CHARLESTON, S.C.: Dylann Roof wanted the world to know he hated black people and thought they were criminals. He thought about attacking drug dealers, but they might shoot back. So, he told the FBI, he picked a historic black church in Charleston he had learned about online.
In a videotaped confession shown Friday during his death penalty trial, Roof laughed several times and made exaggerated gun motions as he recounted the massacre. He explained that he wanted to leave at least one person alive to tell what happened and complained that his victims “complicated things” when they hid under tables.
Forty-five minutes into the interview, an FBI agent decided to tell him nine people died in the June 17, 2015, shootings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
“There wasn’t even that many people in there,” Roof said incredulously. “Are you lying to me?”
The blurry video made it hard to see his face. After being told the details, an agent asked how he felt.
“Well, it makes me feel bad,” said Roof, who earlier in the confession estimated he might have killed five.
Roof’s lawyers have conceded that he carried out the attack and are concentrating on convincing jurors to spare his life in the second phase of the trial.
His video confession came about 17 hours after the shooting. FBI agents drove to Shelby, N.C., where he was arrested. The plane that would take him back to Charleston was not going to arrive for a few hours. So FBI agent Michael Stansbury got permission to take a chance and interview him immediately.
It paid off. After reading Roof his rights and engaging in brief small talk, an agent asked Roof what he was doing on the night of the killings.
“I went to that church in Charleston and, uh, I did it,” he said.
Roof said he wanted to kill black people because they rape white women daily. Agents asked why he chose Emanuel AME. He said online it was listed as the oldest black church in the South, and there probably would not be any white people there.
Roof, as he has for much of the trial, hardly looked up as the confession played, mostly just shuffling papers in front of him.