How Serial Killer Danny Rolling Influenced 'Scream' with His 1990 Slayings

In December 1996, Wes Craven's much-loved slasher film, Scream, made its iconic big-screen debut. What many don’t know, however, is that the horror classic was inspired by the real-life case of Danny Rolling, aka the Gainesville Ripper, a Florida man who, in August 1990, murdered five college students during a grisly three-day crime spree. Rolling, a Shreveport, La. native, later confessed to previously killing three other people.

Rolling had a long history of voyeurism that began in his youth and escalated over time. His father, who abused Rolling throughout his childhood, caught him in the act once, according to the documentary Lights, Camera, Murder: Scream, and beat Rolling for it. Though the young man promised he’d stop, he never did.

Rolling frequently spied on women through their windows, stalking them to learn their routines; it’s believed he also did this with the women he later killed in Gainesville. This behavior was part of a broader pattern of deviant sexual interests and fantasies.

Rolling's voyeurism served as a precursor to his more violent acts, and his peeping Tom behaviors intensified in the years leading up to the Gainesville murders.

Rolling’s first murders occurred in November 1989 when he killed Julie Grissom, 24, as well as her father and her 8-year-old nephew after breaking into their Shreveport home. Rolling raped Grissom, a local college student, before killing her, mutilating her, posing her body and then cleaning it with vinegar to help conceal any evidence.

Rolling got away and, after shooting his father the following year, he fled to Florida, where he lived at a Gainesville campsite. Rolling’s father—who had been shot in the head and chest—survived his son’s attack, though he was permanently blinded in one eye.

It was in Gainesville that Rolling’s crimes began to escalate. On August 24, 1990, Rolling broke into the home of two college freshmen, 18-year-old Sonja Larson and 17-year-old Christina Powell. He discovered Powell asleep on a couch downstairs, but he did not kill her immediately. Instead he moved upstairs to Larson’s bedroom, where he fatally stabbed the young woman after taping her mouth shut. He then headed downstairs and stabbed Powell in the back multiple times after taping her wrists together and raping her. He also posed both victims in suggestive positions.

The very next day, Rolling broke into the home of Christa Hoyt, an 18-year-old student at Santa Fe Community College and an aspiring police officer. When she failed to appear at work on the evening of August 26, Det. Legran Hewitt dispatched a local officer to Hoyt’s home, where she was found beheaded, mutilated and posed. She had also been raped.

Next, Rolling killed Tracy Paules and Manny Taboada, both 23, whose bodies were found in the Gatorwood Apartments near the University of Florida campus on August 27. Paules and Taboada, close friends since childhood, had recently begun living together. Authorities believed the young man was stabbed to death first. Paules’s body was found staged on the living room floor with soap on it. She had also been raped.

After the Gainesville murders, which triggered a city-wide panic and media frenzy, authorities arrested Rolling on September 7, 1990, initially charging him for a grocery-store robbery in Ocala, Fla. When he was later confronted with murder charges, Rolling didn’t deny them. Instead, he offered a disturbing explanation, claiming the brutal acts weren’t his doing, but the work of an alternate personality he called "Gemini." In court, multiple psychiatrists weighed in, diagnosing Rolling with a major personality disorder. However, they agreed on one point: Rolling was aware of his actions when he committed the crimes.

Rolling ultimately pleaded guilty to all five counts of murder and was sentenced to death in April 1994. Before jury selection began, Rolling told the court,“I’ve been running from first one thing and then another all my life, whether from problems at home, or with the law, or from myself.” After spending more than a decade on death row, he was executed at Florida State Prison on October 25, 2006.

In 1994, a Gainesville Ripper-centered episode of ABC News documentary series Turning Point prompted screenwriter Kevin Williamson to pen Woodsboro Murders, the script that later evolved into Scream. Williamson was house-sitting alone when he watched the ABC News special. He soon noticed an open window that he didn’t remember opening, per Lights, Camera, Murder: Scream. Williamson reportedly called a friend, grabbed a knife and headed upstairs to scope out the house for any intruders. He then began discussing horror movies with his friend, according to the documentary, as well as the disturbing possibility that someone could be watching him from outside.

While Scream's masked killer, Ghostface, was inspired by Rolling, the connection is pretty loose. The movie doesn’t closely follow Rolling’s crimes, though there are a few similarities. One of the most striking is the voyeuristic angle; just like Rolling, Ghostface liked to observe his victims before striking, as can be seen in the iconic opening scene with Drew Barrymore.

Ghostface also shared Rolling’s habit of mutilating and staging bodies, turning murder into a grotesque performance. And just like in Rolling’s case, the aftermath of the killings in Scream sparked a small-town media frenzy.

Still, Scream isn’t a true-life retelling—it’s a smart, self-aware slasher that plays with horror clichés. Though the sometimes-funny film had its tongue in cheek, the Gainesville Ripper’s crimes were nothing to laugh about.