I was a Florida sophomore, living a block from campus, when the murders happened. I remember a few things:
- Phones overloaded and unusable. I didn’t have a phone at the time, but even the pay phones didn’t work.
- Realizing I would no longer see or hear of Manny fooling around instead of working on his architecture models.
- Police everywhere. State troopers with shotguns standing guard outside the dorms.
- Gainesville emptying out the following weekend. I had planned to stick around, but when UF shut down and it was clear everyone was bugging out, I took off with some friends, too.
- For months afterward, ads for guns, mace, pepper spray, alarms, etc. in the Alligator.
- News of a murder the day after Rolling was indicted: oh no, not again.
And even tonight, before I knew about his execution, I thought as I saw a woman running alone: that’s just not smart. You never know who’s out there. Maybe it was just because I was 19 years old and hadn’t had my idealism broken yet, but the murders pushed me to think a lot about who I trusted. About what trust was.
Hard to believe it’s been sixteen years.