The Associated Press
Jim Baker of Traverse City, Mich., talks about the December deaths of his daughter, MaryJane Longo, and his grandchildren. Baker's son-in-law was captured in Mexico on Sunday and flown Monday to the United States. Christian Longo is accused of killing his family near the Oregon coastal town of Newport.

Wife's father recounts downfall of slain Oregon family

Debt, legal troubles sent murder suspect Christian Longo packing with family

JOHN FLESHER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- Even before losing contact with MaryJane Longo and her three children, relatives feared she might be in trouble.

Her husband, Christian, was on a downward spiral. Charming and businesslike when they married nearly a decade earlier, he was now a desperate man: buried in debt, targeted by lawsuits, charged with fraud and theft.

When the Longos left Michigan last year, MaryJane's three sisters tracked her down and begged her to come home. "They didn't want her to be on the run," said her father, Jim Baker of Traverse City.

But even then, Baker acknowledged, he never suspected Longo would harm his wife and children: "I never heard him raise his voice once to her."

Now, Longo is accused of killing MaryJane, 35, and their children -- Zachary, 4, Sadie Ann, 3, and 2-year-old Madison -- and dumping their bodies in the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. He was arrested in Mexico during the weekend, shortly after the FBI put him on its Ten Most Wanted list.

For Baker's four surviving children, the delay in catching Longo was an added burden.

"I was so busy taking care of things about my daughter that I'd pretty much blocked out thinking about him ... but my kids wanted him caught," Baker said Monday. "They wanted him to pay for what he did to our family."

A father's regrets

Although relieved over Longo's capture, Baker remains sorrowful that he was unable to save MaryJane and his grandchildren.

"You hear about stories like this and you know they're out there, but when it hits home ... it's so devastating to our family. None of us knew what we could have done to prevent this from happening."

Baker, 57, maintenance supervisor for the Traverse City Record-Eagle, said in an interview that he was impressed with Longo when the couple married in 1993.

He dressed well, had a winsome personality and seemed mature, even though he was eight years younger than MaryJane.

They had met at a Jehovah's Witness church. Baker's first wife converted to the religion after they divorced 30 years ago, and MaryJane was raised in the church.

He has four other children, all with his first wife.

Baker, a Methodist, said his relationship with his daughter had become more distant in recent years, in part because she disapproved of his faith. The Longos would not visit him, and their phone conversations were limited to matters such as the weather.

Still, Baker learned from other family members that the Longos were having money troubles. They lived beyond their means, he said, buying snowmobiles, a boat and expensive cars. They had no health insurance.

A self-employed construction cleaner, Christian Longo was convicted in 2000 of check forgery, put on probation for three years and ordered to pay $1,000 a month in restitution.

Credit cards

Longo also took out a credit card in his father's name and ran up a large debt, Baker said. Baker's ex-wife foreclosed on Longo after he stopped making payments on the house she had sold him in Ypsilanti, about 30 miles west of Detroit.

At the end of last summer they moved to Toledo, Ohio -- in violation of Longo's probation terms.

By then, MaryJane's sisters were fearful. They went to Toledo and took her to a coffee shop, where she could speak freely. She insisted she was getting along with her husband and would not leave him.

A few weeks later the sisters contacted their father, who admits he didn't take their concerns seriously enough.

"I said, 'You guys are just overdramatizing this. There's no way he's going to harm these children and my daughter; he just loves them too much.' "

Making plans

Still, he began renovating the lower level of his house in case MaryJane needed a place to stay. His other daughters, meanwhile, decided to return to Toledo and notify police of Longo's probation violation.

But they arrived too late; the family had gone. Baker didn't hear from them again, except for a postcard with an Oklahoma postmark that arrived in October. It said Longo had found a job and things were going well.

Three days before Christmas, Baker was notified that Zachary and Sadie Ann had been found dead in Oregon and that MaryJane and Madison were missing. The bodies of his daughter and youngest grandchild were found Dec. 27.

Baker said his strait-laced daughter would never have approved of her husband's lawbreaking. Yet she was naive and trusting, he said, and would have "pretty much believed anything he told her."

Far from home

But the quiet, easygoing woman had never ventured far beyond the Ann Arbor area and would have been homesick. Baker suspects she finally put her foot down -- and sealed her fate.

"I think that's when he killed her," Baker said. "She wanted to go home. She'd had enough living out of cars."

Even now, he remains shocked over his son-in-law's alleged violence.

"There was no history of him beating on her, being abusive verbally or physically. And then to turn around and kill his family ... I think he had a nervous breakdown. Something snapped. I think he's sick."

Unlike his daughters, who want to attend Longo's trial and confront him at sentencing, Baker said he has no desire to see his son-in-law again.

"As far as I'm concerned, the laws will take care of it and justice will prevail," he said. "They have the death penalty out there."

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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