The Gainesville Ripper: A Summer's Madness, Five Young Victims- The Investigation, the Arrest and the Trial (St. Martin's True Crime Library) [Mass Market Paperback]

Mary S. Ryzuk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 1995

Recounts the search for and trial of a serial killer who targeted on- and off-campus residents at the University of Florida, and describes in vivid detail how he tortured and mutilated his victims as a means of taunting the police. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In August 1990, five young people were killed in Gainesville, Fla., all students at the University of Florida or Santa Fe Community College. Of the four women slain, some were also raped and others mutilated. The murders were committed by Danny Rollings, a Louisiana resident who had previously been arrested for armed robbery and theft throughout the Southeast and, after receiving a death sentence in this case, admitted to a triple murder in his home state. This account of the lives of the killer, who as a child had suffered extreme psychological and physical abuse, and his victims creates a vivid sense of tragic confluence. Appeals of Rollings's death sentence are pending. Ryzuk's (Thou Shalt Not Kill) true-crime book is haunting. Photos not seen by PW. Paperback rights to St. Martin's; True Crime Book Club main selection.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A series of random, vicious murders of five college students in August 1990 spread fear and panic at the University of Florida campus in Gainesville. In 1994, Danny Rolling, a 40-year-old drifter and habitual criminal, confessed and was sentenced to death. Ryzuk (Thou Shalt Not Kill, Warner, 1990) has written the most complete account of this case to date (see also John Philpen & John Donnelly's Beyond Murder, Onyx, 1994). Rolling was the product of an abusive childhood, and Ryzuk skillfully contrasts the bright promise of the murdered students with Rolling's poverty-stricken background and borderline personality. Except for too much dramatic license in pretending always to know what Rolling was thinking, Ryzuk's approach is effective, and her book will appeal to true crime readers.
Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 582 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks (July 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312953240
• ISBN-13: 978-0312953249
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #992,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Unorganized, repetitive, and graphic, May 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gainesville Ripper: A Summer's Madness, Five Young Victims- The Investigation, the Arrest and the Trial (St. Martin's True Crime Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

I started school at the University of Florida in August 1990...the day after the public became aware of the murders in Gainesville. I will never forget the horror and fright that accompanied my first few days of college. Nearly nine years after the fact, I wanted to read this book to find out about Danny Rolling - to try to understand what made him do what he did. I think the book gave me a good idea about his childhood and his feelings of inadequacy. But, I thought it was too graphic in describing the details of the murders. I also thought that there were a lot of things in the book that the author could not possibly know - like what the victims were thinking or feeling just before their awful murders. I thought that some of the details were wrong (for example, the Oaks Mall is in Gainesville, not Shreveport [page 160]), and that the jumping back and forth between what Rolling was doing and what the murder victims were doing at different time periods was confusing.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "There's Something I Gotta Do...", September 9, 2005

By 

J. H. Minde "Everything I need is right here" (Boca Raton, Florida and Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Gainesville Ripper (Hardcover)

THE GAINESVILLE RIPPER is author Mary Ryzuk's true-crime recounting of one of the most hideous serial-killing sprees on record, the slaughter of Christina Powell, Sonja Larson, Christa Hoyt, Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada, all college students, in Gainesville, Florida in the late summer of 1990.

These five young people were the unfortunate victims of Danny Rolling, a small-time habitual offender and confessed murderer, now awaiting execution on Florida's Death Row. As is well known, the Gainesville victims were not simply murdered---they were butchered, sexually assaulted, mutilated, and intentionally posed in what has to rank as one of the most bizarrely ritualized occurrences of its type anywhere.

Ryzuk maintains a readable novelistic tone throughout, though at times her approach rankles. The young victims (in their late teens and early twenties) are all too predictably described as being exceptional individuals of one stripe or another. Her delving into certain private details of their lives (dating and bed partners) seems unneccessary and puerile.

Ryzuk tries to be evenhanded in her treatment of "Danny Boy" Rolling, whom she sees as the product of a cold, extremely abusive household where severe corporal punishment, spousal abuse, and aggravated assault were near-daily happenings. The Rollings are presented as a ne'er do well working poor Southern family with a long history of deadly violence toward each other (Danny's paternal great-grandfather cut the throat of his wife, an episiode witnessed by Danny's father as a child, and a paternal uncle committed suicide with a shotgun). Danny's father and paternal grandfather were both policemen, though Ryzuk makes it evident she believes they reveled only in their ability to inflict force by authority. Danny's father is the villain of the piece, at least until Danny shoots him in the head after a minor argument (he survived). Danny's mother is portrayed as a willing victim who repeatedly fled the marital home with her sons only to return time after time. It's obvious that Ryzuk wants us to believe that Danny Rolling is the product of nature and nurture (though many people are raised in terrible circumstances and do not commit the crimes Danny did; witness his younger brother). Rolling has claimed this book is untrue; it is up to the reader to decide where and what the truth is.

As if to undercut the sympathy she may have created for Rolling, Ryzuk's descriptions of the murders and the murder scenes veers headlong into the gory and the gratuitous. One of the worst failings of this book is Ryzuk's insistence on placing us into the mind of the killer, though whether she is relying on the record or substituting speculation for fact is not ever clear.

Ryzuk also does poorly in trying to apply the language of law, psychology, forensics, criminology and behavioral science to Rolling's case. It's apparent she simply does not have the technical knowledge at hand, and so her attempts to sound clinical are awash with malapropisms. She mentions at one point that it is "[her] legally unproven belief" that Danny Rolling also killed the Grissom family of Shreveport, Louisiana with a similar signature; yet, she reports later that Rolling confessed to these killings; so it is not simply 'her belief'.

THE GAINESVILLE RIPPER does do a more than adequate job of recounting this nightmarish episode, does seek to understand it, and does memorialize the victims. Tabloid in tone and substance, it is still well worth reading if you are a fan of the True Crime genre.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Florida, Gainesville Murders, June 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gainesville Ripper: A Summer's Madness, Five Young Victims- The Investigation, the Arrest and the Trial (St. Martin's True Crime Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

Florida Attacked by "The Ripper"

The Gainesville Ripper is the chilling true story about the gruesome murder of five college students in Gainesville, Florida. The book leads the reader through the horrible murders of these five students during the hot summer of 1990. Before the identity of the serial killer would be known, five people would be brutally murdered. The lives of their families would be destroyed, and a town would be living in fear. The book takes a look into the mind of a killer. It makes you ask yourself, "What could make a person do something like this?" You feel as if you were there. You will feel for the victims and their families. You will be shocked at the lack of remorse shown by the accused. For all of you who have ever thought, "This could never happen to me," this book will make you think again.