A Death in Wichita (19 page)

On Saturday morning, May 30, Roeder arose very early and at 5:45 drove back to the Central Family Medicine clinic, but this time he wasn’t alone at the office. As he stood in the parking lot and prepared to glue shut the locks, a female employee awaited him inside. When he approached the back door, she ran out and chased after him. Lumbering to his car, he glanced over his shoulder and echoed the words of Bill O’Reilly and many others in the anti-abortion movement, calling the woman a “baby killer.” She got a close look at him, his car, and his license plate.

Since the clinic had been vandalized last Saturday, her boss, Jeffrey Pederson, had upgraded the video surveillance equipment and this time it had captured clearer pictures of the man. The woman went into the office and called Pederson at home. He phoned the FBI with the car’s make and number: a 1990s powder blue Ford Taurus, Kansas plate 225 BAB. The feds said they’d set up a time to come in and interview his staff about the vandal.

As the sun rose over Kansas City, Roeder drove out of town west and headed for Lawrence, laying out his plans for the rest of the day. At 8:45, he parked next to Jayhawk Pawn & Jewelry and stood in front of the locked door, determined to be first in line when the store opened at nine. A few other men showed up and they all traded small talk and jokes on this beautiful late spring morning, before Roeder stepped into the shop and began looking at boxes of ammunition. He told the manager, Jeff Neal, that he used his gun for target practice, and Neal explained that the five-inch-long PT .22 could take either high-velocity or low-velocity ammo. Low-velocity bullets were quieter and less likely to disturb neighbors, but the firearm couldn’t be used in semiautomatic mode without high-velocity ammunition, in case he wanted to shoot multiple rounds without reloading. Roeder bought a box of each.

Leaving Lawrence, he drove across the modest hills of the Kansas countryside, its acres in full bloom by late May, its fertile bottomland filled with stands of cottonwood and rows of grain. Pulling into Topeka, he drove to his old neighborhood, passing up and down the streets of his youth and remembering the people in each of the houses, thinking about the mother of one of his childhood friends, and the father of another. He paused in front of the home of a former Cub Scout leader, recalling the boys in his pack and the good times they’d had together when he was small, before he was sent off to that mental hospital and forced to take drugs. A few people were out on their lawns doing yard work, stirring more memories. He wanted to stay here longer and keep reminiscing, but he was on a schedule.

His brother, David, lived on the western outskirts of Topeka. The two of them didn’t spend that much time together anymore, but Scott had to see him today. David knew that his brother had very strong religious views and opinions about abortion, so in recent years the family had tried to bypass those subjects with him. It just led to arguments and strain, and no one ever changed his or her mind. When Scott arrived at David’s, he seemed a bit hyperactive or manic. He hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before—it was best not to rile him up and to talk about other things.

David and his wife, Karen, had a home on an impressive country spread set back 150 yards from the nearest county road and protected by a gate. David’s living conditions were strikingly different from the cramped apartments and hovels his brother had occasionally plopped down in, when he could hardly make ends meet. The brothers were different in many ways, but shared a common interest in firearms. In recent months, Scott had pawned the 9-millimeter handgun he’d taken into Tiller’s church the summer before, but David had bought it out of pawn to keep for himself. When Scott arrived, he showed off his new PT .22 and suggested going into the surrounding woods to shoot some rounds. The two men walked out to the tall grass and forest, where Scott fired thirty or forty bullets into the ground and a streambed and a rotting old log, before the .22 jammed.

In separate cars, they drove to the High Plains Gun Shop in Topeka and spoke with employee Rex Campbell. Scott asked about buying some steel bullets, but Campbell said they didn’t make them for this particular weapon and the gun had malfunctioned because Roeder was using the wrong ammunition. While recommending a longer Winchester rifle cartridge, he closely examined the PT .22. It was dirty and “dry,” badly in need of oil. He gave it a few squirts, pulled the tape off the grip so it fit better in the hand, and made a few other adjustments, tightening up a few parts parts of the firearm. As David stood in the background, Scott meticulously questioned Campbell about the ammunition that was compatible with the .22, while keeping a running total of every penny he was spending. He bought a small can of oil and a couple of boxes of bullets, including some hollow-point Winchesters. In the parking lot of the gun store, he said good-bye to his brother and drove off alone.

Scott had told several people that he was returning to Westport this evening for a five o’clock meeting with his cohorts, but when he left Topeka he didn’t head east back toward Kansas City, but south on Highway 75, wending his way over the two-lane roads leading down to Wichita. During the past week, he’d thought about changing his license plate, or obscuring the letters and numbers, but in the end he hadn’t bothered doing that. Once or twice this afternoon, he stopped alongside the isolated road and got out and fired a few rounds into a ditch, to make sure that the gun was working smoothly and wouldn’t jam again.

Arriving in Wichita, he went to Reformation Lutheran for the 5:30 p.m. Saturday service, pulling into the uncrowded church lot, holding his Bible in one hand and stuffing the PT .22 into his pocket. In the foyer, he looked around for Dr. Tiller, searching the hallways and the bathroom and then the sanctuary, feeling a rush of frustration, doubt. Was Tiller sick or just on a very long vacation? Was he even a member of the congregation anymore?

This evening, the church was holding a special ceremony, conducted in Swahili to celebrate Pentecostal weekend. Pastor Kristin Neitzel, one of two ministers at Reformation Lutheran, was in charge of the service and only about fifty people were in attendance, all of them sitting together in just a few pews. Any stranger was bound to stand out more now than on Sunday mornings, when hundreds showed up. Roeder walked into the sanctuary and scanned the rows for the mop of short brown hair and the bespectacled face he’d seen so many times before on wanted posters, on anti-abortion material, and on the Internet. Kansans for Life had recently published a spring 2009 pamphlet with Tiller’s picture on the cover, and the lead story had complained about how he’d been acquitted at his trial with the help of “traveling abortionist” Kristin Neuhaus.

Pastor Neitzel noticed the tall, balding stranger, his presence setting off a dim memory. In the late summer or early fall of 2008, ushers had spotted this same man sitting in their church off by himself, and they’d brought him to the pastor’s attention. He didn’t seem to fit in and might be trouble or cause the kinds of disruptions Reformation Lutheran had seen inside its sanctuary in years past. Pastor Neitzel had never forgotten about him.

Not finding Tiller among the congregation, Roeder stayed only briefly before standing and walking out through the foyer. Pastor Neitzel went over to the pew where he’d been and sat down. She saw an offering envelope with scribbling on it—something about whether Reformation Lutheran was organized under the 5013C tax code. She left the sanctuary and went out into the foyer, staring through a window at the man, who was crossing the parking lot and getting into a light blue Ford with a front license plate featuring the purple wildcat logo of Kansas State University, up the road a few hours in Manhattan. On the car’s rear end was the evangelical fish symbol that in recent decades had become so popular.

Roeder cruised around the east side of Wichita before checking into the Garden Inn and Suites on the Kellogg corridor, just a few blocks from the Starlite Motel, where he’d stayed the week before. He paid in cash, because he didn’t believe in credit cards and the computerized trail of numbers they left behind. Using a coupon that dropped the price from $56.14 to $39.29, he also paid the clerk the mandatory $25 overnight deposit for his room. After settling in and trying out the king-size bed, he got back in his car and rode through the streets, thinking about tomorrow and the fastest routes through the city. He ate a cheap dinner and returned to the Garden Inn, waiting for darkness. He put on his pajamas, lay down, and switched on the television, moving through the stations and looking for something to hold his attention, stopping on the History Channel because he liked stories about real people who’d done difficult and important things—things that had altered the direction of history and echoed through generations and made a difference.

For more than thirty years, starting in the mid-1970s, Wichita had been at the heart of America’s battle over abortion, but nothing had ever been resolved or really changed. People from across the nation had come here and clashed in the streets and the courtrooms, lying flat on the sidewalks, going off to jail and making speech after speech, fighting one another through the media and then on the Internet. Bombing Tiller’s clinic, shooting him in the arms, sending him death threats—none of these had had any effect on the man. He was still going to work all week and doing what he’d always done, in the safety of his walled-in office. Everyone in the movement knew about his armored car and bulletproof vest. Everyone knew that he was the most prominent and busiest abortion doctor in the country, if not the world. In 2008, 10,642 abortions had been performed in Kansas and 5,131 of the pregnant women had come there from out of state, most of them to Wichita.

Nothing had stopped them from making these choices, despite the tireless efforts of Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion groups. Roeder had given these organizations his money, his time and energy, his emotional support and patience and hope. He’d consulted with people enough and sought their opinions, he’d had enough inner debates. He’d talked it over with the woman from Operation Rescue until he didn’t want to talk anymore. Ending abortion was a matter of being in accordance with God’s law, not man’s, and this was what God and those in the movement wanted him to do.

Lying in bed, he was certain that if he completed the mission, the anti-abortion groups would step up and support him the way he’d supported them. They’d regard him as a hero, someone who’d changed the course of history. Then he drifted off and slept so soundly that he overslept. By the time he’d awakened, cleaned up, dressed, and gone to the front desk to collect his $25 deposit, it was nearly 9:30. He wasn’t that concerned. The woman behind the desk, Sandy Michael, was standing outside smoking a cigarette, but he told her to finish it before taking care of him.

She was struck by how relaxed and happy-go-lucky the man seemed. A lot of people these days were pushy.

“Take your time,” Roeder told her. “I can wait.”

It wasn’t until he was in his car that he remembered that church started at 10:00, not 10:30, and he barely had time to get over to Reformation Lutheran before the ushers dimmed the lights for the opening of the service.

For the past half hour, traffic had been steadily turning into the church parking lot, but as ten approached it was winding down. Nearly all the worshippers had entered the foyer, received a program from an usher, and taken a seat on the red pews. At the front of the sanctuary was a lectern from where sermons were delivered, and behind the lectern rose a high brick wall featuring red peace banners and a large golden cross. To one side, the choir loft was elevated above the pews. Jeanne Tiller had come to church early today for choir practice, while her husband had driven another car. On this perfect May morning on the last day of the month, people exchanged nods and hellos, smiles and handshakes. In some ways, they came to church for this feeling as much as anything else, this sense of community and belonging to something larger than themselves, and being able to look forward to an hour of peace and worship before starting a new week.

No one paid much attention to the tall, bald man sitting on the aisle in a rear pew and holding a worn Bible, with a distant air that was neither open nor friendly. He wore a tattered white shirt, dark slacks, and black shoes. On previous Sundays a couple of ushers had unsuccessfully tried to start up conversations with him, but he only wanted to talk about the relationship among churches, taxes, and the federal government. One congregant, Dr. Paul Ryding, a local veterinarian who specialized in caring for horses, thought that the man wasn’t there to join in the singing and the prayer. He never put money in the collection plate or signed the guest book. He wore “high-water pants” and he’d once given off a very strong, unpleasant odor. At the same time, he hadn’t caused any disruptions inside the church, so why not leave him alone? He might eventually warm up and become a Reformation Lutheran member.

A few minutes earlier, Roeder had parked in the crowded lot—backing into the space, so his rear wheels were up against the curb. He’d entered the foyer and searched for Tiller, who was supposed to be handing out programs but once again wasn’t there. Roeder eyed the hallways, before going into the sanctuary and taking a seat. Turning his neck and shifting around, his gaze moved along the rows of pews and up toward the choir loft—Jeanne Tiller was present, but where was her husband? This was the third service in a row Roeder had come to and not found him. Had someone tipped off the physician that Roeder would be in the church this morning?

He stood, exited the sanctuary, and walked to the restroom, carrying his Bible in front of him. For a moment, he thought about bolting before things got started—he didn’t want to sit through another hour of Lutheran rituals and a sermon—but decided to return to the pews. As he sat down and glanced over his shoulder, Tiller stuck his head in through a doorway leading into the sanctuary and disappeared back inside the foyer.

Roeder jumped up.

The church was full today because of the Festival of Pentecost, about to be celebrated with a special prelude of international music. A baptism ceremony was scheduled, along with the welcoming of new worshippers into the congregation. Jeanne Tiller and her choir mates were ready to perform the chosen hymns. The trim, short-haired blonde had a good-enough voice to have become a professional singer, but she’d stayed home and spent the past forty-five years raising four children and providing constant support and reassurance for her husband. He’d needed it more with every passing decade—in fact, just a few days earlier, he’d gotten another anonymous letter at the office.

“Somebody should kill you,” it read, “so you can’t kill anymore.”

Reformation Lutheran was one of the very few places in Wichita where Dr. Tiller ever felt safe. In years past, he’d brought a bodyguard with him to the services, but then decided to stop.

At ten o’clock sharp, as the bells rang out from the nearby St. George Orthodox Church, Tiller and the usher Gary Hoepner were finishing up their duties in the foyer and getting ready to join the worshippers inside. Tiller had on a green suit and handsome, hand-tooled cowboy boots, with images of bald eagles stitched into the sides—a symbol of the doctor’s patriotism. Hoepner, a white-haired, kindly looking man who did maintenance on the premises, had been a member of the congregation for fifty-two years. Another usher, Ken Hobart, dropped by to ask Tiller about his recent trip to Disney World, the doctor telling him how much fun he’d had in Florida with his grandchildren. A fourth usher, Keith Martin, was milling around the front of the church, near the large double doors at Reformation Lutheran’s mostly unused main entrance. In recent months, the church had seen several car robberies during its Sunday morning service; Martin was studying the parking lot, looking for any suspicious movements. Waiting for stragglers to arrive, Tiller and Hoepner stood on opposite sides of a long “hospitality” table in the foyer, holding coffee and doughnuts. The men made small talk about the local breakfast places they enjoyed, while above their heads hung a smaller version of the red peace banner on display in the sanctuary.

Kathy Wegner and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Alison, came into the room and spoke to the men. Kathy was always raising money to help young people at the church, through bake sales, jewelry sales, and other activities. She had another sale planned for today in the foyer, once the service was finished. As Tiller and Hoepner chatted, the Wegners brought in boxes and set up their wares by a far wall. Hoepner briefly dimmed the sanctuary lights, to let everyone know church was starting, then wandered back to the coffee table and spoke with Tiller. Inside the sanctuary, Pastor Lowell Michelson began beating a darbuka drum, providing the rhythm for an African song called “Celebrate the Journey!” As the sanctuary filled with the gathering sounds of music, Hoepner picked up a jelly roll from the table and took a bite. A side door leading into the sanctuary swung open.

A large bald man marched through it with his head lowered. Hoepner glanced up and remembered seeing him before—just last Sunday. At exactly this time a week ago, he’d come into the foyer carrying an old Bible, before moving down the hallway toward the restroom. His odd manner and weathered clothes had stayed with the usher. His clothing today was no better and he had the same worn Bible in his hand, but instead of going to the bathroom, he kept his head down and came straight toward Dr. Tiller, fumbling in his pocket.

“I was standing close enough to George to touch him,” Hoepner later recalled. “The man had brought out a gun, but I wasn’t sure if it was real. I saw his hand on the trigger. I saw the barrel go up to Dr. Tiller’s head—very close. I heard a loud pop!—like a pop gun. George fell and I thought, Oh, my God! I stood there for a second and the man exited out through the foyer toward the parking lot. As he ran away, I heard him say something. I heard him say, ‘Lord, forgive me.’”

Instinctively, Hoepner ran after him, bursting through the foyer door and out onto a patch of grass.

From the corner of her eye, Kathy Wegner had seen a flash and heard the pop. She glanced across the room and saw Tiller lying flat on his back. She saw Hoepner chasing a man through the door.

“Mama,” Alison said, pointing at the figure sprawled on the foyer’s gray carpet, “that’s Dr. Tiller.”

At first, Kathy thought he’d fallen down.

“Ali,” she said, “you go help him up.”

Her second thought, as she saw blood pooling around Tiller’s head and realized he wasn’t moving, was that she’d better find a telephone.

As Alison walked toward the body, Kathy ran a into a business office just off the foyer and dialed 911.

“Dr. George Tiller was just shot!” she yelled into the receiver, her breath coming hard.

“Dr. Tiller was shot?” the female dispatcher said.

“Yes!” her voice cracked. “I’m at church!”

“Who’s the suspect?”

“I don’t know!” she cried into the phone.

“Was he black, Hispanic, white?”

“White!”

“What was he wearing?”

“A white shirt and dark slacks!”

What else did she remember?

He was balding, Kathy said, with an “older man hairstyle.”

Alison had approached Tiller and was standing over him, only five feet away.

Roeder sprinted toward the rows of cars at the rear of the parking lot, clutching the Bible to his chest and waving the pistol.

“I’ve got a gun,” he shouted over his shoulder at Hoepner, “and I’ll shoot you!”

Hoepner quit running and froze on the asphalt, thinking not so much about his own safety—he’d do anything to get his hands on the man who’d come into his church and shot Dr. Tiller—but about his aging wife. He didn’t want to leave her a widow. He turned away and moved toward his truck, which he’d left near the foyer this morning so it would be handy for his maintenance chores. Reaching inside the cab, he grabbed his cell phone from under the seat and dialed 911, asking the dispatcher for police assistance and an ambulance.

Keith Martin was drinking coffee near the foyer entrance when he’d heard what must have been a firecracker—until he turned and saw Dr. Tiller lying on the carpet. Glancing out a window, Martin saw a large, bald-headed man angling through some parked cars, going toward the back of the lot. The usher saw Hoepner chasing after him, but then he stopped.

Martin dashed outside, carrying his half-full Styrofoam coffee cup.

“Get his license plate!” Hoepner shouted at Martin from beside his truck. “Get the number!”

Martin followed the man to his car, parked facing outward. The tall, rail-thin usher, a lawyer who’d been a member of the church for decades, came within a few yards of Roeder and stood in front of the pale blue vehicle, looking closely at the stranger. Martin remembered him from his previous church visits—recalling not so much his face or clothes or even his off-putting manner, but his piercing smell, harsh and chemical, which the usher once described as “terrible” and “unusually pungent.” Months earlier, when Martin had first seen the man in church, the attorney had instantly been suspicious of him; maybe he was one of those anti-abortion protesters who’d disrupted their services in the past. He could even be the person who’d mailed Martin an ugly letter saying that because of his association with George Tiller, he was unfit to be a Sunday-school teacher and interact with children. But after seeing the man another time or two in the sanctuary, Martin changed his mind and chastised himself because the stranger had never done anything to interrupt the proceedings or harm the church. Martin felt bad about having passed judgment on him too quickly—an un-Christian thing to do.

The two men stared at each other over the hood of the Ford, and these memories and feelings came rushing back; Martin’s gut had been right all along. The man hadn’t just protested Dr. Tiller’s presence at Reformation Lutheran this morning, as many others had. He’d done the worst thing possible, and done it inside their church in the midst of their Sunday service, violating and defiling the space where people came together for one hour a week to celebrate and pray.

“How could you do that?” Martin said.

“He’s a murderer,” Roeder calmly replied, opening the door of the Ford and sliding into the driver’s seat. He started the engine. “Move.”

Martin held his ground.

“Move!” Roeder raised the gun and aimed it at him. “Or I’ll shoot you.”

Martin hesitated, gazing down the barrel, wanting to do whatever was necessary to keep the man here until the police arrived, but not wanting to die.

He stepped aside.

Another elderly worshipper, Thornton Anderson, was late for this morning’s service and had just parked his car in the rear of the lot. Stepping out of the vehicle, he heard Hoepner yelling from up near the front of the church, “Get the tag number! Get his license number!”

Anderson saw Keith Martin standing next to a blue Ford with a man behind the wheel. As the car pulled away, Anderson watched the usher throw his coffee cup into the open window and onto the driver.

The Ford passed close enough to Anderson to give him a good look at the Kansas plate: 225 BAB.

Roeder sped out through the lot and onto Thirteenth Street, a main traffic artery leading up to Rock Road or back toward downtown Wichita.

Another middle-aged usher, Charles Scott, had come out of the church and heard Hoepner yelling and seen the Ford take off. Operating on instinct, like the other worshippers, Scott began chasing after the Ford, going the length of a football field, and then farther, all the way to Thirteenth before stopping.

Thornton Anderson came up to Hoepner, who was holding his cell phone to his ear and talking to the 911 operator. Anderson gave him the make, color, and approximate year (early 1990s) of the vehicle, along with the license number, and Hoepner relayed all this to the dispatcher. He stayed on the line while Anderson and Martin went into the church.

In the foyer, Alison Wegner was crying on the phone with the police, hysterical. Martin took the receiver from her and gave the dispatcher an account of what he’d just seen. The hospitality table had been pushed up against a wall to make the room more open. Another worshipper, Bob Livingston, was kneeling down beside the body and holding Tiller’s hand. The veterinarian Paul Ryding had heard the commotion and come out from the sanctuary to take a look.

Ryding rolled Tiller onto his left side and bent over him, breathing into the man’s mouth and nose, the vet’s face and shirt now smeared with blood. Tiller showed no vital signs—no pulse, no heartbeat, no corneal response when Ryding passed his hand in front of his eyes. On his forehead, a flap of skin was loose, and soot and powder covered the wound. He’d been shot once above the right eyebrow, with the gun pressed right up against his flesh, a spent .22 shell casing on the carpet near his body.

Inside the sanctuary, Pastor Lowell Michelson had heard a sharp noise toward the back, thinking someone had dropped a hymnal. As he continued with the service, an usher beckoned him away from the pulpit.

“George has been shot,” the man said quietly.

Worshippers were twisting around in the pews, nudging one another and whispering. They, too, had heard an explosive sound—like a balloon popping or a door slamming. Had the percussionist for the choir hit something during the African song?