A struggling mother shot two of her children and her husband dead before turning the gun on herself in a chilling murder-suicide, an autopsy has determined.
Emily Long, 34, was found dead alongside her husband Ryan Long, 48, and two of their children, eight-year-old Parker and six-year-old Ryan, in their stunning New Hampshire home on Monday night. Their youngest child, aged 3, was unharmed.
She had been documenting her husband’s battle with terminal brain cancer in a series of increasingly distressing TikTok videos in which she confessed her mental health was in tatters and that she’d been in a deep state of depression.
Newly released autopsy findings confirmed that Emily died by a single gunshot wound to the head, determined to be suicide.
Her two children each died as a result of a single gunshot wound to the head each, ruled by the medical examiner as homicides.
Emily’s husband suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and his death has also been ruled a homicide.
The medical examiner told the Daily Mail ‘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 Long, 34, was found dead alongside her husband Ryan Long, 48, and two of their children, eight-year-old Parker and six-year-old Ryan, in their stunning New Hampshire home on Monday night
Authorities had received a 911 call reporting multiple deaths inside the home. When they arrived, they found an unharmed three-year-old child
Authorities had received a 911 call reporting multiple deaths inside the home. When they arrived, they found the three-year-old child inside the home, unharmed.
The surviving child is now in the custody of family as the investigation continues. It was unclear if Emily or her terminally ill husband fired the weapon.
On TikTok, Emily had been documenting her family’s journey after her husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. His diagnosis was terminal.
In her last video, shared just two days before their deaths, Emily explained that she and her children had been struggling with her husband’s diagnosis, but that she was committed to improving her mental health.
‘All I want to do is hide under a blanket with my kids, but that isn’t healthy for them and it’s not healthy for me,’ she said.
‘Today I decided I need to make a conscious effort to shift my mindset. I’m getting out of this depression whether I want to or not.’
‘I am determined to create normalcy.’
On TikTok, Emily had been documenting her family’s journey after her husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. His diagnosis was terminal
Authorities are awaiting autopsy results to formally determine their cause of death, but it is being treated as a murder suicide
In separate videos, she had spoken about the grief of having to tell her children that Long’s diagnosis was terminal.
She explained that her two eldest children understood the condition, and the outcome, more thoroughly than their youngest child.
On May 11, Emily uploaded a video captioned: ‘Want to watch someone actually fall apart before your very eyes? I swear, this cancer will be the thing that breaks me.’
Authorities are awaiting autopsy results to formally determine their cause of death, but it is being treated as a murder suicide.
‘One of the biggest questions they have right now is motive, why?’ Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati told WCAX.
‘And I think that’s probably one of the more difficult things that they are trying to grasp to understand how this came to be.’
Long was a psychologist at Oyster River Middle School in Durham, while Emily worked as director of operations at restaurant chain Wing-Itz.
