Rollings Victims
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Childhood: Daniel Harold Rolling was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on May 26, 1954.He was born a healthy baby, but the attitude of his father towards Daniel was abusive. The first incident of physical abuse that Danny experienced was when he was crawling age. His father was infuriated with his behavior, instead of crawling; Danny would pull himself along with one leg. One day James grabbed Daniel by his foot and shoved him along the hallway, bouncing him the whole way. When Danny was four, Claudia, his mother left James and moved to Columbus, Georgia, after the argument had ended because James had punched her in her lip. He was a very abusive father and would abuse the children when he felt they were misbehaving, didn’t sit properly, hold their cutlery properly, and even if they didn’t breathe a certain way. Whatever the punishment, he insisted that they not cry out, under the threat of harsher punishment. Teen Years: During Daniel’s Teen years, the story of abuse and violence continued. James, a police officer, had thrown Daniel into juvenile hall for a couple of weeks for drinking beer with a neighbor. The relationship between Daniel and his father did not improve as Daniel approached adulthood, and Daniels problems became manifest. In 1971 he joined the Air Force but was discharged because of serious drug and alcohol problems. He married O’ Mother Halko in 1974, but they soon had a daughter and the marriage lasted 3 years. He was devastated and left the town. His mother had not heard from him until she found out about Daniels arrest for armed robbery in Montgomery and Columbus. He tried to commit suicide, but once again he was not able to come through with it. Danny's Victims: It was 4:00pm on Sunday August 26, 1990 when the Gainesville police first found the bodies of Christina Powell and Sonja Larson. Officer, Ray Barber was on call to go check out the Williamsburg Village Apartments were there was a call on loud music. When he arrived, the maintenance man had told him that there were anxious parents waiting outside their daughter’s apartment, as they couldn’t get her to answer the door. The officer went upstairs and the Powell’s agreed to wait outside the building as they went up to check everything out. Barbers bangs on the door produced no result; so they attempted to open the front door and as soon as they reached the inside, Barber saw the bloodied naked body of a young women, lying grotesquely, on a bed with her arms placed above her head. They also found a second body, another young women, on the stairway down to the lower level of the Apartment. Both were stabbed repeatedly, mutilated and deliberately positioned for maximum shock effect. Eighteen-year-old, Christa worked at the Sheriffs Office and hadn’t shown up for work yet. O’Hara and Barber knocked on her door to go checkup on her and at first they were relieved because they figured she had already left for work. Then they saw her car, they knocked again then tried the door, and it was locked. They went around back and noticed that the bamboo shades over the door did not reach the floor and they peaked under. Through the window they could see what appeared to be a naked body seated on the edge of the bed. It was bent over at the waist with a small pool of blood at the feet. Then came the shocking realization that she didn’t have a head. When they came back to search the Apartment, they noticed bloodstains on the floor of the shower. In another room was Christa’s lifeless head facing them, propped up on a bookshelf in the bedroom. In the bedroom was Christa’s corpse on the end of the bed, with her two nipples next to her. Daniels next victims were struck on Tuesday, August 28. These time a female and male to be found. Not only the females in Gainesville who feared for their lives. Being male or having a male close by no longer offered anyone a sense of security. The victims were Tracy Inez Paula and Mannuel R. Taboada, both 23 years old. When one of Tracy’s friends came by to visit her and they found that no one answered, they took out their master key and opened the door. They were about to witness something they should have never seen. Tracy’s naked, bloodied body was lying in the hallway between the two bedrooms. Sitting on the floor above her head was a dark- colored bag. Christopher slammed the door shut and locked it. When he retuned five minutes later with the police, the door was unlocked and the bag was gone. There were no mutilations this time. Methods of Murderers: Danny used a three to four inch knife on all three girls, and the use of adhesive tape for restraint was evident, although it had been removed. At both scenes underwear and body pats were missing. Police found DNA matches with semen found at three of the sites; items found at his campsite including the screwdriver, duct tape and a pair of black pants stained with Mannuel Taboada’s blood; and proof of purchase of a Ka-Bar knife. Dannys First Arrest: August 28, 1990 Danny Rolling barely escaped arrest on bank robbery charges. Him and his friend Danzy were near the woods on Archer road. Rolling had made a campsite on the afternoon of the first murders. They were on the way back to the campsite when police had noticed them, for dealing drugs. Danzy stopped to wait for the police, but Danny ran. As the two officers pursued Danny, they came upon his campsite where they would later found evidence from all five murders that he committed. At that time they had their attention on the pink dyed bag of cash. Then Danny stole a vehicle and headed for Ocala where he attempted a daring robbery at Win Dixie supermarket on September 8, 1990. He forced the manager at gunpoint, the police where well on their way by the time Danny left, heading to his get-away car. As Danny backed out of the parking area, the police were already in pursuit and a high-speed chase began. When Danny crashed his car, he fled on foot, but the police were not far off and was waiting for him. They soon caught him in a near by office and arrested him. The Puzzle comes together: Three days after his arrest, September 12, 1990 The “Gainesville Ripper” story was dropped from the front page for the first time. On October 10th, the day that Edward Humphrey was convicted of the assault charges against his grandmother, Danny Rolling sent his mother a Christmas card from the Marion County Jail, where he was being held, awaiting an indictment for the Win Dixie robbery and the many burglaries he had committed prior to his arrest. The more the Police searched for clues that linked to the “Gainesville Ripper”, the more they found similarities linking to his arrest for bank robbery. That’s when they realized that both killers had shown police, techniques by carefully cleaning the crime scenes; solvents were used to clean the victims’ bodies, thereby eliminating clues; duct tape, a good source of fingerprint evidence, was used to bind the victims and was then removed from the scene; both used the same kind of knife; both killers used a similar means of forced entry; both raped and mutilated their victims and finally, both killers displayed the bodies of their victims in a notably gruesome and dramatic way. The similarities were too strong to ignore the crimes that Danny Rolling had committed. The Final Confession: On January 31, 1993, Danny told the Gainesville investigators that he wished to confess to all five of his murders, but only through Bobby Lewis. During the three-hour confession, through Lewis, he confessed to planning and committing the five murders in Gainesville. He also informed them that he originally planned on killing eight people while in prison and that he would. In total, Daniel was responsible for eight counts of armed robbery and one count of attempted robbery, one count of armed bank robbery and two counts of aggravated assault of a police officer, committed over four states. The judge announced his final decision on Daniel Harold Rolling on April 20, 1994 after giving all parties concerned, the victim’s families. The jury decided that Danny Rolling should receive the death penalty on all five counts. He was then sent to the state prison in Starke, where he would be on death row until the customary appeal process was exhausted, and then be executed.
