Rolling claims that his wife was frigid and that caused him to roam the streets at night, peeking into windows. The police caught him one day, but because they knew he was James Rolling’s son, they did not charge him. But they did tell his wife. It was during this period that Rolling says evil spirits first began to make their presence known to him. He recalls that he would chant, “Jesus . . . Jesus . . . Jesus,” to make them leave. They would come as he slept in bed with his wife.
Around this time, Danny was driving a truck and crashed it into a van that had stopped at a blind corner. A woman was flung out the back door of the van by the impact and hit the pavement, split her skull open and died. Although entirely accidental, for Danny Rolling, this event might have served as his “first kill.”
After several years of marriage, Danny’s wife left him for another man, taking their daughter with him. Danny raged, planning to kill his wife and her lover, but never went through with it. The day after Rolling was served with his divorce papers, he raped a woman whom he spotted while window-peeping. He went on to commit a string of similar rapes before he began killing. The classic escalating pattern had begun.
In 1979, Rolling stole his father’s service revolver and went on a spree of armed robberies across the Southern states until he was caught in Georgia and sentenced to six years imprisonment. He was released in 1984, but by 1986 was back in prison, this time in Mississippi, on new convictions of armed robbery. He was sentenced to four years this time. Rolling claimed that Gemini became a fully formed identity for him while he was in prison.
In July 1988, Rolling was paroled on the condition he return and live at home in Shreveport. He moved back home with his parents, a sure formula for trouble.
Danny was good-looking and had this innocent, vulnerable, boyish vibe that many women found attractive. His mother described him as permanently an eleven-year-old. Rolling dated an older woman, a country song writer who doted on him and encouraged his singing and guitar playing.
Rolling took on sporadic employment. He claims that he was a good worker but that when his employers would find out he had a criminal record, he would get fired. Eventually, he got a job at Pancho’s Mexican restaurant.
He began carrying a Ka-Bar knife around this time. He wrote later:
Any weapon just takes up space, until the human hand finds work for it. Then it becomes as deadly as its master’s intent. . . . A Ka-Bar is a foot-long fighting knife, but it was comfortable hidden under a light jacket. I made an improvised shoulder holster from a black leather belt that I threaded through the Ka-Bar’s holster and carried it under my left armpit.7
On November 4, 1989, Rolling was fired from Pancho’s for missing work three days in a row. He exploded in a fit of rage and threatened to kill the manager and cook. Rolling claims that he was fired because the manager was jealous of the attention he received from the waitresses.
Grissom Family Murders: “He Was like a Werewolf”
Two days later, on November 6, Rolling committed a triple homicide: fifty-five-year-old William Grissom, his twenty-four-year-old daughter, Julie, and his eight-year-old grandson, Sean. The family was attacked in their home as they prepared for dinner. Julie Grissom’s body was mutilated and posed on her bed faceup, her legs spread apart. The victims had been bound with duct tape, but the killer removed the tape and took it away with him. Julie’s underwear was also placed in the washing machine and the cycle started, and the killer douched her genitals with vinegar in an attempt to destroy biological trace evidence. This was a “forensically aware” perpetrator.
According to a jailhouse informant, Rolling said:
The old man was outside doing some barbecuing or watering the yard or something. He went and put a knife to him, took him in the house and tied him up. Taped up the old man, the girl and the kid, then he took the old man into a utility room and killed him first. Came back into the living room and took the little kid, rolled the kid onto his stomach and killed him. Stabbed him in the back through the heart. Took the girl into the bedroom, raped her and killed her, did all kinds of stuff to her. . . . He was like a werewolf. He had all the power over everybody to kill them or do whatever he wanted with them.8
Rolling’s pastor said that he came to the church on the night of the murders seeming very incoherent: “He wanted to stay around the church a bit and pray. I got the impression he was really high on something.”
At home, things were getting extremely tense between the raging son and the obsessive, violent, now-retired policeman father. Danny’s aunt would testify, “I was always greeted with James Harold yelling, ‘He’s no good, he’s not going to live here, I hate him. One of these days, he’s going to cross me just a little bit, and I’m going to hurt him, I’m going to hurt him bad, I want him out of here!’”
On Friday evening, May 18, 1990, both father and son finally crossed the line. Danny came home after a drinking session at a bar. The father told Danny to roll up the windows of his car because it was going to rain. Danny ignored him. James started to fume. Then Danny put his foot on a bench in the hallway to tie his shoe, something his father had told him many times not to do. An argument began, and James finally lost his temper beyond all control. He drew his revolver and chased Danny down the driveway, firing multiple shots that were either, depending on the account, fired into the air or aimed at Danny but missed. James went back into the house and locked Danny out. Danny went into the toolshed, where he kept a hidden .38 revolver, returned to the house with it and kicked in the back door, shouting, “I’ve got something for you this time, Pop!”
James was in the kitchen when Rolling came through the door and opened fire. One shot hit James in the stomach while the second shot hit him in the face. Rolling stood over his father, kicking him and screaming, “Die, motherfucker. Die!”
Danny then jumped into his car and drove off.
James Howard Rolling survived his gunshot wounds but lost the sight in one eye and hearing in an ear.
For the next three months, Danny Rolling remained on the run, robbing supermarkets and stores. He stayed in motels, using a stolen identification card. He restlessly moved from town to town, state to state, eventually arriving in Florida. On his way to Sarasota, where he would spend several weeks, he passed through Gainesville, noting all the pretty college girls walking around town.
Danny maintained his boyish good looks. While on the run he had his hair styled and bought jewelry. He frequently picked up women and had brief relationships with two women in Sarasota, whom he wined and dined and serenaded on his guitar. He was reasonably talented, they said. He told them he was a trucking company owner on vacation. He told others he was a successful country music songwriter. Yet, at the same time, when the compulsion struck him, he would foray from his motels at night, peeking into windows and committing sporadic rapes when an opportunity arose. The rapes were highly organized: Danny would dress in black and carry a small bag at his waist with duct tape, handcuffs, mask, gloves and a Ka-Bar knife.
Constantly on the move, the fugitive Danny Rolling was difficult to apprehend—not that there was an intensive manhunt looking for him. Wounding his father did not exactly make him one of America’s “most-wanted.” His armed robberies were not linked to him or to each other, nor were the rapes, or the three murders in Shreveport the previous year. Rolling was the kind of fugitive that the police wait for to make a mistake, rather than actively hunt and pursue.
Gainesville: The Exorcist III
On August 18, 1990, Danny Rolling arrived in Gainesville—death on a Greyhound bus.
He said:
It was destiny—I was driven to Gainesville. God as my judge, I was driven there. Spirits can control and put thoughts in your mind. They can even possess you. The Intruder, the Dark One calls. And if you answer, you will be driven like the restless wind. The Darkness called and I answered.
I could have easily gone to
any other place in Florida with the cash I had left back then. Gemini wanted it to be Gainesville. The only reason I can think of would be the obvious—because Gainesville is a college town filled with beautiful girls. I suppose it was there in my subconscious all along. The eight souls for every year I was abused by the prison system had something to do with it, and Gemini became the catalyst.9
For the next five days, Rolling stayed at the University Inn, a seedy and run-down hotel on Southwest 13th Street. He reconnoitered the various neighborhoods for apartment complexes where students lived. He drifted into the “Porters,” at the time a blighted African American neighborhood where he bought crack cocaine and hired for forty dollars thirty-one-year-old sex worker Denise Taylor, whom he took back to his motel room.10 According to her testimony, they smoked the crack and then he had her undress and lie down on her back on the bed. He grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her to the edge of the bed, positioning her with her legs spread and dangling over the edge. Assuring her he would not hurt her, he opened a small box with an assortment of knives and medical instruments and selected a scalpel, which he lightly ran along her arms, legs and torso. He then instructed her to turn over and stand on the floor with her hands resting on the bed. He sat down on the floor beneath her, positioning a mirror in which he could see the reflection of her genitals as he masturbated with his other hand.
Rolling was building up toward something bad.*
On August 23, he began running short of money and checked out of the motel. He staked out a spot for himself in a large, dense patch of woods frequented by homeless people in the vicinity of Butler Plaza near the corners of Archer Road and Southwest 34th Street.
Later that day, Rolling paid cash for a tent at a Walmart and stole a black-handled screwdriver and a pair of tightly fitting black leather athletic gloves. At the exact same time, at a cash register a few rows away, Sonja Larson and Christina Powell, college freshmen just out of high school, put a purchase on a credit card for their new apartment. Police later speculated that Rolling had seen and targeted his victims in the store, but he vehemently denied it. He said he never even noticed the two girls.
Rolling pitched his tent in the secluded woods and strolled over to the Butler Plaza movie theater to see The Exorcist III.11 Unlike the 1977 sequel The Exorcist II, considered not only the worst of the Exorcist franchise but among the worst movies ever, The Exorcist III was a critical and popular success. Written by William Peter Blatty, author of the novel The Exorcist, the film features the character of police lieutenant William F. Kinderman from the original movie, now investigating a series of demonic serial murders perpetrated by a character that Blatty loosely based on the unidentified real-life Zodiac Killer. Blatty named him Gemini.
In September 1990, as the Gainesville murders were being reported, long before Rolling was identified and claimed that Gemini had possessed him, Florida newspapers reported there were rumors that the murders were connected to The Exorcist III.12 We will see that the Gainesville killings are not the only case of serial murder in which The Exorcist III comes up.
“I’ll Come Back for You After You’re Dead”
On August 24, Rolling made a tape recording in his tent. On the audio tape he greets his mother and hopes his father is doing well after the shooting. He sings “every song I ever wrote.” He spends an inordinate amount of time telling his brother how to hunt down deer with a bow and arrow—how to shoot them through the lungs and wait for them to bleed to death. The tape concludes with Rolling saying to his father, “You know, Pop, I don’t think you was ever really concerned about the way I felt anyway. Nope, I really don’t. You never would take time to listen to me. You never cared about what I thought or felt. I never had a Daddy I could go to and confide in with my problems. You just pushed me away at a young age, Pop. I guess you and I, we both missed out on a lot. I wanted to make you proud of me. But I let you down. I’m sorry for that. Whelp! I’m gonna sign off for a little bit. I got something I gotta do. I love you. Bye.”
Like a nocturnal predatory animal, he slept in the day and emerged from the woods in the night. The murders he committed were all within a foraging range of his campsite. He silently rode on a stolen bicycle, scouting out student housing complexes, wearing a ninja-black outfit and carrying the tools of his rage in his bag: a roll of duct tape, recently acquired handgun, screwdriver, Mini-Mag penlight, mask, gloves and the Ka-Bar knife. Once he located a promising cluster of apartment buildings, he would don his mask and gloves and proceed on foot, searching out potential victims. Several times he was spotted peering at women through windows and was chased away.
According to Rolling’s confession, he came upon the apartment of Sonja Larson and Christina Powell completely at random at about 3:00 a.m. When he tried to force their door with his screwdriver, he found it was already invitingly open. He tore off several strips of duct tape and stuck them to his arm just above the elbow, ready for use. He found Christina Powell sleeping on a couch in the living room and did not disturb her. Rolling slipped upstairs into Sonja Larson’s bedroom, holding his penlight in his mouth to keep his hands free. As she slept, he clapped a strip of tape over her mouth and at the same time stabbed her in the upper chest. She attempted to struggle, but he unleashed a flurry of knife thrusts to her upper torso. Eleven thrusts struck her in the arm as she attempted to ward off the blows. As the girl faded into death, Rolling said he whispered in her ear, “I’ll come back for you after you’re dead.”13
Rolling then went back downstairs and woke up Christina Powell. As he taped her hands, he sadistically told her that he intended to rape and kill her. Rolling walked her around different parts of the apartment, repeatedly raping her for about two hours, telling her, “Take the pain, bitch, take the pain.”14 Finally, he laid her down on her stomach on the floor and drove the Ka-Bar through her back five times.
Rolling returned upstairs and peeled the tape away from the mouth of the dead Sonja Larson. He recalled removing her teddy bear print underwear and spreading her legs, dangling them over the edge of the bed in an obscene pose. He had been in the house so long that rigor mortis had already set in, and Rolling said that Larson’s legs “yielded like old boards.” She was too bloody to rape, he said.
Danny Rolling then returned to the corpse of Christina Powell and raped her again, “chewing on her nipples like a mad dog gnaws a bone,” he said. After he was finished, he took some dishwashing detergent and paper towels and cleaned and douched her genitals. This act was later instrumental in linking his murders, yet it is unclear whether this was some kind of pathological “signature”—a “cleansing” of his act—or whether it was part of his MO to destroy evidence. If it was an MO, Rolling was not thorough. He left Powell’s underwear soaked in his semen, neatly folded next to her body.
Next, Rolling carefully excised her nipples, again unclear whether he was concealing the bite marks he left around her nipples or acting out some pathological “signature.” He dropped them into a plastic sandwich baggie, which he pocketed.
Afterward, he went to the refrigerator and calmly ate some fruit.
By then it was daylight. Saturday morning. Taking all the duct tape with him so as not to leave evidence, Rolling then slipped out of the house and biked back toward his tent. On the way, he passed a newspaper boy on his bike making early-morning deliveries and commented to himself on the irony of two bicyclists on separate ways, “the boy to deliver his papers, the man to his destiny.”
Prior to reaching his tent, he found the baggie with the severed nipples. He stated he did not recall taking it and was sickened at the sight of the bag. He tossed it through a sewer grate and returned to his tent to sleep.
“Apartment Murder”
That evening of August 25, as the sun began to set, he rose from his tent, hungry for more. He knew exactly whom he wanted and where to find her. She lived but eight hundred yards away from his wooded campsite on the other side of the road
. He had spotted her the previous night while prowling and looking into windows. He watched her undressing just as he did when he was a teen. And more. She looked a lot like his ex-wife. He noted her location in the complex—apartment M. He made the short bike ride over to “Apartment Murder,” as he called it, to rape and kill her.
Eighteen-year-old Christa Hoyt was out playing racquetball when Rolling broke into her apartment by forcing with the screwdriver the lock of a glass door leading to a garden out back. Once inside, Rolling moved a bookshelf into her bedroom from an alcove near the door, in order that he could hide in the space to ambush her as she entered. He patiently waited in the dark for about an hour for Christa to come home. At around 10:00 p.m., he watched her through the window as she walked across the parking lot toward her apartment, carrying her racquet. He positioned himself in the dark of the alcove and waited. Christa entered her apartment, locked the door securely behind her and placed her keys, racquet and balls on the table by the door. According to Rolling, she had sensed there was somebody in the room, but before she could flee, he burst out of the alcove and overpowered her. He duct-taped her mouth and hands and forced her into the bedroom, where he raped her. Then Rolling turned Christa on her stomach and drove his knife through her back once, almost instantly killing her. He then turned her over and cut her abdomen open and excised her nipples. Rolling says that he then felt the dead girl’s eyes watching him, so he closed them.
Rolling rode his bike toward his tent site. On the way, he stopped and defecated, using a roll of toilet paper he carried with him on these nocturnal missions; then he stopped off at a convenience store to purchase a soda, where he discovered that he had lost his wallet. Fearing that he might have left it at the scene of the murder, Rolling bicycled back to Christa’s apartment and reentered it. Using his penlight, he searched for his wallet. Possessed by Gemini or not, Danny Rolling was making sure that no evidence was going to expose him as the murderer. He didn’t find the wallet, but while there he went to look at Christa’s corpse and was shocked to discover that her eyes had opened. He then decapitated her with his Ka-Bar knife and placed her head on the shelf he had moved into the bedroom. He took Christa’s headless body and sat it upright at the edge of her bed, posing her in the stance of Rodin’s The Thinker, Rolling said. He wrote, “It was like molding a block of Playdoh—just a lifeless lump of clay.”
American Serial Killers Page 37
