The Pretender Unmasked

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(CBS)

Det. Trish Miller caught the call, when the first victim was found floating near the bridge. The Lincoln County sheriff released the dead boy's picture to the local news.

"I thought, 'Oh, God, that can't be. You know, that can't be Zachary,'" says Denise Thompson, who babysat Zachary Longo and his two little sisters, Sadie and Madison. She knew Longo from the local Starbucks where they both worked. "You know, this can't be happening."

By the time Thompson got to the police station, the second body, a little girl, had been found, weighted down with a rock. Thompson identified them both as Zachary and Sadie Longo: "They were so young, you know. You don't want to see a dead child."

Police hunted for Longo, his wife, Mary Jane, and their baby, Madison. Thompson told them she remembered a strange conversation she'd had with Longo the very day Zachary's body had been found: "He made it a point to come up to me while I was working, and said, 'You won't be seeing the rest of the family. My wife and I are getting a divorce.'"

Thompson says she was surprised by the news because the Longos seemed like a very happy couple.

A surveillance tape taken just days before shows the Longos shopping like any normal family. They had just recently moved into an upscale housing complex.

Eight days into the investigation, divers dredged up two suitcases from the harbor, just outside the Longo's apartment. One suitcase contained the body of Mary Jane Longo; the second suitcase contained the body of Madison Longo.

"It meant somebody killed those two human beings and stuffed them into suitcases like garbage and put them in the water," says Miller. "Either he [Longo] was dead and a victim, or he was a suspect. And chances are he was a suspect."

The biggest manhunt in Oregon's Lincoln County history was under way. But Longo had a healthy head start. One month before the murders, he'd casually written down the credit card number of a Starbucks customer. Now, he was on the run.

Before police could catch up with him, Longo would leave the country, and his old identity far behind to start a new life as Michael Finkel.

Longo, wanted for killing his wife and three children in December 2001, made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, right alongside Osama bin Laden.

It was an unlikely place for someone so apparently devoted to his family.

The Longos came from Ypsilanti, Mich., where Chris was raised in a stable, middle-class home. He and Mary Jane Baker were part of the same congregation. They married when Chris was 19 and Mary Jane was 25.

Mary Jane's sister, Penny Dupuie, says Longo was a real-life Prince Charming. "He made other wives jealous, because Chris did all of those things that a husband is supposed to do," she explains.

Mary Jane wanted children, and she was thrilled to become a full-time mom when Zachary, Sadie and Madison came along. At 22, Longo took a job with a company that distributes The New York Times in Ypsilanti. Driven to succeed, he worked his way up to manager. Longo eventually developed a fondness for reading the Times, especially articles by feature writer Michael Finkel.

Longo would later tell Finkel that he envied the writer's worldwide adventures. "He told me that if he was a writer, he'd like to write the same stories I wrote," says Finkel. "In other words, he was somewhat of a fan."

Longo's own life, however, was far less exotic.

At 25, he quit his job to start up "Final Touch," a cleaning company for contractors. Dupuie says the Longos had a lot of good things: "I was wondering about the vacations that they took. They were always driving brand-new cars. Either somebody's helping, I'm thinking Chris' parents, or they are majorly in debt."

Dupuie's suspicions were right. Longo was in debt, although he bragged to Mary Jane and everyone else that his business was booming. "I think honestly and truly, the most important thing to Chris was his image and money," says Dupuie.

But neither Mary Jane nor anyone else knew that, to keep up appearances, Longo had turned to crime. He took a minivan for a test drive, and never brought it back. Then, he wrote himself nearly $30,000 worth of counterfeited checks from a client, and got caught.

"There was no attempt to cover up anything in this investigation," says Det. Fred Farkas, of the Michigan State Police. He had the goods on Longo. "We had seven counterfeit checks, which were each 14-year felonies."

Longo confessed, presenting himself as a financially strapped family man. "He just believed in his own mind, that he could just talk or walk his way out of the charges," says Farkas.

In fact, Longo got off easy with probation and restitution. Mary Jane believed his promise that his life of crime was over. But then, she discovered a crime of the heart, and confided it to her younger sister, Sally Clark.

"She had found an e-mail between Chris and this other woman, and he told her he had stopped loving her when she started having children and that she wasn't any fun anymore," says Clark. "And she was spending too much time and attention, you know, towards the kids instead of him."

"She didn't want her kids to grow up without their father," adds Clark. "And she loved Chris so deeply that she wanted it to work out."

Longo told Mary Jane he needed a fresh start, so in June 2001, just seven weeks after his fraud conviction, he packed up the family and skipped town. Their new home was a warehouse in Toledo, Ohio.

"Chris is capable of conning anyone. And someone that loves you, and wants to believe you? That was probably the easiest con," says Dupuie.

Two months later, with an arrest warrant out for Longo in Michigan for violating his probation, and new reports of stolen property at the Ohio warehouse, the Longos disappeared.

Mary Jane's sisters went looking for her at the warehouse. "It was awful," says Clark. "I just knew that something was wrong. It looked like someone was trying to get out of there in a hurry."

And then, Mary Jane's cell phone was cut off. "There was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that never went away," says Dupuie. "I don't know what it was, just a feeling that we had to find her."

The sisters now believed Chris had never really been the doting husband that he appeared to be. Desperate, they filed missing persons reports. Then, in early November, Clark got a card from Mary Jane. It was mailed from South Dakota.

The police closed the missing persons case, but Dupuie says she still believed her sister was in danger. She was right. One month later, Mary Jane and her children would turn up dead in Oregon, where their cross-country journey had ended. And Longo was now long gone.

Longo's life on the run finally brought him to Cancun, Mexico. While Mary Jane's family was still reeling from the shock of the murders, Longo was partying in paradise. While police were hunting him, Longo was beginning a new life, as the globetrotting journalist he always wanted to be.

But little did Longo know that the real Michael Finkel would soon find him.