A New Hampshire mother who had been documenting her husband’s terminal cancer diagnosis on TikTok fatally shot him and two of their children before turning the gun on herself, authorities confirmed.
Emily Long, 34, her husband Ryan, 48, and two of their children - Parker, eight, and Ryan, six - were found dead inside their Madbury home on Monday night (August 18) after police responded to a chilling 911 call reporting multiple deaths.
According to the Daily Mail, the caller had reported "multiple deaths" within the property.
The family’s third child, a three-year-old, was discovered alive and unharmed inside the house and is now in the care of relatives.
Autopsy results revealed Emily shot her husband multiple times, each child once in the head, before taking her own life.
Ryan, a school psychologist at Oyster River Middle School in Durham, had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a highly aggressive and terminal form of brain cancer. Emily worked as the director of operations at the restaurant chain Wing-Itz.
“It was a perfect family as far as we knew,” neighbor Bevy Ketel told WBZ-TV, per CBS News. “It’s just shocking. We didn’t see it coming.”
Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati told WCAX that investigators are still trying to understand the motive behind the killings.
“One of the biggest questions they have right now is motive, why? 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," Agati said.
In the months leading up to the tragedy, the mom shared a series of increasingly distressing TikTok videos with her nearly 8,000 followers.
Just two days before the deaths, she posted a clip on her now-private page opening up about her grief, isolation, and struggles to care for her children as her husband’s health declined.
“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, cited by Daily Mail. “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... I’m trying to get myself out of the rut, our kids are definitely struggling, and now I’m starting to notice some changes in our three-year-old.”
In separate TikToks, she spoke about having to tell her children that her husband's diagnosis was terminal. She revealed that her two eldest children understood the condition and the outcome more thoroughly than their youngest child.
On May 11, she 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," per The Mirror.
According to the New York Post, police officials have disclosed that they are aware of concerns within the household at the time of the killings, but have not elaborated further.
"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," a medical examiner said.
"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," they added.
The tragedy remains under investigation.
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