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Do you guys have any idea why we just said that?
Bet you don't. I know. Actually, I bet most of you do.
Because you're all true crime enthusiasts.
I was going to say they probably do now.
You know what we're talking about. You already know.
Because today we're going to be talking about... danny rollings the gainesville ripper And this is the dude that inspired a very popular slasher flick, which we'll talk about in a minute.
And I knew that it was inspired by something, but I don't know much about the case.
So I'm experiencing it with you. It's going to be a journey.
This one... Isn't it always? It's a real journey.
This one's a real journey. So we took you way down with the toy box killer.
We brought you a little bit up with the Salem Witch Trials because there's some whimsy in that.
We're not going to bring them all the way down to where the toy box was, right?
We're not going to bring them back down to toy box.
But we're going to bring you back down. Okay.
There's a couple of things in here that are pretty brutal.
How many people did he kill? So he was convicted of killing eight people altogether.
Five of which he is, like, most known, like, infamous for.
That's, like, the five that we'll talk... We're going to talk about all of them.
But the five that we're in... Gainesville or what earned him the Gainesville Ripper name where's Gainesville Florida I thought so But we're going to get into that, all that good stuff in a minute.
Before we do anything, we want to thank our new Patreon. who I like to call Patrons Patrons it's true she does call you Patrons that is a thing all my little Patrons I don't even like Patron And actually this week we're going to be giving you guys a bonus episode. bony bony so if you want to get in on this bonus action hey oh bonus action feel free to become a Patreon.
If you're so inclined. Only if you're so inclined.
If you don't feel like it, we get it. We love you anyway.
Don't worry about it. If you're declined, I've been there too.
I'm there right now. If you are any other kind of clined besides in...
We still love you. Yeah. So it's fine. One thing we will say is if you want to get in on the bonus episodes, you got to become a patron.
Become a patron. You know what I'm just saying.
Become a patron. But we got a few new Patrons this week.
So without further ado... Tell me. The new members of the Window Latching Coven are... a madonna another madonna i love our madonna our madonna patrons are like some of my faves the patroniest And actually, Alexis spells her name with a U instead of an I, and I think that's cool.
Oh, that is cool. A-L-E-X-U-S. I like that.
Yeah. I like that. I like that. So I approve of your name.
The next one is Heather Libhart. I love you, Heather.
I like the name Heather. It's a really good movie, Heathers.
That's what it makes me think of. Yeah. And Heather Dubrow from The Real Housewives.
I didn't think of that, but I like it. I like where you're going with it.
I'd like to include Bravo in this as much as we can.
Fuck yeah. Thank you, Heather. So, Heather, we love you.
Thank you so much. And the next Window Latching Coven member is Catherine Zamarone.
And I think I said that right. But if I didn't, Catherine, tell me.
Tell her. Especially with names, because I feel you all.
Yeah, because my name gets mispronounced all day er day.
Mine only gets misspelled. That's true. And sometimes mispronounced.
I was just going to say, sometimes people say Ashley.
Well, and then we have one member of the Jagged Little Bitches.
Tell me. Eve McKenzie. Eve McKenzie. Thank you.
Thank you, Eve McKenzie. That's a spooky name.
That's a great name. Eve. Eve. I love that name.
Me too. A lot of good names this week. Yeah.
I also really like the name Catherine. I don't remember if I said that.
Well, I like it too. Sometimes I think about naming a kid Catherine.
I like that. You have a lot of names for your children.
Well, I want a lot of children sometimes.
Still? After hanging out with mine? No, not really.
I was going to say, I haven't scared you off of it yet.
Thank you so much to Alexis, Heather, Catherine, and Eve.
You guys are the shitake mushrooms. on my salad um so yeah and so you guys are getting a bonus episode this week we're not going to tell you what it is yet Do you even put shiitake mushrooms on a salad?
I don't know. I don't either. I think you can fry them up.
I don't know why I got southern there. I was like, because it's fried.
So yeah, shiitake mushrooms. I don't know how we got there, but we got there.
Hey. So we went to a haunted house last weekend.
I think we told you guys we were going to be leaving right after we were recording to go to a haunted house.
And we went to Barrett's Haunted Mansion in Abington, Massachusetts. it was so much fun it is so good this is our third year i think yeah and it just keeps getting better and better Yeah, it's this time was.
It's one of those that exactly. It's like you're never safe.
You might be in a long line, but you're going to be entertained literally the entire time.
Because I hate the ones that just put you in a line and nobody... Like pops out or anything.
You're just standing there. And while you're in line, they also play horror movies.
In one section, yeah. Yeah, like all these different clips of classic horror movies.
They make sure you are literally entertained from every angle.
And then they have, I'm not sure what time it is, but I think it's if it reaches midnight or something like that.
Yeah, I can't remember. I don't know what it is, but they do this thing called Mayhem Hour. yeah and all the people if there's a big long line they come out and do like they like hang from like the ceiling and shit Yeah, it's like they play crazy heavy metal and they have all the characters just hanging from the rafters and like screaming and going crazy.
Barrett's in Abington, Massachusetts. If you're around this area, go check it out because it's really good.
A plus. And we're going to another one at the end of this week, and we'll tell you about that one.
It's the number two scariest. Yeah, it's called Fear Town in Seekonk.
Seekonk. So we'll check that one out. I also really want to see the new Halloween costume.
I want to see it too, but I hate going to the movies because it gives me anxiety.
It kind of gives me anxiety, too. Yeah, I can't relax with the movies.
But for something like that, I'll deal with it.
Because I don't go to the movies ever. So I'll do it for the once in a lifetime things, like seeing Halloween in the theater.
Well, once in a lifetime things are like even scarier to me.
I just go sit in Lux level. Yeah. That way you're above it all.
There's an exit right there. I feel like more.
I feel safer up there. Okay. Right? You have a separate entrance and exit.
And you're above everything. You can see everything that's going on in the theater.
Yeah. I just don't like going to the movies anymore.
I think we're ready to just jump into this.
Why waste any more time? I'm so excited.
So let's get into this madness, shall we?
So like we said, we are going to be talking about a little dude.
That inspired a little movie. A little doo-doo.
A little doo-doo. A turd, if you will. On December 20th, 1996.
Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven released their soon-to-be classic slasher flick, Scream, in theaters. ghost face who's a killer and scream in case you have not seen it.
And that's not a spoiler because he has a ghost face.
I almost just said spoiler alert. I can see it on your face.
Ghostface was inspired by a real-life brutal serial killer who stalked, tortured, and murdered... teens in a college town in Florida in 1990.
Okay. So this wasn't like, I mean, it's a long time ago, but like, it wasn't that long ago.
As long as it's in the 90s, I feel like it's recent enough yeah This man was Danny Rowling, who became known as... The Gainesville Ripper!
For a little side note before we get into this...
I'm sure a lot of you have either seen Scream or have at least seen the mask that Ghostface wears in Scream.
You know how the ghost face has these droopy eyes?
Like spooky droopy eyes? Did Danny have those?
Danny kind of has spooky droopy eyes. And I wonder if they kind of...
Like, got inspired by that? Because I don't know.
When I see him, I'm like, you kind of have weird, spooky, droopy eyes.
And I feel like it's just like a kind of a thing that you zero in on.
And I think it's weird that Ghostface has spooky droopy eyes.
I'm going to need you to pause and show me his eyes.
Oh. See, he has spooky droopy eyes. He does have spooky droopy eyes.
They like droop on the outsides. Yeah. Danny Rowling was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. on May 26, 1954, to James and Claudia Rowling, and he had one brother, Kevin.
Kevin. Just Kevin. Shockingly, he grew up in a shitty home environment.
I thought you were going to say he grew up in a nice environment.
It's crazy. This never happens. This is not a pattern at all.
Um, his father was actually a Shreveport police officer.
Was he a dick? who regularly beat his wife and kids.
Also, he informed Danny quite a bit that he was unwanted since birth.
That sucks. Yeah, it's pretty awful. In one instance, just to point out, I mean, there's a couple of instances that I can point to to tell you how shitty this dude was.
In one instance, Claudia was brought to the hospital because she claimed that James had tried to force her to cut herself with a razor blade.
Jesus Christ. Then one time, his father brought home a puppy.
No, no, nope. And a trigger warning? Yeah.
Trigger warning. I would say trigger warning.
Danny was really excited, really close to the puppy. the father regularly beat this dog and then one time beat it so badly that it died in Danny's arms.
And he was five. So a five-year-old was holding this puppy.
And his father, his father was a literal piece of shit.
No, that just made me want to cry. Yeah.
I say that a lot. So that's how much of a shit he was.
Like he was, I mean, that's an awful home to grow up in.
Who does that to a dog? And he's a police officer.
How scary is that? I was going to say that's terrible.
That dude holds so much power and he's that psychotic?
I mean, you have to be psychotic. You have to be sociopathic in some kind of light to... beat a puppy and kill it okay i don't want to talk about that so at 15 years old danny slit his wrists And wrote in his mother's lipstick on the bathroom mirror, I tried, I just can't make it.
Jesus. Obviously, he survived it, but at 15 years old, that's how far he was pushed by regular verbal, emotional, and physical abuse by his father.
That's intense. His mother apparently was not abusive at all, but she was a victim of it.
And obviously he watched his dad abuse his mother too.
Right. Yeah. He dropped out of high school in 1971.
Crazy enough, he couldn't finish high school.
And he immediately enlisted in the Air Force, which I feel like is another pattern of this kind of thing.
It's like a lot of them enter the military.
Yeah. Right. Like right out of high school or at some point.
And I think it's because they want control.
Structure. And they want... to hold that kind of power and authority because that's the main you know because they didn't have it yeah and they think they're going to get some kind of power out of this and they end up not getting that Apparently he was great at all the intellectual parts.
All his coursework and everything. He was like nailing it.
But he was also a huge heavy drinker and drug user.
And he continued that. Oh, no. So it messed him up.
A military psychologist diagnosed him with I believe borderline personality disorder.
Oof. So he was discharged for his drug use and apparently for stealing a bike.
Like, what? Like, what did you need a bike for?
So he ended up returning to Shreveport, Louisiana, which is where...
He just wanted to get out of Shreveport, Louisiana, and he ended up right back there.
That's a bummer. Exactly. But don't worry, you won't feel bad for him for long.
Oh, I don't even right now. And when he got back to Shreveport, he began to attend the King's Temple United Pentecostal Church.
And it was there that he met a woman named Omather Helko.
The fuck? Her name is Omather. Kind of like O'Brien.
Interesting. Yeah. She was a petite, dark-haired woman, which turns out to be his type later in life, just to point that out.
You're petite. woof um you don't have dark hair though no naturally it's darker it's dark yeah dark red That's not that dark.
But he liked dark brown. Yeah. I would say like he was more of a brunette person.
A lot of these dudes are into brunettes.
I was gonna say Bundy was into brunettes.
Yeah, that's a thing. Bundy liked a brown hair. the two married in 1974 and had a daughter Kylie a year later okay Kylie Jenner?
That's exactly who it is. I knew it. See, we just connected this to present day.
The lipstick palette. That's fucked that I just made that connection.
Bye. Their marriage only lasted three years, weirdly enough.
Actually, that's way longer than I thought it would.
He, yeah, he was not a good husband. He was an alcoholic.
And he couldn't keep a job. So, Rowling was really pissed.
I probably would be too. Well, no, he was really pissed when Omather filed for divorce in 1977.
Oh, I thought you just meant he was pissed at his life.
He was really pissed. I was like, yeah, I get it.
You stole the bike. Weirdly enough, and this will come back later.
He did mention later that his ex-wife looked a lot like one of his victims, Krista Hoyt. who ended up getting the most violent murder of the bunch.
Yeah, her murder is really brutal. That's fucked up.
Just warning you. isn't it weird that they just go and murder other people and they like they don't murder the actual person who right i mean i'm not saying like go murder the actual person if he had stayed married to his wife that she probably would have been the first victim i think eventually but she got away from him Because a lot of these things... You get trapped in it.
Actually, his mother left his father several times but kept coming back.
So, I'm glad that at least this woman didn't fall into that trap.
After he got divorced, he became a drifter, which it's never good when you become a drifter.
Nope. We'll get, you know, at some point we'll cover Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole.
They'll show you that Drifters is not a good thing.
He was a tool. Yeah, he was a tool. He started committing armed robberies in Alabama Louisiana and Georgia.
Wicked casual. Super casual. He was very into robbing supermarkets.
That was his thing. Was he hungry? No, because he robbed them of money.
Oh. Yeah. The police caught him as he left a Columbus, Georgia Winn-Dixie supermarket with 956 stolen dollars. you ever seen the movie when dixie no i have not good ass movie I'm just saying.
What is that about? A dog. I thought so.
That's not my kind of flick. Watch it. The dog doesn't die.
I'm probably not going to watch it. Fine.
So yeah, the police caught him as he left at Columbus, Georgia with Dixie.
He had only stolen $956 in cash. And for that...
He was sentenced to six years in prison.
Oh, wow. Was it worth it? I was gonna say, that's a long time. um while he was in prison yeah prison doesn't teach you anything good he lifted weights he boxed he got like he started getting buffer uh inmates called him psycho sweet nickname so that's good you ever seen double jeopardy yes She gets really buff in prison to get back at her ex-husband.
I've seen that movie. all right yo you ever seen shawshank redemption yo you ever seen the green mile that's a great movie i never watched it you never watched the green mile It's always on Bravo, but you said it's sad.
Well, yeah. But it's good. I just don't want to watch it right now.
It has a good ending. Okay. It ends well.
Anyways, we're gonna be here all night. So after his release, he started hitchhiking across the country, you know, just doing the drifter thing, robbing some more supermarkets. because i was he kept robbing oh yeah he went right back to robin oh in 1985 the year i was born Ayo.
Rowling held up another supermarket and was arrested again.
What an idiot. Yeah, he went to jail a few times.
Get a fucking job, buddy. And his defense attorney was Arthur Carlyle.
And during a conversation with him, Rowling was like...
Hey, instead of going to prison, why don't you just cut my hands off?
So he really was psycho. And they were like...
Nah. They were like, yeah, this isn't like 1600s.
We don't do that. So they were like, you know what?
Instead of doing that... How about you go to a Mississippi jail for four years for armed robbery?
So that's what he did. What? He was described as clearly having impulse control problems.
He was also described as very emotionally immature.
Clearly. Which makes sense considering how he grew up.
And that he didn't think through the consequences of his actions, obviously.
So in 1988, he was paroled and he returned to Shreveport.
So this dude keeps leaving and coming back.
I don't know. Because part of the thing you'll see is he hated his father, but he, like, wanted his father to love him.
Yeah. And he wanted to love his father and he loved his mother, which is fucking bizarre when you see how he treats women.
Yeah, it's weird. But that's also what he learned.
Yeah, it's just all of it is very bizarre.
His case is a... Is like a conundrum. Right.
Like, a lot of these things you can kind of be like, you know what, he does this because his mom... Usually it's the mom...
Who's the thing that sets like Ed Kemper.
That makes them mad at women. But this one is like the father, but he takes it out on women.
I feel like it's just always women that could have taken out on them no matter what.
So yeah, he went back to Shreveport after being paroled.
And on November 4th, 1989, he was fired from his job at a ponchos restaurant.
Ponchos, huh? When he was fired, he wasn't just like, this sucks.
He lashed out and this happened to be the first night that he killed.
Now, this murder, which is actually three murders in one night, a triple homicide, wasn't connected to him until like a year or so later.
Damn. Yeah. They didn't have surveillance?
Well, no, he didn't murder the manager. Oh.
So Rowling had watched 24-year-old Julie Grissom as she worked at a Dillard's department store in Shreveport's South Park Mall.
So he just got fired and then he was like, I'm gonna go to the mall.
Well, no, he had been watching her for a while.
Like, he knew who she was. Oh, so he was stalking her even before he got fired.
Well, he had just seen her. okay you know so he just like was interested he followed her home from her job uh-huh Broke into her home, raped and murdered her.
Oh my god. Also murdered her father, Tom Grissom.
Oh, wow. And also murdered her eight-year-old son, Sean.
Holy shit. All of them were stabbed to death.
Now, for no fucking reason. As would become his signature, Rowling positioned Julie's body with her legs spread in a sexually explicit manner.
What a fucking dick. And also carefully fanned her hair out on the bed.
Hate that. Yeah. She was discovered also with clear adhesive tape marks all over her, like restraints, and bite marks on her breasts.
Now all of this is going to connect him back to this because it becomes kind of something he's known for.
It's only going to be a few months before he starts killing again in Gainesville.
Now, before he started murdering again in Gainesville.
He had an argument with his parents one night.
He shot his father in the stomach and in the head.
His father lived, but lost an ear and lost sight in one of his eyes.
Well, he was a dick anyway. He was, but like, whoa.
Yeah. Now, he also, one of the things that's weird about Danny Rowling is he, like, recorded himself on cassette tape a lot.
Mm-hmm. either just talking about things.
It was like a diary kind of thing. They just found a bunch of them or something?
They did. He had them all on him and stuff.
Did he have a creepy scream voice? No, he has a very hilarious southern little bitchy voice.
That's funny. And he also sang a lot and wrote songs and played music and liked to recite poetry and shit.
So yeah. Motherfucker. So he recorded these things.
And during some of these recordings, he would talk about how he loved his father, but then he would also like cry. curse his father so he was very conflicted about clearly he wanted to love his father but it just wasn't It's almost like Edmund Kemper, actually.
Because he did want to love his mom. I know I go back to Edmund Kemper a lot, but he's, I swear, he's like one of my favorites.
Just because he, and I said that. And I say favorites like fascinating because he is fascinating.
Right. In fact, there was a special. on him last night Kemper on Kemper I put it on our on the Morbid Instagram Kemper on Kemper on Oxygen and they went into like way more detail about it and The way he talks about his mother, how he's like, I wanted to love her and I wanted her acceptance and I wanted her approval. then he did awful things to her.
So it's the same kind of thing here. He wanted his father's love and approval, but he couldn't.
But same thing, they were both like shitbags.
They were both shitty to their kids. To their kids, exactly.
Don't be shitty to your kids, man. At this point, he left Shreveport finally.
After he shot his father. And he ended up taking a bus to Sarasota.
And then finally ended up in Gainesville.
And at this time Gainesville was actually ranked as the 13th best place to live in the United States by Money Magazine.
Only for a minute. Only for a minute. So apparently it was like this great college town, which is exactly what he was looking for.
When he got there, he rented a room in a hotel, but also set up a weird campsite in the woods.
You know, just cuz. And, like, mainly stayed there.
So it's like, why did you buy it? That's weird.
He's a weird dude. He seemed confused. And he set up this campsite in the woods near Archer Road with a tent and a mattress that he bought at the Gainesville Walmart.
In the Walmart, while buying those supplies and the supplies to stock and murder people.
Oh, God. He saw his first two victims. Oh, no.
And by first two victims, I mean the first two that he was known to have committed.
Sure. Now we know he did those other three, but...
These are technically the first two that people know about.
They were two University of Florida, so UF freshman girls.
Sonia Larson, who was 18, and Christina Powell, who was 17.
Aww. They were at Walmart buying things for their brand new apartment because, you know, like the semester had just begun.
Mm-hmm. They were several aisles away from him, but he was just stalking them through the store.
While he's stalking them, he's holding the things he was going to use to murder them.
Wow, that's so fucked up. He had stolen a screwdriver, a roll of duct tape, and two pairs of gloves.
I hate this. Yeah. After shopping... Oh, it gets worse.
After shopping, he followed them to their Williamsburg Village apartment.
He literally set up camp to watch them that night.
So he followed them to their apartment. And then he watched through their window as they washed dishes.
He was wearing a black outfit, a ski mask, and the gloves.
He waited until 3 a.m. outside, and then he crept up to their second floor apartment.
He used the screwdriver to pry open the door.
Now, Officer Ray Barber was called to this first scene the next day.
And he was called by the apartment complex's manager because Christina Powell's parents couldn't get their daughter to answer the door.
And that was obviously unusual. And they were scared, so they asked for the police to be called.
They were like, this is weird. Barbara, Officer Ray Barbara, said he initially wasn't super worried when he got this call because...
He was like, these are young kids. It's their first time away from home.
They party and then they forget to call their parents.
Right. And then their parents get scared.
Yeah. So he was like, but I'll certainly come and try to open the door and check on them. them right so her parents waited downstairs the manager attempted to use a master key to enter the unit but it wouldn't work weirdly enough Probably did the screwdriver just like fuck it up.
Yeah, maybe. So Barber had to break a window and immediately a strong, sick smell came out of the window.
So they had been chilling there for a while?
No, only overnight. Oh, wow. But it's in Florida, so... Oh, and I was teeming.
And he also... One thing that, I mean, I don't know.
Trigger warning. If you don't want to hear, like, a medical side of this, then maybe skip forward because it's kind of gross.
But the strong, sick smell doesn't necessarily have to be decomposition.
Oh. If you nick the bowel, that is a very tough odor.
And it will emanate quite strongly. Like during an autopsy, you make very... clear not to nick the bowel because that smell is really gross.
Don't hit the poop pipe, kid. I don't know.
Have we mentioned that before on this? Yeah, we did one time.
Yeah, from the movie Pathology. It's a really good movie because you really don't want to.
Because not only does it smell really badly, it contaminates the entire thoracic cavity because whatever's in there is...
Very unsavory. Anyway. Yeah. So, yeah, he broke the window.
He smelled something. He immediately was like, oh, shit.
They first found Sonia Larson. She was laying with her legs spread and arms above her head.
She was so badly mutilated that dental records had to be used to confirm her identity.
Christina Powell was posed in front of the front door in a similar way.
So anyone coming through the door would immediately see her.
That was the intention. Oh my god. Her breasts had been mutilated and her nipples were removed and were missing from the scene.
Oh, what? That became a thing with him. Both of the bodies had been washed with detergent.
That's strange. He cleaned all the bodies.
Oh, just because if there was anything of him left?
Um... It was like some weird attempt at getting rid of forensic evidence, yeah.
There was a third roommate named Elsa Strepp.
She happened to have not been home that night.
Thank fucking God, Elsa. She arrived shortly after the bodies were discovered and literally, like, collapsed when she found out.
So they're probably her two best friends.
Well, she was also, like... Holy shit, I would have been in this house.
Like, that would have been me. Oh my god, that's so fucked up.
Crazy. I can't imagine what that feels like.
I hope I never find out. Barber said his first thought was that this was absolutely the worst crime scene he had ever been to.
As we said, the night before, Rowling had watched these women and had broken into their home with a screwdriver in the early morning hours of Friday, August 24th. powell christina powell was asleep on the downstairs couch stop sleeping on the couch everybody oh my god don't sleep on the couch It's by no means your fault, but just stop sleeping on the couch.
It's just not a safe place to be. So unfortunately, Powell was asleep on the downstairs couch.
He apparently stood over her briefly, but didn't wake her up immediately.
So he went to the upstairs bedroom where Sonja Larsson was asleep in her bed.
He murdered Larson first. Before he murdered her, he taped her mouth shut with duct tape to stifle her screams.
And then he stabbed her to death. My God.
The way he stabs all these women is he forces them to roll onto their... their stomach and then he stabs them in the back repeatedly that's like his thing which is so cowardly too like you can't have someone look at you he doesn't want to look at them It's so gross.
She fought him. Unfortunately, it did not work.
He then went back downstairs. He woke Powell up.
He taped her mouth shut with duct tape, bound her wrists together behind her back, and then threatened her with a knife as he cut her clothes off of her.
Like he terrorized his victims. That was like part of his thing.
He liked to terrorize them. Jesus. He then forced Powell to perform oral sex on him.
Ew. He raped her, and after forcing her face down, he stabbed her in the back five times.
Rolling then ate an apple and a banana from the refrigerator.
Okay, fucking night stalker. Posed the bodies in sexually provocative positions and then left the apartment.
So he's got like a little Golden State Killer in him too.
That's what I meant to say. Night Stalker did it too though.
Yeah. He ate like a banana or something.
So weird. The Night Stalker and the original Night Stalker.
Yeah, that is weird. Before the police were even done with this crime scene, they were called to another one.
How far? The same day, like a day after, like he was literally like the following day.
Wow. Now this one is a doozy. What is it?
So if it's. That they don't have a rest period in between.
A cooling off period. Does that make them disorganized or not necessarily?
Not necessarily. Okay. They just say serial killer has a cooling off period because...
It can be confused with like mass murderer or screen killer, which he isn't.
He has a couple of days between these and he had already murdered that family.
Right. Months earlier. So he did have that cooling off period.
He did have a cooling off period. But yeah.
Just not in between every murder. But same thing with like Ted Bundy.
Yeah. And the Night Stalker too. Like he went on. a couple pages but so this one was 18 year old Krista Hoyt Who looked like his ex-wife.
This is the one that he said looked like his ex-wife.
She worked for the records department of the sheriff's office.
Oh, wow. And on August 25th... That's fucking ballsy of him.
Yeah, I don't even know if he knew that.
But on August 25th, she was late for her shift and a shift supervisor became worried because he was like, this is not like her.
Right. So this led him to ask deputies to check on her.
One of the two deputies that was dispatched out to her home said she immediately knew something was very, very wrong. because Krista was known to be very reliable and wouldn't have missed work unless something absolutely stopped her from going to work oh god so she already was like something bad that's like the worst feeling i'm sure yeah The male deputy that was with this other, because they sent two out, he said he knocked on the door.
Couldn't get an answer. So he walked to the other side of the residence and noticed that a chain link fence on the edge of the property had been flattened down.
Like somebody had walked over it. Right.
So he was like, this is weird. Like it alarmed him.
Then they saw that there was Venetian style blinds on the window and one side of the Venetian style blinds was like raised a little.
So you can see in. So they bent down. They peeked under to see if they could see anything.
And that's when they saw Krista on her bed.
Her naked body was found seated on the edge of her bed with her torso bent slightly at the waist, literally sitting up.
And she was headless. Yes. Oh my god. Yeah.
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So he posed her headless body sitting on the end of her bed.
He fucking beheaded her? Yup, and it gets worse.
On the bed next to her- Was her head? Were her two nipples.
Oh! Her head was propped up on a bookshelf that he had brought from another room.
What the fuck? He turned this bookshelf and her head into the bedroom in a way that it would make it look like her headless body.
Like her head was looking at her headless body.
Oh my God. That is so fucked up. Yup. Her breasts had also been cut off and were wrapped up as if the killer planned to take them with him.
And then just like forgot them? Like what?
Oh, and the killer had also placed mirrors all around her body because it would make it more horrific and magnify the image.
Like you saw a hundred images of her just.
I don't even know how to respond to that.
Yep. Who the fuck thinks like that? Your mind is a dark, dark, dark, dark, dark crevice.
It is. Well, it's just, I'm just, I don't know how, I mean, I don't know how you beheading freaks me out.
It's a lot of work to chop somebody's fucking head off.
And what he ended up, he used a K-bar knife, which is a military style knife.
It's like a I think like a foot long or something.
It's like a huge knife. Like a big, huge knife.
And beheading just freaks me out. I don't know if it's just because your humanity is in your head a lot.
Well, yeah. Yeah. I don't want to go back to Ed Kemper again, but I think he said something about that.
The person is the head. Right. You know, that's why he took it off.
So it's like, I don't, that just freaks me.
I can't imagine walking into seeing a head.
No. and a headless body. That would, that takes a moment.
What ended up happening was, Rowling had broken into her apartment the night before, prying open a sliding glass door with the knife he had.
And a screwdriver. So he used a lot of the wedge.
Right. He had washed her from his weirdo campsite.
And had seen her towel off after a shower.
And he was like, yep, that's the one. So he was watching her like get out of the shower and stuff.
He's a disgusting pig. When he broke in that night, she wasn't home.
So he waited in the living room for her to return.
At 11am, she entered the apartment and he surprised her from behind, placing her in a chokehold.
Oh my god. So she walked into her apartment and he just came out of nowhere and choke-holded her from the back.
After she had been subdued, he taped her mouth shut with duct tape, bound her wrists together with duct tape, and led her into the bedroom, where he cut the clothes from her body , and raped her, or as Rowling himself described it, quote, played with her.
Ew. He's disgusting. As in the Powell murder, he forced her to face down and stabbed her in the back. which ruptured her heart.
So hopefully she died a little faster. He then left and went back to his campsite.
Like he was like, okay, I'm done. Then he thought he left his wallet at the apartment.
So he came back. And when he came back, he was like, huh, this is a boring crime scene.
Like what? And when he came back, he sliced her open from sternum to groin.
Because she was also gutted. And decapitated the body and cut off the nipples.
The cut from sternum to pubic bone was so clean, according to authorities, that no damage was found to internal organs from that slice.
That is really hard. I was going to say like, so what does that mean?
Like even for a professional, it's just because you cut through the skin, you cut through the muscle. you know, fat, any fat that's on the body.
And then there's like a, you know, a thin lining that protects your organs.
You have to carefully cut through the... If you puncture through that, you're gonna puncture one of the organs.
So he was... Was that just luck? I think it was luck, but then again...
He was also like a hunter, I think, as well.
Oh, okay. So maybe he was good at it. He had that under his belt.
I don't know. I just thought that was really crazy.
I was like, whoa. This also harkens back to the inspiration for Scream.
I know no one's nipples were specifically removed for that film or their heads taken off.
But this inspiration kind of goes back to the gutting of the victims.
And staging them. Right. When Casey Becker is killed initially.
She's gutted, right? Yep, she's gutted.
And in the infamous scene of the crew having lunch by the fountain in school the next day...
Sidney asks, how do you gut someone? And Stu Mocker replies, you take a knife and you slit him from groin to sternum.
Which is exactly what Rowling did. And Casey is also hung from a tree to shock the people, unfortunately, her parents, who discover her And that's exactly what Rowling did to Krista.
Except he didn't pay her for my truth. But he... He horrified her.
He displayed her in a very shocking way.
And that was his... His whole thing. Damn.
So it was clear to authorities now that these scenes were connected.
Because, I mean, just the things that were happening here.
I mean, there was the same posing, same methods.
Underwear was stolen from each scene. The victims were all young women with shoulder-length brown hair.
Tape was used to restrain them, and they'd all been sexually assaulted.
He also took body parts from both scenes.
Ew. By now... The murders had attracted a ton of media attention because this is like boom, boom, two days.
Co-eds in their house. Many students started taking a lot of precautions, which is good.
They were changing their daily routines.
They were sleeping together in groups. And because it was happening so early in the fall semester, some students just withdrew their enrollment or transferred to other schools.
I would 100% be like, bye. I was going to say if my kids were down there.
I know I would not let my kids stay there.
I would be on the first plane. I'd be grabbing them and being like, you're going to a different school.
Yeah. No fucking way. I don't care what needs to happen here.
I don't care if I get a refund, you're going to another school.
So for the one, I'm actually going to homeschool you for college.
You're never leaving the house again, actually.
Uh, So for the ones that did stay, they set up a 24-hour security at all the sorority houses on campus because I'm sure they started thinking like, back to Ted Bundy.
Right, that's next. Yeah, so all of a sudden that's got to pop in your head.
It was Florida too, so it's like... Yeah.
Holy shit, dude. Students started staying in packs of like 20 to a room, with each of them taking shifts to stay up all night and like...
Oh, my God, that's so fucked. Luckily, the campus, the people like the campus higher up seem to handle it right.
The students were all informed that they would not be penalized for missing classes or going home.
None of them were going to be. They even opened up the lounge and common areas of student residence halls and used them as bedrooms for students who lived off campus in other apartments and didn't want to stay in their apartments.
Wow, good for them. So that's kind of cool.
A task force was immediately formed with members of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit.
FBI profilers and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents, and the most expensive manhunt in Florida's history officially began.
Police had evidence and were getting tips everywhere, but DNA was not super widespread used at that point, and they were kind of struggling to keep up with all the tips coming in.
So the following day after this, on August 27th, a First Union bank was robbed at gunpoint.
Later, a suspect who matched the description of the robbery suspect was seen with another man on the side of the highway, like near the woods.
Police tried to apprehend them, but one of the men ran into the woods.
They chased him and they lost him, but found a campsite with a bag of cash that was covered in like the exploding dye that banks use.
Oh, right, right, right. Just to stop this kind of shit.
So they went back to the other man that didn't run.
And they were like, who the fuck is that?
Yeah. He said his name was Michael J. Kennedy.
And it turns out this was Danny Rowling under an alias that he started using.
So they were that close to catching him.
Oh my gosh. God. So he was using the alias Michael J. Kennedy.
That's how he was getting around. Very specific.
I know, right? I like the J. yeah right just for fucking shits and giggles dad's name was james maybe it was like a weird connection.
I don't know. So only two days after the discovery of Krista Hoyt.
Rowling broke into an apartment by prying open the sliding glass door with the same tools he had used previously.
This apartment... belonged to 23-year-old Tracy Pauls and her roommate Manny Taboda.
Okay. I hope I'm not saying those names wrong.
He was also 23. Rowling found Manny asleep in his bedroom.
He was a big guy, like 6'2", 200 pounds.
Oh, wow. And played football. He was a big dude.
He was asleep in one of the bedrooms, so Rowling just plunged the huge knife into his abdomen while he was asleep.
It went through his stomach and out his back.
Oh my god. Yeah. Manny woke up and fucking fought him.
After that. That reminds me of Scream when she's like, my boyfriend plays football and he's big and he plays football.
Oh my god, maybe that's... I wonder if that's what it is.
Whoa. Yeah. Because she's like, he's big and he plays football and he'll kick the shit out of you.
Yeah. Oh my god, maybe that's like a little callback.
It could be. I didn't even think of that.
Ayo. Ayo. Unfortunately, after a huge struggle.
In fact, Rowling himself admitted later that Manny almost got him.
Wow. Like, almost got the best of him. He eventually killed Manny by stabbing him 31 times.
He had to stab him 31 times to... Get him off of him.
After already stabbing him literally through his whole body.
Yep. Wow. So hearing this craziness... Tracy ran out of the goddamn house.
Well, she went down the hall to DeBoda's bedroom because she was like, what's going on?
And she saw Rowling. So she ran back to her own bedroom. and slammed the door shut and attempted to barricade herself in the room oh poor thing rolling broke down the door And when he did, she looked at him and said, terrified, you're the one, aren't you?
Oh my fucking God. And his response was, yeah, I'm the one.
Do you really think that happened? I don't know.
Because that's not that cool. That's more just, like, terrifying.
Yeah, no, that is terrifying. I mean, I hope... I don't even know what I hope happened, but...
I mean, you would have to... I would think she would say that.
I would say something, yeah. No, I know.
I'm just wondering if he was being a dick.
Because if after what just happened, you're...
You see what just happened in the other bedroom, you're going to be like, you're him.
Like, you're the one who did this, aren't you?
Rowling then immediately attacked her. He duct taped her mouth and wrists.
He cut off her clothing and he raped her before turning her over and stabbing her three times in the back.
He then cleaned her body with soap and water, dragged her into the hallway and posed her body in a sexually explicit manner, But left Taboda's in the same position where he died.
Because he was, like, a guy, maybe? Yeah, well, he...
He also rolled up a towel under Paul's hips to kind of like make it more shocking and explicit because it elevated her pelvic area.
Sure. And when she was found, her hair was wet.
Maybe from when he was cleaning her body.
Now, with the exception of Taboda, obviously, all the victims were petite Caucasian brunettes with brown eyes and brown hair.
Manny was not, clearly not expected to be there by Rowling.
And like the Golden State Killer, He was just a threat that needed to be neutralized before he could go after the woman, which is always the target.
Like always. Rowling himself again said he only killed Manny to have his way.
With Paul's. Ew. That's how he described it.
Fuck him, dude. Now this is when authorities fully realized they had a fucking serial killer on their hands.
People were fucking freaking out. Although law enforcement initially didn't have a lot of leads, one name kept being brought up in all of the tips that they were receiving.
Michael J. A 19-year-old University of Florida freshman named Edward Lewis Humphrey.
Yeah. Oh, so not Michael J. Kennedy. Edward had a history of mental illness and bore numerous... deep scars on his face from a car accident.
So I think he, and you'll hear, he had a lot of issues.
But I think the scar is kind of added to, you know, the visual that people have of the serial killer because you never picture Ted Bundy.
Exactly. You picture, you know, like someone scary looking.
Like Freddy Krueger. Exactly. And he had lived in the apartments across from where Manny and Tracy had lived. but his lease had been terminated because he got into a lot of arguments with residents there.
So he was kicked out of the apartments across the street from them.
People said he was, at that time, he was threatening people a lot, carrying knives, talking about Satan.
That's terrifying. Wearing a lot of camo, and he would spend a lot of time in the woods during the night.
He would regularly talk about murder and shit, so people took notice and called him.
Wow, did he ever kill anyone? I don't think, no, he didn't.
Shit. But people called on him because obviously they were like, we're going to see something, say something.
That's fucking alarming behavior. So police began surveillance on him on October 28th.
Like, maybe don't act like that if you're not a fucking murderer, because then you're taking away...
From the actual catching of murderers. So on October 30th, the police were actually called to his grandmother's home.
His mother had called them because she said Edward had assaulted his 79-year-old grandmother.
Ew, what a freak. Little asshole. He was questioned without a lawyer present and his grandmother dropped the assault charges.
But despite all this, the assault charges were reinstated by police and his bail was immediately set at $1 million.
Holy shit. Yeah. They were like, they totally thought it was him.
So his photo was shown repeatedly to media outlets. was he super scary everyone was convinced and the killings ended at this time too so it totally seems like it So then people started to relax.
He didn't do it. well yeah and they found this out because they finally tested the dna that they had gotten in one of the crime scenes and it didn't match and it did not match him Did he say like, I didn't do that?
Yeah, he was very and what's what's sad is his grandmother came out a lot and was like, he didn't do this.
He didn't and his brother came out more like he didn't do this. and then his grandmother died of a heart attack right before he was cleared publicly of it so she died like not ever seeing him cleared of it that's horrible yeah But he was a little shit for assaulting her.
He was a little shit, for sure. But he was also, I think he was also mentally ill.
Okay. I mean, I don't know. Don't assault people though.
Yeah, don't assault people. Later on September 7th, 1990...
Rowling was arrested in Ocala, Florida on a burglary charge.
And in the course of that investigation, shit started coming in that was like wait a second oh this is danny yeah like this is our killer yeah His tools were matched to the marks left at the Gainesville murder scenes.
And then they started matching the DNA. Like, they just started.
Everything was happening. This is when the investigators did, they had discovered the campsites.
Oh. They found recordings of Rowling singing country songs that he had composed in those audio diaries.
And in the audio diaries, he kind of like alluded to the crimes.
He didn't say it outright, but he alluded.
He was brought to trial by the Alachu. I don't know if I'm saying that right.
I don't know. County state attorney, Len Register, nearly four years after the murders.
Wow, it took that long? Yeah. For him to be brought to trial, yeah.
Oh, okay. He was arrested already, but... He claimed his motive was to become a superstar similar to Ted Bundy.
So it was kind of like in Scream when they're like, fame baby.
Yeah. And in the end, he actually said that he killed people because he liked to kill people.
Yeah, some people just like to fucking kill people.
That's why I did it. So February 15th, 1994, before his trial could start.
He unexpectedly pled guilty to all the charges.
That's weird. Which were five counts of first degree murder, three counts of sexual battery, and three counts of armed burglary.
The state attorney, Rod Smith, presented the penalty phase of the prosecution, and he ended up being sentenced to death on each count.
Oh, wow. He was sentenced on April 20th, 1994.
He was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and paraphilia.
Which paraphilia is like sexual fetishes that are like...
Very abnormal. Oh, okay. Like cutting off people's tits.
Because they thought that he might have even dabbled in necrophilia.
Like he might have raped some of these women after he had killed them.
Or while he was killing them, which is another really fucked up, like, perimortem kind of thing.
Ew. Yeah. After he was arrested in Florida, police in Louisiana alerted the authorities in Florida that there was a triple homicide in Shreveport on November 4th 1989 and they were like hmm there's a lot of similarities here Because it was 55-year-old William Grissom, his 24-year-old daughter Julie, and the 8-year-old son Sean.
And because Julie Grissom's body had been mutilated, cleaned, and posed, they were like, this is weird.
And he was in this area at this point. He didn't initially confess to investigators about this.
He was like, nope, I didn't do it. But he did write about the murders and he used information that only the killer would know. but i think he did it under the guise of like if i did it yeah like like kind of oj's i was just gonna say yeah Shreveport police obtained an open arrest warrant in 1994, but he was never extradited to Louisiana to stand trial for these killings because they had already got him on the...
He was already five counts. And I think probably the, the family of the Grissom's were like, you know what?
He's already going to die. I don't want to go through the whole thing.
Yeah. In prison, he was weird as fuck. He expressed... In life, he was weird as fuck.
He expressed hatred for women and became, which is like, really?
No way. He became a. upset when the other inmates watched Madonna music videos on MTV.
He said Madonna was evil and that he wanted to cut her head off and place it on a bookshelf.
Like, cool, we get it. I wonder if Madonna knows that.
He also quoted scripture and attended Bible study on the regular.
You know, like, that doesn't correlate with murdering people.
Not so much. Not so much. Maybe find another activity.
It's not supposed to. He also claimed to a lot of his fellow inmates that the Gainesville victims were all killed because they were evil.
Oh yeah, sure. And he also actively urged a fellow inmate to get married and stop living in sin with his girlfriend.
You're not living in sin. You're in jail.
Well, it's just like, that's a sin. But not brutally, viciously raping and murdering real girls.
Like, I don't understand it. So this is... Now, if it sounds crazy right now, shit gets even crazier.
No way. How? So we all know that some women like to get involved with dudes on death row.
No, just fucking don't do that. If you're listening to this and you're like thinking about it. get real it's not a good idea get real and also this one takes the cake i think tell me because I know Ted Bundy had a wifey and like impregnated her and shit And she's crazy.
Did she have the baby? She did, yeah. Fuck, I forgot about that.
And she's crazy, for sure. But at least she held on to the idea the entire time that he was innocent.
And then when she found out he really wasn't, she like...
She was like, yeah, I gotta go. Which you're still, that's still crazy.
But at least there was that. Also, you have Ted Bundy's baby.
Yeah. No thanks. Yeah. I know what I'm saying.
Sorry to Ted Bundy's child. I know. A freelance journalist named Sondra London. began carrying on a relationship with Danny while he was behind bars.
She actually started as a business relationship because she claims that Danny contacted her because she wrote about a lot of serial killers and a lot of... you know, inmates on death row and all that.
Like her whole claim is that she's like the guru of writing about this stuff.
Okay, Gail Weathers. Which I'm like, really?
Because I've never heard of your name. She's the fucking Gail Weathers.
She's not even as good as Gail Weathers.
Oh, no, nobody is. So he said that he would give her exclusive rights to his story.
So of course she was like, she was like, cha-ching.
I'm just kidding. You're like, it's all carrying up.
It's true now. It's making sense. Yeah. And then eventually, in her own... The way she talks about it, which I'll try to put in a clip here, because her clips are fucking bonkers.
She was saying she was living with a roommate at the time, and she was like, and I just kept talking, Danny this and Danny that.
And finally, one day I came home and my roommate was like, you're in love with him, aren't you?
And I was like, oh no. And the way she says it is like this super like...
How when you're 18 and you're like, I have a crush.
Danny this and Danny that. And then your roommate's like, you're in love with him, aren't you?
She was like 40 something. But also, well, it has nothing to do with being 40.
Well, he was a fucking murderer. I'm saying because he was a fucking brutal murderer on death row.
No, I know that's what you're saying. That makes a difference.
No, no, but also, like, why are you acting like that? but and that's and that's how she talks about him like very giddy and very but then she keeps changing her tune and she'll get very like business about him when in the right It's weird.
In the right settings. Exactly. So she actually agreed to marry him in 1994.
They became engaged. and she believed that he did this all right well that's the thing in the beginning and so she spoke to a bunch of news outlets because of course she was a money grubbing bitch so she just wanted all this fucking fame about it.
Yeah. You don't see Ted Bundy's wife talking to...
She didn't talk to anybody. Right, because she thought he was innocent and probably loved him.
I'm not saying, but I'm like, she wasn't looking for attention, at least.
Right. Or at least not actively like that.
And this lady was like, throw me in front of anything, any camera, and I'll talk about Danny Rowling.
Oh, God. So she also fancies herself, so she's a writer.
And she also dated Gerald John Schaefer when they were 16 years old.
He's another serial killer. Oh, wow. Obviously, she didn't know when they were 16.
She was just destined. But this is important because he was a killer who mutilated two teenage girls and decapitated them.
Oh, she's into that. Now, this is important because she had read Anne Rule's Stranger Beside Me about how Anne Rule knew Ted Bundy.
And she was like, I knew and rule. And she was like, I can do that better because I dated him for like four minutes when we were 16 before he was even a serial killer.
Like, really? Really? no girl you're no in rule and she's so she's that's when she when she started talking to Gerald John Schaefer when he was on death row again.
And she was like, Oh, remember we dated when we were 16.
Let's write a book together. So they started writing this book, but they did it under the thing of fiction.
Like he was like, sure, I'll write about it, but I'm not going to talk about what I really did.
I just want to talk fiction. And... I don't know if I'm going to put a clip in of this because it's kind of disturbing.
But there is a clip of him... Gerald John Schaefer reading a portion of what they wrote.
And when you hear it, it clearly sounds like what he actually did.
He wrote this Okay. And it's very detailed, it's very disturbing, and it's about killing a young girl in the woods, which is basically what he did.
Uh-huh. And the details are just really disturbing.
And you're like, you're basically writing from memory.
That's fucked up. I don't need to hear the details of your murders like that.
But he ended up putting the kibosh on the whole thing because they got in a big fight and I don't know what happened.
So she had already tried to do that. And now Danny Rowling is offering her the exclusive rights to his story.
So she's going to latch onto that money train, of course.
Luckily, she can't profit off of this because there, well, excuse me.
Luckily, he can't profit off of this. Because there's something called the Son of Sam Law, which is named after the son of, like, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, which we'll cover at some point.
And it's mainly after his arrest in August 1977, Berkowitz's.
Right. they because it was such a crazy media circus surrounding him his whole thing because he was such a weird case yeah um They were worried that he was going to try to, people were going to try to make a film.
He was going to sell the rights to his story to someone.
He didn't want to, he denied wanting this, but the New York State Legislature immediately passed a preemptive legal statute That said, this also included Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon.
Right. Couldn't profit off of their story.
So luckily this was in the works already, so he couldn't profit from it, but she was definitely trying to profit from it.
The fact that it even has to be a law is so sad.
Well, and what is supposed to happen is any time... a convicted killer on death row or something like that wants to write a book or something like that, because they have.
The profits are supposed to go to the victims' families.
That's good. Any profits. So that's what this should be about.
Sondra London is a fucking asshole. And she was actually annoyed that that was part of it.
Like, what is wrong with you? Like, the way she talks about the victim's families is basically like they're annoying and money-grubbing.
Like, oh, okay, you know, because they don't deserve that.
Yeah, like, you're disgusting. I'll put in a couple of clips of her and you'll all want to gouge your eyes out.
And what's funny is she goes back and forth between saying, no, no, he's innocent until proven guilty.
And then the next interview she does, she'll be like, you know, he went through a lot and he's not happy with the things he's done and blah, blah, blah.
And it's like, but I thought... He's innocent until proven guilty.
Like, do you believe he did it or do you believe he didn't?
Right. She believed he did it. She knew he did it.
Yeah. She just didn't want to seem like a complete psycho, but too late.
Now, like I said, she's a published author.
Yikes. Which gives me hope that my book will someday see the light of day.
Sure it will. Holy shit, this is some Fifty Shades of Grey garbage.
In a book called Knockin' on Joe, which she talks about men on death row.
Uh-huh. She describes seeing Roland for the first time.
Oh, God. Are you ready? Is this going to be like some Twilight Fifty Shade shit?
Quote. His gel line. I approached my meeting with Danny thinking I was prepared for anything.
But there was one thing I was not prepared for.
I had no idea what a fine-looking man he is today, instead of a broken and dejected loser I'd seen on TV.
Standing before my hungry eyes was one gorgeous hunk of man.
I'm sorry, folks, but it's the truth. My maximum man stands in an imposing six foot two with muscles out to here.
His color is bright, his youthful skin is glowing, his hazel eyes are clear, and so is his head.
The news footage publicized the courtroom image of him stumbling about awkwardly, stupefied by Thorazine and seeming lost in his own body.
But now my dangerous pussycat strides across the floor with a languid power and instinctive grace that makes me highly aware that...
I am a woman and this is a man. Okay, two things.
Get fucking real. I'm screaming. And take a long fucking walk off a short fucking pier, bitch.
She's just a woman. Get real pussycat. And he's just a man.
Actually, he's not just a man. He's a dangerous pussycat.
What the fuck? I don't even know what to say.
Oh, he's also a maximum man. Honestly, she's the worst.
Like what the fuck? Now, Rowling himself wrote to the Washington Post about their relationship.
So did they get married? No. Oh, okay. He's just as hyperbolic and ridiculous as she is.
He said, quote, My relationship with Sandra runs as deep as the Amazon River. like die and just as wild exclamation point he uses a lot of exclamation points she is an extremely exciting woman My feelings for her dot dot dot are my feelings.
Oh. Just the mention of her name sends my heart racing to her.
She is without a doubt, dot dot dot, my soulmate.
And I thank God above for sending her my way.
We are desperately reaching for each other daily across miles of red tape.
Cast before us by faceless foes. Dot dot dot.
We are denied even the simplest of human rights to just hold hands and speak to each other during a simple visit.
Oh, you know who else was denied the simplest of human rights?
All the fucking people that you murdered for no reason.
Right. Are you kidding me? I'm supposed to feel bad because you can't play footsie with your crazy ass fucking writer bitch who just wants to get all your money?
Are you kidding me? You chopped somebody's head off.
You literally murdered people. You killed an eight-year-old boy.
You ripped people's nipples off. You put mirrors around dead body, dead mutilated bodies.
You literally stabbed somebody through their whole body.
31 times. 31 times. You shout your own dad and you want me to feel bad for you?
But he wants, but you know what? Because you just want to hold your hand of your fucking pussy cat?
He can't hold his fake girlfriend's hand.
Well, them's the rules, hun. I mean, Ash.
He's being denied the simplest of human rights.
Oh my god. Like, fuck you, dude. What the fuck is life?
This is kind of just a funny little thing.
Rawling was apparently corresponding in writing with several other women.
Of course. This pissed Sonia off. Royally.
Sondra. Excuse me. She called them all whores.
Pfft. Oh yeah, it's always the other bitch's fault.
There's a clip, and they were like, and she also called them all Debbie's, because there was one Debbie who wrote to him, and so she was like, they're all Debbie's.
What does that even mean? She's a crazy bitch.
Shout out to our Deb. Now, the ring she uses as an engagement ring was actually designed by Dani.
Shut the fuck up. And she had to trade some of his artwork to a jeweler for him to make it for.
It was a diamond with four rubies around it.
And she says this means something, but she won't say what.
Could it be four women and one man? Oh my god.
Like, how fucked up would that be? It's just weird.
It's like five stones, one diamond, four rubies.
Yeah, that's fucked up. Four women, one man.
Maybe. Maybe he's just fucking with people to the end.
Maybe he thinks it's wicked funny that she's in love with him and is going to wear that.
It gets a little more. Which is not funny.
It gets a little more bizarre. How? How, pussycat?
So when he was sentenced to die on April 20th, 1994...
He was told he could address the court, which they always are able to.
Sure. And he chose not to address the families of the victims that he destroyed.
Instead, he wanted to say something to Sandra.
So he stood and he sang a song for her. If I was the victim's family, I would have been also convicted of murder.
Because I would have murdered him. Yes. Pause.
I recall the day I first saw you. I reached out to say I love you.
But it was hard to say I couldn't touch you So tell me baby, what were my words?
All my tears run together. Just like Ray.
Someone said. from your shadow you know you want to be deep or shallow Mr. Rollins.
Mr. Rollins. Okay, you get one song and that's it, Mr. Ross.
We're not here so that you can address your...
I don't even know what to say. Your tears are like rain.
I just... It's like... It's funny because you're just like, what are you doing to me?
That's horrible. But then... you think about it and you're like, these victims' families are sitting in that room after dealing with this whole trial, waiting for him to be sentenced to death, and this...
Jagweed stands there and serenades his shitty-ass girlfriend, who has already treated these victims' families like shit.
Well, and what purpose did that serve? Like, why was that allowed?
You know what the purpose was? It was to fuck with the families more.
I don't understand why the judge allowed that.
I would say no. Well, they are allowed to make a statement.
Because. I'd be like, yeah, you can't do it in song form.
Because it's like First Amendment rights.
I mean, it's. Yeah, I know. I know. We can't make them.
The judge tried to stop him. He tried to stop him several times.
And then he was like, okay, this is not what this is for.
You were supposed to make a statement. You're not supposed to sing.
And he's like, this isn't so you can address your friend.
Ew. What a fucking loser. Yeah. Yeah, so they're disgusting.
Ew, that made me so angry. Yeah, so she's disgusting.
He's disgusting. She's disgusting. I literally want to punch her in the face.
But so Rawling was executed by lethal injection.
Good. At Florida State Prison on October 25, 2006, after the U.S.
Supreme Court rejected his last-ditch appeal.
I wonder what his last words were. I bet they were shitty.
Well, actually. Do you have them? I do. Well, kind of.
He was pronounced dead at 6.13 p.m. Eastern Time.
And his last meal consisted of a lobster tail served with drawn butter, butterfly shrimp with cocktail sauce, a baked potato with sour cream and butter. strawberry cheesecake, and sweet tea.
That's a pretty fucking good last meal. For his last words, he sang a gospel hymn.
Like, actually, if there is a hell, I hope you're in the hottest fucking part.
Yeah, literally. Like, I hope Beelzebub is having his way with you.
I don't even like, right before his execution in a written statement he did confess to the murders of the Grissom family in Shreveport so they were able to put that one finally to bed Oh, I just got so fired up.
Well, I'll bring you back down a little bit on a much lighter note.
The five students that were brutally murdered by this piece of fucking garbage.
They've never been forgotten and actually are actively remembered in pretty awesome ways around Gainesville. in the campus that they attended.
That's good. So there's this pretty grassy, well-maintained median on Southwest 34th Street in Gainesville around the campus.
And in that median, there's like a big memorial to them.
Good. There's a big wooden sign that says, remember August 1990 with a white rose on the front of it. that's standing in front of the median.
Behind this sign on the median, there are five palm trees.
And each one is wrapped in a white ribbon always and has plaques containing one of the victim's names on each one.
I love that. There's also scholarships set up in each of their names.
Wow, I'm gonna start crying. There's another mural on the same street, like in the same area, that was painted on a huge wall along the sidewalk, and it was painted by Adam Bryn Tritt.
It has a background of black paint with remember painted in large red letters.
Wow. Under that, it says 1990. And next to those words are the victims' names in white paint.
The wall has a lot of changing art and graffiti, so when he created that mural, His intention was just like a temporary memorial to them because he was like, it's going to get painted over.
Right. He said, quote, we thought it'd last maybe a week or two, and he's now 51.
And he said, quote, things never last more than a week on that wall.
But today, 28 years later, the mural is still there.
And it has a bronze plaque that's been installed now on the concrete beneath the mural. with the names of the victims and the words you will never be forgotten oh my god the community to keep it well maintained, but now the University of Florida Interfraternity Council has maintained the mural since 2000.
And they apply fresh cones of paint several times each semester.
Wow. Good for them. So. And they have memorials, like they just had one on the 25th year of it with all the victims' families are like super close now.
They all spoke, they all came out and said like, we are okay.
Like, it's been hard, but we're all okay.
Don't worry about us. We're gonna be fine.
And, yeah. So... I guess the happy ending in that is that... That makes me, like, happy.
At least all the families were able to lean on each other.
And the community, like, really... rallied around them so that's the only and I think some of the like police in this whole thing were saying like the only good to come out of this was seeing even during the whole murder spree that he was like students took care of students like people were taking care of each other right being people safe and Wow, that was a fucking doozy.
So yeah, that is Danny Rowling, the Gainesville Ripper.
Want to do something fluffy next week? Inspiration for... Nah. a fluffy podcast i know but sometimes morbid but we do fluff yeah i'm gonna have like a heart attack on an episode one day I mean, I won't... You know what we'll do?
We'll do an even more unknown one. Okay.
Because this one's slightly known. So we'll do... We'll pick one out of the...
The depths. Sometimes those are worse. I know.
You love to horrify me. Don't act like you don't.
100%. That is fully part of this. It's like what the podcast has become.
I wanted to do this podcast just to horrify.
Well, you've been succeeding. Oh, I'm so glad.
Yeah. You know how stressed I am when I drive home?
See, and I feel great. But, yeah, so, oh, and we're going to do a bonus episode this week, so we'll let you guys know when that's coming out.
So, yeah, be on the lookout for a bonus episode.
Subscribe, rate, review, because you guys are awesome and we appreciate your great reviews.
We really, really do. I look at them all the time and they make me happy inside.
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Follow us on Facebook. morbid colon a true crime podcast join that group join the Facebook group because all of a sudden it's getting like big and people are actually talking and it's kind of fun So I'm going to interact more in there, I swear.
I just have to figure out how. I don't have a Facebook, I'm sorry.
I'm old, so I'm going to try. But I love watching what people post.
So, yeah. Oh, and Vasco is giving us our final designs for our merch this week. oh my god we're gonna get getting that moving very shortly and i'm very excited and follow vasco on his instagram yeah I think it's just, I don't know.
Is it at Vasco Vaz art or is it just at Vasco Vaz?
I honestly can't remember, but you know what?
I'll tag Vasco when I announce this on...
On Instagram, the episode, when it's done, I'll tag Vasco.
And you guys need to follow him because he's awesome.
So, yeah. So, we hope. You keep listening.
We hope you keep it weird. So stay out of Florida.
Peace out, pussycats. you maximum man you ew gross he's the worst light yourself on fire bye Bye.
That's my song. So pretty. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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