A moral civil war: The truth is millions of Americans believe Dr ‘Baby Killer’ Tiller deserved to die

A moral civil war: The truth is millions of Americans believe Dr ‘Baby Killer’ Tiller deserved to die

A moral civil war: The truth is millions of Americans believe Dr ‘Baby Killer’ Tiller deserved to die

David Jones

Daily Mail: June 7, 2009

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1191199/A-moral-civil-war-The-truth-millions-Americans-believe-Dr-Baby-Killer-Tiller-deserved-die.html

Somewhere beside a busy freeway in the dreary suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, there stands an anonymous, single-storey building. Its cream walls are stained by exhaust fumes and it has no external windows.

Guarded night and day by a private security patrol and CCTV cameras, and surrounded by ‘No Trespassing’ signs, it could be a top-security prison.

As vandals have spattered the perimeter fence with something that looks like congealed blood, it might equally be a laboratory where animal experiments are conducted.

In reality, this forbidding breeze-block rectangle is an abortion clinic – one of the most pitiful places in America.

Trading under the innocuous name of Women’s Health Care Services, for more than 30 years it has served as the last resort for a wretched procession of expectant mothers who have felt compelled to terminate their pregnancies at such a late stage that the mainstream U.S. medical profession has refused to help them.

Braving a gauntlet of howling protesters who keep a daily vigil outside the clinic, banging on their car windows and brandishing gruesome placards depicting dismembered foetuses, they have journeyed here in their thousands from all over America and even abroad.

Clutching overnight bags and often wearing clothing to disguise their condition, they range from schoolgirl rape victims to far more questionable cases, such as those who claim to be suffering from depression.

They came here because they knew that Dr George Tiller, the clinic’s controversial founder, seldom turned anyone away. Operating on the extreme edge of the minefield that is U.S. abortion law, his only stipulation was that clients must settle his $6,000 (£3,700) fee in full and up-front before he donned his surgical gowns.

As the dapper 67-year-old doctor, whose rimless glasses and soft voice lent him a vaguely sinister air, was among only a handful of physicians prepared to conduct late-term abortions (even terminating a pregnancy in the ninth month if he deemed it necessary), they had little choice but to agree. Thus, in recent years, Wichita has attained an unwanted soubriquet: Abortionville, U.S.A.

This remote city, out on the dusty Mid-Western plains, has also become the key battleground in the long-simmering war between so-called pro-lifers, who vehemently oppose abortion, and the pro-choice lobby, who defend a woman’s right to decide whether to have a baby or not.

Though we may find it difficult to comprehend in Britain, where abortion has become an accepted (and all-too often abused) and commonplace procedure, in the U.S. this struggle remains as violently divisive as any in the nation’s history, from slavery to prohibition.

And last Sunday, in what one eminent professor of moral theology described as ‘a very American crime’, Dr Tiller became its latest and most shocking casualty. As he went about his duties as an usher at the Reformation Lutheran Church – smiling, shaking hands and handing out pamphlets to worshippers – a gunman burst into the lobby and fired a single bullet into his head.

Among those startled by the balloon-like popping sound was the doctor’s wife, Jeanne, who was preparing to sing in the choir, one of her great joys.

Today, at a Methodist church selected to accommodate hundreds of mourners, Mrs Tiller and her four children will attend an altogether more sombre service: her husband’s showpiece funeral.

Within hours of the murder, Scott Roeder, a mentally unstable 51-year-old linked with extremist groups, who had staged acts of sabotage against abortion clinics for years, was stopped while driving near his home in Kansas City, 170 miles from Wichita.

If Roeder, an Old-Testament-thumping vitamin pill addict, is convicted, he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Unless, that is, his lawyers succeed in arguing he was psychologically impaired at the time of the shooting.

For all the moral dilemmas surrounding Dr Tiller’s work, we might expect the American nation to join in condemning his cold-blooded execution.

Perplexingly, however, revulsion at the murder is by no means universal. Many feel outrage, of course, yet a surprising number believe the man his enemies branded ‘Tiller the baby killer’ simply got his comeuppance.

These are not anti-abortion fanatics, but ordinary Middle Americans. Women such as the elderly news vendor at Wichita airport who, on learning why I was in town, said with a shrug: ‘I don’t lose sleep over the death of anyone who pushes a needle through a crying baby’s brain.’

Even among those who are sickened by the murder, many are reluctant to blame Roeder.

Instead, they point the finger at influential talk-show hosts such as Bill O’Reilly, the motor-mouthed voice of the extreme Right on Fox TV, who for years has waged a campaign against Dr Tiller so vitriolic that some say it was tantamount to incitement.

Having declared his outrage at the ‘heinous act of violence’ this week, Barack Obama is also under fire – from both sides.

Pro-lifers despise the liberal President for softening abortion regulations introduced by George W Bush. Pro-choicers are appalled by his appeasement of the anti-abortionists, most recently in a speech at Roman Catholic Notre Dame University, where he called for a new spirit of reconciliation between the warring factions.

Within a few days, Roeder appears to have made a mockery of the President’s entreaty. But what turned this one-time pacifist – who would tell his son off if he swatted an insect – into an allegedly fanatical killer, and why did he single out Dr Tiller?

Though these two men seemed as different as night and day – one a brilliant medical practitioner, the other a former factory worker and backstreet subversive – they shared similar traits.

Both, in their way, were devoutly religious and both were utterly convinced that when it came to their views on abortion, God was on their side; both pursued their ideologies with relentless single-mindedness.

Roeder, his ex-wife Lindsey told me, was born into a respectable Kansan household, though mental illness ran in the family. Upon retiring, his father had studied to be a Methodist minister, 51-year-old Mrs Roeder said.

Scott was reasonably bright and graduated from high school, but suffered psychiatric problems in his late teens and had little ambition. He was making envelopes in a factory when they met, in 1983, but Lindsey was attracted to his ‘happy-go-lucky’ nature and they became ’soul-mates’.

When it came to the abortion issue, the young Roeder appeared uninterested. Indeed, after his wife fell pregnant he even went with her to discuss their options at Planned Parenthood – a family planning organisation that is anathema to pro-lifers – although they kept the child.

During the early Nineties, however, he started to change. He stopped paying taxes as some form of protest at the government and began to see dark conspiracy.

He also joined subversive sects, including The Freemen, a quasi-religious cult based in the wilds of Montana who declared themselves outside all authority, and in 1996 were involved in an armed siege when the FBI surrounded their remote farmhouse seeking to arrest several members of the group. The stand-off lasted for 81 days, before the group surrendered.

In 1994, when Lindsey refused to listen to Roeder’s rambling monologues – and would not open their home to his homeless friends – he walked out on her and their son Nicholas, now 23.

It was around this time an episode occurred which may have been the catalyst for Roeder’s descent into violent anti-abortion activism.

During a U.S. TV interview this week, Lindsey mentioned that Roeder had been upset when he discovered that ‘a friend’ planned to terminate her pregnancy.

What she did not say, however, was that this unidentified friend was Roeder’s lover – and that the baby she wished to abort was his.

Whether or not Roeder’s unnamed girlfriend went ahead with the abortion we don’t know, but the very possibility was enough to send him into a near-suicidal depression.

After he recovered, he joined anti-abortion groups such as Operation Rescue (whose leader Randall Terry described Dr Tiller this week as a ‘mass murderer who reaped what he sowed’) and embarked on his fateful crusade.

In 1996, he was jailed for two years after explosives were found in his car; a conviction later overturned on appeal because the police search was judged to have been unlawful.

And six years ago, staff at an abortion clinic in Kansas considered him such a menace that they reported him to the FBI, who took no action. He was caught attempting to glue door locks there a few days before the murder, but nothing was done.

By then, Roeder had found a new hate-figure: George Tiller. He was enraged by graphic internet accounts of Tiller’s abortion procedures, which described how Tiller would stop the foetus’s heart with a drug injected through the mother’s abdomen, and then send the patient to a hotel, where she waited for up to two days until a stillbirth delivery was induced.

Last March, Roeder drove for four hours to Wichita to attend a court case involving the doctor. The evidence he heard there stoked his fury.

Under Kansas law, aborting a foetus considered to be ‘viable’ – or capable of surviving outside the womb – is only permissible when two independent medical experts agree that the mother’s health could be substantially impaired if the birth went ahead.

Dr Tiller was accused of breaching this law 19 times. The prosecution alleged that in every case he obtained the consent of the same ‘tame’ doctor – Kristin Neuhaus, who was paid $250 (£156) to $300 (£187) in cash by each patient for signing the necessary forms.

Tiller denied the charges and was acquitted. During the trial, however, the doctor – who lived in a mansion on an exclusive estate – admitted that he had conducted up to 300 late-term abortions in 2003 alone, charging a fee of $6,000 (£3,700).

Had Tiller not been shot he would have faced a fresh prosecution, this time brought by the Kansas health department, who also believed his collaboration with Dr Neuhaus to be improper.

Contained in their case was the allegation that he carried out an abortion on a 10-year-old girl, who was 28 weeks pregnant, without gaining genuinely independent consent.

Four years ago, Christin Gilbert, a 19-year-old Texan girl with Down’s syndrome, died of sepsis – an acute bacterial infection – soon after he aborted the baby she had conceived as a result of being raped.

After the injection to kill the foetus, Christin was in her hotel room when she started to suffer agonising stomach spasms. She was rushed back to the clinic, then to hospital, where she died.

After an inquiry, Dr Tiller was again exonerated. Yet, according to his detractors, his staff’s greatest concern that day was to preserve the clinic’s reputation.

Transcripts of the 911 emergency call made by one of his staff suggest they may be right. ‘Please, please, please! No lights, no sirens,’ implores the female clinic employee. She is also said to have placed the 911 operator on hold for 45 seconds while asking how much she should tell him, and playing down the seriousness of Christin’s condition.

For every damning story like this, however, the are others portraying Dr Tiller as a kindly, dedicated physician whose only motive was to help desperate women.

Among those who risked public opprobrium to support him this week (one in three Americans believes late-term abortion should be legal) was Miriam Kleiman, from Virginia, whose 29-week pregnancy he terminated nine years ago.

Scans revealed her baby to have such severe brain abnormalities that it would either die in the womb or soon after birth.

Unable to face a ‘two-month death watch’, she pleaded with her doctor in Virginia for an abortion. As the foetus was so well formed he would not help. Instead he scribbled the name ‘Tiller’ on a scrap of paper and handed it to her.

Dr Tiller and his staff couldn’t have been more professional or compassionate, recalled Mrs Kleiman, who now has two healthy sons. She wept on hearing that he had been shot.

She was not alone. But his death must have been half-expected, for over the years his clinic had been firebombed and besieged by mobs. Death threats had become routine.

The first attempt on his life was made in 1993, when Rachelle Shannon, a 37-year-old anti-abortionist shot him in both arms. Though she languishes in jail, she is still regarded as a pillar of respectability by some and became one of Roeder’s heroes.

Following that attack, the doctor had his car armour-plated, moved to a gated community, employed a bodyguard, varied his travel routine and wore a bullet-proof vest.

Knowing all this, Roeder struck at church – the place Dr Tiller relaxed his guard – and made sure to aim the pistol at his head.

On the Friday before the murder, Roeder’s ex-wife told me he had insisted on taking their son to the pictures and later for dinner. ‘Normally he observed the Sabbath on a Friday, but this was like his Last Supper,’ she said.

Perhaps so, but one question remains: knowing that fanatics such as Roeder had him in their sights, why didn’t Dr Tiller, who was, after all, a wealthy man in the autumn of his years, simply close his clinic and retire?

A reserved man with an acerbic wit (’Hi there, I’m Satan’ he once quipped when meeting opponents in the pro-choice advice centre which opened next-door to his clinic), he never intended to follow such a high-profile career. After graduating from medical school, he became a Navy flight surgeon and seemed set to remain in the military.

In 1970, however, when his parents were killed in a plane crash, he inherited his father’s medical practice; and, thumbing through the files, he discovered that Dr Tiller Senior had secretly been carrying out abortions – which were then still strictly illegal in America – for years.

By all accounts, he was aghast. After pondering on the morality of abortion, however, he decided his father had acted according to his conscience and vowed to continue his ‘noble’ work.

Dr Tiller rarely explained himself, but during his recent court hearing he said he took succour from the support of his daughters – and one conversation with them stuck in his memory.

It apparently took place when they approached him as he worked in his study, and said: ‘Daddy, if not now, when? If not you, who? Who is going to stand up for women with unexpected and badly damaged babies?’

Comforted by their backing, he found the strength to carry on. In Scott Roeder, however, he would meet a man who was also on a mission, sure in the knowledge that right was on his side.

So Dr Tiller becomes the ninth abortion doctor or clinical worker to be murdered by fanatics who purport to cherish human life during the past 15 years; a statistic that shames the Land of the Free.

With America’s unofficial civil war now at fever pitch and reconciliation beyond even the unifying powers of President Obama, ‘Tiller the baby killer’ surely won’t be the last.

A Brief History of the Radical, Violent Right: How Racist Hate Groups Joined Up with Abortion Terrorists

A Brief History of the Radical, Violent Right: How Racist Hate Groups Joined Up with Abortion Terrorists

A Brief History of the Radical, Violent Right: How Racist Hate Groups Joined Up with Abortion Terrorists By James Ridgeway, MotherJones.com Posted on June 6, 2009, Printed on September 23, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/story/140458/ The revelation that Scott Roeder, the alleged murderer of Dr. George Tiller, belonged to an anti-government, white separatist group called the Montana Freemen might seem like an unlikely twist. After all, such groups are generally thought of as either indifferent to the issue of abortion or actively enthusiastic about its potential for reducing the nonwhite population. As it turns out, however, the journey from radical racialist to anti-abortionist isn't as unusual as you might think. Roeder's connections to the right-wing fringe began well over a decade ago, according to the Kansas City Star. His ex-wife, Lindsey, said that after a few years of marriage, Roeder became increasingly involved with the Freemen and its anti-government ideology. "The anti-tax stuff came first, and then it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion…That's all he cared about is anti-abortion. 'The church is this. God is this.' Yadda yadda." Noting that she vehemently disagreed with her ex-husband's views, Lindsey Roeder told the Star that he moved out in 1994. "I thought he was over the edge with that stuff," she said. "He started falling apart. I had to protect myself and my son." In 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after sheriff deputies stopped his car because it had no license plate. Instead, the Star reported, "it bore a tag declaring him a 'sovereign' and immune from state law. In the trunk, deputies found materials that could be assembled into a bomb." Roeder was convicted, sentenced to two years probation, and told to stay away from far-right groups. A state appeals court subsequently overturned the conviction. Roeder and the Freemen belonged to a little-recognized nativist political movement that began in the early 20th century, flared up periodically, and then ripped through the American heartland during the farm depression of the mid-1980s. This movement was often called "the posse," after a core group named the Posse Comitatus. Like any political movement, it consisted of a myriad of shifting entities that appeared and disappeared. But even though the names of the groups often changed, they all held tightly to the notion that the true white sovereigns, who had rightfully been given this land by God, were being threatened by race traitors "inferior races" creeping across the borders from Mexico and lands farther south. A favorite posse image was a drawing of a man hanging by the neck from a tree on a hill. Below in the distance stands a group of armed men. A sign is scrawled on the drawing. It says "The posse." Over the years, this movement has encompassed various remnants of the Ku Klux Klan, what was left of Lincoln Rockwell's Nazis, the national socialists of William Pierce, and skinheads. Sometimes, adherents of the Posse ideology operated underground. Sometimes, they attempted to win support via electoral politics, like the white supremacist David Duke, who ran numerous times for statewide and national office. Terry Nichols, who along with Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, dabbled with the concept of sovereign citizenship. The militia movement, too, was an outgrowth of the posse movement. Daniel Levitas, author of a book about the phenomenon, has described Roeder's group, the Montana Freemen, as "the direct ideological descendants of the Posse Comitatus." The Freemen aimed to rid the nation of "14th Amendment citizens" -- anyone who wasn't a white Anglo Saxon directly descended from God. Nonwhites, or "mud people," weren't really people at all, but God's failed attempts to create Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. A bad Xerox copy, they used to say. These beliefs derived from a school of thought known as Christian Identity, which holds that Jews, blacks, and other minorities aren't actually people and therefore don't deserve constitutional rights. Instead, those rights are reserved for so-called "white Sovereigns," who aim to take over government and run it through grand juries of the people, with laws enforced by old-time posses. The Freemen achieved notoriety in 1995, when they moved into a foreclosed farm in Garfield County, Montana, which they named Justus Township. Here they cached weapons and ammunition, dug bunkers, stockpiled food, and cut off a county road. They prepared for a siege with the feds. But the FBI eventually brought in an attorney connected to the Aryan Nations and worked out a surrender deal. Some of the Freemen were prosecuted for running a check scam. (One of the most detailed accounts of the Freemen and the unraveling of the far-right movement is contained in Blood and Politics, a new book by Leonard Zeskind. He is the leading historian of the scene.) One might think that the divisions between pro-life Christians and far-right racists would preclude any sort of working alliance. Evangelical Christians thought that the creation of Israel was a sign of the Second Coming of Christ and became keen supporters of that country. The racialists, meanwhile, hated Israel and detested Jerry Falwell for supporting it. The Klan historically loathed Catholics, and modern far-right leaders like Tom Metzger in California thought abortion was a great way to stem the tide of brown and black babies who were burdening the welfare system and who as adults would threaten white political power. In the early and mid-'80s, however, the racialist underground often railed against abortion. I wrote about this development in the Village Voice: Bob Mathews, leader of a terror gang known as The Order, saw abortion as the suicide of the white race. Jim Wickstrom, the Christian Identity leader of another underground terror group called the Posse Comitatus, ranted against Jewish doctors and nurses who engaged in abortion. Posse screeds claimed the space program was part of a plot to get rid of aborted fetuses by blasting them into space. By the 1990s, the far right had started to attack abortion clinics. Ray Lampley, a far-right racialist in Oklahoma, and two members of a national militia were convicted in federal court of conspiring to bomb abortion clinics (along with gay bars, welfare offices, an Anti-Defamation League office, and the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama). In Spokane, Washington, three men who claimed ties to a group called the Phineas Priesthood were charged with the bombings of a newspaper office and a Planned Parenthood clinic. The group is named for a Bible story in which Phinehas slew an interracial couple. Today's Phineas Priesthood has been popularized by the white separatist William Pierce, whose 1989 book, The Hunter, tells the story of a drive-by killer who starts out murdering interracial couples and works his way up to killing Jews in order to save the future of white civilization. Paul Hill, who was sentenced to death for the murder of an abortion doctor and his escort, has written an essay calling for "Phineas actions." In 1994, he told USA Today, "I could envision a covert organization developing -- something like a pro-life IRA." (Hill was executed in 2003.) What was the bridge between the posse movement and anti-abortionist fanaticism? The Sovereign crowd viewed women as chattel, and the prospect of an independent woman deciding to seek an abortion didn't sit well with them. I gained some insight into this line of thinking in another piece I once wrote about a young woman in Oklahoma who aspired to join the Christian Identity group, hoping that its followers would teach her to shoot and become a guerrilla. Instead, the men asked her for sex. When the woman replied that she wanted a relationship first, one of them replied, "Women are for breeding." According to one faction of the group, women who have abortions are race traitors and should be stoned to death. With that in mind, the fact that some members of the far-right became violent anti-abortionists perhaps shouldn't come as such a surprise. © 2009 MotherJones.com All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140458/

Suspect had ties to fringe group

Suspect had ties to fringe group

By James Carlson

Created June 6, 2009 at 11:12pm

Updated June 7, 2009 at 12:12am

In the late 1980s, Scott Roeder held a job, loved his wife and paid his taxes — as normal a life as any other Topekan.

Then life pivoted with his entrance into a group of people who considered themselves sovereign. They believed they weren’t subject to American authority, didn’t have to obey laws enacted by, as they saw it, an unjust federal government. They were Freemen.

The group, which had a moderate following in the mid-1990s, held trials against public officials, registered notices of civilian death with the government and allegedly learned how to write bogus checks that earned them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

More than a decade before he was charged in the shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller, Roeder’s association with the Freemen movement was hardening his view that the U.S. government was corrupt and held no say over his life.

Sovereignty

Behind the doors of Topeka motel rooms in the mid-1990s, members of the Freemen held court in trials against the American government.

An air of revolution hung heavy during these often-raucous gatherings. Holed up for weekends, the group — sometimes 15 or 20 people, sometimes as many as 150 — would draw up writs of habeas corpus for people they thought wrongly imprisoned and writs of mandamus condemning other courts’ decisions.

“They felt like they were doing something valuable,” said Morris Wilson, a former member who attended these meetings. “They were shaking things up.”

To the members, they were sovereign from a corrupt government. “The Freemen’s belief was that you could give away your federal citizenship and you’re only a state citizen,” Wilson said. “You become sovereign and get yourself out from under all the crap of the government.”

What brought many to these meetings varied. Everyone had an issue, Wilson said. Maybe they were jailed for not having a license plate or were manhandled by the police. It was a time just after the botched federal raid in Waco, Texas, which soured Wilson’s view of the government. And it was the time of President Bill Clinton, who members saw as the highest of criminals.

For Roeder, former wife Lindsey Roeder said, the issue was federal taxes. And abortion.

“I agreed with him on his abortion thing,” Wilson said. “Except I got over it, and he never did.”

Criminality

Doug Mauck saw the other side.

As the sergeant in charge of criminal intelligence for the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office at the time, he knew the workings of the Freemen well.

The group first caught his eye when it published legal notices in the Topeka Metro News, trumpeting what members said were legal filings. “This common law affidavit, in law, is true, correct and certain, being made in good faith,” began one notice.

They termed themselves “the One Supreme Court,” which didn’t impress Mauck.

“I understood the words, but I couldn’t understand the message,” he said. “It was just crazy talk, one long schizophrenic diatribe.”

Mauck knew that Wilson and Topeka-area Freeman leader Ronald Griesacker attended the Montana ranch of Leroy Schweitzer, national leader of the Freemen. There, Wilson said, members ate breakfast, cleared the table and listened to Schweitzer talk of Christian philosophy and rail against the government for hours. Then lunch, clear the table and repeat.

What they were learning, however, was how to pass bogus checks, Mauck said. He said, for example, the group wrote $400,000 on what resembled a check and presented it to Caterpillar for a $150,000 bulldozer. Then the company sent them a corporate check for the difference.

Mauck, who retired in the late 1990s, said legal wrangling let the statute of limitations run out on most cases of bank fraud in the area.

No longer around

From all indications, the Freemen movement is no longer breathing.

“If they’re still around, they’re really, really underground,” Wilson said from a ranch in Keith County in western Nebraska, where he now lives.

Sgt. Phil McKay, who helps with criminal intelligence for the sheriff’s office, said he hasn’t heard anything about the Freemen in years. Detective Janine Falley, with the Topeka Police Department’s intelligence unit, said the group is never discussed in daily briefings.

The local and national movements broke down in 1996 when a monthlong standoff at Schweitzer’s Montana ranch ended in the leader’s arrest and conviction for numerous crimes. He is still in a Colorado prison.

Griesacker, the local leader, had fortuitously left the Montana compound the day of the raid and spent two years on the run before his arrest and conviction.

It was during the standoff, and one day before the one-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, that Roeder was arrested for possessing explosives. His subsequent conviction later was overturned for an improper search of his car.

Wilson said there was never any real threat from the Freemen, who he said spent a lot of time locally just playing war games in fields.

“It was mostly people getting together to shoot their guns and blow off steam,” he said. “They weren’t planning to blow up buildings or anything.”

James Carlson can be reached at (785) 295-1186 or james.carlson@cjonline.com.

Roeder speaks from jail | CJOnline.com

Roeder speaks from jail | CJOnline.com

By The Associated Press

Created June 4, 2009 at 3:32pm

Updated June 5, 2009 at 12:19am

WICHITA — The man charged in the slaying of late-term abortion provider George Tiller says he is “being treated as a criminal” even though he hasn’t been convicted of anything.

Scott Roeder called The Associated Press on Thursday from the Sedgwick County Jail and disputed what he called “broad brush” characterizations of him as being anti-government.

“I want people to stop and think: It is not anti-government, it is anti-corrupt government,” said Roeder, who called in response to a written request for an interview.

When asked by the AP to discuss the Tiller shooting, Roeder, 51, of Kansas City, Mo., refused to comment, saying he would talk about that later.

Roeder, a Topeka High School graduate, is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly killing Tiller with a single gunshot as the doctor handed out programs Sunday while ushering at the Lutheran church he attended. Roeder also is accused of assaulting two witnesses before leaving the church and driving away.

Roeder was arrested a few hours later, near Gardner, about 170 miles northeast of Wichita.

“I haven’t been convicted of anything, and I am being treated as a criminal,” he said in a telephone conversation that lasted about three minutes.

Roeder said he has made it through the first several days of his incarceration but is concerned about the media attention his family, particularly his elderly mother, has been getting.

“I appreciate your prayers,” he said.

Dan Monnat, the attorney for the Tiller family, declined to comment on Roeder’s statements.

Also Thursday, District Judge Warren Wilbert set bond for Roeder at $5 million.

A day earlier, public defender Steve Osburn had filed a motion asking the court to set bond for Roeder, saying bond should be granted for defendants charged with noncapital crimes.

Kansas law requires that special circumstances exist for a defendant to be eligible for the death penalty. Such circumstances include the killing of a law officer, more than one person or a victim kidnapped for ransom or rape, or killed in murder for hire. Prosecutors said the Tiller homicide case doesn’t qualify.

If convicted of the murder charge, Roeder would face a mandatory life sentence and wouldn’t be eligible for parole for at least 25 years. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 16, although it likely will be continued.

Tiller and his Wichita clinic have been a regular target of anti-abortion protests, including the 45-day “Summer of Mercy” event staged by Operation Rescue in 1991. His clinic was damaged by a pipe bomb in 1986, and a protester shot at him in 1993, wounding his arms.

Hundreds of people are expected at his funeral Saturday.

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Tiller murder suspect says he's "being treated as a criminal"

Tiller murder suspect says he's "being treated as a criminal"

Story by The Associated Press

Originally published 03:29 p.m., June 4, 2009
Updated 03:45 p.m., June 4, 2009

Sedgwick County Jail

Scott Roeder appears via video from the Sedgwick County Jail on Tuesday, June 2, 2009.

The man charged in the slaying of Kansas late-term abortion provider George Tiller says he's "being treated as a criminal" even though he hasn't been convicted.

Scott Roeder called The Associated Press on Thursday from the Sedgwick County Jail and disputed characterizations in the media of him as being anti-government, saying he is "anti-corrupt government."

When asked by the AP to discuss the Tiller shooting, the 51-year-old Kansas City, Mo., man refused to comment, saying he would talk about that later.

Tiller was killed Sunday while serving as an usher at his church in Wichita.

FBI Failed To Act On Tip About Abortionist Killer

FBI Failed To Act On Tip About Abortionist Killer

FBI Director Robert Mueller

The FBI once again, engaged in its famed criminal negligence in not intervening in the unlawful conduct of a violent stalker, that went on to murder another human being. Once again, the FBI has blood on its hands.

Last week, Scott Roeder, stalked and murdered abortion doctor, George Tiller, where the physician attended church. Now comes word the FBI received numerous formal complaints and evidence from another clinic regarding Roeder and simply sent an agent to tell him to stop his misconduct, which any psychologist knows, does not work.

Any stalker exhibiting all the obsessive, dangerous traits Roeder did, was not going to give up that easily. Stalkers will behave for a little while and when they believe the coast is clear, take the criminal misconduct to new heights, angry they were reported to the authorities.

There is only one way to deal with an obsessive stalker and that's to lock them up or institutionalize them in a bid to correct their terrible behavior. Most psychologists agree on this.

The mere fact they are stalking another says they have lost all sense of reasoning in engaging in conduct most would not do, as it is completely illegal.

As I wrote previously, stalking often leads to violence or murder. Law enforcement has seen this destructive pattern emerge enough that they should know better by now.

To the anti-abortion activists, I agree abortion is wrong, but whatever you do in this life, you should eschew breaking the law. Murder, violence, stalking, harassment and property destruction is wrong.

Before Tiller Murder, FBI Got Detailed Info On Roeder's Illegal Activity

By Zachary Roth - June 4, 2009, 11:56AM - Earlier this week, we raised questions about whether the FBI acted aggressively enough after getting a tip about Scott Roeder, who's been charged with murdering Kansas doctor George Tiller.

And those questions are only getting louder. Last night, the abortion clinic worker who had provided that tip went on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, where he laid out Roeder's various efforts to vandalize the clinic -- starting in 2000 and culminating the day before Tiller's murder -- as well as the detailed information that the FBI received about the incidents...

In a nutshell, here's what the worker -- using the pseudonym "Jeffrey Pederson" to protect his identity -- told Maddow:

Back in 2000, Pederson saw Roeder supergluing the front and back door locks to the clinic -- preventing anyone from entering or leaving -- two weekends in a row. Pederson gave the FBI the security videotape of the incident, as well as the license number of Roeder's car, which he had taken down. In response, the bureau said the pictures were not clear enough to build a case, but that they'd talk to Roeder.

That may have had some effect, because the worker said Roeder wasn't seen around the clinic again until 2006. At that time, he returned for several months, joining the group of anti-abortion protesters that would gather outside the clinic. Then he went away for a while again.

On the morning of Monday, May 25, 2009, clinic staff showed up to work to find the doors super-glued. When Pederson got in, he replaced the locks, then called the local police and the FBI. He viewed the security tape but was unable to identify the vandal. But on the 28th, he viewed the tape again and was able to identify Roeder. He gave that tape to the FBI.

On the morning of the 30th, the day before Tiller's shooting, Roeder returned. A staff member saw him gluing the back door of the clinic. She chased him away, and he fled, yelling "baby killer." She noted his license number, and told Pederson about the incident. He reported the incident to the FBI, making clear that this was the same person as had vandalized the clinic the previous week. In response, the FBI said that in order to take any action to stop Roeder, they'd need to convene a grand jury and get a warrant...

Late Update: Bridget Patton, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Kansas City office, tells TPMmuckraker that after receiving the information about Roeder from Pederson, the office opened an investigation. She declined to elaborate, citing that ongoing investigation. A spokesman with the FBI's national office declined to comment, referring us to Kansas City or the Department of Justice. A message left with DOJ public affairs was not immediately returned.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com

Alleged shooter's ex-wife: He was capable of murder

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Story Highlights Ex-wife:Scott Roeder was self-righteous, potentially dangerous Scott Roeder, 51, of the Kansas City, Kansas, area charged with murder Roeder suspected of killing abortion provider Dr. George Tiller on Sunday Tiller was one few remaining doctors in the U.S. offering late-term abortions WICHITA, Kansas (CNN) -- Scott Roeder's ex-wife said she believes her former spouse was capable of murder. Roeder, 51, is sitting in a Kansas jail, charged with murdering George Tiller, one of the few U.S. doctors who performed late-term abortion. "He was determined that if the abortion doctor killed the baby, then he didn't have any right to live either," Roeder's ex-wife Lindsey Roeder told reporters on Monday, refusing to show her face to cameras. Lindsey Roeder said their 10-year marriage ended 13 years ago in part because he had a fanatical preoccupation with certain views, including those on abortion. She said her ex-husband believed killing an abortion provider "is justifiable," and described him as self-righteous and someone who may be capable of murder. Scott Roeder was charged Tuesday with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault stemming from Tiller's shooting death at Tiller's Wichita church Sunday morning. Watch panel discuss ramifications of slaying » During a brief initial court appearance, in which he appeared via video from the county jail, Roeder requested a court-appointed lawyer. He has made no plea, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 16. Police have not disclosed a possible motive in Tiller's killing. But associates have told CNN that Roeder was a regular among the anti-abortion protesters who routinely gathered at Tiller's Wichita clinic, Women's Health Care Services. And records and interviews with family and fellow abortion protesters suggest Roeder had a fanatical preoccupation with abortion and used Christianity to support his beliefs. In 1996, he was arrested in Topeka, Kansas, with explosives, a military rifle, ammunition and a gas mask in his car, according to records. His ex-wife said that at that time he intended to blow up an abortion clinic. A Shawnee County judge called Roeder a "substantial threat to public safety" telling him that one must follow the law as established, not the law as one might wish it to be. Roeder pleaded not guilty, spent 16 months in prison and eight on probation. But his lawyer argued on appeal that his car had been illegally searched, and Roeder's conviction was vacated. He became known as a regular at protests outside abortion clinics, say those who rallied alongside him. Anti-abortion activists Anthony Leake and Regina Dinwiddie told CNN that Tiller had strong beliefs. "He was a confessing Christian," Leake continued. "He always had his Bible, which wasn't uncommon. He professed faith in Jesus Christ." A man named Scott Roeder signed a message on the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue's Web site in 2007, calling for prayers to shut down Tiller's "death camp." "Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the pastor, deacons, elders and members while there? Doesn't seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller," the message reads. National anti-abortion organizations, including Operation Rescue, condemned Tiller's slaying. "[The alleged killer] is not one of us, and if he thinks he is, then he is deluded," said the Rev. Gary Cass, the director of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. Dinwiddie, a 54-year-old grandmother, said Roeder once told her that he confronted a doctor at a Planned Parenthood center, telling the physician, "Now I know what you look like." "We all said, 'Scott, you better leave or they are gonna get after you,' " Dinwiddie said. "Next thing, all these people come rushing out of the place, all worried. Scott was standing up for what he believed in." In the mid-1990s, police said he was also possibly linked to the Freemen, an anti-government group based in Montana. Eugene Frye, who says he has known Roeder for years as an anti-tax campaigner, said just Roeder showed up at a recent abortion protest talking about this year's trial of Tiller, whom Frye called the "killer." Tiller was acquitted in March of 19 misdemeanor counts of performing unlawful procedures at his clinic, and Frye said Roeder told him he had attended the trial. See what people are saying about Tiller's slaying » "He just said he'd been down there, and that the trial was a sham," Frye said. But he said he was surprised that Roeder was a suspect in Tiller's death, saying he never spoke of any kind of violence. Tiller describes the philosophy of his clinic in 1999 » CNN's Ed Lavandera, Randi Kaye, Paul Vercammen and Ashley Fantz contributed to this report. All AboutAbortion • Kansas • Wichita

Links referenced within this article Watch panel discuss ramifications of slaying » #cnnSTCVideo See what people are saying about Tiller's slaying » #cnnSTCOther1 Tiller describes the philosophy of his clinic in 1999 » #cnnSTCVideo Abortion http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Abortion Kansas http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Kansas Wichita http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Wichita

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/02/kansas.shooting.roeder.profile/index.html?iref=newssearch

© 2008 Cable News Network

George Tiller, Scott Roeder: Trying to Justify Murder

Wikipedia - Assassination of George Tiller

Wikipedia - Assassination of George Tiller

Metapedia - Scott Roeder

Metapedia - Scott Roeder

Family of suspect in Tiller death had noticed a change in behavior

Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2009

Posted on Tue, Jun. 02, 2009

BY LAURA BAUER AND DAVID KLEPPER
Kansas City Star

Lindsey Roeder thought it was unusual that her ex-husband wanted to hang out with their grown son Friday evening.

Scott P. Roeder, 51, had always been adamant about his Old Testament beliefs and observed the Sabbath from Friday night through Saturday. Nothing could get in the way of that. Not soccer games when his son was younger. Nothing.

But last Friday was different. He wanted to take his 22-year-old son to see Star Trek, then to dinner. It was like Roeder, who family said adopted extremist anti-government and anti-abortion views in the early 1990s, didn't want the evening to end, Lindsey Roeder said Monday.

"In hindsight, my son said, 'He was saying goodbye to me.' "

Scott Roeder is now in a Wichita jail cell and today could be charged with first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault in the Sunday morning shooting death of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.

Tiller's attorney, Dan Monnat, said Tiller -- who received regular death threats -- often worried about what would happen to his patients if he was killed. Tiller, who was shot twice in 1993, often wore a bullet-proof vest and was escorted by security.

Monnat said he didn't know what protection Tiller had Sunday morning.

"Whatever the safety precautions, they most regrettably weren't enough," he said.

As part of the inquiry into Tiller's killing, investigators have searched two homes where Roeder has lived, one in Merriam and one in Kansas City.

Wichita police continued to investigate Monday but provided no new details.

What did emerge is a clearer picture of Roeder, who family said could be a kind man but had a history of mental health problems.

Lindsey Roeder noticed a change in Scott between 1991 and 1994, when the couple separated. In that time, she said, he'd started having trouble paying the bills and functioning with daily life.

"One day someone told him that paying income taxes isn't constitutional," Lindsey Roeder recalled. "And he realized if he stopped paying his taxes he could pay all of his bills. From there things just started like a snowball. He became very obsessive."

Roeder moved out of the home in 1994, she said, after he got involved with the Freemen movement, an anti-government group.

His views against abortion got stronger over the years.

"He thought the doctors were murderers," Lindsey said.

She said she and her son have always disagreed with his beliefs. But "he was not a mean, violent person," she said. "That's why I don't understand how you can be against killing a baby, an unborn child, and turn around and believe it's justifiable homicide."

The couple divorced in 1996, after Roeder was arrested in Topeka when Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate.

After the divorce, Roeder saw his son during supervised visits. For the past four years the father and son have seen each other periodically.

"Usually when he's with him, (Scott Roeder) talks about his beliefs, my son tunes it out," Lindsey said. "He doesn't believe in any of that, he believes it's over the edge."

Roeder's beliefs also came up in another custody battle in Pennsylvania. In 2003, Roeder sued for visitation of a girl born the previous year that he said he fathered.

The child's mother and her current husband told the court they felt Roeder would not be a good influence on the girl.

A court ruling filed in 2005 said Roeder was earlier diagnosed with schizophrenia "for which he takes no medication, which may pose a clear and present danger to the female minor child."

The child's mother also brought up Roeder's affiliations:"... Past conduct and association with anti-government organizations is ongoing and poses a risk to her daughter," the records said.

The child's mother and her husband -- who has raised the girl as his own since her birth --"feared that (Roeder) would kidnap and hide their daughter since he threatened to do so with his son."

Lindsey Roeder said she has spoken with the woman in Pennsylvania, but her son and his half-sister have not met.

Her focus is now on her son, helping him get through everything that's happened since Sunday morning.

"It's been an absolutely devastating 24 hours," Lindsey Roeder said late Monday afternoon. "I haven't slept. My son can't sleep.... I can't imagine, if it's been like this for us, what it's been like for the Tiller family."

Contributing: Dan Margolies of The Star

© 2009 Wichita Eagle and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansas.com

Man charged with murder in Kansas doctor's death

Scott Roeder was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.

District Attorney Nola Fouston runs down the charges against the man accused of killing a late-term abortion provider.

Story Highlights NEW: Physician says future of slain doctor's clinic is unknown Scott Roeder, 51, charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault He is accused of killing Wichita doctor George Tiller on Sunday Preliminary hearing is set for June 16 WICHITA, Kansas (CNN) -- Kansas prosecutors have brought murder and assault charges against the man suspected of killing Wichita physician George Tiller, whose women's clinic was a frequent target of protests against abortion. Scott Roeder, 51, is being held without bail on a first-degree murder charge and two counts of aggravated assault stemming from Tiller's shooting death Sunday morning, Sedgwick County District Judge Ben Burgess said. Burgess set a preliminary hearing in the case for June 16. Police have not disclosed a possible motive in Tiller's killing, but associates said Roeder was a regular among the anti-abortion protesters who routinely gathered at his Wichita clinic, Women's Health Care Services. Tiller, 67, was one of the few U.S. doctors who performed late-term abortions, and he had survived one attempt on his life before being gunned down in his church Sunday morning. Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty "under the facts and circumstances that are known at this time," District Attorney Nola Foulston said. Watch the district attorney explain the charges » Kansas state law allows the death penalty only in certain circumstances, such as multiple killings, contract killings, the deaths of police officers or jailers, or a slaying that takes place during a sexual assault. Roeder was in the county jail during his brief initial court appearance and appeared in court via video. He requested a court-appointed lawyer during the hearing, during which he was dressed in maroon jail coveralls and appeared to fidget. Watch scenes from court Tuesday » Burgess ordered Roeder to have no contact with witnesses or Tiller's family. Since Tiller's death, supporters have left a few bouquets of flowers outside his clinic. The architecture of the low-slung, windowless concrete building -- which is fenced off, monitored by cameras and separated from buildings behind it by a moat-like ditch -- reflected the threats he faced for nearly two decades. In a statement issued Tuesday, Tiller's family said they hope his "valuable work" will go on, "but there have been no final decisions made about the long-term plans for the medical practice." "There is currently no plan to immediately reopen the clinic and no patients are being scheduled at this time. The Tiller family's focus, of course, is to determine what is in the best interests of the employees and the patients," the statement read. Dr. Leroy Carhart, a Nebraska physician who also practices at Tiller's clinic, said at his suburban Omaha office that he left a Monday meeting in Wichita with the belief that the practice would reopen "in the very near future." But he said, "At the present time, there's no known future." Carhart was the plaintiff who challenged a federal ban on a type of late-term procedure that opponents labeled "partial-birth" abortion. The Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2006. Tiller practiced medicine for nearly 40 years. Most of his patients were grappling with pregnancies that were "fatally or catastrophically complicated by medical problems," Dr. Warren Hern, a Colorado physician and a friend, said on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "The many women who come for late abortions, in fact, have desperate circumstances with a desired pregnancy," he said. "They want to have a baby, not an abortion." But Tiller's practice made Wichita a flashpoint in the controversy over abortion, which opponents routinely decry as the killing of unborn children. Most anti-abortion leaders quickly condemned Tiller's killing and disavowed Roeder. The National Right to Life Committee, the largest anti-abortion organization in the United States, said it "unequivocally condemns" violence. And Wichita-based Operation Rescue said Roeder never was "a member, contributor, or volunteer." "Operation Rescue has diligently and successfully worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see to it that abortionists around the nation are brought to justice. Without due process, there can be no justice," it said. But Hern called those disavowals "hypocritical nonsense." "This is the result of 35 years of anti-abortion harassment and terrorism and hate speech and rhetoric and harsh names and exploitation of the abortion issue as a political issue to get power," said Hern, who runs an abortion clinic in Boulder, outside Denver. "And this is the inevitable result of this kind of hateful behavior by the anti-abortion movement." Carhart blasted abortion opponents who resort to violence "and those who support and incite these violent acts." He declined to name names but urged the estimated 46 million women who have received abortions and their supporters to demand that government officials "enforce the laws on the books that protect us from hate crimes." "And if these officials don't openly respect your right to choose abortion, you have the power to vote them out of office," he said. CNN's Ed Lavandera, Gary Tuchman and Aaron Cooper contributed to this report. All AboutGeorge Tiller • Abortion

Links referenced within this article Watch the district attorney explain the charges » #cnnSTCVideo Watch scenes from court Tuesday » #cnnSTCVideo Tiller http://topics.cnn.com/topics/George_Tiller abortion http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Abortion George Tiller http://topics.cnn.com/topics/George_Tiller Abortion http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Abortion

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/02/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html?iref=newssearch

© 2008 Cable News Network

A Portrait of an Alleged Murderer: The Life of Suspected Tiller Killer Scott Roeder

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09060203.html

Tuesday June 2, 2009 By Peter J. Smith WICHITA, Kansas, June 1, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A clearer portrait has now emerged of the man who allegedly took it into his hands to play judge, jury, and executioner of George Tiller, the foremost provider of late-term abortions in the United States. The portrait reveals a mentally disturbed, long-time anarchist and convicted felon, who appears to have succumbed to the influence of an anti-abortion domestic terrorist group and believed that he had to commit murder in order to stave off the wrath of God. Just three hours after Tiller was gunned down in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, where he had been ushering, law enforcement apprehended Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kansas, traveling the speed limit on the I-35 back to his home. He was officially charged with the murder today. Tiller's murderer had shot the abortionist once and threatened two other men in the church, before departing the scene of the crime in a powder-blue 1993 Ford Taurus, which deputies checked out as belonging to Roeder. After Sherriff’s deputies intercepted Roeder, he surrendered to them without incident and was taken back to Wichita for questioning. However in the aftermath of the murder and subsequent arrest, information has surfaced that shows Roeder to be a mentally unstable individual, who as early as the 1990s adopted quasi-biblical beliefs to compensate for his moral failings, and fell under the influence of two violent radical organizations, especially a fringe anti-abortion group far outside the sphere of the pro-life community. This group is the so-called Army of God, a group that advocates domestic terror, violence, and murder against abortion facilities and those who work there. The Anarchist Origins of Scott P. Roeder Roeder’s first links with violence and terrorism began with his association with the anti-government “Freemen” movement. The Freemen claim that the individual has sovereignty above the government, making them largely exempt from laws, regulations and taxes. Among other things, they began operating their own legal system, and printing their own paper currency independent of state and federal governments. Roeder’s ex-wife, Lindsay, told the Kansas City Star that Roeder began to break down in the early 90s, when he began having trouble paying bills and acting normal in daily life. "One day someone told him that paying income taxes isn't constitutional," Lindsey Roeder told the Star. "And he realized if he stopped paying his taxes he could pay all of his bills. From there things just started like a snowball. He became very obsessive." In April 1996, while the Freemen were engaged in the first month of an armed 81-day stand-off with the FBI at their Jordan, Montana compound, Roeder was pulled over and arrested by Shawnee county deputies for driving without a valid license plate. Instead Roeder had a tag reading, "Sovereign private property. Immunity declared by law. Non-commercial American.'' Roeder had been on an FBI list of Freemen, and when a deputy searched the trunk of his car, he found weapons, ammunition, a gas mask , and bomb-making materials: a fuse cord, a pound of black powder, two nine-volt batteries, and a switch for a bomb-trigger. Roeder was then charged and subsequently convicted of felonious possession and use of explosives, driving with a suspended license, and having neither vehicle registration nor car insurance. Following his conviction, Roeder was released on probation with intensive monitoring, and he was required to have no more contact with anarchist anti-government groups that advocated violence. Yet, Roeder soon violated parole in 1997 by refusing to pay his taxes and give his employer a social security number, which earned him a 16 month sentence in state prison. However, in December of that year, the Kansas Court of Appeals, threw out his conviction on the technical grounds that the officer arresting Roeder had improperly searched his car. Schizophrenia, Moral Confusion, and an Obsession with Abortion Throughout this time, Roeder had been suffering with a schizophrenic mental disorder, and his obsession with abortion had brought him into contact with extreme anti-abortion activists, who adopt an “ends justify the means” ethic toward abortion, rejecting the moral values of the pro-life community. Roeder had fallen in step with the ideology of the Army of God movement, which claims the murder of abortion providers constitutes “justifiable homicide” and praises the murderers of abortionists as “American heroes” on its website. "I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," Regina Dinwiddie, an acquaintance of Roeder’s, told the Kansas City Star. Dinwiddie herself had signed the first and second “defensive action statements” advocating the murder of abortionists as “justifiable homicide,” and her home was featured in an HBO documentary on the AOG called “Soldiers in the Army of God.” Dinwiddie told the Star that in 1996, Roeder walked into the Kansas City Planned Parenthood abortion facility, demanded to see abortionist Dr. Robert Crist, stared at him for 45 seconds, then said, “I’ve seen you now” before turning to walk away. Roeder also enmeshed himself with the AOG affiliated Prayer and Action News, a newsletter edited by David Leach, which also advocated the murder of abortionists as “justifiable homicide.” Leach had reprinted the 3rd edition of the Army of God manual in 1996, which included bomb-making instructions, and advocated acid attacks and murder among its “99 Covert Ways to Stop Abortion,” a direct violation of a ban by the Justice Department, which was confiscating all copies of the book. Roeder met with Leach in Topeka. Leach had been visiting Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon, who attempted to assassinate Tiller at his abortion facility in 1993. "I met him once, and he wrote to me a few times," Leach told the Kansas City Star. "I remember that he was sympathetic to our cause, but I don't remember any details." However, among the details that the Star reported Leach did remember, was Roeder’s obsession with government conspiracies. He said that Roeder would demonstrate how to remove the magnetic strip from a five dollar bill. "He said it was to keep the government from tracking your money," Leach added. Over the years, Roeder’s mental instability and obsession with anarchist groups and abortion ground down those people closest to him. Roeder’s first marriage of ten years ended in divorce after his 1996 arrest and conviction, leading him to estrangement from his now 22-year old son, Nick. Roeder’s ex-wife Lindsay told ABC News that Roeder had little contact with her son, seeing him once every six weeks, and that her son had no interest in seeing him. In later years, Roeder fathered a child by another woman, who fought to retain sole custody of her child with her current husband. The woman expressed grave concern for the safety and welfare of her daughter to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, citing both Roeder’s “past conduct and association with anti-government organizations [which] is ongoing” and “chronic mental disability of schizophrenia for which he takes no medication.” The court denied her request despite the plea that her little girl was living in an intact household with the only father and mother she ever knew. The Lead-Up and Aftermath of the Murder Preliminary reports from law enforcement indicate that Tiller's murderer acted alone. The investigation, however, continues to examine Roeder's background and activities. In the last several years leading up to Tiller’s assassination, the mentally disturbed Roeder expressed more violent agitation and a belief that divine wrath would befall the United States unless Tiller were stopped. “Bleass [sic] everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp,” says a May 19 post attributed to him on Operation Rescue’s website. “Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn’t seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller.” Elsewhere, on a separate website, Roeder had posted in September 2007, “It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the ‘lawlessness’ which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp ‘Mengele’ of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement [sic] upon our nation.” Operation Rescue, the Wichita-based leader of prayerful protests outside Tiller’s facility, has been quick to point out that Roeder is “not affiliated with this organization” and that thousands of persons, including Roeder and pro-abortion activists, have posted on its open website. “Scott Roeder has never been a member, contributor, or volunteer with Operation Rescue,” OR president Troy Newman said in a statement. “We deplore the criminal actions with which Mr. Roeder is accused,” said Newman. “The pro-life ethic is to value all human life from the moment of conception until natural death.” Operation Rescue had expelled Rev. Donald Spitz, the founder of the AOG website, in 1993, after Spitz had praised the murderer of Pensacola, Florida abortionist Dr. David Gunn. In a days leading up to his alleged murder of Tiller, Roeder made one last visit on Friday to his estranged son. His ex-wife told the Kansas City Star that the event was unusual since Roeder had embraced an Old Testament Sabbath observance from Friday to Saturday. Tiller was killed just over two months after a Kansas jury had voted to acquit the abortionist of 19 misdemeanor charges relating to violations of Kansas’s ban on late-term abortions. The jury had acquitted Tiller largely on the technicality that Ann Kristin Neuhaus, the abortionist signing off on his late-term abortions, was not a full-time employee of his, despite their close financial affiliation. The political consequences of George Tiller's murder are only now beginning to unfold. However, if past is prologue, this latest Army of God murder, the first murder of an abortionist in eleven years, will be seized upon by abortion advocates to hamper the momentum of the pro-life movement. Immediately after the murder, abortion supporters began to paint the whole pro-life movement with the brush of “terrorist” and “extremist.” URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09060203.html Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.

A Portrait of an Alleged Murderer: The Life of Suspected Tiller Killer Scott Roeder

A Portrait of an Alleged Murderer: The Life of Suspected Tiller Killer Scott Roeder

Tuesday June 2, 2009 By Peter J. Smith WICHITA, Kansas, June 1, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A clearer portrait has now emerged of the man who allegedly took it into his hands to play judge, jury, and executioner of George Tiller, the foremost provider of late-term abortions in the United States. The portrait reveals a mentally disturbed, long-time anarchist and convicted felon, who appears to have succumbed to the influence of an anti-abortion domestic terrorist group and believed that he had to commit murder in order to stave off the wrath of God. Just three hours after Tiller was gunned down in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, where he had been ushering, law enforcement apprehended Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kansas, traveling the speed limit on the I-35 back to his home. He was officially charged with the murder today. Tiller's murderer had shot the abortionist once and threatened two other men in the church, before departing the scene of the crime in a powder-blue 1993 Ford Taurus, which deputies checked out as belonging to Roeder. After Sherriff’s deputies intercepted Roeder, he surrendered to them without incident and was taken back to Wichita for questioning. However in the aftermath of the murder and subsequent arrest, information has surfaced that shows Roeder to be a mentally unstable individual, who as early as the 1990s adopted quasi-biblical beliefs to compensate for his moral failings, and fell under the influence of two violent radical organizations, especially a fringe anti-abortion group far outside the sphere of the pro-life community. This group is the so-called Army of God, a group that advocates domestic terror, violence, and murder against abortion facilities and those who work there. The Anarchist Origins of Scott P. Roeder Roeder’s first links with violence and terrorism began with his association with the anti-government “Freemen” movement. The Freemen claim that the individual has sovereignty above the government, making them largely exempt from laws, regulations and taxes. Among other things, they began operating their own legal system, and printing their own paper currency independent of state and federal governments. Roeder’s ex-wife, Lindsay, told the Kansas City Star that Roeder began to break down in the early 90s, when he began having trouble paying bills and acting normal in daily life. "One day someone told him that paying income taxes isn't constitutional," Lindsey Roeder told the Star. "And he realized if he stopped paying his taxes he could pay all of his bills. From there things just started like a snowball. He became very obsessive." In April 1996, while the Freemen were engaged in the first month of an armed 81-day stand-off with the FBI at their Jordan, Montana compound, Roeder was pulled over and arrested by Shawnee county deputies for driving without a valid license plate. Instead Roeder had a tag reading, "Sovereign private property. Immunity declared by law. Non-commercial American.'' Roeder had been on an FBI list of Freemen, and when a deputy searched the trunk of his car, he found weapons, ammunition, a gas mask , and bomb-making materials: a fuse cord, a pound of black powder, two nine-volt batteries, and a switch for a bomb-trigger. Roeder was then charged and subsequently convicted of felonious possession and use of explosives, driving with a suspended license, and having neither vehicle registration nor car insurance. Following his conviction, Roeder was released on probation with intensive monitoring, and he was required to have no more contact with anarchist anti-government groups that advocated violence. Yet, Roeder soon violated parole in 1997 by refusing to pay his taxes and give his employer a social security number, which earned him a 16 month sentence in state prison. However, in December of that year, the Kansas Court of Appeals, threw out his conviction on the technical grounds that the officer arresting Roeder had improperly searched his car. Schizophrenia, Moral Confusion, and an Obsession with Abortion Throughout this time, Roeder had been suffering with a schizophrenic mental disorder, and his obsession with abortion had brought him into contact with extreme anti-abortion activists, who adopt an “ends justify the means” ethic toward abortion, rejecting the moral values of the pro-life community. Roeder had fallen in step with the ideology of the Army of God movement, which claims the murder of abortion providers constitutes “justifiable homicide” and praises the murderers of abortionists as “American heroes” on its website. "I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," Regina Dinwiddie, an acquaintance of Roeder’s, told the Kansas City Star. Dinwiddie herself had signed the first and second “defensive action statements” advocating the murder of abortionists as “justifiable homicide,” and her home was featured in an HBO documentary on the AOG called “Soldiers in the Army of God.” Dinwiddie told the Star that in 1996, Roeder walked into the Kansas City Planned Parenthood abortion facility, demanded to see abortionist Dr. Robert Crist, stared at him for 45 seconds, then said, “I’ve seen you now” before turning to walk away. Roeder also enmeshed himself with the AOG affiliated Prayer and Action News, a newsletter edited by David Leach, which also advocated the murder of abortionists as “justifiable homicide.” Leach had reprinted the 3rd edition of the Army of God manual in 1996, which included bomb-making instructions, and advocated acid attacks and murder among its “99 Covert Ways to Stop Abortion,” a direct violation of a ban by the Justice Department, which was confiscating all copies of the book. Roeder met with Leach in Topeka. Leach had been visiting Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon, who attempted to assassinate Tiller at his abortion facility in 1993. "I met him once, and he wrote to me a few times," Leach told the Kansas City Star. "I remember that he was sympathetic to our cause, but I don't remember any details." However, among the details that the Star reported Leach did remember, was Roeder’s obsession with government conspiracies. He said that Roeder would demonstrate how to remove the magnetic strip from a five dollar bill. "He said it was to keep the government from tracking your money," Leach added. Over the years, Roeder’s mental instability and obsession with anarchist groups and abortion ground down those people closest to him. Roeder’s first marriage of ten years ended in divorce after his 1996 arrest and conviction, leading him to estrangement from his now 22-year old son, Nick. Roeder’s ex-wife Lindsay told ABC News that Roeder had little contact with her son, seeing him once every six weeks, and that her son had no interest in seeing him. In later years, Roeder fathered a child by another woman, who fought to retain sole custody of her child with her current husband. The woman expressed grave concern for the safety and welfare of her daughter to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, citing both Roeder’s “past conduct and association with anti-government organizations [which] is ongoing” and “chronic mental disability of schizophrenia for which he takes no medication.” The court denied her request despite the plea that her little girl was living in an intact household with the only father and mother she ever knew. The Lead-Up and Aftermath of the Murder Preliminary reports from law enforcement indicate that Tiller's murderer acted alone. The investigation, however, continues to examine Roeder's background and activities. In the last several years leading up to Tiller’s assassination, the mentally disturbed Roeder expressed more violent agitation and a belief that divine wrath would befall the United States unless Tiller were stopped. “Bleass [sic] everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp,” says a May 19 post attributed to him on Operation Rescue’s website. “Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn’t seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller.” Elsewhere, on a separate website, Roeder had posted in September 2007, “It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the ‘lawlessness’ which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp ‘Mengele’ of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement [sic] upon our nation.” Operation Rescue, the Wichita-based leader of prayerful protests outside Tiller’s facility, has been quick to point out that Roeder is “not affiliated with this organization” and that thousands of persons, including Roeder and pro-abortion activists, have posted on its open website. “Scott Roeder has never been a member, contributor, or volunteer with Operation Rescue,” OR president Troy Newman said in a statement. “We deplore the criminal actions with which Mr. Roeder is accused,” said Newman. “The pro-life ethic is to value all human life from the moment of conception until natural death.” Operation Rescue had expelled Rev. Donald Spitz, the founder of the AOG website, in 1993, after Spitz had praised the murderer of Pensacola, Florida abortionist Dr. David Gunn. In a days leading up to his alleged murder of Tiller, Roeder made one last visit on Friday to his estranged son. His ex-wife told the Kansas City Star that the event was unusual since Roeder had embraced an Old Testament Sabbath observance from Friday to Saturday. Tiller was killed just over two months after a Kansas jury had voted to acquit the abortionist of 19 misdemeanor charges relating to violations of Kansas’s ban on late-term abortions. The jury had acquitted Tiller largely on the technicality that Ann Kristin Neuhaus, the abortionist signing off on his late-term abortions, was not a full-time employee of his, despite their close financial affiliation. The political consequences of George Tiller's murder are only now beginning to unfold. However, if past is prologue, this latest Army of God murder, the first murder of an abortionist in eleven years, will be seized upon by abortion advocates to hamper the momentum of the pro-life movement. Immediately after the murder, abortion supporters began to paint the whole pro-life movement with the brush of “terrorist” and “extremist.” URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09060203.html Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.

Kansas Murder Charges Against Scott Roeder

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JOURNAL ENTRY: Life has been a monstrous rollercoaster ride

6-2-09 - Good morning everyone,

Life has been a monstrous rollercoaster ride this past couple of days, even moreso than the past 7 years. As most of you probably already know, Dr. George Tiller, a late-term abortionist in Kansas, was shot and killed this past Sunday. The shooter is my youngest daughter's sperm donor, my ex.

When I first read the initial report that Tiller was killed by a 51 year old man from Merriam, Kansas, my gut told me that it was Scott, but the reports had not yet confirmed it. Within about an hour and a half later, Scott was named as a person of interest in the case and had been incarcerated.

Sunday, I was immediately overcome with sheer joy, because now everything I have been saying about this man for the past 7 years was now being realized by others. Also, my daughter, myself, and my family, would now be free from the wiles of Scott.

Yesterday, the sickening realization that I had "slept with the enemy", hit me square between the eyes. To think that I had lived with someone capable of taking the life of another, was more than a little unsettling to me.

Today, though, the reality of everything in my relationship with Scott over this past 8 years, is looming in front of me. I'm finding myself feeling so very sad, not only for myself, but also for him.

I'm also greatly concerned that the media will scout us out. We have our attorney to deflect any inquiries to, but just being on the radar screen of anyone in this type of situation, is attention that I do not want for my family. My daughter does not know who Scott is to her and it would not be in her best interest to tell her now.

I would greatly appreciate all of your prayers during this extremely trying time in my family's life. Thank you.

~~Sue

YouTube - O'Reilly on Tiller Shooting part 2

JOURNAL ENTRY - Sinking Reality

6-2-09 - I greatly appreciate your support and wish that I could scoop up all of you and be encircled by the blessing of your presence. The reality of it is all sinking in today, which has brought about a dynamic of deep sadness that any of this has taken place. Watching the news reports about someone I once loved and gave my life to, is hitting me deeply. I'm sure it would all be easier, if my daughter had never entered the equation, so I have a reminder every day of poor choices I have made in my past. Yes, he is a lunatic and deserves everything that he has coming to him, but there is/was a human side to him that at one time had my interest.

I'm sure this is all mixed up and I just don't have it in me to even try and sort it out. Sorry.

YouTube - O'Reilly on the Tiller Assassination - part 1

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