She Hid a Storm Behind a Perfect Life | Emily Long

Late-summer New Hampshire looked peaceful on August 18, 2025, with porch lights glowing and kids finishing popsicles…but inside a quiet cul-de-sac home, Emily Long’s double life was about to shatter. Behind the flawless TikTok reels and a reputation as the perfect wife and mom, Emily was hiding a $600,000 embezzlement, a dying husband, and an obsession with control.

When investigators closed in on the missing money, Emily chose the unthinkable: a murder-suicide that left her husband and two of their children dead, a toddler miraculously alive, and an entire community asking how someone so “perfect” could harbor such darkness.

In this gripping episode of GBRLIFE Of Crimes, we unpack:
• Emily’s meticulous childhood and perfectionist streak
• The secret financial theft that fueled the spiral
• The psychological “cornered offender” profile that often precedes familicide
• How curated social-media images can hide devastating truths

This is more than a true-crime story. It’s a chilling look at shame, secrecy, and the pressure to appear perfect. Listen now for a deep dive into a case that shocked New England and captivated true-crime fans worldwide.

✨ New episodes every week on GBRLIFE.com or your favorite podcast platform.

Chapters

• 0:00 A Calm Before the Storm
• 4:14 The Illusion of Perfection
• 8:15 A Family's Tragic Collapse
• 9:58 Community Reactions and Reflections
• 11:03 Understanding the Darkness/Outro

Transcript

0:00

Late August in coastal New Hampshire carries a deceptive kind of calm. The air is warm but edged with the first bite of autumn, and the evening stretched long and honey-colored. On August 18, 2025, Madberry settled into the easy rhythm, porch lights flickering on, children's finishing popsicles, the low drone of crickets beginning their night chorus, and along a nice, calm street, a gray colonial stood quiet at the end of a cul-de-sac. Its curtains drawn against the fading light, to the neighbors watering late summer gardens. Nothing about the house seemed unusual, but inside, a story decades long was reaching its final terrible scene. Welcome to GBRLIFE Transmissions. I'm your host, Kaitlyn, and you're listening to GBRLIFE of Crimes, where we explore not just what happened in crimes committed by women, but why they happened and the psychology behind them. Today, we're diving into the story of Emily Anne Stoddard, who would later become Emily Long. Emily Long had been a child of two worlds. Born in Dover, she was the kind of girl adults described as poised, but poised beyond her years, and friends remembered a different texture. A restless perfectionist, quick with a laugh yet fiercely private, she loved the quiet rituals of or even as a little girl she lined up her crayons by shade before drawing and rewrote school assignments if the letters didn't lean exactly the same way when her parents marriage fractured during middle school which is one of the hardest times she didn't rebel but she did up the control teachers marveled at her immaculate handwriting and the way that she could turn a chaotic group project into a color-coded masterpiece. She joined the bookkeeping club and loved the way numbers obeyed her. Tidy columns that promised order, when the rest of life felt unpredictable. Again, she craved order, neatness, and appearance. These became the quiet engine in her life, something she carried like a private shield. After graduation, Emily stayed close to the small towns of New Hampshire's seacoast, earning an associate's degree in accounting and a reputation for competence. Friends from that time recall a young woman who seemed both friendly but unreachable. If she were playing a part no one else could quite see, people did notice the smooth but rough edge that she would present in an effortlessly perfect way. And her first job at a small insurance office, she continued these traits. She stayed late, caught or dismissed, never lost her composure, and she dated quietly. She was never the center of attention. At least not by choice. And then Emily met Ryan Long when she was 24. He was an HVAC technician with a dry wit and warm steadiness that felt like safety. They met through mutual friends at a fall bonfire. Ryan told a buddy he was drawn to her quick smile and the way that she listened like every word mattered. Their courtship was brief. Their marriage was nearly storybook. A white sand beach ceremony, a first apartment with thrift store furniture, then a starter home and three children. It was the American dream. They loved small rituals, late night drives with classic rock on the radio, Sunday breakfast heavy with maple syrup and handwritten notes tucked into lunchboxes. They seemed perfect. A family anchored in laughter and routine. Emily's TikTok channel reinforced the image. Softly lit videos of school lunches packed with precision, home organizing tips. Gentle encouragements about motherhood. Thousands scrolled past and didn't think anything except for what a beautiful little family. They only saw serenity. Neighbors would later say she waved from the driveway with a smile that looked real because it was practiced. But perfection is a demanding God. And in late 2024, Ryan was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. Treatments were grueling. The bills were relentless. And Emily shouldered everything. The caregiving, the finances, the children's routines. Outwardly, as in Emily's style, she stayed composed. But inwardly, something began to fracture. She spent nights watching the steady blink of medical monitors, her thoughts chasing each other in circles, friends remembering her voice becoming tighter, and her hugs lingering just a second too long. When Fisher Plumbing and Heating offered her a bookkeeping position, it seemed like a blessing. A steady job with flexible hours. Investigators would later allege it became the stage for a slow, methodical theft. Over nearly two years, small transfers and quiet manipulations of invoices added up to more than $600,000, siphoned from the company's accounts. Whether the money was used for medical costs, the mortgage, or simply to prop up the appearance of control remains murky. But what is clear is that Emily hid it all behind the same calm she perfected since childhood. And in early August of 2025, the public saw the first real crack. The company's owner noticed discrepancies and contacted police. A meeting was scheduled for the following week. Emily skipped it. Around the same time, her TikTok posts have now changed. On August 7th, she uploaded a short video. Her eyes were flat. Her voice was drained. I don't know how to fix this. Most viewers assumed it was about Ryan's illness. No one guessed she was standing on the edge of exposure, financial ruin, criminal charges, The shattering of the immaculate life she built. The neighbors who saw her at the grocery store a few days later remember a polite nod, a tight smile, and a cart filled with ordinary things. Apples, milk, a birthday card, and she gave no sign of a storm inside. Criminologists describe what was happening as a cornered offender, a form of a spiral. It's shame fused with fear, a belief that once the secret surfaces, there will be no recovery. In cases of familiaside, this sense is impending humiliation, but it collides with a warped idea of protection. If I can't save us, at least I can end the pain. The plan isn't usually impulsive. It grows in silence, and Emily's history fits the profile. The earlier quietly dismissed theft in 2016.

Speaker0: 7:15

The lifelong need to keep the picture perfect, the exhaustion of caring for a dying spouse, each element tightened the vice until the walls of her carefully constructed life felt as though they were pressing in from every direction. And on the afternoon of August 18th, neighbors saw nothing unusual. A car in the driveway, curtains drawn against the heat and sometime before nightfall, Emily retrieved the family's weapon. Investigators believe Ryan was resting downstairs but she went for him first. She moved through the house with a terrible deliberation going after eight-year-old Parker and then six-year-old Ryan Jr. as they played in their rooms. Their toddler sister slept in a crib, and for reasons no one will ever fully know, Emily left her alive, but then she turned the weapon on herself. The scene police discovered after a welfare check around 9 p.m. Was quiet except for the small cry of a hungry child. Four lives ended, one spared, and a mystery that would ripple far beyond the cul-de-sac. Officers described the eerie stillness. A half-folded basket of laundry. A child's Lego creation mid-built. A faint smell of dinner still in the air. One neighbor said that it felt as if time itself had stopped in that house. As journalists combed through court records, the earlier theft case surfaced. A 2016 allegation of forgery and embezzlement from a different employer. Ultimately, it was dismissed. But it painted a picture of a woman skilled at balancing books and hiding shadows, always striving to maintain the facade of competence. Friends from childhood admitted that even as a teenager, Emily hated asking for help, and she hated being seen as weak. The little girl who once color-coded her notebooks had grown into a woman who believed any crack in the image was fatal. Former co-workers recalled how she always volunteered for extra shifts and rarely joined after-work gatherings, as if fun were a luxury that she just couldn't afford. And the community reeled. Candlelight vigils filled the elementary school gym, where Parker's drawings still hung on the walls. Blue ribbons fluttered on mailboxes and telephone poles. And at a town meeting days later, parents held their children tighter, while counselors, handed out pamphlets on grief. Strangers donated to a fund for the surviving toddler who went to live with extended family. The embezzlement case was closed with Emily's death, leaving only civil suits to trace the stolen money. And for those left behind, the numbers hardly mattered. What haunted them was the question of how someone who looked so gentle, so composed, could commit an act so violent. A neighbor told reporters she was always smiling. If someone like Emily can do this, how do you ever know anyone? And psychologists caution against simple answers. Familiarity rarely stems from sudden rage. It is born of control, a rapt mercy, a profound isolation. Emily's life offers a stark illustration. The perfectionism of her youth became a prison. Her financial crimes raise the stakes of exposure. The relentless care of a terminally ill spouse deepened the despair. Each layer tightened until she may have believed death was the only way to preserve the image, to prevent her children from witnessing the fall. But none of this excuses what she did. It only shows how quietly a life can twist when shame and secrecy meet unrelenting pressure. The quiet of that August night has lifted, but the questions linger, like humidity after a storm? How many people saw small warning signs and dismissed them as simple stress? How many of us scroll past curated lives on social media, never guessing at the chaos behind the ring lights? What would have changed if someone had reached past the perfection to insist on help? We'll never know. This has been GBRLIFE of Crimes, part of GBRLIFE Transmissions, and I'm Kaitlyn reminding you that understanding the darkness helps us appreciate the light. Join me next time as we uncover another case that challenges everything we thought we knew about the criminal mind.