Ghostface Not Just a Movie Killer.

Ghostface Not Just a Movie Killer.

Every single person alive knows the famous movie serial killer aka Ghostface. Whether it be from the Scream Franchise and its classic line of “Do you like Scary Movies?” or the parody franchise Scary Movie.

What people might not realize and I didn’t know this until recently is that the original Ghostface Killer in the Scream movies was inspired by a real-life serial killer named Danny Rolling.

The year was 1989 when Danny Rolling, decided to go on a murder spree and kill eight people including five college students. The press gave Danny Rolling the nickname “The Gainesville Ripper” as his last murder was in Gainesville, but he also killed in Shreveport crossing state lines.

During the news reports of the killings, a budding screenwriter named Kevin Williamson was housesitting and he had flicked on the TV to see a special on the murders. This inspired him to create a screenplay which later was picked up by Wes Craven to become the famous Scream franchise which is in fact about to release a new movie.

Like most serial killers, we read that Danny Rolling was brought up in an abusive home, and to be honest, just once I would like to read about a serial killer who didn’t use that as an excuse for killing. 

His first killings were triggered by him losing his job and in November 1989, Danny broke into a house in Shreveport, Louisiana, and killed three people including an 8-year-old child. Surprisingly this murder was not connected to Danny Rolling until 2006 when with nothing to lose admitted to the police that he committed the crime. Up till then, the police had no leads and the case had gone cold and remained unsolved.

In 1990, by this time Danny had moved to Gainesville, Florida, and tortured and murdered five college students where he would mutilate and pose his victims. The crime scenes were considered to be grisly acts and this was where he gained the nickname “The Gainesville Ripper”

However, he was pretty cunning and tricky as it wasn’t the murders that got Danny put under the police’s radar but a robbery of a supermarket in September 1990.  Eventually, the police with the help of DNA and blood, were able to connect Danny to the murders of the college students as he had stupidly made a mistake and left some of his blood – blood type “B” on the victims which until now had been seen as an “unknown”. 

During the lead up to the trial, of course, it looked like that at first Danny might get off on insanity plead as he proclaimed he had been possessed by a demon named “Gemini”, however as the date got closer to his trial – Danny changed his tune and pleaded guilty to all accounts with the statement that he wanted to be famous and go down in history like Ted Bundy. In a way, he did but not as himself but as Ghostface – the Scream Killer.  Danny Rolling’s life ended in October 2006 when he was executed by lethal injection.