For those of you still interested in his motives.

Call me old fashioned, but when a guy invades an amish schoolhouse carrying guns, lumber, wire ties, and K-Y Jelly and then dismisses the boys and the adult females, I'm guessing he is not just looking to become an ordinary suicide-by-cop.

RedNova: Experts Differ on Reason for Pa. Attack

If the attacker at a Pennsylvania school really acted out of overwhelming guilt from molesting relatives in his youth, as police suggest, he would be a very rare breed, even in the bewildering annals of multiple murder, say experts in such crimes.

The history of school shootings and multiple murders is full of attackers who feel bullied or rejected at school, at work, or in marriage. They strike out for symbolic revenge, not out of tortured guilt. Several authorities contacted Tuesday were unable to point to a multiple killing clearly motivated by the latter.

Deluded parents who kill their children typically act out of a warped desire to save them from something worse, said Dr. Phillip Resnick, a psychiatrist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who testified in the trial of Andrea Yates, who drowned her young children in Texas.

In the Pennsylvania school shooting, the official explanation "just doesn't add up," Resnick said.

At a news conference Tuesday, investigators laid out a murky scenario of how and why 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts IV may have conceived of his attack in Nickel Mines, Pa.

He told his wife in a phone call from the one-room Amish school that he had molested two girl relatives, ages 3 to 5, two decades before, when he would have been about 12 years old. He indicated that, in recent years, he had dreamed repeatedly of those molestations and the possibility he'd molest someone again.

He also said he never recovered from the death nine years ago of his own baby girl, who was born prematurely. He said he had become furious with God and with himself.

It's likely he meant to sexually assault the girls, ages 6 to 13, according to authorities. He brought a sexual lubricant and ties, wood, and bolts that might be used to keep the girls still. He instead shot the girls methodically and then, as police stormed the school, fatally shot himself in the head. Five girls died, and five were hospitalized.

Several experts on violent minds said the suicidal behavior of the attacker makes sense if he still felt guilty over his sexual misconduct long ago. But the murder of the girls is harder to comprehend from a psychological viewpoint.

Perhaps Roberts came to view little girls as a painful reminder of losing his own, suggested psychologist Joseph Tecce at Boston College, who has studied the motivations of violence.

"He wants to exact his revenge against the little girls, because they have no right living since his little girl is dead," said Tecce. However, at least one of the attacker's own three living children is a daughter.

If Roberts felt painfully conflicted about a sexual desire for little girls, he might have blamed the children themselves and acted out his rage on them, one expert said. He might have considered them "responsible for his downfall," said criminal psychologist Eric Hickey at Alliant International University in Fresno, Calif.

More likely, that. Even if he never molested his younger relatives, he may have wanted to.

If Roberts was tortured by guilt over molesting little girls in his youth, he'd more likely donate money to a school than kill students, said multiple-murder researcher Jack Levin, at Northeastern University in Boston.
"I've never heard of anything like that, never, never," he said. "Usually the killer feels he was a victim of injustice and wants sweet revenge."

Levin said it would be more plausible if the attacker had been caught molesting relatives, reprimanded, and perhaps ostracized by his peers - even though his parents were said to deny any knowledge of him molesting anyone.

Whatever the psychological history of the attacker, his demons could have been uncorked with the attack in Colorado last week, when a man is said to have molested girls in a classroom before killing one and himself, several experts said.

"When the floodgates are full to the top and somebody sees them open in somebody else, sometimes they will act," said male-violence specialist William Pollack, a psychologist at McLean Hospital outside Boston.

Bingo! I vote for that last one!