Danny Rolling On August 20 1990, the university town of Gainesville, Florida was ranked as being the thirteenth best place to live in the United States by Money magazine. By the end of the week, American papers had renamed the town "Grisly Gainesville" after the bodies of five young students had been discovered brutally murdered and mutilated as they slept in their dorms. One weekend by one man transformed the excitement of the beginning school yeah into terror as hundreds of students fled, not knowing if and when he would strike again. A week later the media reported that the police had their number one suspect in custody, which created countless issues and ordeals for Edward Humphrey and his family. His case was simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Emotionally disturbed with a long history of strange behavior and violent emotional outbursts, he had seemed to police and the many witnesses to his antics, to be a prime suspect. With no evidence to hold him, the authorities somehow succeeded in stretching the limits of the law and had him locked away while they built their case around him. Before they could, the real killer was found. Danny Harold Rolling had moved on after his murders in Gainesville and was eventually arrested for armed robbery in Ocala, Florida. It would be some time before he would be linked to the homicides, and it would be longer still before Edward Humphrey's name would be cleared. Danny Rolling's story is a perfect example of how a childhood and background information about a person make the probability of becoming a serial killer so high. It would be impossible to know how horrible Rolling's childhood was and not feel compassion for the child who has been abused, beaten and bullied by an over-bearing and disturbed father. It would be impossible not to feel anger toward his mother who time and time again refused to do anything to protect her own son. Growing up, Danny participated in a lot of robberies and peeping-tom activities. His father would constantly remind him of how worthless he was. Danny was always the quiet, neurotic guy who was always pretty angry but kept to himself. But Danny Rolling was not a child when he brutally murdered five young people at the threshold of their lives. Were the psychological scars from his childhood so deep that he was unable to control his vengeful impulses? Was the man who had come to be known as "The Gainesville Ripper" just a victim of the brutality of his past? Should he have been treated with leniency or should he have felt the full weight of the law? These were the questions that a jury of twelve and one judge had to answer in 1994 when Danny Rolling was to be sentenced for five murders. The slayings began on August 24, 1990 when Rolling broke into the apartment of 17-year-old university freshmen Sonja Larson and Christina Powell. They were found mutilated and stabbed to death. He had raped both women, one after she was dead. The next day, Rolling killed Hoyt, 18. Her body was found propped up, sitting on her bed bent over at the waist. Rolling had sliced off her nipples and left them on the bed next to her, and police discovered that her torso was sliced open, from her chest to her pubic bone. Her severed head perched on a shelf across the room. Two days later, Rolling killed roommates Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada, both 23. Rolling remained at large until September 8, when he was arrested after a botched robbery in the central Florida town of Ocala. He was later linked by DNA to three more killings in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1989. He was not charged in the Gainesville slayings until 1992, while serving a life sentence for armed robbery and other crimes. With the exception of Taboada, all of the victims were petite Caucasian brunettes with brown eyes. He pleaded guilty to all five murders as the jury was being selected for trial in 1994. Rolling was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on October 25, 2006, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal. Rolling showed no remorse and refused to make any verbal statements or offer any apology to the relatives of his victims, several of whom were present at his execution as witnesses. In a written statement made shortly before his execution, Rolling confessed the murders of the Grissom family in Shreveport.