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

Ryzuk, Mary S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312953240 ISBN 13: 9780312953249

Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1995

Synopsis

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.

About 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.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0312953240
• ISBN 13: 9780312953249
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 582