In the early 1990s, the college town of Gainesville,Florida was paralyzed by fear. Over just three days, five students were brutally murdered in their own apartments, victims of Danny Rolling, the man the press would call The Gainesville Ripper. His crimes were savage, his methods deliberate, and the terror he left behind felt like something straight out of a horror movie.

Years later, screenwriter Kevin Williamson watched a documentary about those killings while home alone. That fear he experienced while watching that documentary became the spark for Wes Craven's Scream (1996). Set in the quiet town of Woodsboro, Scream follows a masked killer who taunts his victims with phone calls and deadly games, blurring the line between fiction and reality. What began as a true story of terror became a movie that made us all ask the same question…

“What’s your favorite scary movie?”

Sources:

World’s Most Evil Killers: S3,EP13

https://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/psyc%20405/serial%20killers/rolling,%20danny%20-%202004.pdf

https://www.ksla.com/video/2024/03/29/archives-murders-tom-julie-sean-grissom-shreveport-la-1989/

https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/crime/2019/11/08/grissom-family-murders-shreveport-louisiana-gainesville-murders/4157607002/

https://www.aetv.com/articles/how-serial-killer-danny-rolling-inspired-scream-with-his-1990-slayings

https://people.com/serial-killer-gainesville-ripper-danny-rolling-exclusive-11763591

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Rolling

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1993/02/20/5-dead-may-have-been-stalked/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTvIh8rC4ak

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