Published March 16, 1994|Updated Oct. 6, 2005
He would have jurors think that his killing lust took root in a hellish childhood at the hands of his belt-wielding, wife-beating, gun-toting father.
But Danny Harold Rolling's first line of defense against the electric chair is taking a beating of its own.
At Rolling's sentencing hearing Tuesday, prosecutors repeatedly punched holes in the defense team's harsh portrayal of James Harold Rolling, a retired police lieutenant from Shreveport, La.
The dispute over the character of Rolling's father is important. Jurors must recommend whether Rolling deserves the death penalty for the 1990 murders of five college students here. Defense attorneys argue that Rolling's alleged childhood of abuse calls for mercy _ if that's what you call life in prison without possibility of parole for 25 years.
A psychologist for the defense testified Tuesday that Rolling's tormented childhood left him "seriously disturbed" and formed the basis for severe personality disorders that fed his rampage of rape, murder and mutilation.
But using Rolling's own witnesses, prosecutors recast the elder Rolling as a hard-working, loving father who supported his son even after he disgraced the family by peeping on neighbors and going to prison.
Prosecutors reminded jurors that Kevin Rolling, Danny Rolling's younger brother and closest friend, grew up in the same home and did not become a serial killer.
He holds a steady job, hasn't been arrested and can't recall any beatings.
He says he had an ordinary childhood with a father who liked to take his two sons camping and hunting and fishing.
Prosecutors also undercut Rolling's mother _ the chief source of the abuse allegations against her estranged husband. They produced records of 1980 interview with mental health officials in which Claudia Rolling readily acknowledged she would lie to protect her son.
They also produced prison records in which Mrs. Rolling, when asked to describe Danny's childhood, failed to mention any abuse by her husband.
And then prosecutors revealed a letter written by Danny Rolling in which he recalled one difficult Christmas when there was little money for presents. His father, Rolling wrote, surprised him on Christmas Eve with a gift of a puppy. They named him "Rocky."
"They didn't have much that year," Alachua State Attorney Rod Smith said, reading from Rolling's letter. "But his father made Christmas special."
Over and over, prosecutors showed, Rolling's father was there for him when he stumbled in life. When Rolling dropped out of high school, when he washed out of the Air Force, when his marriage fell apart, when he was released from a Georgia prison, when he was released from a Mississippi prison, when he violated probation _ each time his father took Rolling back into the home.
In 1989, Rolling's mother and girlfriend urged him to seek out mental health counseling. Rolling refused, saying he was afraid his father would be displeased. But the girlfriend, Bunnie Mills, told jurors that when they confronted the elder Rolling about getting his son help, he was supportive.
All these seemingly caring acts by the elder Rolling seemed in conflict with the testimony of Dr. Harry Krop, the Gainesville psychologist hired by the defense.
Krop, who spent a total of 22 hours in interviews with Rolling, testified that the 39-year-old drifter is "a fairly bright individual" whose blighted childhood left him with the emotional maturity of a teenager.
Krop said Rolling suffers from extreme mood swings and unfocused, impulsive thinking. He is narcissistic, histrionic, obsessive-compulsive.
"I think that Mr. Rolling has an incredible amount of underlying anger," Krop said.
But Krop's "primary diagnosis" of Rolling is that he suffers from paraphilia: "He's a peeping tom," Krop explained.
Rolling began peeping when he was 14 or 15. He and a friend peeked in a neighbor's window and watched a teen-age girl get out of the shower. From that point on, peeping "became a compulsion," Krop said.
Rolling would go out at night and look into windows for hours on end. Sometimes he would masturbat* as he watched from the darkness.
Other times, he would watch families engaged in the mundane _ eating dinner, watching TV _ in order to feel "as if he belonged."
How this sexual disorder related to Rolling's childhood, Krop never explained. Nor did he tell jurors why Rolling graduated from voyeurism to sad*stic murder.
What he did say, under intense cross-examination by Smith, is that Rolling is not insane, that Rolling knew right from wrong when he killed, that Rolling showed cunning and calculation in the way he killed, and that Rolling was very much in control of his own actions throughout his sad*stic rampage.
"He never said anything about mom and dad when he killed those girls?" Smith asked Krop.
"No," Krop replied.
