Imagine growing up in a house where love is a word that's as foreign as a summer snowfall.

Well, your father's idea of affection is a glare that could chill your bones, and the only thing you can rely on is his fist.

Now imagine what happens when that house of horrors becomes the breeding ground for something

much darker. What kind of man does that create? This is the story of Daniel Rowling, a boy

raised on cruelty and control, who eventually transformed from a tormented child into one of the

most feared serial killers in American history.

What was it that turned him from the bullied to the butcher?

And just how far does one man go to make the world feel his pain?

Today we're peeling back the layers of Daniel Rowling's twisted life,

tracing every step from Shreveport to Gainesville to see how a father's rage

gave rise to a serial killer's wrath. Stick around because this story goes from deeply unsettling

to downright horrifying in the blink of an eye. Daniel Rowling had a childhood unlike most. His father, James Harold Rowling, was a Korean

war veteran, turned Shreveport police officer. In 1953, he married Daniel's mother,

Claudia, when she was only 19 years old, and it was only two weeks into the marriage that James

would turn on her. It started when Claudia found out that she was pregnant. What is normally a joyous

and happy occasion first went sour, then turned violent

when James revealed his true colors. He blamed and resented Claudia for the pregnancy,

and claimed that she had forced a child on him when he did not want a child. Helpless and not

wanting to be a single mother in the 1950s,

Claudia brought her son Danny into the world, hoping that James would eventually come around.

He didn't. In fact, he would often beat both Claudia and Danny as punishment for the situation

that they were in. It didn't take much. All either of them had to do was

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