A man who laid siege to a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, killing five girls, told his wife shortly before opening fire that he had molested two young girls who were his relatives decades ago and was tormented by “dreams of molesting again", authorities said today.

The US gunman who stormed a one-room Amish school in Pennsylvania was an ordinary man and a devoted father and showed few signs of trouble in the days before the attack, according to several people who knew him.