To determine the sentence, jurors listened to testimony from his mother, who recounted the abuse the defendant had received at the hands of his father, and from a psychiatrist, who described an alternate personality of Rolling's named "Gemini," who drove him to his sadistic acts. In February 1994, just before the start of his trial, Rolling abruptly changed his plea to guilty. It wasn't until early next year, when authorities used a tooth extracted from Rolling to link him to the DNA evidence at the Gainesville crime scenes, that he became a primary suspect.Īlready facing multiple life sentences for his various armed robberies, Rolling was formally charged with the murders of the five Gainesville students in June 1992. In September, Rolling had robbed a Winn-Dixie grocery at gunpoint in Ocala, Florida, and was nabbed after crashing the getaway car. Meanwhile, the killer they were looking for was already in jail. It was soon revealed that this student was battling acute manic depression, however, and with zero evidence connecting him to the murders, the task force was back to the drawing board. Authorities soon zeroed in on a prime suspect, a UF student who briefly lived in the same complex as two of the victims and exhibited erratic behavior, at one point getting arrested for hitting his grandmother. Rolling was charged for the murders almost two years after they happenedĪs Rolling skipped town, a local task force was assembled to calm a frantic community and find answers. A former high school football player, Toboada put up a fight before both were overwhelmed neither body was mutilated this time. On August 27, the killer surfaced again at the home of two 23-year-old UF students, Manuel Toboada and Tracy Paules. The following day, he made Santa Fe Community College student Christa Hoyt his next victim, leaving behind her severed head on a shelf to face her body propped up on the bed. On August 24, he slipped into the home of UF freshmen Christina Powell and Sonja Larson and brutally stabbed and raped both students. In 1990, he set up a campsite in a wooded area behind the University of Florida, Rolling embarked on his murder spree as students began the fall semester. He brutally killed five students in Gainesville
His father survived but lost the use of an eye and ear before fleeing to Kansas and Florida, eventually arriving in Gainesville.
This time he pulled out a gun and shot James in the stomach and head. The following May, Rolling got into one final argument with his father. Echoing his later killings, Julie was found with bite marks and her body arranged with her legs spread on the bed. That same night, he broke into a home to murder 24-year-old Julie Grissom, her eight-year-old nephew, Sean, and her 55-year-old father, Tom. His time in between stints in jail were spent traveling the country, stealing and occasionally forcing himself on women.īack in Shreveport in November 1989, Rolling was fired from his job at a restaurant. The 1980s brought more of the same for Rolling, who was in and out of jail in Alabama and Mississippi for armed robbery.