"As we said in the Bible study, we enjoyed you. But may God have mercy on you."

Said Felicia Sanders to Dylann Roof, who listened by video feed and could be seen standing, no moving, looking blank.

Felicia Sanders is the mother of victim Tywanza Sanders, the first of the 9 persons Roof shot. According to this account in The Washington Post, Tywanza, 26, was the first person Roof shot. He was not, however, the first person Roof targeted. Roof aimed first at the oldest person there, a woman, Susie Jackson, 87. And Tywanza "put himself between the 87-year-old woman and the gunman and sought to talk him down." Roof shot Sanders and then Jackson.

Such strong and profound expressions of Christianity rarely appear in the media. Truly awe-inspiring.

Here's a new photo of Roof that's turned up. It would be ludicrous, like some nonracist's parody of a racist, if the fact of the massacre didn't block any possible comedy:



The NYT found that at a website (which it doesn't link to) that "features dozens of photos of Dylann Storm Roof...  posing with weapons, burning an American flag and visiting Southern historic sites and Confederate soldiers’ graves.... posing with wax figures of slaves."

It... concludes with a section labeled “An Explanation.” “I have no choice... I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

That reminds me in some ways of the Norwegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who is carefully profiled in "The Inexplicable/Inside the mind of a mass killer," in The New Yorker a few weeks ago:

He made himself a sort of military commander’s uniform, in which he photographed himself before the crime; he consistently referred to a large organization, of which he claimed to be a prominent member but which does not exist; in his manifesto he interviews himself as if he were a hero; and the impression this gives is of a person who has erected a make-believe reality, in which his significance is undisputed....