Encore: Witness to an Execution

DEVIANT

Cold Open Media

Education, Documentary, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This encore presentation revisits one of the most unsettling stories ever featured on DEVIANT. It is a firsthand account of the execution of Gainesville Ripper Danny Rolling, as witnessed by veteran South Florida journalist Michael Mayo. Mayo covered two Florida executions in his 31-year career. What he saw, and what he did not expect to feel, stayed with him. In this conversation with DEVIANT host Dan Szematowicz, Mayo walks us through the days leading up to Rolling’s death: meeting the families of the victims, entering Florida’s death chamber, hearing the condemned man sing a self-written hymn moments before the chemicals flowed, and grappling with what executions mean for justice, closure, and the people left behind. It is a stark and unvarnished look at an experience few ever witness. It also raises hard questions about punishment, memory, and the weight of what the state asks us to carry. This is a rerelease of a previous DEVIANT episode. New episodes return next week. SUPPORT THE SHOW: http://www.deviantpodcast.com Visit DEVIANT's socials: http://www.instagram.com/deviant.podcast http://www.tiktok.com/@deviant.podcast Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm James Patterson. I write way too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my
0:07.1	maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis Morris. Nan used to always say, Hungry Dogs Run Faster, James,
0:13.9	and I've been running fast ever since. Here's what will be coming your way soon, and this is a really
0:19.3	terrific list, I think. You'll hear from some incredible people like Stacey Abrams.
0:24.6	Yay.
0:25.6	B.J. Novak.
0:26.9	Yay.
0:27.7	Kathy Bates, Dolly Parton, Josh Gadd, and Pope Leo.
0:32.4	Okay, maybe not Pope Leo.
0:33.7	But who knows?
0:34.4	Maybe he'll show up.
0:35.3	Hungry Dogs Run Faster.
0:37.3	Thank you, Grandma, for turning me into a hopeless, obsessive, compulsive.
0:42.0	Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever
0:49.1	you get your podcast. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
0:59.2	This is it.
1:01.3	The world, as you know it, is over.
1:02.5	Completely done.
1:05.0	It's not about to be over.
1:06.2	It's over.
1:11.0	Some of the scientists who helped build AI are now sounding the alarm.
1:19.5	I was selling AI as a great thing for decades, and I was wrong. I was wrong.
	...

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