Suspect Vandalized Planned Parenthood Before: Ex-Wife

Robert Lewis Dear thought he was doing 'God's work,' says source
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 2, 2015 8:54 AM CST
Suspect Vandalized Planned Parenthood Before: Ex-Wife
In this photo from Monday, Colorado Springs shooting suspect Robert Lewis Dear, right, appears via video before Judge Gilbert Martinez.   (Daniel Owen/The Gazette via AP, Pool, File)

The shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Friday wasn't Robert Lewis Dear's first alleged attack on the agency, his ex-wife says. Barbara Micheau, Dear's second wife from 1985 to 1993, says her ex-husband told her he put glue in the locks of a Planned Parenthood in Charleston, SC, more than 20 years ago, per the New York Times and NBC News. "He was very proud of himself that he'd gone over and jammed up their locks with glue so that they couldn't get in," she says. A source says Dear believed people who attacked abortion providers were "heroes" doing "God's work." Micheau adds Dear "would spin on a dime from being OK to being furious." She alleges he physically abused her and once "knocked me down and beat my head on a concrete floor." A police incident report alleges Dear also abused his third wife in 1997.

Dear was also arrested on rape charges in 1992. The woman said Dear called her repeatedly after she refused to go out with him, then turned up at her home in Charleston, held her at knife point, and assaulted her. The case appears to have been dismissed. In 2002, a woman in South Carolina accused Dear of "making unwanted advancements" toward her and said she saw him hiding in bushes and looking into her house, per the Washington Post. "He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but does not follow the Bible in his actions," Micheau wrote in divorce papers, describing Dear as a philanderer and gambler. "He says that as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do whatever he pleases." He "spends a lot of time planning revenge," she adds. "For him to plan this and go there, he meant to go there," she tells NBC, referring to the Colorado shooting. "There is no doubt in my mind." (More Planned Parenthood stories.)

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