‘LilAryan’ Roof found online support for his hatred, FBI agent testifies

Using the name “LilAryan,” convicted Charleston church killer Dylann Roof visited a white nationalist website in the months leading up to the night he opened fire and killed nine African-Americans in a Bible study class.

At the website, Roof posted messages ruminating on aspects of white supremacist ideology, the lead FBI investigator in Roof’s case testified Friday. Roof was seeking to connect with like-minded individuals living in South Carolina, agent Joseph Hamski said.

The term “Aryan” refers to a term for white racial purity that Adolf Hitler used in his writings and by the Nazis in their efforts to kill millions of people they didn’t consider pure blooded.

Testimony about Roof’s internet activity, as well as more facts about his obsession with Nazi and white nationalist ideology, came on the third day of the penalty phase of Roof’s federal death penalty trial.

After Hamski’stepped down from the witness stand, the rest of the testimony came from seven family members and friends of the victims Roof killed at the church. At times, the testimony was so emotional that jurors, audience members and even reporters were seen dabbing their tears.

Lead prosecutor Jay Richardson said he intends to wrap up the case by Monday. Presiding federal judge Richard Gergel estimated that if Roof doesn’t present any witnesses like has previously said, the case could go to the jury on Tuesday.

Roof embraced racial purity

In mid-December, the same jurors found Roof guilty of all 33 charges, including hate crimes, in the June 17, 2015, mass shooting at “Mother Emanuel” AME church here. The jury will decide next week whether Roof will get life in prison or is to be executed.

For 45 minutes on Friday morning, Hamski told the jury about Roof’s growing obsession with racist ideology.

Roof had written in a jailhouse diary about “eugenics” – a term that rejects racial equality and maintains that an “enduring core” of white people have to maintain racial purity, Hamski told the jury. On his visits to the website, Roof found reinforcement for those beliefs, Hamski said.

Roof’s email address was “avenueofoaks” – a reference to Boone Hall, a South Carolina slave-era plantation, now a tourist destination near Charleston. Roof visited Boone Hall in the months before his killings, an apparent attempt to draw inspiration from a time when whites enslaved blacks.

Hamski also read passages from messages Roof posted on the website, which included a private message to a user. Roof wrote that white women who date African-American men are “really victims.”

“They have been told its (sic) ok, even cool, to date black men,” Roof wrote. “They have been told their whole life that blacks are the same… So yes, they are race-traitors, but I don’t have this hate for them that others seem to have. I actually feel sorry for them.”

Roof, however, barely spent time on the website. He created an account in early February 2015 and made his last post later that month, Hamski said.

The agent also quoted Roof’s diary as saying that he wanted to take an action “that would make the biggest wave.”

Asked by federal prosecutor Richard Burns what Roof meant by “biggest wave,” Hamski said, “That means targeting innocent people in a significant church.”

Families wrenched

Hamski also elaborated on various words and symbols from the Nazi era found in Roof’s jailhouse diary six weeks after his arrest a day after the killings. One of the terms is “Orion,” which Hitler used to connote allegiance to the racial purity of the Germanic race. One of the images is double thunderbolts, used by one of Hitler’s feared paramilitary groups to enforce order in concentration camps.

Hamski also disclosed that Roof has worn into court as recently as Monday shoes with Nazi racist symbols inked. The shoes, shown to jurors in a photograph, are part of Roof’s county jail outfit.

They had a small drawing of a Celtic cross, a form of a Christian cross that is often used to represent white nationalism and supremacy. The photograph was taken in August 2015, Hamski said.

It’s unclear whether any witness or jurors saw the shoes while he was wearing them in court. Monday’s hearing was a close-door session about Roof’s mental competence to represent himself. But some witnesses were in the courtroom before the hearing was closed to the public.

Gergel ruled after that Roof is competent to decide that he didn’t want a lawyer arguing for him in the sentencing phase.

Hamski, the lead FBI investigator on the case that involved some 50 agents, was the only law enforcement witness to testified Friday.

The remaining witnesses filled the courtroom with wrenching accounts.

During testimony by one witness about her slain relative, a woman in the audience cried out in grief. She was helped from the courtroom. Another man, obviously shaken, bolted out the door.

Malcolm Graham, brother of shooting victim Cynthia Hurd, who was among those who shared stories of her.

“When I found out she passed that night, I was at a total loss,” said Graham, who lives in Charlotte and is a former N.C. state senator. “And so, my life is empty.”

Rev. Sharon Risher, eldest daughter of victim Ethel Lance, said Lance blossomed and looked so “peaceful” when she worshiped at Emanuel AME.

She said it was Lance who kept the family together. Since her killing, the family has barely kept in contact.

“There was nobody there to keep it together,” Risher said in tears. “So, now we have tattered pieces. And I know that would devastate her.”

Friday's final witness, Walter B. Jackson Jr., told the jury that he had grown up in Cleveland and that his grandmother, Susie Jackson, at 87, the eldest of the victim, made trips to his grade school graduations to stay involved in his life.

She continued traveling outside of South Carolina to do the same for his school-age daughters, Jackson told the jury.

“Any moment that was important to us, she made sure to show us it was important to her too,” testified Jackson, who called her “an angel in disguise ... . She was the matriarch of our family – she supported everyone.”

Roof shot Susie Jackson almost a dozen times with a Glock loaded with hollow point, .45-caliber bullets.

This story was originally published January 6, 2017 at 1:07 PM with the headline "‘LilAryan’ Roof found online support for his hatred, FBI agent testifies."