Case File: Danny Rolling

Danny Rolling was born into violence. His police officer father, James Rolling, routinely beat his wife Claudia, who tried several times over the years to leave her abusive husband—often staying away for months—but she always came back.

The Rolling brothers were beaten by their father beginning when they were toddlers. When Danny brought home a puppy, his father beat the dog so often that it eventually died in Danny’s arms. Danny’s teenage years were marked by drug and alcohol abuse, petty crimes and attempts at running away.

After a brief stint in the U.S. Air Force, Rolling married Omatha Ann Halko, who was pregnant with his daughter, Kiley Danielle, born in 1975. The couple divorced in 1977, after which Rolling reportedly committed his first rape.

Soon, Rolling was robbing grocery stores and other businesses across the South, which landed him in a Georgia prison by 1979, followed by a stretch in Alabama. He frequently escaped from prison but was always caught and returned. By the 1980s, Rolling was traveling around the country, committing robberies and other crimes. He eventually went to prison again, this time in Mississippi, where he attempted another escape.

During his prison sentences, Rolling began lifting weights and soon developed a powerful physique. After returning to Shreveport and getting fired from a restaurant job for repeated absences in November 1989, Rolling began committing a gruesome series of crimes.

Two days after Rolling was fired, police in Shreveport discovered the bloody bodies of Tom Grissom, his 24-year-old daughter, Julie Grissom, and her 8-year-old nephew, Sean. All three victims had been stabbed to death, and after Julie’s murder, her body was cleaned and repositioned into a pose.

Rolling had a violent clash with his father, James, in May 1990. This time, however, James was left bleeding after his son shot him multiple times in the head and stomach. James survived the shooting but lost the use of an eye, among other injuries.

Rolling’s criminal behavior continued throughout 1990 from Louisiana to Florida, where he robbed stores, burgled homes and stole cars. By August, he had raped a woman in Sarasota, Fla., before making his way to Gainesville.

The University of Florida college semester just started, and many new freshmen were settling into their apartments, including Sonja Larson and Christina Powell. Rolling followed them home on August 24, then broke into their apartment and bound Larson’s mouth shut with duct tape while she was sleeping. He proceeded to stab her to death.

He then taped Powell’s mouth, bound her wrists, raped and stabbed her. After posing the women’s bodies in provocative positions, he took a shower and left.

The following day, Rolling hid in 18-year-old Christa Hoyt’s apartment until she arrived home. He once again bound, raped and severely mutilated his victim’s body before decapitating her and placing her head on a shelf.

On the night of August 27, Rolling broke into another apartment and found Manny Taboada asleep, then stabbed him to death. Taboada’s roommate, Tracy Paules, was next—she was bound, raped and stabbed before her body was placed into a sexually provocative position.

Local police had no real leads into the identity of the murderer; they held Ed Humphrey, a UF student with a history of mental illness, for five months until a dearth of evidence forced police to set him free.

News about the shocking Florida murder spree riveted the nation, and police in Louisiana became suspicious when the murderer’s modus operandi was revealed, including his penchant for posing the bodies of his female victims. Investigators in Shreveport realized they could be dealing with a serial killer, but they had no positive leads.

That changed when Shreveport resident Cindy Juracich recalled a disturbing conversation her husband Steven had with Rolling, a fellow parishioner from their church. Rolling reportedly told Steven that he likes “to stick knives into people.”

When she learned about the Gainesville murders, “it would not let me rest,” she later told ABC News. “One day, I picked up the phone, I called Crime Stoppers, and I said, ‘I think there’s one guy y’all need to investigate—Danny Rolling.’”

In September 1990, Rolling committed another armed robbery. When the police arrived, Rolling tried to escape by car. After crashing his car during the ensuing high-speed chase, then attempting to flee on foot, he was finally caught by police and imprisoned in a Marion County jail 36 miles from Gainesville.

By autumn of 1991, Rolling was serving a prison sentence for a string of robberies. When homicide detectives discovered that his blood type B matched that of the crime scenes, they charged Rolling with five counts of murder in November 1991.

A deeper investigation into Rolling found that he had been camping in the woods near his Gainesville victims. At his campsite, police found a gun, a screwdriver that matched the type used to break into the students’ apartments and a bag of money from a bank robbery.

They also found a cassette recorder with a tape in it that identified the owner as Rolling. The tape also included some of Rolling’s singing, including the lyrics, “Mystery rider, what’s your name? You’re a killer, a drifter, gone insane.”

By 1992, Rolling was serving a life sentence for robberies; his mental state had deteriorated to the point that he attempted suicide and was moved to the prison’s psychiatric ward. Before his murder trial began, Rolling pleaded guilty to all charges. In 1994, he was sentenced to death, despite being diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and paraphilia, a sexual attraction to nonsexual objects.

Rolling was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on October 25, 2006. Before his execution, he confessed to all eight murders, including the Shreveport killings.

In a statement, Rolling wrote, “I, and I alone am guilty. It was my hand that took those precious lights out of this ole dark world. With all my heart & soul would I could bring them back. Being a native son of Shreveport, I can only offer this confession of deep felt remorse over the loss of such fine—outstanding souls. ‘Have wept an ocean of tears ... By which mournful doth float 'pon a sea of regret.’”

Before his execution, Rolling collaborated with author Sondra London on their book, The Making of a Serial Killer: The True Story of the Gainesville Murders in the Killer's Own Words. London allegedly became romantically involved with Rolling; he even serenaded her during one of his courtroom appearances.

Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter behind the Scream film franchise, was inspired to write his film after learning about Rolling’s murder spree.

The college-town murders sparked a movement to ensure that students, faculty and staff—especially women—could be safe on and around college campuses nationwide. Today, blue-light emergency phone poles that immediately connect a caller to emergency services are commonplace on college campuses.