Rodney Long was a ruthless criminal dirtbag with no conscience or remorse. omaha.com reports that last Friday Long escaped from a minimum-security Iowa prison while serving a sentence for burglary. Long story short, the convict shot a deputy who tried to apprehend him. He then stole the deputy’s car and led police on a high-speed chase, finally taking an elderly couple hostage in their Bedford home. The couple was armed. “At about 2:10 a.m., Jerome Mauderly took a shotgun from the kitchen and shot Long in the chest. Rodney Long was what cops would call a ‘skell.’ Now he’s what we call a ‘corpse.’ At the risk of editorializing a hard news story, good riddance to bad rubbish.
CNN takes it from here:
An Iowa man shot and killed an escaped inmate on Tuesday after the convict held him and his wife hostage in their home, investigators said.
Jerome Mauderly, 71, and his wife, Carolyn, 66, were asleep when escaped inmate Rodney Long, 38, broke into their rural Bedford home a little after 10 p.m. on Monday, said Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation spokesman Mitch Mortvedt.
Long — who had allegedly shot a deputy pursuing him on Sunday — woke up the Mauderlys and disabled their landline phones except for a line in the couple’s bedroom. He then took a shotgun that Jerome Mauderly, a retired prison guard and farmer, had loaded that night and placed next to the bed before going to sleep.
Long took the shotgun from the bedroom and moved it to the kitchen. He held the Mauderlys hostage at gunpoint for about four hours while he rummaged through their home for supplies and used their cell phone.
Around 2 a.m. Tuesday, while Long was upstairs looking for supplies, Jerome Mauderly sneaked into the kitchen and recovered his shotgun, Mortvedt said. Carolyn Mauderly called 911 from their bedroom. When Long walked down the stairs, Jerome Mauderly shot him in the torso. Long was found lying face down in the kitchen, Mortvedt said.
Adding to the good news, police announced that the wounded officer is expected to recover, and that the Mauderlys will not be charged with any crime. “The Mauderlys feared for their life. They had a real fear that he was going to kill them,” Mortvedt said.