Police: Pennsylvania school shooter admitted molesting

NICKEL MINES, Pa. - A man who laid siege to a one-room Amish schoolhouse told his wife he had molested young children decades ago and left a note saying he had “dreams of molesting again,” state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said Tuesday.

Police said they could not confirm the claim by Charles Carl Roberts IV and that family members knew nothing of the alleged molestation.

Authorities say a heavily armed Roberts, 32, took hostages in a one-room schoolhouse and opened fire on several girls before taking his own life as police stormed the schoolhouse.

Two more girls died from gunshot wounds Tuesday, raising the number of victims to five. Five other children remained hospitalized after Monday’s school shooting, the country's third in less than a week.

Roberts wrote his wife and three children suicide notes, took three guns and ammunition and went to the West Nickel Mines Amish School ready for an extended siege. He also had sex lubricant with him, but there was no evidence that any of the Amish children had been sexually assaulted, Miller said.

From the suicide notes and telephone calls, it was clear Roberts was “angry at life, he was angry at God,” and co-workers said his mood had darkened in recent days, Miller told NBC’s "Today" show on Tuesday.

In the notes to his family, Roberts talked about his anguish over the loss of the couple’s newborn daughter, Elise, in 1997, Miller said.

Pennsylvania state police released the first part of the suicide letter, which read, “I don’t know how you put up with me all those years. I am not worthy of you, you are the perfect wife you deserve so much better. We had so many good memories together as well as the tragedy with Elise. It changed my life forever I haven’t been the same since it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate towards God and unimaginable emptyness it seems like everytime we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn’t here to share it with us and I go right back to anger.”

He also alluded to his wife another reason for his anger, Miller said, but said he “can’t discuss it with her and it happened 20 years ago.”

photo & story courtesy msnbc.msn.com, 10/3/06