Louisville, TN: Man held in wife's slaying

Brother: Sister felt relief with order of protection

By Matt Lakin

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Just this week, Janas Long finally felt safe.

"She told me she had a relief," said her brother Rick Yates. "She said she had something to protect her. She told me, 'Now I'm rid of him for good.' "

The piece of paper didn't save her. Blount County authorities found Janas Marie Long, 57, stabbed inside her Louisville apartment late Thursday, less than a week after she told her brother about the temporary order of protection she'd obtained against her estranged husband.

Long died at Blount Memorial Hospital. Her husband, Jeffrey Scott "Scotto" Long, 47, remained under guard at the hospital Friday night awaiting homicide charges after police said he stabbed himself during a standoff.

Yates, of Bristol, said the killing came after more than a decade of threats and abuse.

"She was afraid for her life," the brother said. "She was up here just Sunday visiting with us. She said, 'I've done everything I can to get away from him. Scott said the last thing he'd do was to kill me.'

"I told her, 'Don't put your faith in a (protective) order. He'd have you dead before the police ever got there.' "

Alcoa police officers investigating a call about a "suspicious" van found Janas Long on the floor of her apartment at the Lakemont Village complex just after 10 p.m. Police tracked the van to the Shamrock Motel on East Lamar Alexander Parkway in Maryville, where members of the Blount County Sheriff's Office Special Weapons and Tactics team spent about an hour and a half trying to get Scott Long out of his room before he surrendered Friday around 3:45 a.m. He had an "apparently self-inflicted wound," BCSO spokeswoman Marian O'Briant said.

Court records show Janas Long filed a petition for an order of protection Aug. 10. General Sessions Judge Robert Headrick granted a temporary order but postponed the hearing on her case until Oct. 1.

The wife wrote in the petition that her husband broke her neck in 1998. She never pressed criminal charges, her brother said.

"He slammed her up against a wall," Yates said. "He threatened her that if she didn't drop the charges, he'd kill her."

The threats didn't stop after that, according to the petition. The wife wrote that he'd hit her, held a knife to her chest and wouldn't stay away.

He "told her he would kill her and put her somewhere no one would find her," Janas Long wrote. "Respondent (Scott Long) told her not to take an order of protection out on him or she'd be sorry. There are so many things over the years that the petitioner is scared and tired.

"Help me!!," she wrote.

Yates said he plans to be there when Scott Long appears in court.

"I want justice to be served," the brother said.