( CNN ) -- The string of attacks at the University of Florida in the past two weeks has sparked terrible memories of a week in August 1990 that sent a tsunami of fear through the student population and the city of Gainesville . Unlike the most recent attempted assaults around campus , the victims in 1990 did n't have a chance . For five students that year , assaults ended in dismemberment and death . The first attack happened the Sunday before school started . Gainesville police were called to check on two students in their apartment . When they arrived , the scene horrified them . Both Christina Powell and Sonja Larson had been stabbed to death , one of them mutilated , her body posed in a sexually explicit manner . Within 72 hours , five students were fatally stabbed , the crime scenes staged for dramatic effect . Police soon surmised Gainesville had a serial killer in its midst and it appeared University of Florida students were his targets . I was a freshman back then and remember students being pulled out of school by their parents , who feared their children would be the killer 's next victim . The killer was entering students ' apartments , usually through sliding glass doors , as people slept . Police said he was likely stalking his prey and was very meticulous , staging crime scenes and cleaning them up to avoid detection . There was a sense that no one was safe at night . Every day the killer roamed free and gruesome details surfaced , a wave of fear swept across the city . Gun stores began selling out , students traveled in groups or left campus entirely . The university even offered to reimburse tuition for those too afraid to return . Eventually , we all learned and memorized the names of the five students killed : Sonja Larson , Christina Powell , Christa Leigh Hoyt , Tracy Paules and Manny Taboada . After Taboada was killed , fear increased , because it became clear men would not be spared and were just as vulnerable . By the time the killer was caught and about to go to trial , I was nearing graduation . It happened that as a student journalist working at the university television and radio station , I ended up covering the trial . I was among those allowed to view the crime scene photos that were entered into evidence . I have never been able to get those scenes out of my head . The worst : a picture of a victim 's body on a bed with her severed head staring down from a bookshelf . It is the stuff of nightmares . They were haunting , purposely theatrical photos that were pornographic in nature due to the positioning of the bodies . All of them seemed to be scenes from a horror film too gruesome to make . `` I was here then , '' University of Florida Vice President of Student Affairs Dave Kratzer said of those difficult days in 1990 . `` This community came together , unified and I really think that the closeness that was forged during that terrible time really is what you are seeing today . '' This is a campus that never forgets . Long after serial killer Danny Rolling confessed to the killings and was executed by the state in 2006 , a memorial to the five students he killed remains .
A serial killer struck CNN campus in days . five students were killed in days , sending fear rippling across the city . the University of Florida 's Tracy Paules was a freshman at the university when the killings occurred . The university is dealing with a string of attempted assaults on women over the past two weeks .