Danny Rolling, AKA the Gainesville Ripper.

Rolling, born in 1954, was a mentally unstable man from Shreveport, Louisiana, who struggled to fit into society all his life. He joined the Air Force in his 20s, but was discharged after two years due to his mental instability, and later did several stints in prison for multiple armed robberies.

In November of 1989, he was fired from his job at a Mexican restaurant in Shreveport. Frustrated and angry, he decided to deal with those feelings by killing a few random strangers in his neighborhood. The unlucky victims were William Grissom, 55, his daughter Julie, 24, and grandson Sean, 8. (Sean was Julie's nephew, son of her brother Scott.) Rolling stabbed all three to death with a Ka-Bar knife; he also raped Julie and left her body posed in a lewd sexual position on her bed. Rolling was not caught, nor was he a suspect in the initial investigation.

Some months later, Rolling drifted down to Gainesville, Florida, and set up camp in the woods near the University of Florida. He had told an acquaintance in Shreveport that he wanted to go someplace where he could just stare at beautiful young women all day.

But soon, staring wasn't enough.

On August 24, 1990, Rolling broke into the apartment shared by Christina Powell and Sonja Larson, both 17 and incoming freshmen at the University; he had seen the girls bringing boxes into their new apartment. He stabbed both to death, and also raped Christina, and like Julie Grissom, both were left nude, in lewd sexual positions.

The next day, Danny broke into another apartment, this one belonging to 18-year-old Christa Hoyt, a student at Santa Fe Community College. Christa — whom Rolling had seen through her window a few days earlier and correctly guessed lived alone — was not home; Rolling hid in a closet for four hours waiting for her, then attacked her from behind, bound her wrists, raped her, stabbed her to death, and placed her in that same lewd position on her bed before leaving.

However, he quickly realized he had dropped his wallet in Christa's apartment, and when he went back for it, he decided it would be fun to mutilate her body. He used his knife to decapitate her, put her in a seated position on the edge of her bed, then placed her head on a shelf, making it appear that her head was looking at her detached body. Then he left again.

Two days later, on August 27, Danny got the urge to kill again. This time he broke into an apartment rented by UF students Manuel “Manny" Taboada and Tracy Paules, both 23. Unlike the previous three victims, all petite girls, Manny was a strapping young man, a former high school football player, and very strong, but he was asleep when Rolling began stabbing him, and despite putting up a tremendous fight, was ultimately unable to fend him off.

Rolling then broke down the door to Tracy's room, where she had been cowering since discovering Rolling stabbing her roommate. He bound her, raped her, and stabbed her to death, then left her, nude, in the same lewd position as the other girls.

Rolling was apprehended in early September, after a woman in Shreveport, upon hearing about the manner of the young women's deaths in Gainesville, tipped police off, and told them she suspected Rolling might be the killer in both the Shreveport and Gainesville killings. She said she suspected Rolling because shortly after the Grissom family was murdered, Rolling had told her husband that he “had a problem”, which was that he “liked to stick knives into people”. (She and her husband cut off contact with Rolling after this little revelation.)

(EDIT: I forgot to note that all of Rolling's female victims were petite, white brunettes with brown eyes. So was his mother, with whom he did not have a good relationship.)

Rolling would ultimately confess to all eight murders. His motive? To be a “superstar", like his hero, Ted Bundy. He was convicted on 5 counts of first-degree murder for the Gainesville murders, and was sentenced to death (he would not confess to the Shreveport murders until later). He was executed by lethal injection on October 25, 2006. He never made any apology to the families of his victims, nor did he ever show any remorse for his crimes.

Sean and Julie Grissom:

Left to right: Christa Hoyt, Sonja Larson, Tracy Paules, Christina Powell, Manny Taboada.

Danny Rolling:

Memorial to the Gainesville victims on the University of Florida campus: