Post by CCADP on Aug 26, 2005 7:38:32 GMT -5
Where are they now?
August 26. 2005 6:01AM
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ives and careers change in 15 years.
Some of the people who played key roles in the response to, and investigation of, the Gainesville student murders and Danny Rolling have retired; others have taken new career paths and some have left the community. But no matter where they are or what they're doing, they say August 1990 helped define their personal and professional lives.
Here's a look at where some of them are today.
LAURA KNUDSON
These days, Laura Knudson said, she sometimes thinks how old each of the murder victims would be now. The ages would range from 32 to 38.
At the time they were killed, Knudson was a victim advocate in the State Attorney's Office in Gainesville. Working professionally with the victims' families, she quickly developed a close personal friendship with them that has lasted 15 years.
"Through the course of the years I got to know their kids as they lived, not in death alone," said Knudson, 48, who left the State Attorney's Office in 1993 and today is president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of North Central Florida.
"The Powells did a video of Christina growing up, and other families have put similar things together," she said. "I honor the parents. It's a comfort to me in knowing that all of (their children) had good lives while they were here.
"I think the families mark the years by how old their kids would be," Knudson said.
ART SANDEEN
For years after the student murders, Art Sandeen invariably would be asked about them at conferences of college educators.
Today other reminders - like the SW 34th Street Wall - bring back that time when the education professor was UF's vice president for student affairs and coordinating the school's response to the murders.
"For all who were there during those years, and especially those who were so closely involved, the student murders are part of our psyche and souls forever," said Sandeen, 67, a professor in UF's College of Education. "Unfortunately for the students who were here at that time, I suspect those terrible events forever will be a part of their experience."
He retired from student affairs in 1999 and returned to full-time teaching in UF's Department of Educational Leadership, Policy and Foundations. He retired again in December, but has come out of retirement to go back into the classroom this semester.
JEANNE SINGER
After leaving private practice to join the State Attorney's Office in 1993, Jeanne Singer became one of three attorneys assigned to the student murders. She was in charge of making the prosecution's case in the murders of Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada.
"I worked the Gatorwood scene," said Singer, 53, who is chief assistant state attorney in the 8th Judicial Circuit. "Humans are innately beautiful when they're young, and when you see them destroyed when they're young you never get over it."
She said that justice takes patience.
"I accept the tenets of this system where you are entitled to all your constitutional rights . . . and I don't have a problem with (Rolling) exercising all his rights," Singer said.
"And when he has exercised all his rights and exhausted all his remedies, then justice will be done. And I'm confident it will be done. So I'm willing to pay the price and wait."
LINDA GRAY
Hardly a day goes by that something doesn't trigger for Linda Gray a memory of the 1990 fall semester at the University of Florida.
She was in Tigert Hall, a vice president and director of UF's News and Public Affairs. As such, she was the school's official spokeswoman, updating the news media on UF's response to the student murders.
"If I hadn't continued working for a university, I might not think about it every day," said Gray, who left UF in 2002 and now is vice president and director of News and Information at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
"Students think they're invincible," said Gray, who gave her age as "in my 50s."
"One night when I left (my office), it was getting dark and I saw this young woman jogging alone wearing headphones," she said.
"All I could think when I saw her was that she has no idea the bad things that can happen to you."
LEN REGISTER
In 1989, Len Register, who was state attorney in the 8th Judicial Circuit, was among the witnesses to the execution of serial killer Ted Bundy. The next year he began spearheading the prosecution of another notorious serial murderer, Danny Rolling.
Bundy had been on Death Row for nine years. Rolling is in his 11th year there.
"Hopefully, it will not be much longer for the families to see his sentence carried out," said Register, 51, who now lives in Pensacola where he is managing assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's Northern District of Florida.
Register's work on the Rolling case ended after he lost the election for state attorney to Rod Smith in 1992. He entered private practice for a few years before joining the Justice Department in 1996.
He choked up when he recalled attending a 1990 memorial for the five students.
Fifteen years later, Register said, "Sometimes the memories still make you emotional."
ROD SMITH
Rod Smith, newly elected as a Florida state senator, was involved in the resolution of the Florida vote count for the infamous presidential election of 2000. He recalled a news conference in which a colleague leaned over and asked if he'd ever seen so many television cameras.
"Yeah," Smith replied, "I've seen a lot more."
He was thrust into the spotlight two years after the student murders, when he was elected state attorney in the Gainesville-based 8th Judicial Circuit.
He took over the prosecution of Danny Rolling. At the time of the murders he was in private practice in Gainesville, but he stayed abreast of developments in the case, he said, because his clients included the unions for the Gainesville Police Department and Alachua County Sheriff's Office.
"I remember (Clerk of the Court) Buddy Irby opened the courthouse at night for us," said Smith, 55, who is in his second term as a senator and running for Florida governor. "It was round-the-clock. In my life I've never put as much focus on something as I did on the prosecution of Danny Rolling."
WAYLAND CLIFTON
As he shepherded the Gainesville Police Department after the student murders, former Chief Wayland Clifton kept some notes on the investigation and other aspects of the case. He thought he might assemble them someday into a book.
"I've rewritten it probably 40 times," Clifton said. "I kept notes in those days without any thought to do anything with them other than to refer to them to solve other crimes. Someday I'll probably sit down and attempt to put some form to them that might be useful to somebody."
Clifton, who turns 64 on Sept. 11, left GPD in 1996. After a short stint in Gainesville's Code Enforcement Department, he took a job as chief probation officer in the 8th Judicial Circuit for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.
He occasionally teaches a course at Santa Fe Community College's Institute of Public Safety, he said, and sometimes uses the student murders in his class to police recruits.
STAN MORRIS
Even before the last of the bodies of the student murder victims were found, Circuit Court Judge Stan Morris was assigned to preside over the case whenever the killer was found. Danny Rolling eventually was caught, pleaded guilty and, on April 20, 1994, Morris sentenced him to death.
He said that despite the seemingly endless delays in carrying out his sentence - which was recommended by the jury in Rolling's sentencing trial - the appeals are moving forward.
"I think the case is progressing as a case like this should progress through the system," said Morris, 58, who stepped down as chief judge of the 8th Judicial Circuit on July 1. "It has moved to the federal system, and the federal courts control their own time."
Morris also serves on the state's Trial Court Budget Commission, a panel of 15 judges and seven court administrators who review revisions to the state legal system and work to obtain the proper funding for Florida's trial courts.
SPENCER MANN
When he was with the Alachua County Sheriff's Office - including serving as spokesman during the student murder cases - Spencer Mann said, he was "on the front end" of criminal cases. After he went downtown to the State Attorney's Office in 1998, he said, "I now get to see it through to fruition."
Fruition has been a long time coming in the case of serial killer Danny Rolling, whose death sentence was imposed more than 11 years ago.
"I wish the appellate courts would make some ruling up or down so we can close the chapter on the sentencing issue," said Mann, 49. "It's been very frustrating that the appellate process has dragged on so long, especially for the victims' families."
While at the Sheriff's Office, Mann was an investigator who worked mainly on homicide and cold cases, including the still-unsolved disappearance of University of Florida student Tiffany Sessions in February 1989. Eight years after the student murders, he said, a career opportunity came up and he went to the State Attorney's Office in the 8th Judicial Circuit. He now is an investigator and spokesman for that office.
JOHN LOMBARDI
Exactly one week before the bodies of the first two student murder victims were found, John Lombardi celebrated his 48th birthday. He was in his fifth month as the University of Florida's new president.
He likely still needed directions to get around campus. But, some say, he didn't need direction in leadership during his unforgettable first fall semester at UF.
"Almost everybody involved in the day-to-day concerns back then had been at the university for years," said Linda Gray, UF spokeswoman at the time. "The only new person was Dr. Lombardi. He was incredibly compassionate . . . and eminently believable as a dad and as a higher-eduction administrator."
Lombardi left Tigert Hall in 1999 to return to the classroom as a history professor. In 2002, he was named chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
"No one who lived through those days escaped unchanged," Lombardi, 63, said in a recent e-mail to The Sun, "and the emotional anguish of that tragedy affected everyone deeply."
SADIE DARNELL
In 1990, Sadie Darnell was a lieutenant about halfway into her 30-year career at the Gainesville Police Department, where she was the public information officer. Fifteen years later - just before her May 31 retirement as a captain from GPD at age 53 - she said the student murders gave her "a very public way of showing how painful bad things could be."
This month she returned to GPD in a civilian capacity as a community relations coordinator. Darnell said 15 years accentuate not just the maddeningly slow pace of justice in the Rolling case, but the potential of the five victims who now would have been in their 30s.
"I never knew the children personally, but I feel I have learned about them from the families and I have some sense of their loss," she said. "I wish we all had the chance to know what they would become."
Darnell said the murders heightened her compassion for crime victims. Today she remains an advocate and close friend of the families of children she never knew.
- Compiled by Sun staff writer Bob Arndorfer
August 26. 2005 6:01AM
Font Size: 101112131415161718192021222324
ives and careers change in 15 years.
Some of the people who played key roles in the response to, and investigation of, the Gainesville student murders and Danny Rolling have retired; others have taken new career paths and some have left the community. But no matter where they are or what they're doing, they say August 1990 helped define their personal and professional lives.
Here's a look at where some of them are today.
LAURA KNUDSON
These days, Laura Knudson said, she sometimes thinks how old each of the murder victims would be now. The ages would range from 32 to 38.
At the time they were killed, Knudson was a victim advocate in the State Attorney's Office in Gainesville. Working professionally with the victims' families, she quickly developed a close personal friendship with them that has lasted 15 years.
"Through the course of the years I got to know their kids as they lived, not in death alone," said Knudson, 48, who left the State Attorney's Office in 1993 and today is president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of North Central Florida.
"The Powells did a video of Christina growing up, and other families have put similar things together," she said. "I honor the parents. It's a comfort to me in knowing that all of (their children) had good lives while they were here.
"I think the families mark the years by how old their kids would be," Knudson said.
ART SANDEEN
For years after the student murders, Art Sandeen invariably would be asked about them at conferences of college educators.
Today other reminders - like the SW 34th Street Wall - bring back that time when the education professor was UF's vice president for student affairs and coordinating the school's response to the murders.
"For all who were there during those years, and especially those who were so closely involved, the student murders are part of our psyche and souls forever," said Sandeen, 67, a professor in UF's College of Education. "Unfortunately for the students who were here at that time, I suspect those terrible events forever will be a part of their experience."
He retired from student affairs in 1999 and returned to full-time teaching in UF's Department of Educational Leadership, Policy and Foundations. He retired again in December, but has come out of retirement to go back into the classroom this semester.
JEANNE SINGER
After leaving private practice to join the State Attorney's Office in 1993, Jeanne Singer became one of three attorneys assigned to the student murders. She was in charge of making the prosecution's case in the murders of Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada.
"I worked the Gatorwood scene," said Singer, 53, who is chief assistant state attorney in the 8th Judicial Circuit. "Humans are innately beautiful when they're young, and when you see them destroyed when they're young you never get over it."
She said that justice takes patience.
"I accept the tenets of this system where you are entitled to all your constitutional rights . . . and I don't have a problem with (Rolling) exercising all his rights," Singer said.
"And when he has exercised all his rights and exhausted all his remedies, then justice will be done. And I'm confident it will be done. So I'm willing to pay the price and wait."
LINDA GRAY
Hardly a day goes by that something doesn't trigger for Linda Gray a memory of the 1990 fall semester at the University of Florida.
She was in Tigert Hall, a vice president and director of UF's News and Public Affairs. As such, she was the school's official spokeswoman, updating the news media on UF's response to the student murders.
"If I hadn't continued working for a university, I might not think about it every day," said Gray, who left UF in 2002 and now is vice president and director of News and Information at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
"Students think they're invincible," said Gray, who gave her age as "in my 50s."
"One night when I left (my office), it was getting dark and I saw this young woman jogging alone wearing headphones," she said.
"All I could think when I saw her was that she has no idea the bad things that can happen to you."
LEN REGISTER
In 1989, Len Register, who was state attorney in the 8th Judicial Circuit, was among the witnesses to the execution of serial killer Ted Bundy. The next year he began spearheading the prosecution of another notorious serial murderer, Danny Rolling.
Bundy had been on Death Row for nine years. Rolling is in his 11th year there.
"Hopefully, it will not be much longer for the families to see his sentence carried out," said Register, 51, who now lives in Pensacola where he is managing assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's Northern District of Florida.
Register's work on the Rolling case ended after he lost the election for state attorney to Rod Smith in 1992. He entered private practice for a few years before joining the Justice Department in 1996.
He choked up when he recalled attending a 1990 memorial for the five students.
Fifteen years later, Register said, "Sometimes the memories still make you emotional."
ROD SMITH
Rod Smith, newly elected as a Florida state senator, was involved in the resolution of the Florida vote count for the infamous presidential election of 2000. He recalled a news conference in which a colleague leaned over and asked if he'd ever seen so many television cameras.
"Yeah," Smith replied, "I've seen a lot more."
He was thrust into the spotlight two years after the student murders, when he was elected state attorney in the Gainesville-based 8th Judicial Circuit.
He took over the prosecution of Danny Rolling. At the time of the murders he was in private practice in Gainesville, but he stayed abreast of developments in the case, he said, because his clients included the unions for the Gainesville Police Department and Alachua County Sheriff's Office.
"I remember (Clerk of the Court) Buddy Irby opened the courthouse at night for us," said Smith, 55, who is in his second term as a senator and running for Florida governor. "It was round-the-clock. In my life I've never put as much focus on something as I did on the prosecution of Danny Rolling."
WAYLAND CLIFTON
As he shepherded the Gainesville Police Department after the student murders, former Chief Wayland Clifton kept some notes on the investigation and other aspects of the case. He thought he might assemble them someday into a book.
"I've rewritten it probably 40 times," Clifton said. "I kept notes in those days without any thought to do anything with them other than to refer to them to solve other crimes. Someday I'll probably sit down and attempt to put some form to them that might be useful to somebody."
Clifton, who turns 64 on Sept. 11, left GPD in 1996. After a short stint in Gainesville's Code Enforcement Department, he took a job as chief probation officer in the 8th Judicial Circuit for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.
He occasionally teaches a course at Santa Fe Community College's Institute of Public Safety, he said, and sometimes uses the student murders in his class to police recruits.
STAN MORRIS
Even before the last of the bodies of the student murder victims were found, Circuit Court Judge Stan Morris was assigned to preside over the case whenever the killer was found. Danny Rolling eventually was caught, pleaded guilty and, on April 20, 1994, Morris sentenced him to death.
He said that despite the seemingly endless delays in carrying out his sentence - which was recommended by the jury in Rolling's sentencing trial - the appeals are moving forward.
"I think the case is progressing as a case like this should progress through the system," said Morris, 58, who stepped down as chief judge of the 8th Judicial Circuit on July 1. "It has moved to the federal system, and the federal courts control their own time."
Morris also serves on the state's Trial Court Budget Commission, a panel of 15 judges and seven court administrators who review revisions to the state legal system and work to obtain the proper funding for Florida's trial courts.
SPENCER MANN
When he was with the Alachua County Sheriff's Office - including serving as spokesman during the student murder cases - Spencer Mann said, he was "on the front end" of criminal cases. After he went downtown to the State Attorney's Office in 1998, he said, "I now get to see it through to fruition."
Fruition has been a long time coming in the case of serial killer Danny Rolling, whose death sentence was imposed more than 11 years ago.
"I wish the appellate courts would make some ruling up or down so we can close the chapter on the sentencing issue," said Mann, 49. "It's been very frustrating that the appellate process has dragged on so long, especially for the victims' families."
While at the Sheriff's Office, Mann was an investigator who worked mainly on homicide and cold cases, including the still-unsolved disappearance of University of Florida student Tiffany Sessions in February 1989. Eight years after the student murders, he said, a career opportunity came up and he went to the State Attorney's Office in the 8th Judicial Circuit. He now is an investigator and spokesman for that office.
JOHN LOMBARDI
Exactly one week before the bodies of the first two student murder victims were found, John Lombardi celebrated his 48th birthday. He was in his fifth month as the University of Florida's new president.
He likely still needed directions to get around campus. But, some say, he didn't need direction in leadership during his unforgettable first fall semester at UF.
"Almost everybody involved in the day-to-day concerns back then had been at the university for years," said Linda Gray, UF spokeswoman at the time. "The only new person was Dr. Lombardi. He was incredibly compassionate . . . and eminently believable as a dad and as a higher-eduction administrator."
Lombardi left Tigert Hall in 1999 to return to the classroom as a history professor. In 2002, he was named chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
"No one who lived through those days escaped unchanged," Lombardi, 63, said in a recent e-mail to The Sun, "and the emotional anguish of that tragedy affected everyone deeply."
SADIE DARNELL
In 1990, Sadie Darnell was a lieutenant about halfway into her 30-year career at the Gainesville Police Department, where she was the public information officer. Fifteen years later - just before her May 31 retirement as a captain from GPD at age 53 - she said the student murders gave her "a very public way of showing how painful bad things could be."
This month she returned to GPD in a civilian capacity as a community relations coordinator. Darnell said 15 years accentuate not just the maddeningly slow pace of justice in the Rolling case, but the potential of the five victims who now would have been in their 30s.
"I never knew the children personally, but I feel I have learned about them from the families and I have some sense of their loss," she said. "I wish we all had the chance to know what they would become."
Darnell said the murders heightened her compassion for crime victims. Today she remains an advocate and close friend of the families of children she never knew.
- Compiled by Sun staff writer Bob Arndorfer