Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 452: Danny Rolling Part I - I Need a Job

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

This week, we begin our two-part series on Danny Rolling AKA The Gainesville Ripper and explore the bleak origins of a deluded failure who would later go on a terrifying rampage at the University of Florida.Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

I appreciate how all the new true crime documentaries, they're trying to do more from the victim's perspective and tell the victim's story, I think it's interesting. In every one of these new documentaries, always, absolutely, of course though, is that like, Courtney, love to laugh, Courtney, you always find her with a packet of peanuts. Oh sure. She's literally an angel. And just one time, I want to hear, there's been like Rodney Smith, victim number one, he was a real fucking piece of shit.

Well, he's also a victim, so that Trump's a little bit doesn't mean, I just want to be like, Rodney, honestly, I'm glad he's dead. And honestly, if there was two Rodneys, I'd wish the other Rodney would be dead as well. Well, you are a horrible interviewee for this documentary, welcome to Rodney's... Rodney owes me... I don't know... Rodney was brutally murdered... And I can't get the money back because it's a part of the victim's association.

Brutally murdered. Okay, this is the last podcast on the left, everyone. I am Ben, hanging out with Henry, and of course, Mark is Parks, hey, I understand where you're coming from, Henry, but I understand that from a different perspective, I'm watching the John Wayne Gacy documentary, and why not interview just one child who smiled while he was a clown? Just one child who said yes, but it was the best birthday party of my life. I will stand by the fact that I don't think that John Wayne Gacy was a very good clown.

He was not, he was scary all the time. Well, we know that because of his, the psychological makeup of Justice Makeup, like literally the pointed edges, and I just feel like when you watch him, John Wayne Gacy is only funny to other men who look like Teamsters. Well, as a matter of fact, John Wayne Gacy is currently headlining in Austin this weekend. All right, let's do this story. We are so excited to bring you this tale of... Are we?

Well, it's... I'm gonna say we're back to blood, back to good, back to mayhem, and the person who's gonna provide that blood for us today is a demonic character, Danny Rowling. This shit's fucked up. Danny Rowling, aka the Gainesville Ripper, was an American serial killer drifter who murdered eight people in single, double, or triple murder events between November of 1989 and August of 1990, and most of those murders occurred over a period of just four days. Holy sh-t, Nikes.

He's the type of serial killer that kind of, he confuses me in many ways, because who he is as a person versus what his crimes were like, to me, don't add up. Like a lot of times I think that when you see a serial killer, you know, oh, this is gonna be a chaotic, they had a chaotic personal life, so then their murders are also the scenes, the crime scenes are gonna be very chaotic. But this is the story of a drifter killer who also was a very meticulous, highly organized serial killer who also worked in sprees, which is very scary. That's what I was gonna ask, if they took place over four days, is he a serial killer

or a spree killer? Because he did commit a triple murder about five, six months before the spree murder. Then yeah, he's absolutely a serial killer. It's just that the cooldown period that he had in those four days was very, very short, because each one was planned and each one was meticulously executed, if you'll excuse the pun. I won't. I won't.

And I think you should be putting the stocks for it. He's in pun jail. You're in free speech jail and Mark is in pun jail, which means I'm running this fucking business. Oh God, here we go. Oh God, he sold the mics, there's just piles of beer here. What? I wonder how long I have to spend in the pun atentury over here.

I've got 10 more years. Oh wow, all I wanted to do was make a small reference to Michael Jordan, how he's a basketball player more than a baseball player. So this man's a serial killer who happened to play in the spree game. You're using my sports reference. Yeah, kind of. Well, as far as the scope of Danny's crimes went, he also committed armed robberies and rapes in addition to committing murders that went beyond slash throats and bound wrists

into areas of horror that venture well into the realm of hyper-violence. I don't know if this episode's going to be the gold star episode. I believe it's going to be next episode. This episode is going to wander into gold star territory, definitely. But next episode, we're 100% sitting in a gold star seat. This is one of those old school heavy hitters. This is one of those like, this is back in the day kind of zero. Roar of the crowd.

From a combination of a product and a process killer, Danny Rowling both killed using horrific methods and posed some of the mutilated bodies post-mortem in ways that give the Richard Chase crime scenes a run for their money. Uh-oh, okay. So it might not be a gold star episode, but this is definitely a Mr. Yuck episode. There's some Yuck. If there's anything Richard Chase related, it's going to be nasty. But that was Danny Rowling, the serial killer.

Danny Rowling, the man was 98% of the time a friendly and easygoing, if emotionally stunted fuck up with delusions of grandeur concerning a possible songwriting career. It's the songwriting career, which is the difference. Because what do we know about frustrated musicians, frustrated artists in general? Sometimes they take those frustrations out on their would be consumer class. They could or they take it out on themselves. Now it would be unfair to call Danny Rowling a failed musician, because he never really tried making it outside of singing songs about death to children at birthday parties.

That's honestly, that's pretty sweet, yeah, it's good. It's pretty good. But while his songs are better than say Charles Manson songs, when it comes to technical ability, they just don't have the same zazz. Because Manson did have a weird star quality about him. He did. He'd go into parties. I can talk sideways.

Do you want to see what it's like? And they're all like, there's something about this guy. But Danny Rowling didn't have that X factor. No. No, I don't think any of these people belong on Teen Beat, on the cover of maybe like Teen Beat and Murder. But Manson was, and Manson got the ear of the Beach Boys, which at the time, I mean like he was closer to having a hit record than the three of us ever were.

Yeah, that's true. We're not musicians. We're microphones. Well, Danny Rowling saw himself as a kind of Jesse James, a suave, misunderstood, singing outlaw whose crimes could either be blamed on an entity called Yenad. You get it? It's Danny spelled backwards. Oh my.

Or it could also be blamed on a demon called Gemini, which Danny just fucking ripped from the Exorcist 3. Maybe I think, honestly, I'd blame it on the fact that his haircut, he looks like Bert from Sesame Street. He has that weird, what's about serial killers? And having a haircut where all of your hair is piled in a little like circle on the very top of your head. Well, it's fun because then the prison guards can grab you by it.

But even though Danny tried to later blame his crimes on internal entities, just like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy did, he was also constantly apologizing for his actions like a child who believes that just saying, I'm sorry is all that you got to do to make their transgressions go away. Emotionally stunted. He was like a little boy. But even though Danny was admittedly abused as a child in ways that make Gacy's childhood seem tame, his life was still, like the lives of most serial killers, a long string of pathetic

events perpetrated by pathetic people for pathetic reasons. But before we get into the story of Danny rolling an earnest, let's acknowledge our two sources today. We've got the Gainesville Ripper by Mark Rizuck, which is a more straightforward, classic true crime book, and the more sensationalistic and recent A Monster for All Time by J.T. Hunter. It's interesting. Normally it's reversed.

Normally the old one is the sensationalist one and the new one is the, let's really take a look at this now that we're mature in its 2005. The most serial killers have pretty rough childhoods as we know, and usually that rough childhood is caused by one single parent. Because I was racking my fucking brain about it. I couldn't really think of a serial killer who got it from both barrels, besides like say Ed Gein, but even then it was mostly his mother. Henry Lee Lucas.

I can put him up there. Henry Lee Lucas was, I believe, molested by the entire family and beaten by the entire family. But was Henry Lee Lucas an actual serial killer, or did he just kill his mom and a couple other people and lie about all the rest? Interesting. Either way, being a hypocrite and a liar is the worst sin of all. I'm sorry.

Danny Rowling's case, the psychotic parent that broke their child, was his father, James Rowling. When Danny was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1965. Marcus, in order to really set the tone for Shreveport, Louisiana, can you say it correctly? All right. When Danny was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1965. That's how you can tell what his childhood was like. Shreveport.

Shreveport. Yeah. You don't say any letters. That's the key. There's no letters. Shreveport, Louisiana. Yeah. They're in Rowling.

I like that. Son of James Rowling. It kind of makes it easier on the brain. Sure. Okay. So Danny's father immediately hated his newborn son because his wife, Claudia, had become pregnant within months of their marriage. Apparently this fucked with James Rowling's life plan because James was soon forced to

take a job he hated on an oil rig to support his new surprise family, which began the resentment towards Danny before he was even fucking born. I mean, I'm going to channel the father from the movie Dirty Work. Has this guy heard of pulling out? He knows he's complicit in the creation of this child, right? No, no, no. She was so swept by his eroticism and his deep, deep plunging inside of her. There was nothing else he could do.

There was nothing else he could do. And her eggs honestly had the option of staying shut. I think he had the option easier than anyone else in the situation to just pull it out. I might just be speaking for my own childhood, but I thought all fathers have resentment. They're not supposed to. You're supposed to have a child when you're ready. No, my father loved me very much and still doesn't stay. You fucking weakling.

There's a lot of good parents out there who planned to have children. And even unplanned a lot of those babies. All of those babies are loved as well. But that was just one of Danny's opening disadvantages. While most serial killers have to wait a few years for a head injury, Danny Rowling's head injury came while he was in the process of being born. The doctor delivering Danny clamped a little too hard on Danny's head with the forceps, breaking the veins in Danny's skull, which is exactly what happened to serial killer

Haddon Clark on his way out of the birth canal. Very interesting because him and Haddon Clark also have a lot in common in terms of what they did, the types, the way that they lived, and drifter killing. And also, his mother was severely abused while she was pregnant with him because of his anger that he had towards having a new family coming in. And obviously, this is not a good way to start. No, it's not. Also, that is what happened to, this is not a bit, that's what happened to the Kennedy to the...

Rosemary. Rosemary. Yes, that's exactly how she got the ailments. We need to start a program against head squishing. I don't understand how the doctors did it. Were they, did you go to, like, Lenny from of Mice and Men Hospital? Like, how do the doctors, they can take a small thing out of your eye, but yet they squished the head of a baby?

I think that shrapnel all the way down has changed a lot in the years. And then I think maybe when you're in the outskirts of shrapnel, some of these hospitals are, they sound like that. You go to the hospital, you say, I'm Dr. Octopus. I'm Dr. Wellstone Octopus. Dr. Wellstone Octopus. That's a great character, doctor.

They forced me to put an asterisk nest to the doctor on a piece of paper that the concrete building I went inside told me I was a baby doctor. I'm happy this is working out. As Henry just mentioned, I mean, James Rowling did severely beat his wife while she was pregnant with Danny Rowling. He choked her and threw her down a flight of stairs, presumably in an attempt to force an abortion. Once Danny was born, though, his mere presence enraged James Rowling.

When Danny was learning to crawl, he shuffled on his butt with one leg tucked underneath. For some reason, this was unacceptable behavior. James shoved his infant son down the hallway so hard, he bounced off a wall. Just to stop this weird butt shuffle. It's similar in a way to John Wayne Gacy, where his father looked at him as a boy,

and he viewed his boy as being effeminate. And so he decided to beat the effeminate out of him. And it doesn't seem to work. Be very careful following cultural norms. Just love your kid. Just let them be. Like them shuffle on their butt. That's just how they crawl.

There's a fine line between absent parenting and just having a little course like, watch your kid play. Just like, relax a little bit. Relax a little bit. Around the same time, Claudia Rowling got pregnant again with another child, Kevin. But Kevin didn't incur his father's wrath like Danny did,

or at least that's what Kevin assumes. According to him, he doesn't think his father abused him, but he also admits to have blocked out years of his childhood. Oh, that means there was a lot of abuse. Now as it sometimes goes in abusive households, Danny's defense mechanism was to side with his father, even though his father was the abuser. And instead of trying to save his mother,

Danny desperately sought his father's approval. And conversely, Danny also hated what he perceived as weakness in his mother because she felt to protect herself and her children. And because a boy's view on the world is sometimes shaped by his view of his mother, that internalized hatred later manifested itself in horrific ways. Which is how abuse gets normalized,

because then you begin to view the abuse as love. Danny viewed the attention that his father gave him when he was abusing him as what love is. And so that's what cements this idea of, when I want to love somebody, I have to hurt them. Now as far as his father's abuse went, James would beat them if they held their fork wrong, make them hold their breath until they turn blue,

beat them until they piss themselves, and he'd give them painful noogies that were neither playful nor jocular. And as a person who is balding, noogies are not playful anymore. They are not playful. They hurt because you are just putting knuckles to the very fine hairs between the air and my skull.

Well, and now that we're speaking of noogies, it's a good time to plug the facts. We'll be in Grundy County. Wait a second, what do noogies have to do with Grundies? Noogies and Grundies. That's what bullies do. You guys know what Grundies are, right? No, I've never heard of a Grundy. I've heard of a Grundole.

You've never heard of a Grundy where you grab somebody by the back of their underwear and pull it up to their butt crack? That's a wedgie, bro. That's not a Grundy. I think it's called a Grundy. It's called a wedgie. What are you talking about? Did you...

No, I am almost... I think you got molested by a man named Grundy. I did not, okay. No, Grundy... Grundy verb is what I'm writing into. Yeah, actually, he's right. Some people do call wedgies Grundies. Okay, yeah, I thought that everyone... I thought that was the whole joke when we kept on saying Grundy County.

No, not to me. I just like the name Grundy. Wow, interesting. I'm just so happy that I won this one really weird side bet that we have that has nothing to do with anything. This country's so big and so wide, there's so much inside of it. That's why it's so important for these United States to get to know each other.

Thank you so much. Back to the story, Marcus. You mentioned how the father used to beat the son for not holding a fork properly. I mean, you would have gotten your ass kicked. Oh, because I hold forks real weird? Yeah, I do hold forks weird. No, my mom also got beat for holding a fork wrong, too.

That seems to be just a thing for this time period. I wasn't beat for holding a fork wrong, although I did have a girlfriend who was enraged by it for some reason. That was just a patrol issue. Yeah, I don't know what people are very weird about things. Well, this testimony of abuse didn't just come from Danny Rowling. Claudia's sister Agnes said that the Rowling family

stayed with her for six months, and during that time, she found Danny and Kevin bound with ropes by their father over a dozen times. So by this time in Danny's life, James Rowling had become a police officer. Oh, my God. And anytime Agnes tried reporting abuse in the household, whether it be towards the kids or her sister,

the reports would somehow magically disappear. Oh, so he's also a magician. Wow. But you'll be happy to know that James's fellow cops later said that James was, quote, a great guy. Oh, my... And you shouldn't believe anything about him, because he's a cop, he's a great guy, he's wonderful.

And due to his short-stocky nature, he was known by his cop buddies as they call them baby dumpling. I feel like you only should earn the name baby dumpling as if you are a famous pedophile. I can't. Oh, right. You don't even need a hide from me. You know what I do.

Never go out after 8 p.m. The baby dumpling will get you. Oh, it's even scarier than I thought. I didn't even try to hide. It's horrifying. Besides the abuse, Danny also dented his forehead on a concrete step when he was five. He was molested by a visiting cousin at the age of nine.

What? And he physically prevented his mother from slitting her own wrists in the family bathroom at the age of 11. Holy hell, all right. So this is not just a serial killer soup. This is a full gumbo. This is a potluck. This is the one you bring and share with the whole church.

It's not an appetizer, it's an entree. Yeah, holy crap. With such, Rowling was a truant, alcoholic, petty thief by his early teens. Both eager to impress his police officer father while also doing everything he could to piss him off and embarrass him in front of his cop friends.

At the same time, though, Danny, like many a troubled youth, also picked up a guitar and began dreaming of being a singer-songwriter after learning the hymn, Near My God to Thee. Because nothing says rock and roll like a hymn. Well, a hymn is a great place to start.

That's how James Brown started. However, by his teens, Danny's wires had already gotten crossed. His daydreams of being a famous singer were often paired with escalating fantasies of sadistic sexual violence. And, like most serial killers, Danny was also very sensitive.

At the start of seventh grade, James shaved Danny's head as a punishment, which I get could be traumatizing. It does sound traumatizing. We used to get our head shaved all the time. It's a free haircut. But you wanted it. I didn't want it.

That was the only thing my parents would do for us. That's true. That was like a boy's haircut. You just got a buzz cut. You just got a buzz cut. That looked horrible. I was like the tall dumpling. Long dumpling.

Long dumpling. But when Danny got to school, the kids gave him the nickname Sasquatch, which I suppose was meant to be ironic, because he wasn't big and he was just bald. I don't know why he called. Yeah, I'd call him ET. I'd call him the bowling pin.

Son of little dumpling. Son of little dumpling. Son of baby dumpling. You go to school, you've got a bald head, and there's that big dumpling man outside going, I bring your friends outside. Bring them to my birthday party. It's just me.

No pains. That could certainly have been worse. Yeah, definitely Sasquatch is not bad. Maybe I'm projecting and just dealing with my life. Yeah. But Danny never forgot about it and held on to that humiliation for years. Now Danny seemed to be turning things around a little

at 15 when he got a job at Dairy Queen. But after getting into a physical fight with his father that ended when his dad put his hand through a plate of glass, Danny decided he'd had enough. Rolling went to the bathroom, wrote, I tried, I just can't make it, on the mirror with lipstick, and attempted suicide in the woods with a razor blade.

This was, however, all for show, and Danny went back home when he got hungry. Yeah, it was a cry for help. He's desperate. He watched his mother do it. He's in a world of hurt. He's not good at school. He's not good at the guitar.

He's not good at friends. He's not good at a single thing, which is what we always talk about, how serial killers are born out of extreme mediocrity. He got hired at Dairy Queen. My friend Snake got hired at Dairy Queen. I think he wrote the word Snake on the application. I didn't even realize it.

I'm Burger King and Dairy Queen. I wonder if they ever met. Has anyone ever thought about that? I'm just so upset. This is like when these Twitter accounts all become ironic. I know. Meanwhile, Danny's father was getting worse and started waving his gun around the house

when he got angry while saying, I'm gonna get you to both his wife and his kids over and over and over again. At least they warned him. Me when he walks into the police precincts and everyone's just like, baby template. Yes, me, everybody. Bring the children to work days, my favorite day.

I hate guys like this so much. So much. What an asshole. Anyone that is nice to people on the outside and then mean to their family is just, man, it's all wrong. And it was around this time that Danny began escalating. The older he got, the stronger his violent fantasies became.

And before he knew it, he began peeping on women just like Ted Bundy, Jerry Brutus, and countless others before him. I'm gonna maybe head into some Kissel territory here. But I think we should... You're gonna drop some hard truths. Really? I think so. I think we should relook at the word peeping as a crime.

And I think we should change it. What to what, stalking? Something, because peeping just sounds like those little peeps from Easter walking across the road and everyone has to stop. You're like, oh, it's a peeping. Oh, peep train, peep train. Where the crime actually is looking through windows

and jerking off at a stranger. Maybe we can call it criminal voyeurism. Sure, I was about that. But again, that's not cute. You can't put that in a bumper sticker being like, I'd rather be peeping. Well, do you want it cute or do you want it accurate? Yeah, I think you didn't want it cute.

I thought you wanted it more technical. Because now I'm just thinking about a bunch of peeps jerking off looking at me through the window. Yeah, you need some kind of like dangerous one word. Snarpen. Snarpen. All right, there you go. You nailed it.

Before his behavior escalated again, Danny took a short detour to the Air Force at the age of 17. His antisocial urges, however, ended his career before it even began and Danny was stripped of his rank for disobeying orders, hoarding drugs in his bunk and stealing, then wrecking a bike

by crashing it into the back of a military truck. Stripes ruined my whole idea of what is bad behavior in the military because I view all that. I was like, oh, that's fun. He's like a fun guy. I thought that was what you did. For the theft and wreck, Danny was given 30 days in military jail

and was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force in 1973. Remember that for a future reference, Danny did not, he barely made it out of boot camp. Also, that's how he came into this world, a dishonorable discharge. Now I'm in pun jail. You're selling. Bunkies, he's my bunkie.

Bunkie, I got a shit. I got a shit. Can you imagine what hell you'd be in at that nine-by-nine cell with Kessel just filling it? We'll be lucky if it's a nine-by-nine. Danny then moved back in with his parents in Tree Fort where his father continued to tell him what a worthless piece of shit

he was every single day. Yeah, I don't think Shreypaw was going to get any easier if he got discharged from the Army and then he went to go live with his sadistic father, Cop. Yeah. And to cope, Danny turned to drugs, alcohol, and religion. He began attending King's Temple United Pentecostal Church in Shreyford where he joined the church choir

and played guitar for the congregation and Jesus. Much like Berkowitz, I think that religion is a really good place to go if you need a set group of friends. If you need an immediate group of friends and a support network, you can always throw yourself to the church and be like, I'm into this now because it also, number one, gives you

a veneer of respectability because you're fixing your soul. And two, it's a whole bunch of fucking gullible goobers that you can manipulate. And they're forced to hang out with you because it is a church. It is a bizarre trifecta, though, the drugs, alcohol, and then joining a church.

Usually people do drugs and alcohol, quit, and then join the church. But he kind of just lumped them all together. But no, pretty soon he quit drinking. He was doing alcohol first, then drugs, then church. So the church kind of helped mellow him out on that anyway. For a bit. I mean, pretty soon he was attending church five days a week

and even took on church duties. He drove the church bus and he dressed up as the Easter buddy during services that year. Why is everything scary? Can we have one Easter buddy that is not a murderer, please? Danny also met a quiet Christian woman named O. Mather Halcoe at a church social. And within four months, Danny married O. Mather Halcoe.

Now, James Rowling hadn't really set a good example for Danny when it came to raising a family. And Danny wasn't what you'd call a mature person outside of that. See, the one thing that just about everyone who knew Danny personally had to say about his personality while he was a nice enough guy most of the time, he had the emotional maturity of a child.

And like children, they can be really good, but children are incredibly selfish as well because they have to mature, their minds have to mature. But also, children can be incredibly cruel and physically violent to each other. Yes, they can be. Well, perhaps the most illuminating opinion on this came from a psychiatrist who examined Danny

after he was arrested, who said that Danny, on his best and brightest day, was no more than eight or nine years old on an emotional level. Add to that an inability to provide financially because he couldn't keep a job and the inability to satisfy his wife sexually because his actual sexual preferences

were becoming horrifically violent and you've got a marriage that wasn't going to last long. Yeah, you got to work on a marriage. Yeah, I mean, but if he has his fetishes and stuff, I'm sure if they had a mature conversation about it. It's hard to, this is one of those things. We've talked to this several times on the show. How do you express to your partner

that my actual sexual needs are I want to tie you up? I want to surprise you. I want to do these rape fantasies. It takes someone who is a very giving person. You have to like, you got to spell that out. I think you got to talk about that with like a counselor and shit. You need like a third party to like help you

parse all that shit out. I don't know how you do that. Yeah, that would be the mature portion of it, making sure everything is safe. So within months of marrying, no matter was pregnant with Danny's child, but instead of stepping up, Danny started drinking again

and got caught peeping onto, got caught criminally voyoring. Oh, I thought it was called snarping. Snarping, snarping. Oh, snarping, excuse me. Got caught snarping several, I don't, I'm not going to, snarping sounds just as cute as fucking peeping.

Snarping sounds very cute. Yeah, criminal voyoring also doesn't really work either, but peeping is just so, it's just too innocent. What about being a bad window cleaner? Windowing. Windowing, that's good. But anyway, he got caught looking at women through windows.

Peeping. And that garnered humiliating visit after humiliating visit from the cops. We're going to have to arrest your eyeball son. But like lots of people in Danny's in the mindset, none of this was his fault, and he blamed the peeping on his wife's quote, frigid attitude towards sex.

Yeah. In 1976, Danny abandoned his family for a month, and by 1977, Ol' Mather was filing for a divorce after Danny threatened her with a shotgun. Jeez. Now Danny again took no responsibility for the failure of his marriage

and told his reverend quote, Now God's against me too. Now God's punishing me too for being born so much for praying. Jeez, buddy, I think you have something to do with the problems in your life. That's why I put it in the song why God won't love me anymore.

God's my ex-girlfriend, he won't love me anymore. You know, music doesn't replace really good therapy. Well, after seemingly resigning himself to his fate, Danny stole his dad's revolver and drove out to the woods to kill himself. But when Danny found he again couldn't go through with it,

he figured he'd do the next best thing. Suicide by cop. That's the way to go. So what, he's gonna be shot by his own dad? Well, that's the thing. He's the pinnacle of revenge. Yeah, I mean, that was kind of my reading on it, is that, you know, he thought he'd go out

brazenly rob a couple of stores with reckless abandon, and then eventually a cop would put a bullet in his brain, and if he was super lucky, then it'd be his father who put him down, and then it would totally fuck up his dad. At least that's my read. This is the beginning of the Danny rolling inner mythos, where he wants to portray himself

and become, in his own way, an old west outlaw. Like, he wants to be the real deal. He wants to be a child who used to be a child, but he was born a child, but he needed to be an adult real early, because he had to go out there and he'd drift from town to town, and he'd make love here and there,

but every once in a while, you gotta steal from a bank to get enough corn to make your rucksack full. Right, right. At the same time, Danny would also cause chaos, hurt others, and spread around a bit of the anger

that he was constantly feeling, but while he was turning fully to a life of crime, Danny was also bringing his violent sexual fantasies into reality. See, most serial killers begin moving into the realm of murder following a disappointing life event, and it seems like process killers like Danny Rowling are much more motivated by, quote,

show in the world a thing or two than product killers like Dennis Nielsen or Jeffrey Dahmer. But later on, Danny Rowling would become weirdly a product killer, but it does come from that perspective, where it is not about spending time with a corpse and ownership over a corpse,

which is like Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Nielsen, the idea of like, I finally can make a partner who can never leave style, where his was about showing the world my rage, making them feel my rage, especially cops. Yeah.

So maybe like a one-tenth pensroom? One-tenth pensroom. All serial killers are elite the tenth pensroom. Nope. And so in 1979, just after being served his divorce papers, Danny broke into a woman's house in Shreveport in the middle of the night

and raped her, although he stopped short of committing murder. Now Danny was a truly pathetic figure on the criminal scene. While he liked to think of himself as the title character in the outlaw Josie Wales, he ended every armed robbery with the seemingly heartfelt apology,

as if that made everything okay. In his first robbery, Rowling held up a 7-Eleven, but after being handed the till's entire take of $11, Danny handed it back in Sid at One Worth Keepin'. But over the next month,

Danny's crime spree would show increasing returns. A liquor store robbery netted $200, while twin robberies of two Winn-Dixies in Montgomery, Alabama and Columbus, Georgia gained Danny almost $2,000 total. And he'd done it all with his cop father's stolen revolver. Symbolism!

Wow, leave the Winn-Dixie alone. That's my parents' favorite grocery store. They love the Winn-Dixie. I couldn't get hired at Winn-Dixie because I failed the drug test. And then I got hired at a video store and everything was better. It was from the one time I smoked weed.

You didn't have enough drugs in your system. That's right. Ha ha, I guess I'll. But it wasn't that great. Yeah, see, I actually got hired at the Lawrence Brothers, a grocery store in Stanford, and I just barely got under the line

of the drug test. I was really worried that I was going to fail the drug test. But I don't think they ever sent my piss away. I think they just hired me because they were tired. They probably just... Yeah, they just sent me to one guy

who just slammed it down. He's like, you'll be a good employee. It's a pass. Also, the... I had this robbery, the same style of robbery happened to me. I remember when I was mugged for the second time

and the man realized just how little money I had. When I showed him that I had $3 in my wallet and I had a disc man, and then he asked me for my cigarettes and then he opened up my cigarette pack and he took a couple out and then threw the pack at me and then left me alone.

Yeah, they're really... People aren't walking around with that much money. Sometimes they do, but you gotta look at how they dress and see because I was not dressed like a man who had cash on him. So, to get a little serious truthfully,

so he committed this horrible sexual assault, broke into this woman's house, and then he started robbing. Isn't the inverse usually true, where they start with the smaller crimes and then get to the massive, horrible crime? Snarping leads to a sexual assault. The sexual assault, the thrill of that

as probably a mirror to the same thrill that he gets from bank robbery, but also bank robbery has a practical need for him. Where at bank robbering, he views, because he's formulating himself from the idea of an outlaw, that bank robbering's supposed to be his money jobs. That's where shit isn't personal.

But when he is snarping, that's when it gets personal. Okay, so they kind of ran concurrent. Yeah. But Danny never found that bullet that he was hoping for, and he was arrested after some witnesses saw him scampering into the woods

after a robbery. Reportedly, when the cops caught up to him, Danny hung his head and said, quote, It's me. I did it. And I'm real sorry. I hate this Eeyore serial killer. What's going on? Get used to it,

because it gets a lot more Eeyore as it goes. It does. Now, for this little crime spree, Danny was sentenced to six years in prison, but two months after being released, Danny ran off from a work detail after he told a guard he had to go take a dump in the woods. I'd still like to believe he took a dump first.

Wait, this was in the 1970s. All you had to do was be like, I got a shit, and they'd be like, why don't you just go to the Great Wide Open? To do that. Because at this point, they didn't know he was snarping. They thought that he was just a bank robber. Oh, all right. But Danny was recaptured in town a few hours later,

but even though he was very sorry, he got another year added to his sentence for the escape. Let's just say this one's on me. The apology, you know, the thing is, Danny, when you apologize, you have to show it through your actions. See, you seem, you commit the same crimes. I'm sorry, I apologize.

No, I apologize for apologizing. Just stop committing armed robbery and stop peeping on women, please. I will say, I think more people need to have less windows in their homes. It's not the windows fault. He then tried escaping again not too long after, but when the guard, Danny, tried overpowering,

tapped on his knowledge of Taekwondo, Danny got whacked in the nuts so hard that he suffered from a torn testicle for the rest of his life. Now I gotta sit sideways. That's what I call the sideways robber because of my diagonal balls. Yeah, and your love of wine.

Before long though, Danny escaped yet another work detail after he was transferred to a prison in Alabama and he spent a few nights at a nearby tent revival meeting listening to sermons before authorities tracked him down. Now like many prisoners, Danny was given a psychological evaluation which found that he, among other things,

suffered from antisocial personality disorder, had deeply ambivalent feelings about his mother, and both idolized and deeply hated his father. But even so, Danny was released from prison in 1984 and moved back in with his parents in Shreveport. While there, a neighbor named Gary Flowers remembered Danny jogging down the street carrying a log across his shoulders

while inexplicably dressed up as Rambo. Serial killers are like this. This is the thing, maybe not just serial killers, there's something about this stripe of douchebag that serves 19 months. Was it 19 months that he was in the army or was it in the armed forces? If that, and it was Air Force,

it wasn't even the army, it wasn't even the Marines, it was just the Air Force. You're just a glorified janitor for the country, for the state. I'm sorry you didn't see any combat. But these guys take this little kernel of authority and blow it out. Because they're desperate for identity.

I think that there is a search for who am I, what is my role in life, and that's why I think all of the him running to church and all that kind of shit is very empty. I think it is him just trying to find a place where he can just fit in, in a way, he has no personal stakes in any one of these games. But the Rambo thing gives him weird personal agency

because Rambo also was one man against that town. And if you watch that first Rambo. He's a terrorist, technically. But the first one, he was a man that was abandoned by his country. I agree with him, but he's also a terrorist. But he's dressed in Rambo 2, Rambo 3. It's the red headband.

It's the older brother from Goonies. But he wasn't cut like Sly was. No, he was junior dumpling. Yeah, he's junior. He's the son of baby dumpling. Well, perhaps it was his odd appearance that attracted the neighborhood children. And before long, Danny was teaching the kids

how to lift weights while he sang them his emo singer-songwriter compositions in his backyard. I like to watch your little Bobby going to that chess machine. I like to watch what Doon calls make you big and mean. Please stop, Danny. I'm trying to lift weights here, I'm a child. Is there a parent in the town?

Is one parent in this town? Does anyone care? Back in the 80s, man, you could just hang out with creepy old men all the time and nobody really said much anything. And yes, some kids got molested, absolutely. But sometimes you just hung out with a serial killer and he didn't kill you.

But within months, Danny left Shreveport, went hitchhiking, and ended up catching a ride with a guy named Jake. While they were driving down the road, though, the cops pulled them over and Jake handed Danny a.45 semi-automatic pistol for safekeeping. As it turned out, Jake had warrants. So when Jake was arrested,

Danny drove Jake's car to the police station, abandoned his new acquaintance, and took off with the gun. Armed once more, Danny embarked on yet another crime spree. First, he robbed a Kroger in Mississippi while wearing a ski mask, then broke into a house where he ate bananas and yogurt. I'll remember that detail. Interesting.

And after finishing his snack, Danny made sure to leave the empty yogurt container and the banana peel conspicuously placed on the kitchen table, which is a pretty common scare tactic amongst home invaders. It shows a sense of possession of your own home. He comes in. This is how comfortable I was. We saw this with the East Area Rapist, the original Night Tucker. We also have BTK, same kind of shit, which shows...

Richard Ramirez also. Yes. It is weird. That's why I started to kind of put him in a different category, where he does sound like kind of a flagrant, disorganized drifter killer. But then it's shit like this, where like, he also had this like feeling of being a superior predator, because that's what that shows to me. It shows that I can come in your house and spend as much time as I want in your house,

and I want you to know that I was here, and I was all through your shit. It shows to me as he did not eat before committing these crimes. It's like shopping. Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry. Hold him nearly from around the table of gentlemen. Back in the day, we would record at this restaurant, and he would bring chicken wings in to the recording, and we would say,

Can't you just eat before? It was 6 p.m. when we would do it, and he would say, This guy's hungry now. And that's why this guy is such a douchebag. He needs to eat and then commit the home invasion. You can't eat at work. However, it's not like the banana and yogurt family

wouldn't have noticed someone had been in their home, because Danny also stole their car after ferreting out the keys. But Danny was soon pulled over for driving erratically, and was arrested for grand larceny and armed robbery after cops found the ski mask he used to rob the Kroger on the stolen car's passenger seat. Once again, Danny was very sorry for what he'd done, but this time he had a possible, if overly dramatic solution.

Reportedly, he told his lawyer, quote, I know I did wrong, and like I said, I'm sorry, but instead of going back to jail, listen to this, this is my pitch. Do you have a different idea? Couldn't I just have my hands cut off? Then I wouldn't be able to do any more bad things,

because no one's ever heard of a foot robber. You know, in a very strange way, we can do that for you. Actually, it would actually be worse. I could use my hands, because I'm a professional guitar player. Yeah, it would be hard for you. So maybe we could just have my dick split in two or so. I don't know. You're the lawyer.

Well, you're making the, you're coming up with the suggestions here. The judge didn't go for the hand solution, and Danny pleaded guilty. But just before sentencing, Danny shaved off all of the hair on his head, including his eyebrows, in a misguided attempt to, quote, clean up his image. People forget that Lex Luthor was also a billionaire.

That's very true. He was successful in business. He shaved off all of his hair and his eyebrows, but then the worst thing he did was tear up the picture of the Pope. I can't believe he did that. That is a shanaid, O'Connor reference. She's doing okay, because she has mental health issues, and we hope we're the best. Always wish her the best. Nothing compares to you.

That was a wonderful cover of that print song. Oh, I didn't know that was a cover. Yeah, that's a print song, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like all along the watchtower. That's Jimmy's song now, you know. But Bobby even said that. Bobby Dylan. That's what I've been calling him, Bobby.

Bobby. Yeah, you guys are close? Yep. The hairlessness, however, did nothing to convince the judge that Danny was a changed man, and rolling with sentence to 15 years in prison for his latest crime spree. Okay. Three years later, though, Danny was paroled,

and he moved back in with his parents in Shreveport, and he had no place else to go. There, his dad continued calling him a piece of shit, and Danny resumed his neighborhood Rambo routine. Fuck you, dad. I'm going to the forest to start my militia. Okay. Eventually, Danny got a job at a convenience store,

which he quickly lost, and that was followed by short stints at Circle K, Walmart, and The Sizzler. But Danny couldn't keep a job to save his life. And honestly, you could be a waiter at The Sizzler if you have an open fucking head wound. There is no way.

How do you get fired from The Sizzler? It's mostly buffet. Yeah, it's mostly buffet. Anybody who gets the entrees at Sizzler's is a fucking psychopath. Yeah, absolutely. Always get the buffet. It's Ponderosa rules as well. Wait, you're getting chained to a table?

That's ridiculous. You got the buffet right there. That's freedom. I'm with you. This is America. I could not agree with you more. About the only job Danny could keep was an electrician gig set up by his friend Bunny Mills, who nonchalantly played guitar and had casual sex with Danny once a week,

but thankfully came out of the whole thing unscathed. It's about the guitar. It might be. But Danny missed his calling because even though he was a competent electrician, he was let go when work slowed down. From there, Danny moved on to Poncho's Mexican buffet,

where he was soon fired. But for some reason, losing the job at Poncho's was the last straw. It's hard to get fired from two buffets. Was he eating the beans? How did he get fired? How do you? I mean, really? All you have to do with a buffet waiter

is you just have to bring the plates and bring water. Was he the guy cutting the ham at the end of the buffet? Oh, you're supposed to engage in conversation. You have to say that, yes. He was the guy that brought out the chips when they put up the little Mexican flag. When the little Mexican flag brings out the chips. Yeah, they get fired from that.

You don't show up to work. That's how. Oh, it's your conspicuous absence. Danny Rowling did the George thing, where you just didn't show up the George Casanzo thing. You just didn't show up to work for three days and then just rolled in acting like things are cool

and like, all right, ready for Danny? He failed to show up for work on November 2nd and November 3rd, and then showed up on November 4th saying I didn't do fucking nothing wrong, man. You know what I bet it was because he fucking made this huge scene. He threatened the manager.

All the buffeteers were uncomfortable. What? I guarantee you what it was is that he did that thing where he didn't look at the schedule and he's like, well, I didn't look at the schedule. You posted the schedule after I left. So it's not my fault that I didn't show up for the last two days

because I didn't know I know the schedule. He does make a valid point there. You want to update the schedule all weird? Absolutely. You can go in there just in an irate buffeteer. You know how it is because I've been a buffeteer and I have named myself sometimes co-captain buffeteer at a buffet

when you're there and you notice, honestly, these onion rings, these could be brought up faster. This is getting colder. These lamps need to be turned up. I feel like when your family walked into the buffet, they reminded you there was a two-hour time limit. Oh, yeah, dude.

Because we pushed it. That was what my father understood best in the economy, is you have to make the buffet work for you. Can we get it to go? No. It's whatever you eat in the restaurant. I could see the Zabrowski and be like, can I get a doggy bag for this

and just go into the mac and cheese. You fucking act like my parents didn't understand you have to go off the grid for that. My mom used to line her purse with a Ziploc bag. That is true. We do this to this day and inter-joke the Natalie that I do all the time because my mom does it. She goes, put it in your purse.

You know, like turkey leg, like wrapped in napkins. Well, that's classic. And then it goes in the freezer and then it's good for two years. Of course, yeah. I don't know for sure, but it seems like Danny didn't show up for work because he'd been distracted by the resumption of an old habit.

See, Danny had started peeping again. I'm not calling it snarping. I'm sticking with peeping. He's going peeping. I'm sticking with it. If I say it, I know what I'm saying. But Danny added an odd twist. Instead of peeping on ladies,

Danny was peeping on entire families. Gross. And he'd become focused on a particular family called the Grissoms, which included Father Tom, his 24-year-old daughter Julie, and his 8-year-old grandson Sean. For days, if not weeks,

Danny would show up to the Grissom House at dawn and stand outside their window unseen, watching them as they interacted with each other and got ready for their day. This is why whenever I get a house and I might be in the woods at 9 p.m. every night, I'm taking a shotgun

and I'm just shooting it in the air. This is so scary. This idea is so scary. It really is. This is what haunts me. It's this type of shit. Because you could tell, in a way, Danny Rowling is looking through the windows

with almost a nostalgia of a life he didn't have. I can almost kind of see that where he looks at this family and part of the fascination is is watching a functioning family go and then his, I'm going to show the whole world my rage shit starts popping up because he's like,

fuck this family for being together. Do you think that he would just have become an internet voyeur no longer being a tangible peeper? No, he's a serial killer. Even with today's he wouldn't get an only fans for looking at families.

Only fans. But do you think he would still be active? I think the idea that the internet is preventing people from being serial killers as far as them getting their rocks off I think that's bullshit. People who are going to kill are going to kill no matter what.

It's not like everyone started killing when movies started getting more violent in the 70s and 80s. People have always killed. Serial killers have always existed. Mass murders have always existed and they probably always will. Do not change. Well, this has been a very strange Gaia meetup.

It is, man. Thank you for that non-encouraging view of the future. Humans are a violent primate. Yeah, we're very, very violent. I think serial killers get caught much faster now. That's why there aren't as many serial killers. It's just the investigative tools that people have

are just so much better now than they were in the 70s. From what it sounds like, this wasn't the only family that Danny had watched. What we do know is that the Grissoms were the family that Danny had in his sights when he was fired from Pancho's Mexican buffet.

And so, just like after his divorce, Danny decided to take his anger out on other people. Except this time, the result would be an absolutely brutal, triple murder carried out with a cruelty not seen since the days of BTK.

On November 6th, two days after Danny was fired, he rode his bike to the field behind the Grissoms' home at about 10 p.m. See, that night, Tom Grissom had been barbecuing outside and had unfortunately left the door to their back porch

open. So, Danny, wearing camouflage pants, jungle boots, and a black t-shirt hopped the Grissoms' fence and burst into their living room through the back door, essentially dressed in the same Rambo outfit he'd been seen wearing around the neighborhood.

I don't know why that detail makes me even more frightened. There's something about that detail of, like, he had a costume. Yeah. In fact, I mean, he came with all the Rambo accoutrements because slung around his shoulder in a makeshift holster was a large USMC K-Bar knife

with a wood handle and a jagged edged 8-inch long blade. So, brandishing a 38 revolver, Danny commanded Tom, Julie, and Sean Grissom to lay on the floor, where Danny handcuffed Tom Grissom's hands behind his back and duct-taped his mouth

shut. After securing Tom, Rowling then bound Julie and Sean's hands behind their backs with duct-taped and taped their mouth shut before returning to Tom. Danny then led him from the living room into the utility room, where he stabbed Tom

from behind, piercing his right kidney. He then turned Tom around and drove the knife upward into his heart just below the sternum, killing him. These also were techniques he learned from years of hunting. Danny then returned to the living room and almost casually killed Sean Grissom

by stabbing him in the back. As Sean bled out on the floor, Danny led Sean's mother into the bathroom, where he raped her on the sink countertop. Finally, Danny led Julie to Tom's bedroom, where he stabbed her three times in the back, once on the right side,

once on the left, and once through her spine. Afterward, Danny washed Julie's vagina with vinegar to remove DNA traces, then left the body spready-eagled on the edge of the bed. With the family completely annihilated, Danny used the family's washer

and dryer to clean his clothes. Then he removed the duct-tape he'd used to bind and silence the Grissoms before leaving the scene. Because he did understand that they look at duct-tape for evidence of fingerprints and hairs and stuff like that. So he knew that, I guess

he knew that from his father, I'm not certain if he knew that specifically, or if he just looked it up, or if he'd become a because this is a thing that maybe we'll talk about more in the next episode, where do we think he was a serial killer fanboy, and he learned from reading about

serial killers, like he learned how to cover up his crimes more often, and better, and he also specifically posed the body, which is the sign that he had a whole different agenda in mind, that this wasn't just impulse driven. This was an expression

of rage that he wanted people to see. So he did move the body and put her in a way where her hair was fanned out on the bed, and she was, like, displayed. Mm-hmm. Now, the police never even came close

to Danny rolling for the Grissom triple murder, until Danny was already arrested for the Gainesville murders. But friends noticed that Danny became by the start of 1990 more solitary, nervous, and secretive. But at the same time, Danny was also becoming more braggadocious,

even though he had nothing to brag about. He'd hang out every night at the superior bar and grill in Shreveport, bragging that he was going to break big as a songwriter, even though the manager at the superior wouldn't even let Danny set up for a show

in the corner of the bar. Danny, I don't know how to tell you this, but you ran 20 minutes over the light last week. I had too much to say. You know my I'm sorry song is 35 minutes long. Then, about a month after the Grissom murders, Danny

managed to get a job as a telemarketer, but didn't make a great impression after he showed up wearing army fatigues and combat boots while carrying the same K-Bar knife that he'd used less than a month before to slaughter a family of three.

You should never be a regular at your local army surplus store. They should know you by sight. You have to hide so you think. You should go there when you have like a Halloween costume and you need to find pants. Of course, this is not a defense of Danny Rawling, but it is a telemarketing

job. They can't see you. So can you just dress however you want? It's about an office culture, I think. He came in, did he come with the knife? He came in with an eight inch blade and is like a holster that he made himself. Technically, that would have only been mildly acceptable

at Poncho's Mexican buffet because at least that's food service. But is an inch report can't you sign up for like one of those kind of like emotional support knives? Yeah, you can actually have all of your limbs cut off and replaced with guns and knives. No, well Danny soon got fired from the telemarketing

job as well. He'd also made friends with a couple of retirees at the Superior Bar and Grill. Steven and Luisa Claussen took a shine to Danny for one reason or another. And after he fixed the floodlights at their house, they all started hanging out. Sometimes a weird

dude just starts hanging out at your house for some reason and you just don't know how you've become best friends. And you got to figure out being like, well, I guess you're my family now? I guess. Now unlike most people, the Claussons actually liked Danny's music and oddly hired

him to sing at a children's birthday party even though all of his songs were mopey, dark and overly emotional while also being somehow shallow. And I can just see him setting up for the stage and he's got his fatigues on and he's just like

this song is about the horrors of war as all of these children just watch him. In fact, Danny was so emotional about his music that he took great offense at said children's birthday party when only the kids were paying attention.

Because Danny expected everyone at the party to drop everything they were doing and quietly enjoy the rolling vibes. Bullets are the worst kind of bird. Now Danny had kept his darker impulses under control in the

months after murdering the Grissom family. But on April 27th, 1990 Rolling almost died in a car accident but came away instead with yet another nasty head injury. While driving through a freak storm, Danny's car hydroplained and at the same

time a gust of tornado force wind propelled the car 12 feet into the air where it smashed into the top of a telephone pole. And because Danny wasn't really a seatbelt guy, he flew out of the car and landed on his head.

And after recovering, Danny resumed peeping and before long he was breaking into homes to rape women escalating more and more each time back towards murder. But in May of 1990, the world was almost spared the worst of Danny's crimes

when Danny was almost put away for attempting to murder his own father. Now the fight started as it usually did with something terribly small. See Danny had just arrived back at his parents house after a night at the superior bar and grill. And James

screamed at Danny to roll up the goddamn windows on his car because it was raining. But Danny said he didn't need to roll up his windows because the car was parked under an awning. It's under an awning dad! I'm 36 years old and I am a full grown balding man. But you will not

tell me to close the windows of my car if I don't need you Danny. Wow. Then Danny put his shoe on a bench in the kitchen to tie his laces. That escalated things even further and Danny said quote, I got my foot on the bench hole man. What

are you gonna do about it? And that's when the guns came out. Oh my goodness. Both men pulled out the revolvers. I see teeth. I see teeth. What? And after several warning shots were fired James Rowling declared that he

was gonna kill this whole goddamn family once and for all. But instead of killing his family James Rowling simply locked himself in the kitchen. Danny not satisfied with this conclusion, he kicked down the door, fired his 38 twice and hit his father in

the stomach and right between the eyes. Dang. And when Danny's mother walked into the room, she found her eldest son kicking her husband's badly wounded body saying, Lord forgive me over and over again. Danny then ran off and disappeared.

I'm going to the woods! Wow. Back to the woods to take another shit. I can see him like running through all the trees. They accept my apologies. Oh my god. Father didn't die though.

Absolutely survived. I would imagine probably the 38 glanced off of his forehead. Some happened. Some happened, but yeah, he didn't die. Now Danny ran away thinking that he'd murdered his father. But instead of hitting the road immediately, Rowling showed up at Stephen and Louisa

Dawson's house, dressed in his standard Rambo uniform and brandishing his K-Bar knife. But instead of just knocking on the door and asking for help, Danny broke into his friend's house through the back door and surprised them as they were in bed watching TV at the end of a long day.

Danny then pointed his handgun at his two supposed friends and told him that he was in big trouble for shooting his father and all he needed was their money. Now the Klausons sound like they're about the most patient people in the goddamn world, because they spent the next two hours

trying to calm Danny down. They kind of seem to know it and they also weirdly reacted like they've had guns pointed at them before. They're like comfortable with guns. Danny, what are you doing? Danny, are we serious here Danny? Meanwhile, full Rambo outfit

fucking 8 inch knife just being like I fucking killed a knife. I killed and no one will accept my apology. Well, it does seem like you're not sorry. Again, actions. You have to change your actions. That's as good as an apology. I wrote it down. By the end of it,

Steven Klauson gave Danny 30 bucks and Louisa sent him off with cookies and fruit. Danny then apologized for pulling the gun and for tracking mud on their carpet before he cried and left Shreveport forever. Oh my god. Within weeks, Danny

had robbed $1600 from a supermarket in Kansas City with all the cashiers on the way out. Thank you. God bless. Please pray for me. I need it. God, damn you're annoying, Danny. Then two weeks later,

he returned to the same store to rob it again that came away with nothing. Again? I'm just going to put this out there. This is a pre-sorry because I'm going to have to rob you again. Wow. Maybe don't rob me anymore. And from there, Danny floated around the southeast

for a small-time crime spree robbing two Kansas City grocery stores and a Taco Bell before breaking into a home where he stole the idea of a man named Michael Kennedy. Hmm. Danny then moved on to Sarasota, Florida where he became Michael Kennedy

for a time, bought some glasses at Lenscrafters, he ate out at Chonies, he bought a bunch of Goddy jewelry from Tilden Ross Jewelers Gold chain, about shitty ring. Yes, my name is Michael Kennedy. Michael Kennedy? Yeah, I got bad eyesight,

that's for certain. I love a Salisbury steak. You say your name is Michael. So who? Michael Kennedy. Where is he? It's you. If I scream like, hey Danny! Yep. So you're Danny?

No. Thank you, Michael. I'm sorry for taking the driver's license. It's fine. I'm just going to need it back. I'm Michael. Danny also began telling stories to everyone he met, claiming that he was a Vietnam war veteran who owned a trucking company

in Kansas City and had also just sold a song for $10,000. If only. But you know what's funny? His lies of ambition are modest? Because a lot of people run construction companies.

He's still in front of you, so his lies can't be that big. He can't be like, I'm a professional basketball player. Right. But at the same time, Danny was building up to something terrible and he knew it. A week before the murders in Gainesville,

Danny sat down with a tape recorder in a motel room in Sarasota. There, Danny recorded a protracted message to his family and the police explaining what he was about to do and of course, apologizing to his family while also telling them

how great they were. He said, among other things, Pope, I tell you, you got a good one and she got her a good one too. He he he he he he and you're a good man, Pope. Oh, well, I want you to go on.

What I'm trying to say is that after this tape you're not gonna hear anything else from me. Just forget about me. Just forget about me. I'm gonna hmm I'm gonna sing

every song I ever wrote. What? I'm gonna sing it to you, Mom and I'm gonna sing it to you, Daddy. Oh, my God. I'll sing it to you, Pope, if you want to listen. I don't. I don't want to listen.

You did never want to listen. No, I know, that's kind of why you're here in this situation with your mental illness. It's interesting, so he recorded this tape with his parents. Just to see how well is it doing, but he didn't go alt-right enough. They changed the alt-right.

Danny then played and sang all of his songs. He had one about Jesse James, he had one called Boggy By You, one called I Need A Job. Honestly, he should be playing that song a lot more. In front of a future employer, perhaps.

I need a job, not one for slob. I need one right here right now. And he played this song right here, Mystery Writer, just to rip off of House of the Rising Sun. And so on and so forth. Mystery Writer, what's your name? Black leather, black riding white horse,

fucking terrible. Can you imagine the 15-minute version he did of that at the children's birthday party? Wow. He seems like the kind of guy who really takes that song super seriously. Very serious.

But the one that's like, you don't know what it's like. Because I just pictured that's the soundtrack in his head as he runs with the log in Arnie Fatigue. No one will, he's too mysterious, he's too intense, he's too real.

You'll never get to know his passion. You can just see the poor guy in the hotel room next to him, just with his eyes bugged out, just be like, I need to fucking sleep, man. I hope I'm gonna get Becky back, man. I smoke too much crack for this song to be my soundtrack right now.

Oh, shut up, dude. So the night after Danny recorded his shout out goodbyes in all of his songs, he pawned his guitar and bought a 9mm semi-automatic handgun for $500. And by August 18th, Danny had left Sarasota

and he arrived in Gainesville. There, he began stalking students at the University of Florida. And that's where we'll end our series next week with the Gainesville Ripper Murders and the serial killer groupie that arrived afterward.

I saw a man in my mind. A man in black. On a black horse and he was humping me. The idea Zandra enters the room.

I think we have to publicly shame everyone involved. In this case, it is. Well, good job on bringing some levity to that horrible fucking story. It's a fucking up story. You have no fucking idea how bad it's gonna get

next week. I am so happy I don't know that yet. For this next week, I'm gonna say, every day, I'm gonna say, I don't know what he did. And then by next week, I'll say, now I do. And then I've ruined a little bit more. That's where we always catch up.

But that's why we'll cleanse it afterwards with a UFO episode and everyone's gonna be like, oh, real shit. Look at this real news. It's more fun anyway. Well, thank you all so much for listening. I just be very careful and as we learned with the Richard J's

lock, door, lock the door, any little thing, just any little stop. Well, because these people are idiots, they're lazy. They need a reason to stop. Yeah, you don't have to live in fear. You just have to lock your doors. This makes your doors a lock. Doors a lock, windows a lock. And that's usually good enough.

Also, I have one of those alarm systems that says whenever any door is open, you hear like, back yard, door, a jar. And we're always so scared of hearing that upstairs. You can just hear like, living room, window, a jar. That's scary. Oh my God.

All right. Well, let's see here. So we got Grundy counting. We're coming at you now. Those tickets are sold out, but that's so exciting. We are gonna feel, honestly, you will find out tonight what it was we can maybe make up on stage. Yes. And that will be interesting. I'm very excited

to get back in the groove. I'm excited. We're gonna be in Nashville. We're gonna... It's fun to happen again, boys. Yeah. It's happening again, boys. It's evident. And we hope everyone is being safe and responsible out there. Absolutely. I know there's a lot of thoughts and mistrust when it comes

to all of the things going on, but I would say I got the vaccine. Yep. I'm fine. I just want to throw that out there. Dude, I didn't get any symptoms. I know I had to say that, but like, I mean, I was tired, but that was it. I got sick as fuck, but I got over it in about eight hours. Got the chills, got the fever,

but hey, you know, it was fine. It was fucking worth it. I'm fully vaccinated now. Fully fucking vaccinated now. Yeah. Well, I think people are trying to marry the idea that, like, how do we trust these, you know, corporate entities and the government? But in this case, I can just... I just... So I understood... You can rationalize that and you can say, be skeptical, but

also get the vaccine. Yeah, because... Because it is the... It's just the proper thing to do. It works. Just get it. Also, vaccines work. It's part of human history. If you deny your vaccines, you begin to sound like someone who is unhinged and uneducated. Yeah. All right, everyone. Well, thank you all so much

for listening. Hope everyone is being safe and anything else. Keep on supporting all the shows here on the Last Podcast Network. We're fucking... Yeah, listen to No Dogs in Space. We're four parts into a six-part series on the Beastie Boys. Right now is the perfect time to get into it. And we got two episodes left of the DuneCast

D&D Dives Dune, which I'm really excited to choose. And it's not that I'm excited to stop reading Dune, I'm excited to read Dune for pleasure again. It's not that nice and not have to orate all of your thoughts. But it's fun! At the same time, it's getting down to the goods

of Dune. And check out Abling and Stompat and, of course, all the other shows here. So, all right, everyone. Well, we love you very much. Hope you're hanging in there and hail yourselves! Hail Satan! Hail Gim! Maghustalations! Hail me, you fucking pieces of fuck! Is it safe to put your blinds

down? But then you have to live in your own... We can't be scared, either. Just lock your windows. Lock your windows and lock your doors. That's all you really need to do. And lick a knife! Lick a knife outside. You look through your window. You peep the peeper. Also, have a grenade in your

home. Because if you do see the man, you can pull the paint, hold the grenade, being like, we'll both go, motherfucker. We'll both do this. Mutual destruction always wins. I love that. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one

you just listened to, go to castnetwork.com.