Early Years
Rolling was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He had a difficult upbringing. His father, James Rolling, was a Shreveport Police officer who abused him, his mother, Claudia, and later his brother, Kevin. In one incident, Danny's mother went to the hospital after she claimed that her husband, James Rolling, tried to make her cut herself with a razor blade. His mother made repeated attempts to leave her husband but always returned. In another example of James Rolling's cruel sense of discipline, he pinned Danny to the ground and cuffed him, then had police come to take him away like a criminal because his father was embarrassed by Danny. The idea that Danny was an unwanted child was reinforced ever since birth by his father.
As a teenager and young adult, he was arrested several times for robberies in Georgia, and caught spying on a cheerleader dressing. As an adult, Rolling had trouble trying to assimilate into society and hold down a steady job. At one point, he worked as a waiter at Pancho's restaurant in Shreveport, Louisiana. In May 1990, he tried to kill his father during a family argument in which his father lost an eye and an ear.
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