A struggling mother had documented her husband’s battle with terminal brain cancer in a series of increasingly distressing TikTok videos before they were both found dead inside their home alongside two of their children in a horrific murder-suicide.
Emily Long, 34, her husband Ryan Long, 48 and two of their children, eight-year-old Parker and six-year-old Ryan, were found suffering gunshot wounds in their stunning New Hampshire home on Monday night.
Authorities had received a 911 call reporting multiple deaths inside the home. When they arrived, they found an unharmed three-year-old child.
The surviving child is now in the custody of family as the investigation continues. It was unclear if Emily or her terminally ill husband fired the weapon.
On TikTok, Emily had been documenting her family’s journey after her husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. His diagnosis was terminal.
In her last video, shared just two days before their deaths, Emily explained that she and her children had been 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.
Emily Long, 34, her husband Ryan Long, 48 and two of their children, eight-year-old Parker and six-year-old Ryan, were found suffering gunshot wounds in their stunning New Hampshire home on Monday night
In her last video, shared just two days before their deaths, Emily explained that she and her children had been struggling with her husband’s diagnosis, but that she was committed to improving her mental health
‘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.’
In separate videos, she had spoken about the grief of having to tell her children that Long’s diagnosis was terminal.
She explained that her two eldest children understood the condition, and the outcome, more thoroughly than their youngest child.
On May 11, Emily uploaded a video captioned: ‘Want to watch someone actually fall apart before your very eyes? I swear, this cancer will be the thing that breaks me.’
Authorities are awaiting autopsy results to formally determine their cause of death, but it is being treated as a murder suicide.
Authorities had received a 911 call reporting multiple deaths inside the home. When they arrived, they found an unharmed three-year-old child
Authorities are awaiting autopsy results to formally determine their cause of death, but it is being treated as a murder suicide
On TikTok, Emily had been documenting her family’s journey after her husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. His diagnosis was terminal
‘One of the biggest questions they have right now is motive, why?’ Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati told WCAX.
‘And I think that’s probably one of the more difficult things that they are trying to grasp to understand how this came to be.’
Long was a psychologist at Oyster River Middle School in Durham, while Emily worked as director of operations at restaurant chain Wing-Itz.
