A native of Dayton, Ohio, born in 1927, Long was a violent racist who could not abide the specter of black progress in his home community. 

In 1966, he approached local police and confessed to stabbing a black man in 1944, but he was released when detectives could find no record of the crime in their files. They had forgotten about Long by the early 1970s, when a three-year series of shootings left six blacks dead and fourteen others wounded, pushing Dayton toward the brink of racial war.

The catalyst for Long's final rampage was a school desegregation program that included busing students Neal's 12-year-old son among them - from one school to another in the interest of "racial balance." 

On September 19, 1975, Long picked his boy up from school at the end of the day and promised, "You won't be bused any more, son." An hour later, Dayton's white desegregation planner - Dr. Charles Glatt - was shot four times and fatally wounded in his office at the federal building. Long was arrested near the scene, and FBI agents noted his resemblance to descriptions of an unknown gunman in a score of shootings logged since 1972. 

Indicted on seven counts of murder, Long was found competent for trial in November 1975 and was eventually convicted of two counts, drawing consecutive terms of life imprisonment. To protect him from black inmates and vice versa - Long was confined at the U.S. Medical Center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, under conditions of maximum security.

Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers

SEX: M RACE: W TYPE: T MOTIVE: PC-extremist

MO: Random shootings motivated by racism.

DISPOSITION: Consecutive life terms on two counts, 1975.