In 1990, five students — four of whom attended the University of Florida in Gainesville — were murdered by a man who’d later be dubbed the “Gainesville Ripper”
NEED TO KNOW
- In August of 1990, five students — four female, one male — were murdered by a serial killer in Gainesville, Fla., home of the University of Florida
- The killer, who was also responsible for a triple homicide in Shreveport, La., would later come to be known as the “Gainesville Ripper”
- The events inspired the 1996 horror movie Scream
I’ll never forget the late-August night in 1990 when my roommate Stephanie called me on the phone sobbing. It was on a Tuesday shortly before the start of the fall semester at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and I was sitting in my office at The Independent Florida Alligator, UF’s student-run newspaper, working on the latest issue of the “Applause” entertainment section, which I edited. At first, Stephanie could barely get any words out, but I had a sneaking, stomach-churning feeling. I knew why she was calling.
Over the course of the previous week, a serial killer had been terrorizing our college town. He murdered five students — four female, one male — breaking into their apartments at night, raping the women and stabbing all five to death. He posed their bodies after killing them, and in a horrific, gruesome twist, he decapitated one of his victims and placed her head on a mantle near her corpse. News of the murders traveled quickly and somewhat inaccurately: At one point, my friends and I thought he’d decapitated all of his victims and put their heads on display in their living rooms.
He didn’t, but the truth didn’t offer any consolation.
It felt like we were living in a real-life horror movie — and in fact, the murder spree of the “Gainesville Ripper,” as he would later come to be known, eventually launched books, documentaries and movies, and inspired Kevin Williamson to write the 1996 film Scream. Making matters more terrifying than any nightmare on Elm Street was the fact that the killer’s five victims were young local students like Stephanie and me, and they lived in the part of Gainesville where we lived…