GAINESVILLE, Fla. – In August 1990, as Gainesville, Alachua County and state law enforcement officials spent the weeks after five brutal murders of University of Florida students focusing on prime suspect Ed Humphrey, a 36-year-old drifter from Louisiana -- Daniel Harold Rolling -- was in a Marion County jail, accused of holding up a supermarket.
A month later, when DNA from the murder scenes cleared Humphrey, investigators were still investigating when they got a call from Rolling's hometown.
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"Shreveport authorities were alerted to what was going on in the Gainesville area, contacted us and said, 'You need to take a look at our crime scene.'" former Gainesville Police Department spokeswoman Sadie Darnell remembers. "There was a viewing of the crime scene. It was a twin in so many aspects of the crime scene here."
Rolling was their No. 1 suspect in the Shreveport murder of 24-year-old Julie Grissom in 1989. Grissom's 8-year-old nephew and her father were also killed.
All three were stabbed to death by someone using a large knife.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officer crime lab analyst Steve Platt, who worked on the Gainesville student murder task force in 1990, went to Shreveport to compare the crime scenes. There were many more similarities.
"The first thing was similarity in which how the victims had been displayed," Platt told WJXT's Staci Spanos. "Second thing -- he had attempted to clean up his victims, and put clothes in the laundry."
The Shreveport case may have given Florida authorities a name, but detectives still had to prove that Rolling killed the five students in Gainesville.
The biggest clue was a sighting of Rolling just hours before the fourth and fifth victims -- Manny Taboada and Tracey Paules -- were found.
"Apparently a couple of deputies saw him cross 34th Street and attempted to stop him for questioning and he bolted and ran," Platt said. "When he ran he ran through the woods to this campsite. In that tent and backpack, a handgun was found, screwdriver, knickknacks, and also a tape recorder with a tape in it."
Rolling managed to elude police that night, but the screwdriver found at the campsite would be forensically identified as the tool used to pop the door locks on his victims' apartments.
As for that tape recording, it was an eerie piece of evidence, complete with the self-identification of the man who had recorded it.
"No matter what anyone thinks about this man, Danny Harold Rolling, I want these three people I'm talking to know this is not the road that I really wanted," Rolling can be heard saying.
The tape was dedicated to his brother, mother and father, and runs about one hour.
Besides messages to his family -- Rolling can be heard singing: "Mystery Rider, what's your name? You're a killer; a drifter gone insane. Mystery Rider, what's your game? You're a rebel no one can tame."
Toward the end of the tape, detectives said Rolling eerily foreshadowed the murders he was about to commit: "Well, I'm going to sign off for a little bit. There's something I gotta go do."
Nearly three years later, Rolling admitted he went on his killing spree in Gainesville shortly recording that tape.
"This wasn't just spur of the moment crimes related to burglary. He knew he was going out to commit murder," Platt said.
Despite the screwdriver and other evidence recovered, it was DNA evidence that would conclusively link Rolling to the murders of the five young students.
And detectives had plenty of it.
"Danny spent quite a bit of time in each of his crime scenes. He drank beverages out of the refrigerator. He ate food," Platt said. "We had soft drink containers, sliced cheese wrappers. We had a number of things we knew were handled by the suspect during the commission of those crimes."
The FDLE lab in Jacksonville finally Rolling's DNA to all three Gainesville murder scenes in January 1991 -- five months after the murders.
It would take several more months -- November of 1991 -- for a grand jury to indict Rolling, It would take several years for Rolling's trial to start.
On Feb. 15, 2004, as a jury was being picked to hear the trial, a plea agreement Rolling had signed the week before was read in court:
"Your honor, this is the defendant Danny Rolling. At this time the defendant would ask leave of the court to withdraw his previously entered plea of not guilty and tender a plea of guilty to all 11 counts entered in the indictment of this case."
Except for his defense team, no one saw it coming. And none of the victims' family members were prepared to hear what the defendant would say next.
"Your honor, I've been running all my life?.there are some things you can't run from, this is one of them," Rolling said.
Family members showed their disgust in court.
"The offender came in and announced his plea in a flowery fashion, self-serving fashion and it was hugely traumatic to the families," Darnell said. "Speaking only for me, it was an intense, emotional sensation. I can't imagine what it must've been for the family."
With the shock of the guilty plea sinking in, it would take several more days to present testimony as part of the sentencing hearing.
"He turned her over, and stabbed her through the heart and she died," prosecutor Rod Smith told the court.
Defense attorneys argued for the defendant's life, saying his police officer father abused Rolling as he was growing up.
Rolling was accused of shooting his father in May 1990, but his father survived. Rolling was never prosecuted in that shooting.
Outside of the courtroom, victim Manny Taboada's brother made it clear how he felt about Rolling's attempt to gain leniency from the court.
"At the age of 24, my dad died. At 29 someone murdered my brother. I've been divorced just four years ago. I didn't have a penny to my name. I didn't go berserk," Mario Taboata said.
Two months later, Judge Stanley R. Morris announced Rolling's sentence: "Defendant committed for execution. May God have mercy on his soul."
In a recording of that hearing, Taboata could be heard predicting that Rolling would soon meet his maker.
"You understand that? Less than five years," Taboada before the judge ordered him removed from the courtroom.
Taboada's prediction, would be painfully wrong. Rolling's date with death would come more than 16 years after Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Tracy Inez Paules and Manny Taboada were killed in a spree that still sparks raw emotions in Gainesville.
