In this heartfelt interview, Angie Austin reconnects with Wally Long after more than a decade, recounting a tragic event that changed Wally’s life forever. As Wally opens up about the murder of his brother and sister-in-law by their own son, he explains how this devastating event led him to write ‘Why Me, Lord?’. Through grief and suffering, Wally found a new purpose in life as a pastor and author, emphasizing the biblical and practical aspects of dealing with suffering.
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey there, friend. Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. I believe we have joining us my first guest from 12 years ago when I started The Good News. I’ve become friends with Wally Long. His family had gone through a real tragedy. His extended family, some of them lived out on the eastern plains. And we met when he came back to Colorado to deal with, you know, the aftermath of that tragedy. And I’ve really followed his life’s journey since then. He’s a father, a He became a pastor and now is an author, and he ended up raising some of his brother’s children after this particular incident. And the book that he’s written now is Why Me, Lord? Biblical and Practical Answers for Suffering in Our Lives. Welcome back to the show, Wally. It’s been a while.
SPEAKER 04 :
It has been a long time, Angie. I appreciate you having me on. Yeah, it’s been several years now. since the last time we met.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, you came into the studio and you blessed me being my first official guest after I started the good news. And I’m just excited to have you back. I know this book has been something that you’ve really dreamed about and are so excited to have Why Me, Lord? Biblical and Practical Answers for Suffering in Our Lives. I see great reviews on Amazon. But I want to go back in your testimony before the family tragedy out on the Colorado Eastern Plains and just hear a little about you and your wonderful wife and that long marriage and all the kids before, you know, everything went down here in Colorado.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. Well, my wife and I have been married almost 44 years this July. We met in Lynchburg, Virginia after my first year of college at Liberty Baptist College. At that time, it was Liberty Baptist. Now it’s Liberty University College. She had been attending there for a couple of years. We met on a summer camp for children called Treasure Island. It was right on the James River in the middle of Lynchburg. We were both camp counselors. We met. Strangely enough, at 19 years old, I was not thinking about marriage. I hardly even dated in high school, but I was beginning to want to get into the dating scene, so her and I started going out on Friday nights, and Strangely, about seven or eight weeks into our relationship, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that one day she and I would be married. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew that she would be my wife. So I just, not having any experience with girls, I just told her one day, I said, one of these days you’re going to be my wife. And she kind of laughed at me and said, And I just kept on working in my magic, I guess, and eventually won her over.
SPEAKER 03 :
And Sylvia, she is wonderful. I mean, you really scored a good one with her. So the fact that you never really dated and that you were able to pick someone so wonderful, what a blessing that was.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, yeah, no doubt. She’s stuck with me through thick and thin. We’ve had quite a journey over the years. We had six children of our own. Shortly after we got married in 1980, we both joined the Marine Corps. I joined, and then she thought, well, we’ve been married six months, and I don’t want to be home alone for several months while you go off to training, so why don’t I join too? And we both became Marine reservists, went down to boot camp at Parris Island at the same time, graduated on the same day. Well, we went at separate times, but we graduated on the same day. And then after a few months of training, we went back home and kind of picked back up our lives together. And in 1983, we had our first daughter, Ashley, was born. And we actually moved to Colorado at that time. And we had our first daughter there in Colorado, lived there for several years. And that began the journey of parenthood for us.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. And so you have all these kids yourself. And then in your own family, how many kids did you grow up with?
SPEAKER 04 :
I had four of us. I was the oldest of four. My brother was next behind me, and we had two sisters that were younger. And now it’s just me and my sister left. Me and one sister who lives in Colorado still. We’re the only ones left.
SPEAKER 03 :
And you and Sylvia were very involved in your kids’ lives and your faith. You were working, and then the kids homeschooled. Am I correct in remembering that?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, yes. We homeschooled all of our children. Up until actually four years ago when our youngest daughter, the one my brother’s daughter we adopted, she ended up going to our local high school and thrived there. I mean, she really did well. But Sylvia had been homeschooling for 34 plus years and was just tired. Plus, Sarah, the two boys had gone away from home. They’d gone to their own apartment in Springfield. So Sarah was basically home alone by herself and We prayed about it, thought about it and realized it just probably wasn’t a good situation for her or for my wife at that matter. We were still, you know, still kind of well and not recovering from the aftermath of the tragedy, but things had just changed in our family. And so we put her in a high school and she’s done very well. Matter of fact, if you don’t mind me bragging on her just a minute.
SPEAKER 03 :
I saw on Facebook. Yes, I saw. Yeah, please brag.
SPEAKER 04 :
She actually has been – she got nine scholarships on scholarship night from just local people in the community. And she was chosen to – among several students that all got 4.0 grade point averages, she was chosen – to do the commencement address on Friday for the students. So she’ll be speaking Friday night at her graduation. We’re very, very proud of her. She’s done wonderful.
SPEAKER 03 :
Unbelievable. So now while your wife was working, homeschooling all these kids for 30-some-odd years, you were working in the prison system when I met you. Is that correct?
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. I actually was right at the tail end of my 30-year career or 20-year career, and I had retired – in april uh april of 2011 after the march first tragedy i retired because i had no time to travel back and forth to colorado several times i was back and forth two or three times a month for court hearings for adoption hearings for different things and so i just i pulled the plug and went ahead retired i had my 20 years in and retired in 2011.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, let’s go ahead and get into that then, because you ended up then raising your niece and nephews. I’m so proud of Sarah. I can’t believe how well she’s done. And then here you’d raised all these other, you know, your other children. And then you’re finally getting ready to kind of, you know, be, you know, empty nesters. And then you ended up taking on your brother’s children who were, you know, quite young at the time. And so you were living in Missouri at the time. Your brother was here in Colorado. So… Many people may remember hearing about this tragedy out in the Eastern Plains. Go ahead and go through, you know, what happened on the day that you got the call and, you know, what went down.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. On March 1st, 2011, I had been I was working an evening shift at the prison. I had just counted all my inmates at nine o’clock. It was our time to count. I received a phone call after I was just sitting down relaxing a little bit. I received a phone call from my nephew, my oldest nephew, my brother’s oldest son, and he was just sobbing. It took me a couple of minutes, it seemed like, to get him to calm down enough where he could explain to me what happened. But then he said somebody broke into their home and killed his mom and dad, and that his younger brother and sister were on their way to the hospital as well. They were being life-flighted to Denver, and he wasn’t sure if they would live or not. Of course, I left the prison within minutes. I called my supervisor and said, I need to go. I’ve had a family tragedy. I need to get out of here. So I left, got home, and by the time – on my way home, I called my wife and told her what was going on. She started notifying the rest of the family. My pastor at the time and friend was notified. He came over to the house. He was waiting for me, and I knew on the way home that if those children lived – And at the time, I didn’t know how serious they were injured, but I knew that if they lived, that we would end up raising them because there was no one else in the family that could. My oldest sister, the other one that was left, she was single and working full-time and wasn’t able to retire, and there was no way she would be able to probably be able to take care of the children and raise them. So I just knew that we would, and I told my wife on the phone as we were coming home that that would happen, and of course it did. So I got home, and we were just beside ourselves. I knew I had to get to Colorado, wasn’t sure how that was going to happen, and then a friend called me up, and after he was notified by our pastor, they started kind of a prayer chain in the church. He called me up and said, look, I got your ticket taken care of. I’ll meet you at such and such time, and I’ll drive you up to Kansas City and drop you off at the airport. We’ve got a flight for you leaving out at the first flight out at 6 a.m. in the morning, so… We drove through the night and got to Kansas City. I flew out to Colorado, and I just – I still think about it, and it just turns my – I don’t know. It just causes these feelings because when I walked into the ICU and saw those two kids, it just – And it’s hard to describe the feeling. They looked more dead than alive. Tubes hanging out all over them, little bitty kids with these tubes and wires. And it was just, it was something.
SPEAKER 03 :
And Sarah was five, right? And Ethan was nine?
SPEAKER 04 :
Five had to happen and Ethan was nine, yes. And then, of course, the world got worse two days later. I’d been talking to the investigators and and asking them if they had a suspect in mind, if they had caught anybody yet, because at the time, all we knew was that somebody had broke into the home, um, And then he told me that they did arrest a suspect and that it was my brother’s own son. He was 12 years old at the time.
SPEAKER 03 :
So you find out that your brother’s 12 year old son has killed him. Charles, your brother and Marilyn and his wife. Yes. And that and almost killed his five year old sister, Sarah and Ethan nine. And so your nephew is 12 years old and he’s done this. Was there any inkling from anyone in the family that anything was amiss with him? No, we had no idea that anything was that bad.
SPEAKER 04 :
But we knew that they were having trouble with him. My wife had talked to Marilyn in January of that year and just talking mom to mom about it. And they said they were having some trouble with him. And my wife assumed, Sylvia assumed that it was He was 12 years old. We often have trouble with 12-year-olds. If you’ve had 12-year-olds, sometimes they get to that age, and they just start getting a little obstinate and that preteen thing. And my wife just assumed that’s what it was. But now we look back and wonder if there was more going on, and Marilyn just didn’t tell us. So we had really no inkling that anything was that bad. And to this day, we don’t know anything. really why he did it. All the time that he was in the prison, all the time I talked to his counselors and the prison staff, they never related any reasonable answer for why he did what he did. All they said was he was mad at his parents, mad about some things. It just didn’t make any sense. There was something else going on, and we don’t know what it was.
SPEAKER 03 :
And they, too, were a church-going family, really close with their children like you. And how many kids in your brother Charles’ family?
SPEAKER 04 :
They had seven. The two youngest were the ones we adopted. The boy who did it was the third one from the bottom, and then they had four older children. Only one at the time, one other, an 18-year-old, was living at the house. He was at work, actually, when it happened. And so he got home. He actually arrived home from work when the police were still there and everything was being, you know, the initial investigation had started and the response teams were there.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, I know that after this, you know, you retired and you adopted Sarah and Ethan. So what did that give you then? Eight kids?
SPEAKER 04 :
Eight children.
SPEAKER 03 :
Eight children. OK.
SPEAKER 04 :
Six of our own and then eight. They were they were, you know, and weirdly kind of a I don’t know, fortuitous thing or or. A wish that came true. We had long thought about having two more children. My wife was unable to, and so we weren’t able to have any more children. So we thought about several years before that adopting a couple, and it just never panned out. It never worked out. We just weren’t able to. Adoptions often are very expensive, and we couldn’t afford to, with raising other six, afford to adopt two children. So essentially, we adopted the two children that we had kind of thought about adopting, but not in the way we had planned it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, that you prayed for. Wonderful kids they are. All right, we’re going to take a break. We’ll be right back with Wally Long. Why me, Lord? We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
Northland is listening to the mighty 670 KLT. Welcome back. Angie Austin here along with Wally Long, author of the book Why Me, Lord? Biblical and Practical Answers for Suffering in Our Lives. Wally and I met about 12 years ago, and he was the first guest on my show. We’d become friends after a family tragedy that he was just talking about. in the prior segment, happened out in Burlington, Colorado. Wally got a call that someone had broken into his brother’s house and killed his brother, Charles, and his wife, Marilyn, and seriously injured two of their children that had to be life flighted out, Sarah, five, and Ethan, nine. And then by the time he got to Colorado to, you know, see what was going on and knowing that he’d probably need to raise Sarah and Ethan, he found out that, uh, His 12 year old nephew had actually killed his parents and almost killed Sarah and Ethan. It was really touch and go there. I remember Wally for a while wondering whether or not Sarah and Ethan would make it. And you mentioned that when your nephew went to prison, like no one’s ever really figured out. why he killed his parents, that maybe he was mad at them, but no one’s ever really gotten the answer as to why he killed his parents. So obviously, then, you know, you raised your own six kids, and then you get these two little ones, five and nine, and you’re going to homeschool and raise those kids. Sarah just graduating, along with my son, who’s the same age as Sarah, and she’s just 4.0 student, all these accolades. I mean, just great kids that you ended up raising for your brother. You were a blessing to them, and they were a blessing to you. Absolutely. And congrats on their success. I met Sarah and Ethan when they came in once for one of our interviews, along with your wife, Sylvia. So eight kids now raised, and you decide to write this book. And obviously… The tragedy with your brother and your sister-in-law being killed by your 12-year-old nephew is obviously part of why me, Lord, biblical and practical answers for suffering in our lives. Is that really the impetus for writing the book?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, that’s what launched the idea in my heart. Actually, what I ended up doing in the aftermath of that tragedy was really the tail end of a series of tragedies that had occurred in our family starting in 2006. with the suicide of my youngest sister. She was 40 years old, took her own life. And then my brother, well, my 18-year-old son at the time, in the spring of 2007, had a motorcycle accident. Actually, summer of 2007, had a motorcycle accident, lost his right leg, nearly lost his life. Changed our life right then dramatically. And then a few weeks after that, my mother died. And that all happened in the space of 11 months. And then it was a little over three and a half years later when this happened with my brother. So It was just a series of tragedies, and I was really at one of the lowest points of my entire life. I was survival – survival mode. I was just trying to keep the family together, just trying to take the next step. As a matter of fact, our motto became just do the next thing because we had no way to even think about the future or what happened after. It was just one day at a time, one step at a time, which is how we lived for years. And I began – to cry out to the Lord saying, what is going on? Have I done something wrong? Are you punishing me? And are you trying to teach me something? I just asked the question that I believe so many people ask when they’re going through hard times. I said, why is it happening to me, Lord? And I began to search the scriptures for answers. And in that search, God gave me a sermon. He started leading me to answers in this word. As I read scriptures, I found these different answers, and I’d add more to it in searching more. And over time, that became a sermon that I began to preach at a couple places and preach at a couple of homeschool conferences and got a lot of great feedback. And that sermon became the idea for this book. I just felt like after a few years of preaching that sermon, I became a pastor and preached it at my church in different places. And I just felt like that message needed to get out to other people, to a wider audience. And so I finally decided in January of last year, of 2023, to start writing. I mean, I had the outline from the sermon, and I began to study a little bit more and add some more to it and fill it out some, then began writing. And that became the book that was finished in August or September of last year.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, after you retired from the prison, started raising your brother’s kids, working in a ministerial or working in the ministry, that was something that really appealed to you?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, I had been in ministry. When I first went to college, when I met my wife back in Liberty Baptist College, I had went there or gone there with the intent of studying for ministry and took two years of Bible college. ran out of money, got married instead. You know, I don’t know how smart that all was, but it worked out good for us. But I ran out of money, got married, started raising kids. But I found an opportunity to minister in every church we found ourselves in. We moved a lot between the Marines and the prison later and all the different places we moved. I found a place to minister either in teaching or in music or in preaching. And I It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do, and when the opportunity came after I retired and our family smoothed out a little bit, we leveled out some, Sylvia and I kind of got past the survival mode of our own lives. began thinking about the possibility of going into full-time ministry, or at least vocational ministry. I’m still not technically full-time. It’s a very small church. But this church, just out of the blue, called me up and heard that you could preach well. Would you mind coming and preaching at our church a couple times? We’re looking for a pastor. They didn’t ask me to be a pastor at the time, but I just went to fill in, to fill the pulpit and preach a few times, and I did. They apparently liked it because he called me up a few weeks later and said, would you come and stay on as our pastor? So I’ve been there since 2014.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s wonderful. Okay, I’m just going to hop back a little bit because I remember speaking with you about visiting your 12-year-old nephew. And you said when he was in prison. So we’re assuming now that he’s out. Talk to me about going to visit him after he killed his parents and almost killed Sarah and Ethan, his siblings.
SPEAKER 04 :
It was… It was one of the strangest things I had ever experienced. It was four days after it happened, so we were just, like, March 5th. I had the strongest urge that I needed to go visit him in the prison. And I didn’t know why, because I didn’t really want to see him. I did not want to see him. But I had this urge that I needed to. There was something, and I think it was just God’s Holy Spirit in me telling me, you need to go visit this kid. Didn’t know why, so I wrestled with it for a day and Finally, I told my wife, I said, she didn’t understand why. I told my kids, they didn’t understand why. But I said, I have to do this. So I called the prison the next day. This was day five on May 6th, I guess, and said, I’d like to go visit my nephew. And they made the arrangement. So on the 6th or 7th, I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was the 6th or 7th, six or seven days after it happened. My wife, she went with me, even though not understanding at all why she went with me. And we went to the juvenile facility where it was there in north of Denver and sat down and visited him. And it was a very difficult visit. I had one of the strongest spiritual battles in my heart that I’ve ever had in my life because part of me wanted to hate him. Part of me wanted to be angry at him. Part of me wanted him to see him suffer, to see him reap the consequences of his actions, all the things that go along with justice and that type of thing. And so I wrestled. That was one side of the wrestle. But the other part of it was this kid’s here alone. We don’t know what’s going on. He needs someone that will show him some love and care and concern because everybody else hates him. And I wrestled with that the whole time we sat there and visited. My wife and I were just deers the whole time we were there. And when the visit was over, it probably lasted 20 minutes or so. When the visit was over, I literally stood up and gave him a hug. And it was probably at that point in my life the hardest thing I’d ever done was to stand up and give that kid a hug. But I did, and I showed him. I couldn’t say I love you. And I couldn’t say, I forgive you. But I said, I’m still your uncle. And if you need me, I’m here. And I think the reason I know now, I believe now the reason I needed to go see him was so that I could start down a path towards forgiveness. Because I know, and you know as well, that when we hold on to anger and hatred and bitterness, it only hurts those of us who are holding on to it. It doesn’t hurt the other person. I’ve heard it said that having unforgiveness towards a person for the things, the wrongs they’ve done is like drinking poison and hope the other person gets hurt. And so I knew that if I held onto that, it would destroy me. And, and I think that first step I took by giving him that hug was why I needed to be there. And maybe perhaps to let him know that the world did not hate him. Not everybody in the world hated him. And I maybe one day, that little seed will sprout and bring forth some fruit and help him to see what he needs to do to change his life and give it over to the Lord or wherever he needs to go, bring some healing to his heart. But later on that year, I was able to forgive him, although he would not see me again. He refused to visit with me again. I don’t know why, but he refused to visit with me. But I was able to tell him in a court hearing – Several months later, I was able to tell him in a hearing that I had forgiven him and that I would not hold it against him any longer and that at least one person in the world loved him and forgave him.
SPEAKER 03 :
So how long did he spend in prison and when did he get out? Seven years. Seven years.
SPEAKER 04 :
He was sentenced in September of that year of 2011 and got out in September of 2018.
SPEAKER 03 :
So have any of his other, you’ve never seen him again, have any of his siblings or anyone in the family ever seen him or heard from him again?
SPEAKER 04 :
No, no. Nobody, to my knowledge, nobody’s had any contact with him, and I don’t think any one of them would want to. Oh, I don’t think so.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I would assume that Sarah and Ethan, who almost died at his hand, would not want to see him.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, we have a lifetime restraining order against him. He can’t be near me, my wife, or those two kids forever. Unless we would actually have to go to court to have the court rescind that so that we – if one of us wanted to visit with him, we would have to go to court to have that rescinded. or we’d be in violation of our own restraining order.
SPEAKER 03 :
So he’s 25, he’s been out, he has no family left, even though between your seven kids, your brother’s six, it’s 13 kids, and I’m assuming you’re close to Sarah and Ethan, who you adopted, the other kids as well. So now you’re kind of de facto 13 kids, you know, basically. Or was that right? Yeah, 13. Oh, my goodness. Well, I want to make sure that people can find you. I know you’ve got WallyLong.com, and I want to have you back, Wally. I know you’ve got a busy schedule, but I want to talk about the book in more depth. But just catching up with you took our entire show today, basically. Yeah. Why me, Lord? Biblical and practical answers for suffering in our lives. And I think it would be neat to have you back to kind of go through some of the chapters and give, you know, some of the, basically the sermon that you’ve been giving for all these, you know, the 13 years now since this tragedy.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, I would love to do that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Please tell Sylvia I said hi and Sarah and Ethan how proud I am of them. I met them when they were so young and how wonderful that they have succeeded in losing their parents at such a young age at the hands of their brother that they’ve been able to excel at this level. And Sarah’s going on to college. You said all those scholarships. What is she going to study? Does she know?
SPEAKER 04 :
Right now, kids are. Right now, she wants to be a high school biology teacher. But last year… It was a nurse, and then it was an ultrasound tech, and now it’s high school biology. So that may very well change. But she does plan on going back to go into a local community college for two years. It will be debt-free for that because of her grades in school and the program they have with the local community college. And then she’ll go on to MSU and study to be a teacher. Ethan is actually married. He’s been married just over a year and graduated from college last year. And he has started the process, an application process, to go into – the Marine Corps, as an officer candidate.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
So he’s heading out in that direction. We don’t know where it’s going to lead. Oh, that’s wonderful. Because he has to apply and has to get approved. But he’s done very well with his life. He’s got a wonderful wife, and they live local here in Springfield, close to us.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, all right.
SPEAKER 04 :
We’re very proud of them.
SPEAKER 03 :
Unfortunately, we’re out of time, but we’ll have you back. Again, WallyLong.com. Why me, Lord? Thank you, friend. All right. You take care.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
In this heartfelt interview, Angie Austin reconnects with Wally Long after more than a decade, recounting a tragic event that changed Wally’s life forever. As Wally opens up about the murder of his brother and sister-in-law by their own son, he explains how this devastating event led him to write ‘Why Me, Lord?’. Through grief and suffering, Wally found a new purpose in life as a pastor and author, emphasizing the biblical and practical aspects of dealing with suffering.
