Amish School Siege Was Well-Planned

Charles Carl Roberts IV started buying supplies for his siege on an Amish school six days earlier. He made a checklist of what to bring. He wrote out four separate suicide notes.

Carrying a change of clothes and toilet paper, Roberts planned for a long stay inside the one-room schoolhouse, but it ended quickly when police showed up. Roberts opened fire on 10 tied-up little girls, killing five of them, and then killed himself.

Authorities on Tuesday laid out the details of a disturbing plot by Roberts — a man who said he was tormented about molesting two relatives 20 years ago and by dreams of doing it again. Police also raised the possibility that Roberts, who brought lubricating jelly with him, may have been planning to sexually assault the Amish girls.

"It's very possible that he intended to victimize these children in many ways prior to executing them and killing himself," State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. But Roberts became disorganized when police arrived, and shot himself in the head, Miller said.

"I don't think you can make sense of it. My younger child last night had problems with this," Miller told CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts. "You don't want children to be scared to go to school. You think in America if there's anywhere in the world you'll be safe it would be in a one-room Amish schoolhouse."

Roberts left separate notes for his wife and each of his three children, who are all 6 years or younger, at their home in Bart, Miller said.

Roberts also said he was haunted by the death of his prematurely born daughter in 1997. The baby, Elise, died 20 minutes after being delivered, Miller said.

Elise's death "changed my life forever," the milk truck driver wrote to his wife. "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."

The state police commissioner laid out in chilling detail the steps Roberts took in the days and hours leading up to his attack Monday morning on the West Nickel Mines Amish School in Lancaster County, where the Amish live a peaceful existence in an 18th-century world with no automobiles and electricity.

"He certainly was very troubled psychologically deep down and was dealing with things that nobody else knew he was dealing with," Miller said.

During the standoff, Roberts told his wife in a cell phone call from the one-room schoolhouse that he molested two female relatives when they were 3 to 5 years old, Miller said. Also, in the note to Marie Roberts, he said he "had dreams about doing what he did 20 years ago again," Miller said.

Police could not immediately confirm Roberts' claim that he molested two relatives. Family members knew nothing of molestation in his past, Miller said. Police located the two relatives and were hoping to interview them.

At the time Roberts' wife received the phone call, she was attending a meeting of a prayer group she led that prayed for the community's schoolchildren.

Roberts, who was not Amish and did not appear to have anything against the Amish, had planned the attack for nearly a week, buying plastic ties from a hardware store on Sept. 26 and several other items less than an hour before entering the school, Miller said.

Using a checklist that was later found in his pickup truck, Roberts brought to the school three guns, a stun gun, two knives, a pile of wood for barricading the doors, and a bag with 600 rounds of ammunition, police said.

He sent the boys and several adults away and bound the girls together in a line at the blackboard. One of the girls in the class was able to escape with the boys, Miller said.

A piece of lumber found in the school had 10 large eyebolts spaced about 10 inches apart, suggesting that Roberts may have planned to truss up the girls and sexually assault them, Miller said.

The girls left in the room were shot at close range shortly after police arrived, Miller said.

The victims were identified as Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lena Miller, 7. Stoltzfus' sister was among the wounded.

Three other girls were in critical condition and two were in serious condition. They ranged in age from 6 to 13.

One of the girls in the hospital is Marian Fisher's sister, but her youngest sister escaped the schoolhouse, midwife Rita Rhoads said on CBS News' The Early Show.

"She told her mother that she was able to escape because one of the women who was allowed to leave the school told her to tiptoe out. And she mixed herself amongst the women and tiptoed out and praises God she's safe," Rhoads told co-anchor Harry Smith.

Some of those involved recalled their roles in chilling detail a day later. Emma Mae Zook, 20, who was teaching German and spelling at the school, told the Intelligencer Journal of Lancaster she sensed trouble when Roberts came to her classroom door, wearing a baseball cap. "He stood very close to me to talk and didn't look in my face to talk," she said. Emma Mae and her mother, Barbie Zook, who was visiting the school, managed at one point to dart outside, run to a nearby farm and call police.

Deputy Coroner Janice Ballenger described the horrific task of examining 7-year-old Naomi, who weighed about 50 pounds, and was shot about 20 times. "Kneeling next to the body and counting all the bullet holes was the worst part," Ballenger said.

Church members visited with the victims' families Tuesday, preparing meals and doing household chores, while Amish elders planned the funerals.

"It's a tragedy we've never seen before," said the woman, whose father was a church bishop. Like many Amish, she declined to give her name. "They said it was a happy school," she said. "The children were happy, the teachers were happy."

Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, spoke at a community prayer service Tuesday evening and said he was at the home of Roberts' father when an Amish neighbor came to comfort the family.

"He stood there for an hour, and he held that man in his arms, and he said, 'We will forgive you,'" Lefever said. "He extended the hope of forgiveness that we all need these days."

Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, said the victims' families will be sustained by their faith.

"We think it was God's plan and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going," he said. "A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors."