I'm Having a Harvard Vision

I'm Having a Harvard Vision

MacINTOSH and Sheehy, report "Harvard psychology Professor William Pollack said the bloodshed may have prompted Roberts to seek revenge now. 'Seeing someone else enact it, certainly that would open up the gates,' he said." (JEANE MacINTOSH in Paradise, Pa., and KATE SHEEHY in New York, "SLAUGHTER AT AMISH SCHOOL," New York Post, October 3, 2006) Yes and eating Twinkies may have prompted revenge as well.
Here is a pompous Harvard psychologist speculating on why a man he never met committed a crime. Yet the New York Post wastes ink to print this nonsense. Is it any wonder why people have such a low opinion of psychiatrists and journalists? This must explain why Harvard is so prestigious in the world as an education institution.
Is what Prof. Pollack does called remote viewing?
--
Roy Bercaw, Editor
ENOUGH ROOM
Cambridge MA USA

SLAUGHTER AT AMISH SCHOOL
By JEANE MacINTOSH in Paradise, Pa., and KATE SHEEHY in New York
New York Post
October 3, 2006
-- A maniacal milkman harboring an adolescent grudge from 20 years ago systematically separated the girls from the boys in a one-room schoolhouse in Amish country yesterday and then shot the girls, execution-style, in the head, killing at least four. "The police are here, but I'm not coming home," deranged dad Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, ominously warned his wife via cellphone from inside the tiny, yellow West Nickel Mine Amish School in Paradise, Pa., moments before the slaughter and suicide.
At least six other young female students were wounded, including three critically. A choked-up police spokesman last night said that "it would take a miracle" for all of them to pull through, describing the condition of one as "very, very dire."
Roberts pumped bullets into the heads of the terrified schoolgirls - at least one as young as 6 - at point-blank range after herding them to the front of the room, lining them up next to each other in front of the blackboard and binding their feet with wire. In a chilling twist, Roberts had placed a brief phone call to his wife, Marie, at around 11 a.m., just before his bloody siege, saying "he was acting out in a way to achieve revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," according to Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller.
Roberts, who is not Amish, would have been around 12 at that time. He was not targeting the insular religious community but instead apparently picked the school simply because it was around the corner from his home in Bart, it was easy to enter - and it had the victims he was looking for, Miller said. "It seems as though he wanted to attack young female victims," Miller said. "That's the only reason we can figure that he went to the school. "This is a horrendous, horrific incident for the Amish community," Miller added, referring to the pacifist group famous for its horse-drawn buggies and gentle folk sporting straw hats in Lancaster County. "They're solid citizens in the community. They're good people. They don't deserve . . . no one deserves this."
Stunned authorities in the bucolic, farm-rich region - where modern conveniences such as phones, TVs and cars are shunned - added that Roberts had seemingly begun his day like any other, dropping off one of his young sons and a daughter at a school-bus stop at around 8:45 a.m. Still, a neighbor who drops her kids off at the same stop said Roberts did one thing out of the ordinary before the massacre. After putting his kids on the bus, "he seemed like he lingered," resident Paula Derby said. She said Roberts then asked the driver to let his children off the vehicle for a minute again, and as they stepped off, "he said, 'Come here and give Daddy a hug.' " He quickly added, "Remember, Daddy loves you," as the kids got back on the bus and it drove off, Derby recalled.
It had been a little more than five hours since Roberts finished working his night shift at the Northwest Food dairy. His job was to collect unprocessed milk from the surrounding Amish farms and take it back to the Land O' Lakes-owned dairy, The Washington Post reported, making it possible that he knew some of his victims. By 10 a.m., the deeply disturbed man was headed for his nightmare showdown with police, clearly braced for a siege he expected to last for a while, cops said. Roberts backed up his pickup truck to the school and entered, armed with a 9mm handgun, 12-gauge shotgun and rifle.
On his belt he carried a heavy sack containing 600 rounds of ammo, a stun gun, two knives and two cans of gunpowder. He also lugged with him several planks of plywood, plastic and wire twist ties, rolls of tape, assorted tools, a change of clothes and a pail containing earplugs and toilet paper. Once inside, Roberts bizarrely first acted as if he just wanted to show the kids his guns, police said. "Have you seen anything like this?" he said, waving the 9mm, according to cops.
"Can you help me find it?" He then began methodically separating the 15 boys from the dozen girls. The school, about an hour's drive west of Philadelphia, teaches first through eighth grades, and the kids ranged in age from 6 to 13. After a few minutes, the psycho killer freed the boys, their female teacher, a pregnant woman and three other women with infants. He barricaded the door with the plywood, and piled up the school desks against it for extra measure. Then he lined up the girls, including a 15-year-old teacher's aide. Within minutes, Roberts "apparently executed them . . . firing in rapid succession," Miller said.
The murderer then shot himself in the head moments before police sharpshooters - hearing the gunfire that killed the girls - stormed the building. Two of the schoolgirls, still bound near the blackboard, died instantly, as did Roberts, who was found face-down on the floor, officials said. A third girl died shortly after in the room, cradled in a state trooper's arms. One of the dead was the young teacher's assistant, cops said.
Fern Stork, whose daughter is married to one of Roberts' three brothers, described the killer as typically a "very quiet" but devoted family man. "Charlie was nice, friendly, pleasant . . . real involved with looking after the children," she said."He must have been carrying around a burden that no one knew about." Roberts' co-workers noted that he had grown sullen earlier this year, refusing to share a quick joke or even talk to them or customers, as he was used to doing.
But they told cops that by late last week, he was back to his more jovial self. "We think that's when he decided to do what he did," Miller said, according to The New York Times. "It's like his worries and burdens were lifted from him." Based on the rambling suicide notes he scribbled to his wife and kids, and his call to his spouse, Roberts was clearly "angry at life, he was angry at God," Miller said. "I can't go on anymore," the distraught dad told his wife.
Miller said authorities were checking into the death of one of the couple's daughters, who died as an infant in 1997. According to an obituary that ran in the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal on Nov. 15, 1997, Roberts and his wife had had a baby girl, Elise Victoria, who died at Lancaster General Hospital "shortly after birth." Miller also noted that Roberts was supposed to take a periodic drug test yesterday but added that it was unclear if that might have had anything to do with the attack.
Police said Roberts' wife first became alarmed after she arrived home in the morning and discovered his notes to her and to each of their children: an infant boy, a 4-year-old son and a daughter, 7. She immediately tried to call his cellphone, but he didn't answer, Miller said. When he finally did call her, "he told her loved her" and cryptically said he wanted to avenge the past incident, Miller said.
During the tense standoff with cops, Roberts called 911 and warned the operator to tell police to back off. Troopers heard gunfire from inside the building moments later. A spokesman for Roberts' wife later read a heart-wrenching statement from her: "The man who did this today was not the Charlie I've been married to for almost 10 years. He was loving, supportive, thoughtful, all the things you would want and more. "He was an excellent father. He took our kids to soccer practice and games, played ball in the back yard and took our 7-year-old daughter shopping. He never said no when I asked him to change a diaper.
"Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today. Above all, please pray for the families who lost children and please pray, too, for our family and children." The attack was the third fatal school shooting in the country in less than a week. Last week, a gunman singled out several girls and shot one of them dead before committing suicide in Bailey, Colo. A school principal also was fatally shot in Cazenovia, Wis., by a disgruntled student.
Harvard psychology Professor William Pollack said the bloodshed may have prompted Roberts to seek revenge now. "Seeing someone else enact it, certainly that would open up the gates," he said. Last night, the Amish community was still trying to fathom the horror. "I thought always my community was safe," said an Amish woman as she stood with her three kids near the school. "We hear that this happens all over the world, so I guess it would be presumptuous of us. For some reason, this man decided to go against God. He made a choice."
With Post Wire Services jeane.macintosh@nypost.com