Organ Donation Stories

The crusade of Christian Longo

SALEM — Christian Longo joined Oregon’s Death Row without remorse.

Even with his sentence passed down in April 2003, the convicted killer still was clinging to the web of lies he’d cooked up to explain the deaths of his wife and three young children. Longo still insisted to his own family and friends that he strangled his wife, MaryJane, in a fit of rage, after discovering that she had killed two of the couple’s children, not long after the family moved to the Oregon Coast from Michigan in 2001. Then, he maintained, he put the last child breathing, 2-year-old Madison, out of her misery.

The fabrication enraged the family of his victims. Not only was Longo still denying his horrific crimes, he was blaming them on his murdered wife.

Now, from the white walls of a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell at the Oregon State Penitentiary, Longo wants the world to believe he has changed. That he’s come to grips with the “monster” that he is. That he accepts full responsibility for strangling his wife and youngest daughter, Madison, and dumping his two other children, 4-year-old Zachery and 3-year-old Sadie, off a bridge and into a frigid bay along the Oregon Coast while they were still alive, rock-filled pillowcases tied to their legs to ensure they sank to the bottom and drowned.

Now, he says, he wants to make amends.

Longo said he wants his organs donated once he’s executed, and he’s created a Facebook page, a nonprofit organization — and a headache for prison officials who said they have no interest in negotiating with inmates who want to change the rules or the drugs used to put inmates to death. (The current cocktail of drugs makes it impossible to preserve organs.)

Longo claims he’s willing to waive his appeals if the state will grant what would ultimately be his last wish, potentially shortening the time before his execution.

Family members of Longo’s victims said what the narcissistic killer really wants is attention.

In April, editors at the New York Times gave Longo a virtual megaphone, publishing an opinion piece by the inmate, allowing him to launch a nationwide campaign to convince not just Oregon but all states to change the rules for capital inmates, to let them donate their organs after they’re executed.

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