mental incompetence.​

Each appeal was denied. Each time, the original verdict and sentence were upheld.​

The families of his victims waited. Year after year, they attended hearings, read impact statements, and returned home without closure.​

Lisa McVey, meanwhile, was building a life.

From Victim To Advocate

After the trial, Lisa tried to return to some kind of normalcy. But normal felt impossible.​

She had survived a serial killer. She had testified in court, reliving her trauma in front of strangers and cameras. She had helped put a monster behind bars. But the victory felt hollow because the trauma still lived inside her.​

Lisa struggled with PTSD. She had nightmares. She jumped at sudden sounds. Intimacy was difficult. Trust was nearly impossible.​

But she refused to let what Bobby Joe Long had done to her become the only thing that defined her.​

Lisa finished her education. She studied law enforcement and criminal justice. And then she did something remarkable: she applied to work for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office—the same agency that had saved her life.​

She became a deputy. Then a detective. Eventually, she specialized in cases involving missing and exploited children—using her own experience to help other victims find justice and healing.​

Lisa married. She had children of her own. She built the family she had told Bobby Joe Long about—the one that had been a lie when she said it but became truth through sheer force of will.​

And she began speaking publicly about her experience, teaching others the survival strategies that had saved her life.​

May 23, 2019: The Day Justice Was Finally Served

For thirty-four years, Bobby Joe Long lived on death row at Florida State Prison. He aged from thirty-one to sixty-five. His hair turned gray. His body weakened. But he never showed remorse.​

On May 23, 2019, after exhausting every legal avenue for appeal, Bobby Joe Long was executed by lethal injection at 6:55 p.m..​

Lisa McVey—now Lisa McVey Noland, a wife, mother, and master deputy—was invited to witness the execution.​

She attended, standing behind the glass with the families of Long’s other victims.​

“I wanted to be the first person he saw,” Lisa later said. “For 34 years, he knew I was out here. He knew that his last victim became a police officer. He knew that I was the one who got away, the one who helped catch him.”​

As the chemicals flowed into Long’s veins, Lisa felt something she hadn’t expected: not satisfaction, not triumph, but a profound sense of closure.​

“It felt like the final chapter closing,” she reflected. “Not just for me, but for all his victims and their families. He couldn’t hurt anyone else. Ever.”​

Bobby Joe Long’s last words were an apology to the families of his victims—words that came three and a half decades too late.​

The Lessons Lisa Teaches

Today, Lisa McVey Noland travels across the United States speaking to law enforcement agencies, victim advocacy groups, schools, and community organizations. Her message is clear: knowledge can save your life.​

These are the survival strategies Lisa teaches based on her own experience:

Strategy #1: Leave Evidence Deliberately

Lisa’s decision to touch every surface in Long’s bathroom was brilliant criminal investigation thinking under extreme duress.​

“If you’re taken somewhere, leave traces of yourself,” Lisa advises. “Touch things. Pull out strands of your hair and drop them. Scratch surfaces. If you can, hide something small that belongs to you. Make it so that even if the worst happens, investigators can prove you were there.”​

This strategy requires clear thinking during terror, but it can make the difference between a case going cold and a killer being caught.​

Strategy #2: Memorize Every Detail

Lisa’s years watching crime shows had taught her that details matter. She counted the stairs in Long’s apartment. She memorized the dashboard of his car. She listened for distinctive sounds—the ATM beeps, the gas station chimes.​

“Your memory becomes your witness statement,” Lisa teaches. “Note everything: What does your attacker look like? Sound like? Smell like? What’s in the vehicle or room? What route are you taking? What time is it? All of these details help police build a case.”​

She recommends that people practice this skill in everyday life—noticing details about surroundings, license plates, people’s features—so that in a crisis, the skill is already developed.​

Strategy #3: Make Yourself Human

Perhaps Lisa’s most powerful tactic was talking to Bobby Joe Long, asking about his life, sharing (fictional) information about her own family.​

“Predators dehumanize their victims,” Lisa explains. “They can’t do what they do if they see you as a real person. So you have to force them to see you that way. Talk about your family. Use their name if you learn it. Ask them questions. Be calm if you can. It’s counterintuitive—you want to fight, to scream—but sometimes strategic compliance is smarter.”​

This doesn’t work with every attacker, Lisa is careful to note. But in situations where the perpetrator keeps the victim alive for a period of time, building even minimal rapport can increase survival odds.​

Strategy #4: The Subtle Acts of Resistance

Lisa tightening her jaw to create slack in her blindfold was a masterstroke. That tiny gap allowed her to see the dashboard, to observe details that would later identify Long.​

“Little acts of resistance and intelligence can make huge differences,” Lisa teaches. “If you’re being restrained, flex your muscles to create slack. If you’re blindfolded, try to create a small gap. If you’re being transported, pay attention to turns, sounds, time elapsed. These small acts might seem insignificant in the moment, but they can be critical later.”​

Strategy #5: Know When To Fight, When To Comply

Lisa emphasizes that there’s no one-size-fits-all response to being attacked.​

“If you’re in a public place and someone grabs you, fight like hell. Scream. Run. Make a scene,” she advises. “Studies show that resisting immediately increases your chances of escape. But if you’re already isolated, already under weapon control, already in their vehicle or home, the strategy changes. That’s when you assess: Can I physically overpower this person? If the answer is no, then you switch to strategic compliance and evidence gathering.”​

The key is constant assessment of the situation and adapting your response accordingly.​

Strategy #6: Never Stop Looking For Your Opportunity

For twenty-six hours, Lisa waited for her moment. She didn’t act impulsively. She watched, learned, and prepared.​

“Survival isn’t about one dramatic moment,” Lisa teaches. “It’s about staying alert, staying alive, and waiting for your opportunity. Sometimes that opportunity is immediate. Sometimes it takes hours or days. But you have to stay mentally strong enough to recognize it when it comes.”​

Strategy #7: Use The Aftermath To Catch Them

Lisa reported her assault immediately, even when her own family didn’t believe her. She gave police detailed information. She cooperated fully with the investigation.​

“So many assault survivors don’t report because they’re afraid they won’t be believed, or they’re ashamed, or they just want to forget,” Lisa says with compassion. “I understand those feelings. But reporting isn’t just about getting justice for yourself. It’s about stopping your attacker from hurting someone else. Your testimony, your evidence, your willingness to come forward—that can save the next potential victim’s life.”​

The Message To Survivors

Lisa’s advocacy work extends beyond teaching tactical survival skills. She’s a vocal supporter of assault survivors, particularly those who, like her, experienced abuse in their own homes before being victimized by strangers.​

“I was already a victim when Bobby Joe Long grabbed me,” Lisa shares openly. “I was being abused at home. I was suicidal. I felt worthless. And that’s why I want survivors to know: what happened to you doesn’t define your worth. You’re not damaged. You’re not broken beyond repair. You’re a survivor, and survival is the first step toward thriving.”​

She acknowledges that healing isn’t linear.​

“Some days are harder than others,” Lisa admits. “Even now, decades later, I have moments when the trauma resurfaces. That’s normal. That’s part of living with PTSD. But it doesn’t control my life anymore. I control it.”​

Lisa encourages survivors to seek professional help, to build support networks, and to find purpose in their pain.​

“For me, purpose came through helping others,” she says. “Not everyone’s purpose will look the same. Some survivors want to speak publicly. Some want to work in victim services. Some want to move on privately and never talk about what happened. All of those choices are valid. You get to decide what your healing looks like.”​

The Ripple Effect of One Brave Choice

If Lisa McVey had not fought to survive that night in November 1984, Bobby Joe Long would have continued killing.​

After Lisa escaped, investigators reviewed missing persons reports and unsolved cases across Florida. They found several women whose disappearances matched Long’s patterns but whose bodies had never been found.​

How many more women would have vanished if Lisa hadn’t memorized those details? If she hadn’t left her fingerprints? If she hadn’t identified him from a photo?​

The answer is unknowable but certainly more than zero.

Lisa’s courage didn’t just save her own life. It saved the lives of every woman Bobby Joe Long would have targeted in the future. It gave closure to the families of his confirmed victims. And it taught a generation of law enforcement officers and potential victims that survival is possible, even against the most terrifying odds.​

The Suicide Note That Was Never Used

In interviews, Lisa has spoken about the suicide note she wrote the night she was abducted.​

“I keep it as a reminder,” she says. “A reminder of how dark things were, and how far I’ve come. That girl who wrote that note thought her life was over, that she had nothing to live for. And now I’m a mother, a grandmother, a law enforcement professional. I’ve helped solve cases and save lives. I’ve spoken to thousands of people. I’ve built a beautiful life.”​

She pauses, emotion flickering across her face.

“Bobby Joe Long tried to take everything from me. He tried to make me another nameless victim. But I refused. I fought. I survived. And I made sure he paid for every single person he hurt.”

The note stays in a drawer, unread for years at a time, a relic of a darkness that no longer has power over her.​

The Legacy

In 2018, Lisa McVey Noland’s story was adapted into a Lifetime movie titled “Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey”. The film brought her story to millions of viewers worldwide, educating a new generation about survival tactics and the reality of serial predators.​

Lisa served as a consultant on the film, ensuring the details were accurate and respectful to the memory of Long’s victims.​

“I want people to watch it and learn,” Lisa said of the movie. “I want teenage girls to see it and know what to do if something similar happens to them. I want parents to have conversations with their kids about safety. I want law enforcement to remember that victims can be incredible sources of information if we just believe them and listen.”​

The “believe them and listen” part is crucial to Lisa. She remembers how her grandmother’s boyfriend didn’t believe her. She remembers the initial skepticism from some investigators.​

“Victims already feel powerless,” Lisa emphasizes. “When the people who are supposed to protect you don’t believe you, it compounds the trauma. We have to do better. We have to listen. We have to take every report seriously.”​

The Woman She Became

Lisa McVey Noland is now in her late fifties. She has lived far more years as a survivor and thriver than she did as a victim.​

She works as a master deputy specializing in missing and exploited children. She’s married. She’s a mother and grandmother. She speaks internationally about survival and advocacy.​

And when she tells her story, she doesn’t do it for sympathy or attention. She does it because she knows that somewhere, someone listening might need those strategies someday.​

“If even one person remembers something I taught and it helps them survive, then telling my story over and over is worth it,” Lisa says.​

She’s been asked many times if she’s angry about what happened to her, if she wishes she could have avoided that night in November 1984.​

Her answer is nuanced.

“Of course I wish it hadn’t happened,” she says. “I wish Bobby Joe Long had never existed. I wish those ten women were still alive, living full lives with their families. But I can’t change the past. All I can do is use it to create something meaningful.”​

And meaningful is exactly what she’s created: a career dedicated to protecting the vulnerable, a platform for teaching survival, and a living testament to the power of human resilience.​

The Final Word

On the night of November 3, 1984, Lisa McVey pedaled her bicycle toward what she thought was the end of her life.​

Instead, she found her beginning.​

In the twenty-six hours that followed, she displayed courage that most people couldn’t imagine. She kept her mind sharp when terror should have shattered it. She made strategic decisions that saved not only her life but the lives of potential future victims.​

And in the decades since, she’s transformed personal tragedy into public good, turning her worst experience into a teaching tool that has reached millions.​

Bobby Joe Long took eight years to kill ten women and terrorize an entire community. Lisa McVey took twenty-six hours to end his reign of terror.​

One girl. One bicycle. One decision to fight for a life she had been ready to give up.​

That’s the power of survival. That’s the power of refusing to be a victim. That’s the power of one brave choice made in darkness.

Lisa McVey wrote a suicide note on November 3, 1984.​

But she never needed it.

Because on that night, instead of ending, her life was just beginning.​