Wanted for attempted murder, he fled Louisiana, staying briefly in Sarasota, Florida, where he broke into the home of Janet Frake and raped her, reports the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Months later, in May 1990, Rolling got into a fight with his father and shot him twice, once in the stomach and once in the face, reports the Orlando-Sentinel. Rolling was back in Shreveport in the fall of 1989 after being paroled from jail in Mississippi. Rolling, who was long considered the only suspect in the 1989 murder of the Grissom family after police found similarities between the crime scenes, confessed to their murders in the moments before he was executed, reports the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Julie was raped and posed bite marks were found on her breasts. The Grissom family - William, 55, his daughter, Julie, 24, and grandson Sean, 8 - were preparing dinner when a man broke into their apartment, stabbing them all to death. “Lucifer told me eight souls for every year I’d done in prison,” said Rolling, according to CNN - counting the triple homicide of the Grissom family in his hometown Shreveport, he did kill at least eight people. Over the following decade, he would turn to crime and spent extended periods of time behind bars for armed robbery in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. While he briefly lived what seemed to be a normal life - becoming active in the Pentecostal Church, getting married, and having a daughter - his mother claimed he “lost it” after his wife filed for divorce, in a videotaped testimony during the 1994 court trial. Serial Killers Who Were Married While They Murdered (According to court documents, Rolling's commanding officer told his mother that 'he was not mature and did not have the nervous system or maturity necessary for military life.')

It would be on one minute, off the next.'Īs a child, Danny would run away from home and camp in the woods, indulging in petty crime and voyeurism, by his own admission during the court trial.Īfter dropping out of high school, Rolling joined the Air Force in 1972, but he was discharged honorably after only serving two years, reports the Orlando Sentinel. 'He'd beat the hell out of them,' Danny’s cousin Charles Strozier would later say, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Perhaps ironically given his nefarious life of crime, Daniel Harold Rolling was born in 1954 in Shreveport, Louisiana to a police lieutenant who allegedly abused his wife and children, both physically and verbally. Who Is 'The Gainsville Ripper' Danny Rolling?

RELATED: Everything We Know About The ‘Hollywood Ripper,’ A ‘Serial Sexual-Thrill Killer’īefore his execution, police would learn the Gainesville murders weren’t his only homicides and the entire affair would inspire the maker of Scream, one of the most famous horror films of all time. Rolling was already in custody for armed robbery he would later be given five death sentences, one for every murder he committed that August. Quickly dubbed the “The Gainesville Ripper,” the serial killer initially eluded capture when police first identified a troubled teen as their main suspect, before realizing the gruesome murders were actually the work of Danny Rolling, a 30-something drifter with a long criminal history. The victims had been fatally stabbed, and, in some cases, raped and mutilated, their bodies posed in sexual positions. In the summer of 1990, the college town of Gainesville, Florida found itself in the grip of terror after five students were murdered in quick succession.

Murders A-Z is a collection of true crime stories that take an in-depth look at both little-known and famous murders throughout history.

Gainesville serial killer