The New Hampshire woman who killed her husband and two children before taking her own life embezzled over $600,000 from the company she worked for, her employer now claims.
Emily Long, 34, her husband Ryan Long, and two of their children, son Parker, 8, and daughter Ryan, 6, were found dead Aug. 18 with gunshot wounds in their Madbury, NH home.
Long was the director of operations of Wing-Itz, a chicken wing restaurant company with several locations in New Hampshire.
The owner of the chain’s Hampton location, Derek Fisher, is alleging that she stole $660,000 from the company over two years.
“I felt I had no other option than to go to law enforcement,” Fisher told WCVB. “We noticed there were a lot of handwritten checks being deposited into her bank account.”
He told cops he was going over his finances with an accountant when he found several discrepancies stemming from cash deposits that were never actually deposited into company accounts.
“What we came up with – it started in January 2023, and until July of this year, there was over $660,000 taken,” Fisher said.
He said he and his bookkeeper started looking into a large number of checks written to Emily personally, according to WMUR.
Fisher said Long offered no explanation when he questioned her.
He asked for three months of her bank statements, which he did not receive until Aug. 5.
Fisher said the bank told him the statements had been manipulated and pages were missing.
He said at one point, out of the blue, Long told him she could resign or he could fire her, leaving him feeling confused.
Fisher reportedly tried to get answers from Long for weeks before turning to the police, but says he was generous with time because he knew Long’s husband was battling brain cancer.
“Given her circumstances with her husband, I was trying to be considerate and patient,” Fisher said.
But on Aug. 18, Fisher says he woke up to the unthinkable: Long, her husband and two of their young children were all dead.
A third child, a 3½-year-old toddler, was not hurt.
Fisher says he can only focus on that boy and not the financial loss his company has suffered.
“Anything that’s left should go to that child; he deserves all of it. It’s not fair to him; he didn’t make this happen, and he didn’t deserve this,” he said. “He has no family anymore.”
“I don’t have any answers as far as where the money went, what she needed it for, what she spent it on,” Fisher added. “But I do know that something was wrong. She’s the only one who had access to any of this money.”
He said he is not planning legal action to recover the funds.
It’ll likely be forever an unsolved mystery whether the suspected theft played any role Long’s suicide or the murders of her husband and two children.
The state attorney general’s office last week told WMUR that cases like this usually have multiple factors.
“I think the big thing is to try not to speculate that any one reason something like this happens” Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati said. “Homicide and suicide is usually much, much more complex than just one reason,.”
Ryan Long died from multiple gunshots and the two children died from a single gunshot, according to the attorney general.
Just before the carnage, Long posted about her husband’s brain-cancer diagnosis, glioblastoma, on TikTok.
She had often discussed the stress and grief she and her family had struggled with since his diagnosis, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader.
He was a school psychologist in the Oyster River School District.
A GoFundMe created to help with the only surviving child had raised more than $135,000 by Aug. 29th.
He’s currently in the care of his maternal and paternal grandparents and aunt, “and supported by many friends throughout the community,” the GoFundMe organizers said.
“We hope to raise enough funds to support his education, extracurricular endeavors, mental health, and any additional needs as he grows into the young man his parents and siblings would be proud of.”
