Jurors on Monday entered into the second week of the federal trial of accused Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof, whose own words they heard on Friday in a taped confession given to FBI agents.
Roof, 22, laughed several times during the two-hour confession, in which he described going into Emanuel AME Church, the oldest black church in the South, and, after sitting through a Bible study session with a dozen of its members, pulling out a gun and opening fire. Nine people died, including the church’s pastor.
The Post and Courier reported that the confession showed a calm and sometimes jovial Roof talking to a pair of FBI agents who had traveled to Shelby, North Carolina, where he was arrested about 17 hours after the slayings. He began the confession by telling the agents he "went to that church in Charleston and, uh, (he) did it."
The agents asked him to say exactly what he did.
“Well, I killed them, I guess,” Roof said, chuckling.
When an agent asked Roof how many people he shot, he estimated that he shot four or five, the Post and Courier said. When he was told that he'd killed nine people, Roof seemed incredulous.
“There wasn’t even nine people there,” he said. “Are you guys lying to me?”
Roof also estimated that he’d sat through about 15 minutes of the Bible study group. Surveillance footage showing Roof entering and leaving the church indicate, however, that he was there for about 50 minutes.
One of the three survivors of the massacre, Felicia Sanders, testified last week that the first shot rang out after she and her fellow congregants had shut their eyes in the closing prayer at the end of the study session.
When an agent asked Roof how the deaths made him feel, he paused, the newspaper said.
“Well, it makes me feel bad,” he replied.
Roof indicated that he committed the mass shooting because “somebody had to do something because, you know, black people are killing white people every day on the street, and they’re raping white women.” He told the agents that the church massacre was “minuscule” compared with the damage done by black people.
“I had to do it because no one else is brave enough to do anything about it,” Roof said.
He also indicated that he chose Emanuel because of its historical significance and the fact that, during a Bible study session, there would be a small number of black people there. He said he’d considered committing the crime at some sort of black festival, but didn’t because a festival would have had security.
The Post and Courier reported that Roof said he did not speak to the congregants before the shooting. During the shooting, he said he told them, "'Don't talk to me' or something like that."
An agent asked if the church members reacted to him being in their church.
“I mean, they reacted after I shot, right?” Roof said with a chuckle.
Other details that came out in Roof’s confession and through testimony in the trial last week, according to the Post and Courier, include:
- Roof went into the Bible study session armed with 88 rounds of ammunition. A total of 74 spent shell casings were recovered at the scene.
- Roof's mother suffered a heart attack in court during opening statements. She was taken to the hospital, but her condition is unknown. The benches in the gallery reserved for Roof's family have since remained empty.
- Crime scene photos of Roof's car taken after his capture show the alleged murder weapon in the back seat of the vehicle. A Confederate flag can be seen on the floorboard. Extra ammunition can also be seen in the photos.
- Roof's journal, which was also found in his car, detailed his hopes to start a race war. During his confession, however, he called a race war "pretty terrible" and "sort of unrealistic," and said that a return to racial segregation would be a better answer to the issues he saw in the country.
- Though he denied being a neo-Nazi, Roof told the investigators that he supported World War II-era German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
- He cited the internet as the source of his white nationalist ideology and said the web was where he found out more about Emanuel AME Church. "I didn't want to go to another church because there could have been white people there," he told the agents.
- When scouting Emanuel, he stopped a congregant to ask about the times of the church's services and Bible study meetings.
The newspaper reported that testimony this week is likely to include Roof's friend, Joey Meek, who pleaded guilty in April to charges that he knew Roof was planning his deadly mission, but did not alert authorities to the danger. Meek also lied to investigators after the fact.
The jury will also likely hear from another survivor of the shooting, Polly Sheppard. The 71-year-old survived the shooting by hiding under a table as her fellow congregants were gunned down.
Roof allegedly told Sheppard he would let her live so she could tell the story of what he had done.
Federal prosecutors are anticipated to end their case about mid-week, the Post and Courier reported. It is unknown if defense attorneys will call any witnesses.
The defense does not dispute that Roof committed the crime, for which he faces 33 federal charges and could receive the death penalty. Roof has allowed his defense team to represent him during the guilt phase of the case.
He will represent himself in the penalty phase.
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