The suspect accused of killing three people in an attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado was once a happy father and art dealer who painted and listened to rock music, a report has revealed.
Robert Dear, 57, who allegedly burst into the clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday and opened fire, was a recluse who moved to a remote cabin in the state a year ago, his neighbors have told Daily Mail Online.
But a new report by the New York Times has revealed that Dear was once a happily married family man who lived with his wife and son in South Carolina.
Since his 2000 divorce, Dear seems to have declined into a loner who lives in a remote cabin, seeking bondage and sadomasochistic sex online and smoking marijuana.
Dear’s former wife of 16 years, 54-year-old Pamela Ross, said he did get angry sometimes and did not engage in small talk.
The couple had one son together before divorcing in 2000 and Dear took custody of the boy who is now 25. Dear raised his son in North Carolina, where he taught him to hunt.
Before their divorce, Dear was an independent art dealer and earned a degree in public administration from a Midwestern college, Ross told the Times.
Ross was born in Charleston and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and his father was a graduate of Charleston’s famous public military college, Citadel.
The younger Dear was raised Baptist, Ross told the New York Times. She said he was not a regular church goer, but he was religious.
‘He believed wholeheartedly in the Bible,’ she said, adding that he was never fixated on the book.
‘That’s what he always said, he read it cover to cover to cover.’
Dear was generally conservative and kept guns in his home for personal protection and hunting, but he was not obsessed with politics, Ross said.
She said that Dear believed abortion was wrong, but ‘it was never really a topic of discussion’.
Ross said Dear exercised, ate healthily, rode motorcycles and listened to rock music and it ‘never crossed her mind’ that he would be capable of a mass shooting.
Dear moved from North Carolina to Colorado and set up home in an area where people ‘like to be by themselves’ about a year ago, locals told Daily Mail Online.
But he never gave any hint of any political views when he ate his meals at the only cafe in the isolated town of Hartsel, eight miles from his remote cabin.
Van Wands, 58, was a neighbor of Dear, and said that the suspected gunman ‘preferred to be left alone’.
Dear is due to be arraigned on Monday over the deaths of three people at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.
The divorcee seems to have retreated from society after his divorce.
An online advert posted under Dear’s pseudonym after the split asked for bondage and sadomasochistic sex and company to smoke marijuana.
Ross said that on Saturday morning Dear’s photo on television looked much more haggard and that ‘something must have happened to him’.
Dear is accused of murdering 44-year-old six-year police veteran and part-time pastor Garrett Swasey and two civilians who have yet to be named.
The murders prompted President Barack Obama to once again push for more gun control. Dear was reported to have had an assault rifle, possibly an AK-47.
It remains unclear if the Planned Parenthood murders were linked to undercover videos showing its staff discussing the sale of aborted fetuses’ body parts.
The organization claimed the videos had fueled ‘domestic terrorism’.
Sources told NBC that nothing apparent, such a felony conviction or mental illness, would have disqualified him from purchasing an AK-47 style rifle.
But public records from South Carolina show that he was charged with cruelty to animals for an incident where he shot a dog and was also charged with being a peeping Tom, eavesdropping or peeping in 2002 for an incident after ‘making unwanted advancements’ towards a woman and being seen in the bushes by her house.
He was found not guilty of the first charge and the second was dismissed, though a restraining order was issued in the case.
In 1997 Ross also called police for a domestic violence evidence where she says he locked her out of their house and pushed her out a window when she entered.
She did not press charges.
Though Dear’s motive remains unclear, officials claim that the suspect ranted about abortion and politics after the shooting.
Dear reportedly made statements to law enforcement officers about President Barack Obama and comments such as ‘no more baby parts’ in reference to Planned Parenthood.
Dear is a self-employed art dealer and lives in a dilapidated shack. He gets inspiration from loud rock music. I don’t understand why no one addresses the fact that the shooting started at Chase Bank and then this weirdo moved into the Planned Parenthood office. You also can’t logically blame an undercover operation by the Center for Medical Progress that exposed the butchers of Planned Parenthood for trafficking in baby body parts for this man’s murderous rampage. That’s just vile. One of this nut case’s acquaintances said he never heard Dear discuss religion or abortion. The guy sounds like a sociopath that snapped and went psychotic. But any excuse will do to grab guns and Obama never wastes a crisis. Never ever. If insanity can be used as an excuse for wrong doing, then the Left should all be behind bars. This man was delusional, depraved and highly disturbed. His behavior screams that he had a mental break with reality.