Dylann Roof

• 1. Introduction

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  Dylann Storm Roof, born on the 3rd of April 1994, is an American white supremacist and neo-Nazi who carried out the Charleston church shooting. On the evening of the 17th of June 2015, a routine Bible study was under way at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. By the time it ended, nine people were dead, all of them African American. One was the church's senior pastor, Clementa C. Pinckney, who also served as a state senator. The attack has been widely described as domestic terrorism. Its perpetrator was a young man who had left school, was out of work, and spent much of his time alone in his room. How did he arrive at that night? Who noticed the warning signs, and why did they fail to stop him? And what happened inside the courtrooms, where Roof fought his own defense team over how his mind would be described?

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• 2. A Drifting Childhood

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  Columbia, South Carolina, is where Roof was born, to Franklin Bennett Roof, a carpenter and construction contractor nicknamed Benn, and Amelia "Amy" Cowles, a bartender. His parents had divorced but were briefly reconciled when he arrived. In November 1999, when Roof was five, his father married Paige Mann. That marriage lasted ten years and ended in divorce. Benn was verbally and physically abusive toward Mann, who did most of the work of raising Roof. The family lived mostly in South Carolina, apart from a stretch in the Florida Keys from about 2005 to 2008.

  A 2009 affidavit filed for Mann's divorce described "obsessive compulsive behavior" in the growing boy. It said he obsessed over germs and insisted on having his hair cut in a certain style. In middle school he began smoking marijuana.

  Over nine years, Roof attended at least seven schools in two South Carolina counties. They included Dreher High School in Columbia and White Knoll High School in Lexington, where he repeated the ninth grade and finished it at another school. In 2010 he stopped attending classes. His family said he dropped out and passed his days alternating between video games and drugs. A local Lutheran congregation kept him on its rolls, though it was unclear whether he had attended recently.

  In the period before the attack, Roof lived by turns in his father's home in downtown Columbia and his mother's home in Hopkins. For several weeks he also stayed with an old middle school friend, whose mother, two brothers and girlfriend lived there too. His father had arranged a landscaping job for him, but Roof quit it before the shooting. He allegedly spent his time using drugs and getting drunk.

  Carson Cowles, his maternal uncle, worried about the 19-year-old's withdrawal. Cowles said Roof "still didn't have a job, a driver's license or anything like that and he just stayed in his room a lot of the time." Cowles tried to mentor him, but Roof rejected the help and the two drifted apart. His stepmother said Roof cut off all contact after her divorce from his father. When his sister planned her wedding, he never answered the invitation. A former classmate recalled that, despite Roof's racist comments, some of his school friends were African American. In early 2015, this isolated young man began drawing the attention of security guards and police.

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• 3. Missed Warnings

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  On the 28th of February 2015, security staff at the Columbiana Centre mall in Columbia called police about a man in all-black clothing who was asking employees unsettling questions. It was Roof. He consented to a search, and officers found several strips of buprenorphine and naloxone, a prescription medication for opioid use disorder. He had no valid prescription. Police arrested him on a misdemeanor drug charge, and the mall banned him for a year.

  Thirteen days later, on the 13th of March 2015, Roof was investigated for loitering in his parked car near a park in downtown Columbia. An off-duty police officer had recognized him and called a colleague. A search of the car turned up a forearm grip for an AR-15 rifle and six unloaded magazines, each able to hold 40 rounds. Roof said he wanted to buy an AR-15 but lacked the money. Owning a forearm grip was legal in South Carolina, so he was not charged.

  On the 26th of April 2015, Roof was arrested again, this time for trespassing at the mall in violation of the ban. The ban was extended by three additional years.

  In July 2015, FBI Director James Comey described a paperwork error behind the February arrest. A jail clerk had made a data entry mistake and first recorded the charge as a felony. A felony would have triggered an inquiry during a firearms background check. Comey said Roof could potentially have been barred from buying a gun under a law covering unlawful users of controlled substances. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote that it was unclear whether the misdemeanor would have met that definition.

  Roof bought the handgun used in the attack at a retail gun store in West Columbia, with money he had been given for his birthday. The Washington Post reported on the 10th of July 2015 that Comey said Roof "was able to purchase the gun used in the attack only because of lapses in the FBI's background-check system."

  One week before the shooting, two of Roof's friends tried to hide his gun after he claimed he was going to kill people. They stashed it in a trailer. They handed it back after the girlfriend of one friend pointed out that her boyfriend was on probation and could not keep it.

  On the 30th of August 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that survivors and families of the dead could sue the federal government, after a lower court had held that it was immune. On the 28th of October 2021, Charleston attorney Carl Pierce, whose firm represented Rev. Daniel Simmons, confirmed that the government would pay 88 million dollars. The Justice Department approved the settlement without admitting guilt.

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• 4. The Last Rhodesian

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  On the 20th of June 2015, three days after the shooting, investigators discovered a website called The Last Rhodesian, at lastrhodesian.com. It had been registered to a Dylann Roof on the 9th of February 2015. Its owner's identity had been deliberately masked the day after registration, but law enforcement officials confirmed that Roof owned it.

  The site held photographs of Roof posing with a handgun and a Confederate Battle Flag. In one image he had written the neo-Nazi code numbers 88 and 1488 in sand. In others he was seen spitting on and burning an American flag.

  Some pictures appeared to show Roof at home in his room. Others came from a tour of slavery-related historical sites in North and South Carolina. He visited Sullivan's Island, described as the largest slave disembarkation port in North America. He also visited four former plantations, two cemeteries, and the Museum and Library of Confederate History in Greenville. One cemetery held white Confederate soldiers and the other held enslaved people. Roof is believed to have taken self-portraits with a timer, and staff at the sites did not remember his visits.

  An unsigned manifesto of 2,444 words, apparently written by Roof, sat on the same site. It was laid out in methodical sections titled "Blacks", "Jews", "Hispanics", "East Asians", "Patriotism" and "An Explanation". In it he said he chose Charleston because it was the most historic city in his state and once had the highest ratio of Black to white residents in the country. He complained that white supremacists were only talking on the internet and wrote: "Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me."

  The manifesto says Roof was "truly awakened" by coverage of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin. He wrote that he then typed "black on white crime" into Google and added, "I have never been the same since that day." The first website he found was run by the Council of Conservative Citizens. The manifesto also mentioned the Northwest Front, a Seattle-based white supremacist organization. In August 2016, federal prosecutors said Roof was "self-radicalized" online, not through personal contact with white supremacist groups.

  According to web server logs, the site was last modified at 4:44 p.m. on the 17th of June 2015. Roof wrote that he was in a great hurry. Court documents filed in August 2016 revealed two more manifestos, one from 2015 found in his vehicle and one written in jail. He had also made a list of churches and a "selection of victims".

  His offline life carried the same symbols. A Facebook photo showed him in a jacket decorated with the flags of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and of apartheid-era South Africa. Another photo showed him on the hood of a car with a Confederate flag license plate. His roommate said Roof supported racial segregation and wanted to start a civil war. A childhood friend recalled a rant about Trayvon Martin and about the 2015 Baltimore protests that followed the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Roof also often claimed that "Blacks were taking over the world." At the time of the attack he was unemployed and living in Eastover, a largely African American community.

  Roof told friends and neighbors he planned to kill people, including in an attack on the College of Charleston, but nobody took the claims seriously. One friend said: "I don't think the church was his primary target because he told us he was going for the school. But I think he couldn't get into the school because of the security... so I think he just settled for the church." An African American friend said he never saw Roof express racial prejudice, yet a week before the shooting Roof confided that he would carry out a shooting at the college. Later, FBI analysis of his seized phone and computer found online contact with other white supremacists, though officials said those contacts did not appear to have encouraged the massacre.

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• 5. Capture and Confession

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  At 10:44 a.m. on the 18th of June 2015, police stopped Roof's car in Shelby, North Carolina, about 245 miles from the church. Police and FBI officials were already treating the attack as a hate crime. A .45-caliber pistol was found in the car, though it was not immediately clear whether it was the weapon used in Charleston.

  Debbie Dills of Gastonia, North Carolina, made the arrest possible. Driving on U.S. Route 74, she spotted a black Hyundai Elantra with South Carolina plates and a bumper decoration showing three Confederate States of America flags. She recognized the driver from security camera images taken at the church and shown in the media. She later recalled: "I got closer and saw that haircut. I was nervous. I had the worst feeling. Is that him or not him?" She called her employer, who contacted local police, and she followed the car for 35 miles until she was certain authorities were moving in. Roof's older half-sister also reported him after seeing his photo on the news.

  FBI agents interrogated Roof after his arrest. He said he had been planning to travel to Nashville, Tennessee. On the day of his capture he confessed that he carried out the attack in hopes of starting a race war. He reportedly told investigators he almost did not go through with it because the members of the church study group had been so nice to him. When told that nine people had died, he at first did not believe it, thinking the number was lower. He said he felt "bad" once he learned the true toll. Asked whether he thought his actions would start a revolution, he dismissed the idea as delusional.

  An unidentified source said the interrogations established that Roof had been planning the attack for around six months. He had researched Emanuel AME Church and chose it for its role in African American history.

  On the evening of the 18th of June, Roof waived his extradition rights and was flown to the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center in North Charleston. His neighbor on the cell block was Michael Slager, the former North Charleston police officer charged with first-degree murder after the shooting of Walter Scott.

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• 6. Two Courts

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  The 19th of June 2015 brought Roof's first court appearance, by video link, at a bond hearing in Charleston County. He faced nine counts of murder and one count of possessing a firearm during a violent crime. Survivors and relatives of five victims spoke to him directly. They said they were "praying for his soul" and that they forgave him. Governor Nikki Haley called for prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

  Judge James "Skip" Gosnell Jr., the chief magistrate, stirred controversy at that same hearing. He said that beside the dead and their families, "there are victims on this young man's side of the family." He set a bond of 1 million dollars on the weapons charge and denied bail on the nine murder counts.

  On the 7th of July 2015, Roof was indicted on three counts of attempted murder, one for each person who survived. A temporary gag order followed on the 14th of July, after a letter purportedly written by Roof appeared on an online auction site. Seven groups, including news outlets, victims' families and church officials, asked for looser restrictions. On the 14th of October, portions were lifted, releasing 9-1-1 call transcripts. Graphic photos, videos and 9-1-1 audio stayed under the order.

  Scarlett Wilson, the Ninth Circuit solicitor, said on the 3rd of September 2015 that she would seek the death penalty, because more than two people had been killed and others put at risk. Thirteen days later, Roof said through his attorney that he would plead guilty to the state charges to avoid a death sentence. The state trial, first set for the 11th of July 2016, was pushed to January 2017 and then delayed again.

  Five days after the shooting, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that a federal grand jury had indicted Roof on 33 charges. Nine were counts of using a firearm to commit murder. The other 24 were civil rights violations. Twelve were hate crime charges under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Twelve more prohibited using or threatening force to obstruct a person's free exercise of religious beliefs. Eighteen of the 33 charges carried the federal death penalty.

  On the 31st of July 2015, Roof pleaded not guilty to the federal charges at the urging of his lawyer, David Bruck. Roof himself wanted to plead guilty. Bruck would not advise that until the government said whether it would seek death. On the 24th of May 2016, the Justice Department announced that it would. Roof became the first person in U.S. history to face the death penalty on both state and federal charges at the same time.

  On the 9th of June 2016, Roof asked to be tried by the judge alone instead of a jury. The judge denied the request because prosecutors, whose consent a bench trial requires, opposed it. In August 2016, prosecutors said they would call thirteen expert witnesses, including specialists on white supremacy. Judge Richard Gergel closed a hearing on the 1st of September 2016 to rule on "potentially explosive" evidence, citing Roof's right to a fair trial. Two Charleston-area outlets, The Charleston Post and Courier and WCBD-TV, unsuccessfully sought to keep it open. Jury selection began on the 26th of September 2016, drawing on an initial pool of three thousand candidates.

  Then the schedule unraveled. On the 8th of November 2016, Gergel ordered a competency evaluation, and the hearing was pushed back several times before ending on the 22nd of November. Roof was declared competent on the 25th of November. Three days later, a federal judge granted his motion to represent himself. On the 4th of December he asked in a handwritten note to have his lawyers back for the guilt phase, and Gergel agreed the next day.

  Roof's federal trial opened on the 7th of December 2016. The jury had two Black women, eight white women, one white man and one Black man. Two days in, a recording of his confession was played in court, in which he admitted killing the people at the church and then chuckled. On the 15th of December, after about two hours of deliberation, jurors found him guilty on all 33 counts.

  For the sentencing phase, Roof chose to act without attorneys. At a hearing on the 28th of December, he said he would call no witnesses and present no evidence. Gergel repeatedly warned him this was not in his interest. On the 3rd of January 2017, after a lengthy closed-door hearing, Gergel rejected a motion from Roof's court-appointed counsel to declare him incompetent. The jury recommended death on the 10th of January, and Gergel formally sentenced Roof to death the next day.

  State court came last. On the 31st of March 2017, Roof agreed to plead guilty to all pending state charges in exchange for life without parole, which spared him a second death sentence. On the 10th of April 2017, he pleaded guilty to nine counts of murder and received nine consecutive sentences of life without parole. Wilson told the victims' families the deal was "an insurance policy," guaranteeing that Roof would die in prison even if the federal sentence were overturned. On the 22nd of April 2017, he arrived at USP Terre Haute, home to the federal death row for men and the federal execution chamber.

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• 7. Mind and Appeals

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  On the 10th of May 2017, Judge Gergel denied Roof's motion for a new trial and unsealed two psychiatric reports by forensic psychiatrist James Ballenger. He also unsealed transcripts of two competency hearings. All of them found Roof competent. The court had first ordered a psychiatric exam after Roof wrote to prosecutors calling his defense attorneys "the sneakiest group of people I have ever met." He rejected their strategy of portraying him as mentally ill, and he denounced psychology in antisemitic terms.

  Ballenger's report quoted Roof as saying of his victims' relatives that he "did not identify with them, he didn't care." Ballenger found "perhaps some autistic traits" and said Roof met the criteria for social anxiety disorder, probably generalized anxiety disorder, possible autistic spectrum disorder, a mixed substance abuse disorder, depression by history and schizoid personality disorder. Even so, he judged Roof competent. Roof denies having autism. He told Ballenger he "would rather die" than rely on such a defense, saying "it would ruin me" and "everybody would think I am a weirdo." Ballenger concluded that Roof's trial decisions were driven by racial prejudice and by a wish to protect his image as someone with no mental illness.

  In January 2020, it was reported that Roof was appealing his death sentence. A 321-page brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit argued that representing himself in the penalty phase kept the jury from hearing about his mental illness. It cited the Supreme Court ruling in Indiana v. Edwards, which allows judges to force a lawyer on defendants who lack mental capacity.

  On the 25th of May 2021, his lawyers began the appeal process, claiming Roof was "too disconnected from reality" to represent himself. They argued he had disorders ranging from schizophrenia spectrum to autism, anxiety and depression. They also said he did not care about his sentence because he believed white nationalists would rescue him from prison after an impending race war. According to the defense team, he decided to appeal only once he realized the war was not coming and no rescue would follow. They said he had masked his illness at trial because he thought it might interfere with that rescue.

  On the 25th of August 2021, a Fourth Circuit panel unanimously rejected the appeal. The judges wrote in a 149-page opinion: "no cold record or careful parsing of statutes and precedents can capture the full horror of what Roof did. His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose." His attorneys appealed the ruling on the 10th of September, and on the 24th of September a federal court declined to take up the challenge. On the 2nd of March 2022, they asked the Supreme Court to settle the dispute with their own client, who had fired them to stop them from portraying him as mentally ill. On the 11th of October 2022, the Supreme Court denied the appeal without comment.

  Behind bars, Roof had already been attacked. On the 4th of August 2016, a fellow inmate at the Charleston County Detention Center beat him. The assailant was 25-year-old Dwayne Marion Stafford, who was awaiting trial on charges of first-degree assault and strong-arm robbery. Roof suffered bruising to his face and body but was not seriously injured. Stafford had left his unlocked cell, passed through a steel door and gone down to the protective custody unit. Roof was alone because one detention officer was on break and the other had been called away. Roof and his attorney did not plan to press charges, and Stafford was released on a bond of over 100,000 dollars the following night.

  In December 2024, President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row to life without parole. He excluded Roof. He also excluded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who carried out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and Robert Gregory Bowers, who carried out the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. All three had been convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder.

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• 8. Echoes and Reactions

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  On the 20th of June 2015, the Council of Conservative Citizens took down its website after a wave of negative publicity. Its president, Earl Holt, said the organization was "hardly responsible" for Roof's actions. The group also issued a statement saying Roof had some "legitimate grievances" against Black people and that its site "accurately and honestly reports black-on-white violent crime."

  Harold Covington, founder of the Northwest Front, condemned the attack but called it "a preview of coming attractions."

  The Southern Poverty Law Center, analyzing the manifesto, alleged that Roof read and commented on The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website. Its editor, Andrew Anglin, publicly disavowed violence and repudiated the crime while endorsing many of Roof's views. He said he could sympathize with a white man shooting criminals, but called the killing of innocents, including elderly women, "a completely insane act."

  A neo-Nazi group named itself the "Bowl Patrol," after Roof's bowl-cut hairstyle. A Huffington Post exposé in July 2020, five years after the shooting, found the group still active.

  Other killers cited him as well. Brenton Tarrant, who committed the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, named Roof as an influence in his manifesto. Three years later, Payton Gendron, the perpetrator of the 2022 Buffalo shooting, also referred to Roof in his manifesto as an inspiration. Gendron wrote Roof's name on one of his guns.

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