A serial rapist and killer who terrorized Gainesville, Florida in the fall of 1990 with the murders of five young college students, has been assigned an execution date by Gov. Jeb Bush. Danny Harold Rolling, who plead guilty to the murders in 1994, is scheduled to be executed Oct. 25 after having exhausted all of his appeals.

"Signing death warrants is one of the governor's most solemn duties," Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj said. "Danny Rolling exhausted his appeals and this is the next step in the process."

The bodies of five college students, some of whom were mutilated and posed, were discovered over a three-day period in August 1990 as students were returning to the University of Florida campus after summer break.

Rolling, the son of a Louisiana policeman, wore black clothes, a ski mask and glove, and camped out in the woods during his Gainesville crime spree. When he was arrested for the robbery of a grocery store in nearby Ocala, the Gainesville killings stopped, but investigators did not connect him to the murder until five months later.

Authorities in Shreveport, Louisiana, where Rolling is suspected in three murders, contacted Florida investigators and suggested they look at Rolling for the Gainesville murders. It was then that they matched Rolling's DNA to samples taken at the crime Gainesville scenes.

The Victims

The reign of terror began in Gainesville on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 26, 1990, when roommates Sonja Larson, 18, and Christina Powell, 17, were found dead in their townhouse apartment near the University of Florida campus. Both had been stabbed and Powell was raped and mutilated.

The following day, Christa Hoyt, 18, a records clerk at the Alachua County Sheriff's Office who planned to attend the university after community college, was found in her duplex where she lived alone. She had been decapitated and raped.

The next day, roommates Manuel R. Toboada, 23, and Tracy Inez Paules, 23, who shared an Gatorwood Apartments unit, were found dead in their apartment. Police believe Toboada was stabbed in his sleep. Paules had been sexually assaulted.

"We don't much care if they burn him, stick him or hang him, as long as they kill him," said George Paules, Tracy's father told the Associated Press.

See Also:
Gov. Jeb Bush Signs Death Warrant for Danny Harold Rolling

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