Dylann Roof
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Dylann Roof
Dylann Roof mugshot.jpg
Mugshot of Roof taken by the Charleston County Sheriff's Office, June 18, 2015
Born Dylann Storm Roof
April 3, 1994 (age 26)
Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.
Known for Perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting
Criminal status Found guilty of all charges and sentenced to death in federal court, pleaded guilty to all counts in state court and received nine life sentences; currently incarcerated and awaiting execution at United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana
Motive White supremacy, desire to start a race war
Conviction(s) December 15, 2016 (federal)
April 10, 2017 (state; agreed to plead guilty on March 31, 2017)
Criminal charge Federal (33 counts):
Hate crime act resulting in death (9 counts)
Hate crime act involving an attempt to kill (3 counts)
Obstruction of exercise of religion resulting in death (9 counts)
Obstruction of exercise of religion involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon (3 counts)
Use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence (9 counts)
South Carolina State (13 counts):
Murder (9 counts)
Attempted murder (3 counts)
Possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime
Penalty Death (federal)
Life imprisonment (state)
Details
Date June 17, 2015
c. 9:05 p.m. – c. 9:11 p.m.
Location(s) Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
Target(s) African American churchgoers
Killed 9
Injured 1
Weapons Glock 41 .45-caliber handgun
Dylann Storm Roof[1] (born April 3, 1994) is an American white supremacist and mass murderer convicted for perpetrating the Charleston church shooting on June 17, 2015, in the U.S. state of South Carolina.[2][3] During a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof killed nine people, all African Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, and injured one other person. After several people identified Roof as the main suspect, he became the center of a manhunt that ended the morning after the shooting with his arrest in Shelby, North Carolina. He later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.[4]
Three days after the shooting, a website titled The Last Rhodesian was discovered and later confirmed by officials to be owned by Roof. The website contained photos of Roof posing with symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism, along with a manifesto in which he outlined his views toward black people, among other peoples. He also claimed in the manifesto to have developed his white supremacist views after reading about the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin and black-on-white crime.
On December 15, 2016, Roof was convicted in federal court of all 33 federal charges (including hate crimes) against him stemming from the shooting; on January 11, 2017, he was sentenced to death for those crimes.[5] On March 31, 2017, Roof agreed to plead guilty in South Carolina state court to all state charges pending against him—nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony—to avoid a second death sentence. In return, he accepted a sentence of life in prison without parole.[6] On April 10, 2017, Roof was sentenced to nine consecutive sentences of life without parole after formally pleading guilty to state murder charges.[7][8][9]
Contents
1 Early life
1.1 Earlier contacts with police
2 Charleston church shooting
2.1 Motivation
2.1.1 Website and handwritten documents
2.2 Weapon purchase and FBI lapse
2.3 Prior to the shooting
2.4 Reaction by white supremacists
3 Manhunt and capture
4 Prosecution
4.1 State prosecution
4.2 Federal prosecution
4.2.1 Indictment
4.2.2 Trial preparations
4.2.3 Trial and sentencing
4.2.4 Post-trial proceedings and release of documents
4.2.5 Death sentence appeal
5 2016 assault in prison
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Early life
Roof was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Franklin Bennett Roof (nicknamed Benn), a carpenter and a construction contractor,[10] and Amelia "Amy" Cowles, a bartender. His parents had divorced but were temporarily reconciled at the time of his birth. When Roof was five,[11] his father married Paige Mann (née Hastings) in November 1999; they divorced after ten years of marriage. Roof has two siblings, an older half sister[12] and a younger sister, Morgan Roof.[13] Bennett Roof was allegedly verbally and physically abusive toward Mann.[12][14][15][16][17] The family mostly lived in South Carolina, though from about 2005 to 2008, they temporarily moved to the Florida Keys. There is no information about Roof attending local schools there.[18]
According to a 2009 affidavit filed for Mann's divorce, Roof exhibited "obsessive compulsive behavior" as he grew up, obsessing over germs and insisting on having his hair cut in a certain style.[14] When he was in middle school, he exhibited an interest in smoking marijuana, having once been caught spending money on it.[11]
In nine years, Roof attended at least seven schools in two South Carolina counties, including White Knoll High School in Lexington, in which he repeated the ninth grade, finishing it in another school. He apparently stopped attending classes in 2010 and, according to his family, dropped out of school and spent his time alternating between playing video games and taking drugs, such as Suboxone.[11][12][14][19][20] He was on the rolls of a local Evangelical Lutheran congregation, but it was unclear if he had recently attended.[21]
Prior to the attack, Roof was living alternately in Bennett's and Cowles' homes in downtown Columbia and Hopkins, respectively,[15][22][23] but was mostly raised by his stepmother Mann.[14] For several weeks preceding the attack, Roof had also been occasionally living in the home of an old friend from middle school and the latter's mother, two brothers, and girlfriend.[16][23][24] He allegedly spent his time using drugs and getting drunk.[23] He had been working as a landscaper at the behest of his father, but quit the job prior to the shooting.[11]
His maternal uncle, Carson Cowles, said that he expressed concern about the social withdrawal of his then-nineteen-year-old nephew, because "he still didn't have a job, a driver's license or anything like that and he just stayed in his room a lot of the time."[25] Cowles said he tried to mentor Roof, but was rejected and they drifted apart.[25] According to Mann, Roof cut off all contact with her after her divorce from his father. When his sister planned to be married, he did not respond to her invitation to the event.[16][17]
A former high school classmate said that despite Roof's racist comments, some of his friends in school were black.[20]
Earlier contacts with police
Roof had a prior police record consisting of two arrests, both made in the months preceding the attack. He was investigated on one occasion during this period but without arrest or charge.[26][27]
On March 2, 2015, he was questioned about a February 28 incident at the Columbiana Centre in Columbia, in which he entered the mall wearing all-black clothing and asked employees unsettling questions. During the questioning, authorities found a bottle of what was later admitted to be Suboxone, a narcotic that is used for treating either chronic pain or opiate-abuse addictions and that is abused as a recreational drug; Roof was arrested for a misdemeanor charge of drug possession. He was subsequently banned from the Columbiana Centre for a year.[28]
On March 13, 2015, Roof was investigated for loitering in his parked car near a park in downtown Columbia. He had been recognized by an off-duty police officer who investigated his March 2 questioning; the officer then called a colleague to investigate. A police officer conducted a search of his vehicle and found a forearm grip for an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and six unloaded magazines, all capable of holding 40 rounds. When asked about it, Roof informed the officer that he wanted to purchase an AR-15, but did not have enough money to do so. He was not charged, as it was not illegal in South Carolina to possess a firearm grip.[29][30]
On April 26, 2015, Roof was arrested again for trespassing on the Columbiana Centre mall's grounds in violation of the ban. The ban was then extended for three additional years.[17][20][31]
According to James Comey, speaking in July 2015, Roof's March arrest was at first written as a felony, which would have required an inquiry into the charge during a firearms background examination. It was legally a misdemeanor charge and was incorrectly written as a felony at first due to a data entry error made by a jail clerk. Despite this, Roof would not have been able to legally purchase firearms under a law that barred "unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance," such as the Suboxone, from owning firearms.[32][33]
Charleston church shooting
Main article: Charleston church shooting
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
On the evening of June 17, 2015, a mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States. During a routine Bible study at the church, a white man about 21 years old, later identified as Roof, opened fire with a handgun, killing nine people.[34] Roof was unemployed[35] and living in largely African-American Eastover at the time of the attack.[36]
Motivation
According to a childhood friend, Roof went on a rant about the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the 2015 Baltimore protests that were sparked by the death of Freddie Gray while Gray was in police custody.[31] He also often claimed that "blacks were taking over the world".[37] Roof reportedly told friends and neighbors of his plans to kill people, including a plot to attack the College of Charleston, but his claims were not taken seriously.[19][22]
One image from his Facebook page showed him wearing a jacket decorated with two obsolete flags used as emblems among American white supremacist movements, those of Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and apartheid-era South Africa.[38][39][40] Another online photo showed Roof sitting on the hood of his car with an ornamental license plate with a Confederate flag on it.[41] According to his roommate, Roof expressed his support of racial segregation in the United States and had wanted to start a civil war.[42]
One of the friends who briefly hid Roof's gun away from him said, "I don't think the church was his primary target because he told us he was going for the school. But I think he couldn't get into the school because of the security ... so I think he just settled for the church."[43][44] An African-American friend of his said that he never witnessed Roof expressing any racial prejudice, but also said that a week before the shooting, Roof had confided in him that he would commit a shooting at the college.[45]
On the day he was captured (June 18, 2015), Roof confessed to committing the Charleston attack with the intention of starting a race war,[46] and reportedly told investigators he almost did not go through with his mission because members of the church study group had been so nice to him.[47]
Federal prosecutors said in August 2016 that Roof was "self-radicalized" online, instead of adopting his white supremacist ideology "through his personal associations or experiences with white supremacist groups or individuals or others".[48][49]
Website and handwritten documents
On June 20, 2015, a website that had been registered to a "Dylann Roof" on February 9, 2015, lastrhodesian.com, was discovered.[50] Though the identity of the domain's owner was intentionally masked the day after it was registered,[50] law enforcement officials confirmed Roof as the owner.[51] The site included a cache of photos of Roof posing with a handgun and a Confederate Battle Flag, as well as with the widely recognized neo-Nazi code numbers 88 (an abbreviation for the salute "Heil Hitler!") and 1488, written in sand.[50][51] Roof was also seen spitting on and burning an American flag.[50] While some photographs seemed to show Roof at home in his room, others were taken on an apparent tour of slavery-related historical sites in North and South Carolina, including Sullivan's Island, the largest slave disembarkation port in North America, four former plantations, two cemeteries (one for white Confederate soldiers, the other for slaves), and the Museum and Library of Confederate History in Greenville.[50][52][53] Roof is believed to have taken self-portraits using a timer, and his visits were not remembered by staff members working at the sites.[53]
The website also contained an unsigned, 2,444-word manifesto apparently authored by Roof,[54][55] in which he outlined his opinions, all methodically broken into the following sections: "Blacks", "Jews", "Hispanics", "East Asians", "Patriotism", and "An Explanation":[52]
I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.[50]
The manifesto states that its author was "truly awakened" by coverage of the shooting of Trayvon Martin:
I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words "black on white crime" into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on white murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on white murders got ignored?[50][51][56][57]
The manifesto also mentioned the Northwest Front, a Seattle-based white supremacist organization.[58]
According to web server logs, Roof's website was last modified at 4:44 p.m. on June 17, 2015, when Roof noted, "[A]t the time of writing I am in a great hurry."[50]
According to court documents filed in August 2016, Roof drafted two other manifestos, one in 2015 and the other in jail, recovered from his vehicle and jail cell respectively. He also made a list of churches and a "selection of victims", along with other writings.[59][60][61]
Weapon purchase and FBI lapse
Roof personally purchased the gun used in the shooting from a retail gun store in West Columbia,[62] using money given to him on his birthday.[22] The Washington Post reported on July 10, 2015, that FBI Director James Comey said that Roof "was able to purchase the gun used in the attack only because of lapses in the FBI's background-check system".[63] On August 30, 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the survivors and families of the deceased can sue the Federal government.[64]
One week prior to the shooting, two of his friends tried to hide the gun after Roof claimed he was going to kill people. They returned it to him after the girlfriend of one of the friends, in whose trailer they hid the gun, pointed out he was on probation and needed to have the gun out of his possession.[22][43]
Prior to the shooting
FBI analysis of Roof's seized cellphone and computer found that he was in online communication with other white supremacists, according to unnamed officials. Although Roof's contacts did not appear to have encouraged the massacre,[65] the investigation was said to have widened to also include other persons of interest.[66]
Reaction by white supremacists
Although the Council of Conservative Citizens took down its website on June 20 in the immediate wake of negative publicity,[52] its president, Earl Holt, stated that the organization was "hardly responsible" for Roof's actions.[56] The organization also issued a statement saying that Roof had some "legitimate grievances" against black people and that the group's website "accurately and honestly report black-on-white violent crime".[67] Harold Covington, the founder of the Northwest Front, also condemned Roof's actions, but called the attack "a preview of coming attractions".[58]
Through analysis of his manifesto, the Southern Poverty Law Center alleged that Roof was a reader and commenter on The Daily Stormer, a white nationalist news website.[68] Its editor Andrew Anglin "repudiated Roof's crime and publicly disavowed violence, while endorsing many of Roof's views."[69] He claimed that while he would have sympathy with a white man shooting criminals, killing innocents including elderly women was "a completely insane act".[70]
A neo-Nazi group named itself the “Bowl Patrol" after Roof's "bowl-cut" hairstyle. The group remained active as of a July 2020 exposé in the Huffington Post, five years after the Charleston church shooting.[71]
