“The Hamman’s did much of the writing, I helped them check facts, dates and details. Having known all the details at one time, it was easy enough for me to recall them or know exactly where to look to find them. That was my focus, and I learned a lot about the process of writing a book and now I’m learning how to market it.”
As with all things, it’s best to start at the beginning. At the time, Long was working for the Attorney General’s office.
“When a big case comes up, counties can apply for help from the State’s Attorney office,” he said. “This is available to any South Dakota county, but usually Minnehaha and Pennington counties don’t need the service. We got the call from McCook County State’s Attorney and our South Dakota State’s Attorney at the time assigned me and one other attorney to assist in the case.”
Long talked about crime and homicide as crime in general.
“Homicide is predominantly a family crime,” he said. “Usually committed by those who know each other, predominantly. Occasionally you get one of the stranger homicides, where nothing is seemingly connected. There is a connection however, it just doesn’t fit with the facts and information you have.”
“In the August 27, 1994 disappearance of Larisa Dumansky, there were no obvious leads, and the investigation didn’t go anywhere. Anderson and Dumansky knew each other, but it was a wide expanse of people between them, too wide of an expanse with no obvious connection. There was no place to start, no way to narrow the field. Only by following the trail and locating productive evidence did we start to see results.
“Then we had the Amy Anderson incident (no relation to Robert Leroy Anderson),” he recounted. “She was a very fortunate young lady. She fought her attackers, she was brave and was very lucky to escape. Again, sadly, investigators had very little evidence to work with.
“Then on July 29, 1996, was the Piper Streyle incident. We had eyewitnesses and some evidence. However, at this point we had many separate crimes. We didn’t know they were connected. It took several months of work for law enforcement and the prosecution to discover those connections. We had some good publicity, and believe it or not the media actually helped in this case. That and we had citizens step up and do the right and courageous thing. We also got testimony from convicts, not always the most reliable source, but in this case, it was very valuable. This combined with hard and diligent work from our law enforcement, along with a helping of just plain good luck, we were able to bring the case to a successful conclusion.
“In working on this book, one of the first things I did was I went back to my opening statement for the trial. A good prosecutor will tell the judge and jury exactly what he’s trying to prove and how he intends to do it. Mine took about four hours, and for this book I used it as an outline for my own benefit. Anything that was significant, anything that was important to the case, I covered in that opening statement.
“At the time, I felt tremendous pressure. I wanted to get this right. The pressure was to try this case well enough to get the death penalty, which for me and the others working on this case, was the only appropriate sentence for this situation. Normally as a prosecutor you work to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, but in cases like this, where you’re asking jurors for the death penalty, you want to go beyond a shadow of a doubt. You want the jurors to be very certain that this is the guy who did it, and that this is what must be done. I’m confident we did that.
“If you’re only going to read one true crime book, this one is a pretty good place to start and finish with,” Long said. “It has all of the elements. For one, the success of our criminal justice system. Good citizens, doing what’s right. Good law enforcement officers working hard and doing their jobs well. Classic forces of evil and worst of the human nature. At the same time you see the best of humanity as well, and more than a couple elements of great good fortune. Never underestimate the power of good luck. Combine that with tremendous forensics, and a terrific interrogation. Eyewitness testimony that was crucial. A convict informant that produced tremendous evidence. Tremendous participation from citizens, citizens stepped up to the plate and do what’s right because it was right. That above all gives me hope and makes me proud of my home state. In my job you can get kind of cynical, seeing the worst of things and people, but I saw the best qualities of humanity on display as well and it’s inspiring. There is likely to be local interest in this book as there were potential victims from Sherman, Egan and Colman.”
Duct Tape Killer went on sale on January 14, 2020 and will be available at the Treasure Chest in Garretson, several locations in Sioux Falls, and on-line. The authors will sign books at Barnes and Noble on January 18. Long will sign books at Reach Literacy in Sioux Falls on January 23 and January 27. He will also be a featured writer at the Treasure Chest this year during our next Jesse James Days festival.
