Original subtitles

[foreboding music]

- Danny Rolling shows the most abject, horrible way

that these people could die.

[foreboding music continues]

- A serial killer is paralyzing a Florida college community.

- [Reporter 1] Sources say the girl's body was mutilated.

- [Reporter 2] The killings have terrorized the campus.

- It wasn't normal. It was sadistic.

And it had the hallmarks of,

"That it was gonna happen again."

[siren wailing]

- We were like running from crime scene to crime scene.

Another homicide, again, knife wounds.

- He had a problem, sticking knives in people.

He liked it.

- I didn't intend to start out living a life of crime.

- He was a peeping Tom,

and then he began to become a serial rapist.

His appetite couldn't be sated.

[thrilling music]

[gentle music]

sec of south Shreveport.

Middle income, low crime area.

- A neighbor noticed the newspapers were piling up

in the driveway at the house across the street.

And the cars hadn't seemed to move.

So the neighbor curious about potentially

something being wrong,

went over and looked through the window,

and what he saw shocked him.

There was a pool of blood on the living room floor.

[siren wailing]

- [Police] Okay, we'll looking around.

- When detectives first walked through the door,

it's just an absolutely horrific scene.

[foreboding music]

In the living room,

they find eight year old, Sean Grissom.

He's in a position that looks like his hands

were behind his back, at some point.

- Moving on, they find Tom Grissom in the utility room,

lying on his stomach.

He's got an stab wound to the lower back.

They move down the hallway to the back bedroom

and they find Julie Grissom lying on the bed.

And she has a number of stab wounds to the back.

But she's lying on her back.

[foreboding music]

- Danny Rolling's father, James, was a police officer.

And Danny told me that his father at times was his hero.

But at the same time, he was "A cold hearted bastard."

- Dad had to have control over every aspect

of our life.

Every thought, every...

We weren't allowed to have an individuality

in the Rolling home.

- When his father came home

and took off that police uniform,

he expected to have dinner on the table,

and for everybody else to just let him alone.

- Danny was always trying to make his father happy,

but he never could.

- One of the things that we learned

in just basic psychology

is when you don't get the reinforcement

from something positive,

individuals, and Danny was one of them,

would start engaging in behavior

that he'd get attention for,

but it was not positive attention.

- He would act out. Cause a scene.

It got to the point he couldn't go anywhere.

- Danny said his father was very unpredictable.

- Danny got a puppy one time.

I think he just found it.

He went to school.

I think it was when he came in that afternoon,

he ran out in the backyard and he asked his daddy,

"Where's my puppy?"

And his father walks up and showed him a hole in ground.

He killed it.

Whatever Danny had at that time to make Danny happy,

Mr. Rolling would destroy it.

- And so we have Danny always fearing when his father

or how his father is gonna react.

[tense music]

- I show up to the crime scene, it's all taped off.

And came to find out pretty quickly

that there were three victims,

and it was a whole family.

The father is 55.

He was an AT&T worker.

By everybody's standard,

a good neighbor and a good dad, and one of those guys.

Sean Grissom was a student at local

neighborhood school here.

Just spending the weekend with the grandparents.

Julie Grissom was at the time 24,

LSU Shreveport student,

and was working at Dillard's, which is the retail outlet.

- Julie and I had been painting for a year

and six weeks or so.

I used to love to just hear her talk.

She had an almost childlike voice.

It was really, really soft. Everything was soft about her.

She didn't wear flashy clothes,

and she was working on completing her marketing degree.

Life was good.

I'm at my law practice in Shreveport,

and my legal secretary said she just saw a news bulletin

on the television that Julie and her father

and nephew's bodies had been found.

[foreboding music]

[siren wailing]

- Detectives, when they are examining this crime scene,

they're clearly examining the bodies.

Sean, the eight year old is fully clothed.

Tom Grissom is also fully clothed.

But Julie Grissom is nude,

and her clothes have been cut off and removed from her.

It looks like Julie is the target of this case.

- They also noticed tape residue on Julie.

At some point, both of her wrists were bound together

and there was duct tape over her mouth.

So whoever did this has taken the tape with them.

- When you see an offender like this,

who is engaging in sexual assault,

and then has a very definite ritualized behavior

in essentially the posing of the victim,

I'm seeing a sexual sadist.

And those kinds of offenders are very dangerous

because they engage in a lot of planning

and are forensically astute.

[siren wailing]

- This is not your everyday murder.

A triple homicide involving a child,

and you have a sexual homicide as well.

So you've got in a really egregious crime here.

- The target was Julie Grissom.

So we just didn't know the details.

Investigators, they were very tight-lipped about everything.

So all the reporters go,

boyfriend, ex-lover, domestic dispute.

We all know Julie's boyfriend,

kind of a high profile local attorney named Hal Carter.

- There was a gathering of neighbors

and relatives across the street.

And I said, "I need to go."

- There's an uncanny ability for criminals

to show up at the scene of a crime, right?

So we're standing out at the crime scene

and we see this car slow rolling down the street,

and it's Hal Carter.

- I saw a detective come out of the front door

and I waved him over and I said,

"I dated Julie Grissom for over a year,

and I wanna do everything I can

to help y'all find her killer."

They gave me a strange look.

And he said, "We will be in touch."

- The minute he rolled onto the scene,

the entire city basically convicted him.

Of course we found out later,

he had nothing to do with anything.

[foreboding music]

- [Danny] Home was not a safe place for me.

The night, it held a place where I could go

and I could feel at ease.

- When he was about nine years old,

Danny started roaming the streets

to get away from the home.

He started looking in windows

and saw a family of four eating dinner together,

and started to fantasize that he was inside

just to become part of someone else's family.

- He was always looking for somewhere to feel welcome,

because he acted so strange.

He didn't know how to act around normal people.

- One night, he happened to come across a house

where he observed a female that had just come out

of a shower.

That was the first time that he got some sexual

gratification and aroused.

He went back to that same house, I believe the next night,

because it was so exciting to him.

And then this became the pattern after that.

He is clearly progressing

going from one relatively benign event

to the beginnings of becoming a sex offender.

[thrilling music]

- There was a knock on the door and it was two detectives.

They said, "We need to question you

about the Grissom murders."

I did get scared because I knew they were looking at me

as the prime suspect.

But the night of the murders I was in Atlanta, Georgia.

- He gets alibied out because he's out of state.

So they're very careful,

but also very quick to rule out the boyfriend.

- It gets more difficult.

The more time goes by, the more difficult it gets.

I think the correct word is anxious.

We felt anxious and worry

that this was gonna happen to someone else

before we could catch him.

- There was definitely a palpable sense of fear

because it wasn't normal, it was sadistic.

And it had the hallmarks of,

"That it was gonna happen again."

- It's a year later,

the Shreveport murders still don't really have any suspects.

And when you have a sexual sadist who is murdering,

this is not typically an offender who does this once

and then stops.

- Gainesville, Florida is home to the University of Florida,

and the entire town just

flourishes around the University.

In late August, every year, it's just filled with excitement

around the beginning of the school year.

Students, they're 17, 18, 19 years old,

and they're on their own for the first time.

Christina was supposed to call her parents,

and then they hadn't heard from her

and they got concerned,

eventually called a well check.

Would somebody go by and would see what's going on?

The police officer enters the apartment,

and there he is met with an incredible site.

The body of Christina Powell,

she had been stabbed in the back multiple times.

And then they went upstairs and found Sonja stabbed.

The first wound was to the upper part of her torso.

And there were a couple of others.

All frontal stabs.

- The offender removed the clothing from both of them

and then he posed Sonja Larson and Christina Powell

in provocative positions.

- This was a crime scene with a real purpose.

We believe it was designed to shock anybody

that walked into it.

[foreboding music]

- I believe that down deep, the happiest Danny ever was,

was when he got married and had a family.

He had a job, he had it all.

His life was gonna be different from there on out,

but it couldn't last.

[foreboding music]

She goes, "Danny is not who everybody thinks he is."

I'm like, "What are you talking about? Danny's, Danny.

She goes, "No, Danny's beginning to scare me."

She had to wear what he said to wear.

She had something new, he would destroy it.

He turned into his father, literally.

[foreboding music]

That was it. She took the baby and left.

- Danny refused to accept responsibility

for his negative behavior.

It was all somebody else's fault,

either his wife's or society.

And when I talked to him about why he was such

an angry person, he blamed her as well.

- And eventually, this leads to a very strong

disdain for women,

and the need to be in control.

And for Danny, it's all about control.

[foreboding music]

- [Reporter 3] The authorities discovered

the mutilated bodies of two female roommates,

18 year old, Sonja Larson,

and 17 year old, Christina Powell,

were first year students who lived off campus.

Police say both girls had been savagely attacked.

- I was moving into my own dorm at college,

and the next thing I know,

I was being summoned to a professor's apartment.

And I got there and my mom was sitting there,

and then I laid eyes on her,

I knew something was wrong,

and she could barely get the words out.

But what she said was, "Honey, it's Christie."

Christie was the life of the party.

She loved to dance.

Christie was an amazing dancer,

just a dynamo full of power,

and just a really strong personality.

Christie wanted to be an architect.

She loved to sketch and draw.

She took drafting classes.

At 17, that was kind of the direction

she thought she was headed.

Christie's roommate was Sonja.

I never met Sonja, but I remember Christie telling me

that Sonja was quiet, studious,

and that she thought she would make a great roommate.

- These were wonderful kids,

and their futures looked like they were unlimited.

[thrilling music]

- One of the first things that investigators know

is that this apartment backs up to a wooded area.

- The perpetrator could have hidden himself in the woods.

- This guy has probably been surveilling them

and peeping through the windows.

In the apartment,

Christina Powell is laid out on the floor

with her arms over her head and her hair fanned out.

- She was sexually assaulted and there was a gummy substance

that was on her wrists.

And after closely examining it,

it was duct tape that had been applied,

and uniquely after it had served its purpose,

had been cut and removed.

- The fact that they see sexual assault

and you have the other victim also posed,

suggests somebody with a very rich fantasy life.

And somebody like that, is very likely not to stop.

- The next day as the crime scene was even being cleared,

notifications coming out

there's another crime scene.

- [Reporter 3] Early this morning,

the body of another victim is pulled out of her apartment.

- Another homicide, again, another female.

So there's someone out there that has a specific intention.

Preying on women.

It became clear that we had a serial killer on the loose.

[thrilling music]

- Less than a day after the bodies of Sonja Larson

and Christina Powell are discovered,

another young woman is found dead in her apartment.

- It was clear that Christa had been killed with a knife

and that there had been sexual assault.

- She had been eviscerated and decapitated.

- He had posed her.

Her decapitated head was set up

so that when you open the front door,

that's what greeted you.

They're all horrible, but that crime scene was unspeakable.

[thrilling music]

- As the Gainesville community is just beginning to process

these three murders,

another homicide scene is discovered.

With two victims,

Manuel Taboada and Tracy Paules.

- Tracy Paules was sexually assaulted.

Again, knife wounds.

Manuel Taboada was found in his bedroom

and he had been stabbed many, many times.

These three crime scenes all happened

within a span of three or four days.

We were like running from crime scene to crime scene.

- That was unbelievable.

That was when everybody said,

"Oh my Lord, what is going on? When will this end?"

[foreboding music]

- After Danny's wife divorces him,

he committed robbery after robbery.

He committed sexual assaults.

He was imprisoned in three different states.

- I didn't intend to start out living a life of crime.

But in the frame of mind I was in, I figured,

"Okay, I'll just go. I'm just gonna rob."

And I ended up in prison.

- That was another experience

that certainly hardened him towards society.

- And then when he gets out of prison,

Danny was kind of a loser and a drifter.

- I think his things weren't changing.

And as he felt he had little control over his life,

he turns to fantasy

just like when he was about nine years old.

But this time, he is fantasizing about raping women,

forcing them to have sex with him, and also being sadistic.

- For sexual sadists,

a lot of the arousal

comes from essentially terrorizing their victims.

- I didn't see Danny for at least 10 years.

I was cooking supper one night and Danny shows up,

but he weren't the Danny I knew before.

He looked like Rambo in the army fatigues,

and he was in the back throwing a knife into a tree.

And so my husband, Steve,

stepped outside and was talking to him.

And Danny says, "Steve, I have a problem."

I like to stick knives in people.

Steven came in, he goes,

"Cindy, this guy's, what's wrong with this guy?"

[foreboding music]

- The person described as a maniac,

apparently, a serial killer is paralyzing

a Florida college community.

The victims were painfully young and savagely killed,

but it is by no means over.

The killer still was out there.

- I'm leaving.

My parents are coming to get me and I'm going home.

- Word of the crimes spread like wildfire.

- A serial killer responsible for the deaths

of five young people.

Killings have terrorized the campus.

- It was a flurry unlike anything that's ever happened.

- The entire central Florida area was gripped with fear.

- Scariest thing is just waiting to see tomorrow morning

if there's gonna be another report on the news.

- For days, of course you were on edge,

When is the next one? When's the next one?

- Is it gonna be Gainesville?

Is it gonna be some other city? Has he moved on?

You know that the clock is ticking.

[thrilling music]

We were looking for other crime scenes,

either within the state or on a national level

that had common signature similarities.

One of the cities,

it was identified was Shreveport, Louisiana.

- If somebody showed you the crime scene photos

from Shreveport, you'd go, "I've seen this before."

[foreboding music]

- It's hard to describe what it feels like.

Frustrating is a word.

- When you focus on the target

of the triple homicide in Shreveport,

namely Julie Grissom,

the way in manner in which she was killed,

the binding of her hands with the duct tape and the removal,

and in the shocking pose,

all of that, at least on the surface appeared similar.

But we needed something more than that.

We needed physical evidence to tie these together.

Our perpetrator in Gainesville,

there had a B blood type.

Specifically, he was a B secretor,

which is a very small percentage of the population.

Their perpetrator in Shreveport has a B blood type,

and he's a secretor.

I felt that whoever did Shrieveport

in November 4th, in 1989,

may be our perpetrator in Gainesville in August of 1990.

[foreboding music]

[telephone ringing]

- They would have these news breaks

talking about the Gainesville murders.

Another student got murdered.

And I mean, it was just horrible.

And then they had a news flash.

- [Reporter 3] It was one year ago in Shreveport, Louisiana,

three people were murdered.

Sources say the girl's body was mutilated

in a manner similar to the murders in Gainesville.

- And I looked at Steve and I said,

"Steve, I guarantee you, that's Danny."

When I started thinking about the things he said to us,

the way he acted, the thing where he told Steve,

"he had a problem sticking knives in people, he liked it,"

it wouldn't let me sleep.

So I called down there and I said,

"I hear y'all think there's a connection between

Shreveport and Florida."

And I said,

"I think there's someone you need to investigate."

And they said, "Who?"

- She said, "His name is Danny Rolling."

We were able to find out that Danny Rolling,

we had him in the Marion county jail

for having committed a robbery

just a few days after Manuel Taboada and Tracy Paules

are both killed.

I grabbed another agent

and went down to the Marion County Jail.

I knew I was meeting the killer.

I knew for sure it was him.

- I asked him for his voluntary cooperation

to provide me with a blood sample,

and he signed the form, and we walked out with his blood.

- Guess what? He's a B secretor.

- Now it's no longer just my suspicion.

Here's our guy, Danny Harold Rolling.

[foreboding music]

- Danny told me about the three homicides in Louisiana.

- So it appears that Danny saw Julie

in the department store where she worked.

I think he tried to talk to her,

and she sort of, in his mind, maybe blew him off.

- Julie probably never even saw him.

I think he just totally turned himself over

to what was inside.

All the anger and hate.

- Danny followed her home and surveilled the residence.

It was the perfect location.

It backed up to this wooded area.

He watched Julie through the window.

And her father, Tom, is outside barbecuing.

So he's coming in and out of the residence,

the door remains unlocked.

- His plan was to rape her, make her suffer,

and somehow put her through the same thing

that he went through.

- He knew that there were multiple people in this house,

but for him, it was like,

"I don't care. What I really want is Julie."

[foreboding music]

- Danny had seen Julie and he followed her home.

Whereas in Gainesville, Danny had planned his action.

I think the first time,

it was more of a spur of the moment kind of thing.

- Danny is wearing a mask

and he's got a large military knife.

So he is a very terrifying character.

He walks Tom, the 55 year old father

into the utility room and he stabs Tom in the back.

He moves Julie to the bedroom

and then he dispatches Sean, the eight year old.

- I asked him years later,

why did you feel a need to kill the father

and the young child?

And Danny told me,

"'Cause they were in the way."

- Now he was in the position that he wanted.

He had Julie in the bedroom by herself.

- He cut off her clothes and her underwear,

and that's when he sexually assaulted her.

And he got some kind of gratification

from being able to have her afraid of him

rather than the usual that he was always intimidated

by his father.

- And then he basically rolled her onto her stomach

and then stabs her in the back.

He wasn't panicked. He was careful.

Then you have to remember that he's a lifelong criminal,

and he's a lifelong peeper and prowler.

- He told me that he was proud of what he did.

[foreboding music]

- One week before trial,

the judge called me over to say that Danny Rolling

wanted to enter a plea.

- I've been running from first one thing

and then another all my life,

but there are some things that you just can't run from.

- State witness.

- Harry Krop, I'm a Clinical Psychologist

licensed in the State of Florida.

What I try and communicate to a jury

is that a person isn't born a killer.

So why did Danny Rolling do such horrific things?

I think you have to look at all the psychological dynamics

that go way back to when he was a child.

He indicated the father would grab him by the hair,

slam him against the wall, shove him around.

We have the domestic violence. We have the emotional abuse.

We have the neglect.

The father clearly was a control freak.

- We know that things that happen in your young life

come back and form part of your personality.

- The sexual disorder is what we call voyeurism,

and it's of a severe nature.

It almost became a pulsion with him.

And then of course Danny's failed marriage

reinforced Danny's view that everybody is against him.

- Danny met the textbook for progression.

He started off as a peeing Tom, he then was a burglar,

and then he began to become a serial rapist.

His appetite couldn't be sated,

until such time as he began to commit the murders.

- Danny chose the most abject, horrible way

that these people could die.

And he was fine with it,

because it made Danny feel like he was the one in control.

- [Man] It is ordered in a judge that the defendant,

Danny Harold Rolling, is hereby sentence to death.

- All of these crimes warranted the death penalty.

It was that heinous.

[foreboding music]

- The reason it's important for me

to continue to talk about Christie

is because she was stolen from me, from us,

from the world.

She would've made the world a better place,

and she didn't get an opportunity

to see her 18th birthday.

- If Julie had lived,

I firmly believe that Julie and I

would have ultimately married and had children.

We would've had a normal life.

I just miss Julie.

I just miss Julie.