Danny Rolling

Daniel Rolling

Daniel "Danny" Harold Rolling (born May 26, 1954 in Shreveport , Louisiana ; died October 25, 2006 in Bradford County , Florida ) was an American serial killer who became known as the Gainesville Ripper . In August 1990 he killed five students in Florida within a few days, and he also confessed to the murder of a family of three from Louisiana. In 2006 he was in the state prison of Florida with the lethal injection executed.

Life

Daniel Rolling was born on May 26, 1954 in Shreveport as the first child of Claudia and James Rolling, on August 15, 1955 his brother Kevin was born. As it turned out later in court, James was a very violent and domineering father who never wanted to have children. He regularly beat his wife and children, often tied them around the house, and did not allow them to have birthday parties or holidays. When Danny took a puppy home with him at the age of five, it was killed by his father. Claudia and the children left her husband several times, but kept coming back to him. When Danny was eleven years old, he saw his mother attempt suicide . She had cut her wrists in the bathroom, but was saved. At this early stage he committed the first thefts and became addicted to alcohol . He had his first prison terms at the age of 12, 16 and 17 for drunkenness.

In June 1971, he joined the US Air Force at the age of 17 after previously being rejected from the US Navy . But in 1972 he was dismissed for drug offenses and insubordination, whereupon he moved to his grandfather in Shreveport and joined the Pentecostal movement. In June 1974 he married a woman he had met in church and had a daughter with her. However, Rolling began again with the consumption of alcohol and drugs, and he worked less and less, which is why his wife divorced him in 1977. Shortly thereafter, Rolling raped a woman and was involved in a traffic accident in which one person was killed.

In the years that followed, he committed a number of armed robberies, break-ins and thefts in the states of Florida, Mississippi , Georgia and Alabama . He was imprisoned for a total of eight years and was paroled in July 1988. On November 4, 1989, he was fired from his job for having been absent for several days without excuse. In May 1990, he shot his father down in an argument, fled and committed several burglaries and robberies in the weeks that followed. In a burglary in June, he captured two handguns and the ID of a resident, whose identity he then tried to impersonate.

Gainesville murders

On August 24, 1990, Rolling broke into an unlocked room in the Williamsburg Village Apartments and met 18-year-old Sonja Larson from Deerfield Beach and 17-year-old Christina Powell from Jacksonville . Both women studied at the University of Florida at Gainesville. Rolling tied up the sleeping women, raped them, killed them with a knife and mutilated the corpses. The very next day he broke into another apartment on 24th Avenue , where he raped, stabbed and mutilated 18-year-old Christa Hoyt. Hoyt attended Santa Fe College in Gainesville and worked as a typist in the Alachua County Sheriff's Office .

Since Powell's parents hadn't heard from their daughter for two days, they asked a police officer on August 26 to see if everything was okay. He found the bodies of Christina Powell and Sonja Larson in their beds, apparently deliberately displayed by the perpetrator lying on their backs with their legs apart. Larson's body had at least 19 stab wounds in the arms, upper body and thighs. Powell died from five stab wounds in the back, and the perpetrator severed her nipples. While the first crime scene was being investigated, officers from the sheriff's office found the body of Christa Hoyt, who had not shown up for work that day and had not responded to calls. Rolling had slit the woman's abdomen, removed the nipples, and severed her head and placed it on a bookcase.

On August 27, Rolling broke into a room in the Gatorwood Apartments and killed 23-year-old sleeping Manuel Taboada from Carol City with 31 stab wounds. Then he pounced on Tracy Paules, who was also present, from Miami , raped her and killed her with stab wounds. The previously missing University of Florida students were discovered by a janitor who was asked to look over by friends of the victims.

The brutal murders of five young students within a few days caused panic in Gainesville; around 700 students left the city and never returned.

Arrest and solve the murders

Danny Rolling was arrested on September 8, 1990 after an armed robbery in Ocala and was initially charged only for his numerous robberies. The task force established as a result of the murders investigated all the crimes in the area at the time, including the acts of Danny Rolling. At a storage area he used in the forest, not far from the Christa Hoyt crime scene, objects were found that later brought Rolling to the five murders. A screwdriver was found that, according to laboratory tests, matched 17 points with the burglary marks at the crime scenes. A hair was found in a vacuum cleaner that, according to DNA tests, could be attributed to the murder victim Christa Hoyt, as well as trousers with traces of blood from the murder victim Manuel Taboada and a receipt for a combat knife of the KA-BAR type , which could be used as a murder weapon. Based on this evidence, DNA samples were requested from Danny Rolling, which ultimately matched the DNA traces at all three crime scenes.

While the task force was gathering evidence, Rolling was charged with robbery and sentenced to four life imprisonment until October 1991. In May 1992 he was transferred to the Florida State Prison Mental Health Department and in February 1994 his trial of the five Gainesville murders began. Rolling pleaded guilty on all charges and was sentenced to death on April 20, 1994.

In this criminal case, Rolling was remorseful, admitted to the murders and said he would like to set the clock back before August 1990: “But I am not the keeper of time, I am only a small part of history and a remnant of the sin of mankind "The Washington Post quoted him on March 30, 1994. Rolling's mother then offered to be executed in the electric chair instead of her son because Danny was the product of serious family abuse:" Better take me, I am the one who failed him and made him fail. "

Shreveport murders

Because of the similarity of the crimes, police also linked Rolling to a triple murder of a Shreveport family on November 4, 1989, the day Rolling was resigned. 55-year-old Tom Grissom, his 24-year-old daughter Julie and their 8-year-old nephew Sean were stabbed to death. The bodies were discovered two days later. Here, too, the perpetrator's attention was focused only on the female victim Julie, who was also mutilated and naked in a pose that was almost identical to that of the murder victim Sonja Larson. At that time, DNA analysis was still in its infancy, so no useful evidence could be secured. Rolling was never charged for the crime, but hours before his execution he made a written confession in which he confessed to the three murders. Members of the Grissom family were among the witnesses to his execution.

execution

On October 25, 2006, Danny Rolling was executed by lethal injection in Florida State Prison. When asked if he wanted to say the last few words, he began to sing a song that sounded like a chorale in a church. Out of consideration for the relatives of the victims who attended the execution, the loudspeakers were turned off. It was the 63rd execution in Florida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

reception

• Kevin Williamson's script for the horror film Scream is based in part on the Gainesville murders.
• The murders also served as a template for Josh Townsend's 2010 horror film The Gainesville Ripper , which was shot in Florida with an estimated budget of $ 750,000.
• The author Sondra London visited Danny Rolling in prison and based on the conversations with him wrote the book The Making of a Serial Killer: The Real Story of the Gainesville Student Murders in the Killer's Own Words .
• Another book on the case was published by Mary Ryzuk under the title The Gainesville Ripper .
• The convicted killer Robert Fieldmore Lewis was one of Danny Rolling's fellow inmates. Lewis received relief from prison for disclosing information about the crimes that Rolling had entrusted to him.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ FAQ for Scream at IMDB
2. ↑ The Gainesville Ripper at IMDB
3. ↑ The Making of a Serial Killer
4. ↑ The Gainesville Ripper

Web links

• Daniel Harold Rolling
• Danny Rolling (PDF; 55 kB)
• Danny Rolling's Victims
• Serial killer dies singing