Per All That’s Interesting, Danny Rolling left Gainesville after the killing spree and went back to committing robberies. He was jailed shortly after for robbing a Winn-Dixie in Ocala, Florida. Meanwhile, authorities began to see similarities between the Gainesville murders and previous murders in Shreveport, Louisiana — Rolling’s hometown (via Oxygen). According to the Shreveport Times, Julie Grissom, her 8-year-old nephew Sean, and her father Tom were murdered in 1989 in an eerily similar manner as the Gainesville victims. Thus, Florida authorities decided to get DNA from anyone who was from Shreveport and was incarcerated to see if there was a possible connection.
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Biography reports that Rolling’s tooth incriminated him as it matched DNA evidence from the Gainesville killings. He was charged with the murders of the five students in June 1992. Heavy writes that he was sentenced to death in 1994 and was executed by lethal injection in 2006 at the age of 52. Before his execution, Rolling’s wrote and signed a confession stating that he had indeed killed the Grissom’s, bringing his total victim count to eight (via Murderpedia). Though there had been enough evidence to implicate him, the state of Louisiana decided to forgo a trial as he was already set to be executed in Florida. Rolling’s crimes later inspired screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who wrote the 1996 classic film “Scream.”
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