Wife and mother Emily Long gunned down her husband and two of their three young children at her $600,000 home in Madbury, New Hampshire on Monday, before killing herself.
Now the Daily Mail can reveal that Long, 34, was struggling to cope: Her husband, 48, was terminally ill with brain cancer and bedridden, and she hated her job.
A family friend tells us that Long had just left her job helping run a small chicken wings chain because she was dissatisfied with it.
‘Ryan was bedridden, from what I gather he was undergoing chemotherapy. He was just weak and sick’, the friend said.
‘Emily had been fairly open about struggling with severe depression and not knowing how to explain to the kids that they were going to lose their father.
‘She had also left her job but was unhappy with her career and they were obviously struggling with money and at risk of losing the house. Emily had a network of friends around her who knew what she was going through and even so were still shocked and caught off guard.’
Long killed eight-year-old son Parker and six-year-old daughter Ryan, each with a single bullet around 5:30am Monday.
Ryan was then blasted multiple times by Long, before she turned her handgun on herself.
Their toddler son James, 3, survived unharmed and was found wandering around the home by cops who arrived at the address around 8:30am.
Emily Long murdered her ailing husband Ryan as well as her son Parker and daughter Ryan inside their home on Monday
A family friend told Daily Mail that Long had recently quit her job and were struggling financially
It remains a mystery why Long let James survive, the friend added: ‘I don’t know why she spared him. I can’t make sense of it.’
James is now being cared for by Long’s parents, the friend said.
Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati said that investigators are probing the circumstances of the shooting and conceded finances and impending widowhood had likely been playing on the murderess’s mind.
He said: ‘Some that involved the idea of what was going on with the money situation, with the health situation, I think the big thing is to not speculate one reason why something like this would happen
‘Homicide and suicide is usually much, much more complex than just one reason. There’s still more information we’re trying to gather to narrow down different things.’
Long had been open about her fears surrounding losing her husband, regularly posting to her TikTok account about their journey.
In the family’s final days, Long discussed their rapidly deteriorating situation on her TikTok channel, admitting she ‘knew that [she] needed to’ seek therapy.
‘I feel very, very lonely. I feel so anxious… I know that I need to see a therapist, I know that I need to ask for help… but I’m not ready to acknowledge that, I think,’ she confessed in a video shared just two weeks ago.
‘I feel so guilty that I’m not ready to get help yet, but… it is what it is, right? I know that I will one day, and I hope that I make the decision before I feel that it’s too late.’
The couple’s youngest child was found wandering around the $600,000 property, seen here, unharmed by police called to the scene about three hours after the shooting
Long had shared incredibly candid videos of herself to TikTok, expressing her anguish over her husband’s impending death
Long said in the same video that she could ‘feel [herself] withering away’ with the knowledge that ‘this isn’t going away, this is only going to get worse.’
And as her husband’s condition worsened, Long opened up about the realization that she could one day become a single parent to three traumatized children.
‘I’m doing all the bed times and by the time I’m saying goodnight to my third kid it hits me that this is going to be every single night at some point for the rest of my life,’ she said.
‘Where I’m doing all three bedtimes alone, and then I shut the door to the final kid and I’m totally by myself and I have no one to talk about my day with.’
Long said despite trying to remain positive, she also had to ‘plan to be a widow, and plan to support your family on one income and to be a single parent of three kids and juggle all the things that come with that.
Ryan had been battling glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer when his wife killed him
‘I’m mourning my husband, I’m mourning my marriage and it’s still there. It’s very confusing and it’s very overwhelming.’
In her last video, shared just two days before their deaths, Long explained that she and her children were struggling with her husband’s diagnosis, but that she was committed to improving her mental health.
‘All I want to do is hide under a blanket with my kids, but that isn’t healthy for them and it’s not healthy for me,’ she said.
‘Today I decided I need to make a conscious effort to shift my mindset. I’m getting out of this depression whether I want to or not. I am determined to create normalcy, she said.
Long was a psychologist at Oyster River Middle School in Durham, while Long had last worked as director of operations at restaurant chain Wing-Itz.
