Danny Rolling

Daniel "Danny" Harold Rolling (May 26, 1954 – October 25, 2006), known as the Gainesville Ripper, was an American serial killer who murdered five college students in Gainesville, Florida over four days in August 1990.

He later confessed to raping several of his victims, committing a triple homicide in his home city of Shreveport, Louisiana, and attempting to murder his father in May 1990.

In total, Rolling confessed to killing eight people.

In August 1990, Rolling murdered five students (one student from Santa Fe College and four from the University of Florida) during a burglary and robbery spree in Gainesville, Florida.

He mutilated his victims' bodies, decapitating one.

He then posed them, sometimes using mirrors.

In the early morning hours of Friday, August 24, Rolling broke into the apartment shared by two university freshmen, 18-year-old Sonja Larson and 17-year-old Christina Powell.

Finding Powell asleep on the downstairs couch, he stood over her briefly but did not wake her up, choosing instead to go to the upstairs bedroom where Larson was also asleep.

Rolling murdered Larson, first taping her mouth shut to stifle her screams, and then stabbing her to death with a Ka-Bar knife.

She died trying to fend him off.

Rolling then went back downstairs, taped Powell's mouth shut, bound her wrists together behind her back and threatened her with the knife as he cut her clothes off.

He then raped her and forced her face-down onto the floor, where he stabbed her five times in the back.

Rolling posed the bodies in sexually provocative positions.

He took a shower before leaving the apartment.

A day later, on Saturday, August 25, Rolling broke into the apartment of 18-year-old chemistry honors student at nearby Santa Fe College named Christa Hoyt, prying open a sliding glass door with a screwdriver.

Finding she was not home, he waited in the living room for her to return.

At 11 a.m., Hoyt entered the apartment and was surprised by Rolling, who placed her in a chokehold.

After she had been subdued, he used duct tape to gag her mouth and bind her wrists together behind her back and led her into the bedroom, where he cut the clothes from her body and raped her.

As in the Powell murder, he forced her to lie face-down onto the bed and stabbed her in the back, rupturing her aorta.

He then flipped her body over and sliced her abdomen open from her pubic bone to her breastbone.

After arriving back at his campsite, Rolling could not find his wallet.

Thinking he may have lost it at the murder scene, he returned there, at which time he decapitated Hoyt, posed her body in a sitting position at the edge of her bed and placed her head on a shelf facing the corpse.

He later claimed his intent was to add to the shock of whoever discovered her.

By this point, the murders had attracted widespread media attention.

Many students had begun taking extra precautions, such as changing their daily routines and sleeping together in groups.

Because the spree was happening so early in the fall semester, some students withdrew their enrollment or transferred to other schools.

Tracy Paules, who was 23 years old, was living with her roommate Manny Taboada, also 23.

He was sentenced to death for the five Gainesville murders in 1994.

His killing spree inspired screenwriter Kevin Williamson to pen the script of the famous 1996 slasher film Scream.

Daniel "Danny" Rolling was one of two sons born to James Harold Rolling and Claudia Beatrice.

James was a Korean War veteran in the U.S. Navy and a Shreveport police officer.

He often abused his wife and sons for frivolous things, such as breathing in a way that displeased him and also told his son that he was unwanted from birth.

In one incident, Rolling's mother went to the hospital after claiming her husband tried to make her cut herself with a razor blade.

She made repeated attempts to leave her husband but always returned shortly after.

James once pinned Rolling to the ground, handcuffed him, and had police take his son away because he was embarrassed by him.

In another story, Rolling had a dog, but James beat the dog so often that it died in his son's arms.

As a teenager and young adult, Rolling was arrested several times for robberies in Georgia and Alabama and was caught spying on a woman getting dressed.

As an adult, he had trouble trying to assimilate into society and holding down a steady job.

At one point, Rolling worked as a waiter at Pancho's restaurant in Bossier City, Louisiana.

He was executed by lethal injection in 2006.