Grissom Family Murders (Danny Rolling Confession)

Case background and investigation

On November 4, 1989, three members of one family were killed inside a home in Shreveport, Louisiana. According to NBC News and other outlets, the victims were William T. "Tom" Grissom, 55, his daughter Julie Grissom, 24, and his grandson Sean Grissom, 8. Reports state that the three were stabbed as they were getting ready for an evening meal.

Investigators in Shreveport came to suspect Danny Rolling, a local man. According to an ABC report, an investigator noted that Julie Grissom's body had been cleaned and posed in a way that resembled what was later found at crime scenes in Gainesville, Florida, and that the blood type attributed to the Shreveport offender matched that of the Gainesville suspect. News4Jax reported that Shreveport police prepared an arrest warrant for Rolling, but that it was never signed.

In late August 1990, five college students were murdered in Gainesville: Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Manuel Taboada and Tracy Paules. ABC reported that a Louisiana woman, Cindy Juracich, contacted Crime Stoppers in November 1990 to suggest Rolling as a suspect, and that he was by then being held in the Marion County jail in connection with a supermarket robbery. The same report says Rolling had shot his father during a dispute in May 1990; his father survived.

Rolling pleaded guilty to the Gainesville murders in 1994, before his trial began, and was sentenced to death on April 20, 1994. Louisiana authorities did not prosecute him for the Grissom killings. NBC News reported that officials saw little purpose in a Louisiana trial once he faced execution in Florida. NBC also reported that in 1997 Rolling had sent a detailed written admission to a woman he married while in prison, who passed it to authorities, and that retired detectives said it included descriptions of the crime scene.

Rolling was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on October 25, 2006. Shortly beforehand he gave his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Mike Hudspeth of Shreveport, a handwritten statement taking sole responsibility for the deaths of Julie, Tom and Sean Grissom. Shreveport police subsequently held a news conference about the statement.

Relatives of the Grissom family attended the execution. KSLA reported that Julie Grissom's mother, Joyce Burton, said the family had never had any sense of satisfaction in the years since 1989. Because Rolling was never charged or tried in Louisiana, the Grissom case is resolved on the basis of his confession and the investigative findings rather than a conviction.