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The report describes the complaint as a matter of suspected embezzlement, but it doesn't specify how many incidents of alleged theft are believed to have occurred.
Owner Derek Fisher told the Globe in an interview on Thursday that Emily Long was suspected of stealing about $660,000 from Wing-Itz over three years.
"She was essentially my number two in my company. We worked very closely together," he told the Globe.
On June 18, Fisher, 44, said he and his bookkeeper noticed that a large number of checks from his business accounts had been written out to Long and deposited into her personal bank account.
Fisher confronted Long that day and asked her to provide three months of her prior bank statements. He said she did not send them to him until Aug. 5.
The statements she sent were missing pages and looked "very unusual," he said. "My bookkeeper went through them and they weren't matching up. They were all over the place."
Fisher said he took the statements to Long's bank and asked them to verify them. On Aug. 8, after analyzing the documents, the bank informed him that all of the statements had been "doctored and manipulated," he said. "They were not accurate."
He went to his restaurant in Hampton, where he confronted Long about the inconsistencies in the statements and asked her if she would accompany him to the bank and provide him those statements directly from the teller.
Long told Fisher that she could not and that she needed to go home, he recalled. Knowing that her husband had been diagnosed with cancer just months before, Fisher said, he was considerate of her situation and asked her what day would work best for her.
They agreed to meet at the bank on Aug. 11 at 11:30 a.m, he said.
When that day arrived, Long sent Fisher a "very, very long" text around 11:05 a.m. saying that "she was resigning, or she could stay in some sort of remote capacity, or I could terminate her," he said. "She gave me three options, essentially of how we could proceed."
When Fisher pressed her about whether she was coming to the bank, he said she told him that she was at an appointment and would be unable to meet with him until the end of the week.
Fisher and his bookkeeper continued to examine his business records, and discovered that Long had been taking cash deposits and writing checks to herself from his business accounts since January 2023, he said, around the same time he had started a redevelopment project. Even after confronting her in June, he said, she continued to take cash deposits.
"At this point, I already knew that the bank statements were manipulated and we had already been trying to get this information from her since the beginning or middle of June," Fisher said. "I felt like there was no other option, other than to go to local police and file a complaint against her."
Hampton Police Chief Alex Reno said the initial complaint was referred to the criminal investigations division, but officers hadn't completed their investigation prior to Long's death. Reno said his department never arrested her.
When he learned that Long had shot her husband and children and then killed herself, Fisher said he was completely devastated.
"I held my son and my wife and told them I loved him, and gave them lots of hugs and kisses, and just absolutely felt heartbroken for the children that were involved," he said.
Fisher said he doesn't plan to seek recovery from Long's estate, since she has a toddler who survived the shootings.
"I feel like the child should get all those assets," he said. "That's the only fair thing, or what I feel is right."
State law enforcement officials urged the public to refrain from assuming the "event was caused by a single reason or stressor" as the investigation unfolds.
Ryan Long was a school psychologist at Oyster River Middle School in Durham. He had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer a few months ago, his cousin told the Globe, and Emily Long had posted videos on TikTok indicating he had been diagnosed with glioblastoma in late April.
Since the embezzlement allegedly began in 2023, it appears to pre-date Ryan Long's cancer diagnosis.