A Death in Wichita

by Stephen Singular

  He stood, exited the sanctuary, and walked to the restroom, carrying his Bible in front of him. For a moment, he thought about bolting before things got started—he didn’t want to sit through another hour of Lutheran rituals and a sermon—but decided to return to the pews. As he sat down and glanced over his shoulder, Tiller stuck his head in through a doorway leading into the sanctuary and disappeared back inside the foyer.

  Roeder jumped up.

  The church was full today because of the Festival of Pentecost, about to be celebrated with a special prelude of international music. A baptism ceremony was scheduled, along with the welcoming of new worshippers into the congregation. Jeanne Tiller and her choir mates were ready to perform the chosen hymns. The trim, short-haired blonde had a good-enough voice to have become a professional singer, but she’d stayed home and spent the past forty-five years raising four children and providing constant support and reassurance for her husband. He’d needed it more with every passing decade—in fact, just a few days earlier, he’d gotten another anonymous letter at the office.

  “Somebody should kill you,” it read, “so you can’t kill anymore.”

  Reformation Lutheran was one of the very few places in Wichita where Dr. Tiller ever felt safe. In years past, he’d brought a bodyguard with him to the services, but then decided to stop.

  At ten o’clock sharp, as the bells rang out from the nearby St. George Orthodox Church, Tiller and the usher Gary Hoepner were finishing up their duties in the foyer and getting ready to join the worshippers inside. Tiller had on a green suit and handsome, hand-tooled cowboy boots, with images of bald eagles stitched into the sides—a symbol of the doctor’s patriotism. Hoepner, a white-haired, kindly looking man who did maintenance on the premises, had been a member of the congregation for fifty-two years. Another usher, Ken Hobart, dropped by to ask Tiller about his recent trip to Disney World, the doctor telling him how much fun he’d had in Florida with his grandchildren. A fourth usher, Keith Martin, was milling around the front of the church, near the large double doors at Reformation Lutheran’s mostly unused main entrance. In recent months, the church had seen several car robberies during its Sunday morning service; Martin was studying the parking lot, looking for any suspicious movements. Waiting for stragglers to arrive, Tiller and Hoepner stood on opposite sides of a long “hospitality” table in the foyer, holding coffee and doughnuts. The men made small talk about the local breakfast places they enjoyed, while above their heads hung a smaller version of the red peace banner on display in the sanctuary.

  Kathy Wegner and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Alison, came into the room and spoke to the men. Kathy was always raising money to help young people at the church, through bake sales, jewelry sales, and other activities. She had another sale planned for today in the foyer, once the service was finished. As Tiller and Hoepner chatted, the Wegners brought in boxes and set up their wares by a far wall. Hoepner briefly dimmed the sanctuary lights, to let everyone know church was starting, then wandered back to the coffee table and spoke with Tiller. Inside the sanctuary, Pastor Lowell Michelson began beating a darbuka drum, providing the rhythm for an African song called “Celebrate the Journey!” As the sanctuary filled with the gathering sounds of music, Hoepner picked up a jelly roll from the table and took a bite. A side door leading into the sanctuary swung open.

  A large bald man marched through it with his head lowered. Hoepner glanced up and remembered seeing him before—just last Sunday. At exactly this time a week ago, he’d come into the foyer carrying an old Bible, before moving down the hallway toward the restroom. His odd manner and weathered clothes had stayed with the usher. His clothing today was no better and he had the same worn Bible in his hand, but instead of going to the bathroom, he kept his head down and came straight toward Dr. Tiller, fumbling in his pocket.

  “I was standing close enough to George to touch him,” Hoepner later recalled. “The man had brought out a gun, but I wasn’t sure if it was real. I saw his hand on the trigger. I saw the barrel go up to Dr. Tiller’s head—very close. I heard a loud pop!—like a pop gun. George fell and I thought, Oh, my God! I stood there for a second and the man exited out through the foyer toward the parking lot. As he ran away, I heard him say something. I heard him say, ‘Lord, forgive me.’”

  Instinctively, Hoepner ran after him, bursting through the foyer door and out onto a patch of grass.

  From the corner of her eye, Kathy Wegner had seen a flash and heard the pop. She glanced across the room and saw Tiller lying flat on his back. She saw Hoepner chasing a man through the door.

  “Mama,” Alison said, pointing at the figure sprawled on the foyer’s gray carpet, “that’s Dr. Tiller.”

  At first, Kathy thought he’d fallen down.

  “Ali,” she said, “you go help him up.”

  Her second thought, as she saw blood pooling around Tiller’s head and realized he wasn’t moving, was that she’d better find a telephone.

  As Alison walked toward the body, Kathy ran a into a business office just off the foyer and dialed 911.

  “Dr. George Tiller was just shot!” she yelled into the receiver, her breath coming hard.

  “Dr. Tiller was shot?” the female dispatcher said.

  “Yes!” her voice cracked. “I’m at church!”

  “Who’s the suspect?”

  “I don’t know!” she cried into the phone.

  “Was he black, Hispanic, white?”

  “White!”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “A white shirt and dark slacks!”

  What else did she remember?

  He was balding, Kathy said, with an “older man hairstyle.”

  Alison had approached Tiller and was standing over him, only five feet away.

  Roeder sprinted toward the rows of cars at the rear of the parking lot, clutching the Bible to his chest and waving the pistol.

  “I’ve got a gun,” he shouted over his shoulder at Hoepner, “and I’ll shoot you!”

  Hoepner quit running and froze on the asphalt, thinking not so much about his own safety—he’d do anything to get his hands on the man who’d come into his church and shot Dr. Tiller—but about his aging wife. He didn’t want to leave her a widow. He turned away and moved toward his truck, which he’d left near the foyer this morning so it would be handy for his maintenance chores. Reaching inside the cab, he grabbed his cell phone from under the seat and dialed 911, asking the dispatcher for police assistance and an ambulance.

  Keith Martin was drinking coffee near the foyer entrance when he’d heard what must have been a firecracker—until he turned and saw Dr. Tiller lying on the carpet. Glancing out a window, Martin saw a large, bald-headed man angling through some parked cars, going toward the back of the lot. The usher saw Hoepner chasing after him, but then he stopped.

  Martin dashed outside, carrying his half-full Styrofoam coffee cup.

  “Get his license plate!” Hoepner shouted at Martin from beside his truck. “Get the number!”

  Martin followed the man to his car, parked facing outward. The tall, rail-thin usher, a lawyer who’d been a member of the church for decades, came within a few yards of Roeder and stood in front of the pale blue vehicle, looking closely at the stranger. Martin remembered him from his previous church visits—recalling not so much his face or clothes or even his off-putting manner, but his piercing smell, harsh and chemical, which the usher once described as “terrible” and “unusually pungent.” Months earlier, when Martin had first seen the man in church, the attorney had instantly been suspicious of him; maybe he was one of those anti-abortion protesters who’d disrupted their services in the past. He could even be the person who’d mailed Martin an ugly letter saying that because of his association with George Tiller, he was unfit to be a Sunday-school teacher and interact with children. But after seeing the man another time or two in the sanctuary, Martin changed his mind and chastised himself because the stranger had never done anything to interrupt the proceed
ings or harm the church. Martin felt bad about having passed judgment on him too quickly—an un-Christian thing to do.

  The two men stared at each other over the hood of the Ford, and these memories and feelings came rushing back; Martin’s gut had been right all along. The man hadn’t just protested Dr. Tiller’s presence at Reformation Lutheran this morning, as many others had. He’d done the worst thing possible, and done it inside their church in the midst of their Sunday service, violating and defiling the space where people came together for one hour a week to celebrate and pray.

  “How could you do that?” Martin said.

  “He’s a murderer,” Roeder calmly replied, opening the door of the Ford and sliding into the driver’s seat. He started the engine. “Move.”

  Martin held his ground.

  “Move!” Roeder raised the gun and aimed it at him. “Or I’ll shoot you.”

  Martin hesitated, gazing down the barrel, wanting to do whatever was necessary to keep the man here until the police arrived, but not wanting to die.

  He stepped aside.

  Another elderly worshipper, Thornton Anderson, was late for this morning’s service and had just parked his car in the rear of the lot. Stepping out of the vehicle, he heard Hoepner yelling from up near the front of the church, “Get the tag number! Get his license number!”

  Anderson saw Keith Martin standing next to a blue Ford with a man behind the wheel. As the car pulled away, Anderson watched the usher throw his coffee cup into the open window and onto the driver.

  The Ford passed close enough to Anderson to give him a good look at the Kansas plate: 225 BAB.

  Roeder sped out through the lot and onto Thirteenth Street, a main traffic artery leading up to Rock Road or back toward downtown Wichita.

  Another middle-aged usher, Charles Scott, had come out of the church and heard Hoepner yelling and seen the Ford take off. Operating on instinct, like the other worshippers, Scott began chasing after the Ford, going the length of a football field, and then farther, all the way to Thirteenth before stopping.

  Thornton Anderson came up to Hoepner, who was holding his cell phone to his ear and talking to the 911 operator. Anderson gave him the make, color, and approximate year (early 1990s) of the vehicle, along with the license number, and Hoepner relayed all this to the dispatcher. He stayed on the line while Anderson and Martin went into the church.

  In the foyer, Alison Wegner was crying on the phone with the police, hysterical. Martin took the receiver from her and gave the dispatcher an account of what he’d just seen. The hospitality table had been pushed up against a wall to make the room more open. Another worshipper, Bob Livingston, was kneeling down beside the body and holding Tiller’s hand. The veterinarian Paul Ryding had heard the commotion and come out from the sanctuary to take a look.

  Ryding rolled Tiller onto his left side and bent over him, breathing into the man’s mouth and nose, the vet’s face and shirt now smeared with blood. Tiller showed no vital signs—no pulse, no heartbeat, no corneal response when Ryding passed his hand in front of his eyes. On his forehead, a flap of skin was loose, and soot and powder covered the wound. He’d been shot once above the right eyebrow, with the gun pressed right up against his flesh, a spent .22 shell casing on the carpet near his body.

  Inside the sanctuary, Pastor Lowell Michelson had heard a sharp noise toward the back, thinking someone had dropped a hymnal. As he continued with the service, an usher beckoned him away from the pulpit.

  “George has been shot,” the man said quietly.

  Worshippers were twisting around in the pews, nudging one another and whispering. They, too, had heard an explosive sound—like a balloon popping or a door slamming. Had the percussionist for the choir hit something during the African song?

  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!”

  XXXV

  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.”