I wrapped up the evening of February 6^th, 2004, thinking the evening proved one of my best in a long, long time. For the last several months I dated a special woman for whom I cared for a great deal and the children liked. Heck, she just left the house after a very special night together. The children came home a little later and I settled down for the night thinking our life was finally moving forward after two years of hell. I remember thinking this weekend would mark the second year since Patricia filed for divorce.

We seemed to be getting past the darkness. It was not just that the children were safe, living with me and only seeing their mother with supervised visitation, it was evident Patricia was making true progress. Heck, the previous weekend Kyle and Patricia came to Jessica’s basketball game at Eagle Ridge.  An entire game without incident, even with my mother and Michelle present. Both Glen and Montie spent some time with their mother during the game. Patricia did leave before she got the chance to visit with Jessica, but Patricia did come to Jessica’s game.

Just a few months earlier Patricia had attempted to ambush Glen during a joint counseling sessions for the two of them. After this final incident, it appeared everyone gave up on the chance Patricia and Glen would ever restore their relationship -- Patricia, Glen, Dr. Zieman, Dr. Flammer, the GAL John Romero, and the Judge Angela Jewell.

I did not give up. I made Patricia spending time with Glen a condition of her visitation with the other two children. She could not walk away from her fifteen year old son and hope to maintain a relationship with the younger children. She had three children, not just two, and I did not give a damn if Zieman thought it was a good idea to split the children up.

My determination to restore the relationship between mother and son simply reflected my attitude and commitment for the previous fifteen years. Since the day of Glen’s birth, I strove toward trying to shape a ‘good’ or normal relationship between Patricia and our children.

It was not as hard as subsequent events might indicate. Patricia claimed, and still does, that her own childhood was horrible and deprived. She sought a second childhood through her children. True or not, often Patricia’s needs and the children’s needs coincided – as long as the children were young. The May 2001 trip to Disneyworld marked our sixth trip to Disney since Glen’s fourth birthday eight years before. In addition we spent both Montie’s first and fifth birthday in DC, the final trip occurring just before 9/11 and including a weekend in Manhattan.

Patricia’s behavior during these times often more closely mirrored the children’s then an adult’s. She reveled in finally experiencing the childhood she felt her earlier life denied her.

The problems developed as the children began to pass Patricia in maturity. A year earlier, when the Court decided Patricia could not be trusted with the children, the Guardian Ad Litem required me to monitor telephone conversations between Patricia and the children. I would listen in on the telephone conversations and signal for the children to get off the telephone if the conversation turned to inappropriate areas. An example was Patricia’s requesting the children to lobby for the end of supervised visitation or the attempt to convince the children that incident that led to supervised supervision did not occur as Montie and Jessica believed it did.

And the joke is – the only thing worse then having to listen to Patricia during the fifteen years of our marriage is being asked to listen to her after our marriage and without being able to say anything during the telephone conversations with the children.

I remember how this part of Patricia’s mental illness came home to me as I listened to the conversations between her and the children. She never asked about their day or how they did, she either told them about what was going on in her life or repeatedly told the child again and again how much she loved them.  As I listened to conversation after conversation, I realized with increasing horror, that our children were the adult in their relationship with their mother. Even six year old Montie worked to focus his mother and make their conversation meaningful by taking control of these telephonic visits with their mother.

How pathetic this proved became evident the next Thanksgiving. As I said, I believed we were making progress. As the holiday approached, I told Jessica and Montie that I did not see any reason for the Thanksgiving visit to be supervised by APN. If Kyle and Kyle’s parents were present, I thought supervision unnecessary and they could spend some real time with their mother.

Montie objected and stated clearly he wished the visit supervised; however he could not articulate a reason for his position. After some extended discussion, Jessica finally told me the children preferred supervised visitation because their mother paid more attention to them with the supervisor present.

A response that grew out of Patricia’s relationship with her children, especially the period Jessica and Montie spent imprisoned in their own home after Glen moved out in August of 2002 and before they moved in with me in December of 2002.

Again, I came on February 2004 believing our life was improving. Patricia’s visitation was regular and going well.  Patricia even helped teach Glen to drive during one visit. Visitation was going so well, that I decided to allow Glen to have an unsupervised visit with Patricia on February 9^th 2004. If this went well, maybe we could finally get strangers out of our life, and the kids could enjoy some kind of stable relationship with their mother.

The children were doing well, Glen was in high school and a huge help to me. Jessica was playing softball and in drama school. Montie soon would skip a grade and was tearing up the baseball field. The crisis over the previous few years brought a bond between father and children few parents are lucky enough to have. That bond continues today.

This is my perspective, Patricia’s perspective obviously proved different. I thought life was improving and Patricia thought it so desperate that only my death would solve her problems.

 Here is how Patricia might represent the same set of facts. I will refer to myself as ‘Avery’ or in the third person as I try and relate Patricia’s view.

Patricia Long began her active search for a killer around January 31, 2004, after seeing Avery and a strange woman together with the children.  

Killing Avery always was always a serious consideration to Patricia, an option she considered even before filing for divorce in February of 2002. She decided on divorce first; yet, the idea of his murder remained in the back of her mind. After two years of divorce hell, she rethought the idea and decided enough was enough and sought out a hit man.

Patricia could justify anger at both her ex husband and the divorce system. After filing for divorce in February of 2002, she began to tell everyone and anyone about the abusive nature of her relationship with Avery. She reported years of abuse, to include years of beatings, many of the beatings in front of the young children.

Filing for divorce did not end the problems. The emotional and mental abuse continued. Avery yelled at her when he picked up the children, sent abusive emails, told the children lies about her, even showed up and interfered with the children’s doctor appointments. On the advice of her counselor, Patricia sought a restraining order against Avery and won it in a bitter, negative hearing. Avery appealed and talked the Court into throwing the restraining order out shortly thereafter. Patricia tried two more times to get new restraining orders but the Court denied her request and even prohibited her from filing any further requests without an attorney to represent her.

Patricia filed police report after police report outlining the continued abusive actions of Avery. The Albuquerque Police Department initially completed a thorough investigation of Patricia’s ex, at one time reporting that his stalking file was over two feet thick. But the police never arrested him, and as far as Patricia knew, never even contacted her ex about the stalking.

Patricia filed numerous complaints with the State of New Mexico’s Child Protective Services against both her ex and the oldest child. Protective Services opened three investigations but cleared both the ex and the child in each investigation.

Various women support groups initially offered Patricia strong support. They provided counseling, self defense training, and even helped her avoid a confrontation with her ex on once occasion. When Avery insisted the children receive counseling, a move Patricia thought unnecessary; one of the women’s groups helped her locate a therapist that would take her side against her abusive ex-husband while providing counseling to the children. Unfortunately, her ex talked the Court appointed Guardian Ad Litem into firing the counselor and sent the children to Avery’s own hand picked therapist. This new counselor took her ex’s side on all issues.

After a few months, the women’s groups seemed to lose interest in Patricia’s problems and one group specifically asked her not to contact them again.

In August of 2002, the Guardian removed the oldest child from Patricia and sent him to live full time with her ex. Eventually, the Guardian suspended all visitation between Patricia and this child. To tell the truth, Patricia was okay with the separation. The boy was growing up to be just like his father -- abusive and dangerous. Patricia filed various police reports on the child, reporting his thefts and torturing of animals, but the ex got the child off again and again.

The Guardian proved as difficult as her ex; in fact, Patricia was sure her ex had paid the Guardian off. After all, her ex still controlled all the family money. She put her and the kids on Welfare, Food Stamps, and Medicaid within a couple of weeks of filing for divorce to protect her and the children. She worried Avery would cancel the health insurance or stopped paying the bills. She went so far as to post ads on the internet to raise money and put up a website to take donations.

She sacrificed tens of thousands of dollars to reach a property settlement, anxious just to get the ex out of her life.  The settlement did give her the house, none of the bills, and six digits in cash. After her ex had agreed to the property settlement he changed his mind refused to follow the agreement. Eventually they went back to Court and he got the settlement thrown out. This resulted in Patricia losing her lawyer while her ex kept his high priced attorney. A couple of months later he got the Court to give him the community home back and Patricia and her new husband were almost made homeless.

Of course this occurred after the Guardian and Protective Services took the last two children from her. Even after she was cleared of the charges the only way she could see the kids was through supervised visitation, visitation she had to pay for.

The first custody evaluation resulted in the oldest child, now thirteen, with Avery one hundred percent of the time and the younger two with Avery nine days out of fourteen. The second custody evaluation took the Guardian’s side and left her with only supervised visitation, two hours a week.

On top of everything else, the custody evaluations resulted in the court ordering Patricia to pay $500 a month in child support to Avery in spite of the fact that he had all of the community assets, to include the house.

All of this was killing her, literally. Her health had always been poor but the stress caused by her ex-husband’s emotional abuse was taking its toll. Several doctors diagnosed her as a victim of post traumatic stress syndrome and she was actively participating in a study on the disease. The doctors told her that if things did not improve, her health could deteriorate to the point where her life was threatened.

Avery’s death seemed the only way out. Coincidence or the last straw, on the morning she finally decided to seek out the hit man, she attended one of her daughter’s basketball games. Avery was there with the children, his mother, and a new girlfriend. It was the first time since the divorce Patricia had seen Avery and the children with another woman. Her anger showed on her face. Anger at an ex husband spending money and time on some new woman after he had stolen everything from her.

The next step was obvious; she went onto the internet and looked for sites where hit men advertised their services. Now that she was angry again, she wanted it done quickly; she wanted him dead as soon as possible.

*     *     *

This is my attempt to present Patricia’s rationalization, taken from her interviews after her arrest, the grand jury testimony, and other sources

These perceptions, Patricia’s and mine, collided on that cold evening. My beautiful evening disintegrated into shattered dreams our Family is still trying to reassemble four years later. Our world shattered with a knock on the door at about eleven o’clock.

I took a hold of Topaz, complimented her on being an excellent watch dog and opened the door on two gentlemen, one in the uniform of a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputy. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Glen, just fifteen, perched on the stair leading to the top floor.

“Is she all right?” I asked the gentlemen.

They stared at me with a lack of comprehension for a moment; finally they realized I knew Patricia was involved in the reason for their visit.

“Yes, she’s fine” the deputy I who would identify himself as Kmatz .

I turned around and told Glen his mother was fine and he should go to bed. He did, for about two minutes and then snuck back down to hear the conversation between the deputies and myself.

The fact that Patricia had been arrested for trying to hire an undercover law enforcement officer to kill me did not put me into shock. The shock arose out of the realization that I was going to have to deal with this and the children would have to deal with this for the rest of their lives. I do not remember specifics of the conversation. I do not remember the deputies leaving.

I do remember them telling me about the second hit man Patricia claimed was on the way from Oklahoma City. This was why they decided to arrest Patricia instead of following their original plan and work with me to fake my death. I remember telling them to place Patricia on a suicide watch and them telling me that Kyle made the same comment.

They did not think that the second hit man would act without meeting with Patricia, or if he was really on the way, or even if he really existed. They did feel it necessary to warn me.

Despite their warning I did not feel in danger, I do not know why. Maybe it was the shock, especially after the beauty earlier in the evening. Perhaps it was a feeling that Patricia had shot her bow and failed. That night, I felt safe.

I did not have any firearms in the house, I had surrendered them as an act of charity to Patricia we put a mutual non-contact order into place.

I remember calling my parents and letting them know. I do not remember when I told Jessica and Montie. I do remember wondering what Judge Jewell would say about telling them. Time and time again, Judge Jewell and Zieman lectured me about telling the kids too much, as we were suppose to keep all adult issues away from the children. Not that I really cared what Judge Jewell said.  All said and done, now more then ever, I was responsible for raising my children, not the Court or mental health professionals.

I dimly remember calling BJ in order to prepare for the mess on Monday when I had to go to Court and when the media would start to call.