Original subtitles

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

In late August of 1990, the city of Gainesville, Florida,

was paralyzed by a string of senseless and sadistic murders.

The bodies of five college students were discovered

in their apartments brutally stabbed, tortured.

Some were sexually assaulted.

One, decapitated.

Investigators knew that this was the work

of a deranged serial killer,

but who could be capable of such violent depravity?

It would be more than a year before the public

and the victim's families finally knew the truth.

Here's how it really happened.

♪♪

♪♪

Man: They were crimes that horrified a community.

Five students between the ages of 17 and 23

stabbed to death in August 1990.

Darnell: Sonja Larson, Christy Powell,

Christa Hoyt, Manny Taboada,

and Tracy Paules.

We were forced to recognize that horrible things can happen

to vibrant and talented individuals

in a beautiful and pristine place such as Gainesville.

Man: Gainesville police discovered the first two murder victims

Sunday afternoon.

Emery: Christy, she was moving into her apartment.

She got in her car, and off she went.

And I literally can see her rounding the corner,

just like that.

Man: Sonja Larson was 18, the typical all-American girl.

I'll be in a store, and I will think,

"Oh, Sonja will like that."

And then it hits me.

Sonja's not here.

Man: Yesterday, the third victim was found,

reportedly decapitated.

Hoyt: When Christa moved in with us, she started coming around

and giving each one a hug and kiss

before she went to sleep at night.

And now you wish it could just keep going on and on.

Man: Victims four and five, a young man and a woman,

were found at an off-campus

student apartment complex Tuesday morning.

Taboada: The great thing about my brother

is that he lived life to the fullest,

and I was just -- just so proud of him.

And that will never change.

Lahey: She was my sister, and I lost a big part of my heart.

Shoot, I'm 54 years old,

and I still can't get over her loss.

Hewitt: These crime scenes were probably the most horrific crime scenes

that I had ever seen.

He would stalk, in some cases, these victims in advance.

And then pounce when they were very vulnerable.

This guy was committing murders in the middle of the night.

You're most vulnerable when you're asleep.

Woman: All had been stabbed.

Several were mutilated.

He was not just there to kill.

He was showcasing a room,

and that was terribly disturbing.

After he dismembered people, he stayed and --

and just posed people.

It was bone-chilling.

Woman: Police warned the killer may still be stalking.

It was horrific, and it was heart-wrenching.

He was still out there.

♪♪

[ Telephone rings ]

There was new, hot leads every day to follow up on.

There was a bank of investigators

working the phones day in and day out.

Etheridge: At the time, there were questions.

Why is this taking so long?

This guy is out there.

Where is he?

Woman: Investigators say they have volumes of evidence

and a pool of suspects.

We're looking at eight possible suspects

in our series of homicides.

Woman: From that category, 18-year-old Edward Lewis Humphrey

is the only one authorities would name.

The University of Florida student is in custody

on separate charges of beating his grandmother.

Stacy: He -- he looked like a serial killer.

He had scars on his face, and he was acting erratically.

He was talking about murder.

Man: Police say they've been told,

Humphrey liked to put on military clothes,

strap on a knife,

and go on nighttime reconnaissance missions

in the same area searchers sloshed through

looking for possible evidence.

They were just searching and searching and searching.

They were looking for anything.

Needle in a haystack.

Hicks: The police were really at loose ends,

and then it wasn't until Danny Rolling made

a foolish mistake that he even came

to the attention of law enforcement.

Woman: Danny Rolling, 36-year-old unemployed laborer,

was arrested for holding a gun

to the head of an employee of this Ocala grocery store

and then leading them on a wild chase through town.

I was asked by the assistant chief public defender in Ocala

to evaluate his competency

and mental state at the time of the charge.

We start talking.

He said, "I just want to know

whether everything I tell you is confidential."

He then went on and told me about the five homicides.

Man: Five gruesome stabbings took place

over a three-day period in late August.

Krop: He went into detail where he killed,

mutilated, posed, and decapitated,

and other very sadistic kind of acts.

One of the things that Danny told me

was that after he killed on the second day,

the next morning, he woke up, and he couldn't find his wallet,

and he presumed that he left it at the scene.

So he had gone back to the scene.

Of course, no one had been there yet.

When he went back, that is when he decapitated.

He didn't do that initially at the crime scene.

Woman: Christa Hoyt has been decapitated,

her head placed on a bookcase.

I almost think he wanted to know if he had shocked me,

and I said, "No, I hear it all the time,"

which of course, I don't hear it to that degree.

Christian: Now, Dr. Krop knew that Danny Rolling

had confessed to these killings.

Danny rolling put Dr. Krop in a very precarious position

because the tenets of mental therapy,

you cannot tell anyone.

Krop: Once he made his confessions to me,

he seemed emotionally relieved, and I was emotionally drained.

And then I started realizing

this was a confidential evaluation.

I couldn't tell anybody.

Danny hadn't been charged with murder.

It might cause a mistrial down the road

if he's ever brought to trial.

Christian: On the other hand, he knew at that point

that Danny Rolling was not going to be killing

anymore university students because he was locked up.

So, in the end, Dr. Krop didn't say anything.

He waited for the system to work the way that it's supposed to.

The truth will come out.

We knew we had evidence of the suspect

from all three crime scenes.

Man: Matching DNA would link a suspect to the murders.

And things just started clicking.

[ Cheering ]

Let's go, Gators, let's go!

Let's go, Gators, let's go!

Let's go, Gators, let's go!

Woman: Homecoming festivities at the University of Florida

are in high gear.

And while there's no apparent lack of enthusiasm,

memories of the tragic events of recent weeks

are never far from students' minds.

The fall semester, it's the semester of dreams.

There's always that optimism in the fall,

and that got taken away from us.

My heart just goes out to families

and friends of the victims.

Hopefully, someone will catch this guy,

and there'll be a lot of happy people if that happens.

Man: Some of the best criminal investigation minds

in the nation have been working on the case,

but still, no one has been arrested.

Hicks: The murders had stopped.

I called my police sources in South Florida,

and I said, "What do you know? What do you hear?"

And at the time, the police had decided

either the person who was involved in it had died

or had been arrested on some unrelated crime.

Well, let's see who's already in jail.

Hewitt: We filled out ViCAP, violent crime apprehension program,

and it's run by the Federal Bureau of investigation.

It is a very in-depth document

that you fill out on every scene.

They feed the information into their computer base,

and any crimes that have any similarities to it,

it kicks 'em out,

one of them being murders in the Shreveport area.

Woman: The Gainesville murders contained striking similarities

to a 1989 murder in Shreveport, Louisiana.

24-year-old Julie Grissom, Brunette college student,

had been raped, stabbed, posed on a bed,

and the bedroom meticulously cleaned up afterwards.

Hewitt: Her body was staged on the side of her bed

similar to some of our victims.

Woman: Police there say her father and nephew

must have come in on the killer.

They, too, were fatally stabbed.

Several police sources have told us

they have suspected a connection between the two cases.

Hewitt: The task force sent an FDLE agent to Shreveport

to talk with the investigators.

Danny's name came up because of the Grissom

killings in Shreveport.

There was warrants for him out of Shreveport

for shooting his father before he left in the spring of '90.

The investigators in Shreveport said,

"Hey, you might want to go down and check him out."

Woman: Was he linked to the five killings here?

He was basically a career criminal.

Hewitt: He had done numerous robberies

and been convicted and served time.

The man's been to prison for armed robbery

in three different states.

He came to the wrong state when he came to Florida

and committed an armed robbery.

Hewitt: In the midst of working the student murders,

we had a bank robbery that turned out to be very important.

♪♪

♪♪

Stacy: The First Union robbery,

it got kind of lost in all the other news.

Mann: It was crazy.

It was in the middle of the day, near a busy intersection.

The bank robbery takes place.

Hewitt: I don't think anybody, until much later,

put it together that they were connected.

We got there, and somebody said that the suspect

had ran across the parking lot and turned into a wooded area

that leads into the University of Florida.

They brought in the K-9s,

and the K-9s tracked him through a wooded area to a campsite.

At the campsite, we found dye-stained money,

a bag, a screwdriver, audiotape player,

a knit ski cap, and a pair of sports gloves.

And they packed all the stuff up and moved it to evidence.

Mann: At that time, it just didn't make sense

that it had any connection with the Gainesville student murders.

Three months later, we said, "Maybe we should go back

and look at our evidence that we collected from the campsite

that was associated with the bank robbery."

And when we did, we found the tape recorder and noticed

that there was a tape inside it.

And on that tape was talking.

And singing.

The moon is shining.

The rain keeps pouring down.

And he identifies himself.

As Danny Rolling.

Mann: Now you have a possible suspect giving their full name

in Gainesville during this particular case.

This is a very possible suspect and probably the suspect.

We knew we had evidence of the suspect

from all three crime scenes in Gainesville, Florida.

Our forensic lab people were able to create a DNA profile.

Back then, to run DNA took several weeks as opposed to now

where you can get something in one or two days.

Reporter: Sources have told Channel 4 News that the lab is doing

DNA testing on either blood, hair,

or semen sample found at a crime scene.

I got a call one day from a guy I worked with at FDLE.

He goes, "Hey, you arrested this guy named Danny Rolling.

I need to come down and pull some blood from him."

Mann: They took him to the infirmary and had his blood drawn.

That blood was sent to the lab.

Graham: Dennis calls me, and he goes, "you're not gonna believe this.

We think this is the guy."

And all of a sudden, things immediately

just start coming together.

Man: Today, a published report says police

are waiting for a DNA blood test

to confirm that their suspicions are correct,

that they may know who the killer is.

They had discovered his camp in the woods

and the songs that he had -- the tapes he had made.

♪♪

Man: Mario Taboada spends a lot of time at the cemetery.

His brother, Manny, was stabbed to death

in Gainesville, Florida.

♪♪

Taboada: My brother was murdered at the end of August, 1990.

Months later, our case was still in the limelight

and in the news.

Man: For many, it's difficult to understand

or accept why no one's been arrested.

The wheels of justice move slow, and okay,

that's fine to say unless your child was murdered,

and it takes this long to catch the guy.

It turns out, he was actually in custody.

Man: Investigators confirm that this man,

36-year-old Danny Rolling

of Shreveport, Louisiana, is a suspect.

He's currently jailed on an unrelated armed robbery charge.

Reporter: Danny, they say you murdered five people.

What do you have to say?

Hicks: They had discovered his camp in the woods,

and the songs that he had -- the tapes he had made.

You knew without a doubt that he was involved.

We continued putting the evidence together.

Woman: In each envelope, small pieces of more

than 2,000 articles of evidence.

Hewitt: There was a screwdriver found at the campsite.

The screwdriver was so important

because at all three crime scenes,

there was tool marks at the entry point

that could be matched up to the specific tool

that was used to break in.

Like a fingerprint, they matched 'em.

We knew the screwdriver had come from Wal-Mart,

so we went back and started checking the surveillance tapes

and cash register receipts.

Rolling was in Wal-Mart purchasing a tent.

And the time that the tent was being purchased

in the sporting goods section,

our first two victims, Sonja and Christina,

was checking out at the front register in the same Wal-Mart.

Forensic evidence from him comes back

on all three different scenes.

Christian: He left semen behind.

That was his big slip-up.

Man: You had him dead to rights.

And then the question became,

was there anybody else involved with him or not?

Stacy: I think it was pretty evident that Danny Rolling

was gonna be indicted for the murders,

but the big question mark was Ed Humphrey,

whether he had anything to do with it.

Woman: Former University of Florida

student Edward Humphrey of Melbourne

was named early on as a possible suspect.

Humphrey has not been indicted or charged,

but prosecutors have not cleared his name.

We only have one shot at doing this.

You can't be tried twice for the same crime.

So once the process starts, we've gotta do it right

and do it right the first time.

♪♪

A Florida grand jury has just indicted

Danny Harold Rolling for the murder

of five college students

in Gainesville, Florida.

Stabbing her with a knife --

Woman: A clerk reads the grand jury's decision.

Danny Rolling is now charged with all five student murders.

I remember the headline, it said, "Rolling indicted."

Woman: The grand jury also decided

there wasn't enough evidence to indict Ed Humphrey.

"Humphrey not."

The indictment said, for sure,

that Ed Humphrey didn't have anything to do with it.

Woman: Lab tests on evidence at the crime scenes

did not match up to Humphrey.

Christian: Humphrey was released,

and there's absolutely no indication

that he had anything to do with these killings.

We agreed with the grand jury's assessment that,

as of today, there was insufficient evidence

to return an indictment against anyone

other than Danny Harold Rolling.

Woman: Rolling said nothing as he was officially charged

with five counts of first-degree murder.

His attorney entered a plea of not guilty to the charges,

but later said an insanity defense may be more appropriate.

Every time I saw him, he had sort of this bemused face.

I'm not sure what I'm doing here.

God bless the people of Florida.

Lord help me.

He's just a real piece of work.

I received word that Danny Rolling wanted to talk to me.

Danny wanted to confess.

There was pin drop silence, and then gasps.

Woman: I figured there was something you wanted to say.

Yes, ma'am.

Any and all parties involved in the investigation

under way concerning the Gainesville murders have been

and will be dealt with in an honorable fashion.

The wheels of justice may turn slow, but they do turn.

Welcome back.

15 months after the brutal killings

of five college students,

Danny Rolling was indicted for the Gainesville murders.

Investigators vowed that the suspected serial killer

would pay for the innocent lives he took,

but justice would not come easy.

Man: They were crimes that horrified the community.

These kids were butchered in a senseless act.

Man: 15 months of an exhaustive investigation

led to Danny Harold Rolling,

a drifter from Shreveport, Louisiana.

He didn't have any emotion, no matter what was said.

He came almost close to looking clueless.

Hewitt: He was a very strong, athletic individual.

But he wanted that perception of being a weak person.

Woman: Danny Rolling's public defenders believe

he hasn't been competent in quite some time.

Rolling says he hears voices

and see demons, symptoms of psychosis.

♪ My words, all my tears run together, baby. ♪

Danny was not unintelligent, and he was not crazy.

He -- in the sense of insane.

He was anything but that.

He wanted to be a superstar among criminals.

Being famous for, you know, committing horrible crimes.

Tried to blame the demons for turning him

into the kind of person he was.

Smith: He had ynnad, which is one of his spirits

that came to him, evil spirits,

which is Danny spelled backwards.

I'll never forget Rod Smith saying early on,

he knew right from wrong.

Smith: He was very calculating.

The person who committed these crimes was very much in control.

It was all about control.

My lawyers advised me not to make any, you know,

answer any questions.

[ Laughs ]

Smith: Danny would play games.

His narcissism was at the heart of everything he did.

Hewitt: Rolling wanted to meet with us.

He wanted to tell us where the murder weapon was.

Woman: Heavy equipment pushes up mound after mound of dirt

as metal detectors search for clues.

We spent months digging and searching.

And never found the murder weapon.

♪♪

I received word from the corrections department

that Danny Rolling wanted to talk to me.

Rod got word that Danny wanted to confess.

Smith: It was not above him at all to say,

I'm gonna do this just to throw us off.

But Danny won't talk to them except through

this other inmate named Bobby Lewis.

He was kind of a notorious inmate.

Bobby Lewis's claim to fame is he's the only person

to ever escape off death row in Florida,

and that's his claim to fame.

Rolling's idea was to befriend Lewis

so he could help him escape.

We went up there to the prison and met with rolling

and Bobby Lewis at the same time.

He wanted to make sure that we understood

that Robert Lewis was his advocate.

Woman: Rolling would talk only through a fellow inmate

at Florida state prison.

We told Rolling, "we understand

what you're trying to get through Lewis,

but we need to hear it from you."

And he was reluctant to do that.

And so we came up with the idea,

we'll ask Bobby Lewis the questions.

If it's wrong, you correct him, and he can tell us.

This was ventriloquism.

This was puppetry.

He was bizarre.

They would ask him questions.

He would lean over, whisper to Bobby Lewis.

Bobby Lewis would answer for him.

I don't know why they thought this was such a great idea.

Then we would turn around and ask Rolling,

"Is what he's telling us correct?"

Smith: Legran just kept saying, "Did he get that right, Danny?"

And Danny kept confirming, so we now had Bobby saying it,

but Danny confirming it.

We had the DNA evidence, and most importantly,

we had him saying what he did.

We thought it was a slam dunk.

But Danny wouldn't see it that way.

Man: Rolling has pleaded not guilty and denies law enforcement

reports that he confessed to the crime.

♪♪

[ Sirens wailing ]

Man: Rolling came to court in a motorcade,

heavy security, armored vans.

He gave no clue as he stepped out of the van

as to the bombshell he was about to drop in court.

I was in journalism school by the time Danny Rolling

ended up in court, and I was working for WUFT-GM.

It was an NPR station run by the students.

It was February 15th.

It was my 50th birthday.

We all went into court.

Lahey: I was standing next to Diana Hoyt.

All of a sudden, I hear, "They're bringing him in."

And we froze, and then here he comes.

♪♪

And it's the first time we've ever seen him.

We had no clue that anything that was going to happen.

Your honor, this is the defendant,

Danny Harold Rolling.

Danny Rolling was meticulous, crafty, and evil.

Your honor, 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.

I leaned a little closer to hear what they were saying.

And all of a sudden, the whole town froze.

Sidner: Danny Rolling decided to plead guilty,

unbeknownst to any of us that were in the room.

Man: Danny Rolling pleaded guilty to the gruesome murders

of five Gainesville area students in August 1990.

I almost questioned that I'd heard what I did.

There was pin drop silences, and then gasps.

Stacy: 'It was absolutely stunning.

No one saw that coming.

He says he can't run for his demons anymore,

and he admitted to killing all five students.

It was a shock to the system.

I don't recall that he ever apologized.

Woman: Anna Larson was in court the day rolling pleaded guilty.

Can you ever forgive him?

Larson: What I think about that is that the people

who need to forgive him are unavailable.

They are dead.

We learned a lot that we didn't know before.

Fraser: When Tracy Paules saw him, she said,

"you're the student killer."

And said to him, "They will find you."

Listen, I was okay with just getting a gun,

shooting him, and that be it.

♪♪

Man: It was a trial that was to take months,

but today in a Gainesville courtroom,

6'4" Louisiana drifter

Danny Rolling put an end to all that.

In a surprise move, rolling pleaded guilty

to the now infamous Gainesville student murders.

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

He was not remorseful.

He was never remorseful.

Man: His attorney claims Rolling decided to plead guilty

in his jail cell last month.

When we've asked him why he reached this decision

was to do the right thing.

I think it was a play on his part

to attempt to stay out of the death chamber.

Taboada: It was very simple for me.

I've always said I wanted to refer to him

in the same tense as my brother --

in the past tense.

♪♪

Man: Should Danny Rolling die

because he murdered five college students in August 1990,

or should he be allowed to live

because his mind was warped by a terrible childhood?

That's the question before a Gainesville, Florida,

jury now.

The prosecution described the murders

and said Rolling should die.

Smith: That's five humans tortured to death, premeditated,

planned by a man with a history of crime.

I had never prosecuted a case before.

Now, I didn't tell people that very much.

You must return --

you must return a recommendation of the death penalty.

Man: Defense countered that Rolling's brutal childhood in Louisiana

turned him into a monster.

He came from a very, very abusive background.

He was a very mentally disturbed person.

I diagnosed him with borderline personality disorder.

Woman: His head bowed, Danny Rolling heard friends

and relatives describe a life of emotional and physical abuse

at the hands of his father.

Rolling's mother, ill with cancer,

testified on videotape to her husband's extremes.

James went straight to the bedroom where Danny was,

and he grabbed his hair and held his head back

and put a knife to his throat.

I accept that he was damaged goods

from his beginnings in Louisiana,

but many people have bad parents,

and they don't do what he did.

Woman: Danny Rolling was hustled into the courthouse

wearing a bulletproof vest under his shirt.

So strong is sentiment against the confessed killer,

police take no chances.

Hoyt: I went every day to the court.

I went for Christa.

She was no longer on this Earth to stand up for herself.

Woman: Tracy Paules's sister was in tears

even before the first witness was called.

She knew what was coming.

I had to be there every day to represent her.

Had to.

Umm -- she, umm, would have done that for me.

I feel like I still want to protect her.

To me, it's almost the last thing

I'll ever get to do for her.

Every time he mentioned her name, it was a jolt.

How he went into the apartment and did what he did,

step by step.

We learned a lot from the penalty phase

that we didn't know before.

Smith: We know that Danny originally had picked somebody else out,

who his first victim was gonna be.

Have no idea who it is.

He was at the back of a house,

and somebody stumbled around that house, and Danny ran off.

We were told that, when Tracy Paules saw him,

she said, "you're the student killer."

And he told his people he liked that,

he liked that she recognized him.

Tracy actually stood up to him and said to him,

"They will find you."

I'm glad that she was able to stand up to him in some way.

He wanted to be known as the greatest

serial killer of all time.

He was the most despicable person I ever saw.

He would often turn around

and look us right in the eyes and stare at us,

but he knew all the time that he was playing to the cameras.

Smith: You have to understand, in Danny's mind,

everything was always about him.

He wants to be as famous as possible, you know.

He wants to get the spotlight every chance he gets.

You never knew what you were gonna get.

Fraser: One day he's crazy. The next day he's singing.

The next day, he's smiling and happy.

Hicks: He got a girlfriend.

She'd come into the courtroom, and "I love you."

And she'd wave to him.

It was surreal.

Woman: Rolling's accused of grandstanding here,

even during his final plea for mercy.

There's much I'd like to say, your honor,

about our world, my beliefs, and the destiny of man.

It was infuriating to watch him.

If only I could bend back the hands on that ageless clock

and change the past.

But alas.

I am not the keeper of time.

Only a small part of history.

And the legacy of mankind's fall from grace.

And then he'd sit down and look at the camera.

Absolutely the wrong way to go.

♪♪

Man: Danny Rolling had already admitted

he was the serial killer who was behind the five brutal slayings.

Now it was time to hear his fate.

♪♪

It is ordered and adjudged that the defendant,

Danny Harold Rolling, is hereby sentenced to death.

I think some people would say that it was a shame

that you couldn't do the sentencing five times, you know?

Taboada: Listen, I was okay with just getting a gun,

shooting him, and that be it.

Woman: Mario Taboada did what all the other relatives

of the five students wanted to do.

Standing up so that he would have to see me.

It startled everyone.

He was able to address the person who killed his brother

for the first time and have that person see him.

Taboada: We have the last say.

We will prevail.

Our children's names will be remembered.

It was fitting that one of the victim's family members

got the last word.

I have no pity for this individual.

This is a life form gone bad, and I don't feel

jack [bleep] for him.

Woman: Killer Danny Rolling left for death row under heavy security.

Are you ready to die?

I've been preparing myself for years.

This is my last interview.

Woman: It is? I'm not doing any more.

It took forever to go through the appellate process.

Man: In August 1990, Rolling went on a three-day

rampage in off-campus apartments near the University of Florida.

Mann: It's not a matter of whether he did it or not.

He said he did it.

He just didn't want to die.

This is five horrible, heartless murders.

Danny Rolling enjoyed what he did.

It was his supreme source of joy.

He would have done the same thing again.

Hoyt: During his time while he was in prison,

he had the students' pictures above his bunk

so every night, when he went to sleep,

he could look at those pictures and relive each crime scene.

You can't keep killing our children.

Are you ready to die?

I've been preparing myself for years.

♪♪

It was 16 years in the making.

Hewitt: The families all met here in Gainesville.

We made arrangements to escort 'em up

to the Florida state prison.

Hoyt: We got to see all of the people that worked on the crime scenes

and who worked with us through the years

and get to talk to 'em.

Mann: There's a bond that will always be there.

It's just, you know, it's something that I cherish.

We were led to the back, into the room,

and it was very crowded.

They brought him out on his gurney and hooked him up.

It was very, very difficult to sit through this.

The 52-year-old killer is being given a lethal dose of drugs.

Lahey: He died too peacefully.

I watched him die too peacefully.

He was able to take a medical cocktail and simply go to sleep.

It was very anticlimactic.

Considering the -- the violence

that he bestowed upon these victims.

♪♪

The world became a better place to not have the evilness here.

On this date, October 25, 2006, at 6:13 P.M.,

the state of Florida carried out its sentence

against Danny Harold Rolling.

Mr. Rolling sang a song.

"None greater than thee, oh Lord.

None greater than thee."

Man: And there were five verses, five choruses.

It went on for, I'd say, between two and three minutes.

He would look at each one of us in the eye,

and he kept singing his songs.

I didn't understand how he could sit there

after the horrendous crimes that he has committed

and talked about the angels watching over him.

I don't understand that.

We waited for this time, and justice was done.

Tracy will always live in our hearts and our minds.

I thought maybe at that point, that was closure.

To watch him disappear, oh, I don't know.

I'm feeling a lot better now.

A lot better now.

But it really wasn't 'cause she's still gone,

and I still hurt.

I still hurt for her.

Fraser: Danny Rolling, he got what he deserved.

The victims, they didn't get what they deserved.

They didn't get to live their lives, so remember them.

Don't remember him.

♪♪

Emery: Christy, she was the girl that was cheering

everybody else up all the time.

When I think of her now,

I literally see her with a smile on her face.

Man: Sonja Larson was 18.

I look forward to being with her in eternity, you know?

I believe that she's here, that her presence is here.

Hoyt: They called Christa glow worm

because she always had a brilliant smile.

She was always happy, and she was a pleasure to know.

Taboada: You know, when you least expect it,

I will still bump into somebody who says, you know,

"I knew your brother.

He'll be 24 forever."

Lahey: I told my children all the time that they have

a guardian angel, Aunt Tracy.

It brings me comfort.

I just really wish she were here.

Sidner: If you drive down one of the main thoroughfares

in Gainesville, there is a wall, and on that wall, to this day,

there is a memorial to the five students that were killed.

I think the wall reminds us that we're all human beings.

Sidner: His name's not on that mural. Their names are.

He told people he wanted to be the greatest serial killer

of all time.

Hicks: He did not get what he wanted,

and there is sort of a sweet justice in that.

♪♪

Just hours before his execution,

Danny Rolling confessed to three additional murders.

In a written statement, Rolling said

he killed 55-year-Old Tom Grissom, his daughter,

Julie, and 7-year-old grandson Sean in Shreveport, Louisiana.

In the decades since the Gainesville student murders,

a scholarship in the victims' names

has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And the memorial wall bearing the names of the five killed

still stands in remembrance of promising lives lost.

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.