The One Victim Who Got Away From Bobby Joe Long
Lisa McVey Noland (pictured as an adult, above) was a 17-year-old Tampa teen who was riding her bike home from her job at a donut shop when she was abducted by serial killer Bobby Joe Long. Noland would later say the convicted serial killer "pressed a gun, with the tip of his cold steel barrel against my left temple before dragging me to his car. I vowed from that moment on to save my own life," according to a press conference clip posted on Twitter by reporter Emerald Morrow at Tampa Bay 10.
That was the day of Long's 2019 Florida execution, some 34 years after he confessed to killing eight women, though the FBI says Long raped and murdered 10 young women in the Tampa Bay area from May to November of 1984. None of those girls were as lucky as Noland, who convinced Long to release her after he'd held her for 26 hours and repeatedly raped her.
According to what Noland told reporters (via YouTube/10 Tampa Bay) she managed to convince Long, who had already kidnapped, raped and murdered five young women in the Tampa Bay area, to let her go by showing him she was a compassionate person.
Noland said she asked Long why he was hurting her. He said he was doing it "just to get back at women in general." Noland told him, "I'll be your girlfriend," and started to work toward getting "inside his head" to convince him to let her go. It worked.
Lisa McVey Noland said prior childhood abuse contributed to her survival skills
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."