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Unfortunately, when Parabon had uploaded the bank robbery suspect's snip profile to GEDmatch, they had discovered only one low level match of about 70 centimorgans. Their initial genealogy research block had led nowhere and North Richland Hills, a small agency, could not afford to keep paying their hourly rates. Detective Whitlock had met Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick at a training seminar, so he reached out to her on November 18, 2019. He provided her with the raw data file and the information collected by Parabon. Identifinders got to work but did not make much progress until December 7, 2021, when a new upload to GEDmatch proved to be the new top match to the suspect's DNA. This relative shared 149 centimorgans of DNA with the suspect on his paternal line. This was likely a second cousin, second cousin once removed, or possibly a third cousin to the suspect. The genealogist noted that matches 2 and 3 shared DNA in common. She built back their trees to the third great great grandparent level for match three and to the great great grandparent level for match two. There she located the most recent common ancestor, a union couple that was the intersection of the trees of matches two and three. Who was on the suspect's maternal side. These were Peter Gates, born 1808, and his wife Elizabeth Frank, born 1821. Their daughter Elizabeth had two sons, John and George. Ge George's grandchild was match number two. John's grandchild was the likely suspect's mother. She had married into a family with the surname Long. The top match, who shared no DNA with the two matches descended from the Peter Elizabeth union, proved to be on the suspect's paternal side. The tree of that top match was built back multiple generations to the Union couple of James Leeper, born 1706, and Margaret Seawright, born 1708. Match number one was eight generations removed from this couple. And that's where the genealogist found her. Aha moment. A granddaughter of James and Margaret Leeper had married a man with the last name Long. The long name tied together the two genetic networks. The suspect was likely the descendant of the Leeper union through their intermarriage with the Longs. Their fifth great grandchild was likely the suspect's father. Sure enough, descendancy analysis from the two MRCA couples culminated in the marriage of Aubrey Longbourn, 1932, and Jeanne Deering. They had three sons, all of whom bore a genetic relationship to matches 1, 2 and 3 consistent with being the suspect. But just one of them had visible pockmarks on his face. According to photos he posted on social media, he was a lifelong resident of Oklahoma City, and he was a stocky white male, age 60, the right age to be the suspect in the bank robbery and shooting 19 years earlier. After just two weeks of research, on December 21, 2022, the Identifinder's genealogist provided a possible name for the Cowboy Hat Bandit. His name was Mark Allen Long. Even with all the tips and all the sketches and all the investigation, his name had never crossed investigators deaths. Detective Whitlock immediately looked up Long on social media. He resembled the suspect with a rounded face and a paunch. Court documents from a 2000 arrest listed him as 5 foot 6 and 225 pounds. He had a pockmarked round face and his brown hair was significantly balding. On his Facebook page, he had a photo of a revolver and several posts indicating his proficiency with ham radio communications, which meshed with the investigator's knowledge that the suspect was listening to the police scanner using an earpiece. And Long had multiple posts about the three Jeeps and two Land Rovers that he owned. Detective Whitlock requested workups on Mark Allen long from Texas DPS, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI. They started to gather information on him. The OSBI informed Detective Whitlock that Long had owned a 1992 Jeep Wrangler and a 1995 Land Rover. Initial reports were that the Jeep was black, but the National Insurance Crime Bureau revealed that the Jeep was metallic red. The Range Rover was white. Detective Whitlock learned that the Range Rover had been junked in California. It was not retrievable, but the Jeep had been sold to a woman named Deborah W. In Oklahoma. Long was living at 920 Southeast 12th street in Oklahoma City. He was working at the University of Oklahoma Robert M. Byrd Health Science Laboratory. It was time to start watching Mark Allen Long. On February 15, the OSPI agreed to install a pole camera on a utility pole across from Mark Long's home. And Detective Whitlock pulled together a surveillance team. Undercover members of the North Richmond Hills Special Investigations Unit, the FBI and Detective Whitlock started surveillance of Mark Long at his residence and workplace in Oklahoma City on February 16, 2022. They had photos of Long from his Facebook account and they all familiarized themselves with his appearance at the time. He was driving a white Volkswagen Touareg SUV with Oklahoma plates. Long was observed to leave his house daily around 7 o' clock in the morning and stay at work until about 5 or 5:30. He always parked in the same parking spot in the parking lot at work. What's insane is that as the detectives followed Long from his home to his work on January 16, they watched him use unauthorized red and blue lights on his vehicle to move through a red traffic light at the intersection of South Lincoln Boulevard and Reno Avenue. This was at 6:58am he did the same thing at a subsequent intersection, activating his unauthorized emergency lights. He was masquerading as a law enforcement officer to get through traffic lights. Detective Croft and an unidentified undercover officer staked out Long's car at work on February 16th. He left work at 5:03 and drove home. He didn't leave the house that night. The following morning, the 17th again, he went to work, parked in the same spot and went inside. They followed him during the day when he left in his work truck with a co worker and drove to the University Research Park Health Club. Then they returned to their place of employment. At 5:30, long left work and got in his car. They followed him as he drove to Earl's Rib palace on Northwestern Avenue. The two detectives went into the restaurant in an undercover capacity. They took a table in the same area as Long and they watched him order an iced tea, which he drank out of a black straw. He ordered an appetizer of deviled eggs. E.W. long was soon joined by a man identified as a friend named Thomas B. And two juvenile females whom the detectives heard call Long Uncle Mark. Although they were Thomas B's children and not actually Long's nieces, they all ordered and ate and drank. The investigators watched Long use a fork and a spoon. He did not share his utensils, drink or food with anybody else at his table. During the meal, the detectives could overhear Long talking extensively about shooting several types of weapons, in particular six shooters. Of course, the detectives knew that a six shooter was a common term for a revolver, the exact type of weapon used in many of the bank robberies Long was suspected of committing. When the group left the restaurant, Detective Croft donned a pair of rubber gloves and collected and bagged the spoon, fork and straw that Long had used. They met with Detective Whitlock and handed the Items over. On February 22, he emailed the fork via FedEx to the FBI lab, delivered the straw to the office of the Tarrant County Medical examiner and took the spoon to the University of North Texas lab. Three different labs for three different items of evidence. On March 24, Detective Whitlock was notified by the Tarrant County Medical examiner that the straw that had been collected from Mark Long, analyzed by senior forensic biologist H. Kramer, was found to be a match to the suspect profile from the Orkin shirt collected from the road after the Arlington robbery. Detective Whitlock asked the OSBI to start writing up search warrants for Long's vehicle residence and the Jeep he had formerly owned. He had sold it to a woman who lived on South Peebley Road named Deborah W. The warrants were signed by an Oklahoma judge on the morning of April 1, 2022. No joke. On that morning, Detective Whitlock, Sergeant Snyder, Sergeant Hobson, Detective Croft, and two additional undercover officers drove to Oklahoma. They met up with FBI Special Agent Jamerson and approached Mark Long as he left his place of employment. Jefferson identified himself as an FBI special agent. They didn't tell Long at this time that the other officers were from North Richland Hills PD as they didn't want to tip their hand. Detective Whitlock was also wearing an N95 mask in case Long had been following the news reports of the case in which Detective Whitlock had been interviewed or mentioned. They told Long that they were conducting an investigation and wanted to ask him a few questions. They gave him some choices of where they could talk and he chose their Dodge Caravan parked in his work parking lot. He asked to be able to make a phone call to tell his friend, who turned out to be Thomas B. That he might not be able to make it to dinner and they let him do that. It sounds like he knew that this might take a while. Detective Whitlock sat in the front passenger seat of the van and Long and Special Agent Jamerson were in the middle row when Long's phone rang. They asked him to allow them to put it in the front seat cup holder during the interview and he agreed. They told Long that the interview was fully voluntary and he could leave at any time. The interview was audio recorded, but a camera hidden in a yeti drinking container in the front cup holder failed to operate. Special Agent Jamerson told Long that lying to a federal agent was a federal offense, and Long acknowledged that he understood that. Detective Whitlock said to him, when. When one tells a lie about his past, it forever becomes a part of their future. They started to ask Long questions about his background, his education, his work history, and so on. They asked him about an arrest in 2000 that I will get into. They asked Long about the cars that he had owned, and he listed several of them, including a red 1992 Jeep Wrangler and a white 1995 Land Rover Range Rover with a sunroof. The Jeep he said he owned had Michelin LTX tires, and these were consistent with the large tires observed by Officer Garner. They asked Mark Long about growing up in Oklahoma and whether he was a hunter. He replied that the only thing he shoots is with a camera. That was a good segue to ask him about weapons he owned, and he listed a bunch of guns, but did not include the one. They specifically asked about a revolver capable of firing.38 caliber bullets. They asked Long if he had any idea what they might want to talk to him about, and he said no, but it might have to do with some Facebook post he had made, which some might find offensive, which I have no idea what it was. Long was then told by Special Agent Jamerson that it was in regards to several bank robberies. Up to this point in the interview, Mark had been relatively calm and quiet. However, the moment the bank robberies were brought up, he began to swallow more often and began exhibiting signs of dry mouth. Long denied being involved in robbing any banks. Okay, then Jamerson asked, why did we find your DNA on a shirt worn in one of the robberies? Long appeared to have an answer ready for this. He said that he often sold clothing at thrift stores and he must have sold this shirt. Whoever bought it must have committed the bank robbery. He said they asked him specifically if he had ever owned any clothing bearing the logo of the pest control company Orkin, and he said he had not. Jamerson then asked Long why his DNA was discovered on some other items from two other bank robberies that would not be sold at thrift stores. He was referring to the surgical mask and pantyhose from the 1998 bank robbery and the brown glove from the 1999 Oklahoma City robbery. Quote, Long had begun to fidget slightly with his hands. And at this point, he stated he believed he needed an attorney, end quote. Special Agent Chamberson ended the interview and executed a buckle swab for Long's DNA pursuant to the search warrants they had obtained. They all got out of the vehicle, but they weren't done talking. After they got out of the car, Detective Whitlock told Long that he was a detective out of Texas and wanted to ask him some questions. He told him he was free to leave and that this was a totally voluntary conversation. Detective Whitlock asked Long to listen to what he had to say. Quote, I attempted to explain to him how I believed he was an overall good person and that he veered off down a bad path for a small period of his life. I explained to Mark that I wasn't there to ask him if he committed these offenses, because I knew that he did. I told him what I didn't know was the why, end quote. But Long didn't bite. Quite the opposite, in fact. Not only did he continue to deny any involvement in the bank robberies, he pushed back. He told Whitlock that he was intimidated by him and that his heart was pounding out of his chest. He then said he had studied science in college and was aware of the tactic that Whitlock was using. He accused Whitlock of bluffing about having recovered his DNA from any bank robberies. Mark further stated that I was trying to elicit a false confession from him, end quote. Detective Whitlock basically said in response, how would we have found you after all these years if we didn't have DNA? Long declined to speak with him any further, and at that point, Captain Green of the OSBI executed their search warrant for his vehicle. Long asked if they were also searching his house at the moment, and Whitlock replied in the affirmative. They had started the search at his home the second his phone had been placed in the front seat of the minivan. That was a planned maneuver. So Long, who had surveillance cameras set up around his property, didn't get a notification that his home was being entered while they were trying to interview him. While his vehicle was being searched, Long walked out of sight in the parking lot. But Detective Croft and another undercover officer were secretly watching him and saw him place his hands over his face in a manner indicative of overwhelming emotions, the report says. I would venture to guess that's because he knew what they would find when they searched his house. While they waited for the vehicle search to be completed, Long asked for a bottle of water, and Detective Whitlock handed him a business card identifying himself as North Richland Hills pd. This was the first indication to Long that they were investigating the attempted murder of Officer Jeff Garner. Quote, I told Mark to think about his great grandfather Sam Long. And Mark looked at me and nodded affirmatively. End quote. I'll get into that momentarily. Don't worry. The investigators didn't find anything relating to the bank robberies in Long's Tuareg, but they did find a fake Oklahoma City police officer badge in the dashboard onto the front windshield. In fact, he had numerous fake badges in his vehicle, as well as blank Oklahoma fire marshals, fire code violation citations, forms, red and blue lights that could be placed on the vehicle, and a white hard hat and yellow nylon rope. Meanwhile, stuff was going on at Long's house. The OSBI had entered it to search and had no doubt scared the crap out of Long's sister and her family. The sister's family primarily lived in China and had just returned in October to help Long organize his house, which he had purchased a few years earlier. They were planning to stay until May when they would return to China. Long's sister and her husband were interviewed and immediately it became apparent they had no idea about Long's criminal activities. Long pulled in as the search was going on and sat in his sister's car while it was completed. He told his sister and her husband that the search must be because of something the previous owners of the home had done. The OSBI agents took Long's phone, covered by the search warrant, but that was the least exciting thing they collected in the house. They found a Llama Comanche 3.357 revolver. This was consistent with the blued revolver with the 4 to 6 inch barrel. Officer Garner had described being aimed at him by the driver of the red Jeep. Detective Whitlock later said this at a press conference. Quote, we found that in his bedroom under his bed in a case. It was loaded with.38 caliber special rounds in the cylinder, the same caliber class used to shoot Officer Garner. It got a lot of us very excited that against all odds, 19 years later, he actually kept the weapon that he used in multiple bank robberies. And to shoot Officer Garner, end quote. This gun had a double action mechanism consistent with the firing of five rounds rapidly with a single hand without having to deal with the hammer. The shooter had fired five rounds rapidly at Officer Garner with a single hand. The mind boggling hubris of this guy to keep the gun. Lots of electronic devices and digital equipment were also collected from Long's home. After the search was over, the officers left the house and Long was free to go about his life. But they were watching him. On April 2, undercover detectives followed Long all day long. He went and bought a cell phone at Dollar General and went to Cabela's and browsed. He checked on a warning siren utilized for storms. Meanwhile, Detective Whitlock and the OSPI went to the home of Deborah W. Who had purchased Long's 1992 Jeep for her son. Deborah said she had no interaction whatsoever with Mark Long. She had asked a friend to handle the purchase for her. In 2015, her friend had paid $1,500 for the Jeep on her behalf. She had had it painted black, replaced the ratty soft top, and had the entire interior and possibly the doors replaced. But no body work had been done. The tailgate and all other body components were original to the previous owner, Mark Long. Deborah was able to find the original Facebook messenger photos of the Jeep that her friend had sent to her when he was buying it from Long. The guy she had used to buy the Jeep identified Mark Long from a photo shown to him by Detective Whitlock, and the VIN number to the vehicle was verified to match the VIN associated with the Jeep that Mark Long had owned. The police seized the Jeep and conducted a search, and they located a bullet hole in the tailgate. It had been repaired by body filler, but was evident when the tailgate was dismantled by a police mechanic. Officer Garner had never known for sure that he hit the Jeep as he fired at it from a seated position in the field, but he was a good shot, and one of his bullets found their mark. Get it. On April 4, Detective Whitlock took the Llama revolver to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office for ballistics comparison against the two.38 caliber bullets recovered from the North Richland hills shooting in 2003. He also requested the ATF conduct a firearms history on the revolver. It took just two days for the analyst to determine that the revolver and the projectiles were a ballistic match. The gun had fired those two bullets aimed at Officer Garner. An ATF search revealed that the firearm was purchased on September 20, 1984, at a Walmart in Oklahoma City, presumably by Mark Long. Detective Whitlock was working closely with the FBI, who, of course, had been the lead on many of the bank robberies. The FBI had their own charges against Mark Long for federal crimes associated with the bank robberies. They were in the process of trying to amend the original indictment of John Doe, whose DNA profile they had indicted as a Placeholder to indict mark long. On April 6, Special Agent Jamerson approached Mark Long in his work parking lot and served him with a letter informing him he would be charged with the 1998 and 1999 Oklahoma City bank robberies and recommending that he obtain an attorney. Detective Whitlock felt that it was time to arrest mark long. On April 7, he met with Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Vassar and completed four arrest warrants. One for attempted murder of a North Richland Hills peace officer, aggravated robbery, Fort Worth robbery, Arlington, and robbery Watauga. Luckily, under Texas law, the statutes of limitations were frozen because the offender had left the state. Long admitted he had only ever lived in Oklahoma and had never lived in Texas or really spent significant time there. Tarrant County District Judge Catalano signed the search warrants on April 8. The plan was to have the FBI arrest long that very day, Friday, April 8, 2022. But a review of the poll camera revealed that Long didn't go to work that day. They learned from his employer that he had used some flex days and was scheduled to return to work on Monday, April 11th. This is from Detective Whitlock's report. Quote, FBI administration informed special Agent Jamerson that they would not be affecting any arrests as at Mark's house or on a traffic stop, and that we would need to wait until April 11th, end quote. The Feds wanted to avoid any kind of hostage situation at Long's home and they didn't want to risk a traffic stop because he was known to carry a gun and shoot cops. Detective Whitlock agreed to wait until Monday to effect the arrest of Mark Long in the parking lot at his workplace deemed the safest place possible. On Sunday, April 10th, Detective Whitlock, Sergeant Hobson, Sergeant Snyder, and undercover detectives left for Oklahoma City. Investigators reviewing the pole camera video noted that Mark Long had returned to his home Saturday night and not left the house since that time his car was parked outside. They knew he was scheduled to go back to work the next day, Monday the 11th. So that morning they set up outside his workplace in order to be prepared to arrest him. He typically got to work no later than 7:30 in the morning. By 8 o', clock, they realized he wasn't going to show up. But a check of the pole camera showed his vehicle was still at his residence. And a call to his workplace revealed he had not called into work. What was going on with Mark Long? The investigators decided to start reviewing the pole camera video more closely for the day before Sunday. And that's when they found it at 10:30 Sunday morning, April 10th. Long left the house carrying a duffel bag. He had a cell phone and a clip on his belt. Waiting on the street in front of his house was a gray Toyota passenger car, an Uber or Lyft. Mark placed his duffel bag in the trunk and got into the backseat. The suspect was on the run and they had missed it. Enhancing the pole camera footage failed to reveal the license plate of the vehicle Long had gotten into. Detective Whitlock notified the SBI, FBI, U.S. marshals and Texas Rangers to monitor all border crossings and be on the lookout for the suspect. Remember that Long left his house on April 10, Sunday after learning that he was on the run. Undercover officers surveilling his home watched his brother in law leave the residence and followed him. They decided to contact him to see if he knew where Long had gone. When they did, he said that his wife, Mark's sister, had been contacted by the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner's Office and informed that Mark Long was dead. What? The Oklahoma City Medical Examiner's office confirmed to Detective Whitlock that they had a Mark Long in the morgue who had the same birth date as the suspect. He had died from a fall and a resultant head injury. Detective Whitlock was sent photos of the deceased man and verified that it was in fact Mark Long. How incredibly frustrating. He had slipped out of their grasp and now they would never have a chance to question him. Meanwhile, the results came back from the office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Analysis of the buccal swab collected from Mark Long. The DNA matched to the profile from the three bank robberies. When the FBI test results came back, they showed that the single source male DNA profile extracted from the fork collected from Mark long at the rib restaurant matched to the genetic profile developed from the 1998 and 1999 Oklahoma City robberies. They had their guy, but he had the last laugh.
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So who was Mark Long? Mark Allen Long was born on April 9, 1962 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Father Aubrey Francis Long and mother Jenny Dearing. He was the third of four children and the second of three boys born to the couple. Here is his obituary minus his living siblings names. Mark Long of Oklahoma city died Sunday, April 10th. There will be a memorial service at First Baptist Church of Nakoma Park, Oklahoma at 2:30 Saturday, April 30th. Mark was born to Aubrey and Jeanne Long of Oklahoma City in 1962. He's survived by his brothers as well as his sister. He is also survived by six nieces and nephews and four great nieces and nephews, all who love their Uncle Mark. Mark was preceded in death by his parents. Mark graduated from OSU with an Associate's degree and from OU with a bachelor's degree in Media Technology. He worked previously for local TV stations and was employed the last few years for the OU Health Science Center. Mark faithfully served multiple faith based organizations in various capacities well over 30 years. Mark also served several civic organizations throughout those same years. From what I could find, Mark Long appeared to live in Oklahoma his entire life. He graduated from Choctaw high school in 1981. In 2003, he graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in film and video. He transferred credits that he had earned in 1988-1990 from OSU, including a number of credits for law enforcement classes. When detectives learned his name for the first time, he was working at the University of Oklahoma Health Science center as a media specialist. Long was in his 30s when his father was killed by a drunk driver in 1997. From what the genealogist and detectives could find, he never married or had children. He would have been about 41 years old at the time of the Watauga robbery. And my jaw literally dropped open when I read this part. Long had a great grandfather named Sam C. Long who was a Love county sheriff in Oklahoma and who was killed in a shootout with bank robbery in 1928. Did the murder of his grandfather inspire Mark Long to become a bank robber? That is pretty effed up. Two men had conducted an armed robbery of the Love County national bank, making away with $9,434. A telephone operator spread the alarm and Sheriff Sam Long responded to the bank alone. He found the bank looting in progress and opened fire. It was unknown how many bank robbers were involved. Contemporary articles say as many as three or four, maybe more. The sheriff was believed to have wounded at least two of them, but himself was mortally wounded and died a few days later in the hospital. He left behind nine children and a wife whom before his death he nominated to take over as sheriff. A hundred years later, an FBI workup of Mark Allen Long revealed that his ancestors owned 320 acres of land in Oklahoma in a family trust. At least one parcel had been sold in 1998. Detective Whitlock's report notes quote. This was of note considering that the suspect in the 1999 Oklahoma City robbery and the 1999 Wichita robbery had referenced having to pay off farm debt, end quote. It was unknown whether there was any validity to farm debt statements. I wondered why explain what he wanted the money for. Detective Whitlock had a computerized criminal history run for Mark Allen Long which showed to be negative. But this turned out to be somewhat deceptive. Detective Whitlock learned on December 16, 2021 from Special Agent Jamerson that Long did actually have a criminal history. He had been arrested in 2000 for an odd crime. In January of 1998, he erroneously received a check from a bank made out to someone else, but mistakenly placed in his post office box. He forged the endorsement and presented it to a different bank. He received $32,149 for the fraudulently negotiated check. He spent $26,130 of those funds obtaining cash advances on credit cards, paying off other credit cards and making purchases at retail stores. He ended up pleading guilty to the federal misdemeanor offense of bank robbery and in February 2001 was sentenced to two years of probation in connection with this arrest. He was interviewed by a special agent of the FBI and admitted he had committed the offense because he was depressed and had large credit card debt. He had been unemployed from May of 1998 until the summer of 1999. He told the FBI agent that he always wanted to be a detective, but didn't want to start as a street cop. He ended up paying restitution to the bank victim in January of 2000. Quote. In a subsequent check by his parole officer, it was noted that Mark had expensive computer equipment, which was odd considering his level of income did not appear to be proportionate to being able to purchase those items, end quote. How had Long managed to pay back that stolen money when he had been unemployed for 18 months and admittedly had spent most of the funds he fraudulently obtained? The investigators believe the restitution was paid with the proceeds from some of Long's bank robberies. Long also had an account with Riverwind Casino that had last been used in June of 2017, but there was no evidence he was a gambling addict. It's unclear what he was spending all his ill gotten gains on. No one was able to figure out why. But Long's 2000 arrest and conviction for the 1998 Czech larceny case were never placed on his criminal history, nor was his DNA collected. And his prints had never been entered into aphis. Geez, did this guy just get freaking lucky? Yes he did. Because had this information been entered into the proper databases and therefore readily available to law enforcement, it would have identified Mark Long as the bank robber in the Oklahoma City cases that had DNA which would have prevented the later robberies and the shooting of Officer Garner. It turned out Long had also gotten lucky in another way. Detective Whitlock worked with the OSBI to compile a list of all owners of both 1985 to 1987 Jeep Wranglers and 1996 to 2001 Range Rovers. Long had not appeared on this list. That's because it turned out his Range rover was a 1995. Further bait bills given to Long in the 1998 Oklahoma City robbery, the 1999 Oklahoma City robbery and the Fort Worth robbery were never found. I wasn't sure how bait bills worked, so I asked Detective Whitlock to explain it. He said serial numbers are recorded on select bills prior to circulation and when provided to a suspect during a robbery, they can be linked to the bank robbery if found in the suspect's possession. However, these bills do not trigger alarms when just out in circulation. They have to be found on the guy and they weren't. Of course, as seems to be a common theme in many cases of this type, the investigators learned from Thomas B. Long's close friend that Long had wanted to be a police officer. Remember the fake police badges found in his car? Investigators concluded he used the red and blue lights in connection with his volunteer role as an emergency responder, but he was clearly fascinated with law enforcement. He had applied to be a security guard in Oklahoma on February 12, 1985 for American Security Corporation. As part of his application, he submitted a fingerprint card. Detective Whitlock obtained it and had his fingerprint team compare the prints to the single Tulsa bank robbery print taken from the teller station counter. It was not a match. That print could have been left by any bank patron. Next, the detective orchestrated a comparison of Long's prints to the ones collected after the Wichita robbery. The suspect had appeared to wear gloves, but you might recall that 4 APHIS quality latent prints had been collected that never matched anyone. The prints themselves had been destroyed, but CBI finally located some Polaroids of the prints in an archive location. They were compared but also did not match to long. On February 28, 2022, Detective Whitlock had the three $1 bills dropped by the bank robber in the Watauga robbery sent to Suzanne Ryan of Pure Gold Forensics for M Vac DNA extraction. The Fort Worth Police Crime Lab had had no luck trying to get Leighton prints off the bills. The MVAC was able to pull one CODIS eligible profile from one of the bills, but it was not consistent with the offender profile from the robberies. This was not a surprise since the bills had been in circulation and who knows how many people touched them. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want.
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okay, so circling back to our dramatic ending, Marg Long was found dead after a fall. What happened? On April 10, a homeless man was walking around a radio tower site in Oklahoma City and found a body at the bottom of the tower. He went to a nearby 711 and told an employee what he'd found. Authorities responded and removed the body and declared the death the result of a fall. But when Detective Whitlock reviewed photos of the death site and put a little context into the deceased, he immediately questioned the circumstances related to the death. Long was all harnessed up and equipped with rope as if he were climbing the tower in a recreational manner. But the polypropylene rope he used was not the type of rope that even a novice climber would use to support one's body weight from any kind of significant height. In fact, it looked like the flimsy rope that was found in Long's vehicle on the day the search warrant was executed. The harness affixed to his body appeared to be very new, as if it had been purchased very recently. And the carabiner attached to his equipment was not something which would be rated to climb any structure safely. In fact, the carabiner gate was missing, indicating it had failed because it was not a climbing grade carabiner. The office of the Medical examiner investigator also had questions surrounding the nature and manner of death. Detective Whitlock wrote, quote, I believed at this point that it was possible Mark fabricated the circumstances of his death to make it appear as if it was an accident when it was actually a suicide. End quote. Detective Whitlock arranged for a drone operator from the Oklahoma State Police to send a drone up the radio tower. The medical examiner had estimated, based on the damage to Long's body, that he fell about 100ft. The drone images detected no evidence whatsoever of a broken rope, a carabiner clip, or anything else that could explain his fall. Interviews with Mark's sister and brother in law did not reveal much new information. They didn't know where Mark was going on Sunday when he left the house and didn't even know that he had left on Saturday, April 9. They said they all went out for Mark's birthday, enjoying dinner and a movie, and nothing appeared out of the ordinary with him. However, his sister said that in the days following the initial police questioning, Mark was concerned about the impact the police investigation would have on her and his family. He made a comment along the lines of he was living his worst nightmare. She described Mark, her brother, as generally a melancholy person. Neither she nor her husband had any apparent knowledge of his criminal activity, including his 2000 arrests by the FBI for the 1998 forgery. Nor were they able to shed any light or provide any solid reason why Mark Long might have resorted to bank robbery after his death. In Long's bedroom, his family had found several items that supported a theory of suicide. A typed bucket list left sitting in plain view had not been there during the initial search warrant search of his residence by police. On the bucket list, the earliest completion date was labeled 2016. Examples of some of the items on the list were Subway, Museum, Eat cronut, Riverside Church, etc. But the list also contained a curious entry that stated climb a radio tower. Another thing that was found in the bedroom but was not there a week earlier was a handwritten list of Long's accounts with usernames and passwords. These were for financial accounts, Facebook, his utilities, and so on. He also left a wad of cash. A plastic bag containing $1,000 was labeled to be given to his sister. The bills did not have serial numbers matching up to any of the robberies. Long's sister said the thousand bucks was approximately the amount it would cost to cover the mortgage and utilities on Long's house for about a month. In his car, they found the packaging material for the new climbing harness Long was wearing when he was found on the ground beneath the radio tower. He was also wearing the clip on his belt for the cell phone he'd purchased at Walmart. But the phone was not on him or anywhere that the investigators could find. So Detective Whitlock and Sergeant Snyder went to the radio tower site where Long was found dead. This was at 1020 Southeast 64th street in Oklahoma City. No sign of the cell phone anywhere. But they did find a white hard hat consistent with the one they'd seen in Long's car when they searched it a week earlier. Detective Whitlock and the FBI made the rounds of businesses in the area of the radio tower to find surveillance footage to see if they could see Long and what had happened at that radio tower. After compiling footage from a number of different sources, here is what they saw. At 11am Long entered the footage wearing a white hard hat. He walked to the tower and dropped a duffel bag containing radios. He immediately Began to climb the tower utilizing his carabiner on several rungs as he made his way up and out of sight of the camera. I'm quoting from the report here. At approximately 11:20 hours, Mark is seen entering the frame. As he plummeted to the ground, Mark's chest and face are facing toward the radio tower. With his feet pointing toward the sky, Mark's arms are completely and purposefully outstretched toward the ground, akin to someone who was diving off a highly elevated diving board into a swimming pool. End quote. Long dove headfirst off the tower. He hit the ground 16ft from the base. The investigators really wanted to find Long's cell phone. He had purchased it a week earlier and had given his new number to no one. What was he using that phone for? An employee at a business that backed up to the radio tower told the investigators there was an unhoused guy who set up an encampment around there. He was an older blonde white guy who rode a bike everywhere. Footage from this business showed a blonde guy in a blue shirt ride up on a bike and find Mark's body. He then rifled the body and appeared to take some things, including possibly the missing phone. He then biked in the direction of the 711 from which the 911 call reporting a death at the radio tower had been initiated. An employee at the 711 called in on April 15 and reported that the unhoused guy had just been in. Special Agent Jamerson sped over there and found him. His name was Pat Harrington. In short, he confirmed he was the one who found the body, but denied stealing the phone until he was confronted with the surveillance footage. Then he admitted he stole the phone and sold it to another unhoused dude named Jeremy for $5. They never found Jeremy, and hence they never found the phone. I wanted to know what the heck Mark Long was doing climbing that radio tower with a bunch of radio transmitters. Further investigation by Detective Whitlock revealed that Long had been very involved in the ham radio community in Oklahoma City. Apparently, the radio tower Long had climbed was known within that community as a tower which did not have a security fence. To be clear, Long did not have permission to be on that tower and had no plausible reason to be on that tower, despite all the equipment he had on him. The owner of the cell tower, the company Terra Pact, confirmed that any work out on the tower would have had to have gone through them, and any certified tower climber would have had to be bonded and insured. Long was neither of these. Detective Whitlock did learn that Climbing towers and trying to transmit immature radio waves far distances was sort of a challenge within the ham radio community. And back in the early 1980s, Long had climbed a small 30 foot high radio tower used by the OU Amateur Radio Club. This tower was much bigger, servicing the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, T Mobile, US Cellular, and several other smaller entities. Had Mark Long not been about to be arrested for bank robbery, his death climbing a radio tower with a bunch of ham radio equipment would almost certainly have been chalked up to an accident. Extensive interviews were conducted with Mark's family, in particular his sister. She had no idea as to why her brother had started robbing banks, but she said she and her husband lived out of the country during that time frame. She really didn't know what her brother was up to. She had no idea what he did with the money because he was a very frugal person. In fact, she said he was cheap to the point that he would buy gifts for the family at thrift stores. However, she had learned that he had made a comment to her niece that he had money buried all over the place. She didn't think anything of that comment at the time. The sister said that Long lived with their mom for a while, indicating that money was tight and when their mom had to move out of her house in the mid 2000s, he could not help her financially and moved on his own to the RV park where he had lived for several years before buying the house where he was living when police caught up to him. As she went through his things, the sister found several bills that were outstanding that Long had not paid. Quote, Mark had also been known to take out loans to pay bills and utilize his tax returns to take vacations. Detective Whitlock wanted to speak with Mark Long's brothers, from whom he appeared to have not necessarily been estranged, but certainly not close or connected. On April 21, he managed to track down a sister in law. She said her husband, one of Long's brothers, was not ready to talk about the situation yet. They could think of no reason why Long would have committed bank robberies or what he could have done with the money. They did not know about his 1998 forged check offense or subsequent arrest two years later. Detective Whitlock then spoke with Long's brother who was very surprised at the revelation that his brother was a bank robber. However, he said Long took things very personally and didn't forget any slights against him. He was very passive aggressive, which is why he wasn't close with his brother. He also said Long was a very frugal person did not help their mother out financially and bought gifts for his nephews and nieces from thrift stores. Again, this brother really could not think of a motive that Long might have had for robbing banks. But he did come up with one possible idea. He said their father's business had been closed down around 1987 because the bank had denied their father a loan. Their father was killed by a drunk driver 10 years later. Long's first known bank robbery was in 1988, a year after his father's death. We all prefer things a certain way, like groceries. If you want groceries just how you like them, you gotta try Instacart. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences upfront, helping guide their choices. Because when it comes to groceries, the details matter. Instacart get groceries just how you like.
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Detective Whitlock spoke extensively with Mark Long's best friend, Thomas B. He said the two had been best friends since 1990 when they met at Camp Hudgens in McAllister, Oklahoma. A quote from the report Thomas was flabbergasted that Mark had committed these offenses and was still having a difficult time wrapping his head around the situation. End quote. In fact, Thomas was one of the chaplains for the Oklahoma City PD and a strong supporter of the police, so he found it particularly difficult to understand how his friend was a bank robber. Thomas confirmed that Long had driven a red Jeep with a black soft top. He also owned a white Range Rover. He said that Long called him after the police interviewed him and said that the police went through his house and took a few electronic items, but he didn't give Thomas any details. Thomas found this to be odd, but didn't really question it. Long gave no indication whatsoever that he was contemplating suicide. They spoke on Long's birthday, the 9th, and Long said he was getting dinner and a movie with his sister's family. Then on the 10th, Thomas tried to call Mark Long and texted him several times and asked if he wanted to go out to eat. Long never responded. Then Thomas got the phone call saying that Long was dead. Thomas said that even looking back on his decades of friendship with Long, with the hindsight of what his friend was actually up to, there were no red flags or warning signs or even hints that Long was a serial armed bank robber. One co worker and friend of Long's named Chris B. Who worked closely with him for eight years at the Oklahoma University Health Science center, said that Long was a reliable employee. A little Long winded and did have a temper. He would reach a boiling point and slam doors or throw something down on his desk. He sometimes talked about going nuclear, but he would always calm down. And none of this occurred often enough to be a problem. Chris said he heard about Long's car being searched by federal agents and asked Long whether his car had been broken into. Long said no, and he didn't know why it was being searched, but that they didn't find anything. Detective Whitlock obtained Long's work computer pursuant to his search warrant. He found that Long had left a document on his work computer titled Last Wishes. He had created it on April 5 after his initial interview with the FBI and Detective Whitlock in the minivan. In the document, Long detailed his funeral arrangements, specifying that he wanted organ music playing, wanted to be cremated, and did not want a tombstone. But there was something else. A forensic search of his work computer revealed there was a file that had originally been typed as a Word document, but then not saved as such because Long had apparently later decided to stage his death as an accident rather than a suicide. The file image read, quote, it is with great sorrow that I take drastic actions to end my suffering. I did my best to put the past behind me, but it looked like the past was faster than the present spelled wrong. I Hope my past 20 years was productive for God and man. I regret any sorrow I have brought the family. We shall all be together again one day, as that is the plan under Redeemer. Christ. All these sins line up in a row and each one has no more bearing. Over another one in our past. Please be assured I did not have this plan for my life. I have many regrets. Mark this file was created on Mark's last day at work, April 7th at 6:47am One more artifact was on the work computer. Long had apparently conducted a search from home using his work user profile. The search was for Mark Long and North Richland Hills and was on a website set up to allow public searches of Texas criminal records. And a deleted photo was not viewable, but the file showed that it had been titled Garner png, as in Officer Jeff Garner. That photo was downloaded on March 10, 2022, a full three weeks before Mark Long had any idea the police were onto him. Something told him they were coming for him. Maybe he was listening to DNA ID on his ham radio. There was one more piece of slam dunk evidence connecting Long to the attempted murder of Officer Garner. The revolver found in his house was subjected to ballistics testing and matched to the projectiles located at the scene of Officer Garner's shooting. However, Long was never connected to any fingerprints found after any of the bank robberies. The demand note from Watauga did not yield any prints. Prints from the countertop of the Tulsa robbery did not lead to long, and the $1 bills he dropped did not bear any prints connected to him. And the teller's vehicle he stole in Wichita also did not yield any prints from Mark Long. Eager to try to find the money that Long had stolen in the suspected bank robberies, which amounted to about $300,000, Detective Whitlock drafted up nine new search warrants on April 21, 2022. These were for Long's new cell phone, his financial accounts at bank first and Capital One, his social media accounts, and Lyft and Uber to try to find the person who drove him to the cell tower. Quote the purpose of the search warrants was to ensure that Mark acted alone and in an attempt to find the money that was stolen along with any evidence. Unfortunately, District Judge Catalano declined to sign the warrants because the suspect was deceased. And in the eyes of the law, the investigation was over. During this entire investigation, Detective Whitlock had taken good care not to share with Captain Garner any information about the suspect. He password protected the entire file and made sure that no one spoke of the case in front of Garner. On April 12, with Long dead, he compiled a photo lineup using a driver's license photo of mark long from 2007 and five other randomly selected men who looked similar. Captain Garner immediately selected Mark Long's photo and said that's the guy. After Detective Whitlock concluded all this investigation, he prepared a death investigation report and provided it to the office of the chief medical examiner in Oklahoma. On June 15, 2022, Dr. Riccaro of the OCME issued a ruling that the cause of death of Mark Long was, quote, multiple blunt force injuries, and the manner of death of Mark Long was suicide. North Richland Hills police held a press conference announcing the resolution of the case. Then Captain Garner, who is now chief, spoke about the identification of Mark Allen Long as the man who shot him on March 3, 2003. He said that in the wake of the shooting, all they had was a red jeep with fake tags. In 2007, he was a new sergeant trying to put the shooting behind him. But a new young officer would not let it go and kept bringing it up. This was detective Eric Whitlock. He was passionate about the lack of justice that had taken place in this case. Quote, Eric would constantly tell me that he would make his way to criminal investigations and investigate my case. And that is just what he did. Eric has been the driving force. He never gave up. And he accomplished all this while managing his primary caseload as a fraud detective. End quote. Of the shooting investigation, Captain Garner said, quote, 19 years, one month and nine days later, I identified Mark Long in a photo lineup. I never forgot his face. And now we know his name, end quote. Garner said that he at times doubted whether after so many years, his memory would be reliable. But when the moment came, the memories flooded back. Quote, there were a lot of goosebumps, and quite honestly, it was one of the many emotional times that I've experienced in this case. I held on to hope, but you can't hold on too tightly for that. I've received all I ever wanted. I never really thought today would be possible. That's just a gift that Whitlock gave me. While one of Mark's bullets hit me, the other four missed. And I've done my best to honor my survival day. Garner continued, I have come to understand that I have been carrying the weight of this for 19 years, and I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity to finally set it aside. While I'm grateful, I recognize the Long family is grieving. The mark who shot me is not the mark who they knew. In many ways, these recent events have made them victims of Mark's actions the same way it did the employees of seven different banks. I am truly sorry for their loss, the loss of a brother, and I pray they find their own path to healing. I'M ready to begin mine. Then, in a gesture I really appreciated, Captain Garner directly addressed the person who really broke this case, the top match genetic relative of Mark Long who uploaded to GEDmatch in December of 2021. Allowing the genealogist to advance her analysis and pinpoint Long, Garner said to this top match, quote, you opted in with no imaginable idea of the role that decision would come to play. You shined a light darkness and brought justice and healing. Detective Whitlock said that he had gone on a quest to solve the bank robberies and in turn, the shooting of his sergeant because violent crimes with no answers and no justice for the victims bothered him on a personal level. But he admitted to being disappointed that Long had not stuck around to see the case through. Quote, he took it with him. You know, only things he'll know, like the whys, essentially. Why did he do all this? Whitlock said, no one knows. Long took his secrets to the grave. Quote, the only person that knew about these offenses at the time was Mark Long. Okay, so what do we know in the wake of Mark Long's death? We know that he robbed at least seven banks in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas between 1998 and 2003. We know that he had to have been casing the banks beforehand, as he knew what areas were unalarmed, what Plexiglas would fit, what time employees arrived, where to park within walking distance, and so on. We know that he became increasingly bold, walking into some of the banks and stealing employee cars when it came time to leave. We know that he judiciously used disguises, including makeup, to cover his pockmarked skin. And we know that he shot at and tried to kill Officer Jeff Garner as he fled the scene of the Watauga robbery. He kept the very gun that fired those rounds at Garner, even hitting him in the foot. I asked Chief Garner what his thoughts were about the shooting and whether Mark Long intended to kill him. He wrote me in a lengthy email. Quote, it seemed very clear to me that his whole purpose in shooting at me was to kill me, thereby allowing him to break contact with law enforcement before other police units caught up with him. Had other police units reached us and joined the chase, his escape would have been very unlikely. He was driving an older Jeep, and he would not have been able to outrun or outmaneuver us. I don't believe he panicked at all. His actions seemed very strategic, and I believe his immediate and planned response to encountering law enforcement was to resort to violence early in the chase. He pulled over abruptly, and as I was getting off my motorcycle, a female jogged into view on the opposite side of the street. It's my belief his plan was to attempt to shoot me, but he then drove away looking for another location. So he did not have any witnesses. When he attempted to kill me, I did not have my gun drawn. He drove his Jeep into a field that was bordered on the opposite side by houses and fences blocking his movement in any other direction. As I stopped my motorcycle in the roadway, he began a U turn back onto the roadway and towards the opposite direction we had just come. There was nowhere for me to go on the narrow roadway. I started to dismount my motorcycle with the plan to get behind it for cover as he drove by on the opposite side. Instead, as I began to dismount, he accelerated sharply and changed the apex of his turn, changing his direction of travel to directly at me. I believed he was going to run me over. I dropped my motorcycle and tried to run to the side of the road to escape. I looked back over my shoulder to gauge whether I was going to avoid being hit. I saw Mark pointing a pistol at me from the driver's side window. At that point, he began shooting at me. So I took one or two more running steps and dove for the side of the road. It was during my dive that one of the bullets struck me on the outside of my ankle, traveled up my leg, and exited on the inside of my calf. It was not until I was on the ground that I rolled over, drew my own gun, and returned fire at Mark as he sped away in the Jeep. All that from Chief Garner. So there you have it. In the victim's own words, the shooting was intentional and calculated, and lethality was its goal. So that's what we know about the crimes of Mark Long. What we don't know, we have to speculate about. We don't know if Long actually had police scanning equipment, but he did use earpieces and a walkie talkie. In one case, Detective Whitlock told me that back then, when these robberies were committed, the police frequencies were not encrypted, so anyone with radio experience could access the radio waves and hear police transmissions. We know that Long had significant radio experience along these lines. We don't know whether he had any accomplices. He could have been talking to an accomplice on that earpiece, someone who was on the lookout for police. But Detective Whitlock doesn't think so. He believes that Long was, in the end, a narcissist who acted Alone. And we agreed together that Long probably very much enjoyed harboring his little secret until the end. After all, he kept the gun and kept photos of the gun on his phone so he could look at it at any time. It's as if the gun was a tangible reminder of his secret success as the bank robber who outsmarted police and the FBI. A secret he relished revisiting in his twisted mind. Why did Long shoot at Officer Garner? He had to know that if he killed a cop, that would make things significantly worse for himself. Did he have fantasies of dying in a gunfight like his grandfather? Did he just panic? Detective Whitlock believes that Long was desperate to protect his secret identity as a bank robber. In his outer life, he maintained a squeaky clean image of a friend of law enforcement. A religious man, a volunteer, upstanding citizen. That image would have been shattered by the revelation that he was a basic robber who put people in fear to further his own greed. And when it came down to it, he took his own life rather than facing his friends, co workers and family. And the shattering of his carefully cultivated image. I said to Detective Whitlock when researching this case that I could not believe how many people I came across who think that robbing banks is a good idea. He said something interesting, which was that he thinks that sometimes it's not just about the money, but it's about the thrill. And I think that was definitely the case in this instance. We have no idea what Mark Long spent all the money he scored from robbing financial institutions on. He certainly did not live a fancy lifestyle. Yet his crimes were meticulously planned and carried out and required a great deal of preparation and thought. That speaks to someone who acted not out of desperation or stress, but internal motivators that we will never understand. Thank you an infinite amount to Northwichland Hills Detective Eric Whitlock for his extreme patience with me as I tried to figure out this very complex case. His work exposing Mark Long and avenging Chief Garner's shooting was exemplary. And if you are one of the bad guys, they are coming for you. This will be the last episode of DNAID before our summer hiatus. The show will be back in late August. In the meantime, we'll be airing some repeat episodes for you to enjoy. Everyone, have a great summer.
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DNA: ID – Officer Jeff Garner Part 2 of 2
AbJack Entertainment • June 29, 2026
This episode of DNA: ID examines the final unraveling of an extraordinary cold case: the attempted murder of Officer Jeff Garner and a string of armed bank robberies, eventually connected to one man, Mark Allen Long, through investigative genetic genealogy. The episode focuses on the exhaustive investigation to identify the suspect, the circumstances of his capture, and the perplexing puzzle of his motivation—a central question the series always seeks to answer. The audience is taken deep inside the collaborative law enforcement pursuit, the emotional closure for the victims, and the ultimate, confounding conclusion of the case.
| Timestamp | Segment Focus | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:00 | DNA breakthrough and genealogy investigation | | 05:10 | Identification of Mark Allen Long | | 08:45 | Surveillance and DNA evidence collection | | 12:50 | Interrogation: confrontation and first mention of attorney | | 15:45 | Search warrants, discovery of revolver, and vehicle evidence | | 19:40 | Death of Mark Long: discovery and initial confusion | | 25:58 | Mark Long's background and obituary | | 35:48 | Details of Long's death: probable suicide and its staging | | 46:37 | Interviews with family and friends—no clear motive found | | 52:30 | Chief Garner's emotional reflection and closure | | 60:00 | Host’s final thoughts: unresolved questions & impact |
In this exceptional and haunting episode, DNA: ID illustrates both the promise and limitations of modern forensic genealogy. The identification of Mark Allen Long as the Cowboy Hat Bandit and would-be murderer of Officer Garner is a testament to relentless investigation and new forensic tools. Yet the resounding question—why did Mark Long do it—serves as a humbling reminder of the murky depths of human motivation, which sometimes even the best detective work cannot illuminate.
Episode ends with thanks and a note about a summer hiatus for DNA: ID.