Looking back 30 years: Shreveport’s Grissom family triple homicide

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was composed primarily using archived reports of The Shreveport Times. Information and images from sister papers and wire services were also used. It contains content that may be disturbing to readers.)

SHREVEPORT, La. — William, Julie and Sean Grissom were the first three lives taken by serial killer Danny Rolling, who spread his terror between two states in the late 1980s into the early ’90s.

William “Tom” Grissom, 55, divorced, was an AT&T supervisor who lived on Beth Lane in Shreveport’s Southern Hills neighborhood. He was described as being polite, friendly and respectable, and had been battling throat cancer for years but was doing better. He was also nearing retirement.

His daughter, 24-yearold Julie, was a petite brunette studying marketing at Louisiana State University of Shreveport. She had transferred to Shreveport earlier in 1989 after attending the Baton Rouge campus and was working parttime at Dillard’s in South Park Mall. She was on the verge of graduation.

Sean, 8, was a third-grader at Turner Elementary. He was visiting his grandfather, William, and aunt, Julie, for the weekend in part of his recent birthday and was supposed to return home on Monday, Nov. 6, 1989. But he never did.

At around 8:30 that morning, Sean’s mother called police after making multiple unanswered calls to her father-in-law’s house and learning from Sean’s school that he wasn’t in class.

Police then reached out to neighbors, asking them to see if the residence was unlocked. At approximately 8:45 a.m., three neighbors went over to the brownbrick home to check on the family and opened the door to the utility room off the garage.

That’s when the first body was discovered.

Lights were on in the three-bedroom house, and the Sunday and Monday newspapers were at the end of the driveway.

“We cracked the laundry room door open and saw it there,” said Bob Coyles, a neighbor who went to check on the family, in an 1989 report in The Times. “I don’t know who it was. We just got out of there.”

William’s body was slumped against the door, blocking the entrance to the utility room. He had several stab wounds in the back and chest.

He had been cooking steaks on the backyard grill sometime that evening.

Sean was found face down in the family room with one knife wound to his back that exited through his chest.

He was attacked while watching TV.

Julie’s body was found naked and partially hanging off a bed. She was stabbed at least three times in the back but was left facing up. Vinegar was applied to her body.

That evening she was planning to go out to a high school friend’s wedding and had picked out a red dress.

Detectives believe the trio was killed around 6-8 p.m. the Saturday before their bodies were found.

There were no signs of forced entry, no ransacking and no robbery. Although there was some indication of struggle, the overall scene was noted as being “neat.”

That Monday, citizens watched from beyond the taped perimeter in shock and disbelief as first responders removed the bodies from the home on stretchers.

“It makes you leery when something like this happens on your street,” said an unnamed, middle-aged female neighbor in a 1989 report.

The house was put under a 24-hour watch to prevent evidence from potentially being tampered, and red tape was placed over the doors and windows to reveal any disturbances.

Before the end of the week, police said they were searching for a psychologically disturbed man who had experience with crime scenes.

“Somewhere along the line we’ve talked. He’s seen us or we’ve seen him,” Lt. Gary Pittman said in a report of the killer just days after the crime scene was found.

In the first week, police were following “strong leads” and checking alibis but doubted there would be a quick arrest in the case. Evidence was also lining up to indicate that the crimes of violence was directed at Julie.

Although police did not expect the killer would be a threat to others living in the neighborhood, residents were not taking any chances.

“You’re talking about some sick, sick people… I’m no macho son-of-a-gun but I’ll do what is necessary for protection,” Ron Atwood, then 44, told The Times in a 1989 report.

While some where keeping their firearms ready, others kept a strong eye on strange vehicles in the neighborhood.

“Of course everyone is shocked and nervous,” said Leslie Dunn, then 47. She was a neighbor of the victims.

“You watch everything,” she said. “We pray the murderer will confess or be caught so we can feel secure again.”

About 10 minutes away from the Beth Lane crime scene, Danny Rolling lived with his parents in the 6300 block of West Canal Boulevard in the Sunset Acres neighborhood.

He had moved back in with them around summer in 1988. But before this, Rolling had several run-ins with the law — spending most of a decade in prisons between Mississippi and Georgia.

He served three years of a four-year sentence and was paroled in July 1988 before returning to Shreveport. He was to report monthly to a parole officer as part of a five-year probationary period relating to the 1985 conviction of robbing a Kroger in Mississippi.

Rolling was described in a 1991 report by old neighbors as being a loner who played acoustic guitar, jogged the streets alone, worked out and interacted with the youngsters. Some of the neighborhood children reportedly called him “Rambo” because he often wore a bandanna and fatigues.

His stay at his parents’ house wasn’t long. Almost a year after moving back in with them, and roughly six months after the Grissom murders, Rolling fled the area.

A Friday night in May 1990, Rolling, then 35, shot his father, a retired Shreveport police lieutenant, in the head during a dispute at the Sunset Acres home. The argument reportedly began when Rolling’s father told him to roll up his car windows because it was raining.

Sometime that same evening, Rolling went to a house in the 4200 block of Wildwood Street and robbed a couple of $21, saying he needed it to get to Dallas.

His car was found abandoned around 6 the next morning in the Motel 6 parking lot on Monkhouse Drive. Police learned he did not check into the hotel.

At some point, he made his way to Florida on a Greyhound bus and pitched a tent in the woods.

In late August 1990, five Gainesville students were murdered. Their bodies were found within a period of a few days and had striking similarities to the triple-homicide on Beth Lane.

The students killed were Christina Powell, Sonja Larson, Christa Hoyt, Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada. Their ages ranged from 17 to 23 years old.

Not long after, Florida investigators made their first trip to Shreveport to see if the student murders were perhaps linked to the Beth Lane triple-homicide. By January 1991, Rolling was identified as the top suspect in both sets of murders.

At the time of this announcement, Rolling was already in a Florida jail. He was arrested 10 days after the last Gainesville body was found, but for a September supermarket robbery.

In September 1991, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the supermarket robbery and later given more life sentences in connection with other robberies.

That November, he was indicted for the Gainesville murders, but still was not charged in the Shreveport triple-homicide.

Authorities in Caddo Parish had his name printed on warrants for his arrest, but he was ultimately not extradited back to Louisiana on the three counts of first-degree murder after he pleaded guilty to the Gainesville slayings. The Grissoms’ case was closed in March 1994.

He was sentenced to death five times for Florida murders.

Rolling reportedly confessed to fellow inmates of the Grissom family murders and told investigators during a jailhouse interview that he killed one person for each year he spent in jail.

Before his execution in 2006, Rolling admitted to the Grissom murders in a written letter.

“Even though he’s gone, it doesn’t change the fact our loved ones will never be with us again,” said Joyce Burton, mother of Julie Grissom, in a letter read in a news conference around the time of Rolling’s execution.

“It is a type of closure, but it will never, ever bring our children and loved ones back to us.

“He robbed us of so many things.”

“It makes you leery when something like this happens on your street.”

—An unnamed, middle-aged female neighbor in a 1989 report about the murders of William, Julie and Sean Grissom