Tiller suspect said 'fanatic' on abortion

WICHITA, Kan., June 1 (UPI) -- The suspect in the Kansas shooting death of Dr. George Tiller was "a fanatic about abortion," interviews with former acquaintances indicated.

Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kan., is expected to be charged Monday with killing Tiller Sunday in the foyer of the church Tiller attended in Wichita. Roeder strongly opposed abortion and belonged to an anti-government organization in the 1990s, McClatchy newspapers reported.

Roeder was arrested near Gardner, Kan., about 170 miles from the scene of the shooting, about three hours after Tiller was killed about 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church.

Regina Dinwiddie, an anti-abortion rights activist in Kansas City, Kan., told McClatchy Roeder believed it was justifiable homicide to kill doctors who performed abortions, as Tiller had.

"I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn," Dinwiddie said.

Roeder was involved in the anti-government "Freemen" movement, McClatchy reported. Members asserted sovereignty and claimed to be exempt from government control.

Morris Wilson, an official with the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia in the mid-1990s, said Roeder talked often about "how awful abortion was."

"I'd say he's a good ol' boy except he was just so fanatic about abortion," Wilson said.

Roeder was convicted in 1996 and sentenced to 24 months probation after a traffic stop turned up weapons and explosives in his car, McClatchy reported. The conviction was overturned in 1997 when the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled the evidence was obtained through an illegal police search of his car.