Kansas City News Blog

Prosecutors have yet to file charges against Scott P. Roeder, the man suspected of shooting and killing abortion doctor George Tiller at a Wichita church Sunday morning. They won't be filed Monday.

Tiller, serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church, died from a single gunshot wound. Roeder was arrested on I-35 yesterday afternoon. Roeder's 1993 powder-blue Ford Taurus had a red rose in the back window, a Jesus fish on the trunk, a sticker reading "The emperor has no brains" and a Kansas State Wildcats vanity plate.

Here's what we know today:

Tiller's clinic is closed. It'll reopen next week, and Dr. LeRoy Carhart of Bellevue, Nebraska, will take the helm in the interim.

"Harm one of us, it won't do anything to harm the movement," Carhart, head of the Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska, told the Omaha World-Herald.

"These killers are not Christians. They're terrorists," he said. "People walking into restaurants with bombs on their backs, how is that any different than walking into a church and shooting a man down?"

Attorney General Eric Holder has called for increased security for abortion clinics and doctors. Planned Parenthood in JoCo has heeded the call. 

KMBC Channel 9 reports that two houses -- one in Merriam, Kansas, and one in Kansas City, Missouri, have been searched. No word on what was found.

KSHB Channel 41 has Roeder's 1998 mugshot.

Fox 4 talked with Roeder's neighbors, and they didn't know the guy. They told Fox 4 there were "strange" goings on at the home at 5044 Knox, lots of men coming and going and "religious gatherings on Saturday nights."

Scott Roeder's ex-wife, Lindsey Roeder,  told the Topeka Capital-Journal that Roeder had received a mental evaluation the 1990s but never thought he was unstable although "everyone else did." She also said Scott Roeder "scared" her with his extremist views on abortion. In 1996, she filed for divorce after 10 years.

"His anti-abortion rhetoric was very strong," she said. "He followed the view of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

The same year he was getting divorced, Scott Roeder was declared a "threat of danger to the public" by Shawnee County District Court Judge James Buchele. Roeder was arrested for illegally possessing explosives.

From the Cap-Journal story:

Roeder had been convicted earlier that year of felony criminal use of explosives. A Shawnee County sheriff's deputy stopped Roeder's car on April 16, 1996, and found a 1-pound can of black powder, a crude electrical circuit, an electrical blasting cap and a fuse in the vehicle.

Also inside the car were a military rifle, a gas mask, mask canisters, rifle and pistol ammunition and a sheath knife.

Roeder considered himself a part of the anti-government Freeman (see this) group.

An assistant DA in Shawnee County deemed Roeder a "substantial threat to public safety."

Roeder's brother David issued a statement to the Cap-Journal:

"We are shocked, horrified and filled with sadness at the death of Dr. Tiller and the circumstances surrounding it that may have involved Scott Roeder. We know Scott as a kind and loving son, brother and father who suffered from mental illness at various times in his life. However, none of us ever saw Scott as a person capable of or willing to take another person's life. Our deepest regrets, prayers and sympathy go out to the Tiller family during this terrible time."

The Cap-Journal also has a bunch of high school yearbook photos of Roeder.

Salon says the sensationalism of Fox News' Bill O'Reilly -- O'Reilly flung around terms like  "blood on his hands" and "baby killer" -- put Tiller's life in jeopardy. The O'Reilly Factor should be interesting tonight.

Gawker calls Roeder America's "new Timothy McVeigh."

The AP quotes Dave Leach, publisher of the magazine Prayer and Action News. Leach, who met Roeder 15 years ago, talked about Roeder as a hero.

"Scott is not my hero in that sense; he has not inspired me to shoot an abortionist," Leach said in an e-mail. "But definitely, he will be the hero to thousands of babies who will not be slain because Scott sacrificed everything for them."

And read these Tweets to lose faith in humanity