He left no opening for peace.
In transcripts released Tuesday of a 911 call Charles Carl Roberts IV made from his cell phone inside the West Nickel Mines Amish School, he demanded state police leave school property "or else," and rebuffed the 911 dispatcher's attempts to keep him talking.
"Don't try to talk me out of it. Get 'em all off the property now," Roberts said in a 70-second call that began about 10:56 a.m. on Oct. 2. State troopers had surrounded the schoolhouse 10 minutes earlier.
"Sir, I want you to stay on the phone with me, OK?" the Lancaster County 911 dispatcher told Roberts, 32. "I'm going to let the state police down there, I need to let you talk to them, OK, can I transfer you to them?"
"No, you tell them and that's it. Right now or they're dead, in two seconds," Roberts replied, his voice calm and flat.
"It was very chilling, listening to that tape," Lancaster County District Attorney Donald Totaro said.
Totaro released transcripts of four 911 calls, though not the audio tapes, fearing they would further traumatize those involved.
The first call was from a nearby farmer, Amos Smoker, who called police about 10:36 a.m., after the school teacher, Emma Mae Zook, 20, escaped. "There's a, there's a guy in the school with a gun," Smoker said.
Roberts, a milk truck driver, took over the school, armed with a shotgun, 9 mm pistol, 30.06 bolt-action rifle, stun gun and supplies suggesting he'd planned to molest his 10 captives -- all girls, ages 6 to 13 -- during a long siege. The reclusive Amish community buried five of the girls last week. Five others are receiving care for gunshot wounds, many delivered at point-blank range.
"Individuals who go on rampages, once they set it off, they experience it with a certain focus of mission," said Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist and adjunct professor of law at Duquesne University. A chairman of the national consulting practice The Forensic Panel, Welner worked on the Ronald Taylor and Richard Baumhammers rampages in suburban Pittsburgh in 2000.
Roberts' murders resemble those killing sprees more than other school shootings, where killers focus on classmates they know, Welner said. Taylor and Baumhammers killed strangers who were symbolic of things that bothered them -- white people for Taylor and minorities for Baumhammers.
Roberts, who apparently was tormented by a desire to molest children, chose the Amish schoolhouse "because they were a soft, symbolic target," Welner said.
Welner doesn't believe the dispatcher could have talked Roberts out of murdering the girls.
"You either interfere with what they're going to do, or you are not going to catch them until it's over," he said.
Police released transcripts of a call made to police at about 10:58 a.m. by Roberts' wife, Marie, who had spoken with her husband. She told police he wanted "revenge" for something that happened 20 years ago.
Police later learned he was talking about an incident in which Roberts claimed to have molested two young relatives. State police have said they don't believe the two relatives were molested.
The dispatcher who took Charles Roberts' phone call correctly took Roberts at his word, despite his seemingly outlandish claim of having hostages, said Bill Kinch, educational programs manager for the National Emergency Number Association.
The only thing he might have done differently, Kinch said, is tell Roberts he was being transferred to "the appropriate agency," rather than "state police."
"For any person -- I don't care who it is -- it's going to catch you off guard," Kinch said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime call."
During the call, the dispatcher agreed to tell state police to clear out.
"Hang on a minute, we're trying to tell them, OK?"
"Two seconds, that's it," Roberts said.
"Sir, listen to me. Listen ..."
The line went dead. Seconds later, the shooting began.
