00:00:05
-Gainesville, Florida, 1990. On the 23rd of August, students Christina Powell
and Sonja Larson
00:00:14
were preparing to start
their freshman year at the University of Florida. -They are the very vision
of hope and happiness
00:00:23
and joy for the future. -But in less than 24 hours, they would both be dead,
brutally murdered
00:00:30
by a 36-year-old vagrant
named Danny Rolling. -This is a person who volcanically
erupted behaviorally.
00:00:37
The hatred, the paranoia, the psychosis just unleashed
itself upon the world. -Rolling's passion
for killing grew.
00:00:46
His victims were bound, stabbed,
and mutilated. Some had been savagely raped. -His capacity for violence,
and his appetite for violence
00:00:56
was more than anyone
I had ever encountered. -A reign of terror
had been unleashed.
00:01:03
A serial killer the press dubbed
The Gainesville Ripper was on the loose. Danny Rolling was taking
the lives of innocent victims
00:01:11
all over town, making him one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Gainesville, a university city
in inland Florida.
00:01:40
It was here that 36-year-old
drifter Danny Rolling killed five students
in just four days.
00:01:48
The city was shaken to its core
by the murders, and, when Rolling was arrested
for armed robbery
00:01:54
on the 7th of September, 1990, the police had no idea they had
a serial killer in custody.
00:02:03
Retired FBI Special Agent
Ken Porter worked on the investigation into the Gainesville
college killings.
00:02:11
-He brought a dark cloud of fear
and terror amongst the whole community
of Gainesville, Florida
00:02:18
for at least two
or three months, where people were
just afraid to go out, afraid to open their doors,
afraid of the dark.
00:02:28
-In that brief spree of killings
in August, 1990, Rolling effectively terrorized
an entire community.
00:02:38
He reduced the community
to a sense that no one, and no woman,
in particular, was safe,
00:02:45
that there was a madman
on the loose, which, indeed, there was. -Rolling's victims would have
had the most horrendous time
00:02:54
during their ordeals,
because here's somebody that they don't know
who's coming into their home,
00:02:59
which is their place
of sanctuary, and attacking them
in the most brutal way. It really is terror
of an unimaginable degree.
00:03:08
-Former State Attorney Rod Smith
had never encountered a case featuring such depravity.
00:03:14
-I have no way to measure
comparative evil, but certainly, he was a guy
whose crimes were,
00:03:18
for this community,
and in this part of the world, were among the most tragic
and horrific.
00:03:27
-This killer's story
begins in 1954. Danny Harold Rolling was born
in Shreveport, Louisiana,
00:03:34
on May the 26th. His 20-year-old mother
fell pregnant almost immediately
after the couple married,
00:03:42
much to his father's disgust. -Danny Rolling was a son
of a policeman, but he wasn't a very
compassionate policeman.
00:03:51
In fact, he was a violent
and abusive father. -For the rest of Danny's life,
his father would refer to him
00:03:59
as an accident
that should never have happened. He had a violent temper, and
almost anything young Danny did
00:04:06
was able to ignite it. -If he didn't breathe properly,
he was beaten by his father.
00:04:12
The slightest thing
would set him off, and I think if look at that now, we'd called that
coercive control now.
00:04:18
We'd call that the kind
of behavior that is designed to chip away
at somebody's self esteem,
00:04:23
that really does destroy
someone's identity. -Time after time throughout
his childhood,
00:04:30
Rolling was told by
his supremely arrogant father that he was useless. He was a useless piece of work
00:04:38
and never would
amount to anything. -15 months later, Rolling's mother
would fall pregnant again,
00:04:44
and gave birth
to her second son. She would continually try
to protect the two boys
00:04:50
from their father's
destructive influence. -His mother flees several times, taking him
and his younger brother.
00:04:58
They get away from his abusive,
domineering father, but she soon goes back
to the home.
00:05:04
So, you got this constant toing
and froing, this constant state of upheaval, and this creates an environment
that isn't safe,
00:05:11
that isn't secure. -To add to Rolling's insecurity, his mother, his only
form of stability,
00:05:18
was struggling
with mental-health issues. Despite him needing her,
she wasn't always around.
00:05:24
Still a young child, Rolling's
existence became a solitary one. He would hide in the woods
or wander the neighborhood
00:05:32
to escape the constant abuse
from his father. -He would go out at night when his parents
didn't know about it,
00:05:39
and he would look through the
windows of the neighbor's homes, and he'd see them
around the kitchen table,
00:05:44
around the dinner table,
happy families all together, and he's got that
building resentment.
00:05:50
"Why have these people got this
when I haven't? What's wrong with me?"
00:05:54
And that's something
that continues to bubble away in the background. -Rolling yearned
for a normal family,
00:06:00
the kind of home life that
everyone else appeared to have. The suffering at the hands
of his father,
00:06:07
coupled with his mother's
mental instability, sent him on a downward spiral.
00:06:13
-Now, the impact this had on
quite a suggestible child was severe. Now, I'm not suggesting
for a second
00:06:19
that Rolling's father made
Rolling into a serial killer, but there was no doubt
at all there was
00:06:23
a very great deal of animosity
between father and son. -As a teenager,
Rolling continued
00:06:31
to escape his home life. He spent even more time
wandering the neighborhood, and around the age of 13,
his innocent childhood pastime
00:06:40
of watching families
became sexually motivated. -Rolling had a habit of stalking
people, and he would watch them.
00:06:50
That voyeurism that develops
during his early years, when he'd look
through the windows
00:06:55
of the happy families
in his neighborhood, and have that
simmering resentment, turned into something else.
00:07:00
It turned into something
quite sinister. -Rolling took
a particular interest in watching young women.
00:07:07
He was caught several times and began to get a reputation
as a peeping tom. His life had now started on
a destructive path of crime.
00:07:18
-It was that classic
serial-killer pattern -- petty crime, small offenses, gradually escalating into
greater and greater offenses.
00:07:29
-By now, he'd started
drinking heavily. In 1971, age 16, a drunk Rolling
had a fight with his father,
00:07:37
and he was locked up
for two weeks in a juvenile detention center. In an effort to escape
his abusive home,
00:07:45
Rolling then dropped out of high
school and joined the Air Force. -And I think what he's
essentially doing here
00:07:51
is looking for some structure. He's looking for a sense
of belonging. This is somebody who's always
felt rejected,
00:07:58
who's always felt excluded, and for many people who join the
military, it's a family to them.
00:08:04
It's rules, it's structure, it's
routine, it's a way of life. -Rolling initially thrived
in the military,
00:08:11
but his drinking evolved
to substance abuse and led to an early discharge. After barely a year's service,
he returned to the home
00:08:19
in Shreveport
he desperately tried to escape. Nevertheless, Rolling appeared
to turn his life around.
00:08:27
He started attending the United
Pentecostal Church where he met a young woman
in the congregation.
00:08:33
It was love at first sight, and in 1974, when Danny was
just 20, the couple married.
00:08:40
A year later, they welcomed
a baby daughter. -When he was first married,
you know,
00:08:45
he was a very religious guy in a kind of hyper-religious
area out of Shreveport,
00:08:50
went to a very
Pentecostal church, had a very black-and-white view
of the world,
00:08:56
of the ongoing battle
between good and evil. -Things looked like
they might be on the up for him,
00:09:03
but he's still drinking,
he's unemployed, he's not the kind of man
that he thinks he should be.
00:09:09
-In 1977, after just
three years of marriage, Rolling's wife filed
for divorce.
00:09:16
The 23-year-old was devastated
by her rejection. -And this is something
that I don't think
00:09:22
he just moved beyond. The very fact that his wife
is the person that chooses to end their relationship,
00:09:28
she's taking the control away
from him. So, we're just adding to these
resentments all of the time.
00:09:35
-At around the time
his wife left him, Rolling was working
in a local bakery. He had an accident
with a bread-slicing machine
00:09:43
and lost part of his finger. It seemed everything was
going wrong for Danny Rolling.
00:09:49
He stole his father's gun
and embarked on a series of armed robberies
across Mississippi,
00:09:55
Alabama, and Georgia,
but he was soon arrested. By 1989, after spending a total
of eight years behind bars,
00:10:03
Rolling found himself,
once again, back in the family home
in Shreveport. -Aware that he doesn't amount
to anything
00:10:12
and only too conscious
of his father's horror at his uselessness,
he's 35 years old,
00:10:17
he's virtually amounted
to nothing until now, Rolling decides to prove
that he does do something,
00:10:27
and he chooses to kill. -Danny Rolling had grown up
thinking he was worthless. He'd failed at high school,
in his military career,
00:10:35
and in marriage. In 1989, at the age of 35,
he found work at a restaurant in his hometown
of Shreveport, Louisiana,
00:10:44
but even this
resulted in failure. On November the 4th, he was
fired for missing his shift.
00:10:50
Rolling claimed his boss
had changed the roster without telling him and was aggrieved
at his wrongful dismissal.
00:10:58
-Rolling is somebody
who I would refer to as a grievance collector. So, throughout his life,
00:11:04
he's harboring
all of these resentments. There are various events
where the heat is turned up,
00:11:09
and I think the significant one
for me is when he loses his job
at a local restaurant.
00:11:15
Now, usually, he would take this
fairly quietly, and he'd internalize his trauma,
00:11:20
and that resentment
would bubble away, but on this occasion,
he externalizes. He threatens his manager,
he shouts at him.
00:11:28
You see this rage
begin to come out, and this is the day
of his first killing. -Enraged by his mistreatment
at work, that night,
00:11:38
Rolling took his sinister hobby of stalking to a whole
new level -- a deadly one.
00:11:44
He'd grown infatuated
with a 24-year-old department-store worker
named Julie Grissom.
00:11:51
-He had decided that he wanted
her, essentially. So, he followed her home,
and he spied on her,
00:11:58
he saw her with her family, which included her father, Tom,
and Tom's grandson Sean,
00:12:05
and he's got this vision
of this perfect family in front of him again. So, he's thinking,
"Why have these people got this
00:12:11
when I haven't got this? I feel really aggrieved, I feel
really resentful about this."
00:12:17
-The back door of the house
was unlocked. Armed with a knife,
Rolling let himself in
00:12:22
and begins a violent attack
on the whole family, brutally stabbing all of them. -And on that evening,
he kills Julie.
00:12:30
He rapes her, he assaults her,
he also kills Tom, he kills Sean, as well. So, he wipes out three
generations of an entire family.
00:12:40
But it was the attack
on 8-year-old Sean that was particularly horrific. -Sean was stabbed with such
force that the knife went
00:12:49
all the way through him
and stuck in the ground. That is a sort of extreme level
of violence
00:12:55
that even us forensic
pathologists has really seen. It really tells you something
about what the person
00:13:02
is thinking
when he commits that murder. -After raping and killing
Sean's Aunt Julie,
00:13:08
Rolling carefully cleaned her, put her dirty clothes
in the washing machine, and posed her body
provocatively.
00:13:15
-I think that Rolling saw this
as vindication that he amounted to something. That this was his handiwork.
00:13:26
This was something
he was good at. -Rolling fled. Two days later, a neighbor discovered
the gruesome murder scene.
00:13:34
The small town of Shreveport
was in shock. Rolling had a secret
that nobody else knew.
00:13:40
For the first time,
he'd succeeded at something. He had been in control,
and he liked it.
00:13:47
Six months later, Rolling had yet another
altercation with his father. -The Shreveport murders gave
Rolling the courage to confront
00:13:57
the man who'd humiliated him,
emasculated him over years. He gets into a full-scale,
drag-out fight
00:14:08
with his police-officer father. It is so severe that Rolling
shoots his father, and, indeed, his father loses
one eye and an ear in the fight.
00:14:20
-Empowered by confronting
his nemesis and seemingly getting away
with the Grissom family murders,
00:14:25
it was time for a newly
confident Rolling to move on. In May, 1990, the 36-year-old
left his home in Shreveport
00:14:33
for the last time and headed for the university
city of Gainesville, Florida to feed his newfound
appetite for killing.
00:14:42
-Many people ask, "Well, why did
Rolling target a college town? What was so special about it,
that drew him to that place?"
00:14:51
And I think that was because
it symbolized the very thing
that he resented -- young people, successful people,
people who had opportunities,
00:15:01
and he is just a pot
of simmering resentment, and it's no surprise to me
that he takes it out on people
00:15:08
who he wants to be like,
people who he feels envious of. -En route to Gainesville,
Rolling's trip included a stop
00:15:16
in Florida's state capital,
Tallahassee. -He got off at the bus station
in Tallahassee
00:15:22
and clearly had already
made plans as to what he was going to do. He bought a Ka-Bar knife there,
at an Army/Navy store
00:15:30
right there by the bus station. -Armed with his Ka-Bar
combat knife, once he arrived in Gainesville,
00:15:36
Rolling set up a makeshift camp
in the woods. -He was a vagrant, a bum, if you like,
00:15:44
but he had a purpose, and his purpose was a
very particular kind of victim. -Danny primarily targeted
young women,
00:15:54
and they were always
young brunettes, like his former wife had been. I was always struck by the fact
that, for the most part,
00:16:01
his victims were of a type. -On the 23rd of August, 1990, new roommates Christina Powell
and Sonja Larson
00:16:10
were preparing for the beginning
of the fall semester at the University of Florida.
00:16:16
-They're 17 and 18 years old,
they're freshmen. This is the start of an exciting
period in their lives.
00:16:23
-Someone else was enjoying
their excitement, too. That evening, they caught
the attention of Danny Rolling.
00:16:31
-And he's watching them
through the window. He can see them giggling
along together,
00:16:35
having a nice time,
washing the dishes. You can just imagine the kind
of conversations they're having
00:16:40
about the things they're excited
about at university. -Rolling has been watching them.
00:16:46
In fact, he's probably spent
the best part of the night outside in the woods
just behind the apartment block.
00:16:52
In the early hours,
he breaks in. He used very
specific equipment -- a screwdriver to get in
through a sliding door
00:17:01
that most of these girls had, and a Ka-Bar knife,
which he also used. Those two elements
were his signature.
00:17:12
-Rolling found Christina asleep
on the couch downstairs and Sonja in bed upstairs.
00:17:18
-So, he's decided that Christina
is the one that he wants. So, he gets Sonja
out of the way first.
00:17:26
-He leaves Christina Powell
asleep on the couch and creeps upstairs and attacks Sonja Larson
while she's asleep.
00:17:36
He puts duct tape over her mouth
to prevent her screaming, and also, of course, to prevent
her waking up Christina,
00:17:42
who's asleep downstairs. -Rolling stabbed Sonja
repeatedly until she was dead.
00:17:49
He then made his way
back downstairs to Christina, who was still asleep
on the couch.
00:17:54
-He wakes her, puts duct tape
over her mouth to prevent her screaming,
tapes her hands behind her back,
00:18:03
and proceeds to cut off
her clothes and underclothes and rape her
with a knife to her throat.
00:18:10
He then turns her onto her face and stabs her
five times in the back. It's an act of
the grotesque wickedness.
00:18:20
-As with his first female
victim, Julie, in Shreveport, Rolling washed
and posed his victims.
00:18:28
-I suspect
the posing of the body has to do with
his last vision of the body. He can't take a photograph --
too dangerous.
00:18:40
So, what he does is
his sexual conquest -- and, remember,
this woman was a sexual conquest
00:18:45
a matter of moments ago --
he cleans her up, because there's nothing
arousing or exciting
00:18:51
about her as a bloodied body. Cleans her up, poses her,
and I suspect at that moment,
00:18:59
the flash camera of his brain takes one last look
before leaving. -Barely a day later,
on August the 25th,
00:19:07
Rolling broke into the home
of his next victim. 18-year-old Christa Hoyt
was a community-college student
00:19:15
and a part-time overnight clerk
at the local Sheriff's office. -Once again, he broke in through
a sliding door
00:19:23
using a screwdriver. Once again, he was carrying
his Ka-Bar knife. Once again, he was targeting
an innocent student
00:19:34
who had her whole life
in front of her. This time, however, Christa Hoyt
wasn't at home when he broke in.
00:19:43
-Rolling patiently waited
for his victim to return. When Christa arrived
at around 11:00 AM,
00:19:49
he was ready. -He starts with a choke hold,
he renders her unconscious, he then binds her wrists,
he gags her...
00:20:00
-Cuts her clothes off after
she's taped, has sex with her, kills her by stabbing her
in the back --
00:20:08
actually punctures her aorta, which is virtually
instant death. -But what he's done after
she dies shows
00:20:15
a development in his technique. So, he not only poses her
in a provocative position.
00:20:21
He actually beheads her
and places her head in such a way that she is
looking at her own mutilated,
00:20:30
posed body. -Sometimes, if people
are psychotic, they have some delusion
about the head.
00:20:37
It's almost as if they're afraid that killing them
didn't kill them.
00:20:41
Removing the head and being able
to look at the head detached from the body is a complete reassurance
that the person is really dead.
00:20:52
-Through the violent murder of
Christa Hoyt, it seemed Rolling was also settling old scores
from his past.
00:20:59
-Many people who have observed
that Christa bore quite a resemblance
to Rolling's ex-wife,
00:21:05
the woman who had rejected him,
and it's no surprise to me that this was possibly
the most violent of his murders,
00:21:12
the one where the most rage
was expressed. -The residents of Gainesville
were blissfully unaware
00:21:18
that a killer was on the loose. The town's students were
full of hope and excitement
00:21:23
at the start
of the new college year. Danny Rolling had killed and
mutilated three female students
00:21:31
in less than 48 hours. The parents of Rolling's
first victims in Gainesville,
00:21:37
Christina and Sonja,
were becoming concerned at not being able
to contact their daughters.
00:21:43
At 4:00 PM on Sunday,
the 26th of August, two days after they were killed,
police entered their apartment
00:21:50
and discovered the horrifying
truth behind their silence. Just hours later,
Rolling's third victim, Christa,
00:21:58
had failed to turn up for work. -Christa Hoyt worked at the
local county Sheriff's office,
00:22:04
and she was
a very reliable employee. She was never late for work, it was completely out
of character
00:22:09
for her not to turn up on time. So, when she didn't show up
for her shift, which began at midnight,
00:22:15
two officers went to her home
to see what was going on, and they came across
the most horrendous scene.
00:22:20
-The Gainesville community
was learning that some of their students
had been butchered.
00:22:25
Over night, it had gone
from a serene college town to a place where its residents
cowered behind closed doors
00:22:32
in fear for their lives. But Danny Rolling's
killing spree wasn't over. On the same day officers
discovered his latest victim,
00:22:41
Rolling had broken into
another apartment. His next chosen victim
was 23-year-old Tracy Paules.
00:22:50
-He knows that she lives
in an apartment not far from where his den,
his hide, in the woods is.
00:22:58
-By then, people were alerted
that something was going on. We know that because we actually
have a tape recording of Tracy,
00:23:06
and it's a phone recording
in which she basically is telling someone else,
as I was recall,
00:23:12
Tracy was uncomfortable,
and she said, "If Manuel doesn't show up
pretty soon, I'm leaving."
00:23:17
And Manuel was working that
evening, and Manny came home. Well, when he came home,
you know,
00:23:23
I guess the feeling was that
all was safer and more normal. -Manny, or Manuel, Taboada,
was Tracy's burly 6'2"
00:23:31
college roommate. Unaware that Tracy had company, Rolling followed
his usual plan of attack --
00:23:38
breaking in through the sliding
door with a screwdriver, armed with his
Ka-Bar knife and a gun.
00:23:44
But this time,
he was in for a surprise. -Danny did not realize
that Manuel had come home.
00:23:49
So, he thought he was going into
an apartment that had one or two women in it. Manuel was not the target,
but when he checked the room,
00:23:56
he found Manuel, and actually,
when he stabbed Manuel, Manuel came alive and fought him
for a sustained period of time.
00:24:04
-Hearing Manuel's screams,
Tracy awoke and went to investigate. She was greeted with
a most horrific scene.
00:24:12
Terrified, she raced down
the corridor and locked herself in her room. -And now, all that stands
between Tracy and Danny Rolling
00:24:23
is a flimsy bedroom door. He literally bursts through it,
breaks it down. -Tracy was now
at the mercy of a killer.
00:24:37
-Rolling taped her mouth,
taped her hands behind her back, as he'd done
to his other victims,
00:24:42
cut off her T-shirt,
and raped her. Once again, he turned her
onto her face and stabbed
00:24:49
her three times
in the back, killing her. Once again, he cleaned
and posed the body.
00:24:56
This was a killing spree -- a spree aimed at,
to some extent, in cleansing him of the feeling
that he was worthless.
00:25:05
-The repetition in his crimes
was all part of Rolling's design. He wanted to leave
behind a signature
00:25:12
so that the world would know he had finally succeeded
in something. By now, police have discovered
three of his victims.
00:25:20
The entire city was in turmoil. Ken Porter was an FBI agent
at the time and was part of a task force
00:25:27
assigned to investigate
the multiple killings. -I was driving to work on
Monday Morning, August 27th,
00:25:34
and I heard a news report
on the radio of three murders that had been discovered
over the weekend,
00:25:42
and was just shocked
as I was driving in, because things like that
had not happened in Gainesville.
00:25:49
-The task force had immediately
identified similarities between the crimes. -He appeared to be looking
for young, college-aged females
00:26:00
with brunette hair
of a small, petite build. That was the profile
of the three victims
00:26:07
that had been discovered
up to that point. -On the very day
that Gainesville learned
00:26:13
they had a serial killer
on the loose, Rolling committed
an armed robbery at the local branch
of the First Union Bank.
00:26:21
It heightened the fear
felt amongst the community. The next morning, on Tuesday,
the 28th of August,
00:26:27
the bodies of Manuel and Tracy
were discovered. Tracy fit the profile
of the previous female victims.
00:26:34
She was a young
female college student, kind of petite in build,
brunette hair. She was also killed in the same
manner as the other three --
00:26:45
with a knife, stab wounds,
mutilated body, and, immediately, everybody knew
that it was the same killer.
00:26:54
-The people of Gainesville
were now terrified. With the body count rising day
by day, anyone could be next.
00:27:01
The authorities were determined
to catch this monster before he struck again. During their investigations
into the murders
00:27:09
and the armed bank robbery, police came across two men
acting suspiciously. -So, these two officers
followed them into the woods,
00:27:18
they came upon a campsite
that had been carved out of this densely wooded area
near the university campus.
00:27:26
-Unbeknownst to the officers, one of these men
was Danny Rolling. -The police saw Rolling
and a drug dealer friend
00:27:34
of his at the campsite. Now, when Rolling clocked
that the police were watching him, he fled.
00:27:40
He just upped and he left. -Rolling's drug dealer
was apprehended, but the killer himself
had slipped into the night.
00:27:48
-They look around the campsite, and they notice there's
a camping tent set up there,
00:27:53
and they noticed
a few things inside this tent. They saw this money
that was covered in this pink,
00:28:00
reddish dye,
and they knew right away, "Oh, this might be the proceeds
or evidence
00:28:04
from the bank robbery." They also found a gun
that matched the description of the handgun that was used
in the bank robbery.
00:28:12
-But there were also
some other items which were quite perplexing. So, there was a ski mask,
there were a pair of trousers,
00:28:19
there was some pubic hair, and they didn't make
the connection at the time between the murders
and the items at this campsite,
00:28:27
but they did back them up, and they were to prove
incredibly valuable when the pieces
were put together.
00:28:34
-With an entire town
under the glare of the national media spotlight, the FBI were under pressure
to find the killer.
00:28:41
On August the 30th,
amid the panic and chaos on campus, police identified
a 19-year-old freshman
00:28:47
with mental health issues
as a suspect. Edward Humphrey lived
in the same apartment complex
00:28:53
as the last two victims and had been outwardly
aggressive to other students. -Two days after
the final murder,
00:29:02
he was involved in a physical
battle with his grandmother, which involved him hitting her,
and the police arrested him.
00:29:10
-Mr. Humphrey's behavior was such that
he was highly conspicuous. I mean, he was loud,
he was drunk,
00:29:17
he was off his medication,
he had had brain injuries, he was out of control a lot,
even in restaurants.
00:29:24
-Humphrey's grandmother
didn't want to press charges, but the state decided that,
00:29:29
in order to keep their prime
suspect in custody, they would. They posted bail at
an unachievable $1 million
00:29:37
and took DNA samples
from the suspect, hoping to conclusively link him
with the college murders.
00:29:44
-He was under investigation
quite heavily because a lot of the evidence
pointed to him
00:29:50
as a possible suspect. Word of that leaked out
to the press, so he became a focus
of the media
00:29:58
as well as a focus
of the investigation. -I think everybody was so
desperate to solve
00:30:03
what had happened here
for a lot of reasons, one of which is just
a sense of security that,
00:30:08
"They got the guy." -Now it seemed that police
had their serial killer
00:30:12
and the prime suspect
for the bank robbery, Rolling's drug dealer friend,
both in custody.
00:30:18
Despite the incriminating
evidence at the campsite, the FBI weren't convinced
this was their man.
00:30:24
-For some reason, I just felt that this was not
our bank robber. He seemed to me to be
totally clueless
00:30:31
about how to rob a bank. -But, you never give up
on somebody until you do the investigation.
00:30:38
So, over the next
couple of days, my partner and I started
conducting investigations
00:30:43
to determine
if this individual was, in fact, the bank robber or not. -Meanwhile, the FBI's real
killer and bank robber,
00:30:52
Danny Rolling,
was still on the run. -He stole a car,
he drove to Tampa, he committed three robberies,
including holding up
00:31:00
a convenience store
on September the 2nd, and five days later, he tries
to commit another robbery,
00:31:06
this time in a store in Ocala,
where he holds the manager to ransom and demands
he opens the safe,
00:31:14
but, unfortunately, other people
realized what's happening, the police are called,
00:31:17
and Rolling is unable
to escape this time. -Rolling was finally taken
into custody
00:31:23
and awaiting trial for
the Ocala supermarket robbery. But in Gainesville,
the investigation
00:31:28
into the student slayings
had hit a dead end. DNA evidence had proven that prime suspect Edward
Humphrey was not their killer.
00:31:37
-He found himself at
the center of this investigation when police named him
as a potential suspect,
00:31:43
but this was a rabbit hole
that was going to lead nowhere, and it really was a distraction.
00:31:49
-Without another suspect
for the murders, the investigation came
to a standstill.
00:31:54
The Gainesville community
had believed the perpetrator of these horrific killings
was safely locked up.
00:32:01
It had given them
a false sense of security. But now they knew the truth. There was a serial killer
still at large.
00:32:09
A dark cloud of fear and panic hung over the Gainesville
community once again. -Serial killer Danny Rolling
had been arrested
00:32:20
for a grocery store robbery
in nearby Ocala, but the investigations into
the Gainesville murders
00:32:26
and bank robbery he committed
in the city were still ongoing. No link had been made between
the crimes or to Rolling.
00:32:35
The serial number of the gun
used in the bank robbery was traced
to its registered owner
00:32:40
three hours south
in the coastal city of Sarasota. So, FBI agents
went to interview him.
00:32:47
-So, the guy told a story
of selling it to some vagrant, some guy who was just
passing through town
00:32:53
who wanted to buy the gun. Sold it to him for cash. And the agent asked him, "Well, was there anything
that stood out about this guy?
00:33:02
Anything that you can remember that would help us identify
who he was?" -Officers were told the gun
had been sold to a vagrant
00:33:10
who had
a very distinctive attribute. -We were in a task force
meeting one morning,
00:33:17
and I started recalling what
this FBI agent had reported, that the individual --
the gun used in the bank robbery
00:33:25
had been sold to an individual
who had a missing finger, and one of
the Florida Department
00:33:31
of Law Enforcement agents
stood up and says, "Holy shit!" And the whole room falls silent.
00:33:40
-And he proceeds
to explain that, during the crime scene
investigation of the first murders
00:33:47
of Christina Powell
and Sonja Larson, that they found a piece
of paper towel on the counter
in the kitchen.
00:33:58
On one side was the imprint
of a man's penis, as if he were wiping himself off
after conducting a sex act.
00:34:08
On the other side of the paper
was a hand print with a finger missing. And it was at that point
that everybody realized
00:34:18
the bank robber
is the murderer. The problem is we still
didn't know who that was.
00:34:27
-Once that connection
had been made, the crime lab began reexamining other exhibits
from the woodland campsite
00:34:34
in connection
with the student murders. -Among the elements of
significance were a ski mask
00:34:43
whose fibers matched the duct
tape found at the third murder, Christa Hoyt's pubic hairs
were found
00:34:52
on Rolling's sleeping bag
at the campsite, blood on a pair of his trousers
was found to be Manny Taboada's,
00:35:01
a screwdriver was found
which matched the marks on the sliding doors by which
he'd got into the apartments,
00:35:08
but the most significant,
perhaps, of all, was there was
a series of audio tapes.
00:35:13
-In these disturbing recordings, Rolling alluded to the horror
that he was about to unleash.
00:35:39
As more details of the
Gainesville killings emerged, police in Shreveport,
Louisiana, realized
00:35:45
that there were significant
similarities between these cases and the unsolved murders
of the Grissom family in 1989.
00:35:53
They suspected all eight
homicides may be connected, but the identity of this serial
killer remained a mystery.
00:36:01
-After a period of time
when it became evident that the murderer
had either left Florida
00:36:07
or had been arrested, because no further murders
had been committed that matched that M.O.,
00:36:13
a decision was made
to test the DNA of all inmates in Florida
who had been arrested between --
00:36:20
I think it was like a
three- or a four-month window -- anybody who had been arrested
during that time frame
00:36:25
was gonna have their DNA
checked against the DNA on the homicides. -Danny Rolling was in jail
pending the trial
00:36:32
for the armed robbery of the
grocery store in nearby Ocala, so he was on the list
to have his DNA checked
00:36:39
against the killer's. He also had a partially missing
finger on his left hand.
00:36:45
-They obtained his profile,
and lo and behold, they matched, and they've got their man.
00:36:51
-On the 24th of January, 1991,
as a result of DNA testing, Rolling became the prime suspect
00:36:58
in the Gainesville
student murders. Brian Jarvis was a sergeant
covering major crimes
00:37:05
in Marion County,
where Rolling was brought in for questioning in connection
with the murders.
00:37:12
-When Danny walked into the
interview room, he was shackled. He had a lot of anxiety,
his left leg would tap,
00:37:19
it would shuffle, he would be scratching his leg,
or picking lint off of it. In fact, there was one
or two points
00:37:25
there where the detective
offered to show him the photos of the crime scene,
said, "I want to make sure
00:37:29
you know what
we're talking about here," and Danny couldn't
look at them.
00:37:33
He turned his head away,
and he reacted, he said,
"I don't want to see that."
00:37:36
-On September 18, 1991,
Danny Rolling was convicted for three counts
of attempted armed robbery
00:37:43
and two counts
of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer. He was jailed for life.
00:37:49
Finally, two months later, Rolling was indicted on five
counts of first-degree murder
00:37:55
for the atrocities
in Gainesville. -Rolling is indicted
for the murders, and he initially
pleads not guilty,
00:38:03
but he does begin to confess, and he doesn't do this
in a standard traditional way,
00:38:09
where he sits down with officers
or prosecutors and tells them what happened. -He actually speaks through
a fellow inmate of his.
00:38:17
-Once the details of his crimes were revealed
through his fellow prisoner, Rolling himself
broke his silence
00:38:23
and spoke to the investigators. He blamed the atrocities
on a personality disorder.
00:38:50
-And then another one, the evil
one that causes him to kill, Gemini, was the personality
really responsible.
00:39:11
-Now, in my view, it was not
gonna be about whether he'd found guilty, but whether or not
he was gonna be executed.
00:39:16
-With a potential death sentence
now hanging over him, Rolling's trial was set
for February 15, 1994,
00:39:23
in Gainesville, Florida. On the opening day in court, the prosecution was prepared for
an insanity plea from Rolling,
00:39:31
but he was to surprise everyone. -Sure enough, he got up,
and he stepped forward,
00:39:36
and he addressed the court,
and he confessed to the crimes, and, of course,
the outburst was --
00:39:42
the victims were stunned,
shocked, there was even some people like,
"What does that mean?
00:39:45
Did he just confess?" I mean, it was that shocking
to everyone. -Rolling changed his plea
to guilty
00:39:52
on all five counts of murder,
three counts of sexual battery, and three counts
of armed burglary.
00:39:59
On March the 24th, the 12 jurors unanimously recommended
the death penalty. -I had no question in my mind
that Judge Morris
00:40:08
was gonna give him
the death penalty. I don't think Danny had
any doubt, I don't think the defense team
had any doubt.
00:40:14
-On the 20th of April, 1994,
39-year-old Danny Rolling was sentenced to death
by Judge Stan Morris,
00:40:22
and immediately sent
to Florida State Prison. His legal team began a process
of appeals
00:40:27
which would last over 12 years. During one of these hearings, Rod Smith got the opportunity
to cross-examine Rolling.
00:40:36
-It was the one time,
it was just -- in my mind,
it was almost me and him, just for a brief moment.
00:40:42
Danny had said something
in an answer to me, as I recall it, "Mr. Smith, I'm not the monster
you made me out to be,"
00:40:50
or, "I'm not a monster,"
something like that. And for the first time
in the entire thing,
00:40:55
the entire process,
I think I lost my cool entirely, and I remember saying -- and I remember
the judge just about --
00:41:03
oh, he was really upset
with me for it. I remember saying something
to the effect that,
00:41:07
"When you killed that boy,
were you a monster then?" -Rolling fought his death
sentence to the very end.
00:41:16
The day before his execution,
his last appeal was turned down. That night,
on the eve of his death,
00:41:22
Rolling surprised
everybody again. Despite never admitting to
the 1989 Grissom family murders
00:41:29
in his hometown of Shreveport, he had another confession
to make. "Hereby, I make a formal
written statement
00:41:37
concerning the murders of Julie,
Tom, and Sean Grissom. I, and I alone, am guilty.
00:41:43
It was my hand that took
those precious lights out of this old, dark world."
00:41:49
On October 25, 2006,
in Florida State Prison, justice for his victims
was finally carried out.
00:41:57
At 6:00 PM, Danny Harold Rolling
was executed by lethal injection. He was 52 years old.
00:42:06
-When a grisly crime like this
is committed, and people's lives
are impacted forever,
00:42:11
the worst part of it is,
of course, the victimization. The families who should've been
able to see their kids graduate
00:42:20
from college,
who instead have to bury them at the beginning
of their college careers.
00:42:28
That's the worst part. -The things that mystify us
most about people like Rolling
00:42:33
is how ordinary they are. We want them to be monstrous
in their behavior, we want there to be
something obvious about them,
00:42:42
and it's hard to accept
that somebody this meaningless in terms of anything
they accomplished in their lives
00:42:48
could come in
and kind of dominate and terrorize a community. -When I looked into his eyes,
it was vacant.
00:42:57
There was just darkness, and I'd never seen that before
with anybody, and I've never seen it
with anybody since,
00:43:04
and Danny Rolling is,
in my opinion, the most evil person
I've ever met. -Danny Rolling brutally
slaughtered eight people
00:43:13
for no reason
other than to prove to himself that he could succeed
at something.
00:43:18
He stalked women, mutilated,
and raped them. He killed anybody
who got in his way,
00:43:23
including an 8-year-old boy, and that makes Danny Rolling one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:43:30
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪