Taking Down the Serial Killer: Lisa Mae Part 2

Today's story includes discussion of sensitive topics including kidnapping, sexual assault, murder, and crimes against children. Listener discretion is advised. Previously on The Survivor Files.

I started screaming and then I felt the cold steel barrel of a gun to my left temple.

He said, stop screaming or I'm going to kill you.

Lisa Marie May is just 17 years old when she is abducted while riding her bike home from work in November of 1984. She is held in her captor's home for more than 24 hours, restrained, sexually assaulted, and threatened with death.

I think he was trying to live a romantic fantasy because at one point I asked him, why are you doing this to me? He said he was getting back at women in general.

But through it all, Lisa is paying attention to the car, the route, the room. And somehow, she convinces him to let her go. But when Lisa finally makes it home, she faces.

A new nightmare.

No one believes her, not even the police.

She kept saying, there's too many holes in her story. She's not telling the truth.

My name is Elizabeth Smart. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped from my home and held captive for nine months.

I survived.

Now I'm on a journey to uncover how other people survived the moments that should have destroyed.

Them in their own words.

On today's episode of The Survivor Files, our Lisa May finale brings us to the hours after Lisa has escaped her captor and has finally found what she thinks is safety.

With the police.

Did you feel hope in that moment?

I did.

Until I got down to Tampa Police Station. I had to tell my story. I had to be driven around to hospital for a rape kit. I think it was two rape kits, actually.

And it was like I was being violated all over again.

Lisa has spent the night memorizing details. The car, the apartment, the man's face beneath her hands.

When I first got to tell my story, it was a female detective. The last person I wanted to interview with me was a female detective. And the reason being, the two women in my life that are supposed to protect me, my mother and my grandmother, failed me.

They didn't nurture me. They didn't show me love.

I even told my mom what was going on at my grandma's house.

You know what she told me?

What?

If you ever tell anyone I'll take you out of this order myself. I'll kill you. I wanted a male detective. I don't care how detailed. I wasn't embarrassed to talk about it.

Her reaction is understandable. But Lisa also knows this woman is not her mother. She's not her grandmother. So she takes a breath and begins.

We must have sat for hours. And she kept saying, there's too many holes in the stories. And so she gets up. She goes, why don't we go to some water?

I go, okay.

I'm calling as can be.

You're talking a day after. Same day, I go to the rape crisis center. I go to TPD, Tampa Police Office.

She walks out. There must have been another officer at the door. And I hear him say, how's it going in there? There's too many holes in her story. She's not telling the truth.

Which is just wild because your memory is incredible. This is the second trauma of Lisa's story, not the attack. but the disbelief that comes after it. The realization that no one is going to believe what she has survived unless she can prove it.

She comes in, looked at me, she goes, okay, let's start from the beginning. Now I'm done. I want to go home.

I just want to clarify, I want to go home. But you don't, I said, you don't understand. Until you send somebody here that's more intelligent than you are, I no longer want to talk to you.

I mean, that's pretty brave.

I am not a criminal. I'm going home now. They took me home.

And I told my grandmother, and she was there with her boyfriend or my step-grandfather. I told both of them, if you ever touch me again, I will turn the gun on you and I will kill you. You would never rape me again.

The trauma of the last 48 hours has broken something in Lisa. but it has also awakened something, a line she will not let them cross again.

So they sent officers to the house. They felt that I might have felt more comfortable at my grandma's house. And to be honest to them, I wasn't. He could hear our conversations from another room.

And he told me, if you tell the police, the detective, anything going on in this house, I'll come out, I'll kill him, and then I'm going to kill you.

So we talked, told my whole story. Even this detective's like, wow, your story's incredible, you know, and he leaves.

Then, Lisa hears something that she can't ignore. Something that makes everything come together.

The news break came on. I was watching some show. The victim of another body found in a field.

I stopped.

And I am telling you, the hairs on the back of my neck And I'm like, oh my gosh, my abductor's a serial killer.

I knew it.

I knew it was him. I called the police department. I said, hey, get me Larry Pinkerton, Sergeant Pinkerton. I need him to come get me. I know who my abductor is.

He goes, who? I'm like, it's the serial killer.

What?

That makes no sense. I'm telling you. How do you know? I said, I'm telling you. 100% he is the guy.

This time, Lisa is not backing down She knows the truth, and now she has to show them.

I said, we have to go find him. We went around.

They took me to the church, closed my eyes, kind of gave us a sense of direction where we were at. Drove over almost to the exact point where he took me. Just my eyes closed.

Wow. We got back.

They wanted to hypnotize me to see if I saw his face. Well, now I didn't get permission because I'm underage.

It's her step-grandfather that the police go to in order to get that permission.

You know what he tells him? No, send her home.

She's got chores to do. Because my home life would have came out. So Larry walks back in. Pinkerton walks back in and sits down. He takes his wallet. The old accordion picture holder, the side of a wallet. Pictures fall down of his wife and his daughter. He goes, you know, If this ever happened to my family, I would do anything, including hypnotize anybody in my family to help catch this monster.

And I started crying. You want to tell me what's going on at home? I looked at him. I'm like, absolutely.

He was the first person I trusted out of everybody in that office. I told him from the time he started sexually abusing me, raping me with a gun point in my grandma. That afternoon, he went and placed his own handcuffs on him and said, you're going to jail.

This is what rescue feels like for Lisa, not just from the man who abducted her, but from the house that she has been surviving for years.

They took back the house, packed a suitcase. I grabbed that suicide note and I read it.

And I said, God, thank you for not allowing me to do my own will and kill myself.

Do you remember what you had written in the suicide note?

I explained how I was being raped by my grandmother's boyfriend and how my grandmother used to watch and the reason why I wouldn't leave because he would kill my sister. And then I said, it's time for me to go.

Love, Lisa.

For the first time, Lisa can tell the truth. No more protecting her abuser out of fear of retaliation. No more carrying it alone. For the first time, someone says they believe her and they are ready to help.

He got a hold of, I believe it was a Gary Terry. He was in charge of homicide and sex cases at the time. And said, hey, we have another body for you.

He goes, where is it? Here's your thing. She's alive.

In 1984, Tampa, Florida is being terrorized. Women are going missing. Bodies are being found. Authorities say there is a serial killer on the loose, and no one has survived his spree of rape and murder until now.

I told my story over and over again. I said, we need to catch this guy. Let's go.

Let's go. The FBI got involved. They sent my clothing to Washington, D.C. to recover a type of evidence because it was a high-profile case. What broke the case wide open in that he was the guy that took me was the other red fibers was on the other victim's clothing when they were found dead.

Red fibers, like the red shag carpet Lisa had seen in his car.

I remember Pinkerton coming to me and asked me to do a photo lineup. He had six pitchers. So three photos above, three photos below. And he goes, take your time. He shows me the photos. And I scan the top row and the bottom row. And I was like, the one there in the bottom right, the very last picture, that's your guy.

How did they have the picture of him at this point? Had they already arrested him? Once again, Lisa's memory provides the key. She remembers the word she saw on the dashboard.

Of his car.

Magnum.

A Dodge Magnum. Don't forget, before he released Lisa, he stopped by the bank to withdraw money. So all the police had to do was compare the people who visited the bank that day with people who owned a Dodge Magnum. And when they did that, only one name came up.

Robert Joe Long.

He was already under surveillance. So now they got to make sure they're going to get the right guy. Whenever we go to arrest him, they want to make sure I can do a positive ID on him. But that's why they wanted to hypnotize me because maybe subconsciously at some point I saw his face and I realized it.

Even though Lisa never saw his face, she felt it. The pockmarks, the round shape, the mustache, the details he never realized he was giving her.

I saw his face through my hands, remember?

Yes.

You'd be surprised what you could see when your sight's not there. That's how I got to identify him.

That is amazing right there. For eight months, Bobby Joe Long terrorized the city, killing at least eight women. But just days after Lisa shares everything she can remember, she hears the words she has been waiting for. The words the whole city has been waiting for. He is in custody.

I remember being in the office of Blair Pinkerton's. I was sleeping on the couch and he woke me up and I thought I was dreaming.

He goes, we got him. I go, got who? We got the serial killer. We've been looking for this monster for eight to nine months. And in 12 days with your help, we caught him.

12 days? Did you feel like he was going to come back and get you? And especially after you realized that he was the serial killer, did.

You think he was going to come kill you?

Yes.

They actually put me at a sergeant's. Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office sergeant's apartment to keep me safe. I wasn't allowed to read the paper, wasn't allowed to watch the news, wasn't allowed to listen to the radio.

The girl who was not believed, the girl who was called a runaway, is now the girl who breaks the case.

I can't remember a movie theater watching a Chuck Norris movie. And there was another guy, Sergeant Stephen Cribb. And he said he slid his badge on him and said, she got you.

Lisa is now the sole survivor of a serial killer. But she's still only 17. Her life is just beginning.

They finally found my mom after, you know, a few weeks. And they said they needed to come get her. And she's all her own.

She'll be an adult soon. She's all her own.

I remember the abandonment feeling for my mom when she refused to come get me.

And they asked me, do you have any other family here? I was like, I don't. I'm going to be homeless. I was literally going to be homeless now as an adult again. And I said, well, I do have an aunt and uncle that live in Titusville, but I ain't seen them in 10 years. You know, maybe longer. I don't know. I don't know.

The very next day, the very next day, my aunt and uncle came and got me. and they nourished me, and they took care of me, and they showed me what love was about. My aunt taught me how to drive a car, you know, got me back in school. Couldn't finish high school. I was just too far gone. I got my GED, though. I did get that.

Finally, Lisa is in a safe place, supported by people that love her, and ready to start her own life.

I ventured off my own adult world, and I am getting married at the age of 19, and we did have a daughter, one daughter, um, I ended up being a single parent at the age when she was four. It was in the apartment life. I worked three jobs at one time. So I would, you know, steal from Peter to pay Paul. I'd come home to the electricity house sometimes. I mean, lawn chairs and small TVs sitting on top.

Of a milk crate. But we did it. We made it. We did it. I could promise you this. We were never homeless.

And eventually, Lisa finds her way back to the system that had once failed her.

I entered into the sheriff's office. I knew I wanted to be in law enforcement, especially what I've been through. Put myself through my own academy. I'd work at the sheriff's office, get off at night, go straight to the academy for three hours every Saturday for nine months. First firearm, I had to not pay a bill to get my firearm.

I think it was car insurance at the time, but I did it. And I graduated the academy and I became a full-time deputy, Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

So proud of myself.

You should be.

For 35 years, Lisa continues to work as a deputy for the Hillsborough Sheriff's Department. She becomes a school resource officer at a local school.

That was my purpose and to be a deputy to help others because I can empathize with others, especially when it came to children or adults being victimized and being raped or just being abused in general as far as physical.

You know, I can say, hey, This is who I am.

Let's talk about it. Talk about your feelings. You know, God gave me the gift to go on with my life and give back.

Lisa makes the most out of the second chance life offers her. But she has no idea that the story that changed the trajectory of her life has one more twist in store. In 2019, Lisa gets a call from a number she doesn't recognize.

This phone number kept calling me. You're talking like five hours, this number kept calling me.

So I finally answered. Hello, is this Lisa? And I said, it is. What can I do for you?

I'm calling from Governor Ron DeSantis' office in Tallahassee. Governor Ron DeSantis just signed Robert Geelong's death warrant.

I know what death warrant means, But when she said that, for a minute, I was back to being a civilian. I'm like, what's that even mean?

She goes, he's going to be set for execution May 23rd, 2019.

Over three decades have passed since Lisa was abducted and held for more than 26 hours. She built a life after that day. She became a mother, a deputy, a woman with years of distance from the girl she was that night. But when the call comes, Lisa responds in three ways at once. The human in her feels the weight of what an execution means. The deputy in her understands the sentence and the survivor in her knows why it has come to this.

I started crying because the compassionate side of me thought the power that went into this, that had the decision to get him executed, I was the one that got him caught. The law enforcement kicked in. I'm like, hoorah, finally.

You know, from the time I was rescued to the time that my captors were actually tried, it was almost a decade. And it just felt like, like, why did it take so long?

He kept doing appeals, appeals, appeals.

She goes, I don't know how to say this, but We want to invite you to come up here and bring one person with you.

I didn't want to bring anybody. I needed to do this alone.

Did you want to go to it?

Absolutely. And let me explain why.

So first I said, well, I'm all about coming up there.

But let me ask you a question. Why aren't you calling the other victims' families, the victims who didn't survive? She goes, because honestly, you know, if it wasn't for you, he wouldn't have been caught.

You saved countless lives. And we want to make sure that you got the first phone call. Because you deserve that. For what you've been through, we want to reach out to you first.

That's fair.

But just a few days before she is set to leave, she gets another unexpected phone call.

I had gotten a phone call from Robert Geelong's ex-wife. We ran into each other on an interview in New York one time.

We just became friends.

She says, listen, my daughter wants you to call her. She was trying to get me to stop the execution.

Her daughter was.

Oh, you're kidding.

So I get there to go to the execution. I remember driving by. Sergeant Larry Pinkerton was there with me. Stephen Krim, the two detectives I mentioned to you. There was news reporters. There must have been 100 people there. They were all shouting, had signs, stopped the execution.

When Lisa walks into the execution room, beside her are the two men who did what no one else would all those years ago.

Believe her so we finally get in there and um i sat in the first front row and i said hey i want these two with me oh well i know there's limited seats i'm like i don't think you know who i am sir.

Sergeant Larry Pinkerton, this is Stephen Cribb, and I'm a last surviving victim.

They're sitting with me. And guess what? They sat with me, and they held my hand.

Lisa takes her seat beside the men who helped catch her kidnapper. Then the execution begins.

The room was not big. I could see him laying like on a gurney or like a bed, like a hospital bed. His arms were out. I saw IV in his arm. They asked him one question, and do you have anything to say?

He says no. Never opened his eyes. And he was gone.

Did you feel like after he was executed, you had some type of closure or.

Funny you said that. No closure.

Closure came years ago, when I went on my life and became a sheriff deputy and just made my life for me, you know? This is how I look at it. Justice was served the day he was arrested. Justice was completed the day he took his last breath. And I stand by that.

For Lisa, the execution is in closure. It's one part of a much longer process. And as we talked, that brought us to something every survivor has to answer in their own way. What does it mean to move forward? I mean, I feel like, especially as I've gotten older, as I look back at like my 14 year old self and what I experienced and even afterwards, I feel like I look back with so much more compassion and understanding on myself. As you were in law enforcement and you look back at your case, did you look at it differently?

I did, but I had to remind myself to give myself more grace because there were times, I don't know if you ever felt this way, I used to feel victim's remorse.

Why was I the only one left alive? Why didn't he kill me? Or you know, did I bring this on myself? So I was punishing myself, right? So I had to look within and say, hey, give yourself some grace. I was a victim of circumstances. My mother failed me. My grandmother failed me. Some of the officers at Tampa Police Office failed me. And then finally, I was able to break free and say, you know what? It wasn't my fault.

I don't know about you, but when I think of forgiveness, I feel like it's I feel like my definition is almost different than everyone else's because I feel like it's for me. It's like loving myself enough to not carry the hate.

There is no form of genuine, authentic love you can give yourself but to forgive.

I feel the same way. If forgiveness was not for them, it was for me to be free.

One of the things that's so powerful about you telling your story now is that for so long, You weren't really allowed to tell it.

It's crazy how the judicial system fails us.

Back when I had to start going to court, I was never allowed to talk about my 26 hours with him.

My voice was silenced. I was only there to identify clothing and to identify him.

But somehow for all that, victory is on my side.

And here I am. And, you know, my voice was silenced. It's silenced no more.

Is that why you share your story now?

Yes, I share my story because I don't want others' light to be dim. I don't want their light to be blown out. I don't want them to not be able to talk about what happened. It's real to them. They're a victim. They need to be able to express themselves. They need to be able to have people believe their story.

When my voice was taken, I was victimized all over again. I don't want anybody to ever have to experience that anymore.

Today, Lisa continues broadening her work in advocacy and outreach.

Now that I'm retired, I don't have time to do speaking engagements.

I want to start going and talking and telling and empowering others.

Lisa would never say what happened to her was okay. She would never wish it on anyone. But when she looks back, she can see the terrible truth of it. Her life before that night became the reason she was able to survive that night.

Had I not gone through what I had already gone through at home in those four years, if I had lived a normal life, I don't think I would have survived that, the serial killer.

As a matter of fact, I know I wouldn't.

I would have acted different. I probably would have been screaming. I probably would have been dead the minute he took me off my bicycle. You know, it's a weird thing that I was already prepared for this attack because I was going through this at home. I don't think, no, I'm pretty sure. I wouldn't go back and change a thing in my life. because it's maybe the person who I am today.

When you do speak to young people, what advice do you give them if something like this happened to them?

Stay calm. Never give up.

My mantra forever will never give up. Don't give up on the situation. Don't give up on yourself.

Fight.

Even if it's just psychological, fight.

And Lisa's biggest message to anyone listening to her story?

Listen to that victim. I can't tell you enough how bad I wanted something back then, even in the court system. Just listen to me.

Hear me roar today. I'm a lioness and I'm not backing down. I'll continue to say my story, to tell my story. Whoever wants to listen until I take my last breath.

You are absolutely incredible.

And I know you will go on to affect so many more victims for good.

Thank you. It's been an honor and pleasure being on your show, too. So thank you for giving me the opportunity because this also opens windows for me indoors. And I'm looking forward to a new journey and chapter in my life.

I'm so happy for you.

Lisa is the one who survived. But today, she is also the one who speaks for the girl she was, for the victims who never make it home, and for every survivor still waiting to be believed.

Next time on The Survivor Files... They opened.

Half of the box and they pushed me inside. They pulled the pillowcase off my face. And I found myself in this tiny little box.

It's like something out of a horror movie. Eduardo Valseca has been stripped naked and imprisoned inside a box. The walls are just inches from his body and they're covered in sandpaper.

I was bleeding because if you move a little bit, you run. against the same paper.

And the terror is only rising because Eduardo has no idea what they want from him.

They never spoke a word.

Never.

We are giving you an opportunity to connect with the survivors who appear on this podcast. If you have a question for Lisa May or me about our experiences or your own personal challenges, email thesurvivorfiles at gmail.com and we may answer your question in.

An upcoming episode.

Thank you for listening to The Survivor Files. New episodes every Monday. Subscribe, listen, share, and follow us at thesurvivorfilespod on Instagram. The Survivor Files is produced by Marwar Junction Productions for iHeart Podcasts. Our producers are Steve Kniff and Natalie Freed.

Our executive producers are Joseph Freed and Allison Berkley.

The executive producer for iHeart Podcasts is Katrina Norvell.

Taking Down the Serial Killer: Lisa Mae Part 2

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