A Death in Wichita

by Stephen Singular

  They got in an ATF car and drove across the state line into Missouri, to the apartment rented by Roeder and Kamran Tehrani.

  Lindsey had gone back inside to try to calm down her father, but more people were knocking on her front door.

  Using her cell phone, she called Knox Presbyterian and asked to speak with her pastor, briefly laying out for him what had happened and saying that she wouldn’t be coming in tomorrow. Hanging up, she looked out the window and saw a young man approaching her house, thinking it was a TV journalist. When she opened the door, he said he was an FBI agent and needed to talk with her. Before she could respond, a woman jumped out from the side of her house and landed in front of her, frightening Lindsey. It was a reporter, and the agent shooed her away.

  When he asked if any other government agencies had contacted her, Lindsey told him that the ATF had been lurking outside her home at least since her son had left to pick her up from church about 1:45. An ATF agent had just left with Nick, headed to Roeder’s apartment.

  This information clearly agitated the FBI man, who said that he had to talk with her son—at once.

  From inside the house, Lindsey’s father was watching TV and yelling.

  “Scott’s been arrested!” he shouted. “Picked up!”

  “Scott’s been arrested?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Yes!”

  “He’s been arrested,” Lindsey told the agent, and the news agitated him even more.

  “No way,” he said, asking for Nick’s cell phone number.

  She gave it to him and he dialed, while Lindsey listened to the conversation and looked on in amazement. A U.S. government law enforcement turf war between the ATF and the FBI was unfolding on her front stoop. The ATF agent with Nick wouldn’t let the FBI agent communicate with her son or reveal Scott’s address in Westport. These people, Lindsey told herself, really don’t talk to one another in the middle of a crisis, just like on those TV police shows.

  The FBI man walked off and disappeared.

  Reporters and TV producers kept coming all afternoon and into the evening, from Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita. Then they began calling Lindsey from New York and Los Angeles.

  “We had press,” she says, “out the wazoo.”

  A journalist asked her to deliver a statement on behalf of her and Nick about the death of Dr. Tiller. As best she could under the circumstances, she put together a few words expressing their sympathy for the physician’s family, and it went out across America. Deep into the night, Nick searched Google for information about the crime and his father’s role in it. The name Scott Roeder had generated tens of thousands of hits and somebody had already written a song about him, recorded it, and uploaded it to YouTube.

  The next morning, after learning that his brother had been arrested for the murder of George Tiller, David Roeder called the local FBI office and told them how Scott had come to his home on Saturday afternoon and taken target practice with a .22 handgun in the woods behind it. He explained that the weapon had jammed and they’d had to take it into a gun shop for repairs and while there his brother had bought more ammunition. David was most interested in telling the feds that his fingerprints might be on the .22, but that he’d had nothing to do with the killing of Dr. Tiller. Later that day, the feds came to his property to retrieve the empty shell casings from the rounds that Scott had left in the ground.

  XXXVIII

  Like the shots fired at South Carolina’s Fort Sumter in January 1861, opening the War Between the States, the single shot at Reformation Lutheran unleashed the emotions behind the cultural battle the country had been fighting for decades—Americans began either mourning or celebrating Dr. Tiller’s death. Some laid the blame on the religious right and conservative commentators such as Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter. Others blamed the physician himself. An Operation Rescue Web site, chargetiller.com, was immediately taken down and the Internet was afire with speculation. What did the murder mean for the anti-abortion movement, with its greatest enemy now dead? What would happen to Tiller’s clinic? What about his Kansas patients and the five thousand out-of-state women who came to Wichita each year seeking counseling or an abortion? Were his co-workers, friends, and family under threat?

  By Sunday afternoon, the news out of Wichita was affecting the highest levels of government. U.S. marshals were mobilized nationwide to offer more protection to abortion clinics, and Attorney General Eric Holder was preparing to order the Department of Justice to launch a federal investigation into the killing. President Obama issued a statement from the White House:

  “I was shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller, as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences over difficult issues, such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.”

  Warren Hern of Boulder, one of the last doctors left to perform late-term abortions, delivered his own public statement about the murder:

  “I think it’s the inevitable consequence of more than 35 years of constant anti-abortion terrorism, harassment, and violence.”

  Because President Obama supported legalized abortion, Hern said, abortion foes “have lost ground…. They want the doctors dead, and they invite people to assassinate us. No wonder that this happens. I am next on the list.”

  On its Web site, Operation Rescue posted: “We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller’s family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.”

  Kansans for Life, said its executive director, Mary Kay Culp, “deplores the murder of Dr. George Tiller, and we wish to express our deep and sincere sympathy to his family and friends. Our organization has a board of directors, and a 35-year history of bringing citizens together to achieve thoughtful education and legislation on the life issues here in Kansas. We value life, completely deplore violence, and are shocked and very upset by what happened in Wichita today.”

  The Kansas chapter of NOW was “deeply saddened at the cowardly act of violence committed against Dr. George Tiller, a champion for women’s reproductive freedom—an act that ultimately took his life. Dr. Tiller, although previously surviving many acts of terrorism and violence directed at him and his clinic, did not allow it to stop him from standing up for the rights of all women. Kansas NOW grieves not only the loss of Dr. Tiller, but also the loss that all women needing access to safe abortions have suffered due to this act of violence…”

  Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said, “I am saddened to hear of the killing of George Tiller this morning. At this point, we do not know the motives of this act, or who is behind it, whether an angry post-abortive man or woman, or a misguided activist, or an enemy within the abortion industry, or a political enemy frustrated with the way Tiller has escaped prosecution. We should not jump to conclusions or rush to judgment. But whatever the motives, we at Priests for Life continue to insist on a culture in which violence is never seen as the solution to any problem. Every life has to be protected, without regard to their age or views or actions.”

  “Some of us who worked at Wesley Medical Center,” said a nurse employed at this Wichita hospital, “felt that Tiller’s death was about what goes around comes around. But others couldn’t understand why crazies would kill him. I believe in choice and felt that his murder could send us back to the days of coat-hanger abortions.”

  From Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, Phill Kline said that he was “stunned by this lawless and violent act which must be condemned and should be met with the full force of law. We join in lifting prayer that God’s grace and presence rest with Dr. Tiller’s family and friends.”

  “Dr. Tiller’s murder,” said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, “will s
end a chill down the spines of the brave and courageous providers and other professionals who are part of reproductive-health centers that serve women across this country…We also call on opponents of a woman’s right to choose to condemn this action completely and absolutely. What happened today in Wichita cannot become the beginning of a more aggressive wave of violence targeting abortion providers and the women for whom they provide care…”

  Operation Rescue’s founder, Randall Terry, was unconcerned with being diplomatic.

  “George Tiller,” he said, “was a mass murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name: murder. Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.”

  In an extensive videotaped speech running more than six minutes, Terry said that Tiller “had blood all over his hands” and was “every bit as evil as Nazi war criminals.” The anti-abortion movement should not stop showing people pictures of dead babies: “our best weapons of rhetoric…and our most effective images.” In the background as Terry spoke were arrayed Christian symbols, including a cross, several angels, and other religious figurines.

  Since 2002, Julie Burkhart had run Tiller’s political action committee, ProKanDo, which came to an end on May 31, 2009.

  “I was in a meeting that day in Washington, D.C., at the Embassy Row Hilton hotel,” she recalls, “and my husband sent me a text message. Then another friend sent me a text, saying Dr. Tiller was dead. There was just this feeling of heaviness that was almost paralyzing, and it’s still there.

  “When you work every day in this kind of environment—I saw the bulletproof vest in Dr. Tiller’s office and rode in his car with the bulletproof windows—you start to think that you’re immune to the violence. It’s not going to happen to you or someone you work with. I thought he’d eventually retire and spend his time with his grandchildren.”

  On its Web site’s home page, the Army of God depicted flames burning under Tiller’s body as it was being carried out of his church on a gurney.

  “Large numbers of innocent children scheduled to be murdered by George Tiller,” the site read, “are spared by the action of American hero Scott Roeder…George Tiller, Babykiller, reaped what he sowed and is now in eternal hell…Psalm 55:15, Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.”

  “After getting the news,” says Julie Burkhart, “I caught the first plane out of D.C. for Wichita. I felt just shock and utter disbelief, and all this anger. It was a life-altering experience for me. All I could think about on the flight was, ‘The fuckers got him,’ and all the work we’d done together and all the work he’d done before I’d met him had been taken away in an instant. Dr. Tiller always said that until you understand the heart of a woman, abortion doesn’t make sense. It’s only when you get to know the heart that you can understand. This is not a cerebral or medical issue.”

  In the spring of 2009 following Tiller’s acquittal, Bill O’Reilly had increasingly referred to “Tiller the baby killer.” On his first show after the murder, the talk show host declared that “quick-thinking Americans” should condemn his violent death.

  “Anarchy and vigilantism will assure the collapse of any society,” he said. “Once the rule of law breaks down a country is finished.”

  Speaking of O’Reilly in Salon, Gabriel Winant wrote that no other person bore as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller “as a savage on the loose, killing babies.” Winant cited how Tiller’s name had first appeared on the Factor in February 2005 and since then O’Reilly and his guest hosts had brought up the doctor on twenty-eight more episodes, including April 27 of this year.

  “Almost invariably,” Winant wrote, “Tiller is described as ‘Tiller the Baby Killer.’”

  On June 1, the conservative commentator Michelle Malkin posted online, “Prepare for collective demonization of pro-lifers and Christians—and more gratuitous attempts to tar talk radio, Fox News, and the Tea Party movement as responsible for the heinous crime.”

  A few weeks after the homicide, Ann Coulter came on The O’Reilly Factor and, while indicating that she was personally against the shooting of abortion doctors, said she didn’t want to impose her values on others.

  “I don’t really like to think of it as a murder,” she stated. “It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.”

  XXXIX

  By late afternoon on May 31, federal agents were at Kamran Tehrani’s Westport apartment, interviewing him about his connection to Roeder. He spoke openly to them about his roommate and their mutual ties to Messianic Christianity.

  “I was just in shock and awe about the murder,” Kamran says. “Scott was passionate over this issue, but it never entered my mind that he’d actually shoot the doctor. As I told the FBI, we’ve all thought about committing suicide, but how many of us carry it out? After this happened, there was a lot of fear in the people I know. Some didn’t want to do Bible study any more, which I think is cowardly. All we had was an innocent Bible study program and there’s nothing wrong with that. If people want to stop us from doing this, then shed my blood over that because I will stand on conviction.

  “This country is in enemy hands and I make no secret of that with anyone. The truth will ultimately come out. Both Scott and I are strongly anti-Bush, anti-Obama, anti-Satan, and anti-those who want to destroy the country. Tiller is no different from them. I can’t regret that he’s been executed for what he was doing. But did I know it was coming? No. Am I still Scott’s friend? He’ll have to walk away from our friendship before I do. I feel very grieved for what has happened with him.”

  As Kamran talked with the FBI, the police detectives who’d gone up to Gardner, Kansas, tried to question Roeder, but he’d already asked for a lawyer and was withholding comment. That evening, he was placed in a WPD vehicle and driven back to Wichita, making small talk with the officers sitting beside him, while offering up a few comments about his opposition to abortion. He was booked on first-degree murder charges, held on a $5 million bond, transferred to a cell in the Sedgwick County Detention Facility next to the courthouse, and placed in solitary confinement. By the time he was left alone it was after midnight but sleep didn’t come, because his cell was cold and he was on suicide watch, with guards constantly walking by and monitoring him. So he couldn’t hurt himself, the staff had placed him in a tight-fitting, wraparound garment called a “skirt,” designed to limit his movements.

  On Sunday afternoon, before Roeder had been booked and locked up, an unidentified friend of his had made a phone call to Ney, Adams & Sylvester, one of Wichita’s most prominent criminal-defense offices. Back in 1987, the firm’s Richard Ney had gained local notoriety as the key defense attorney for Bill Butterworth, charged with killing Phil Fager and his daughters, sixteen-year-old Kelli and nine-year-old Sherri. A well-respected contractor, Butterworth had been engaged in a construction project at the Fager home when the murders occurred inside this residence. Ney had been able to reach Butterworth before the police interviewed him, and to advise him on a legal strategy. The crime rattled Wichita, in part because it was thirteen years and numerous victims into the unsolved BTK case. Had the region’s best-known serial killer, who’d terrorized the city off and on since 1974, struck again?

  At Butterworth’s trial, he claimed to have gone missing during four crucial days around the murders and couldn’t remember what had happened. After undergoing hypnosis, he testified that when he’d found two victims at the house and heard Kelli struggling against an unknown assailant, he’d bolted and fled to Florida. He was acquitted, sending more
shock waves through Wichita, since most people had felt Butterworth would be convicted. Ney’s reputation as a tough, talented defense attorney had just expanded exponentially. And if Butterworth was innocent, who’d murdered the Fagers?

  When BTK, Dennis Rader, confessed to some or all of his homicides in 2005, he didn’t bring up the Fager killings, but did admit sending a letter to Phil Fager’s widow, just to frighten her. Closing the BTK case in Wichita once and for all, and publicly confirming that Rader had committed “only” ten murders, had been extremely important to DA Nola Foulston, who’d taken great umbrage with media suggestions that there were any unsolved BTK killings in Kansas or elsewhere. It was time to put that nightmare behind the city and local law enforcement. Now, in the spring of 2009, Wichita’s legal establishment was about to reveal just how importantly it viewed the death of Dr. Tiller—and the conviction of his alleged assassin.

  When the call from Roeder’s friend came into Ney, Adams & Sylvester on May 31, Ney was on vacation, but a secretary took down the information. Although it was Sunday, the attorney quickly got the message and phoned the person who’d contacted his office. He didn’t know this individual, but later described him as very “concerned and compassionate” toward the accused, and they discussed the possibility of Ney representing Roeder. Ney called his partner, Doug Adams, asking him to go over to the detention facility and set up an initial meeting with Roeder, standard operating procedure inside the criminal justice system.

  “When somebody gets arrested,” says Ney, “a family member usually calls us and says they need a lawyer and then we go to the jail and talk to the person. It works like this because once you’ve been locked up you can’t just go to the Yellow Pages and look for a lawyer. Someone has to help you do this.”

  On Monday, June 1, Adams went to the jail to speak with Roeder, but wasn’t allowed in. The official reason for this was that because the inmate hadn’t personally placed Adams or Ney on a visitors’ list, or specifically asked to see the attorneys, they’d been denied access. When Adams demanded that a judge change this policy, the request was turned down. In effect, this meant that Roeder would now be represented pro bono by public defenders instead of by a high-priced lawyer who’d made his name by winning difficult cases against the DA’s office (and there may well have been money available for a pricey Roeder defense team because some of those who most strongly supported the murder of Dr. Tiller had considerable financial assets). Since Adams and Ney couldn’t get to the defendant quickly and lay out a possible plan, they also weren’t able to instruct him that above all he should talk to no one, starting with the press.