NEWS

Roof confession: 'I just finally decided I had to do it'

Tonya Maxwell
tmaxwell@citizen-times.com

CHARLESTON –Two things appeared to surprise Dylann Roof as he recalled the shootings that claimed nine lives and will forever link his name to one of the nation’s oldest historically black churches.

The first came when he stepped out of Emanuel African Methodist Church and into the dark warmth of a summer night. He had fired so many shots – investigators later said 74 shell casings were found inside the church – yet no armed police stood ready for attack.

“I was in absolutely in awe there was nobody out there when I shot that many bullets,” he told two FBI agents in a videotaped interview presented to jurors Friday as his federal capital case concluded its opening week.

Had he encountered police, Roof said in the video, he planned to shoot himself.

In chilling video, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof laughs, confesses to murders

Instead, the 22-year-old slipped into his car without a concrete plan or destination, finally settling on Nashville, until he was pulled over by Shelby police officers in North Carolina, about an hour west of Charlotte.

He submitted to arrest without incident, telling officers a gun was on the backseat, under a pillow, and he was taken to the town’s police station. The building didn’t have a jail cell, so Roof, handcuffed, was placed in a conference room for questioning, typical procedure for suspects there.

When FBI Agent Michael Stansbury arrived, Roof was eating a hamburger from the nearby Burger King, given to him by police. That too is common for the department, to buy a sandwich for a hungry suspect under detention, an officer told jurors.

Stansbury removed the restraints in an effort to build rapport, though Roof remained in leg shackles. The agent asked about his education, learned Roof had dropped out of high school, then started and dropped an online school before obtaining his GED. But Stansbury testified Friday he didn’t linger on personal details for long. He sensed Roof’s willingness to talk about the crime.

Roof’s confession aligns largely with the account provided by prosecutors and earlier witnesses, as well as a manifesto he published online before the June 2015 shooting, one that describes his awaking to a racist ideology.

In the video, only once, when investigators asked about drug use, was Roof intent on not answering a question.

“Obviously I have smoked weed, but I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

He described sitting in the Wednesday night study group at Mother Emanuel, silent for about 15 minutes, and told agents he waivered on the decision to shoot parishioners.

“I just finally decided I had to do it,” he told agents at one point, and at another, “It was going back and forth in my mind, it was like a jerk, a jerk reaction.”

He admitted he targeted Mother Emanuel because he wanted a small area where black people congregate, and said he didn’t carry out an attack on a black neighborhood or on black drug dealers because, alone, he was not equipped for such an assault.

But for all the certainty he claimed about the superiority of the white race and a world that harkens back to Jim Crow era, he seemed at several points to be unsure of his goals.

“When I got in there it was not really about how many I could kill,” he said. “After I shot some, I didn’t feel like I needed to shoot everybody.”

He wavered too when agents pressed him on what he intended to accomplish and what he thought would happen because of the shooting, with Roof saying he didn’t want to start a race war and thought one would be pretty terrible.

However, a handwritten journal taken from Roof's car indicated he would like to see a race war, as would any white nationalist.

“I just want them to-to-to-to-to-to do something for themselves,” he said of white people during the FBI interview.

Roof could not answer an agent’s question about what should happen to him, and so the investigator framed it another way: What should happen to a black man who kills nine white people in a church?

“Well, he should probably die too, I guess,” Roof said. “I am guilty. We all know I’m guilty.”

Amid that statement, he laughed, as he did periodically. It’s unclear if his laughter reflected humor, darkness or something in between.

At moments Roof had trouble remembering details, that it was June instead of July and that he was being interviewed on a Thursday, as well as his actions in the days before the shooting.

He was also unsure of the number of people shot, though he said he didn’t intentionally shoot anyone in the head.

He believed two women survived; maybe five were dead.

Later when agents revealed the deceased numbered nine, Roof’s reaction matched his description of walking out of the church and not encountering officers. For a second time in the video, he expressed surprise.

“There wasn’t even nine people there,” Roof told the agents. “Are you guys lying to me?”

They were not. How did he feel about that?

“Well, it makes me feel bad,” he said.

A surveillance video shows Dylann Roof leaving Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church holding a Glock handgun, according to officials. Roof, in a confession videotape, said he was surprised police had not arrived, given the number of shots fired.