Last December, a federal court convicted white supremacist Dylann Roof of nine racially-motivated murders in the 2015 Charleston church massacre. He has since been sentenced to death, and prosecutors revealed many disturbing details in open court, including how Roof laughed during a taped confession. However, newly unsealed documents now reveal previously unknown details, including how Roof had more mayhem planned for the evening.
The documents show that Roof’s car contained a list of several predominantly African-American churches, and his GPS records revealed how he departed the Mother Emanuel Church after the massacre and drove 20 miles to a second church in a nearby community. The Charleston City Paper details how Roof first lied to his friends about going to a movie before he carried out his attack, and prosecutors wrote that he followed up with a short road trip:
“The similarities between the two churches — both are AME churches, both have predominantly African-American congregations, and both had scheduled Bible study classes on the night of the attack — coupled with the fact that defendant, who was still armed, drove over 20 miles directly to Branch AME Church immediately after attacking parishioners at Emanuel AME Church, supports the inference that defendant intended to continue his racially motivated violence at Branch AME Church that night and, more specifically, that his intended targets were African-American congregants at the church.”
According to CBS, both churches were advertising Wednesday Bible study classes, and Roof wished to kill as many people as possible that evening. However, the documents showed that Roof found himself too exhausted after the Mother Emanuel Church killings to enter the second church once he arrived. The following day, Roof was arrested over 200 miles away from Charleston after a 16-hour manhunt.
(Via Charleston City Paper & CBS News)