Planned Parenthood Terror Suspect ‘Believed He Was Doing God’s Will,’ Was ‘Obsessed’ With End Times

Those who know Robert Lewis Dear well are painting a picture of a Christian evangelical zealot who professed deep biblical beliefs but acted quite differently.

Robert Lewis Dear, the man suspected of killing three people and wounding nine others last Friday at a Colorado Planned Parenthood, was a man of many contradictions.

A new stunning New York Times profile, published Tuesday afternoon, reveals Dear was a devout Christian yet broke many basic rules of his religion, was married and divorced three times and was living with a woman until his arrest last week. 

He was a man of religious conviction who sinned openly, a man who craved both extreme solitude and near-constant female company, a man who successfully wooed women but, some of them say, also abused them. He frequented marijuana websites, then argued with other posters, often through heated religious screeds.

For the past seven years, Dear was living with Stephanie Bragg. A relative of hers told the Times the couple were “very religious, read the Bible often and are always talking about scripture.”

WATCH: Evangelist Urged 1.8 Million Fans To ‘Punish,’ Make Planned Parenthood Doctors ‘Afraid For Their Lives’

Bragg’s unnamed relative says she “can’t believe he was capable of such things, and I think that’s what’s upsetting her most.”

“He believed he was doing God’s will, and I’m sure he probably wanted to die in the process of carrying out what I’m sure he thought was right.”

The Times reports another of Dear’s wives told them he is “a serial philanderer and a problem gambler, a man who kicked her, beat her head against the floor and fathered two children with other women while they were together. He found excuses for his transgressions, she said, in his idiosyncratic views on Christian eschatology and the nature of salvation.”

“He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but does not follow the Bible in his actions,” Ms. Micheau said in the court document. “He says that 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.”

Another person who “spoke on the condition of anonymity,” the Times reports, spoke with Dear “extensively about his religious views said Mr. Dear, who is 57, had praised people who attacked abortion providers, saying they were doing ‘God’s work.’ In 2009, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for the privacy of the family, Mr. Dear described as ‘heroes’ members of the Army of God, a loosely organized group of anti-abortion extremists that has claimed responsibility for a number of killings and bombings.”

In 1992, “Dear was arrested as a suspect in a rape case. But the state Law Enforcement Division, which offers criminal records checks to the public, has no record of Mr. Dear being convicted of such a crime, meaning it is likely that the case was dismissed.”

 

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Image: Colorado Springs Police Department/Facebook