Massage Parlor Investigation Continues Despite Confession: Police

ATLANTA — Even with a suspect in Tuesday’s deadly spa shootings in Atlanta and Acworth in custody charged with murder for the confessed killing of eight people, Atlanta Police continue to investigate.

“We are not done,” Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton Jr. told reporters Thursday afternoon.

Hampton confirmed that Robert Aaron Long, the confessed gunman who was arrested within hours of the incidents, purchased the 9 mm handgun earlier in the day that he used in Tuesday’s shooting rampage at three massage parlors in Acworth and Atlanta. He also said Long had “frequented both those locations” in northeast Atlanta.

The 21-year-old Long, from Woodstock, told investigators he took responsibility for the
deadly crimes, blaming it on his own sex addiction and his efforts to eliminate the massage parlors he saw as triggers.

Six of the slain victims were Asian women, according to police reports and statements.

Even though Long’s admission seemed to rule out any racial motivation for the crimes, Hampton said Thursday that hate crime charges could still be a possibility.

“Our investigation is looking at everything, so nothing is off the table,” he said. “We are looking at everything to make sure that we discover and determine the motives. We are still working to ascertain all of the facts so that we can have a successful prosecution. That’s what’s most important.”

The attack was the sixth mass killing this year in the United States, and the deadliest since the August 2019 Dayton, Ohio, shooting that left nine people dead, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

While Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office named all five victims there, including one survivor who remains in the hospital, Atlanta Police declined to identify the victims killed in the two spas along Piedmont Road.

A call to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office Thursday revealed at least one of the victims had not been identified.

Hampton later said police were still working with the Korean Consulate to notify the victims’ relatives, but confirmed the need to determine who each victim is.

“We need to make sure that we have a true verification of their identities,” he said.

President Joe Biden will meet with leaders from the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community Friday in Atlanta to address growing concerns about attacks on Asian people stemming from misplaced blame some perpetrators of racially motivated attacks have placed because the global coronavirus pandemic originated in China. Critics say such attacks draw at least some motivation from the words of former President Donald Trump, who misnamed the deadly COVID-19 the “China virus” and the “Kung-Flu” during the pandemic.

Thursday Georgia’s Asian-American and Pacific Islander state legislators held a news conference Thursday to share both grief and goals in the aftermath of the shootings.

Meanwhile, the Asian American Resource Center has set up a Go Fund Me website to help the families of the victims.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

For more on the Atlanta and Acworth Massage Spa shootings:

• Atlanta Spa Murders: Experts Discuss Sex Addiction
• Atlanta Spa Killings Elicit Grief, Resolve from AAPI Legislators
• Metro Atlanta Massage Parlor Shootings: 5 Things To Know
• 8 Killed In 3 Massage Parlor Shootings, 1 Arrested: Police
• Atlanta Massage Parlor Shootings 9-1-1 Calls Released
• Spa Shootings A Platform For Biden To Deliver On Unity Promise