A Death in Wichita

by Stephen Singular

  When they arrived in Kansas, Tiller prayed with them about their decision and explained how, if they chose to go forward with him, they could memorialize their child. The compassion they’d hoped to find at their church and among Gail’s women friends was offered them by the Wichita physician. On the morning of the operation at WHCS, they were surrounded by adult protesters who begged Gail not to get an abortion, and by children holding a model of a fetus. The demonstrators approached the Andersons and called them murderers, declaring that God would not save their souls.

  “Roe v. Wade threatened our patriarchal society at the deepest cultural levels,” Dr. Hern said over lunch, “and set off a reaction that’s never stopped. In terms of biology, we’re hard-wired to protect young, vulnerable creatures, like babies and small animals. Abortion hooks into this wiring and creates certain feelings and they’ve been used to great effect by the Republican Party. It started with Reagan’s election as president in 1980, when the GOP realized this was the issue that could bring together the political right and the religious right. They’ve used it ever since to get people to the polls and to get political power. That’s what the fight over abortion is all about.”

  His cell phone rang and he answered it. While he listened, he looked across the table at me and raised his index finger, as if he were hearing something relevant to our discussion.

  A reporter from Wichita was calling to say that Roeder had just contacted the Associated Press and admitted on the record that he’d shot Tiller inside his church.

  “There is a distinction between killing and murdering,” Roeder told the AP. “I don’t like the accusation of murder whatsoever, because when you protect innocent life, that’s not murder.”

  After giving the journalist a few quotes about Roeder’s confession, Hern hung up and told me that the man accused of threatening his own family last June had entered a guilty plea and would soon have a sentencing hearing.

  “I’ll speak at this hearing,” he said, “and tell him exactly what I think of him.”

  He was silent for a while. The call from Wichita had visibly affected him and he stared past me, up toward the mountains.

  “George’s murder,” he said, “is the worst thing that’s ever happened to the pro-choice movement.”

  He fell silent again and I asked him how he dealt with his own sense of vulnerability, especially since Tiller’s death.

  He set his glass on the table, raised his hands to his cheeks, and lowered his head. Tears were forming in the wings of his eyes and his shoulders slumped forward, as if being pressed on by a considerable weight. For a while, I thought he wasn’t going to respond.

  “What can I say?” he asked. “I have a lot of things left to do and so much I want to do. I just want them to stop bothering me, but they won’t. It ruins your life. For a long time, I felt that these people had irrevocably ruined my life. The purpose of what they do is to create terror in others, and they’re very effective at this. They create terror in me. For a decade I was depressed because I couldn’t have a normal life. Why would any woman want to be with me when I was under all these threats?”

  The tears were falling and choking off his words. He covered his face and sobbed, determined to keep talking.

  “Meeting my wife…in recent years…has made…a tremendous difference. It’s made me…feel part of…the human family again.”

  I glanced around at the people passing by, wondering who they were and if they were watching Dr. Hern.

  His crying subsided and he lowered his hands back to the table.

  “Our body politic,” he said, “is like a rotting corpse—repugnant, but still interesting. We’re setting ourselves back so far from where we could be. Health care reform is something that can actually help people, the citizens of our country. Isn’t that what government is supposed to do? Isn’t that the goal?”

  I didn’t answer, because I knew he wasn’t finished.

  He wiped at his eyes with a napkin. “From O’Reilly on down, it’s the same horseshit. When you deny reality, people get hurt.”

  The Necessity Defense

  L

  One of Roeder’s attorneys, Steve Osburn, the chief public defender of Sedgwick County, was stunned to learn of his client’s confession to the Associated Press and said he’d have to speak with the defendant about this (Osburn was even more stunned that the inmate had been the one getting in touch with the media). Roeder then did something just as confounding by announcing that his other lawyer, Mark Rudy, had given him the “green light” to speak about these matters to the press. Both attorneys were scrambling to respond to Roeder’s actions and to hold their case together. During the prisoner’s call to the AP, he said that he hoped to use the “necessity defense” at trial to argue that by shooting Dr. Tiller he was serving the greater good of protecting unborn children. One provision of this defense was that when taking such a step, a killer had to be facing an “imminent threat.” What imminent threat, many wondered, did Tiller pose to Roeder that morning as an usher inside his church?

  The day the defendant phoned the AP, November 9, 2009, a group of twenty-one anti-abortionists nationwide, including Roeder himself, released a new “Defensive Action Statement.”

  “We, the undersigned,” it read, “declare the justice of taking all godly action necessary to defend innocent human life including the use of force.”

  The statement was signed by Eric Rudolph, James Kopp, and Shelley Shannon, all in prison for targeting abortion doctors. On November 10, Osburn surprised his client by telling The Wichita Eagle that there was no such thing as a necessity defense under Kansas law—or American law, as far as he knew; he and Rudy would be using a regular first-degree-murder defense in this case, whatever that might be now that Roeder had publicly taken credit for gunning down Dr. Tiller at his church. Osburn did, however, want the judge to move the trial out of Wichita because of all the local publicity, and a change-of-venue hearing was scheduled for December.

  Following Roeder’s confession, the National Organization for Women again asked the Obama administration and the Justice Department to treat his assassination of Tiller as domestic terrorism, to employ all available anti-terrorism laws to prosecute the killer, and to broaden the investigation to those who might have aided or financed him. NOW also commented on the legal strategy Roeder was promoting in the media.

  “The absurdity of his defense is insulting and dangerous to women,” said NOW’s president, Terry O’Neill, “but it also reveals his terrorist methodology using murder to accomplish his political goals. It is precisely this unrepentant domestic terrorism—and those who fund it—that must be stopped or else we will see more clinic violence and people will be killed. We urge the administration to freeze the assets of people or organizations, domestic and international, who helped fund and supported Roeder’s anti-choice activities.”

  With these issues playing out behind closed doors at the Department of Justice, the foundation was being laid for an all-out legal battle in Wichita.

  After Roeder had confessed, the DA’s office filed court papers seeking to ban his use of the necessity defense. Osburn then changed course and filed his own documents stating that his client had the “absolute right” to present his case that the murder was justified to stop abortion. As part of its strategy, the defense sought Tiller’s appointment books, records of scheduled abortion procedures, and related documents for the period May 1 to June 30, 2009, with the apparent idea of putting the doctor on trial posthumously for the operations he’d planned during these two months. The defense, in spite of Roeder’s penchant for sabotaging his case by talking with the media, was finding its voice.

  “For the Court to grant the State’s motion to prohibit ‘any evidence’ in support of the necessity defense would be premature, and contrary to Kansas law,” the public defenders wrote to Judge Wilbert. The state’s motion was “nothing more than an attempt to force the defense to reveal their defense strategy and forgo what may be a valid defe
nse.”

  The prosecution had cited a criminal trespass case at an abortion clinic, in which the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that to allow personal beliefs to justify criminal activity and interrupt services at the clinic would “not only lead to chaos but would be tantamount to sanctioning anarchy.”

  The defense contended that Roeder’s situation was different because trespassing at a clinic, unlike murder, did not actually stop the practice of abortion.

  “It is inconclusive whether the lives of the unborn were spared as a result of the act of criminal trespass,” they wrote. But in Roeder’s case, “the result of the alleged murder resulted in the termination of abortions being performed in the City of Wichita by the victim, Dr. George Tiller.”

  In ruling on the trespassing case, the state Supreme Court had sidestepped the fundamental legal issue by saying that whether or not “the necessity defense should be adopted or recognized in Kansas may best be left for another day.”

  That day had now arrived, as a critical judicial decision loomed ahead, and Judge Wilbert would have to confront the necessity-defense question straight on in his courtroom. This made him the most important figure at the trial, since the facts were not in dispute: Roeder had killed Dr. Tiller to end abortion in Wichita. But what were the judge’s own views on abortion? A practicing Catholic, a Republican, and a married father of two, he’d been appointed to the bench in 1995, but had faced no opposition in his first three elections. In 2008, he was finally opposed and won by only 471 votes out of almost 166,000 cast. That year he sought the endorsement of Kansans for Life, and the KFL political action committee supported him in the race, but didn’t directly contribute to his campaign. In September 2008, Wilbert paid KFL seventy-five dollars for his name to be listed in an ad in its quarterly newsletter, containing articles entitled “Update on Tiller Charges” and “Planned Parenthood—a Snake in the Grass!” The ad holding Wilbert’s name read, “The Kansans for Life PAC urges you to vote for, work for and pray for the following pro-life candidates.” As a member of Wichita’s St. Thomas Aquinas Church, Judge Wilbert was also a lay minister.

  He’d never tried a case this high-profile before and was facing some very sticky legal issues. Should a jury be allowed to consider that Roeder’s actions were justified based on the necessity defense or was this a first-degree murder trial like any other? Should prospective jurors’ views on abortion be central to their ability to serve, or not serve, at this trial? To what extent should the lawyers be able to interrogate potential jurors about their religious or political convictions, and was it a given that every juror would tell them the truth? And what if, at the end of testimony, they decided to vote for Roeder’s acquittal regardless of the evidence, a practice known as jury nullification?

  If Steve Osburn had initially seemed lukewarm about representing Roeder, his and Rudy’s involvement was growing stronger and more committed as the trial approached.

  Maybe they could win, after all.

  LI

  On November 11, two days after Roeder confessed, Lindsey went to work as usual and came home that evening to take care of her ailing father. In addition to keeping up with her regular duties at school and with her family, she had many other things to manage now. For worse and for better, Dr. Tiller’s death had opened up a new life for her, a more visible and outspoken life that was more in line with how she really thought and felt. She’d played a role in keeping eBay from auctioning items whose sale was intended to pay for her ex-husband’s expenses. She’d had extensive communication with Susan and Mark Archer of Pennsylvania, after the news broke that Mark had warned the FBI last April about Roeder, in an effort to keep him from boarding a plane and coming to visit his biological daughter, Olivia. Lindsey had been very distressed when someone satirically suggested on the Internet that Nick be tortured in front of his father by smashing his testicles, until Roeder told the police who else was involved in the murder.

  NBC had aired an episode of its long-running hit series Law and Order with a plot about a man who went into a church in New York City and shot to death an abortion doctor. In this fictional story, the son of the killer tries to help his father after the crime. The program infuriated Nick, who’d never done anything to assist his dad since the crime, and Lindsey shared the sentiment.

  “It was really quite outrageous,” she says. “It had everything Scott would have wanted, except for the verdict in the case. The only thing good about the show,” Lindsey grimly joked, “was that the killer’s ex-wife was depicted as skinny.”

  Since Tiller’s death, Nick had been struggling with his feelings for his father and the effect of the murder on his own life. Those feelings got rawer after the nasty June 2009 letter Roeder wrote Lindsey and Nick from jail, calling them spoiled brats. When Nick was a boy, his dad had told him that he’d blow up an abortion clinic late at night because that wouldn’t hurt anyone, and the youngster had held on to this as something separating his father from a terrorist like Timothy McVeigh. As he’d gotten older, Nick had more and more strongly disagreed with his dad’s beliefs, but at least Roeder hadn’t shed anyone’s blood. That was no longer true and Nick could no longer remain silent.

  On October 30, five months after Tiller was murdered, he sat down, composed an angry letter, and sent it to his father. Until now, he wrote, he’d kept an open mind about the existence of God, had thought about different religious paths, and had nurtured an idea of developing his own spiritual base as he came into adulthood. He’d wanted to connect with something larger within himself and beyond, but his father’s actions at Reformation Lutheran last May had ended his search. His dad was a killer and God was an illusion. There was no point in being a seeker. Of all the things he might have written to the prisoner, this was likely the most devastating.

  “Given Scott’s religious convictions,” says Lindsey, “this had to be very, very hard for him to read.”

  As Lindsey did chores around the house at 6:30 p.m. on November 11, the phone rang and she answered it.

  “Will you accept a collect call,” the operator said, “from an inmate at the Sedgwick County Detention Facility?”

  She was caught off guard, but understood that for the first time since Roeder’s arrest, he was calling her. Like Nick, she’d also been thinking since May 31 about what to tell Scott if she ever got another chance. She’d also been thinking about the ugly letter he’d written them after his arrest, but now that he was actually calling, she didn’t want to say anything, or wasn’t ready to, especially if she had to listen to him complain about being in jail and had to pay for this, so she hung up. A minute later, the phone rang again. The operator asked her the same question and she hung up once more.

  As she stared at the receiver, the shock of what had just happened subsided a little and she reminded herself that two days ago her ex-husband had confessed to the Associated Press. Roeder was, in all likelihood, never going to get out of prison or pose a threat to her, Nick, or her father. He’d be locked up for the rest of his life, where he belonged, and the fear she’d felt in the man’s presence for nearly two decades was no longer necessary. Her family seemed safe for the first time in a very long time, yet there still were lingering fears working inside her. If she wanted to be truly free of Roeder, she needed to do something.

  The phone rang again and she grabbed it, telling the operator that she’d put twenty-five dollars on her credit card for the next twenty minutes. Scott came on the line and they awkwardly mumbled hello. She said that three days after the murder his former girlfriend had come to her front stoop and knocked, but Lindsey had shut the door in her face. Throughout the past five months, she’d wondered if Scott had sent her there on a mission and what it might have been (one of the many rumors following the murder, which Lindsey and the Archers had kicked around together, was that the woman had aborted Roeder’s baby in the mid-1990s and that this had enraged him ever since, ultimately driving him to kill). She asked him about the visit and if he’d fathered a child with her
. None of this was true, he insisted. She’d become pregnant with her husband’s baby and given birth to the child; and he’d had nothing to do with her visit to Lindsey’s home last June. By the time they’d hashed this out over the phone, the twenty minutes had all but disappeared.

  She asked if he’d received Nick’s angry letter and he said he had, but didn’t want to talk about that with her. He was calling to speak with his son and to tell him he loved him, but Nick wasn’t available. Their time was up and the call abruptly ended, with Lindsey having more to say.

  Using a few clues she’d gathered from Roeder during their conversation, she spent the next day tracking down the woman, determined to know why she’d come to her house following the murder. After hours of legwork, Lindsey finally located her. The ex-girlfriend had shown up on Lindsey’s doorstep because she’d wanted to apologize for her behavior all those years ago in front of the five-year-old Nick. She spoke frankly and Lindsey accepted her apology, giving her one piece of closure—but she needed another. It was a small thing perhaps in the eyes of the world, but not for her. Her marriage would never really be finished until she’d gotten something out.

  That evening, the phone rang and she told the operator that she’d accept the charges. Roeder began grilling her about what she’d said about him to the media. Had she ever described him as racist? Had she told any reporters that he’d had a copy of the anti-Semitic novel The Turner Diaries in his possession? He was concerned with his public image, especially around the issue of race, and it was important to him that she hadn’t.

  When he’d finished and there was a pause, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and mustered all of her resolve. She was never going to take another call from him, so as far as she was concerned this was the last interaction they’d ever have. She’d rehearsed this speech many times before in the privacy of her mind, and once she started it, the words came tumbling out.