Robert Dear, the self-proclaimed Planned Parenthood shooter, said in a phone interview with KRDO Newschannel 13’s Heather Skold that he feels no remorse for the killing spree that took place on November 27th of last year, where he killed three people and wounded several more. .
As Dear was read aloud the names of each slain victim – Garrett Swasey, Jennifer Markovsky, and Ke’Arre Stewart – he remained unmoved, calling the actions “a righteous crusade.”
Last week, a mental competency hearing for Dear was delayed until next month. He is presently charged with 170 counts including murder, attempted murder, and assault.
In a phone interview with CBS Denver reporter Rick Sallinger, Dear said predictably that one of the sources of his inspiration for the massacre was when he first watched the Branch Davidian siege in Texas, better known as the Waco Siege.
“It started 22 years ago in Waco… I’m a Christian and so when they burned up those Christians and 17 little kids and everything else I was pretty upset about it and I called the radio station.”
According to Dear, he’s been stalked by the FBI ever since then and he decided to make a final stand at Planned Parenthood to “save babies.”
“They got 4,000 babies get aborted every day,” Dear told Sallinger. “I guarantee you they had a lot of cancellations and I might have saved a thousand.”
Dear claimed to be a Christian, but would not repudiate the murders he committed as juxtaposed against the commandment not to kill. Instead he told of a lifelong hatred for Planned Parenthood, claiming (at this point unsubstantiated) to have put super glue on the locks of a local facility in South Carolina in the 80’s, where he was living at the time.
On the day of the shooting itself, Dear claimed he was motivated by the “love of his woman,” convinced that the FBI was watching her and preventing her from being discharged from a local medical facility.
The moment when they started to get my woman, I said, ‘That’s it, there’s gonna be a war. So the question is, where is the war going to be at? I want them to hit where they want to hit me, or do I want to pick the spot?’ And so I picked the spot of the abortion center because it’s the most evil spot there is. They’re killing babies and selling baby parts.”
Courageously, the clinic reopened earlier this month for the first time since the hate crime.
In addition to this assault being the latest headline in an ongoing war on women, the case garnered further national outrage from activists and pundits who saw this as the latest white shooter to highlight the nearly undeniable double standards with which law enforcement apprehends white shooters versus black suspects, and similarly the way in which the aftermath is characterized by most media outlets.
Taking place just a week after video footage of LaQuan McDonald was made public – showing him shot execution style by officer Jason Van Dyke while presenting no credible threat – Dear killed three people, wounded several more, and despite being surrounded by armed law enforcement, was still apprehended safely without the use of force.
Regardless of mental competency, Dear vowed to plead guilty to the 179 charges against him.
He reiterated in his interview that he is not afraid of a possible death penalty sentence, as his hero Paul Hill – who was convicted for first degree murder of a doctor providing abortion services and other services to women – suffered a similar fate.
