The One Victim Who Got Away From Bobby Joe Long

May 2024 · 2 minute read

Noland told Fox 13 News that as she was tied up and blindfolded, she kept talking to Long, saying she would take care of him. She said she was "coddling him, like a 4-year-old child." She also thought to leave her fingerprints all over his bathroom, counted the stairs up to his apartment, and lied that her father was ill and she had to take care of him.

Noland said in a press conference (via YouTube/10 Tampa Bay) that she had been sexually abused by her grandmother's boyfriend for three years before Long abducted her, but that abuse and her time in the foster care system gave her the survival skills to deal with a man like Long.

Finally, on November 4, Long drove her, blindfolded, to a spot near where he'd abducted her and let her out of the car. Though Noland reported her ordeal to police, before they found Long and had enough evidence to make an arrest, he raped and killed four more women between November 6-22, per the FBI.

Noland went on to become a Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy, where she has served for over two decades, and currently works as a school resource officer. Noland told reporters 25 days before Long was scheduled to be executed she had one simple hope after he died: "I'm hoping to get a full night's sleep without any interruptions. I have not slept since 1984 — a full night of sleep."

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