Photo and caption from American Life League (all.org)
Scott P. Roeder, the 51 year-old man being held as a person of interest in the murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, was previously arrested for having bomb-making materials and was affiliated with right-wing militia members known as Freemen.
Roeder, who allegedly shot and killed Tiller Sunday morning at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, was arrested later yesterday by police using a description of the murder suspect's car given by witnesses.
According to a report from McClatchy newspaper the Kansas City Star, Roeder believed in justifiable homicide and had previously visited in prison a woman who was convicted of shooting Tiller in both arms in 1993.
In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate and found bomb-making materials in his car.
In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb, McClatchy reported.
The license plate on Roeder's car read "Sovereign private property. Immunity declared by law. Non-commercial American.'' Authorities said this was a typical license plate used by Freemen in the 1990s.
The commander of the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia in the mid-1990s, Morris Wilson, said he knew Roeder.
"I'd say he's a good ol' boy except he was just so fanatic about abortion," said Wilson, according to McClatchy. "He was always talking about how awful abortion was. But there's a lot of people who think abortion is awful."
Suzanne James, a former director of victim's services for Shawnee County, said she remembered Roeder from his previous trial in 1996.
"He was part of the One Supreme Court, a Freemen group based out of Shawnee County," James told McClatchy reporter Judy Thomas. "He was fanatic about a lot of things. I went to one of his court appearances and thought, 'This guy is dangerous.' There were a lot of red flags that came up about him."
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