Death Toll in Attack at Amish School Rises to 5

Roberts told his wife where the suicide notes were in their home, one for her and each of their three small children. She began reading them, then called her mother and 911, Miller said.

Miller said Roberts didn't answer when police negotiators attempted to contact him.

His letters describe how he was filled with "hatred for God and hatred for" himself. They refer to an unrelenting grief over the loss of his firstborn child, a daughter named Elise, who lived for just 20 minutes before dying nine years ago.

"He said he had been having dreams about doing what he did 20 years ago and wants to do it again," Miller said. The dreams of molesting girls had been tormenting Roberts for two or three years, according to the suicide notes.

In addition to another suicide note found in his truck, police discovered a checklist of 16 items that "matches evidence" seized at the crime scene, Miller said. Among the items Roberts had listed: bullets, gun, binoculars, candle, earplugs, wrenches, nails, eye bolts and KY Jelly. Two tubes of the sexual lubricant were recovered at the school, Miller added, along with items that made up "a restraint system or kit."

Roberts had planned the attack meticulously, Miller said, and was "extremely organized." He began purchasing items on his checklist at a local Amish-run hardware store six days earlier, then spent a "normal, relaxed weekend with his family, playing with his kids."

The supplies he took into the school included a change of clothes, toilet paper and a bucket, additional indicators that he possibly planned to hold his victims hostage for "a number of hours" but then panicked and became "disorganized" when police arrived, Miller said.

Fred S. Berlin, a Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist and expert on sexual disorders, said it would be a mistake to accept Roberts's statement about molesting children years ago as an explanation for what happened Monday. At most, Berlin said, the molestation, if it occurred, is just one piece of a complicated psychiatric puzzle.

"People can develop a major depression and, in the midst of that, begin to feel very guilty and troubled about perceived bad acts in a way that had not been a problem for them in the absence of depression," Berlin said. "I'm speculating here, but it's possible he became depressed and then began to be preoccupied and ruminative and guilt-ridden about these events that occurred so many years ago."

If Roberts did molest two young relatives 20 years ago, when he was 12, it would not necessarily mean he was bound to repeat the behavior as an adult, Berlin said.

Although many adult pedophiles begin their misconduct as young people, "there's good evidence that a majority of adolescent sexual offenders -- if indeed he was that -- do not go on to be adult offenders," Berlin said. "People assume otherwise, but there's some pretty compelling data suggesting that there are lots of kids who do things of a sexual nature during childhood that they ought not do, and they don't do it again."

If Roberts was suffering from depression and became fixated on his long-ago sexual misconduct, fearing that he would repeat the behavior, that could explain suicide, Berlin said.

"That still leaves a tremendous gap in our understanding of how he got from being troubled and guilty about doing that years ago to, in the end, murdering a number of innocent children," Berlin said. "I mean, there's a tremendous leap there that we would need to transcend in order to have a better understanding of why he did what he did."

Staff writers Raymond McCaffrey and Michael E. Ruane in Bart Township and Paul Duggan in Washington, along with staff researcher Meg Smith in Washington, contributed to this report.