Jurors in the federal trial of Dylann Roof got a look inside his mind Tuesday as prosecutors entered into evidence photos of items taken from his home following his June 2015 arrest, along with racially charged photos Roof uploaded to the web in the months before he is accused of gunning down nine people inside a Charleston church.
Prosecutors introduced photos of a white Ku Klux Klan hood, as well as drawings of Nazi symbols, taken from his bedroom in his mother's house. The Post and Courier reported that the photos were shown to the jury as a litany of law enforcement officers took the witness stand to describe their roles in the investigation of the June 17, 2015, shooting inside the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, in which nine people were killed.
Roof, 22, of Columbia, is accused of opening fire on church members after sitting through a weekly Bible study session with them. All but three of the people in the room with Roof that night died.
Justin Britt, part of the Richland County Sheriff's Office's fugitive task force, testified that Roof's mother, who defense lawyers said had a heart attack during opening statements last week, collapsed while talking with investigators who went to her home to search her son's bedroom. The Post and Courier reported that after she was treated by paramedics, she led Britt to her son's bedroom.
"There is something I think you need to see," Britt recalled her saying, according to the newspaper.
Roof’s mother showed the investigator photos from a digital camera in her son’s room, many of which showed the self-avowed white nationalist visiting a number of historical sites with racial significance, including plantations, slave homes and African-American memorials. In one photo Roof took at South Carolina’s African-American memorial, Roof’s finger is pointed like a gun at the head of a black man on the memorial.
Among a large stack of photos confiscated from Roof's room were selfies of him wearing a white KKK-type hood, raising his hand in the air in a "Heil Hitler" gesture, the Post and Courier said.
Incongruous with those photos were more than 100 photos of Roof’s cat, the newspaper reported. Investigators also found on Roof's bed a bunny rabbit wrapped in a Confederate flag.
Crime scene technicians also found boxes and trays of ammunition in Roof’s bedroom, along with rifle parts and large-capacity magazine clips. Witnesses testified earlier in the trial about additional ammunition found in Roof’s car following his capture in North Carolina the day after the shooting.
Also found in Roof’s car were the alleged murder weapon, a Glock .45-caliber handgun, and a Confederate flag.
The Post and Courier reported that GPS evidence showed Roof had visited Emanuel four times before the deadly Bible study meeting, the earliest in December 2014. He went back in February 2014, again in April 2015 -- nine days after buying the Glock -- and a final time on the day of the massacre.
His GPS was turned off for about an hour during the time investigators and survivors said the shooting took place.
A handwritten list of six black Charleston churches, with their addresses and phone numbers was found in Roof’s car, the Post and Courier reported. Emanuel was the first church on the list.
Jurors on Monday viewed surveillance footage from a West Columbia gun store, which showed him purchasing the Glock. Similar surveillance cameras at Walmart stores in the Charleston area showed him purchasing ammunition on multiple occasions.
Testimony on Monday also focused on a website, lastrhodesian.com, that Roof is accused of creating as a sounding board for his white supremacist views. The content of the website, in which the writer urges white people to take “drastic action” to protect white culture from black people, was similar to what was found in a hand-written journal police found in Roof’s car after the shooting.
The words, read aloud in court, also targeted Jews, Hispanic people and other minorities, the Post and Courier reported.
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