Nickel Mines, Pa. – The local milk-truck driver who bound and shot 10 Amish girls in a rural, one-room schoolhouse Monday, killing five, wrote in a suicide note of recurring dreams about two family members he allegedly molested 20 years ago, and spoke of the anguish of losing his own newborn daughter in 1997, authorities said.
Authorities portrayed gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV as a deeply troubled man who apparently showed no signs of anguish to his wife or three children. Police said evidence suggests he had planned the attack well in advance, brought in supplies for a long siege, and may have planned to molest the girls before police interrupted him.
Meanwhile, the Amish – a cloistered, deeply religious farming community in this rural swath of southern Pennsylvania – struggled to comprehend the stunning violence that invaded their pacifist, tradition-bound lives. As the news spread among them, those who know the Amish said they would seek comfort in centuries-old rituals, their families and their bedrock Christian faith.
“The Amish have always felt the modern world is barreling in,” according to David L. Weaver-Zercher, a Messiah College religion professor who has closely studied the Amish. “They have largely seen the world as a spiritually dangerous place, and in this horror they see the world can be a physically dangerous place.”
At a news conference Tuesday, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said that Roberts’ suicide notes and evidence he left at the scene and at home nearby indicated he planned the assault on Sept. 26. Roberts had a meticulous checklist- including batteries, a stun gun, chains, tape, toilet paper, a flashlight, more than 100 rounds of ammunition, binoculars, and a tube of personal lubrication gel – all indicating he was preparing to molest the girls during a long siege, police said.
The assault was “organized, preplanned and had forethought,” Miller said at the news conference, which included local “clergy and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. Roberts, Miller said, intended “to victimize these children many ways prior to killing them and killing himself.”
One girl fled before the shooting started, but authorities said Tuesday that they did not know whether she escaped or if Roberts let her go. Holding up copies of the suicide notes Roberts left his wife, Marie, and their three children, Miller added: “He did not intend to come out alive.”
On Monday, Roberts burst into the schoolhouse, dismissing the boys and adults, and lined up the girls, ages 6 to 13, along the blackboard.
Roberts barricaded the doors and bound the girls, then opened fire with an automatic handgun as police closed in, shooting the girls before killing himself.
The dead girls were identified as Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Anna May Stoltzfus, 12; Marion Fisher, 13; and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7.
Three other girls were receiving medical treatment at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, and the two others were taken to Penn State Medical Center in Hershey.
Miller said four of the wounded girls were shot in the head, while one was shot in the back and the shoulder. Roberts apparently shot all of them at close range.
Authorities are still “trying to develop some insight into what drove him” to violence, said State Police Capt. John W. Laufer, the lead commander on the scene during the shooting. But a clearer, if incomplete, picture of Roberts’ motives began to emerge Tuesday.
Miller said Roberts’ notes repeatedly refer to Elise, his infant daughter who was born prematurely in November 1997 and survived just 20 minutes. “He blamed God for allowing that to happen,” Laufer said.
But in a cellphone conversation Roberts had with his wife while inside the schoolhouse, police said, Roberts mentioned for the first time that he molested two young female relatives 20 years ago, but provided few details other than the relatives were “3 or 4” at the time. Roberts would have been 12 years old at the time of the alleged incident.
“He was having dreams of molesting again,” Miller said, citing both the phone conversation and the note Roberts left for his wife.
Authorities said that they could not corroborate Roberts’ claim Tuesday but that they hadn’t finished interviewing all of his relatives.
Because their community has such close ties, the impact of the shooting was devastating among the Amish. Many of the schoolchildren were related; just 11 girls and 15 boys attended the school, from a total of 10 Amish families that live within walking distance.
The estimated 25,000 Amish who live in Lancaster County pride themselves on their faith, their lifelong work ethic, and their near-complete rejection of the modern world – including electricity, television and automobiles. Their lives are largely devoted to worship, their families and the land they farm by hand.
