Danny Rolling
Danny Rolling, who became known as the Gainesville Ripper, murdered five college students in Gainesville, Florida, over four days in August 1990. Police had almost nothing to go on while it was happening. When he was finally caught, he admitted to killing eight people in total. So where did a man like this come from? How did investigators finally reach him, when the trail began somewhere far from the campuses he stalked? And why does his story keep being retold, decades later, in books, television specials and films?
Danny Rolling was born on the 26th of May 1954 in Shreveport, Louisiana, one of two sons of James Harold Rolling and Claudia Beatrice Rolling. Both parents came originally from Columbus, Georgia. His father James was a Korean War veteran who served in the U.S. Navy and later worked as a Shreveport police officer.
Inside the house, James was cruel over the smallest things. He lashed out at his wife and sons for something as trivial as the way someone breathed. He also told Danny that he had been unwanted from the day he was born.
One episode sent Claudia to the hospital, after she said her husband had tried to force her to cut herself with a razor blade. She tried again and again to leave him. Each time, she came back soon afterward.
Two stories about James and his son stand out. In the first, James pinned the boy to the ground, handcuffed him, and had police take him away because the father was embarrassed by him. In the second, Danny's dog was beaten so often that it finally died in his arms.
Georgia and Alabama appear in Rolling's early arrest record, which includes several robberies. He was also caught spying on a woman as she dressed. As an adult he struggled to fit into society and to hold a steady job. For a time he waited tables at a Pancho's restaurant in Bossier City, Louisiana.
Rolling later confessed that in May 1990 he had tried to kill his father.
In the early morning of the 24th of August 1990, Rolling broke into an apartment shared by two university freshmen, 18-year-old Sonja Larson and 17-year-old Christina Powell. He found Powell asleep on the downstairs couch. He stood over her briefly, then chose not to wake her and climbed to the bedroom where Larson lay sleeping.
He taped Larson's mouth shut and stabbed her to death with a Ka-Bar knife. She died trying to fight him off. Rolling then went back downstairs, bound Powell with tape, sexually assaulted her, and stabbed her five times in the back. He posed the bodies and took a shower before he left.
On the 25th of August, Rolling pried open the sliding glass door of Christa Hoyt's apartment with a screwdriver. Hoyt was an 18-year-old chemistry honors student at Santa Fe College. She was not home, so he waited in the living room.
Between 10:30 pm and 11:00 pm, Hoyt returned from playing racquetball and was seized in a chokehold. Rolling gagged her and bound her wrists with duct tape. He sexually assaulted her and stabbed her in the back, rupturing her aorta.
Back at his campsite, Rolling could not find his wallet. Fearing that he had dropped it at her apartment, he returned. While there, he decapitated Hoyt and arranged her body sitting at the edge of the bed, with her head on a shelf facing it. He later said he wanted to deepen the shock for whoever found her.
Tracy Paules and Manny Taboada, both 23, shared the next apartment he chose, on the 27th of August. Rolling pried open their sliding glass door with the same tools he had used before. He found Taboada asleep in a bedroom and killed him after a struggle.
Paules heard the commotion and walked down the hall, where she saw Rolling. She tried to barricade herself in her bedroom, but he broke through the door. He taped her mouth and wrists, sexually assaulted her, and stabbed her three times in the back. He posed her body but left Taboada's as it fell.
Taboada was the only victim who did not fit a pattern. The other four were petite white brunettes with brown eyes, resembling Rolling's mother.
After the killing of Christa Hoyt, the murders drew wide media attention across Gainesville. Many students began changing their daily routines. Some slept together in groups for safety.
The spree struck at the very start of the fall semester, and some students withdrew their enrollment altogether. Others transferred to different schools.
Police had very few leads and eventually focused on two suspects. The first was Edward Lewis Humphrey, a 20-year-old University of Florida student with a history of mental illness. He had been convicted of felony assault against his own grandmother.
Humphrey was held in custody for five months. Then a grand jury refused to indict him on the murder charges, saying the evidence was insufficient. Media outlets had shown his photograph again and again in the meantime.
Authorities publicly cleared him of all charges only after Rolling's arrest. Humphrey began taking medication for his manic depression and graduated from a local college in 1994. He then worked while studying part-time, and in 2000 he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Central Florida. The other suspect was also cleared later.
The real break came not from Gainesville but from Louisiana police, who were holding an unsolved crime of their own.
On the 4th of November 1989, a family was attacked in their Shreveport home as they prepared dinner. The victims were William Grissom, 55, his daughter Julie, 24, and his grandson Sean, 8. Julie's body was afterward mutilated, cleaned and posed. Louisiana police alerted Florida authorities to the unsolved case.
Don Maines, an investigator with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, traveled to Shreveport in November 1990. He found shared features in the two sets of murders. In both, the victims were posed, tape residue was left on their bodies, and vinegar had been used to cleanse them.
Tests on the perpetrator's body fluids in Shreveport showed type B blood, the same as in the Gainesville evidence. Maines called that match a "revelation" in the case.
Shortly after Maines's trip, a Shreveport resident named Cindy Juracich called Crime Stoppers. In August 1990, while driving through the Florida Panhandle, she had heard a news report about the string of murders. It made her think of Danny Rolling, whom she knew from her church in her Louisiana hometown.
Rolling had said disturbing things to her and her then-husband, Steven Dobbin. She recalled Dobbin telling her that Rolling had a problem, and that "He likes to stick knives into people." Rolling had also told her, "One day, I'm going to leave this town and I'm going to go where the girls are beautiful and I can just lay in the sun and watch beautiful women all day."
Juracich had dismissed all of it because she did not want to believe he could be responsible for the Shreveport killings. Months later she could not shake the thought. "It would not let me rest," she said, and she picked up the phone.
Only later did they learn that on the 5th of August 1990, in Sarasota, Florida, Rolling had broken into the home of Janet Frake. He bound and gagged her with duct tape and sexually assaulted her, but did not kill her.
In November 1991, Rolling was charged with five counts of murder. The case then took nearly four years from the killings to reach court. Rolling said his motive was to become a "superstar" like Ted Bundy.
In 1994, just before the trial could begin, Rolling unexpectedly pleaded guilty to every charge. State Attorney Rod Smith then presented the penalty phase, the part of the case that decides punishment. During the proceedings, Court TV interviewed Rolling's mother at her home, and his father could be heard shouting off-camera.
Robert Fieldmore Lewis became a key witness. A convicted murderer and former death row inmate, Lewis had befriended Rolling in custody, and Rolling confessed to him. Lewis was notorious as the only Florida death row inmate ever to escape, which he did in 1978. In exchange for his testimony, he was transferred to a prison in Minnesota.
On the 20th of April 1994, Rolling was sentenced to death. He had been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and paraphilia.
A confession for the Shreveport murders would not come until his final days.
Reverend Mike Hudspeth, Rolling's spiritual adviser, received a handwritten confession and apology shortly before the execution. Florida police received one too. In it, Rolling finally claimed responsibility for the Shreveport murders.
His last meal was a lobster tail. On the 25th of October 2006, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal, he was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison. He sang a gospel hymn but made no statement just before the end. He was pronounced dead at 6:13 pm EDT.
Many relatives of his victims watched, and many had waited more than sixteen years for that evening.
The 1996 slasher film Scream owes its script to Rolling's crimes, which inspired screenwriter Kevin Williamson. The film became a successful horror franchise.
Sondra London took a different path. She collaborated with Rolling on a book, The Making of a Serial Killer: The True Story of the Gainesville Murders in the Killer's Own Words. Their relationship grew while he was behind bars, and the two became romantically involved, even engaged.
Errol Morris's series First Person devoted an episode to that relationship. It covered Rolling's artwork and his supposed remorse. It also showed him using one of his court hearings to display his affection, serenading London in the courtroom.
A 1999 HBO documentary, Women Who Love Killers, featured London, Rolling and a hairdresser named Yvette Perryman. London explained that she had discovered Rolling's pen pal relationship with Perryman, which had grown into something more. She said it "devastated" her, and she did not recommend that kind of romance.
Rolling and Perryman said he received hundreds of cards and letters every month from women and men who wanted a relationship with him.
A 2007 independent feature, The Gainesville Ripper, was shot in the Gainesville and Jacksonville, Florida, areas. Zachary Memos played Rolling.
Television has returned to the case many times. Episodes appeared on Body of Evidence: From the Case Files of Dayle Hinman, on Forensic Factor under the title Killing Spree, and on Cold Blood in 2010. The series FBI: Criminal Pursuit covered it in March 2011, and Motives and Murders touched on it in 2012.
The Real Story profiled the movie Scream on the 28th of July 2013, and told the story of the murders in graphic detail. Nightmare Next Door featured the case in 2015. Murder Made Me Famous followed on the 24th of November 2018, and the premiere of Mark of a Killer, "Posed to Kill," documented it as well.
In 2020, WUFT News released a television special and podcast, Four Days, Five Murders, reflecting on the case thirty years on. In 2021, the ABC series 20/20 aired an episode about it.
On the 14th of January 2022, Discovery+ premiered Scream: The True Story, starring Steve Shippy and Cindy Kaza. The two conduct a paranormal investigation inside Rolling's childhood home in Shreveport, so the newest production returns to the house where his story began.
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Common questions
Who was Danny Rolling?
Danny Rolling was an American serial killer, known as the Gainesville Ripper. He murdered five college students in Gainesville, Florida, in August 1990, and he confessed to killing eight people in total.
How was Rolling identified?
After investigators noticed similarities with an unsolved triple murder in Shreveport, a Shreveport resident named Cindy Juracich called Crime Stoppers and named Rolling. He was already in jail in Marion County for a supermarket robbery in Ocala.
What happened to Rolling?
He pleaded guilty in 1994 and was sentenced to death on the 20th of April 1994. He was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on the 25th of October 2006.
Which film did his crimes inspire?
His crimes inspired screenwriter Kevin Williamson to write the 1996 slasher film Scream, which became a successful horror franchise.
Who was wrongly suspected of the Gainesville murders?
Edward Lewis Humphrey, a 20-year-old University of Florida student, was held for five months before a grand jury refused to indict him. He was publicly cleared after Rolling's arrest.
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26 references cited across the entry
- 2NewsRolling's confession to Shreveport murdersOctober 27, 2006
- 4BookThe Gainesville RipperMary S. Ryzuk — Dutton Books — 1994
- 5Who Were Danny Rolling's Parents? What Happened to Them?April 9, 2021
- 6Rolling v. State, 695 So. 2d 278.
- 7Danny Rolling – Radford UniversityMike Aamodt
- 8NewsRolling's confession to Shreveport murdersAugust 30, 1990
- 9NewsHumphrey is "still left in limbo'Jeff Testerman — 2005-10-14
- 10NewsFormer suspect in Gainsville killings graduates from UCF2009-06-05
- 11NewsHow a woman in Louisiana helped break the case of 5 student murders in FloridaGlenn Ruppel et al. — April 8, 2021
- 12Sarasota victim: Rolling was 'pure evil'BILLY COX
- 13His final escapeSue Carlton — 2001-08-24
- 14BookWicked ShreveportBernadette J. Palombo et al. — Arcadia Publishing — March 4, 2012
- 15Danny Rolling, the Gainesville RipperFiona Steel
- 16NewsDanny Rolling, Serial KillerJim Leusner — March 18, 1994
- 17NewsPsychologist Says Rolling Suffers From DisordersMarch 16, 1994
- 18NewsRolling Confessed to Shreveport Killings Before ExecutionGrayson Kamm — October 27, 2006
- 19NewsHandwritten LetterDanny Rolling — Gannett Company — October 25, 2006
- 20NewsDanny Rolling executed for five student murdersLise Fisher — October 27, 2006
- 21NewsSerial killer Danny Rolling executed in FloridaOctober 25, 2006
- 24Four Days, Five Murders: A WUFT-TV SpecialChris O'Brien — September 4, 2020
- 26ESPN documentary recounts Gainesville student murders, Steve Spurrier’s first yearNoah Ram — September 15, 2026