One day Sergeant Bradly told me
they were bringing in Danny Rolling. With a new 170 years, facing five murder
charges in the 1990 Gainesville student slayings, and having had a couple of suicide
attempts, he was considered very dangerous, to say the least. I was usually assigned
to new people like Danny since everyone started on the second floor where I worked.
In order to move up and have more property and freedom, they had to prove
themselves. At first, each was considered a threat to himself as well as to others.
Danny was brought in, given a physical, and put alone in a cell. I went to get his
clothing size and take to him a blanket, sheets, toilet paper, and stuff like that.
The first time I saw him he was very nervous and agitated - scared - and he asked me if
the guards were going to beat him. He had been threatened from the jail to the
prison reception center at Lake Butler and, when he first came in the back of the prison
here, by prisoners and guards. I told him not to worry, that he was safe here, and
that no one would hurt him.
About that time a group of guards came in out of the hall to see him and some of them
threatened him. When they'd left he said "they're gonna get me!" I
said they wouldn't and spoke to Sergeant Bradly about it. I told Sergeant Bradly how
this person was being treated and how we had to deal with him every day 24 hours a day.
Sergeant Bradly talked with Danny then went to see the Colonel, the head of prison
security, to see that it did not happen again.
Danny was amazed at being treated like anyone else. As a rule, I treated all people
well until they did something to make my life miserable. Then I would stop doing small
things for them that I didn't have to do like pass them a book or a magazine.
Usually that worked and I got along with most people. That's all I did with
Danny. I gave him a pen and stamps and did a few other favors like that, but no more
than I did for anyone else. Nevertheless he was impressed by this and became more
and more open with me. We began to talk a lot, mostly about his family. His
mother was in bad shape and in a wheel chair after a liver cancer operation.
One day we were told they were going to close W-wing because of the budget. We had
to tell all the patients. When I saw Danny that day he said I'd been good to him and
he was going to help me. And then he told me he'd done the killings in Gainesville
and gave me three things to go tell the people that run the prison. Well, I thought
he was full of shit, but I did relate it to Sergeant Bradly. And that was that.
W-wing was closed and Danny was transferred to the state mental hospital for
observation. I got another job until I hurt my back in a fall and was laid up in a
cell.
Months had gone by when Danny was returned to the prison as a result of a new law that
made the prison put people with pending outside charges in population. Danny and
about 20 others moved onto my wing. At this time I was just getting over the back
injury. As soon as Danny arrived he came to my cell and said he had to see me about
something important. He told me he'd been found sane, but while in the hospital he
had started to pray and to give his life to God. He could not deal with what he had
done and needed to get it out. I was the only person in Florida that had been good
to him and he had decided to tell me everything. He wanted me to be his confessor
and a state's witness against him. He hoped that, from doing this, some good would
come.
For several days we talked and even argued about it. I could hardly believe what he
was asking me to do or fully understand how it might affect me. One day he brought
me a note to give to the prison investigator that said he wanted to do this through me.
He started to cry. He said that he was haunted by the terrible things he had
done. Then he told me he was going to kill another inmate who had made a pass at
him. I was able to stop him from killing the man only by relenting, by telling him
that I'd help him.
It wasn't only to save a man's life that I made this decision. I had done a lot of
soul searching. I knew it was the right thing to do. And it was a way I could
begin to pay back for some of my wrongs, to do the right thing for the right reason.
Your first step to freedom has to take place in your own mind when you begin to
make decisions that are governed by what you know is right and not by any other reason.
Danny was horrified by what he had done and had begged me in tears to do this. The
things he'd done were so bad he could not tell anyone but me. It was driving him
crazy. He had to get it out. So I became his Confessor.