The Gainesville Ripper
Hope you enjoy my true Halloween story.
The summer of 1990 was the best summer of my life. I lived in Gainesville, Florida with ten close friends in a huge Victorian house called the Gracy Mansion. It was built in 1906 by Luther Gracy, a lumberman and staunch prohibitionist. I don’t think he would have approved of the rampant intoxication that occurred at the Gracy. In fact, voices were often heard upstairs when no one was speaking and a ghostly apparition was seen walking across the wrap around porch and peering in my roommate’s windows.
That year will hold a dear place in my memory because my favorite band, Jane’s Addiction released their awesome album, Ritual de lo Habitual. I was obsessed with Jane’s Addiction. I had Ritual on the cassette and it never left my boom box. I played it every day as I got ready to go to work at the futon store, we listened to the tape in the car on our way to Key West and we blasted the bassline of Been Caught Stealing across on the shore of Ginny Springs. Perry Farrell’s voice lulled me to sleep each night with Then She Did. It would have been a picture perfect summer except evil descended on Gainesville that year. A serial killer cast a long, dark shadow over our small town.
The media dubbed him the Gainesville Ripper. He broke into the apartments of young women. The Ripper murdered the girls, raped them and dismembered their bodies in such a foul and depraved way; a veteran police office threw up in the bushes outside one of the crime scenes.
The killer never left any fingerprints or other clues except for his mutilated victims. Each night he grew more bold and vicious in his attacks. He broke into the apartment of Tracy Paules and was surprised to find her male roommate, Manuel Taboada asleep in one of the bedrooms. Manuel was a big guy and they fought but The Ripper killed Manuel and Tracy. Hysteria descended on the town as parents withdrew their daughters from the University of Florida. The president of UF held a conference with safety tips but the killings continued- each more gruesome than the last.
Although we joked about our house being the perfect site for the Gracy Mansion murders, we were terrified. All of us slept with knives and guns under our pillows and dogs close by the beds. We lived in fear not only because the killer was stalking our town but because none of the doors or windows at the Gracy had functioning locks. No one even had keys to the Gracy because none of the doors locked!
My friend, Roger, had a different reaction to the horror.
“Hey girl, we’re having a party!” he shouted into the phone.
“Are you nuts? Have you not heard there’s a serial killer loose?”
“Girl, they ain’t killing at the bars and the parties. Besides, you have to say a password to get in. It’s my drag name, don’t tell nobody.”
The next night as I got ready to go to Roger’s, I couldn’t find my Jane’s Addiction tape. I looked everywhere and asked everyone in the house if they knew where it was or had understandably thrown it out but Ritual was nowhere to be found. I got on my bike and rode over to Roger’s apartment as I did every day. I knocked on the door, Roger kept the chain on and demanded “What’s the password?”
I stood on my toes and pressed my face against the crack in the door, “Anya Knees.”
Roger opened the door but before he let me in he asked,“Is he with you?”
A middle-aged man had snuck up behind me silent as a snake. He had messy brown hair and wore a dirty t-shirt and filthy jeans that looked like he had been laying on the ground.
“No, I don’t know him. Let me in, I need a drink.”
I pushed past Roger and heard him say, “What’s the password?”
The man giggled and muttered some nonsense so Roger slammed the door, bolted the lock and secured the chain.
The party was in full swing. Everyone drank copious amounts of Roger’s secret recipe Hunch Punch to escape the tension felt by the gruesome murders.That night, I fell asleep on Roger’s couch…ok I passed out in the bathtub wearing one of Roger’s sequined ball gowns. The next afternoon, we were eating Froot Loops and watching Golden Girls or porn when a friend of ours called. He told us to turn change the channel to the local news station. We didn’t know there were other shows on TV besides porn and Golden Girls. The reporter’s lips glided over their glossy teeth as they shared the news that the Gainesville Ripper had been caught.
The cops found him in a wooded area between my house-the Gracy Mansion and Roger’s apartment. Every day, on the way to Roger’s apartment, I rode past his encampment not knowing the danger crouched in the tall grass and scrub brush. He had a tape player with him, the Ripper recorded himself singing about the murders and telling stories about the victims. The other cassette the police confiscated was a well worn copy of Jane’s Addiction Ritual de lo Habitual.
Danny Rolling was executed by lethal injection in 2006. I moved to Atlanta and installed a home security system.
