Christian Longo: The Dreamer

MaryJane Baker grew up near Ann Arbor, Michigan, and worked in a University of Michigan office. A devout Jehovah’s Witness, she married a fellow congregant, Christian Longo, nearly seven years her junior, in 1993. They had three children: Zachery, Sadie and Madison. Longo kept up a prosperous front while forging checks, and in 2000 he was convicted of forgery and expelled from the congregation.

In 2001 the family drifted through Ohio to the Oregon coast, where Longo worked at a Starbucks kiosk in Newport and moved them into a waterfront condominium. In mid-December he killed all four. Four-year-old Zachery’s body was found in Lint Slough near Waldport on December 19, and three-year-old Sadie’s on December 22. On December 27, divers recovered MaryJane, 34, and two-year-old Madison from suitcases sunk off Newport’s Embarcadero marina. By then Longo was in Mexico. Added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, he was arrested in Tulum on January 13, 2002, posing as journalist Michael Finkel.

In 2003 Longo pleaded guilty to killing MaryJane and Madison but testified that his wife had killed the older children. Jurors rejected that, convicted him on the remaining counts and, on April 16, 2003, sentenced him to death. Oregon’s Supreme Court upheld the sentence in 2006. In December 2022, outgoing Governor Kate Brown commuted all of Oregon’s death sentences, making Longo’s life without parole.