Emily Long (34) shot and killed her husband Ryan (48) and two of their children – Parker (8) and Ryan (daughter who was 6) before taking her own life on August 18, 2025. Emily left their youngest child, aged 3, alive. Ryan had apparently been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and Emily had been very public with her struggles in relation to Ryan’s illness.
No obituaries have been made public and we don’t know too much about Emily and Ryan’s relationship or background. Based on the age of the children they had together, they had been together for at least 8 or 9 years – Emily would have been around 23, Ryan would have been around 36.
The family lived in Madbury, New Hampshire.
The estimated population of Madbury, New Hampshire is 2,432 as of 2021.
One of Ryan’s friends, Laura Boyce, spoke about his aspirations. She said he wanted to become a doctor, find a perfect wife and start a family.
Ryan fulfilled his dreams. He had worked as a psychologist in the Oyster River Cooperative School District, which serves the communities of Durham, Lee and Madbury.
Emily had been employed by ‘Wing-Itz’ which is a local chain of chicken restaurants. She was working as their director of operations.
Ryan was diagnosed with glioblastoma in April 2025. This is a fast-growing cancer that forms a tumor on the brain or spinal cord.
Glioblastoma has a poor prognosis and is often referred to as an aggressive, incurable brain tumor with challenging survival outcomes. The average survival time for adults is typically 12–18 months, with about 25% of patients surviving more than one year and only 5% living for more than five years.
After his diagnosis, Emily posted a lot about the situation on her social media. Her TikTok was public directly after the murder/suicide but has since been made private.
In one clip, she said a lot of the content she posted was “woe is me” and that she had “forgotten the root reason of why it made her sad”.
“It really is more about why I am obsessed with my husband and how my fear of him passing is the cause of all these ‘woe is me, this is going to be hard for me, feel sorry for me’,” she said in the clip.
She said in the seven-minute clip that she and her husband, while they shared common interests, were each other’s complete opposite.
“While it might not show it here, I am very outspoken, very impulsive, emotionally driven. I have absolutely no filter in a good and a bad way,” she said.
“I don’t take boundaries very well. I fly off the cuff — not in a violent way, obviously, but if I feel something I am going to say it. Sometimes it gets me into trouble,” she said.
She said her husband is someone who processes everything, and thinks about every side to the story. She said he was incredibly thoughtful in his decisions and was the “most ethical human on this planet”.
She said they were both social, but she didn’t know how to be alone and constantly needed to be surrounded by friends and family. She said Ryan had no problem when it came to leaving an event, and it was nice to have someone remind her it was “OK to be solo and independent”.
“While all those things are what makes us such a good team and we push each other to be better, I think that the two things — that if the time should ever come where he passes — that I am going to miss the most is one, he’s taught me how to be a good partner,” she said.
“He’s taught me how to be vulnerable and to be OK relying on someone else. I was never OK with it, I am still not good at it, and how to ask for help and all these things that he’s taught me throughout our relationship.
“And now, I am just like ‘What a waste. You don’t even get to live in the fruits of your labour. You’ve given me so much and I don’t get to give that to you and share that with you’. That’s one of the things I am going to miss.”
She said she felt sorry for herself and was scared of how hard things would be for her if Ryan passed away due to his brain cancer, but she was mostly sad that he might not be around to see all the things he had given her.
In one of her last posts, Emily said ‘I feel very, very lonely. I feel so anxious… I know that I need to see a therapist, I know that I need to ask for help… but I’m not ready to acknowledge that, I think,’ she confessed in a video shared just two weeks ago.
‘I feel so guilty that I’m not ready to get help yet, but… it is what it is, right? I know that I will one day, and I hope that I make the decision before I feel that it’s too late.’
Emily said in the same video that she could ‘feel [herself] withering away’ with the knowledge that ‘this isn’t going away, this is only going to get worse.’
We now know that in the weeks before the murder/suicide, Emily’s employer notified police that he suspected she had embezzled as much as $660k from his business.
“Honestly, I have no idea what she was doing with the money,” Derek Fisher, the restaurants’ owner said in a later interview. Derek said he alerted authorities on August 11 about the suspected embezzlement. Emily began working for the company in 2018 and was involved with every aspect of the chain’s finances.
Emily had spoken about financial stressors in her videos. She spoke about the family decision that was made to sell Ryan’s truck as they needed the money for other reasons.
Derek said that Emily was in charge of collecting money from restaurants. Rather than depositing the money, in early 2023, she began taking it for herself. Derek also said that Emily had been writing checks to herself from the company bank accounts.
Derek has said that it took him awhile to notice the theft as he was focused on expanding the chain.
“Am I embarrassed that this happened to me? Absolutely,” he said. “But this is somebody I had working for me for several years. I trusted her immensely.”
Derek said he first became aware of possible irregularities in Wing-Itz’s finances in June 2025, when the company’s bank alerted him to a series of transactions involving Emily’s personal accounts. Derek confronted Emily and requested that she provide him with copies of her own bank statements. Derek has said that he gave Emily time as he knew that Ryan was battling brain cancer. “Given her circumstances with her husband, I was trying to be considerate and patient.” he said.
He then said that in August 2025, Emily showed him doctored financial records.
On August 11, a week before the killings, Emily sent Derek a text saying that she planned to resign. That afternoon, he alerted law enforcement agencies in Hampton, Newmarket and Dover about the alleged thefts.
“I felt like I had no other option but to go to law enforcement,” Derek said. “We noticed that there was a lot of handwritten checks in her name, personally, that were being deposited into her bank account.”
“On the 12th, she sent me a message just basically apologizing. Not for anything specific, just saying she was sorry,” he said. “And then that was it.”
On the morning of August 18, 2025, it is alleged that at around 5.30am, Emily shot a single bullet into both Parker and her daughter Ryan.
She then shot her husband multiple times before turning the gun on herself.
Police were called to the home around 3 hours after the shooting and found the youngest child wandering around the scene, unharmed.
The New Hampshire Department of Justice released this statement following autopsies that were conducted.
Attorney General John M. Formella, New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall, and Madbury Police Department Chief Joseph McGann announce that autopsies have been completed on the bodies of Ryan Long (48), Emily Long (34), Parker Long (8), and Ryan Long (6) discovered inside their home in Madbury on Monday August 18, 2025.
Associate Chief Medical Examiner Abigail Alexander conducted autopsies today on both minors Parker Long and Ryan Long. Dr. Alexander determined that both children’s causes of death were single gunshot wounds of the head, and their manners of death are homicide.
Chief Medical Examiner Jennie V. Duval conducted autopsies on both adults, Ryan Long and Emily Long. Dr. Duval determined that Mr. Long’s cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds, and his manner of death is homicide. Dr. Duval determined that Emily Long’s cause of death was a single gunshot wound of the head, and her manner of death is suicide.
Based upon the information available at this time, it appears that in the early morning hours of Monday, August 18, 2025, Ms. Long took a handgun from the home and caused the deaths of Ryan Long and her two children, Parker and Ryan, and then took her own life immediately thereafter. While investigators are becoming aware of various concerns/issues ongoing in the household at the time of the event in question, people should avoid speculating that this event was caused by a single reason or stressor.
Emily’s boss has spoken out since the incident.
“I was completely devastated and heartbroken. I cared deeply for her and her family. You know, I was around all of her children as they grew up,” Derek said
He said he is not planning legal action to recover the funds.
“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. He didn’t deserve this,” Derek said.
SOURCE LIST
https://www.kgns.tv/2025/09/01/mother-center-murder-suicide-accused-embezzling-over-600000-employer
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mom-killed-husband-battling-brain-cancer-rcna226320
https://www.doj.nh.gov/news-and-media/autopsy-results-madbury-new-hampshire-deaths-investigation
https://www.wmur.com/article/loved-ones-remember-ryan-long-08272025/65914352