Lisa McVey had a difficult start in life. Her mother was an alcoholic and drug addict who ended up living on the streets. At age 14, McVey went to live with her grandmother and her boyfriend. After suffering years of sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of her grandmother’s boyfriend, McVey, who was now 17-years-old, decided that she could cope with the trauma no longer and opted to end her own life.
In the early morning hours of the 3rd of November, 1984, McVey left her shift at a Tampa, Florida, Krispy Kreme and started to cycle home. She had decided that when she got home, she was going to carry out her plan. She had already written her suicide note. However, the earth had different plans for McVey that night and a chance encounter with evil gave McVey the determination she needed to survive, and ultimately, to live.
As McVey was cycling home, a car approached her from behind and continually honked their horn, in a bid to get her attention. Ignoring it, she continued on her journey. Moments later, she turned around and noticed that the same car was now parked at the side of the road. Suddenly, she was yanked off her bicycle. She felt the cold barrel of a gun on her forehead as she was forced into the car that had been following her. The unidentified man threatened McVey with a knife before blindfolding her, binding her and driving off into the night.
The kidnapper drove McVey to his apartment where she he raped the teenager numerous times. The main thought running through McVey’s head was that she was going to be murdered and that she didn’t want to die despite the fact that she had been planning on killing herself just hours earlier. “I was deathly afraid that he was going to kill me,” she said. “Here I was thinking about killing myself, and now I was going to be fighting for my life.”1
What McVey didn’t know was that the man who had abducted her was infamous serial killer, Bobby Joe Long. By the time McVey was abducted, Long had already brutally raped and murdered at least ten women in Florida’s Tampa strip.
Using her wit, McVey knew that if she wanted to survive, she would have to try and earn her captor’s trust. She asked him what his motivation was for hurting her; he didn’t even know her. Long claimed that he had gone through a bitter breakup. “He said he was doing this to me because he was getting back at women in general for a really bad break up with another girl,” she recalled.2 Finally, McVey told Long she would have been proud to be his girlfriend and that he seemed like a decent man, just misunderstood. McVey made up a story that she was an only child and that she had a sick father she needed to take care of. And with that, Long took sympathy on McVey and dropped her off after a traumatizing 26 hour ordeal.
“When he released me and drove off, I took off my blindfold and saw this amazing oak tree. I had wanted to die before and now I wanted to live,” she said. McVey felt as though she had been given a new lease on life. “I got a second chance at life,” she said.
Thankfully, she managed to get a peek of Bobby’s face when her blindfold was lifted and was able to give this description to the police along with a description of the car he was driving. Before dropping her off, Long had stopped at an ATM and McVey could see that she was near a Howard Johnson’s motel and a Quality Inn. After McVey went to police to report her abduction, investigators searched for an ATM near those two hotels. There was only one. They then had the bank give them a list of people who made transactions that night at around the same time McVey was released. There was only one: Bobby Joe Long.3
McVey was the only ever victim of Bobby Joe Long to survive being abducted by him. He confessed to ten murders and a spate of over 50 rapes across the state of Florida. He was sentenced to death. As he languishes on death row, Lisa McVey – now Lisa McVey Noland – is a sheriff’s deputy at Hillsborough County, close to where she was abducted. “I wasn’t going to allow anybody to hurt me again and the only way I knew how to do that was to get into law enforcement,” she said. “My empowerment comes from being so helpless and lost, that feeling I had when I was 17 years old. I’m not lost any more. I’m on top of my mountain and it feels pretty good.”
In April of 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Bobby Joe Long’s death warrant and he is now scheduled to die by lethal injection. McVey says that she fully intends to be there to watch Long take his last breath. She will be wearing a t-shirt with the word “Long” on the front and “Overdue” on the back.4
Footnotes:
- The Tampa Tribune, 23 October, 2011 – “Now a Deputy, Survivor Tells her Story Tonight”
- The People, 16 April, 2015 – “Bringing Down a Serial Killer”
- The Tampa Tribune, 31 October, 1993 – “Long to Return for 3rd Murder Trial”
- Patch, 3 May, 2019 – “Bobby Joe Long Denied Stay Of Execution; Surviving Victim Speaks”
Comments:
The use of the victim’s last name was pretty confusing- Is She “Nolan” or “Noland”?
Anyway- women like her are the true role models for others.
OMG what a strong and tough woman. To be able to recall all those things under such duress. Who knows how many he would have killed if she didn’t escape! Tough woman, my idol.
What saddened me is also the female police..depicted as uncaring no rush to get her to hospital!!
I remember when Bobby Joe Long was active… I was living in Florida at the time. Very scary time for young women. This lady is very smart and brave. Who knows how many lives she saved?
Bobby Joe Long was “executed” this month. Finally. Why did it take 34 years to euthanize a serial killer? Once convicted, he should have been executed within months, if not days. What a ridiculous waste of time and money. I hope he is roasting in hell.
it’s a long process bc there needs to be the chance for multiple appeals. for a case like this it’s kind of pointless but for nearly every other case, there’s still some doubt that needs to be dealt with. that’s why i’m against the death penalty, personally— the process is far too long & costly, and the risk of killing an innocent person far outweighs any benefit
I can say with almost 100% certainty that innocent people have been sentenced to something less than death and have ended up dying in prison. Should we not be imprisoning criminals for fear that we may imprison an innocent person who ends up dying there.
Would you rather he lived with you? Say this girl was you or a child of yours, would you feel the same way about death penalty? Euthanasia is a way better way to go than electric chair and frankly he should have died sooner!
I would want him to rot and think about what he did. Just like Chris Watts is doing!!!!
Think about what he did??? He’s a psychopath who has no conscience. Ppl like that have no remorse no sense of regret.
You’re missing the whole point! They need yo be taken off the street! Not housed in a prison that we pay for!
Execution by the state costs more than housing a criminal for the rest of their lives, just FYI.
Because that’s how death row typically works. There are appeals after appeals just to the up the court system and drag it out longer. This is the reason some same life in priaon is better. They can sit and rot everyday and think about what they did.
I wonder if you would feel the same if it were your daughter who was brutalized and killed by this monster!!
Before my wife and I got married, we were required to take sort of a “prep course” with a couple who had been married for many years. One of the things we discussed was our feelings about certain things, one of which was the death penalty. I stated I was for it while my wife is against it. The other couple were both for it, but the woman said she was never a proponent of the death penalty…until her brother was murdered. Once her family was victimized, she wanted the murderer put to death. The victims do not choose to… Read more »
i get what you mean but i still dont agree in the death penalty there are people who think it should be done and other it should not this man had a seriuos child hood problems which isnt an excuse but he never learnt how to coppe i think they should have given him a longer prison sentence prbations and an anklet with therapy to help him with his issue it would have given him some freedom and the death penalty in my opinion is just giving them an easy way ouit of prison
Killing him means that he will never get out of jail on a loophole and never kill or rape another girl. I don’t know why you feel sorry for him. alot of people have a bad childhood and they don’t go around killing and raping women. He chose to do this and now he needs to die.
I think ….this is what I have read ….this man also had a disorder….brain disorder….well—-I see in USA is more usual punishing….than finding a way of healing or giving a proper treatment for people ….like this man….
The man raped over 50 women and killed 10. Bad childhood and brain disorder or not, he didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as these families affected.
You really should kill yourself. It would be the best thing for everyone you know and for the rest of us on the planet.
I don’t agree completely with the death penalty. But only in cases where the jury can not or are not allowed to hear all the evidence, Lawyers have turned the law into a political hit job. BUT in the Bobby Joe Long case, the man confessed. McVey left a lot of good evidence behind, so because of his confession, I do believe he got what he deserved. Many men are treated so badly as children but they don’t all grow up to be serial killers. Some grow up to be good people. In this case I thing the death penalty… Read more »
You are a moron.
Strong girl grow up to be a even stronger woman .God Bless you Lisa you saved so many lives..
What happened to Lisa’s Grandmother?
I hope she is serving time as an accomplice.
What an incredible woman. I’m so glad she survived.
she was such an amazing and smart person bt i do agree that execution is wrong, if it was my choice i would rather let him rot and think about how what he did affected so many other people around him.