The Gainesville Ripper, Part 2
To read part 1, please go here.
As quickly as the vicious murders began in Gainesville, so they appeared to end. Sonja Larson and Christi Powell fell victim on late Friday evening/early Saturday morning, Christa Hoyt on late Sunday morning, and Tracy Paules and Manny Taboada on late Monday evening/early Tuesday morning. The city held its collective breath as Wednesday passed, then Thursday, and then another weekend was upon them. While news of the killings themselves were unsettling, the sudden abatement was nearly as unnerving. Why had the killer stopped? Was he still in the Gainesville area? Was he only a weekend killer? Would he strike again? And if so, when?
On Wednesday, the day after Tracy and Manny had been discovered, Marcia West, the founder of Gainesville’s first center for female assault victims, organized a march through downtown — the same day that the University and local police held a joint press conference. It was announced at the press conference that some 100 investigators, forming a task force, would be working on the investigation, the largest manhunt in Florida’s history. Those investigators who had worked on the Ted Bundy case back in 1978, after Bundy attacked four Chi Omega sorority sisters and one Florida State student off-campus, killing two, and abducting and murdering 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in nearby Lake City, were asked to come…