A New Hampshire mom who killed her husband and two children earlier this month before taking her own life may have been embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the the company where she worked.
According to WCVB, Emily Long was director of operations of Wing-Itz, a chicken wing restaurant with multiple locations in New Hampshire. A week before the murder-suicide, owner Derek Fisher had gone to police.
Long, her husband Ryan Long — who was suffering from a terminal brain cancer — their 8-year-old son Parker, and 6-year-old daughter Ryan were found dead from gunshot wounds in their Madbury home on August 18, as CrimeOnline reported. A toddler was found in the home, not physically harmed.
A police report filed on August 11 says that Fisher and his accountant noticed in July the discrepancies while going over his restaurant’s finances, WCVB reported.
“What we came up with – it started in January 2023, and until July of this year, there was over $660,000 taken,” Fisher said.
Fisher told WMUR that his investigation found a large number of checks written to Emily Long, who had been with the company since 2018, personally, but she had no explanation when questioned. He asked to see her bank statements, but when he received them on August 5, the bank said they were manipulated and there were pages missing.
Then, suddenly, Emily Long told him she could resign or he could fire her.
Fisher told WCVB he was left confused and concerned, but was “trying to considerate and patient” because of Ryan Long’s cancer diagnosis.
Emily Long had shared her family’s struggles with her husband’s diagnosis with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive cancer, in a series of TikTok videos beginning in April. In the videos, she discussed her fears about being a single parent once her husband died and acknowledged needing help.
Prosecutors, however, cautioned trying to attribute the tragedy to any one reason.
“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,” Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati said. “Homicide and suicide is usually much, much more complex than just one reason.”
Fisher, meanwhile, said that he wasn’t concerned with his restaurant’s financial losses after learning of the murder-suicide. His only concern, he said, was the surviving toddler.
“Anything that’s left should go to that child; he deserves all of it. It’s not fair to him; he didn’t make this happen, and he didn’t deserve this,” Fisher said.
Fisher told WMUR that he had no plans to take legal action to recover the money.
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[Featured image: Long family/Facebook]
