Crime Weekly - S3 Ep233: Gainesville Ripper: Campsite Confession (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

In late August 1990, Gainesville, Florida, was bustling with the excitement of college students returning to the University of Florida for the Fall semester. However, the anticipation of a new school year quickly turned to horror on August 26, when two students, Christi Powell and Sonja Larson, were discovered brutally murdered in their off-campus apartment. This gruesome discovery was only the beginning. Within two days, three more students were viciously killed in their own apartments. The once vibrant town was now gripped by fear, as students worried they’d be the next victim of the serial killer nicknamed the Gainesville Ripper. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. HelloFresh.com/CrimeWeeklyKids - Get one FREE kid's meal per box for two months! 2. ShopBeam.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY and get up to 40% off! 3. TalkSpace.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code SPACE80 and get $80 off your first month! 4. SimpliSafe.com/CrimeWeekly - Save 20% on any SimpliSafe System with a Fast Protect Plan! 5. RocketMoney.com/CrimeWeekly - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and more today!

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craftsman's high quality, high performance products empower you to build on. Stop by your nearest Lowe's store and check out the full line of craftsman tools today. Valid through 618 while supplies last selection varies by location. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are diving into part two of the Gainesville Ripper series. Is there anything you want to say or talk about before we kind of

do a little quick catch up and then go into the new information? For the YouTube people, I think we have to address the elephant in the room now. What is it? Camera setup, like lighting, camera, lens, everything. Action. All different on Stephanie's setup. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're not, you need to go check it out. But yes, it was something that we were working on behind the scenes. You have the same camera and lens as me, but your camera was a lot older than mine. You actually recommended your camera to me. So mine's a lot newer, but we could clearly see the difference and we were trying to figure it out, but you just decided to bite the bullet and got a whole new setup and it looks great. Got a whole new setup. I'm still working on it. I have a few more lights coming. I want a

hair light here, you know, just trying to up the production value, make it look better. I didn't realize how out of focus and blurry and how bad the quality of my videos had become. It was happening over time. It's almost like losing your vision. Well, yeah. I mean, also, I done did lost my vision forever ago. Like, I'm blind. So I don't know if anyone knows. I'm blind. Those glasses aren't for just style.

So they're not. So there was a time. And when I spend too much time on the computer, too, my vision already gets blurry to begin with. So I was just like, oh, it's just me. It's a little blurry, but it's just me. But I heard you guys. I fixed it. And that's good.

Let us know what you guys think, because I didn't think it was terrible. But some of you were like, this is really bad. And then when I saw the latest episode, it was bad. And it was funny because we were setting this all up on Saturday. So we wouldn't be doing it today. And at one point, I don't know why I said it like this, but I was like, oh, no, you look great. You look like you do in person now.

Yeah. And I was like, what the hell does that mean? You're like, what does that mean? Is that a good thing? I'm like, stop fishing for compliments. Let's go. No, but just genuinely. You're like, well, what is that?

Is that a, what are we talking about here? No, it does. I think it looks better as far as you're not as blown out with the lighting and stuff. So I think it's good. But overall, Mike is on an actual boom stand now. You're not holding it. So we're like a real podcast now. Yeah, I definitely have hands free now. All right. But that was all I had. That

was all I had. I just saw it. It looks great. I'm glad it worked today. No problem. I was a little concerned about that when we hopped on that there'd be technical issues, but nothing. Knock on wood. Yes. Actually, very seamless. Knock on wood. Don't jinx it. I know, exactly. Because that never happens for me. So I'm going to give you a quick update on what we talked about last week. Over the course of a few days in late August of 1990, a serial killer who would become known as the Gainesville Ripper brutally murdered five college students near the University of Florida campus in Gainesville and Gainesville's Florida. So Sonia Larson, Christina Powell, Krista Hoyt, Manny Tabato, and Tracy Paul has lost their lives in these senseless and horrific acts of violence. Now, initially, the police believed

this young man, Ed Humphrey, was the Gainesville Ripper. They put him in custody. And while he was in custody, there were no murders. But as the investigation progressed, it became clear he really couldn't have been responsible, leaving investigators back at square one, even though they kind of kept him behind bars and also didn't publicly announce that he was no longer a suspect, even though they publicly announced that he was their main suspect. Then in November of 1990, the Shreveport, Louisiana police contacted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or the FDLE with a new lead. They believed the unsolved 1989 murders of three members of the Grissom family could be connected to the Gainesville Ripper. And after hearing this promising news, FDLE investigator Don Maines drove to Shreveport to learn more. A couple things real quick that you reminded me of from last episode,

the commenters, we had a couple of corrections we wanted to make, right? Yes. So I misspoke and I gave Krista Hoyt's birth date as being in 1979, but she wasn't born in 1979. She was born in 1971. She graduated in 1989. So my brain did a little, which it does with numbers. It did a little number swap. Yeah. Kind of like I switch up phrases.

Everyone came after me because I kept saying, cough it up. It's chalk it up. Did you say cough it up? People are like, stop coughing it up. It's chalk it up. Did you say cough it up? People are like, stop coughing it up, Derek. That's gross. And I'm like, it's a Derekism. How many times over the years have I combined multiple different sayings, phrases? I just make my own version. So for copyright reasons, I have to. We're just going to cough it up to bad timing. Yep. They're like, Derek, that's a bad one. Don't say that anymore. That's funny. gonna cough it up to bad timing yep no like they're like for for the same dad derek that's a bad one don't that's funny cough it up chalk it up chalk it up so yeah we had that

thing there and it was also sean right sean yes eight-year-old sean uh when we were talking about the grissom family eight-year-old sean is not julie grissom's son he was her nephew um i'm not sure how i made that mistake well we, we got it right now. Listen, nobody's, we're not perfect. And that's, what's great about YouTube. And I've, I sit on detective perspective all the time. We're doing these cases every week. If we get a date or age wrong, that's what the comments are for. Let us know. We'll correct it. Simple. So, yeah. And I mean, no, no one's perfect, but it does bother me when these mistakes happen in the script because the research is done and these are people's lives and we want to get it

right. So it does bother me when that happens. Yeah. So thank you guys for pointing it out. Thank you for pointing out respectfully. We love you so much. We appreciate you. This is a team effort as always, and you are a big part of our team. So thank you. Go team. Go team. Go team. We're going to cough it up now. Cough it up to just a minor lapse in judgment. So when investigator Don Maines arrived in Shreveport, he immediately learned all he could about Tom, Julie, and Sean Grissom and the massacre that had sadly left them all dead. William Thomas, or Tom Grissom, was born on September 2nd, 1934. He grew up in Indiana with his parents, Joe and Agnes, and he had multiple siblings. Now, at some point, he served in the U.S. Army, and in 1960, he married a woman named Joyce. Together, they welcomed two children, Julie and Scott, and the family eventually settled in the

Shreveport, Louisiana area. Tom worked at AT&T, the phone company, and he eventually would become a supervisor of the department that specialized in business communication systems. He was very well liked by his co-workers. He was described as being polite, friendly, and a respectable man who always had a smile on his face. Now, in the mid to early 1980s, Tom, who was now divorced, received a devastating diagnosis. He was told he had throat cancer. But despite his illness,

he continued working at AT&T. However, as they do, the chemotherapy treatments made him very sick. During this challenging time, Tom's daughter, Julie, who is now an adult, moved back in with him in his home on Beth Lane in the Shreveport area to help care for him. Julie was born on April 24th, 1965, and she was honestly the ideal person to care for Tom. She was sweet, warm, and kind, and very smart. By the fall of 1989, Tom was still battling cancer, but his condition had improved. He was nearing retirement. He spent most of his time at work or at home or fishing in his boat. Now, Julie was still caring for her dad, though, while also studying marketing at Louisiana State University of Shreveport and working part-time at Dillard's in the South Park Mall. And Julie was actually

very close to graduating. Now, at that time, Tom's other child, Scott, was living in Shreveport with his wife, Jenny, and their son, Sean Thomas Grissom, who was a third grader at Turner Elementary School. He was celebrating his eighth birthday on October 24th, and as part of his gift, he went to visit Tom and Julie on Saturday, November 4th. He was going to stay with them until the morning of Monday, November 6th, and then the plan was that Tom, his grandfather, would drop him off at school. But tragically, Sean never made it to school that morning. That morning, Sean's school called his mother, Jenny, to report that he hadn't come in. Jenny then called Tom's house repeatedly,

but no one answered. Fearing the worst, she called the police, who in turn reached out to a neighbor. This neighbor had a key to Tom's house and asked him to check if everything was okay. At approximately 8.45 a.m., that neighbor, along with two others, went over to check on the family. And as they approached the house, they noticed that Sunday and Monday's newspapers were still at the end of the driveway and there were lights on inside the house. The neighbors then entered the garage and when they opened the door to the utility room off of the garage, they caught sight of a body. Now, they didn't know whose body it was. They didn't know what had happened. They didn't know what was going on, but they did quickly leave and call 911, which is the right thing to do. We don't want people

traipsing through crime scenes trying to figure out what happened or what's going on. The second you see something that's off, leave the area, call 911, and let the first responders and law enforcement handle it and secure the scene properly. That way there's no corruption of evidence and DNA transfer that shouldn't be there. That is the right thing to do. When the police arrived, they found 55-year-old Tom's body leaning against the utility room door, blocking the entrance. He had multiple stab wounds to his back and to his chest. As the police continued through the house, they discovered eight-year-old Sean face down in the family room with a single knife wound to his back. Next, the police found 24-year-old Julie in her bedroom. And like the other victims in Gainesville, her body was posed. She was face up,

naked, and partially hanging off the bed. She had been raped and stabbed at least three times in the back. And then vinegar had been used to clean her body. But the detectives did find that tape residue had been left behind. And once again, this is very similar to many of the Gainesville victims. Not all of them, but definitely there was at least one at each location who had a similar death, basically. Stabbed, raped, cleaned with something, whether it was vinegar or soap in some of the victims' cases and that tape residue. Yeah. So these are the things you start to look for. And this is why it's so important to have good relationships with law enforcement throughout the country, because it's not like these serial killers will stay just in one area and commit all

their crimes. In fact, they'll normally spread out to try to avoid detection and avoid some connections. So Shreveport is not too far from Florida. No, not at all. And you have this situation where Gainesville, Shreveport, I don't know exactly Louisiana, Florida, but it's in driving distance for sure. It definitely is, yeah. And you're talking about a situation

where the murders occurred in august of 1990 in gainesville and this was 1989 so close proximity as far as timing and then you think about the murders themselves as you're talking about at this point in the story it's still speculative on my part but it does appear that the common denominator here is a young woman there's always a young woman in the equation and it seems like there's obviously a sexual assault involved here. So it's sexual motive. Yeah, sexual motive. And it appears to me, at least at this point, that the men or the other people involved in these murders are collateral damage. They just happen to be there when this is going on. Now, is the offender aware that these individuals are going to be there or is it something where in the process of doing what they're doing they encounter these other people and have to take care of them as well so it's one of those situations where when you separate the other people we have uh manny tabota

and the other one right where i had said last episode he was probably someone who happened to be there and tracy was actually the the target of that attack. And then in this situation, you have Tom and Sean, but when you separate those two with Sean, you mentioned one stab wound to the back, that's it. But when you talk about Julie, the way she's laid out, what has actually happened in this situation appears to be very similar to Gainesville, which is- I pulled it up. I was waiting for you to finish talking and then I was going to be very similar to Gainesville, which is... I pulled it up. I was waiting for you to finish talking and then I was gonna be like, I actually looked it up and it's like 800 miles away.

So technically within driving distance, but... Yeah, you could drive it. You could drive it or if you move over a period of time. So you have a victim in Shreveport and then you have multiple victims in Gainesville and yet the way and then the manner in which they were killed and the way they were left, very similar.

So you think about the time in which this all occurred. We're talking about a year, year and a half tops. Talking about a similar MO. You're talking about similar victims. Yes, great job by Shreveport to say, hey, listen, we heard about these cases in Gainesville. They've released some information and there appears to be a pattern here. We should explore this further. So great job by everyone involved on that front, at least. Honestly, better than the Florida police who found this little robber hideout in the woods.

The tape. The tape. And didn't say anything. And by the way, speaking of tape, not the same tape you're referring to. And the screwdriver. Screwdriver, yeah. The screwdriver. Yep. The means of getting in. The tape itself too. same tape you're referring to. And the screwdriver. Screwdriver, yeah. Screwdriver. Yep. The way, the means of getting in. The tape itself too. Here, you have the tape. You have this.

Yes, we have adhesive tape. And then we have a tape that was found at the campground, which was an audio tape. Exactly. So as far as the tape residue, we talked about this for a few seconds in the previous episode. You have the tape residue that was applied to them. That clearly lets us know that at some point during this attack, these victims were alive, right? At some point they had to use a manner of restraint in order to gain control of their victim. So after that was done, it appears that the offender removed the tape for multiple reasons. They wanted to position them in a certain way to really make the situation even worse,

but also probably for the forensic element of it, which to me- Didn't want to leave DNA, didn't want to leave fingerprints. Exactly. You can have oils from your fingerprints that can leave a fingerprint on the backside of the tape. You have DNA, obviously all that.

But I also wonder if this tells us a little bit about our offender. Dude, I was thinking the same. Who's done research. Well, I would hope you I was thinking the same. Who's done research. Well, I would hope you would be thinking the same. You researched this bad boy. Because it's 1989, you know what I mean? So it's not like forensic police work is as commonly known.

We don't have like forensic files. We don't have all these crime shows. Now people know about DNA and fingerprints like most people do. But in 1989, does this person work in a field where he would have some sort of knowledge about that before most of the general public? That's what I was wondering. All right. So I'm going to go out on a limb here. This is probably going to backfire on me. So I'm just going to take a guess here. I'm going to say that we're going to find out that this guy's a cop, that the offender's a cop. I could be wrong, but I feel like just with the DNA, don't, don't give me any hints, but I feel like this, this sounds like someone who is in law enforcement

because it seems like what they're doing is ahead of their time. Yeah, I agree. So that's the only reason I say that. But the tape to me is a telltale sign that this person has some background in this, maybe in science or in law enforcement. There's something there where they're going, they're going the extra mile. And then as far as the sexual assaults themselves, I'm wondering what precautions they were taking to avoid that type of DNA transmission as well, because you're going to have a lot there, pubic hair, semen, et cetera. So that's just my initial thoughts as we start to connect these two. But clearly, I think anybody listening or watching this episode, when you hear about what happened in Shreveport, after just hearing what we talked about in Gainesville, it's very easy to connect the two and say, yeah, there might be something going on here where we have the same offender involved. Yeah, same MO, most likely same offender.

Before you continue, let's take our first break. We'll be right back. So the police immediately began processing the scene. They found no signs of forced entry, no signs of ransacking or robbery. And although there were indications of a struggle with each victim, the overall scene was described as neat. The police believed it was possible that each victim was killed without knowing anyone else had been attacked and that Julie had been the intended target. Hoping to find more clues, the police canvassed the neighborhood to determine if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual. And some neighbors reported seeing Tom and Sean outside the home

as late as 5.20 p.m. on Saturday, November 4th. But they didn't see them after that, and no one reported hearing or seeing anything to suggest a massacre had occurred. One neighbor told the police that every night he would go outside and look around the street just to check and make sure that everything was okay. And on Saturday night while he was doing this, he noticed Julie's light was on and the cars were parked in the driveway. This was nothing unusual. On Sunday, the neighbor noticed Tom's paper was still in the driveway. But again, this wasn't unusual. He assumed that Tom wasn't feeling well due to his cancer treatments

and had been unable to go outside to get it. There's always that one neighbor, you know, that's like out there all the time, kind of like patrolling, and he knows all of his other neighbors habits. They can be annoying, but I also love them at the same time. I was just going to say that's like annoying. But at the same time, they're like this like FBI profiler living in your neighborhood. And they're like, hmm, Tom's newspaper is still out here. Not common. However, since Tom's been sick, he sometimes isn't feeling great in the morning and doesn't come out and get his paper right away. So I'm okay with this, you know, and he's like making notes. I can't imagine you being part of the neighborhood watch. Me? No, I'm part of my own property watch. Okay. So if something on my property changes or shifts, I'm on top of it. But like what everyone else is doing, no,

I don't care. For my big brother people, they'll get the neighborhood watch reference. Oh, yeah? I created the neighborhood watch inside the house. So we'll just cough it up to a big brother reference. We'll just cough it up to a BB reference. So we got the nosy criminal profile neighbor over here, and he's able to give a little bit of a timeline. Well, based on the neighbor's accounts, the police theorized that the family was killed on Saturday night or very early Sunday morning. They developed a profile for the killer and told the public that they were looking for a man with psychological problems. I feel like that's a given.

Who had experience with crime scenes. Interesting. Experience with crime scenes. This is not something that the Gainesville police added to their profile of the offender. This person's a cop. According to the police, this man knew how to manipulate a crime scene and reduce the number of clues found by officers initially responding to the scene. The police believed the suspect was still in Shreveport at that exact moment and had a, quote, closeness to the family. Multiple Shreveport locals expressed to the media that they hoped the killer would be caught soon. And for a time, it seemed that

might happen, as the police quickly focused on Julie's ex-boyfriend, defense attorney Hal Carter. Now, Hal and Julie had been dating until around two months before Julie's murder, and the police suspected that, you know, Hale might have wanted Julie dead. However, Hale had an airtight alibi. At the time of the murders, he was 600 miles away in Atlanta, Georgia, the whole entire weekend that Julie was killed. Now, despite this verifiable fact, the police kept their attention on Hale for months before ruling him out. Then, in the fall of 1990, the Shreveport police learned about the Gainesville Ripper murders and noticed several striking similarities to Julie's murder.

Like the Ripper victims, Julie was a petite brunette, and she'd been bound with tape, stabbed, raped, and her body had been posed and clean, although tape residue is still present. Given the massive amount of similarities, the Shreveport police reached out to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and in November of 1990, FDLE investigator Don Maines went to Shreveport to discuss the Grissom case. After reviewing the details, he agreed that it was likely the Grissom family killer and the Gainesville Ripper were one and the same. Both departments started looking into whether this theory was actually plausible. While DNA technology was not super advanced at this time, labs could still determine blood type from semen. And since semen had been found at all three college student crime scenes and at the Grissom crime scene, the samples were tested and in the end, they were all found to have type B blood. This finding made the theory that one killer was responsible for both groups of murders even more possible.

However, the police kept this connection between the cases from the media and the public, which makes the next part even crazier. So let's break down a couple of things in there because it's contradictory, right? You have this person who's going to these extremes to avoid detection by removing tape after the fact, and yet they're leaving semen. But it goes back to what you were saying earlier. At this point, DNA and the uses for it were not as known or not as prevalent in the investigatory world where fingerprints were. Fingerprints, they were a big deal at that point. That's how people were being implicated in crime. So this person was clearly focused on fingerprint oils, fingerprint impressions, hair follicles, things of that nature, pubic hair, DNA. They weren't too concerned about semen, apparently.

It still doesn't make complete sense to me, but it does kind of date when these crimes occurred. And then I'll also say we talk a lot about cold cases and the dissemination of information. This is why some things are important to keep in house. Because if this information had been shared publicly, now you have a killer who's aware of it and can change up their MO because they are now, they're under the impression that multiple police departments are communicating with each other and are aware of their process of when they conduct these murders. So they're going to change it up. So these are the times where I would, I'm a strong proponent of, hey, listen, these types of things we want to keep close to the vest. We can share with other

jurisdictions, other agencies, but that's the type of information that can solve a case behind closed doors without the offender even being aware of it. Yeah, absolutely. And I also want to talk a little bit about Hal Carter because he didn't just, you know, prove that he was in Atlanta and the police were like, OK. And remember, we're dealing with Shreveport, Louisiana police here. We're not dealing with Gainesville at this point. But in Gainesville, they did a similar thing to Ed Humphrey, who I believe was only 19 at that time. They thought he was the Gainesville Ripper. They put him behind bars. They announced that he was their main suspect. And then they kind of just didn't do anything about it. And they did something very similar to Hale. So they actually, the Shreveport police actually announced during a news press or

a press release in November or on November 9th that he was their main suspect. Even though he provided police with a credit card receipt from an Atlanta hotel and a plane ticket receipt, they still pressed the issue. They still announced to thousands of people that Hal Carter was the prime suspect in what had happened to the Grissom family. And he said later, he was like, I didn't understand. I produced evidence that I was in Atlanta. I still remained the prime suspect. And his life was pretty much destroyed as a result, he left Shreveport. He lost his law practice in a matter of days. He had to uproot his life. He moved to Washington state and then to Atlanta. And as he's like moving around, he there's murders happening in Gainesville. And he was actually a suspect in the Gainesville murders for a while because of the similarities between the Grissom murder scene and the Gainesville murder scenes. So this poor guy who had like a thriving law practice, was living life, everything's good. All of a sudden, he's, you know, public enemy number one. And he had shown evidence that he couldn't have possibly even been in the Shreveport area. I'll say this. First off, terrible that they put him out there in the public like that when he had an alibi, there was exculpatory evidence ruling him out. It shouldn't have happened. You don't want to ruin someone's life. I will say this silver lining here, and I'm sure Hal will not agree with this and not be on board with this, but this goes back to what I was just saying.

The Shreveport police department puts out there that they got their guy. This is who they think it is. Well, guess who's seeing that? The killer. So this killer has this comfortability to go to Gainesville and conduct the murders in a similar manner, knowing that the Shreveport Police Department is nowhere on to him. So I will say the one takeaway here that's a positive note, which wasn't intentional by Shreveport, clearly. They screwed up here. By them doing that, it put this offender at ease to go commit crimes in you know geographically

a similar area you know it's still 12 mile 11 to 12 hours and to do it and conduct those murders in the same manner which allowed them to eventually make this connection to whoever this person is so sucks for how shouldn't have happened but i will say that's what allowed the offender to continue to do what they were doing without deviating from their process too much because they felt like the law enforcement officials involved had no clue they were involved. Yeah. And they did the same thing to Ed in Gainesville, right? So the real murderer is like, okay, in Gainesville, they think it's this Ed dude. In Shreveport, they think it's Hale. And I can keep doing what I'm doing because clearly me cleaning up my mess actually worked. Yep. So not strategic on the part of the law enforcement

agencies. I'm not giving them any credit here, but basically their mistakes is what put this guy at ease, which allowed him to make more mistakes. And then they eventually connected the dots. So at the same time the police were running DNA tests, a Shreveport woman named Cindy called the authorities and said she had an idea who could be responsible not only for the Gainesville Ripper murders, but also the Grissom murders. So Cindy explained that while she was traveling in Florida she saw a news report on the Ripper murders and it instantly reminded her of a guy she knew for her church in Shreveport, Danny Rowling. Danny often spent time with Cindy and her husband Stephen and on multiple occasions Danny told her that one day he was going to go to a warm place where he could lay in the sun and, quote, watch beautiful women all day, end quote. Despite this sort of weird comment, Cindy didn't think anything was off with Danny until after the Grissom family was massacred.

A few months after the murders, Danny was over at Cindy and Stephen's place hanging out with some friends. They spent the evening doing regular guy stuff, whatever that means. Picking their t-shirts off and wrestling? Throwing Danny's knife at a tree in the backyard. That's guy stuff, I guess.

Oh, yeah, that too. It was all fun and games until Danny stepped in front of Steven, looked him straight in the eyes and said, quote, I got a real problem, end quote. Obviously, Steven's like,

what kind of problem? And Danny sheathed his knife and said he was a bad person. Stephen asked, what made Danny a bad person? And Danny responded, quote, well, I like to stick knives in people, end quote. Yeah, I'd say that you got a problem. Yeah, it's a red flag. And he's holding a knife while he's saying that. But, you know, it's sheathed, so it's OK. Obviously, Danny. Yeah. It's a red flag. And he's holding a knife while he's saying that. But, you know, it's sheathed. So it's OK. Obviously, Danny says this.

Stephen's basically speechless. And he walked into the house because he didn't know what else to do. I would have been like, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that, Danny? How many people have you stuck knives into? You know, give me give me some more information here. I need some context. So Stephen told his wife, about this incident. And I guess she didn't think much of the comment, even though she knew the Grissom family murders involved stabbing. She thought there was no way go to, she started to think he might be connected. Still, she didn't immediately call the police to tip them off. Then, in November of 1990, after months of being haunted by the thought,

Cindy decided to tell the police. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back to discuss this. So Cindy tells the police, hey, I think Danny Rowling, this guy I knew, could be involved with these murders in Gainesville and these murders in Shreveport. And of course, investigators were very interested in this tip. So they decided to look into Danny Rowling. They discovered that when the Grissom family was killed. Is that Officer Danny Rowling? No, no. but just wait. Wait, there's more.

So they discovered that when the Grissom family was killed, Danny was living with his parents around 10 minutes away in the 6300 block of West Canal Boulevard. And not only did he live near the Grissom family, he was actually wanted for attempting to murder his father, a former police officer. Yeah, I'll take partial for that one. Yeah. In Shreveport. Yeah. In Shreveport in May of 1990, just months after the Grissom family murders. Now, at this point, the police believed it was possible that Danny could be a viable suspect. So they conducted a

deep dive into his background and they learned that Danny Harold Rowling was born on May 26, 1954. He grew up in Shreveport with his younger brother, Kevin, and his parents, Claudia and James. Now, James was a police officer who retired as a lieutenant in the 1980s after serving more than 20 years in the force. We're going to explore this more in another part of the series, but it's important to know that multiple people would later claim that James was extremely abusive towards Danny and Kevin, his sons. Danny's mother, Claudia, later testified, quote, Danny was an abused child from the day he was born.

My husband was jealous of him. He never wanted me to hold him or show love to him. He was told from the time he could understand that he would be dead or in jail by the time he was 15. His self-esteem was destroyed by his dad's constant belittling, end quote. A cousin would further state that James would, quote, beat the hell out of his sons. It was like a switch. It would be on one minute, off the next, end quote. Yeah. So we're starting to develop a profile on this person. Yeah. And based on what you're saying, it could, you know, someone who's gone through this type of trauma as a child, it can lead to things that we're discussing in the series. And, and I mean,

this connection to a police officer does make sense to me because as we mentioned earlier, it appeared that this individual, whoever they were were had some type of understanding of crime scenes you know how how investigators worked how they did their job what they were looking for when they came across a murder scene and so i wasn't completely right i thought it could be a police officer but it appears that he may have picked up some things from his dad. Maybe his dad's sitting at home telling old war stories in between these beatings where his dad would maybe talk about what was going on at work at the dinner table. Yeah, exactly.

So it does make sense that this individual would have a background in law enforcement or in this case, someone connected to law enforcement. Now, you may pull a curveball here and Danny may not be the guy, but based on the fact that he's telling friends that are close to him, I like to stick people. Now you have this law enforcement connection. We're going down the right path here. A couple of things are looking

like this, this Danny could be involved. Yeah. And I mean, we're talking that, um, Danny's father was a police officer in the eighties and this is when forensics would have been kind of on the cutting edge and starting to be involved in law enforcement a lot more. And it may have been interesting to Danny's father, James, and maybe James is coming home and he's like, oh, man, they can get fingerprints and we can see who's been there and we can pick them like up. You know, he's just talking and Danny's picking up on it. Additionally, besides the fact of the law enforcement connection, despite the fact of the close proximity to the Grissom family, we have somebody here who, if this is accurate, has been abused from the day he was born. And we know this person's not going to develop normally.

He's not going to develop like the average person. He's going to have a lot of mental health issues. He's going to have trouble regulating his emotional state. He's going to have some issues with seeing other people in a compassionate way because he wasn't given compassion. So this is, you know, the beginnings and the makings of a serial killer. How many other serial killers have we talked about who went through the same thing when they were kids being beaten by their alcoholic fathers or their fathers had PTSD from going to war and came home and took it out on their family members. And then these kids grow up to become serial killers.

You'll see this so often. It's a very common thing in the background in the childhood of killers. Yeah. You do find it a lot in their backstories. Not 100% of the time. Sometimes it's a perfect family and this person just goes off the path and nobody can really explain why, but I do agree with you. And in many cases, this, this behavior is derived from something. Even when we think about sex offenders and child molesters, a lot of the times we find that the offenders were molested or, or, or assaulted by someone at a young age as well. They pick that up from someone, which it hardwires them different than other people. So not making excuses for anyone,

but it's something you do want to look for when you're looking at potential suspects. Definitely not making excuses. I completely agree with you. And it is important. I agree with you. And when you said- Well, think about when we're, as investigators,

when we're looking at suspects, people may say, well, why do you want to know about their child? Because it is important. I agree with you. And when you think about when we're as investigators, when we're looking at suspects, people may say, well, why do you want to know about their child? Because it's important. It doesn't automatically mean they're guilty, but it is something where you have three people and they're all in the same area and they all have similar backgrounds and all these things. And you start to think about the crimes that it doesn't mean that they're the person, but it could be suggestive that they're more likely to carry out this type of behavior as an adult because it's something they experienced as a child. Yes. And when you said hardwiring, that was the perfect way of putting it because your brain in childhood is being programmed to tell you how you look at yourself, how you look at the world around you, how you look at the people around you and how you behave, how you treat other people, how you treat yourself. So it's very much important, but also not an excuse because there's tons of other people that have bad childhoods and are abused and they don't go on to do that.

So there's definitely other factors involved. And there's books that have been written on this. I find it very interesting. There's definitely a link between childhood abuse and serial killers, but there's also a link between brain chemistry, even brain development and serial killers. storm of of factors that come together to create the brain of somebody who is able to kill without compassion without guilt without feeling empathy towards his victims and this person in particular danny is also someone as you mentioned who's currently being investigated for the murder of his father attempted murder attempted murder yeah I stand corrected, attempted murder of his father. So yes, it's something where he's definitely already on the radar. He didn't have an easy go of things, even when he started getting older, because in 1971, when Danny was 17 years old, he dropped out

of high school and he joined the United States Air Force. But after two years, he was caught with drugs in the barracks and he was consequently sent to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed Danny with a personality disorder. Now, the Air Force became concerned that Danny wouldn't adjust to military life, so he was recommended for a general discharge. Danny moved back home, but his relationship with his father was strained, so he moved in with his grandparents, although he spent much of his time drinking and doing drugs on the streets. Then he found religion after members of the King's Temple United Pentecostal Church brought him into the church off the street. While he was in the church, he met a petite brunette named Omather Loomis, and they got married in September of 1974.

Now, Omather later testified that problems in the marriage started after she became pregnant with their daughter in mid-1975. At that time, two police officers came looking for Danny after he'd been caught peeping in windows. This was extremely humiliating and embarrassing for his wife, but things kept going downhill. Danny refused to work and became physically abusive, and then one night in 1977, when their daughter was still a toddler, Danny accused Omather of cheating on him. She denied it, but he didn't believe her, so he grabbed a shotgun, pointed it at her, and threatened to kill her. She left and filed for a legal separation from him, but then Danny begged her to come back and promised things would be different.

They got back together for a short period of time, but things weren't different. Basically, Danny disappeared for about a week and left O'Mather stranded at home without a car. And after this, she left him for good. Their divorce was finalized in 1979. She later married another man and he legally adopted O'Mather and Danny's daughter. Yeah, this is really compelling information. And if I was investigating this case, when Danny comes up on the radar, one of the first things I would be doing is going to O'Mather, asking about Danny's behavior behind closed

doors, but also asking about their sex life. What type of things was sex life. What type of things was he into? What type of fantasies did he want her to play out, if any? Was there any indication that he was more sexually gratified when he was restraining her or holding her down? Or was there any type of bondage or restraint used during sex? These are all things that are normal to some people in their personal lives. But if you have someone who's being connected to these crimes where you see the restraints through tape, this could be an indication that this is something he has role played in the past with a significant other. And now it's evolved into this other thing. But these are some of the uncomfortable questions you would want to go back and ask previous spouses or sexual partners to see if Danny had a history of this type of behavior

prior to the murders that started in 89 and 90. This was talking, we're talking 75 to 79. So this would have been before those crimes, but still there could have been an indicator of things to come. Yes, and I would like to say that O'Mather was 19 years old when she married Danny, who was also 19 years old. But she very, very, very strongly resembled Krista Hoyt. Like, it's startling how much they look alike. Yeah, so he definitely had a type. Yeah.

And O'Mather would later testify and say, I don't know what everyone's talking about, that his father, James, was abusive. As far as I know, when I was with him, father and son acted absolutely normal together. I never saw them argue. I never saw James even swear at Danny. Danny never complained to me about any childhood beatings or abuse. As far as I could tell, his father, my father-in-law, James Rowling, was a caring father who provided them with furniture, clothing, bag of groceries when money was short. He helped Danny buy a car, even tried to line up a job for him at the fire department. She said, we all got along just fine. There was no issues. So I don't know who's right, who's, you know, who's on on. Because obviously, Rowling's defense is going to try to use this later to say, listen, this guy was so badly abused, like you can't really hold him responsible for what he did.

And O'Mather's like, nah, I thought they had a really great relationship. And in fact, James helped us in any way he possibly could. He was a good dad. Well, there's always going to be situations where if defenses want to pinpoint one thing to make someone look like a good person, they can do that, right? There's probably going to be outliers where you can say, well, on this one occasion, he helped this person walk across the street when they had groceries in both hands. Yeah, that's true. That person can feel a certain way about an individual and maybe show signs of being a good person, but it doesn't mean behind closed doors or at the core, they're a monster. We've seen that to lesser extremes as police officers, where I've said this to you five or 10 times throughout our two or three years together, where there were occasions

where I would show up as a civilian to a baseball game or a football game. And there's coaches on the sideline or parents in the stands, and they seem like everything's fine. And then later that night at 2 a.m. while I'm working patrol, I'm getting called to the house because that same guy who coaches the football team is beating his wife. And the son who's the quarterback of the team is in a phone-blown fistfight with his dad because he hit his mom. But if you only knew them at the football game, you would think everything's great and you would think this coach is a model citizen when in reality he has some skeletons in his closet as well. What we're talking about here is just a more extreme example of that. And check out the timeline here, right? Because they get married and then she gets pregnant in 1975. And this is when her husband, Danny, starts kind of disappearing at night without any explanation. And then one day police officers show up at her house and they're

like, hey, we're looking for your husband because he's peeping in women's windows. She's embarrassed. She's humiliated. She tried to talk to her husband and she's like, I don't like what you're doing here. You can't hold a job. You smoke weed all the time. And during that conversation, he punches her, gives her a black eye. James Rowling, who's Danny's father, actually offers to pay for therapy and to get Danny counseling. And then after O'Mather leaves Danny, it's James Rowling, who's Danny's father, who gives her money to help her out because she's now a single mother. And then it's James and his wife, who's Danny's parents, that come to visit their granddaughter, O'Mather's daughter. She's keeping

them in her life. They want to be in her life and her baby's life, but it's Danny Rowling who's not in anybody's life. He doesn't want to have anything to do with her and her child, which is his child, after she leaves. So it doesn't seem like James Rowling was this horrible person that Danny described him as and that Danny's mother described him as. However, like you said, there's two sides to every story, and we're going to kind of unpack this because I think it's very important. It's very important because if he was badly, badly, badly abused in the way that it was described, there's some understanding of how he could develop with such a lack of empathy and how he could do what he did. But if that's not what happened, it goes back to where what you said, where it's like sometimes these killers come from perfectly normal families and they have loving parents and something happens that brings them down that path.

I think it's important to figure out which one it was. It's always important to understand that not only from an investigatory standpoint, but also for us to learn in the future. What should we be looking for? How do we prevent these things from happening? How can we be proactive and get in front of these situations before this individual has the opportunity to hurt someone? It's not a, you know, this isn't the minority report. We're probably not going to get to a point where it's pre-crime. Anyone who's seen that movie will know the reference, but it's something where as researchers and historians, to a certain degree, detectives have to be that as well, where they can start to

document patterns of behavior with previous offenders and apply that to future cases. That's how we as detectives become better at our job, to try to find these things before these individuals have an opportunity to carry out actions like this. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right. So meanwhile, Danny's wife leaves, takes their daughter with him, and he starts living a life of crime. In 1979, he robbed a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Columbus, Georgia, and this led to a three-year prison sentence. And while incarcerated, Danny actually confessed to robbing another Winn-Dixie in Montgomery, Alabama. He was ordered to serve time for that robbery once he was done with his sentence in Georgia. While in prison,

Danny met with another psychiatrist and was again diagnosed with a personality disorder. This psychiatrist further noted and elaborated that Danny had an antisocial trend and an aggressive nature. Danny completed his Georgia sentence in 1982, and he was then transferred to Alabama to serve two more years for his self-confessed crime. He was released in 1984, but then in July of 1985, he robbed a Kroger near Interstate 10 in Clinton, Mississippi. Following this robbery, officers followed him into some woods across the interstate, but lost track of him. The police didn't know this at the time, but Danny slept in the woods for a few hours, then broke into a nearby house and stole a car.

The next morning, he was pulled over in that stolen car. And when officers searched the car, they found a gun that had been reported stolen in Tennessee. So here you go. Here's another situation where, in hindsight, reverse engineering should be taking place, where as investigators from Gainesville are made aware of this individual, right, that's been on the radar of Shreveport, they should not only be looking at the murder that's in question, but the suspect in their previous criminal history. And if they had done that, maybe they did, they would have seen these little blips of a connection staying in the woods for a period of time. Well, you know that in your case, you have an offender who's comfortable staying in the woods. That in and of itself is not enough to go, oh my God, we got our guy. But in totality,

with everything else we're talking about, there should be some light bulbs going off here where you're saying, hey, even well before, we're talking 1984, this guy's already showing a behavior of being willing to stay and kind of hide out in the woods to avoid apprehension. Does that sound like someone we know? Yeah, it's our guy here in Gainesville. So I hope that these connections are being made. In 1979, he's robbing stores and getting told he's got antisocial personality disorder in prison. There's a lot here. There's a lot here.

But that little thing just that stood out to me where this really out of the ordinary behavior where he's sleeping in the woods to avoid being caught. That's not something that every killer is out there doing or every offender is out there doing. And I just, I just thought of something as well. I had mentioned, you talked about robberies. A lot of people were quick to mention in the comments, Israel keys is someone who committed a series of robberies before as well. So good point there. It's not, to me, and if I'm wrong, it's still not the common trend for serial killers. It seems like they usually have a lane, but you, I stand corrected. There are serial killers in the past who have also, in conjunction with these murders, have carried out a series of robberies or other crimes. So they're not just susceptible to doing things

that involve the killing of a human being. They will conduct other crimes, whatever, maybe for a sense of gratification, for the thrill by killing. They'll start by setting fires or killing animals or doing robberies, breaking into people's houses, stealing things. It's like they have this desire to walk on the wrong side of the law or they have a desire to take a life, but they're sort of testing the waters. They're kind of getting in and being like, oh, how does this illegal activity feel to me? I like it. How am I getting away with it? I am getting away with it. Okay, let's up the ante, right? And why is that? There's the same thing as gambling. You know, people start, they gamble a little and they're like, oh, I love this. I like this feeling. And then that feeling wears off and they got to keep pushing it. They got to go the next level. They got to, they got to up the intensity. So yes. Talk about serial killers more specifically. A lot of the times you'll find

that when you have these serial killers as children, they were harming or killing small animals. And it's again, that gratification of having something that's defenseless and taking advantage of it and control of it, and then ultimately hurting it. But as you just mentioned, that dopamine hit that you get from killing a small animal eventually will wear off and you need a bigger high. You need something else to get your blood pumping again. And that's where the escalation occurs to maybe humans at that point, where they actually escalate to this level of, oh, you know what? Animals are too easy. I want to up the ante. And that's where you end up finding when you start to look into these serial killers' pasts. You go back and talk to their parents and their friends and their family. They go, yeah, it was a little odd. They were in the backyard and they were torturing squirrels. And we found it a couple of and then thought it was just a, you know, kid being a kid. Or they move around a lot. And every time, every new place they move, the neighbor's cats start dying. Yeah. And that's not sarcasm. That actually, that,

that happens where you see it where it's like, you can always cough. I almost said it again. You can chalk it up. You can chalk it up to, you know, oh, it's just these kids being kids. They didn't mean it. But I think most people would go, oh, you know what? Something's not right about that. Something's not right. Let's pay attention to this one. Let's keep an eye on this one. Yeah. Yeah. As you should. And I think sleeping in the woods in general, I mean, this is a person who couldn't hold down a job. This is a person who had antisocial personality disorder. Sleeping in the woods seems like exactly the type of thing a drifter who is antisocial would do.

I'm with you. Yeah. And then in conjunction with what I said earlier, the Gainesville cases, to have that with this individual who's now a suspect for them, I could tell you that if I were reading this report with everything else I've already read,

my ears would be perked up. Yeah, you're like, we got our guy. We have something here. Or just a really strange set of coincidences that just look like this guy's the guy. There's two identical weirdos prowling around out there. Haunting our forests. Exactly. So Danny Rowling, he's taken into custody.

He eventually pleaded guilty to robbery and grand theft auto. He received a four-year sentence. So this is, once again, somebody who spent a good amount of his adult life behind bars, which isn't all. This also isn't like a great indicator that somebody is going to be able to fit into society once you've spent so much time in prison. So he was paroled in July of 1988. He returned to Shreveport where he moved in with his parents. His neighbors described him as a loner and some neighborhood children nicknamed him Rambo because he often wore bandanas and camo pants tucked into combat boots. And sometimes he wore a large knife strapped to his leg. He would practice karate kicks in his parents' backyard and jog down the street with a log on his shoulders. So he's like

Shreveport's Napoleon Dynamite over here. Oh my God. Can you imagine though? Like, come on. You're like in this neighborhood and this like grown ass man dressed in this way has a log over his shoulders and he's jogging down the street and come on it's ridiculous it's absolutely ludicrous it's ridiculous but i don't think many people including myself would go oh you know what this guy's a serial killer i'd be like there's some weirdos out there yeah there's some weirdos out there i got them listen i i i can't tell you the stories as a police officer i believe we'd show up to a call. And if I, if you, if I told you the story, you wouldn't believe me. It's just the strangest shit. There were so many times where I'd be

sitting there with my buddy and it's a non-dangerous situation. And we got someone who's doing stuff like this, like karate chopping and breaking things up at the top of Jinx Tower. Shout out to everybody in Central Falls, Rhode Island, who knows what that is. And we're sitting there going, this has got to be like, we got to be on camera somewhere. This is like Grand Theft Auto. This just does not make sense. But yeah, it happened. So I wouldn't look at this person and immediately think, oh, you know, this is someone we all

have to watch out for. He's dangerous because there are people that are just different. There's some other people that do things and have passions that you and I may say, this is just completely out of the ordinary. But to them, they like doing it and they're not serial killers. So totally take it. You take it. You totally mention it. You notice it.

You make a note of it. But I don't think that the knife being attached is something where I'd be like, OK, got to be careful. This was the 80s, though, man. It's like exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's the 80s and it's Shreveport, Louisiana. So, and just to mention quickly, we're seeing this pattern of this person committing crimes and going to prison and then getting out.

And I know I'm someone who's a big proponent of like, oh, here we are. The justice system failing us where this individual, if they were behind bars, you had said 88, I believe they got out. July of 88. Yeah. This wouldn't have happened, but this is not one of those cases. No, because he was in, yeah, he was doing petty robberies. It's a non-violent, you know, I mean, now these robberies are still victims and you can make an argument that he didn't get enough time, but this is not a crime where they're going to do life in prison. The justice system can only do so much. No, it's not like he raped a woman and then went to jail for like six months

and then got out. But that has happened. That has happened. And those are the ones where we're going to, you know, we'll dive in on it and we'll call it for how we see it. But unfortunately, this is not one of those cases. So based on what we've already discussed,

if it does turn out that Danny's the guy, there's nothing the justice system at this point could have done to prevent this. He was going to get out at some point. And I would argue that whenever he got out, 88, 89, 90, 94, when he got out, these things still would have transpired

because this is who he is. If he's the guy. We're also not saying that Danny Rowling up to this point had not committed any violent crimes. That's true. He could have already just not been captured. He didn't get caught doing that. He didn't serve time for that. So I would venture to say it's possible

that he had already dabbled in that. That's what I was going to say. At minimum, there's a shrine somewhere in the woods out there where he has harmed raccoon skulls all over it multiple multiple animals i would bet my salary on it i agree there's there's an area that he has kept his his souvenirs from these actions and it was something that he had been probably doing

since he was a child since being abused by his own father but knew enough allegedly if he was abused but knew enough to hide it from the people around him. Yes, that's right. So the neighborhood kids actually seemed to like Danny, which is pretty. Yeah, because he's acting like a kid. You know, he's out there dressed like Rambo running around the log on his shoulders. That's awesome. As a kid, I would have been like, this dude, he's great, man.

He's not like the other adults. I know my dad's boring, wears a suit to work and comes home and asks me for a beer while he watches the news. Danny's wearing a bandana, he's got a knife, and he's like running drills in the street. This guy's awesome. So they would sit around while he sang songs and played his guitar. As part of his parole, Danny was required to meet with his probation officer once a month. He was also supposed to maintain steady employment, but he struggled with that. Danny rarely stayed at a job for more than a few months, if that, and his co-workers recalled him being quick-tempered and resentful of following orders. By May of 1990, 35-year-old Danny was still on parole and living with his parents in their

Shreveport, Louisiana home, but things were not going well and tensions were escalating by mid-May. Then, on the evening of May 18th, a simple request escalated into violence when James, Danny's father, asked him to roll up his car windows because it had started to rain. Danny said he didn't want to, and in a rage, he left the house. James followed him, armed with a gun, and fired three to four warning shots into the air before returning to the house where his wife Claudia was waiting. As James stood in the kitchen, Danny suddenly kicked the door in, holding a gun and challenged his father, saying, quote, Old man, you want to shoot it out? End quote.

Claudia, terrified, fled the room and moments later she heard gunshots. When she returned to the kitchen, she saw James lying on the floor, bleeding from two gunshot wounds, one to the head and one to his side, and Danny was nowhere to be found. Yo, so this dude legitimately shot his father. Not only shot his father, shot his father in the head.

He wanted to kill him. Intention on killing him, no doubt. So the police were called. James was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. And although he would end up surviving, he'd be left blind in one eye. Danny was charged with attempted murder and a warrant was issued for his arrest. But despite an extensive search, the police couldn't locate him. Should have checked the woods.

Should have checked the woods. All right. Exactly. You know that, dude. Not kidding. He was. Should have checked the woods. Should have checked the woods. All right. Exactly. You know that dude. Not kidding. He was camped out in the woods. Full ass tree house built up there. Okay.

He's got his binoculars. He's looking out, you know. Oh, my goodness. This is insane. Should we take our last break before we go any further? Let's do it. Let's take our last break. So Danny Rowling shoots his father in the head and the side. You know, this isn't I'm firing a warning shot. He's not shooting him in the foot

to stop him from running after him. He's trying to kill him. He goes on the run. Police can't find him for a little bit, but they would soon find out that around 1130 p.m. on the 18th, Danny went to the house of a man he knew in Shreveport. He headed upstairs and found the man and his wife watching TV in their bedroom. Danny pointed a gun at the couple and said, quote, I need your help. I'm in trouble. I just shot my daddy and I think he might be dead, end quote. He told them he needed money to get to Dallas. Now, the husband managed to talk Danny into putting the gun down, but Danny pulled out another gun. He then stole $21 from the wife's purse and fled on foot. And, like, hopefully nobody's ever in this situation, but if this happens, give him the money. Don't try to talk him into putting the gun down.

Don't try to do this. Just say, yeah, take whatever you want and get the hell out, okay? Don't try to talk him into putting the gun down. Don't try to do this. Just say, yeah, take whatever you want and get the hell out. Okay? Don't try to be a hero. So the next day at around 6 a.m., Danny's car was found in a Motel 6 parking lot in Shreveport. The police staked out the area for almost three hours, but then they discovered that Danny had never checked into the hotel. Why would he spend money on a hotel when the woods are right there? So the search continued.

Danny was long gone. The Shreveport police lost track of Danny until September 7th when he was arrested in Ocala, Florida for robbing a grocery store at gunpoint. At around 1 p.m. on the 7th, Danny walked into the Winn-Dixie supermarket on State Road 200 with a.38 caliber handgun. He threatened several cashiers with the gun and ordered them to take money from the cash registers and put it into a bag. After collecting the money, he ran out the back door with the bag, jumped into a stolen Mustang he had parked nearby, and drove off. Witnesses inside the store called

911 and provided a description of Danny and the stolen car. Almost immediately, Danny was spotted driving the car around a nearby parking lot, just a block away from the grocery store. When officers tried to stop him, Danny fled, and a high-speed chase ensued on State Road 200, ending only when Danny wrecked into another car at a stoplight about 19 blocks away. Danny jumped out of the car and tried to run, but he was caught and taken into custody. He was then charged with armed robbery, grand theft, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, aggravated assault, fleeing a law enforcement officer, and numerous traffic violations.

Okay, so this is where we're going to get into some territory where it's like, if this guy was arrested and charged with all this stuff, how is he on the streets not long after to start committing, you know, these murders in Gainesville? So when the Ocala police discovered that Danny was actually wanted in Shreveport for the attempted murder of his father, they informed the Shreveport for the attempted murder of his father. They informed the Shreveport authorities, and he was then held without bail. Meanwhile, Ocala authorities continued investigating the Winn-Dixie robbery, determined to uncover as much as they could. And they learned that the Mustang Danny was driving during the robbery had been stolen from Tampa earlier that same day. Danny gets around. He's quick with it, man. The

police further discovered that on September 2nd, Danny had robbed a Save and Pack grocery store in Tampa. Armed with a gun, he'd held up three cashiers and made off with thousands of dollars in cash. After leaving the store, he jumped into a car he parked nearby, but two police officers confronted him. When Danny pointed a gun out of the car window and sped towards the officers, they were forced to open fire. Danny got away, but he went on to burglarize three apartments. Before leaving each location, he left a banana peel on a chair. The Ocala police continued investigating Danny's crimes and determined that the car he used in the Save and Pack robbery on September 2nd had been stolen from a Gainesville student housing complex on August 30th. Now, it doesn't seem like the Ocala police realized there could be a connection between Danny and the Gainesville Ripper at that time.

However, when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was investigating Danny after receiving Cindy's tip, who remember Cindy was that woman from Shreveport. Her and her husband, Steve, used to hang out with Danny. And Danny told Steve he liked to put knives into people. All right. So Cindy's tip, the FDLE is investigating it. And they definitely thought there could be a connection. You think? Yeah.

At this point, it's. Yeah. We got there eventually, Stephanieie took us a little bit oh the gainesville police man the fdle okay thank god for shreveport make calling them though yeah imagine i mean yeah imagine if they hadn't sitting here and this could be the gainesville ripper unsolved case. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It sounds like this is the guy. I'm going to go out on a limb and say Danny might be our guy.

I think you might be right. Okay. So Danny stealing a car from a Gainesville student housing complex on August 30th meant he was in Gainesville just two days after the last two students were found dead. As FDLE investigators continued digging into Danny and his possible connection to the Gainesville Ripper murders, they remembered that the First Union National Bank of Gainesville had been robbed at gunpoint on August 27th. Now, if you remember from part one of this series, the bank robber, a white man with a gun, managed to get away with $7,000. Then the police searched for the robber. They weren't able to find him right away, but later that night at around 1 a.m.,

a police officer saw a suspicious white man enter the woods across the street from the bank. The officer called for backup and the police tried to speak to that man, but he got away. Officers eventually located this man's campsite in the woods and as they approached the site, they saw red dye- dye stained money on the ground because remember, the bank teller had slipped

a dye pack into the money. And it seemed like they'd located the bank robber's hideout. When an officer looked inside the tent, he found more red stained money and a gun inside a tote. At that point, the officers called for a crime scene unit and they gathered multiple pieces of evidence from the campsite and the tent, including a cassette tape and a cassette player, as well as the tote with a gun. The investigators looked through the tote further. They found a ski mask. They found duct tape. They found a screwdriver. So they found both types of tapes, both types of tapes here at the crime scene or the campsite of the bank robber. Now, they did not locate a knife at the scene.

So no one thought that the bank robber's items could be linked to the Gainesville Ripper. I see it. I gotcha. You know something? That's ridiculous. But that's that is the absence of evidence constitute as evidence itself. No, I mean, I think in this case right here, not having a knife just means one component of a bigger crime may not be there. But yeah, it was sheathed and strapped to Danny's freaking leg. Exactly. Because he's Rambo.

One other thing I wanted to point out about the tape that just dawned on me now, and I should have brought it up earlier, is we keep talking about the tape in the context of DNA. What if this person was removing the tape after using it because they were in fear of a fingerprint impression, oils or hair? But then I was saying earlier how it's kind of contradictory that this person would leave behind semen if they were so concerned about DNA. There is another wrinkle here. And I don't know if this individual, if it was Danny, was that smart, but it is something that is a little bit more, I guess it's something that could be more usable back in this timeframe. Although I don't know if it was being done a lot, but you could have a situation where if he was using duct tape

from a certain role and he was leaving that tape behind, I don't know if it was prevalent in investigatory practices then. But one thing you could do is if they ever found an area like this where they found a roll of duct tape, you can take the duct tape from crime scenes and actually compare it to that roll of duct tape to see if it comes from the same roll. You remember what case they did that in? No, I can't. There's been multiple cases they've done it in. A very big one that we covered, Casey Anthony. Casey Anthony. There you go. Casey Anthony was a good one, but there's been others and they can see from the fibers and the patterns and the manufacturing process, if the tape found at a crime scene is the same tape from a role that's found at a different scene of maybe the home of a potential suspect or something like that. So is this also something this person could have been thinking about? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'm giving them too much

credit. But this is something where by removing the tape from the crime scene, even finding this roll of duct tape, you wouldn't be able to conduct this type of practice to see if there is a connection. So maybe, like I said, maybe I'm giving too much credit. No, that's an interesting theory, actually. Very interesting. So obviously, consequently, because they didn't think that these robbers' items were attached to the Gainesville Ripper case.

Because why would they? Why would they? Because there's no knife. There's no knife. And what really bugs me. Poor Hal over here is. I know. Hal's like, I got evidence that I'm not even like around Shreveport.

Nope, you're the boyfriend. Guilty. We're joking here. It's ridiculous. But like also what really bugs me is that not only did they find a cassette tape, but they found a cassette tape player. They technically could have put that tape in, hit play right there in the woods and listen to it really quick just to get an idea of what was on it. When they put it into evidence, they can be like cassette tape. And there's like, I don't know, Beatles music on it, you know, described what was on the cassette tape. They could have listened to it right there.

They didn't have to bring it back to the police station and put it into a cassette player. There was a cassette player right there. I was thinking about the cassette player after last episode, and I was going back and forth because I said, you know, why wouldn't they listen to it?

Maybe need a search warrant. Here's my take on it. This is my lawyer hat. They wouldn't need a search warrant. And the reason they wouldn't need a search warrant is because this is not a property. The individual, the owner of that cassette tape, technically, by leaving it in the woods, which they do not own, has abandoned said property. And therefore, it's fair game. The same thing happens when narcotics officers like myself go by and steal

the trash that's on a public sidewalk from potential drug dealers. It's fair game for us. So in this sense, at minimum- Wouldn't even need a warrant. Yeah. You do not need a warrant, but I will tell you guys this. Even if it were a situation where it was kind of in the middle, where maybe we should get a warrant, I'm here to tell you, and I can't speak for everyone. I can only speak for myself. Am I going to play 30 seconds of that tape just to see what I got? I am. Probably. Yeah. Probably. Now, can I document that before putting it into the evidence if I didn't, wasn't supposed to do it? No, but it would maybe give me an indication to go get a warrant because what's on that tape could be instrumental to solving the case. So do I think they needed a warrant? No. Should they have listened to the

tape? Absolutely. Even if they did need a warrant, could they have listened? Because you could even argue exigent circumstances where a dangerous individual is on the run and that tape could have information that would allow you to apprehend them sooner than later. You could even make that legal argument. So there's multiple ways to go about this where they could have listened to the tape and may have solved this case much sooner. Yep. And because they didn't make that connection and they didn't listen to the tape, all of these items were entered into evidence and they sat there untouched for months. Now that FDLE investigators knew about Danny's history of robberies and the fact that he was in Gainesville in late August, it seemed very likely that he could have been responsible

for the August 27th bank robbery. Investigators wanted to go through the evidence collected in the bank robbery case, so they went to the evidence room and located everything they could find. This included the gun, the screwdriver, cassette tape, and cassette player. Right away, the screwdriver stood out

as being really important since the Gainesville Ripper had used a screwdriver to gain entry into two of the three victims' homes, which they knew when they found it. So annoying. So annoying. The cassette tape also caught their attention and investigators decided to listen to it. They popped it into the cassette player and started playing the 58-minute long audio tape. And as they listened, they heard a man with a Louisiana accent say his full name. This man, Danny Carroll Rowland. Investigators continued listening as Danny sang and played guitar for 11 original songs about heartbreak and outlaws. Here's part of one song called Mystery Rider. You're a rebel, no one can tame you. In case you couldn't make out the words, Danny sang, quote, what's your name?

You're a killer, a drifter gone insane. You're a rebel. No one can tame, end quote. As investigators continued listening, they said to themselves, why the hell didn't we listen to this when we first found it? No, I'm kidding. They didn't say that. They probably did. Yeah. It just didn't end listen to this when we first found it? No, I'm kidding. They didn't say that. They probably did. Yeah.

It just didn't end up in a report. No, no, no. So as they continued listening, they learned that the whole tape wasn't just songs. In one part of the tape, Danny talked about how to kill a deer. Aim for the lungs, straight through the rib cage. Either there or the heart, but best thing to do is hit the lung. And at the end of that tape, Danny spoke directly to his father and stated, quote, I never had a daddy that I could go to and confide in with my problems,

or you just pushed me away at a young age. I guess you and I, we both missed out on a lot. I wanted to make you proud of me. I let you down. I'm sorry for that. Well, I'm going to sign off for a little bit. I've got something I've got to do. I love you. Bye. End quote. Interesting. So this tape is pretty self-explanatory. He says his name in the tape, so it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out. But let's for this just say he didn't say his name. What is something you said to us earlier about Danny Rollins, something that we knew for sure that he was known to do before finding this campsite?

Play his guitar and sing for the kids. Bingo. There you go. So we know that he has a background in this. And this person, again, with everything else we have, also is known to be a guitar player and a singer who's done this in the past. It was known to his community. And now you have this case in Gainesville where this tent is found that we know, based on the dye packs, is more than likely connected to, at minimum, a robbery. And you have all of these things in this tape as well that are in addition to the other things we've already discussed. So a lot here. I wouldn't say one thing is a smoking gun, but there's a lot here in totality that would suggest with a high degree of certainty that Danny Rollins is your guy. And that's taking for a second that he said his full name. If he hadn't said that, just what we had

was good. And not only that, this is like kind of an audio diary of some kind manifesto because he's a weirdo who lives in the the forest by himself so he's like recording himself um taking talking to himself you know but maybe when he's recording himself he doesn't feel so much like he is talking to himself but even if he hadn't said his name you could have easily done a voice analysis and and been like 100 yeah, same dude. 100%. There's so much here. There's so much here. So after reviewing the tape found in the tent and hearing Danny say his own name, the police were convinced that he could be the Gainesville Ripper. They were convinced that he could

be the Gainesville Ripper and the murderer of the Grissom family. Progress. Progress. We're getting there. You know, they're getting warmer. They got this Ed dude in jail. They're blaming Julie's boyfriend for what's going on in Shreveport. And they're announcing this publicly.

But this guy, he's got to literally step in front of them and hold a sign that says, I am Danny Rawlings and I am the killer before they're like, definitely sure. Well, in fairness, it wasn't a sign. It was an audio tape. OK, let's be honest, Stephanie. No, I'm saying even the audio tape didn't get them all the way there. It's complete sarcasm.

I mean, literally, he basically held up a sign. But yeah, so they're doing their due diligence with Danny, but everyone else, they're just like throwing their name out there like it's nothing. But they're doing their due diligence with Danny. Thank God. So they obtained a sample of Danny's blood. They discovered that he had type B blood, just like the killer of the Grissom family, just like the Gainesville Ripper. And with that revelation, the pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. And on November 15th, 1991, a grand jury indicted Danny for the first-degree murders of the Gainesville Ripper victims, Sonia Larson, Christy Powell, Krista Hoyt, Manny Tabato, and Tracy Paulus. He was now facing the death penalty.

Meanwhile, Louisiana authorities were confident that Danny was also responsible for the Grissom family murders. However, with Danny already facing the death penalty in Florida and considering the mountain of evidence against him, they were deliberating on whether or not to pursue charges. But no matter the decision they made, Danny was going to remain behind bars where he belonged. But the story's not over and we're gonna pick back up next week yeah i know we've made light of some of this and it's not funny that that it took all of this to get there um i am glad to see that we did get there we don't always have this type of outcome where they find out who committed this crime well he made it kind of easy let's's be honest. But let's be even more open about this. How many cases where there's been evidence and the police officers unbeknownst to us didn't do their job. And right now, as you and I are sitting here

talking, there's a piece of evidence that was overlooked by some law enforcement officer in some part of the country where the person responsible for that crime is right there in front of them. And just because of the ineptness of that officer or that department, that family doesn't have closure. And we don't even know about it because it hasn't been exposed to this level, right? There hasn't been a conclusion. There hasn't been an arc to the story. So in that context, it's not funny because I can tell you as one of those police officers, this isn't the only time something like this happens. And there's positive things to take from this case so far. There's also negative things. On a positive note, I'm glad to see there was a collaborative effort amongst multiple

agencies that were able to work together and share information, which resulted in this outcome. It's unfortunate that it took this long. I would love to know some of the specifics behind decisions that were made regarding this tape, because I can tell you in my own department, when you have this hierarchy of people where not all the leaders are that bright, there are decisions that are made by certain individuals that affect an entire case and it's unfortunate. So I would love to be a fly on a wall and get to talk to these guys individually to see who really dropped the ball. But I'm glad to see we are where we are, even though it took too long. I think more than one person dropped the ball, to be fair. I agree.

It's fair. It's fair. I talk about my own personal experiences and I never say names, but I can tell you that when I was a detective, there were people in positions of authority that should not have been there. Just it's that simple through attrition, through seniority, they got promoted and they sometimes tell us to do something and you basically, you have to do it the way they're telling you to do it because it's a paramilitary organization. But we would sit behind, you know, in our offices going, this guy is a moron. And I just it is what it is. So I just I don't understand why you wouldn't listen to the tape.

Well, that's the thing. Right. So I can tell you as a detective being there, even if my supervisor said, hey, yeah, Levasseur, process this, throw it in evidence. You know what I'm doing? I'm clicking play. I'm clicking play. And then I mean, I'm just I'm just curious. I'm clicking play. And then I mean, I'm just, I'm just curious. Like, I'm just curious. You know what happened LT, Lieutenant? What happened LT is as I was

placing the tape into the evidence bag, as you directed me to do, I accidentally hit the play button and it started playing. And then I was trying to fumble with it to get it to turn off, but it was in the bag and I couldn't. And I heard this name being said, maybe we might want to listen to this. You know, you can take the credit for it, but maybe we might want to listen to this. Something like that would have happened. And like you said, it was found in the woods. It's not private property. Abandoned property.

It's just as far as they know, they could be like, oh, we came across the tape recorder in the woods and we had no idea it could be connected to this guy. And we just listened to it. Like nothing would have happened. If for no other reason than to try to find the bank robber, right? You don't have to come to the conclusion based on the tape and the tent and all the, in the proximity to the murders that, Hey, maybe this robber is also the serial killer. It, you have the dye packs there.

There's clearly a connection between the robber and this tent area. So why wouldn't you listen to the tape? As soon as you realize that this is a recorded tape by the person who is residing at this campsite, not just some tape of music. So you should have listened to the tape to see what type of things you would have seen. Maybe they wouldn't say their name. That's just like, that's pure luck. But maybe they would have said things about where they're from or where they were visiting. Or maybe you would have heard sounds in the background that would have indicated other locations where they're staying. There was a lot there. Or maybe he's like, just robbed First National Bank, robbed this other bank. Maybe it's a log

of how many banks he's robbed and how much money he's gotten from each place. You don't know until you play it. Or maybe plans for the future. What targets are in the future? Hey, was just outside of this such and such bank. Looks like there's one security guard better to do it at night looking forward next week, something like that. There's no excuse for it. So it's one thing that's really egregious, but we're harping on it so much is because it could have changed the trajectory of this case entirely. And it wouldn't have prevented what happened because most of the murders were done at this point but it would have allowed them to get access to danny faster than they did and to be on his trail faster than they were yeah absolutely well like i said it's not done there's still more to

come of course and i also wonder and maybe we might not find out we may never find out but i wonder how many more if there are any other victims. Oh, yeah. Are there other individuals, other cases that are unsolved out there where the MO might have been different and we just haven't connected? I always go back to the most recent cases and I think about Rex Ewerman. I think about how they're still there as they dig deeper. They're finding more and more bodies. They're finding more and more people connected to this guy. And so I always wonder whenever a serial killer is taken off the street, yeah, they've admitted to some, but how many are there? How many unsolved cases are they actually connected to? So fascinating case, always a lot to learn and looking forward to part three. Yes. All right. Thank you, everybody, for being here. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to like, follow, subscribe.

And if you're listening on audio, don't forget to leave a positive review and let us know how great Stephanie's cameras are. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You want to say it tonight? What am I going to say? Everyone stay safe out there.

Everyone stay safe out there. Have a good night. We'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye.