COLUMBIA, S.C.—Before Dylann Roof was arrested for killing nine black church members, he scribbled a note to his mother, apologizing for all the repercussions his actions would cause. Weeks later, in a jailhouse journal, he wrote that he had no regrets.
The evidence, along with his manifesto, hundreds of photos and a confession to the FBI, draw a portrait of a young white man consumed by racial hatred who carefully planned the killings, picking out meek, innocent black people who likely wouldn’t fight back.
Jurors who convicted Roof of hate crimes and other charges will decide whether he should be executed or face life in prison.
ROOF AND RACISM
Roof has pointed out that there was no dramatic confrontation that led him to begin hating blacks. Instead, when the Trayvon Martin case made the news, Roof went to Wikipedia to read about the black teenager who was shot to death in 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who was acquitted. That led Roof to research black on white crime and to websites that offer false statistics inflating how often those crimes happen.
Roof was careful in his writings to say his beliefs came just from himself, not his parents. But one of Roof’s old friends suggested otherwise.
“I don’t think his parents liked his decisions, the choices that he made to have black friends,” said Christon Scriven, who is black.
Roof would go between partying with black friends and spewing racist diatribes to his white buddies, Scriven said shortly after the shootings.
Roof also believed the false claims that blacks were better off as slaves and are inferior at their cores to whites. He compared African-Americans to dogs, saying everyone feels bad when a man beats a dog, but no one is surprised when a dog bites a man.
As he sat in jail after his arrest, Roof mused about adopting a white child someday and sought to explain his thoughts on other races, according to a journal found in Roof’s cell.
Lauren Knapp of the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office read the journal aloud in court Thursday. In it, Roof wrote that he felt he would probably eventually be pardoned if he were sentenced to life in prison and believed Adolf Hitler would eventually be canonized as a saint.
He also ranted that Jewish people made America worse by pushing desegregation, that the Hispanic population was growing too quickly and introducing more crime to the nation and Muslims were just as bad as blacks and perhaps more dangerous.
“The Muslim’s violent behavior is increased exponentially by their sick religion,” Roof wrote.
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THE SON
When authorities searched Roof’s car, they found birthday cards from his mom and dad, who were divorced, and what appeared to be suicide notes to each of his parents.
Roof’s writings to his mom show a son worried about how she would feel.
“At this moment I miss you very much,” he wrote. “And as childish as it sounds, I wish I was in your arms.”
