Pod Insights Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén Halloween Special: The 'Scream' Killer About this episode For Halloween this year we are bringing back one of your favorites. In 1996, a new horror movie with an innovative twist would reinvigorate the slasher genre. But behind the fictional Ghostface was an inspiration steeped in reality. A man in a makeshift mask who stalked and tormented teenage girls during a three-day murderous rampage. A man known as the Gainesville Ripper.
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Transcript 0:02 Speaker 00 Hey Serial Killers listeners, it's Carter Roy. I'm the host of Conspiracy Theories. And you might actually recognize my voice from this show. I like to pop in every few years to do a special crossover episode, covering cases with strong conspiracy elements, like the Osage murders or the Tylenol murders. Now, today's episode isn't a crossover, but I have been invited to share my favorite serial killers Halloween episodes. The episodes I picked are just good stories, blending fictional scares with real-life horrors. And I want to remind everyone that the big host reveal is coming. Keep an eye on this feed for some special content leading up to the premiere.
0:45 Speaker 00 Now, please enjoy real horror Ghostface from Scream.
0:52 Speaker 01 Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of gun violence, domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, mutilation, and murder, including the murder of a child. We advise extreme caution for children under 13.
1:12 Speaker 02 We can assume it was probably a cold night in California. Even Los Angeles can get chilly once the sun goes down.
1:20 Speaker 01 29-year-old Kevin Williamson was house-sitting for a friend that night, and everything in the bungalow was unfamiliar. You know how it is, spending the night in a strange place, it can unsettle you for no good reason.
1:33 Speaker 02 As an aspiring screenwriter trying to get by in Hollywood, Kevin was grateful for the extra money. And he had figured the change of scenery might help him creatively.
1:42 Speaker 01 But now that the darkness and cold had descended, it hit him just how alone he was, out in the middle of the desert with only the TV for company. Any noise made him jumpy. It didn't help that he'd just been watching a news special about a murder spree.
1:57 Speaker 02 At some stage, as Kevin wandered through the empty house, he saw something to turn his blood cold. A window was open, exposing the house to the darkness outside.
2:09 Speaker 01 He stared at the window unsettled. He didn't remember opening it. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that the window had been closed the last time he saw it.
2:20 Speaker 02 He slammed the window shut, ran into the kitchen, and took a butcher knife from the block on the counter. Gripping the weapon tight in one hand, he grabbed the cordless phone with the other and dialed the only number he could think of.
2:32 Speaker 01 When his friend David picked up the phone, Williamson whispered, "I think someone's in the house."
2:51 Speaker 02 Hi, I'm Greg Paulson. Welcome to the first episode of our very special Serial Killers Halloween series. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson.
3:00 Speaker 01 Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify.
3:08 Speaker 02 This month, in celebration of spooky season, we're going to take a look at serial killers through a different lens, quite literally. Over the next three episodes, we'll explore the stories of real-life murderers who inspired some of the most iconic horror movies of all time.
3:24 Speaker 01 We'll dig into the parallels and contrasts between these killers and their fictional descendants and explore the divide between fact and fiction. We'll also discuss the enduring appeal of these three horror movie villains and what they can each tell us about the changing nature of society's worst fears. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us.
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6:21 Speaker 02 Horror movies have existed for as long as cinema itself. Ever since the silent era of the early 20th century, audiences have flock to films that offer the promise of a good scare.
6:32 Speaker 01 Fear is a primal emotion. When the threat is imagined, terror can be exhilarating and incredibly fun.
6:39 Speaker 02 The earliest horror movies were almost all supernatural, telling stories of witches, ghosts, and vampires, and other creatures that were horrifying, but distinctly otherworldly. There was a clear divide between these villains and the horrors of real life.
6:54 Speaker 01 This began to change during the 1960s and 70s when filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and John Carpenter started making movies about human monsters. This is no surprise since the 1970s is often called "the golden era of serial killers."
7:10 Speaker 02 At a time when the threat of mass murder began to loom large in the public consciousness, it's only natural that movies followed suit. Hitchcock's 1960 thriller Psycho is often considered to be the first slasher movie, while Carpenter's Halloween took that genre to a new level of popularity in 1978.
7:28 Speaker 01 But by the 1990s, the slasher movie had fallen out of fashion. Discerning horror fans were tired of the same old derivative storyline. Who wants to see yet another group of teenagers being slaughtered by a masked maniac?
7:42 Speaker 02 And then there was Scream. Released five days before Christmas in 1996, Wes Craven's film became an instant classic, not by avoiding those old slasher movie tropes, but by acknowledging them.
7:57 Speaker 01 On its surface, the movie told a familiar story. A group of teenagers partying in a remote house are terrorized and picked off one by one by a mysterious killer. The difference? These kids have seen horror movies, and they recognize the tropes as they happen.
8:14 Speaker 02 Ordinarily, a character leaving the room and casually declaring "I'll be right back" is slasher movie code for "I'm about to be killed." In Scream, when a character does this, he's doing it ironically, in the middle of a house party-turned-horror-movie marathon.
8:29 Speaker 01 Sex is typically punished with death in horror movies. The promiscuous teens never make it out alive. Scream's heroine Sidney Prescott knows this and dares to sleep with her boyfriend anyway, acknowledging the risk even as they're undressing.
8:45 Speaker 02 In short, Scream uses the horror canon to navigate and enhance its own storyline in a way that has never been done before. It also pays homage to a number of horror classics. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson went so far as to call his film "A Love Letter to John Carpenter's Halloween."
9:02 Speaker 01 But that wasn't Williamson's only influence. In creating the unforgettably terrifying character of Ghostface, he took his cues from the story of a real-life slasher.
9:13 Speaker 02 In the fall of 1994, Williamson was an aspiring writer scraping by in Los Angeles. In need of cash, he agreed to house-sit for a friend.
9:22 Speaker 01 One night, he noticed that a window in the house was open, a window he was sure he'd closed. As adrenaline surged through him, his mind instantly went to a news special he'd just watched on ABC.
9:35 Speaker 02 Just a few years earlier, a murderer had terrorized the residents of a small college town in Florida, murdering five college students in three days. He'd broken into their homes, then massacred them. After he was apprehended, 37-year-old drifter Danny Rowling became known as "The Gainesville Ripper."
9:54 Speaker 01 Though he knew Rowling was on death row thousands of miles away, Williamson couldn't shake the fear that had settled over him. He was suddenly convinced that an intruder had snuck into the house through that window and was lying in wait to slaughter him.
10:10 Speaker 02 He grabbed a knife from the kitchen and began searching the house. He looked underneath furniture, behind curtains, inside closets. Then, still deeply unsettled, he called a friend, David, and told him what was going on. Despite Williamson's obvious panic, David laughed it off and started teasing him with horror movie references. He said, "Jason's behind that door. Watch out, he's got a knife."
10:34 Speaker 01 This, of course, was a reference to the villain of the Friday the 13th franchise, which they both loved. Williamson felt his fear starting to evaporate as he and David bantered back and forth about horror movies. And, after checking every conceivable hiding place he could find, he finally accepted that there was no intruder.
10:54 Speaker 02 But the terror he'd felt that night and the phone call with David stayed with him. That experience marinated in his writer's brain alongside the horrific details of the Gainesville Ripper spree. And soon enough, he was writing the opening scene of what eventually became Scream.
11:11 Speaker 01 The film's opening is one of the most well-known in movie history. Casey, a perky teen played by Drew Barrymore, is making herself some popcorn. She gets a call from a mysterious guy who wants to know if she likes scary movies.
11:25 Speaker 02 The conversation is friendly, even flirty. As the caller's dialogue becomes increasingly sinister, Casey realizes that he's inside her house and intends to kill her. Despite her best efforts to save herself, she's butchered within minutes.
11:43 Speaker 01 This unforgettable sequence isn't directly based on any real crime, but it's a creative amalgamation of Williamson's experience and the terror that Danny Rowling's young victims may have felt.
11:55 Speaker 02 All of his murders began with a home invasion, mostly at off-campus student housing. He thrived on stripping away agency from the women he targeted. He started out as a peeping tom, watching unsuspecting neighbors undress. After many years of this, he graduated to sexual assault and murder.
12:14 Speaker 01 He stalked several of his victims for weeks before he finally struck. In at least one case, he might have made creepy phone calls to his target beforehand, establishing a one-sided rapport with his prey.
12:26 Speaker 02 If this suspicion is correct, then an aspect of Rowling's MO is reflected directly in Ghostface. But unlike Rowling, Ghostface is actually charming when he wants to be. When he plaintly asks Casey, "Do you like scary movies?", she's not scared. Though mysterious, the caller seems harmless, and he has kind of a sexy voice.
12:47 Speaker 01 Ghostface builds a rapport with Casey, flirtatiously asking if she has a boyfriend. Eventually, he asks her name, and Casey asks why he wants to know, and that's when the other shoe drops.
13:01 Speaker 02 Ghostface responds, "Because I want to know who I'm looking at."
13:06 Speaker 01 The scene turns on a dime here. It soon becomes clear that not only has Ghostface been watching Casey for some time, but that he's inside her house.
13:17 Speaker 02 A sense of terrible inevitability mounts as Casey realizes she's cornered. This monster has a sadistic, meticulous plan laid out for her. All along, she's been caught in a trap that she couldn't even see.
13:30 Speaker 01 Casey's demise is gruesome and flashy, and, in some ways, exaggerated. But though it turns the shock factor up to 11, it evokes a very real kind of terror. What does it feel like to realize that somebody has decided to kill you? In real life, the odds are usually stacked against a victim, especially when they're being targeted by a sadistic and organized killer like Rowling.
13:54 Speaker 02 But in slasher movies, there's always a sole survivor. This archetype is known as "The Final Girl", a female character who's forced to watch her friends being slaughtered one by one, but outsmarts the killer and lives to tell the tale.
14:07 Speaker 01 In Scream, Neve Campbell's Sydney is a survivor in more ways than one. We learn early in the movie that her mother was raped and murdered a year ago, and that Ghostface's spree takes place on the anniversary of that attack.
14:21 Speaker 02 The trauma of her mom's death has taken a toll on Sydney, but it's also given her extraordinary strength and insight into evil. She is the killer's primary target, the one he wants the most, and yet, she's able to stay alive.
14:35 Speaker 01 Of all the many differences between Scream and the real story that inspired it, this might be the most important. Onscreen, thanks to the magic of cinema, Sidney is given the agency and the information she needs to survive. In real life, Rowling's victims never stood a chance.
14:54 Speaker 02 By the early 1990s, thanks to high-profile killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, the public was all too aware of serial murder. How quickly an ordinary person's life could become a nightmare if they were unlucky enough to cross paths with a killer.
15:09 Speaker 01 For one, there's the sadistic way Rowling toyed with his victims, sometimes for weeks before he killed them. There's his grisly MO, which often involved beheading and mutilation. And then there's the family history. Both Rowling and Ghostface were driven to kill by a deep sense of rage towards their parents.
15:29 Speaker 02 This is another well-known trope that Scream uses deliberately. Serial killers and their defense attorneys often try to shift the blame for their choices under their parents or caregivers. For Ghostface, this feels like a cheap justification from a person incapable of taking responsibility for his own actions. But with Danny Rowling, the picture is more complicated.
15:53 Speaker 02 In a moment, we'll discuss how the seeds of violence were planted during Rowling's childhood.
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16:58 Speaker 02 Now, back to the story.
17:03 Speaker 01 If a child becomes a serial killer, do their parents bear any responsibility? This deeply controversial question doesn't have an easy answer. Most experts, including psychologist James Garberino, argue that forces beyond the family shape children and that solely blaming the parents is a dangerous oversimplification.
17:24 Speaker 02 But at the same time, there's a clear and irrefutable correlation between abusive parenting and violent crime. Children learn how to approach the world from their parents. And so if a parent is violent, there's a chance that the child will internalize that behavior. That might be one explanation for how the world ended up with the Gainesville Ripper.
17:44 Speaker 01 A decorated war hero turned police officer, James Rowling was a highly respected member of his community in 1950s Louisiana. But those accomplishments masked a deeply volatile and emotionally damaged man who reportedly never wanted children. So when his first son Danny was born in 1954, he resented the boy immediately. As his wife Claudia cradled the infant in her arms, James took one look at him and told her that there was no way the child was coming home with them.
18:16 Speaker 02 Before we continue with the psychology for this episode, please keep in mind that neither Vanessa nor myself are licensed psychologists or psychiatrists. But we've done a lot of research for this show.
18:26 Speaker 01 Thanks, Greg. Author and criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky has proposed a theory that the 1970s saw a spike in serial killers because so many young men of that era were raised by fathers who'd served in World War II and came home with trauma that was never addressed. James Rowling served in the Korean War, but the same principle applies. A 2019 study in Federal Practitioner indicated that a significant number of soldiers who served in this war experienced PTSD as a result. However, the condition wasn't formally recognized until 1980, so these veterans were likely inadequately treated. It's possible that James's volatility and his inability to bond with his children
19:11 Speaker 01 was caused at least in part by this.
19:14 Speaker 02 Whatever the cause, James seemed to hate being a father. He resented his young son for taking away his wife's attention. Rowling could do nothing right in his eyes, not even when he was a toddler. Most parents find great joy in watching their children learn to crawl and walk, but James was frustrated by his son's halting attempts.
19:33 Speaker 01 The physical abuse began when Rowling was just six or seven months old and continued throughout his childhood. James had impossibly high standards and punished his son for falling short in any way. Whether it was mowing the lawn too slowly or making a mistake when he learned to drive, any tiny error sent James into a rage.
19:54 Speaker 02 His wife Claudia tried to reason with him, but this only made him more angry. And according to relatives, he got violent with her. So on more than one occasion, she left James. While he was at work, she'd bundle Rowling and his younger brother into the back of the car and drive to safety at a neighbor's house. She even filed for separation a few times.
20:12 Speaker 01 But despite his volatility, James knew how to turn on the charm. He'd always track his family down and persuade Claudia to come back, promising that this time, things would be different.
20:24 Speaker 02 This is a common pattern in domestic abuse scenarios. Victims go back to their abusers for all kinds of reasons. Fear, financial and emotional dependence, or simply the desperate hope that their relationship can be saved.
20:37 Speaker 01 But of course, her young sons couldn't understand any of this. To them, the constant back and forth was bewildering. According to Danny himself, he grew up with conflicted feelings towards his mother. He was grateful for the love she showed him, but felt deeply angry with her for failing to protect him from the abuse.
20:56 Speaker 02 We don't know how much of this backstory was included in the ABC News special that Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson watched years later. But just like Rowling, the character of Ghostface is fueled by a deep well of rage towards a parent.
21:09 Speaker 01 OK, consider this your spoiler warning. If you haven't seen Scream yet and don't want to know how it ends, come back once you're caught up.
21:19 Speaker 02 Shortly after Sidney has sex for the first time with her boyfriend Billy, he's revealed to be the killer. He's not working alone. His eccentric pal Stu is along for the murderous ride. And he's the one hosting the house party that becomes a bloodbath.
21:35 Speaker 01 But Billy is the true antagonist of the movie, the one who Sidney has to face and ultimately vanquish. In a devastating twist, it turns out that Billy also murdered her mother a year ago, then framed an innocent man for the crime.
21:50 Speaker 02 His motivation? Sidney's mom was having an affair with Billy's father, which led to the breakdown of his parents' marriage. In Billy's words, "She's the reason my mom moved out and abandoned me."
22:02 Speaker 01 In Scream, parental abandonment is everywhere. Sidney is essentially an orphan. Her dad is distant and mostly absent, and she and Billy bonded over the fact that they've been left to fend for themselves.
22:14 Speaker 02 Sidney and Billy are a perfect hero-villain duo, illustrating how trauma can affect people in wildly different ways. Sidney becomes stronger and braver as a result of what she's been through, while Billy is consumed by monstrous rage.
22:28 Speaker 01 Billy's anger burns bright and fast. It takes only a year or so to make him a killer. By contrast, Rowling's trauma simmered below the surface for years, gradually twisting his sense of right and wrong.
22:42 Speaker 02 After he failed the third grade due to his many absences, a school counselor noted that Rowling was clearly struggling, despite obvious potential. She recommended therapy, which Rowling never received because his father wouldn't allow it.
22:56 Speaker 01 That meant he was left to cope on his own as things went from bad to worse. When Rowling was 11, he witnessed his mother's suicide attempt.
23:06 Speaker 02 Though Claudia survived, she was hospitalized for some time afterward, leaving the boys alone with their father. Coupled with the trauma of what they'd seen, it was a recipe for psychological disaster.
23:18 Speaker 01 The first red flag was one serial killers listeners will be familiar with. Rowling began peeping into windows in the neighborhood and taking perverse delight in watching women undress. When he was 13 or 14, he got caught.
23:32 Speaker 02 Since James was a police officer, he was able to brush the incident under the rug. But the humiliation of his son being revealed as a peeping Tom enraged him. However, after so many years of unprovoked abuse, James's anger had no effect on Rowling. He'd given up on his father's approval long ago. Now, he found comfort in rebellion.
23:53 Speaker 01 One of the more significant rebellions was when he was 16. That's when he got into a physical altercation with his father, standing up to him for the first time ever.
24:03 Speaker 02 In response, James threw his son to the ground, handcuffed him, then sent for a squad car to pick him up. Rowling spent the next two weeks in jail.
24:12 Speaker 01 This was a turning point for Rowling. He knew he had to find a way out from under his father's roof, so he dropped out of school and in the spring of 1971, he applied to join the Navy. After failing the enlistment test, he wound up joining the Air Force instead and shipped out for basic training that June before landing an assignment in Florida.
24:33 Speaker 02 But though he might have left his father behind, his demons weren't so easy to shake. Rowling struggled to adapt to the rigors of military life and began using drugs. He took LSD so often that he stopped keeping track.
24:48 Speaker 01 Heavy usage of a psychedelic drug like LSD can have significant effects on a developing brain. It's a potent hallucinogen that distorts a person's perception of reality. It's worth noting that this effect isn't necessarily bad. In fact, there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that in small, controlled doses, LSD can be used to improve psychological well-being and may have a place in the treatment of conditions like anxiety and depression. But Rowling was using it so frequently and in such uncontrolled amounts that any positive benefits were probably outweighed, and using it while he was on base was an entirely self-destructive choice.
25:29 Speaker 02 His superiors noticed something was amiss and guessed what he was up to. So at 19, Rowling was given an honorable discharge from the Air Force.
25:38 Speaker 01 Despondent, he returned to his hometown of Shreveport, planning to stay with his parents. But once he arrived there, Rowling couldn't get along with his father. He went to stay with his grandfather instead, and before long, a brand-new path presented itself.
25:53 Speaker 02 He became actively involved with the local Pentecostal church, attending services most weekdays. There, he met a young woman named Omatha, and married her after just a few months.
26:04 Speaker 01 But the marriage wouldn't last. That was partly because Rowling fell back into his old peeping tom habits and was soon caught by local police. Disturbing as this was, it paled in comparison to what happened next.
26:17 Speaker 02 In a book he wrote with author Sandra London, Rowling claimed that he started having visions of a demon who wanted to possess him. One night around this time, he saw a "shadow of evil" hovering on his bedroom wall, reaching out for his soul. Rowling said that his moans of terror woke Omatha, who found her husband in a trance, though she later denied all of this in court.
26:42 Speaker 01 During a psychological evaluation later in life, Rowling was diagnosed with possession syndrome. This term isn't listed as its own disorder in the DSM-5, but it's defined as a type of dissociative disorder. In Danny's case, the term describes when a person believes they're possessed by an evil entity which acts out their forbidden desires. Although possession syndrome isn't a recognized diagnosis in itself, delusions about demonic possession are fairly common in patients living with psychotic conditions. Research shows that people's experience of psychosis is heavily influenced by their cultural and social beliefs, and that religious people are more likely to have delusions about spiritual possession.
27:25 Speaker 01 So it makes sense, given Rowling's recent conversion, that his psychosis took this form.
27:31 Speaker 02 Despite any mental health issues he was experiencing, Rowling still needed work. And he was relieved to find a job as a truck driver. But according to Rowling's account, his new vocation took a deadly turn. One night, he lost control of his truck at a blind curve and ended up slamming into a van.
27:49 Speaker 01 A woman was thrown from the van and died of her injuries. Although it seems Rowling never faced charges, taking a life for the first time had a huge impact on his mental state. He began to wonder if he could do it again.
28:04 Speaker 02 It was around this time that Rowling's behavior got more and more erratic, and Omatha soon reached the end of her tether. In 1979, she filed for divorce, taking their young daughter with her.
28:17 Speaker 01 After that, Rowling was forced to move back in with his parents, where his father's disapproval awaited. Suddenly, he was eager for any excuse to get out of the house.
28:27 Speaker 02 That might be why he started making regular nighttime visits to a house a few blocks from his parents' place, where two female college students lived. He'd lurk in the shadows outside for hours, waiting for them to undress.
28:40 Speaker 01 One of the girls, a petite brunette, looked a lot like Omatha. And one night, Rowling discovered that she was alone in the house, reading on the couch.
28:50 Speaker 02 As far as we know, Drew Barrymore's character in Scream isn't based on any real victim. But the similarities here are hard to ignore. The film begins with Casey settling in for a quiet movie night on the couch. She's making popcorn, getting ready to watch a horror movie.
29:07 Speaker 01 When Ghostface first calls, he innocently asks what Casey's plans are for the night. When she rattles popcorn kernels in an aluminum pan, he asks what the noise is. But he knows what the noise is. He's watching her the entire time.
29:22 Speaker 02 This is a huge part of what makes Ghostface so frightening. He gets to know his victims ahead of time and maps out exactly how he'll kill them.
29:31 Speaker 01 But unlike Rowling, Ghostface is ultimately revealed to be a teenager himself, part of the same high school gang he's terrorizing. When everybody gathers for a house party, Billy blends in seamlessly. And by donning that iconic creepy ghost mask, he keeps his identity hidden until the movie's climax.
29:51 Speaker 02 Like most great horror movie villains, Ghostface has a diabolical master plan that grants him a terrifying level of power. Up until the movie's final act, he seems omnipotent, appearing around every corner to ambush his unsuspecting peers. It's almost like he's in multiple places at once.
30:10 Speaker 01 Which makes sense, of course. Once we discover that Ghostface is two people, not just one, Billy and Stu are working together to create this seemingly all-powerful villain and using the scream mask to hide their duality.
30:25 Speaker 02 Rowling wore a mask too, but it was a makeshift one. On that night, as he watched the young college student reading on her couch, he knew he had to act. In the backyard, he found a piece of cloth and tied it over his face. Then he forced the screen door open and entered.
30:42 Speaker 01 The young woman inside barely had time to react before Rowling had her by the throat. He dragged her into her bedroom, where he raped her.
30:52 Speaker 02 Afterwards, he walked back out into the darkness, feeling both exhilarated and calm. Though this had been his first violent crime, it had felt effortless.
31:02 Speaker 01 But Rowling's criminal instincts were now running rampant, and it didn't take long for the law to catch up with him. In May of 1979, Rowling was arrested and charged with several armed robberies. Beginning with those convictions, he spent almost a decade in and out of prisons in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi.
31:23 Speaker 02 In 1988, he was paroled in Alabama on the condition that he would return to live at his parents' house in Shreveport. When he returned home, he was greeted by his father's usual disdain.
31:34 Speaker 01 But James didn't know how much his son had changed. He still saw Rowling as the defenseless little boy he'd always been. He had no idea that, just like Sidney Prescott, he'd invited a monster into his home.
31:52 Speaker 02 Coming up, Rowling's killing spree begins.
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32:56 Speaker 02 Now, back to the story.
33:01 Speaker 01 If you were writing a horror movie about Danny Rowling's murder spree, 1988 wouldn't be a bad place to open. At 34 years old, he was fresh out of prison and should have been enjoying his newfound freedom. Yet, he'd never felt more adrift or cut off from the ordinary world.
33:19 Speaker 02 He was miserable at his parents' house. He walked on eggshells there, living in fear of antagonizing his father, who was just as quick-tempered as ever.
33:28 Speaker 01 The only thing he looked forward to were his nighttime strolls after his parents went to sleep. During those walks, he returned to his old habit of peeping, enjoying the sensation of watching women in the privacy of their own homes.
33:42 Speaker 02 He also made half-hearted attempts to blend in with ordinary society. He found a job at a restaurant, but had a volatile temper. Toward the end of 1989, his manager had had enough and let Rowling go.
33:55 Speaker 01 This can't have come as a surprise, given Rowling's bad attitude. Still, he was furious. And as he walked the streets of Shreveport on November 4th, hours after storming out of the restaurant, he felt a savage impulse he couldn't ignore.
34:10 Speaker 02 Though it had been more than a decade since he'd killed a woman in a traffic collision, Rowling had never been able to shake the incident.
34:18 Speaker 01 It wasn't guilt, he felt. It was more like curiosity. He'd already taken one life. What would it feel like to take another?
34:29 Speaker 02 He'd been stalking 24-year-old college student Julie Grissom for some time. Julie lived with her family a short walk away from Rowling's house, and Rowling hadn't been able to get her out of his head.
34:40 Speaker 01 When he got to Julie's house that night, Rowling realized her father and nephew were both home with her. He was disappointed that she wasn't alone, but that could be rectified.
34:51 Speaker 02 Rowling killed Julie's father and eight-year-old nephew first. Once they were out of the way, he sexually assaulted her and stabbed her to death.
35:00 Speaker 01 After Julie stopped breathing, Rowling washed her body, possibly hoping to clean any DNA evidence he'd left behind. Then he posed her nude body on the bed, fanning her long, dark hair out around her head. That was how the police found her, two days later.
35:20 Speaker 02 Though the murder was investigated, Rowling's name didn't come up as a suspect at first. He kept a low profile over the next few weeks, struggling to find another job.
35:29 Speaker 01 But his criminal record, coupled with his recent firing, made him virtually un-hirable. And as weeks of unemployment turned into months, the already tense relationship between Rowling and his father reached a boiling point.
35:43 Speaker 02 In May of 1990, the pair got into a heated argument, which culminated in James allegedly pulling a gun on his son. Rowling was done with laying down and accepting his father's abuse. He pulled out his own gun and fired at his father's face.
35:58 Speaker 01 Staring down at his father's bleeding form, Rowling couldn't process what he'd done. But then, he snapped back to reality and fled.
36:08 Speaker 02 James survived his injuries, but lost an eye and an ear. But Rowling knew he still had to get out of town as fast as he could. The police were looking for him and intended to charge him with attempted murder.
36:20 Speaker 01 Rowling managed to find his way west and spent the next few months hopping between Missouri, Colorado, and a few other states. Throughout this period, where he lived as a drifter, Rowling kept up his habit of peeping at women. He'd pick a quiet neighborhood of whatever town he ended up in and walk the streets until he found a target he liked.
36:41 Speaker 02 But now, these trips had an even more sinister purpose. There was something terrible building in Rowling, a new command from the demonic voice that he couldn't deny any longer.
36:52 Speaker 01 At least Rowling claimed the voice was telling him to do it. Since we only have his word to go on, it's entirely possible that he made up this demonic alter ego. He wouldn't be the first killer to fake insanity in the hopes of a more lenient sentence.
37:06 Speaker 02 Perhaps Rowling really did feel a demonic presence urging him onward. Or maybe he was just acting on his own deep-seated, dark impulses. Either way, he was barreling headfirst towards a violent explosion.
37:19 Speaker 01 By the late summer, he'd landed in Gainesville, Florida, where he spent a few weeks canvassing the area near the University of Florida campus. On August 24th, he broke into an apartment there.
37:31 Speaker 02 Inside were 17-year-old Christina Powell and 18-year-old Sonia Larson. Rowling bound both girls with duct tape, sexually assaulted them, then stabbed them both to death. He left their bodies posed in the same way as Julie's, stretched out on their beds, hair fanned out.
37:48 Speaker 01 The very next day, Rowling struck again. He broke into 18-year-old Krista Hoyt's apartment while she was out and waited for her to come home. He was there all night.
38:00 Speaker 02 When she got back, on the morning of the 26th, he ambushed her, bound her with tape, and sexually assaulted her. He stabbed her to death, and then cut off her head and disemboweled her.
38:13 Speaker 01 Here, Rowling was upping the ante to keep things interesting for himself. Statistics show that mutilation and dismemberment are very rare in homicide, and the most common motivation is practical: cutting up a body to make it easier to hide. But Rowling made no attempt to hide his victims' remains. In fact, he posed them in a deliberate way, knowing that they would be found. His goal was to provide shock value to whoever discovered the bodies, which is yet more evidence of his sadism. He wanted to spread as much misery and trauma as he could.
38:48 Speaker 02 This clearly inspired Williamson in creating Scream's unforgettable opening murder. During Casey's phone call with Ghostface, she asked him what he wants. His indelible response... "To see what your insides look like."
39:02 Speaker 01 A few moments later, he makes good on that promise. Like Rowling, Ghostface doesn't just want to slaughter people, he wants them to suffer. He spends 15 minutes psychologically tormenting Casey with a twisted trivia game, allowing her to hope that maybe she can save herself and her boyfriend. And then he leaves her disemboweled body for her parents to find.
39:26 Speaker 02 Rowling was much less smooth and cunning in his spree. He didn't have a master plan like Ghostface. He still found ways to taunt and mock his victims, even after their lives ended. A case in point: after cutting off Christina Hoyt's head, Rowling posed it on a shelf next to her bed. He pointed her face towards her body, as if she were "looking at herself."
39:48 Speaker 01 Hours before this crime took place, Christina Powell's worried parents showed up to her apartment complex and asked staff to let them in. They waited for police to arrive, and then the officers, maintenance person, building manager, and Powell's parents discovered Christina and Sonya's bodies.
40:07 Speaker 02 Within hours, police had also found Krista Hoyt. The parallels were too clear to deny. There was a serial killer in Gainesville, and Rowling's spree wasn't over yet. On August 27th, he carried out another double murder.
40:22 Speaker 01 23-year-old Tracy Paulus and Manuel Taboda were both in college and lived together at a student-friendly apartment building in the south end of town.
40:31 Speaker 02 Rowling broke into Manuel's bedroom first. After a struggle, he stabbed Manuel to death, and then attacked Tracy. He bound and sexually assaulted her, and then killed her too. Once again, he posed Tracy's body after she was dead.
40:47 Speaker 01 After several vicious killings in a row, Rowling finally succumbed to anxiety. He knew his crimes would be easily linked by the police, and his record could make him an easy suspect. So, he did what he did best, and fled.
41:02 Speaker 02 The contrast between Rowling and a carefully crafted fictional villain like Ghostface is never clearer than in a moment like this. Rowling wasn't acting on a grand master plan, or any kind of logic whatsoever. He was going by pure instinct.
41:16 Speaker 01 If his actions feel like they lack any rhyme or reason, it might be because we're comparing him to a villain whose every move was meticulously mapped out by a screenwriter. As scary as Ghostface is, his actions still have an internal logic to them, because that's what we expect of a movie villain.
41:34 Speaker 02 Rowling, on the other hand, was a deeply disturbed man, fast running out of options. He set up a campsite in some woodland on the outskirts of town, where he hoped he could lay low until the dust settled.
41:46 Speaker 01 But that dust was not going to settle easily. After five grisly murders in as many days, the Gainesville authorities had a full-blown panic on their hands. Both the local universities increased their security protocols, but many students were still too spooked to stay. They fled to their parents' houses, figuring they'd be safer there than in their campus-adjacent apartments.
42:09 Speaker 02 And the ripple effects went far beyond Gainesville. The killings sparked a national media frenzy, in part because of the memories they evoked for the public.
42:18 Speaker 01 Ted Bundy had been executed in a Florida prison just a year earlier, following a years-long multi-state murder spree which made headlines across the globe. Though Bundy was dead and buried, the Gainesville murders felt eerily like a resurrection.
42:34 Speaker 02 As a result of all the attention, the authorities received an overwhelming outpouring of tips and information from the public. Over a period of months, investigators looked into more than 600 suspects, running DNA samples and conducting hundreds of interviews to narrow things down.
42:51 Speaker 01 Eventually, 36-year-old Danny Rowling popped up on their radar, but he dodged all of the police's attempts to question him. In September, after the cops found his campsite, Rowling skipped town in a stolen car, but he made no real effort to keep a low profile when he was on the run.
43:08 Speaker 02 Rowling carried out a spree of burglaries on the road, culminating in Ocala, where he robbed a grocery store at gunpoint. He did this in broad daylight when the store was busy.
43:18 Speaker 01 Eventually, Rowling's carelessness brought him down. He was arrested in the fall of 1990 and charged with armed robbery. A year later, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but it took many more months before the authorities had enough evidence to link him to the string of murders in Gainesville.
43:37 Speaker 02 When he was finally linked to and charged with several of the murders, Rowling was quick to try and absolve himself of blame. Remarkably, though he had no idea that he'd soon become the inspiration for one of the most classic horror movies of all time, he referenced another one in his defense.
43:53 Speaker 01 Rowling told the court about the demonic alternate personality which he claimed drove him to kill. In his testimony, he named the demon Gemini. It seems that he got this name from the horror sequel The Exorcist 3, which features the Gemini killer, an executed murderer whose spirit compels other people to kill.
44:14 Speaker 02 Rowling went to see the movie during its first week in theaters, just days before his spree began.
44:19 Speaker 01 When his trial began in 1994, Rowling ultimately pleaded guilty to all the charges. But like the possessed characters in the film, he claimed to have no control over the Gemini side of his personality. The prosecution argued that Rowling was faking this delusion in order to appear insane and therefore less culpable for his crimes.
44:41 Speaker 02 And even his own defense didn't seem to take his claims very seriously. Under cross-examination, the defense psychologist Elizabeth McMahon admitted that Rowling's most pressing issue was borderline personality disorder, rather than his delusions about possession.
44:56 Speaker 01 However, when she spoke about Rowling, Dr. McMahon emphasized that he didn't fit into one neat diagnosis. She said he wasn't out of touch with reality, but underlined that he was extremely immature, highly anxious and suspicious, and had virtually no empathy for others. She also noted that he had an extreme level of rage.
45:19 Speaker 02 McMahon characterized the Gemini persona as a defense mechanism, rather than a real alternate personality. Noting the abuse Rowling experienced during his childhood, McMahon explained at his trial, "He can't look at that horrible, bottomless pit. That is the reservoir of rage."
45:35 Speaker 01 True though this probably was, it didn't help Rowling's case. In the end, he was found guilty on five counts of murder in late March of 1994, and sentenced to death. He was executed at Florida State Prison in October of 2006.
45:55 Speaker 02 When he was alive, Rowling never seemed to grasp the horrific enormity of his crimes. During a conversation with McMahon, he described his spree as being like something out of a horror movie.
46:05 Speaker 01 But he had it wrong. In a horror movie, there's usually a satisfying climax in which a surviving victim gets to take her power back. Scream culminates with our final girl, Sidney, outsmarting Ghostface, in part because she knows horror movies so well, killing him as ruthlessly as he would her.
46:25 Speaker 02 Real-life killers rarely get the tables turned on them in such a satisfying way. But maybe that's why horror movies remain so addictive. They're strangely comforting. They offer audiences a safe way to process their emotions about the horrific things that can happen to people in real life, with the promise of a cathartic, narratively satisfying ending.
46:46 Speaker 01 It's a natural human instinct to try and find meaning, even in the most horrific and incomprehensible events. This is why conspiracy theories run rampant around events like 9/11. It's more comforting to believe that there's an organized plot behind the world's evils, rather than to accept that evil can come from a variety of seemingly random sources.
47:09 Speaker 02 Movies, and stories more generally, can help us to understand the incomprehensible. They give us a way to engage with the darkest parts of humanity, without actually putting ourselves in any danger.
47:20 Speaker 01 But though Scream took some of its cues from Rowling, it's not really about serial killers or the psychology of murder. That subject had already been covered by another acclaimed horror film of the era, which dove headfirst not only into the mindset of killers, but those who try to understand them. And you know we're all about that.
47:52 Speaker 02 Thanks again for tuning in to Serial Killers. We'll be back next time with the next episode in our Halloween series about the real stories that inspired horror movies.
48:02 Speaker 01 In episode two, we'll explore the uniquely horrific case of a murderer who kept his victims in a pit in his basement, and how his crimes inspired the Oscar-winning thriller, The Silence of the Lambs.
48:15 Speaker 02 You can find all episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify.
48:21 Speaker 01 We'll see you next time.
48:23 Speaker 02 Happy Halloween.
48:26 Speaker 01 Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler. Sound design by Scott Stronach, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Nick Johnson, Trent Williamson, and Carly Madden. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Emma Dibdin, edited by Joel Callen and Greg Castro, fact-checked by Claire Cronin, researched by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood, and produced by Bruce Kytovich. Serial Killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson.
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