Suspect in Slayings Spotted in S.F.

Police say a man burdened with debt and a history of petty crime killed his wife and three young children in Portland, Ore., then fled to California after ditching their bodies in the Pacific Ocean.

Christian Longo, 27, was last seen in San Francisco on Dec. 26, said Bernice Barnett, the district attorney in coastal Oregon’s Lincoln County, where the bodies were found.

San Francisco police said they are aware that Longo might be in the area, and citizens have called saying they might have seen the car authorities said he drove, but have no hard leads.

Longo is being sought on four counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of his entire family.

Barnett said she decided to issue a warrant Friday after police divers a day earlier pulled the bodies of Longo’s wife, Mary Jane, 35, and 2-year-old daughter, Madison, from a marina near an apartment that Longo had rented in Newport, Ore.

A week earlier, the bodies of his other two children were retrieved from a coastal inlet 14 miles south of Newport.

Barnett said Longo is still believed to be in the San Francisco Bay Area and is considered dangerous. “If, in fact, what we believe is true about what happened to his family, anyone has to be threatened by him,” she said.

The FBI has placed Longo on its wanted list because he is thought to have crossed state lines.

Longo, about 6 feet tall and blond, had a clean-cut appearance and typically dressed in slacks, a dress shirt and leather jacket, according to neighbors in Newport.

At first blush a successful young man, police say that Longo faced a multitude of legal and financial problems.

Neighbors said Longo told them he had a high-paying job with Qwest Communications International Inc., seeking clients for high-speed DSL service.

In reality, he worked at a Starbucks inside a Fred Meyer grocery store in Newport.

Longo lived alone in an upscale, one-bedroom condominium overlooking the ocean in Newport and was visited by his children and wife, condominium employees said.

“I heard his wife and kids walking in and out of the place,” said Todd Hecht, maintenance manager at the Landing. “It was a normal, happy-go-lucky group. That’s why this whole thing is so baffling.”

The slayings first came to light when the unidentified body of a boy drifted ashore in Oregon’s Alsea Bay on Dec. 19. Residents of a trailer park spotted the boy’s body, small and pale, floating about two feet from shore.

Police divers retrieved a second body three days later in the shallow bay. The pair were identified by relatives on Christmas Eve as Zachary Longo, 5, and Sadie Longo, 3.

The bodies of Longo’s wife and youngest daughter were taken from Yaquina Bay near the Landing condominium.

Longo, who owned a construction cleaning company in Michigan, has been named in six lawsuits seeking more than $30,000 and is wanted on two warrants in Michigan for probation violation and larceny by conversion.

He was convicted in October 2000 for forging $30,000 in checks from builders in Saline, Mich. Longo also is wanted on a warrant in Washtenaw County, Mich., for missing meetings with his probation officer after that conviction, police said Friday. The Longos also reportedly left $60,000 in debts in Washtenaw County.