A Death in Wichita (20 page)

Pastor Michelson conferred with an assistant who felt that the best way to avoid panic was by proceeding with this morning’s program.

In the foyer a woman screamed and the congregation turned in her direction. A few people rose from their pews. The music halted and an usher walked up to the choir box, leaning over to speak to Jeanne Tiller, who sprang out of her chair. Taking her arm, the man escorted her from the sanctuary, as more worshippers stood up.

“Everyone please be seated,” an assistant pastor announced from the front of the sanctuary. “Please remain calm. We have had an incident and we are taking care of it. Remain in your seat.”

The congregation sat down, but kept glancing back to the foyer.

The usher Keith Hobart was in the sanctuary when he’d heard the sound. He went into the foyer and saw a man lying on his side on the carpet. Hobart thought it was part of a staged protest against abortion, but then he saw the blood on the floor and recognized Dr. Tiller. The usher decided to go back inside to tell his daughter to stay put so she wouldn’t see the wounded man. As he was doing so, the foyer doors flew open and Jeanne Tiller rushed in screaming.

“George! George! George!”

The Wichita Police Department had its lightest shift of the week on duty Sunday mornings because automobile accidents and other crimes reached their lowest point during these hours. At 10:02:42 a.m. on this Sunday, the first 911 call from Reformation Lutheran came into the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system for Wichita and Sedgwick County, as the dispatcher took down the information.

Officer Erik Landon was working the east side of town today, the beefy, broad-shouldered patrolman looking for traffic violations or other irregularities. At 10:03:30, he received a call from CAD about a shooting at a church at 7601 East Thirteenth Street. A balding white suspect, about six feet tall and perhaps two hundred pounds, had left the church by himself; he was driving a light blue Ford Taurus and, according to witnesses, moving west on East Thirteenth, toward downtown. He had a small firearm and was obviously considered dangerous. After receiving this bulletin, Officer Landon didn’t turn on his red light or speed up dramatically, but drove straight toward the church. At 10:04:10, as Landon was en route, the CAD dispatcher got the license plate number for the Taurus: Kansas 225 BAB. One minute later, or 123 seconds after the first 911 call was made from the church, CAD had identified the car’s owner and the shooter’s name: fifty-one-year-old Scott Roeder, whose last known address, 5044 Knox Street, was in Merriam, Kansas, the Kansas City suburb where the suspect had once lived with Michael Clayman and studied the Bible with his fellow Messianic Christians. CAD had already retrieved a photo of Roeder from his most recent driver’s license.

At 10:07, Officer Landon reached Reformation Lutheran and went into the foyer, now filled with as many as fifteen people. A crowd was hovering by the far wall, where an older man was leaning down over a body and trying to revive the victim by breathing into his mouth and nose. Landon came closer, observed the situation, and dispatched a brief message to WPD: “Code Blue,” meaning near death. He forcefully moved Paul Ryding away from Tiller, telling the veterinarian to go wash the blood off his face. Landon then separated Jeanne Tiller from her husband and she was escorted into another room, as the officer attempted to clear the area around the victim and secure the crime scene. Someone had already picked up the shell casing by Tiller’s head, before putting it back onto the carpet.

As Landon tried to manage the chaos inside the foyer, all across the city police cell phones and beepers were ringing. At other Wichita churches where services were just starting, on-call officers received the urgent messages, excused themselves from their families, and hustled to the exits. Most drove to Reformation Lutheran, but some were ordered downtown to WPD headquarters. The metropolitan area saw about thirty murders a year, normally investigated by half a dozen homicide detectives. When a major crime occurred, other officers were called in from the gang unit (the city had about three thousand suspected gang members), and that was happening now.

Officer Valerie Shirkey was also patrolling the east side of town when she got the 10:03 dispatch about the church shooting. Using the police car’s siren and red lights, she arrived at Reformation Lutheran at 10:08, dressed in the same casual, summery manner as the other WPD personnel: white pants and a short-sleeved green shirt. Grabbing her camera and two rolls of film, she ran inside and helped Officer Landon take charge of the foyer. Emergency Medical Services were pulling up out front, the Wichita Fire Department had been alerted, and more officers were coming through the church doors and bringing the crime scene under control. Officer Shirkey began snapping pictures of Tiller—of his glasses, which had fallen off and were lying near his head, of the blood pooling around him on the carpet, of the blood splatters off to the sides, and of the brain matter that had been blown onto a nearby trash can.

The police made way for the paramedic Gene Robinson, who leaned over Dr. Tiller and took his pulse, checking for vital signs. At 10:13, he looked up at the others and shook his head.

“Code black,” he said.

A murder investigation had officially begun.

Lieutenant Ken Landwehr, commander of WPD’s homicide division, had not yet come to the church, but was handing out various assignments to the detectives below him. Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston, a veteran prosecutor who’d tried many high-profile cases herself, was on her way to Reformation Lutheran and other lawyers from the DA’s office were right behind her. So was the local press, as pieces of Wichita were just starting to absorb the shocking news: Dr. George Tiller had been shot and killed inside his church—one more jolt to a metropolitan area that had been divided for decades by the conflict surrounding the physician. When travelers from around America came to this city of something under 400,000 in south central Kansas, they saw a modest skyline rising against the flat Midwestern horizon, and were often struck by the friendliness of the native population, but they couldn’t help noticing one other local landmark: those huge billboards proclaiming Wichita “The Abortion Capital of the World.”

The ten police officers at the church called an immediate halt to the service and were blocking off the parking lot exits and isolating the witnesses from other members of the congregation and media. A WPD dispatcher had just issued a teletype BOLO—“Be on the Lookout”—alert, sent to law enforcement throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, and including Roeder’s license number and a description of the Taurus. The FBI and ATF were already aware of the killing and had been told that Dr. Warren Hern out in Boulder and Dr. LeRoy Carhart up in Nebraska might both be at risk. The Kansas Highway Patrol and officers from Johnson County, which included the greater Kansas City area, had been told about a 1993 blue Ford being driven by a man with hazel eyes and the rest of Roeder’s physical characteristics. Citizens in the Wichita area who liked to tune in police scanners had picked up the news, relaying it among themselves and making calls to others.

Reformation Lutheran had been emptied of worshippers and many were standing outside on a grassy section next to the church, holding on to one another, praying together, and crying. A group of adults had led some small children away from all the police activity, trying to distract them as they told the kids stories and played games and rolled on the lawn, the morning growing warmer in the late May sunshine.

Gary Hoepner was still on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. For the next 21.5 hours, CAD would continue receiving data about the shooting. Throughout that time, Hoepner’s grief was just starting to come alive, along with the regret that he hadn’t had time or been quick enough or done something to save George Tiller and stop a murder from occurring inside his church.

The powder blue Taurus had in fact not gone west onto East Thirteenth Street toward downtown, as the original CAD dispatches reported to police officers, but east up to Rock Road and then north toward Highway 254. The coffee stains on Roeder’s white shirt looked suspect and were itching his chest, but he didn’t have time to stop and change. His radar detector was on, to keep track of any cops, and he was determined to avoid the nearby turnpike, by far the fastest way to make the 170-mile trip back to Kansas City. Police might be waiting for him at a toll booth and, besides, the state of Kansas still was not going to get his $3.50 fee. He fiddled with the radio dial, hunting for any news of the shooting.

He took 254 east to El Dorado, home to the highest-security prison in Kansas (BTK, among others, was housed there). Driving the speed limit and conscientiously using all his signals, he departed 254 for Highway 54 and took this two-lane blacktop through the small towns of Eureka and Yates Center, turning north on Highway 75 to Burlington, where he paused to change into the blue denim shirt in his backseat. Sitting behind the wheel, he tossed the stained white shirt over his shoulder, onto some other clothes, ties, papers, and trash. Concealed beneath the car seats were live cartridges and his long serrated knife. Stuffed under the driver’s visor was a handout for the recent Reformation Lutheran service conducted in Swahili and on it, he’d written to himself: “Young women. Short dress!” And next to that, “Deliver us from temptation.”

In Burlington, he moved along the quiet Sunday afternoon main street, just a few blocks long, until he found an empty parking lot behind a row of buildings and pulled into it. A dirt pile in the lot, maybe four feet high and four feet wide, was being used for a construction project. Wrapping the murder weapon tightly inside a piece of cloth, Roeder buried it as deeply as he could in the dirt. The firearm’s magazine was still loaded, with live rounds of ammunition that others might stumble on, including children, but if everything went smoothly, he’d come back for the gun as soon as possible.

Driving sixteen miles north on Highway 75, he stopped at a collection of restaurants and gas stations known as BETO Junction, where he gassed up the Taurus and ate a small pizza, hungry from all the morning’s exertions. From BETO Junction, he turned east onto Interstate 35, toward Kansas City, constantly twisting the radio dial and listening for reports out of Wichita. He heard nothing, which was maddening. What had happened in the church after he’d run outside? Was Tiller dead or alive? Had he even shot the right man, and if he had, could the bullet have hit another usher or worshipper? If he’d so much as nicked somebody else, he’d feel awful about it, because that would be a crime and would damage or negate everything he stood for and was trying to achieve. He kept driving and changing the dial, settling in on a talk radio program. He’d made plans to stop by a farm between Topeka and Kansas City to buy kefir and goat cheese, but that would take too much time. There was a paycheck waiting for him at Quicksilver, which he needed to pick up this afternoon.

For months and years, going back to the start of the decade, he’d wondered what it would feel like to make this journey from Wichita up to Kansas City, after fulfilling his ultimate goal. Now he knew. It felt incredibly good and freeing to leave the church behind and to be all alone out on the open road on this clear spring day, a great day for a drive, to roll down the windows and take in the scenery and let the cool air rush over him as he passed through farm country—knowing, or at least hoping, that he’d finally accomplished his mission. The stress and tension building within him in recent weeks, as he’d thought about the plan and put together the details, was easing out of his body. Maybe he’d done something significant and powerful with his life, after all, something historic. All those emotions that had surrounded and tormented him for so long—culminating with the anger and bitter disappointment over Tiller’s trial—had at last found a focus and a release. He’d expressed himself.

His only regret was that he hadn’t done this sooner.

Deputy Sheriff Andrew Lento of Johnson County was patrolling a rural area outside of Kansas City at 10:40 on Sunday morning when the BOLO had come in from the WPD. It alerted him to be on the lookout for a 1993 blue Ford Taurus driven by a middle-aged man named Scott Roeder, who’d just shot Dr. George Tiller at Wichita’s Reformation Lutheran Church. The suspect was armed and any lone officer would need backup before moving in on him. Lento calculated that if Roeder had left the church around 10:15 and taken the most direct route back to Kansas City, via the turnpike and then I-35, he wouldn’t arrive in this vicinity for about three hours. The deputy kept patrolling the back roads until a quarter to one.

In downtown Wichita, Gary Hoepner and Keith Martin, along with several other members of the congregation, had been escorted to the sixth floor of the City Building, just across the street from the courthouse. The WPD brass worked out of this black high-rise, where detectives were preparing to interview the eyewitnesses. The two ushers were separated, put in rooms with one officer each, and questioned about what they’d seen. Hoepner and Martin gave matching detailed accounts of what Roeder had looked like and that he’d been in the church several times before today. Both said that he’d aimed the handgun at them and threatened to shoot. The detectives went over this last point carefully, because Roeder’s actions with them could widen the charges to include two counts of aggravated assault. The ushers were shown a photo lineup of half a dozen suspects, including the picture of Roeder from his driver’s license, and both identified him as the killer.

While the men were being interviewed, the Kansas City FBI office called Jeffrey Pederson, who managed the Central Family Medicine clinic and whose locks Roeder had glued shut in recent weeks. The feds remembered that a week earlier Pederson had given them a physical description of the vandal and his Kansas license plate number—225 BAB. The tag and description matched the suspect in the Tiller shooting. When Pederson learned that the doctor was dead and the shooter had been identified as Scott Roeder, he literally felt sick.

At 12:45, Deputy Lento arrived at I-35, pulled into the center median, and parked, his car facing the northbound traffic. While taking a call from a local resident about a barking dog complaint, he saw the Taurus approaching in the left-hand lane and traveling the speed limit. Lento got off the phone, and as the Ford went by, he saw the license plate: Kansas 225 BAB. He immediately advised his dispatcher that he’d made a positive ID of the suspect’s vehicle, and the information was sent along to Wichita.

At a few minutes after one p.m., Lieutenant Landwehr was in the City Building being briefed about the two eyewitnesses from the church. Detective Brad Elmore walked in and said that a Johnson County police officer had located the Taurus, about twenty miles south of Kansas City. Was it time to move in? Landwehr nodded, ordering his staff to prepare an arrest warrant and telling Elmore to tell the officer to be prepared to stop the Ford and take the driver into custody.

Deputy Lento was readying himself for a “high-risk” traffic stop, by going over procedure and calling for three other officers to assist him as soon as possible. He exited the median, slipped out into traffic behind the Ford, and turned on the yellow hazard lights on the rear of his vehicle, but did nothing more to call attention to himself.

Roeder had slowed down and moved into the right-hand lane, going fifty-five miles an hour. Lento pulled in closer, his car now occupying both lanes of I-35 so that no one could pass either him or Roeder. He held this pattern for the next few miles, until the other officers arrived and were in position at the rear. Lento turned on both his red light and the camera inside his car, installed to record traffic stops or incidents. When the caravan reached the mile 208 Interstate marker, just outside Gardner, Kansas, Roeder slowed down on the shoulder of the highway and stopped, staying inside his vehicle. Lento parked behind him and, using a loudspeaker, addressed the suspect.

“Raise both hands, driver!”

Roeder complied.

“Driver! With your left hand take the keys out of the ignition. Drop the keys on the ground.”

He did as ordered.

“Driver! With your left hand, open the door from the outside!”

With the door ajar, Roeder stepped out, wearing a white ball cap and sunglasses. He faced the officers, now bunched up behind him.

“Driver!” Lento said. “Raise your hands—with your back to me!”

Roeder turned his back to the men.

“Raise your shirt with your left hand! Take it out of your pants.”

He followed the command.

“Where’s the gun?”

He threw his hands in the air, as if to say he was unarmed.

“Lift up your shirt, driver! Step backward.”

Roeder began walking in reverse toward Lento, until he was only a few yards away.

“Driver, stop! Get down on your knees.”

As he scrambled to the ground and lay flat on his stomach, the cap fell off his head. He put his hands behind his back, in expectation of being cuffed. His blue denim shirt and dark slacks were spread out on the shoulder and he wore a pair of black tennis shoes, spotted with blood.

With guns drawn, all four of the officers approached the figure splayed out in front of them, one policeman aiming a shotgun at the prone figure.

They handcuffed him and frisked him for a weapon but found none, and he was taken to Lento’s car. When he was informed that he was under arrest for the murder of George Tiller, the words sunk in and filled him with relief. The doctor was dead. The mission had been accomplished.

As he was being driven to the sheriff’s office in Gardner, Wichita police officials, including case supervisor Rick Gregg and Lieutenant Landwehr, boarded helicopters and flew north to the Kansas City area. Another detective drove up from Wichita as fast as he felt he could. While several of the officers attempted to talk with Roeder in Gardner, others impounded his vehicle and began combing it for evidence. They found the knife, the live cartridges, and a note scribbled on an envelope. It read, “Cheryl Op Rescue,” with a phone number next to the woman’s name. The police wondered if Roeder had a computer in the car, which he didn’t, but they eventually found one in his apartment. Their first task was to copy all the files on his hard drive and then search through these copies, leaving the computer itself untouched.