Scott Roeder's calculated path to murder

BY RON SYLVESTER

The Wichita Eagle

Editor’s note: This story was compiled through testimony in the trial of Scott Roeder last week in Sedgwick County District Court. It includes Roeder’s testimony, in which he stated his beliefs and how he felt at certain stages. It also includes information from past interviews with George Tiller and members of Roeder’s family.

Scott Roeder watched television in his motel room at the Garden Inn, trying to relax.

Roeder was frustrated, having made his latest trip to Wichita, and to Reformation Lutheran Church. This time, the Saturday evening service was in Swahili. The young women wearing short skirts had offended him. On top of all that, the reason he’d been going to the church wasn’t there. Again.

The 51-year-old had been attending the church off and one for the previous nine months, about the same time it takes a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. That was the reason Roeder was there — not to pray and worship but because of all the babies that weren’t being born in Wichita.

To Roeder, that was George Tiller’s fault. Tiller was the reason Roeder had been driving to Wichita and sitting in the back of Reformation Lutheran for months, if not years. Tiller went to that church. He also ran a clinic called Women’s Health Care Services. Among the services women received there was terminating their pregnancies. Sometimes, Roeder learned, those pregnancies were terminated in their ninth month.

Roeder had made the decision years before, but over the past year he’d taken steps to plan his mission.

George Tiller, Roeder believed, had to die.

That night, on May 30, Roeder fell asleep at the Garden Inn, hoping the next morning, Pentecost Sunday, would provide him with the opportunity to carry out his plan.

***

Tiller was soft-spoken. Some would describe him as shy for a man around whom controversy swirled.

Everyone knew about the bomb that had gone off in his clinic 23 years earlier, the crowds that protested outside his clinic in 1991, and the woman who shot him in the arms two years later.

Tiller had joined his father’s practice and in the late 1970s had begun offering to terminate pregnancies for women who wanted, and sometimes needed, it. Tiller believed that the U.S. Supreme Court protected the right to choose an abortion for a reason, and over the rest of his life, women across the United States would see him as a champion for those rights. Letters of thanks and notes of appreciation lined the walls of Tiller’s clinic.

He fought efforts to narrow the law to limit that choice. He would battle a state attorney general’s investigation to get his records. He would take even a misdemeanor case to a jury trial and be acquitted.

Tiller also offered adoptions through his clinic. He had a counselor and chaplain available, and they would give last rites and funerals for women who felt they had no other choice but to not carry their pregnancies to term. A few would have such conditions that the pregnancies would threaten their very health and well-being. Those are the ones Tiller would see in the late stages.

Because of the threats and violence that followed him, Tiller took precautions.

“After I was shot we did this,” Tiller told a visitor, showing how he drove an armored car into the garage of the clinic, whose door automatically closed behind him every morning, and as he left every evening.

On the last day of May 2009, Tiller put on a green suit and cowboy boots and went to Reformation Lutheran Church, where he had worshipped for decades. He had to usher that morning, unaware that the man who would end his life was checking out of the Garden Inn, just a few miles away.

***

The armored car, the garage, Tiller living in a gated community and belonging to a private country club were on Roeder’s checklist of things keeping him from ways he couldn’t kill Tiller.

Roeder had accepted the killing of abortion providers since 1998. By then he was six years into his born-again Christian conversion that began one day in 1992, when he knelt down in front of his television during the “700 Club” and accepted Christ with Pat Robertson, via cable.

Roeder, who had struggled with mental illness as a teenager, had seen his marriage disintegrate. He jumped from job to job. He tried to keep a connection with his son, who was frightened when his father was caught with explosives in his car. Roeder would tell his son that the bomb fixings were for an abortion clinic.

Roeder found new connections and relationships with the anti-government group the Freemen and through the people he met as a “sidewalk counselor” in front of abortion clinics in Kansas City. He would try to talk women out of going in the clinics. When they listened, he felt successful.

But one man stood in Roeder’s way of trying to save the unborn. Shelley Shannon had tried to stop that man, shooting Tiller in both arms. But he’d been back to work the next day, Roeder heard.

Roeder visited Shannon in prison. They talked about using violence as a means to an end. Roeder talked to others who believed, as he did, that abortion providers murdered babies and deserved death sentences. All Roeder needed to know about Tiller he read on the Web sites of anti-abortion groups. He saw pictures claiming to portray the results of abortions. He read details about Tiller’s security measures.

Maybe, Roeder reasoned, he could cut off Tiller’s arms with a sword, or shoot him with a rifle, like a sniper, at the clinic. Cutting off the doctor’s arms wouldn’t work, Roeder decided, because Tiller could teach other doctors how to work the procedure. The rifle at the clinic wouldn’t work, because the doctor wasn’t exposed.

Ram Tiller’s car? Roeder thought about that, too. But Roeder checked all those off his list.

Then he took a gun to church.

Roeder brought a 9mm Smith and Wesson, packed in a holster inside his coat, to Reformation Lutheran in 2002. He wanted to shoot Tiller. But Tiller wasn’t there.

As the spring of 2009 approached, Roeder had stalked the church looking for an opportunity to kill Tiller.

Roeder didn’t want to call attention to himself and draw suspicion. Because of Tiller, folks at the church were used to troublemakers and people trying to disrupt services. Roeder needed access to that church to get to Tiller.

Roeder also needed a smaller gun, something that might fit in his pocket.

Two weeks before he would kill the doctor, Roeder walked into Jayhawk Pawn in Lawrence and asked the clerk, Matt Smith, to show him some small-caliber handguns. Smith sold him a .22-caliber Taurus pistol. Roeder picked it up four days later after he’d passed the federal background check.

Although Roeder had been convicted of carrying explosives in his car, the conviction was overturned because a Kansas appeals court found the sheriff’s deputies in Shawnee County illegally searched his car after a traffic stop. Roeder wasn’t a convicted felon when he bought the gun.

Roeder drove to Wichita, went to Reformation Lutheran on May 24, and sat in the back row, near the pews where he’d seen the Tiller family sit before. Roeder sat quietly, with a gun in his pocket and a Bible in his hand. Tiller wasn’t there. Again. It was frustrating Roeder.

Something wasn’t right with the gun. Roeder stopped by his brother’s house outside Topeka and took target practice on May 30. That Saturday, they fired bullets into a creek and into a log. But the gun jammed.

The brothers went into town to a gun shop. The gunsmith there said the .22 needed a little oil. Scott Roeder bought a different kind of ammunition: Winchester Super-X hollow-point bullets. A firearms expert later described hollow-point bullets as being able to do more damage than other kinds of bullets because they expand on impact.

Roeder drove to Wichita, checked into the Garden Inn, went to the Swahili service. He didn’t see Tiller that evening either. He would try again the next day. The program said Tiller was going to be an usher on Sunday.

***

George Tiller had spent the week enjoying Disney World with his family. They returned home the day before he went to church to be an usher and so his wife, Jeanne, could sing in the choir.

People filed into the sanctuary as they did for the 10 a.m. service every Sunday. Some arrived late, some just beating the first chords of the opening music.

Kathy Wegner heard the bells at St. George’s church across the street ring the 10 o’clock hour, as she and her teenage daughter, Allison, walked into Reformation. They needed to set up a table for a youth fund-raiser that morning.

Gary Hoepner and Keith Martin, two of the ushers, chided the Wegners as they carried the table — some joke about the men watching the women work.

Martin walked over to look out the window on that sunny morning and keep an eye on the parking lot. He’d heard some of the parishioners talk of having their cars broken into during worship, and Martin wanted to watch out for burglars.

Hoepner walked over to the snack table, where the church offered doughnuts and other pastries, across from a coffee cabinet, right outside the sanctuary.

George Tiller walked up to the table with Hoepner and they began talking about baked goods.

“I like Bagatelle,” Hoepner told Tiller, talking about the popular Wichita bakery.

Tiller said he liked it, too.

As Hoepner grabbed another goodie, he saw a man out of the corner of his eye.

Scott Roeder had arrived early enough to get his seat in the back of the sanctuary. He saw Tiller step in. Roeder looked to the left. He looked to the right. Tiller stepped out into the lobby.

Roeder saw his chance. He walked out of the sanctuary, pulling the pistol out of his pocket. He didn’t expect to see Tiller standing right in front of him. Tiller didn’t see Roeder.

In seconds, Roeder walked up to Tiller, put the gun to the doctor’s forehead and, before anyone could move, pulled the trigger.

Kathy Wegner saw a flash out of the corner of her eyes and what sounded like a balloon popping. Keith Martin thought someone had brought a firecracker into the church.

To Roeder, Tiller seemed to stand there for a few seconds. Hoepner saw Tiller fall straight back to the floor.

Wegner ran to the church office and called 911, hysterically telling the operator that George Tiller had been shot.

Inside the sanctuary, veterinarian Paul Ryding heard a commotion in the foyer and ran to find Tiller on the floor. Ryding rolled Tiller over, trying to clear his airway. Ryding performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Police described arriving to find Ryding’s face covered in blood. Ryding knew his friend was probably already dead, but he wasn’t ready to give up so soon.

Roeder already had run out the nearest door and east down the sidewalk to the parking lot. He heard steps behind him looked back and pointed his gun at Hoepner.

“Stop or I’ll shoot you,” Roeder said.

Hoepner stopped.

Martin ran through the Fellowship Hall, hoping to cut Roeder off the in the parking lot. Not even stopping to put down his coffee, Martin followed Roeder to a 1993 powder-blue Ford Taurus. Roeder jumped into the car. Martin stood there.

“Move,” Roeder said. Martin stood there.

“Move,” Roeder said, raising his gun behind the windshield. “Or I will shoot you.”

Martin moved but threw his coffee through the car window as it drove off, hitting Roeder.

“Get the license plate,” Hoepner yelled.

Thornton Anderson had arrived late that day and parked along the street. The car drove right past him and Anderson caught the tag number: Kansas plates, 225-BAB. Anderson ran to Hoepner, who had a 911 operator on his cell phone, and relayed the license number and a description of the car.

Roeder turned on Broadmoor in front of the church, then east on 13th and north on Rock Road.

As police arrived from all over town and began gathering information, Roeder drove to K-254 and east to U.S. 75, and then headed home toward Kansas City.

While news crews began arriving and pushing out the news over the Internet and broadcast airwaves, Roeder stopped to eat a pizza and fuel his car.

Police put out a be-on-the-lookout report for the Taurus. It warned that the driver was armed. Roeder stopped in Burlington and buried the gun.

Johnson County sheriff’s Deputy Andrew Lento heard the report while riding patrol in the southwestern part of the county, near Edgerton. It’s an expansive rural area with lots of roads to cover, and it’s usually quiet on Sunday mornings. Lento drove to I-35, parked in the median and kept watch.

About 1:30, Lento saw the light blue Taurus driving in the center lane, a Kansas State Wildcat plate on the front. He let the car pass and confirmed the license number and began following it without his overhead lights blinking. Lento knew policy, and he needed at least three deputies before trying to make a high-risk stop with a potentially armed man.

When he had enough backup, Lento turned on his lights. The car pulled over. As Lento shouted instructions, the driver stepped out of the car with his hands up and got on the ground.

The car was towed back to Wichita, where crime-scene investigator Andrew Maul found a box of .22 Super-X bullets underneath the seat and a program from Reformation Lutheran Church.

Wichita officers had already located Roeder’s motel registrations from both weekends and secured videotapes of him in the lobbies.

But Roeder wouldn’t deny shooting George Tiller. He did it, he would tell a jury with a little pride.

Scott Roeder felt successful.

***

The jury took little more than a half-hour to convict Roeder of premeditated first-degree murder in Tiller’s death and two counts of aggravated assault for pointing his gun at Gary Hoepner and Keith Martin.

Roeder faces life in prison when he returns before Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert for sentencing March 9. Usually, a life sentence carries parole eligibility after 25 years for first-degree murder. But District Attorney Nola Foulston said she plans to ask Wilbert to consider a law that would allow him to postpone the possibility of parole for 50 years.

Roeder will serve his sentence at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.