Amish school gunman confessed to abusive past

The gunman who killed five girls in an Amish schoolroom confided to his wife during the siege that he sexually abused two relatives 20 years ago.

Investigators in Pennsylvania also said that Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, plotted his takeover of the school for nearly a week and that the items he brought suggest he may have been planning to sexually assault the Amish girls before police closed in.

State police commissioner Jeffrey Miller said Roberts “became disorganised when we arrived”, and subsequently shot himself in the head.

During the stand-off in Lancaster County, Roberts told his wife in a mobile phone call from the one-room school that he sexually abused two female relatives when they were three to five years old, Miller said. Roberts would have been around 11 or 12 at the time.

Also, in a suicide note left for his family, he said he “had dreams about doing what he did 20 years ago again”, Miller said.

Holding up a copy of the gunman’s suicide note at a packed news conference, Miller also suggested that Roberts was haunted by the death of his prematurely-born daughter in 1997.

The baby, Elise, died 20 minutes after being delivered, Miller said. Elise’s death “changed my life forever”, the milk lorry driver and father of three wrote to his wife.

“I haven’t been the same since it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate towards myself, hate towards God and unimaginable emptiness it seems like everytime we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn’t here to share it with us and I go right back to anger.”

The shootings shattered the sense of calm in the Amish community where cars and electrical appliances are shunned.

“He certainly was very troubled psychologically deep down and was dealing with things that nobody else knew he was dealing with,” Miller said.

The death toll rose to six yesterday – including the gunman – when two girls died of their wounds.

Police could not immediately confirm Roberts’ claim that he abused two relatives. Family members knew nothing of the claims in his past, Miller said. Police located the two relatives and were hoping to interview them.

If Roberts felt painfully conflicted about a sexual desire for little girls, he might have blamed the children themselves and acted out his rage on them, one expert said.

The crime bore some resemblance to an attack on a high school in Bailey, Colorado, where a 53-year-old man took six girls hostage and sexually assaulted them before fatally shooting one girl and killing himself. That attack occurred last Wednesday, the day after Roberts began buying materials for his siege.

Using a checklist that was later found in his pick-up truck, Roberts brought to the school three guns, a stun gun, two knives, a pile of wood for barricading the doors, and a bag with 600 rounds of ammunition, police said.

He also had a change of clothing, indicating he had planned a long siege, police said.

He sent the boys and several adults away and bound the girls together in a line along the blackboard. Miller revealed yesterday that one of the girls was able to escape with the boys.

A long piece of wood found in the school had 10 large eyebolts spaced about 10 inches apart, suggesting that Roberts may have planned to truss up the girls and sexually assault them, Miller said.

The girls left in the room were shot at close range shortly after police arrived, Miller said.

“We’re quite certain, based on what we know, that he had no intention of coming out of there alive,” Miller said.

The victims were identified as Naomi Rose Ebersole, seven; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, eight; and her sister Lena Miller, seven. Stoltzfus’ sister was among the wounded.

Three other girls were in critical condition and two were in serious condition. They ranged in age from six to 13.

Roberts, from the nearby town of Bart, was not Amish and did not appear to have anything against the Amish, Miller said. He said Roberts was bent on killing girls and apparently thought he could succeed at the schoolhouse.

Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, spoke at a community prayer service last night and said he was at the home of Roberts’ father when an Amish neighbour came to comfort the family.

“He stood there for an hour, and he held that man in his arms, and he said: 'We will forgive you',” Lefever said. “He extended the hope of forgiveness that we all need these days.”

Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, said his grandchildren were full of questions when they came home from another Amish school.

“We think it was God’s plan and we’re going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going,” he said.

“A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors.”