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U.S. NEWS A5
Ex-wife says clinic suspect vandalized South Carolina clinic
BRUCE SMITH
Associated Press
CHARLESTON, South Caro-
lina (AP) — An ex-wife of
the man charged with kill-
ing three people at a Colo-
rado women’s health clinic
that offers abortions said
he vandalized an abortion
clinic years earlier when he
lived in South Carolina.
New court documents and
interviews reveal Robert
Lewis Dear as an occasion-
ally violent, fundamentalist
loner who was known to
nurse a grudge.
Barbara Mescher Micheau
told The Associated Press
on Wednesday that Dear
came home one day and
told her that he put glue in
the locks of a Planned Par-
enthood clinic in Charles-
ton when they were mar-
ried more than 20 years
ago, but it could not have
been one run by the na-
tional organization. The
organization did not have
a clinic in the city then,
but another clinic offered
abortions. “I just remem-
bered it because I haven’t
thought about him for a
long time,” said Micheau,
whose last contact with
Dear was more than seven
years ago, when their son
turned 18 and Dear no lon-
ger needed to come for
visits. Micheau said Dear
never talked much about
Planned Parenthood, a
national organization, al-
though “obviously he was
against abortion.” She also
recalled that Dear “was
always plotting revenge
against people he felt did
him wrong, and you know it
didn’t take much for him to
feel like somebody did him
wrong.”
The 57-year-old Dear faces
state charges of first-de-
gree murder for last Friday’s white trailer marked with a
shooting. A law enforce-
ment official has said he
rambled about “no more
baby parts” after his arrest. South Carolina. He rarely
Thursday 3 December 2015

Colorado Springs police Colorado Springs shooting suspect, Robert Dear, right, appears via video before Judge Gilbert
have refused to disclose a Martinez, with public defender Dan King, at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center, where he
motive for the shooting. was told he faces first degree murder charges, in Colorado Springs, Colo. An ex-wife of Dear said
Micheau was the second he vandalized an abortion clinic years earlier when he lived in South Carolina.
of Dear’s three wives, and
in the affidavit she filed to (Daniel Owen/The Gazette via AP, Pool)
divorce him in 1993, she
described him as angry waved to neighbors. with Dear’s girlfriend, Steph- be located for comment
and isolated.
Micheau said Dear had no Authorities have spoken anie Bragg, who couldn’t Wednesday.q
friends, according to the
document. He would listen
to music on headphones
for hours, ignoring her. He’d
vanish for gambling trips to
Las Vegas or Atlantic City
and suddenly explode in
anger at home, kicking her
and pulling her hair.
“Rob’s anger erupts into
fury in a matter of sec-
onds and is alarming,” she
wrote. “You have to con-
stantly monitor his emotion-
al state.”
She added that he ap-
peared devoutly religious.
“He claims to be a Chris-
tian and is extremely evan-
gelistic, but he does not fol-
low the Bible in his actions,”
Micheau wrote. “He says
as long as he believes he
will be saved, he can do
whatever he pleases. He
is obsessed with the world
coming to an end.”
Micheau told the AP: “I
was just devastated for the
people he hurt and the
people he killed and their
children. As to whether he
would do it or not, I wasn’t
surprised.”
In 1992, after Dear and Mi-
cheau were separated, he
was arrested in South Caro-
lina on a charge of crimi-
nal sexual conduct after a
woman said he put a knife
to her neck, forced her into
her apartment and sexual-
ly assaulted her. No records
show how the case was ul-
timately handled.
Dear later moved to a
cross on a desolate stretch
of land in Colorado, along
with a woman he met in