Nickel Mines

In Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, love would have to prove stronger than death.

On the morning of October 5, 2006, twenty-five children were studying in the local one-room schoolhouse, a barn like structure with a simple bell tower and front porch supported by steel rods. The building, as plain as notebook paper, reflected the values of the Amish community that educated its children there. The Amish trace their lineage back to pacifist Swiss Christian communities, who, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, renounced the trappings of worldliness.

On that morning, in the midst of the Amish, the worst of the world's madness appeared. At 9:51 AM, Charles Cad Roberts IV, a thirty-two-year-old milkman, burst into the West Nickel Mines Amish schoolhouse and shattered the community's serenity. He had thought about the violence he was about to perpetrate long in advance, and he came prepared. He carried a 12-gauge shotgun, a 9 mm handgun, a .30-06 bolt-action rifle, about six hundred rounds of ammunition, a stun gun and two knifes. He also had tools and building supplies with him.

He ordered the young girls to line up quickly in front of the chalkboard. Then he demanded that the teacher, Emma Mae Zook, take her fifteen male students, a pregnant woman, and three mothers with infants outside. Once they were gone, Charles Roberts used the tools and the 2x6 and 2x4 boards he was carrying to barricade himself inside. Next, he used flex ties to bind the hands and legs of the young girls, who ranged from six to thirteen.

Evidently, he meant to take his time. He called his wife on a cell phone to confess, in partial explanation of the suicide notes he had left at home, that he had molested two young relatives twenty years before. This tale seems to have been a delusion. He also spoke of his grief at the death of an infant daughter. When the Amish girls asked Roberts why he meant to hurt them, he said he was angry at God.

The community responded more quickly than Roberts may have anticipated, and the schoolgirls themselves would alter his plans. Robert's plan to molest girls seemed apparent from the lubricant he was carrying, but their teacher, Emma Mae Zook, ran to a neighboring farmhouse and called police at 10:36 AM. The police arrived in force nine minutes later. From the loudspeakers on their cruisers they spoke to Roberts. He responded that if the grounds weren't cleared in seconds he'd kill everyone.

The oldest of the girls, Marian Fisher, spoke up. The Amish speak Swiss German as their mother tongue, but she used the best English she could muster. She pleaded, “Shoot me and let the others one's loose.” Marian's eleven-year-old sister, Barbie, asked to be next They demonstrated the greatest love a human possibly could.

Unnerved by the girl's courage and the police, Roberts tried to execute all ten girls, pouring bullets into them as fast as he could.

At the sound of the gunfire the police rushed the building. With one final blast, Roberts committed suicide before they could reach him.

Although Roberts shot all ten girls at point-blank range, and several of them repeatedly, he did not fully exact the revenge against God he had planned. Five children survived. Marian's sister, Barbie, was one of them, which is why we know some of the details of what happened inside the schoolhouse that horrible day.

Charles Robert's death seemed sad only in that he was no longer available to prosecute.

But that's where this story turns in an unexpected direction. The entire Amish community followed young Marian Fisher's lead of sacrifice and love of one's neighbor. While Charles Roberts chose to unleash his anger on he innocent, the Amish chose to bestow forgiveness on the guilty. Newsreel footage showed the Amish horse-and-buggy cortege rolling along the main road in Nickel Mines on their way to the funerals of the slain children. It was a poignant and picturesque scene. But the images that stayed in the imagination were of Amish men and women attending Charles Roberts funeral in the graveyard of his wife's Methodist Church. They insisted it was not their place to judge him. Amish leaders even asked their community to refrain from thinking of Roberts as evil.

The Amish also reached out to Marie Roberts and her children. They invited the family to attend the girl's funerals – for the Bible says to mourn with those who mourn, and the Roberts family was mourning their own loss. As money poured into address the medical bills of the wounded girls, Amish community leaders stipulated that a fund from these resources to take care of the killer's widow and three children.

From “The Faith:
What Christians believe,
Why they believe it, and why it matters”
by Charles Colson and Harold Fickett
Zondervan Press (2008) pp 13-15