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The Serial Killer Who Inspired Scream Terrorized My College Town 35 Years Ago and Left Me Too Terrified to Sleep
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”
The coverage of the 2022 University of Idaho murders and the various documentaries I’ve watched on the four young victims of a brutal psychopath have brought back uncomfortable memories of the days and nights in the summer of 1990 when I was a student at the University of Florida, and my college town of Gainesville, Florida, was terrorized by another brutal psychopath. On August 12, I was an invited guest on Court TV’s Vinnie Politan Investigates to discuss the lingering effect of the Gainesville murders. The producers reached out because of the following article, in which I wrote about what happened 35 years ago for the very first time.
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…
