Charleston suspect's life a troubled road to radicalization
CHAPIN, S.C. (AP) — The people who know Dylann Storm Roof — the people who watched his progression from a sweet child to a disturbed man — are struggling with guilt.
Could they have done something to prevent the deaths of nine innocents at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church?
[...] talk to his friends and family, and a portrait emerges of a troubled and confused 21-year-old, often drunk and occasionally threatening violence as he alternated between partying with black friends and spouting white power slogans to white friends.
Court documents and nearly two dozen interviews show Roof's early childhood was troubled and confused as well, as he grew up in an unstable, broken home amid allegations of marital abuse and infidelity.
Franklin Bennett Roof was a 25-year-old carpenter working for a home construction company, when he met 29-year-old Amelia "Amy" Cowles, a recent divorcee, barely 5-feet tall with blonde hair to her ankles.
In an affidavit filed in her 2009 divorce, Paige said she became a surrogate mother for the children: "I raised his kids from a very young age, took them to all of their activities."
After Paige filed for divorce, Franklin Roof hired a private investigator to shadow her, revealing she was having an affair, according to the court documents.
In February, worried employees at a Columbia shopping mall called the police when Roof, dressed in black, asked them suspicious questions about when stores closed and when they left for the night, according to court records.
In March, a police officer searched his car and found six empty 40-round magazines for an AR-15 assault rifle, according to a police report.
Over several months, "AryanBlood1488" described how he typed "black on white crime" into a Google search, found the Council of Conservative Citizens site and descended into radicalism from there.
On it, were photos of Roof at a Confederate cemetery, brandishing a gun, burning the American flag and spitting on it.
According to Patricia Hastings, recounting recent conversations with her daughter, Roof was quieter than he used to be; he looked distant, lost.