Gainesville Serial Murderer Faces Execution
PHILLIPS: More now on the rapes at Arizona's Fort Apache Reservation. Over the past ten days, three men have been arrested. All are in their 20s. Authorities say that two of them, Jesse Dupris and Jeremy Reed worked together as tribal security officers in the community where those rapes took place. Both are charged with a host of crimes, from abduction to molestation of a child. It's not clear what their relationship is to the other suspect, Jim Aday. He's charged in two of the 15 reported cases. Investigators believed a man dressed as a police officer has been assaulting girls for the past year. He was a cult leader and a killer who claimed to hear God's voice. Jeffrey Lundgren was executed by lethal injection in Ohio yesterday. He was convicted of killing five members of his religious cult because he thought they lacked faith. He told his jury that he didn't deserve the death penalty because he was a prophet of God. He recently argued that execution was likely to be painful because he was obese and diabetic. His argument was rejected by a federal appeals court.</s>LEMON: Well, think back. You'll probably remember this. It's been 16 years. In 1990, a string of gruesome killings stunned the University of Florida campus in Gainesville. The carefree-college town was paralyzed with fear, and a rookie television reporter was suddenly covering one of the biggest stories he had ever seen. Jeff Weinsier now works at WPLG in Miami, but he's back on familiar turf with memories of Danny Rolling's terrible, terrible crime spree. Jeff, you covered the killings when they happened, and this evening, you will witness Rolling's execution. It's very unusual. What's going through your head right now?</s>JEFF WEINSIER, DISCOVERED 1990 GAINESVILLE MURDERS: Well, there's no way to ever prepare for something like this, to watch someone die. Today, tonight I should say, I am going to be the eyes of the public inside the witness chamber, actually witnessing the execution. For me, it's part of the story. I was at every murder scene, all three of them. I lived within a mile of all of the crime victims here. My wife went to high school with Christa Hoyt, one of the victims. I still have the 38 special that I bought from Sapp's (ph) Pawn Shop in Gainesville at the time, because we never knew who we would be the next person. So those of who actually worked in Gainesville at the time say we didn't work this story, we actually lived it. For me, the families -- this won't be closure -- but for me, this will probably be the final chapter.</s>LEMON: Yes, and you mentioned Christa Hoyt. Just to quote from her mother here, "She said this is a tough thing, but it's a necessary thing to go through. The final thing we can do for Christa and my late husband and her dad, Gary, who died." They're thinking it's the right thing. Three bodies -- or five bodies, rather, found, in three days, in the period of three days. What was it like, living in that area? I remember all over the country, families and students were afraid across college campuses.</s>WEINSIER: Didn't just affect that area; it affected the entire state of Florida. Living there, first of all, many people actually packed up and left. They went home. Their parents said get out of there. Students that stayed there actually lived together in a house. They moved in together. One person would stay up at night with a baseball bat. They'd line windows with beer cans so if somebody opened up a window and got in, the beer can would fall and you'd hear the noise and wake up. Without a doubt there was terror, but I talked to somebody who went to Florida State University in Tallahassee, which is two hours from Gainesville and their parents were like, go home, don't stay up in Tallahassee.</s>LEMON: Jeff, we have to point out, just a year before, most people remember, Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy was accused of killing at least 36 women. He was executed just the year before, in Gainesville, for a similar crime. So this town, it was sort of a double whammy for the people here.</s>WEINSIER: A double whammy for the people here. And what's very interesting is when you go to campus today and talk to the students, which we have over the past few days, they were just 5 and 6 years old. In fact, I walked up to several and said, do you know who Danny Rollings is? And at least a few of the students had absolutely positively no idea who he is. But no matter where you go to, the offices you walk into in Gainesville, the public defender's office, state attorney's office, the</s>LEMON: Talk to me about the wall -- we were just showing it 00 the wall that was erected in memory of those students. And it looks like, you know, there's graffiti all around it, but it doesn't look like people touched that wall.</s>WEINSIER: They don't. In fact, that is known as the 34th Street Grafitti Wall. It's about a block, a block-and-a-half long. And every day, students come there, and they're allowed to. It's not against the law, and they write happy birthday, or they send messages up. And that one -- one area has stayed the same for virtually 16 years. In fact, there was a fraternity on the University of Florida campus that actually takes care of that part of the wall, repaints it, puts flowers down at the anniversary. And I should also tell you the victims' families, when they come up to Gainesville, they actually go to that wall adjacent to that wall. Adjacent to that wall, in the median of 34th Street, there are five planted palms with the victims names on them as well.</s>LEMON: And, Jeff, living in that community, and your saying your girlfriend is from that community, I know that you're a reporter, but just sort of, in human terms, and from just living there and being there, what do you think's going to happen to you tonight? How do you think you're going to react to it? It's not -- I don't think it'll be easy witnessing an execution.</s>WEINSIER: I don't think it will be easy. On the way over here, I said to my photojournalist, you know, I've got a knot in my stomach all of a sudden. I am not looking forward to it, but I can tell you in living in Gainesville at the time, and becoming friendly with the family members, knowing what Danny Rolling has admitted doing to those victims -- we're talking about mutilation, we're talking about decapitation, we're talking about posing the bodies in certain ways so when the investigators walked in, there was shock value there. All I have to do is think of that, and think that I'm a journalist and this is part of the story, and I think I'll be okay. Time will tell.</s>LEMON: Yes, time will tell. Jeff Weinsier, thank you so much for joining us. And I want to point out that Danny Harold Rolling, the 63rd inmate to be put to death since Florida reinstated executions back in 1979, the third this year. Thank you, sir.</s>WEINSIER: Thank you, Don.</s>LEMON: Message from a killer.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If only I could bend back the hands on that ageless clock and change the past. But alas, I am not the keeper of time.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's trying to make a name for himself. He wants to be a poet or something, or a philosopher. He's just an idiot, that's all.</s>LEMON: A mother is seeking closure today. That's ahead, in the CNN NEWSROOM.