From left, Gainesville victims Tracy Paules, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Sonja Larson and Manuel Taboada.Photo: Acey Harper/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty; Gainesville Police Dept./ZUMA (2); Clark Prosecutor (2)
In August 1990, the college students who poured into Gainesville, Fla., were eager to begin a new school year.
The discovery of two students found stabbed to death in an off-campus apartment turned that excitement overnight to anxiety. The mood grew more panicked a day later, with the discovery of a third body at another apartment. Then, the next day, two more bodies turned up, and everything about life in the college town was upended as a months-long manhunt scrambled to find a prime suspect.
All but one of those murdered were enrolled at the University of Florida; the fifth was a student at Gainesville’s Santa Fe College, then known as Santa Fe Junior College.
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“After the gruesome murders, everybody just became scared,” longtime Shreveport resident Cindy Juracich tells ABC News'20/20, which revisits the Gainesville murders in a broadcast airing Friday at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT. “You know, we live in the Bible Belt. Things like that don’t happen here.” (An exclusive clip from the episode is below.)
A hunch led Juracich, then known as Cindy Dobbin, to tip investigators that the killings in separate states may be connected.
“I said, “Steven, there’s a connection between Shreveport and Florida,'” Juracich says.
Danny Rolling.Chris O’Meara/AP/Shutterstock
She remembered a man she knew in Shreveport, Danny Rolling. He was the son of a police officer and an aspiring musician, but with a troubled background, having spent time in prison following convictions for armed robbery.
“I met him in church,” Juracich tells20/20. “My husband right off the bat said, ‘That dude’s weird.’ And I went, ‘No, Danny’s Danny.'”
But after frequent visits to Juracich’s home, Rolling revealed to the woman’s husband that he had a “problem,” leading the husband to say that Rolling was no longer welcome.
“I said, ‘What kind of problem?,'” Juracich said, reportsABC News, “[and Steven said], ‘He likes to stick knives into people.'”
The two-hour20/20airs Friday at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT on ABC.
source: people.com
