According to Hunter, Long would call the number in the ad and “He would talk briefly to whoever answered. If it was a woman he would talk to them and get a feel for the woman and see if she seemed older or younger, if she seemed like a promising victim or not.”

Long would drop questions about whether the woman’s husband would be home to help him move furniture, but really he was fishing for information to gauge her vulnerability. If he went to a house and found a desirable woman home alone, he would attack her from behind and show her his knife. Then, according to Hunter, Long would tie the woman up, incapacitate her, then rape her. Often he would steal a victim’s jewelry, bringing it home to his unwitting wife, according to what Cindy Brown told “I Lived With a Serial Killer.” According to an Associated Press report posted by the Times Union, “The Classified Ad Rapist” was believed to be responsible for dozens of rapes.

Then, Long got bolder, or maybe he just didn’t want to go through the effort of the classified ad ruse to find victims anymore. He began picking up random women he saw, often sex workers. At this point Long started killing his victims after he raped them and leaving their battered, bound bodies strewn around isolated locations in the Tampa Bay area. In six months Long killed 10 women before he was finally caught and convicted.