"This Is Christa's Story": The Murder of Christa Hoyt (ABC News 20/20, Part 2)

Part 2 of ABC's 2021 20/20 episode on the Gainesville murders: Christa Hoyt's stepmother and a sheriff's deputy who went to her apartment describe the third victim, and investigators begin to link the scenes. Rolling is not heard.

Subject

Danny Rolling

Recorded

about 2021

Runtime

7:10

Content warning: Concerns the murders of five college students. Contains a graphic description of the murder of Christa Hoyt, including beheading, mutilation, the posing of her body and sexual battery (04:22 to 04:47 and 05:42 to 05:50 of the video).

The Report

This is a 7-minute-10-second segment of "The Devil in Gainesville," a 2021 episode of ABC News's 20/20, posted by ABC News as Part 2 of the episode on April 13, 2021. It combines narration by correspondent John Donvan with new interviews and with news footage from August 1990. Danny Rolling is not heard and is not named in this part.

Historical Context

In late August 1990, five students were murdered in Gainesville, Florida: Sonja Larson, 18, Christina Powell, 17, Christa Hoyt, 18, Tracy Paules, 23, and Manuel "Manny" Taboada, 23. Danny Rolling was arrested on September 7, 1990, for an unrelated supermarket robbery in Ocala, pleaded guilty to the five murders on February 15, 1994, and was sentenced to death after the jury recommended death 12 to 0. He was executed on October 25, 2006.

Circumstances

Christa Hoyt, 18, studied at Santa Fe Community College and, her stepmother says, worked part-time as a records clerk on the midnight shift at the sheriff's office. When she failed to arrive for work, deputies were sent to her apartment, where she was found dead, hours after the bodies of Sonja Larson and Christina Powell had been discovered.

What the Report Covers

The segment opens with 1990 news of the first two murders on the eve of the fall semester. Don Maines, a retired Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigator, describes screwdriver marks at the door, dish soap apparently used to destroy evidence, and tape removed from the victim's hands. Christa Hoyt's stepmother, who introduces herself on camera, says, "this is Christa's story," and describes a girl who wanted to be a police officer and whose "face just glowed." A deputy who went to the apartment recalls a colleague looking through the sliding glass door and telling her, "Don't look. You don't want to see this." The narration describes the scene. The stepmother recalls her husband, Gary, asking to be told that Christa did not suffer. Investigators describe the similarities between the scenes, students describe their fear, and the narration closes by saying that a bank robbery would become "the key to the Gainesville murder case."

What Makes the Recording Significant

It records the account of Christa Hoyt's family and of a deputy who knew her, and shows how investigators came to see the first three murders as the work of one killer.

Archival Importance

A segment from ABC News's own upload of the 2021 episode, built partly from 1990 news footage.

Important Caveats

Danny Rolling is not heard. The stepmother's name is given as she says it ("Diana Laundrie Hoyt" or similar, as heard; the research memo has "Diane"); confirm the spelling from the on-screen name strap before using it in page copy. The deputy is not named; the deputies named on air (Keith O'Hara and Gail Barber) are names as heard and not verified. The descriptions at 04:22 to 04:47 and 05:42 to 05:50 are graphic and should not be repeated in page copy. ABC's "bank robbery" is the Gainesville bank robbery of the day Christa Hoyt's body was found, later tied to Rolling; he was arrested for a separate supermarket robbery in Ocala.

Archival Reporter: Gainesville police discovered the bodies of two 18- to 20-year-old women whose sources say are University of Florida students. Sonja Larson and Christina Powell were stabbed to death and mutilated.

John Donvan: Thousands of young people were coming to Gainesville at this very moment. And in fact, the next day, [unclear: "that's" (captions) / "it was" (Whisper)] the first day of the fall semester.

Archival Reporter: Over 40,000 students will start class at the University of Florida tomorrow.

John Donvan: So they knew it would set off alarms.

Police Official: You have a great influx of young people, and they have to be very, very careful. [00:58: music.]

Don Maines: The forensic people that processed the scene were able to see impressions in the door jamb area. Appeared to be that of a screwdriver, a typical screwdriver, which would have been used to force [unclear: "entry" (Whisper) / "the injury" (captions)].

John Donvan: A very unusual detail of a killing was, Christy Powell was found, [unclear: "on the floor with a towel" (Whisper) / "and on the floor was a towel" (captions)] with what looked like detergent on, on the body.

Don Maines: It appeared that the perpetrator had used this dish soap in an attempt to destroy evidence. He had taped her hands together, it seems, but had removed the tape and taken it with him. Because of the removal of the tape, we weren't finding no latent prints. We think that was in an effort to keep investigators from discovering DNA, of blood types, fingerprints.

Don Maines: It kind of indicates that they have some knowledge, background of what law enforcement is going to be looking for when they go into a crime scene.

John Donvan: The chief told me he knew right away that this guy who had done this was not going to be satisfied with just killing two people. It was a couple of hours later that they found a third victim, a young woman named Christa Hoyt.

Diana Hoyt: I am Diana [unclear: "Laundrie" / "laundry"] Hoyt. I am a stepmother to Christa Hoyt. I very much debated about coming in here and talking to you, and I got to thinking about it again, and I realized this is Christa's story.

Announcer: Our next scholarship recipient is Christa Hoyt.

Diana Hoyt: Christa really wanted to be a police officer. That's all she had wanted for four years in high school. She was going to school at Santa Fe Community College, and she was working part-time at the sheriff's office, working midnight shift as a records clerk. And no matter what, she was a happy person. Her face just glowed. [03:01: music; no speech.]

Diana Hoyt: The television was on, and it said that two students had been murdered in Gainesville.

Sheriff'S Deputy: Christa was supposed to go into work, and she was very punctual, but she didn't show up. That was so out of character for Christa. She didn't miss work. They called Christa's home several times. They dispatched Deputy Keith O'Hara and Deputy Gail Barber (names as heard; not verified) to Christa's apartment. He beat me there by just a little bit. He had gotten out of his car and walked around to the back of the apartment, and there was a sliding glass door on the rear of her apartment. And so he got down on his knees and looked up with his flashlight [unclear: "in the bedroom" / "and bedroom"]. And he looked at me, and he said, "Don't look. You don't want to see this."

John Donvan: Christa Hoyt was found dead, mutilated, beheaded, and the killer had left her head on a shelf, so that anybody walking through the door, that's what they would see. And her body also was posed. She was sitting, her feet on the floor, her torso slumped forward.

Sheriff'S Deputy: I did not want to see that young lady that meant so much to me. I did not want that to be what I carried in my mind of her for the rest of my life.

Police Spokesperson: The exact cause of death is multiple stab wounds to her body. We're not saying how many, what manner, what type of instrument.

Diana Hoyt: We had a very hard time trying to process the whole fact of what had happened to Christa. My husband would just sit and say, "Just tell me she died right away. Tell me she did not suffer."

Diana Hoyt: These police officers knew Christa. Now they had to face the father.

Diana Hoyt: They told Gary she died right away, with the first stab, which was the truth. But there were many hours before that, before she was killed.

John Donvan: In fact, investigators could tell Christa Hoyt had been sexually battered in those hours before she was finally stabbed to death.

Archival Reporter: The question now facing police is, are these murders related?

Police Official: At this point, we simply don't know.

Don Maines: We were starting to see the similarities between the two. He was very precise in his methodology on both scene one and scene two. A large knife had been used. The entry to the apartment, there was several pry marks around the door. Again, we saw that the hands had been taped, but the tape had been removed, like he knew that the police were going to be there and he had to take the evidence with them.

Archival Reporter: So if their hunch is right, that both crime scenes are linked, that's very bad news for Gainesville.

John Donvan: They had a serial killer on the loose in their community, and they had nothing at that point, nothing that could help them figure out who he was or how to stop him.

Student: Frankly, I was scared to go home, and then you're too scared to go to sleep, and then you're so tired you want to go to sleep, and then it just starts over the next day. It's terrifying.

Student: If anything else happens in the next 24 hours, I don't care about classes. I don't care about anything. I'm, I'm leaving.

John Donvan: So while the police are really 99% concerned about what's going on with these murder scenes, there's a bank robbery. And they had no idea that this thing was going to be the key to the Gainesville murder case. [07:06: speech ends; the segment runs to 07:10.] ---