Amish children knew their killer

THERE were no children to greet Charles Roberts the last time he collected milk from the Fisher family farm near the Pennsylvania town of Paradise. It was in the early hours of last Monday and the excited young Amish girls who often ran out to greet his arrival were inside asleep.

As a tanker driver for a Lancaster County dairy, Roberts was well known to farmers as one of the few “Englishers” — the Amish term for outsiders — who were allowed to pay regular visits to the community’s old-fashioned farms.

On his daytime rounds he was routinely besieged by inquisitive children who clamoured for lollipops and stories about an outside world that was rarely mentioned by their stern and protective parents.

Roberts finished his night shift at 3am on Monday and returned in darkness to his home in nearby Bart Township. The next time he saw the Fisher children that day, he lined them up against the wall of their classroom and shot them in the back of the head.

The disclosure that Roberts may have known some of the children he murdered in a still-unexplained explosion of violence at the West Nickel Mines Amish school last Monday has added a startling twist to a uniquely American tragedy.

The killings at the heart of the Amish community’s Pennsylvania homeland shattered the zealously guarded serenity of a quaintly archaic religious order that has somehow flourished despite turning its back on modern distractions such as electricity, telephones and cars.

Police initially thought Roberts chose his victims at random, but evidence is mounting that the 32-year-old deliberately targeted the Amish schoolgirls. “I’m sure he knew the girls,” said Stephen Sipos, who lives across the road from the Roberts family. “The milk drivers were always joking around with the kids.”

Among the 10 girls Roberts seized in a planned assault a few hours after he finished work was Marian Fisher, 13, and her 11-year-old sister Barbie, both of whom bravely offered to die in exchange for the lives of the others. A third Fisher sister escaped; neighbours confirmed the Fisher farm was a regular stop on Roberts’s milk route.

As the Amish sought seclusion after the agonies of a public ordeal, there were no easy answers to awkward questions about what provoked Monday’s mayhem, and whether something happened on Roberts’s rounds to propel him to murder the girls.

There were also fears among criminal experts that respect for Amish traditions and the reluctance of Pennsylvania police to intrude may hamper a promised investigation into the motives of a mild-mannered milkman who turned out to be seething with maniacal rage.

After a few hours’ sleep last Monday, Roberts was up at 7.30am helping his wife Marie get their children Abigail, seven, and Bryson, five, ready for school. The couple also had an 18-month-old baby, Carson.

At 8.45am the couple walked the children to their yellow school bus. Paula Derby, a neighbour, said it was unusual to see Roberts on a Monday because he often worked an early shift collecting the weekend milk.

She smiled when Roberts hugged and kissed his children and told them: “Remember, Daddy loves you.” It was a touching gesture from a man whose friends would later describe as a devoted father and husband.

Roberts was due to have a random drug test required by his employer, Northwest Foods. Yet after his wife left for a prayer meeting, he drove to a hardware store and bought steel bolts, plastic ties and wooden planks.

By the time he reached the Amish school in White Oak Road about a mile from his home it was 10am and he was carrying a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, a 300,000-volt stun gun, two shotguns, 600 rounds of ammunition and an assortment of chains and restraining devices.

Police later discovered that he had also brought lavatory paper, a change of clothes and two tubes of the sexual lubricant K-Y Jelly. The only possible conclusion, said Commander Jeffrey Miller of the Pennsylvania state police, was that he intended to “dig in for a long siege”. Police also think he may have been planning to abuse the girls sexually.

There were four adults and 26 children aged between six and 13 in the one-room schoolhouse when Roberts arrived. Beneath the blackboard hung a small sign that read “Visitors brighten people’s days”.

Two of the adults ran away when Roberts appeared with a gun. There are no telephones in Amish schools so Emma Mae Zook, a 20-year-old teacher, ran across fields to raise the alarm. Emma Fisher, nine, slipped out of the classroom, leaving her two sisters behind.

Roberts ordered the 15 boys and two remaining adults to leave. As soon as they were gone he began hammering planks against the door, barricading himself and 10 girls inside. He ignored Marian’s request that he shoot her first and let the others go. “Shoot me next,” pleaded Barbie.

He was still tying the girls’ feet with wire when the first police arrived at 10.45am. Roberts immediately telephoned his wife to tell her: “I’m not coming home. The police are here.”

As his dumbfounded wife struggled to understand what he was saying, Roberts told her he was filled with guilt and remorse because he had molested two younger relatives 20 years ago. He also told her where to find suicide notes. In one of the notes he said he had never recovered from the death of his daughter, Elise, who was born prematurely in 1997 and lived for only 20 minutes.

“It changed my life forever,” he wrote. “I am filled with so much hate, hate towards myself, hate towards God and unimaginable emptiness.”

Just after 11am Roberts answered a call from police. He warned that he would open fire on the children if they did not back away. The police never had a chance to respond. Within seconds they heard gunfire.

When state troopers smashed through the barricaded door, they found the most harrowing of scenes. Roberts had walked down the line of girls, shooting them in the back of the head. He fired 13 shots from his pistol and four magnum rounds, each containing 12 buckshot pellets, from a shotgun. Then he reloaded the pistol and fired a single shot into his head.

Two girls died at the scene and three more in hospital, among them Marian Fisher. A sixth has been taken off life support and is expected to die at home. Barbie Fisher was badly wounded but is expected to survive. The others are in a critical condition.

America has become used to the dreadful aftermath of school shootings — there were two in Colorado and Wisconsin the week before Roberts’s rampage, and President George W Bush has ordered a summit this week to discuss school safety.

Yet many Americans agreed there was something unfathomably cruel about the assault on a community as peaceful and devout as the Amish. People are no longer surprised about eruptions of violence in inner city ghettos or seething suburbs. But this was Lancaster County, home of the horse-drawn buggy and long-bearded farmers who do not wear wristwatches, let alone carry guns.

In reality the Amish are not nearly as otherworldy as sometimes portrayed. Over the years they have made numerous compromises to accommodate today’s world without abandoning their beliefs that life should not be “easy”, and that modern appliances breed laziness and distance from God.

Ironically it was their success as dairy farmers that produced one of the biggest — and most controversial — compromises. As production soared, dairies demanded the replacement of old-fashioned churns with bulk stainless steel tanks. The Amish agreed to install automatic churners — albeit battery-powered — despite traditionalists’ warnings that opening the doors to modern techniques would invite ruin.

Instead the Amish prospered and multiplied — their population has doubled to 180,000 in the past 20 years — but the price they paid was the arrival of outsider dairymen like Roberts.

“The milkman was our contact with the outside world,” said Ruth Garrett, who grew up in an Amish family before being expelled when she fell in love with an outsider.

“He and the (animal) feed man were the people who would come to the farm and the kids would chase them around and you could sit down and ask them what the world outside was like. We were shielded from everything as Amish kids . . . what we knew we learned from the milkman.”

Did Roberts have that kind of relationship with some of the children he killed? Did he give them lollipops and rides in his truck? Did he try to molest one of the girls and become angry when he was rebuffed? These questions have arisen because of what both police and criminal psychologists agree is a mass murderer’s profile that does not yet make sense. Police have investigated Roberts’s claims to have abused two of his relatives when they were four or five years old, and the young women do not remember a thing; nor does any relative believe such abuse occurred.

Psychiatrists acknowledge that the death of his baby may have filled him with anger, but most consider it unlikely he would suddenly explode nine years later without exhibiting any sign of stress.

His cousin, Ben Hildebrand, insisted: “There was not a drop of anger in him.” His wife Marie said in a statement: “The man who did this is not the man I married.”

According to Peter Ash, director of psychiatric services at Emory University, Roberts probably had “a very detailed inner life that simply nobody knew about”.

Some specialists speculated that Roberts may have been molested himself, and that he may have developed fantasies about molesting the Amish girls. In a 1995 study of murder-suicides, Alan Felthous of Southern Illinois University identified a class of “pseudo-commando” killer who may develop a paranoid delusion that a group of people is either “out to get him”, or is secretly taunting him.

Roberts may have fixated on young Amish girls, Felthous said: “It’s conceivable he would direct his hostilities towards them.”

When police revealed Roberts’s relatives were “absolutely sure” they had not been molested by him, Miller, the police commander, said his team would “try to determine what other motive there may have been”.

But other experts said there was little likelihood police would mount an aggressive effort to interview Amish parents about whether their daughters knew Roberts and how he may have behaved towards them.

The murderer is dead and there is no criminal case to prepare. Pennsylvania is immensely protective of the Amish — not least because of the tourism revenues they generate — and is unlikely to countenance further intrusion into a grieving community. It rained heavily in Nickel Mines on Friday. Outside the home of one of the murdered girls, a dozen black buggies were drawn up, signalling that the Amish community was looking after its own. “There is rarely a real inquiry into the motivation of the worst mass shooters,” said Kristin Rand of the Violence Policy Center, which lobbies for gun control. “It is not really a law enforcement function and I doubt we are going to see a proper psychological evaluation.” She paused. “That may be why these things keep happening.”

You see 18-wheeler tanker trucks going to and fro from Amish dairy farms all the time, hauling their milk production to market.

There is so much that is inexplicable here. Sometimes I think the devil himself took over Roberts to try and make a point against God, but the Amish showed they would not be defeated by such.

Sometimes I think the devil himself took over Roberts to try and make a point against God, but the Amish showed they would not be defeated by such.

I would have to agree with you. It seems odd that a situation he said he felt guilty about may not have happened and that there was not one bit of forewarning. A lot of times when something like this happens people will think back and say, "Now that I think about it I remember him acting such and such a way."

On his daytime rounds he was routinely besieged by inquisitive children who clamoured for lollipops and stories about an outside world that was rarely mentioned by their stern and protective parents.

Lollipops and stories of the outside world? Methinks someone is embellishing a story that does not need it.

I hate the media.

Yes it is utterly unbelieveable. This is a little off topic, but I wonder how the Amish feel about being such a tourist attraction. I went and gawked myself.
Aside from that, this story is beyond words. I happened to read yahoo message boards, I really wish there was something that could be done about the trash that is put on those boards. I don't see how people can post such filth and get by with it. I have complained many times and never got anywhere. All I received was a note to block them

According to Peter Ash, director of psychiatric services at Emory University, Roberts probably had “a very detailed inner life that simply nobody knew about”

Psychobabble.

The man was pure evil,

Roberts told her he was filled with guilt and remorse because he had molested two younger relatives 20 years ago

So what he did makes it right? Some people are just evil, there's no other excuse. I think that a lot of people found insane are simply evil people.

".......There were also fears among criminal experts that respect for Amish traditions and the reluctance of Pennsylvania police to intrude may hamper a promised investigation into the motives of a mild-mannered milkman who turned out to be seething with maniacal rage."

What would be the point in seeking a motive now? The damage is done and couldn't be undone with a prying investigation into lives now shattered of community where just plain gawking is intrusive much less digging detectives.

Maybe question his wife, relatives, friends and co-workers for answers, but leave the Amish alone. They've handled this situation with grace and dignity that should be afforded back to them.

-"Sometimes I think the devil himself took over Roberts to try and make a point against God,"

One has to ask oneself: Do you REALLY believe in Good and Evil?

If you do, then this event, and others such like it (take your pick: 9/11, Colorado, OKLA CITY) are the evidence of its existence.

Manifestations of the degrees of evil is directly related to the extent that the Devil has taken over one's body/soul for the purpose of carrying out such evil. This is where we cannot undertake this battle solely on our own, but by asking God's help, be it on a personal level, or societal level.

The killer may have won his 'battle' but lost his 'war', as the true finish line ends at Heaven's Gate.

While it is undoubtably sad for those of us who still remain behind, the Amish (through their deep faith and by the Grace of God) fully understand that the girls's souls are already in the presence of the true God.

"A lot of times when something like this happens people will think back and say, "Now that I think about it I remember him acting such and such a way."

Pedophiles are some of the most brilliantly evil actors you'll ever have the misfortune to encounter.

My aunt married one and neither she or anyone else in the family or general community [except for the parents of the girls he molested] would EVER imagine him as being capable of doing so.

He is a respected business man, a "devout Christian" and the epitome of a 'pillar of the community'.

He's bright, witty, charming and funny.

Simply everyone adores him....except his victims.

Psychobabble.

And space filler.

And something more sinister: the animals who commit these crimes are always described as perfectly normal, until they're obviously not, and the subtle suggestion is that they snapped because of something the victim did.

Ask the wife. She knows. And she may be just as sick as her husband, for all his supposed outward veneer of normalcy, obviously was.

And then you have the BTK killer who sat on the church board at his Lutheran church...
..consistent member of that church...

..it just shows how deceptive the devil was within this man.

Have you ever read This Present Darkness...by Peretti?

A lot of times when something like this happens people will think back and say, "Now that I think about it I remember him acting such and such a way."

And we've seen nothing of that so far. Instead, we see the Amish asking that one-quarter of the monetary donations go towards Robert's family, since he was the sole breadwinner for them. If the devil did drive Roberts to do this, he suffered a Pyrrhic victory for the ages.

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