Ex-wife says clinic suspect vandalized Planned Parenthood

CHARLESTON, S.C. — An ex-wife of the man charged with killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood said that he vandalized an abortion clinic years earlier when he lived in South Carolina.

Barbara Mescher Micheau told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Robert Dear came home one day and told her that he put glue in the locks of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Charleston when they were married more than 20 years ago, but it could not have been one run by the organization. The organization did not have a clinic in the city then but another clinic offered abortions which some have mistakenly assumed was run by Planned Parenthood.

“I just remembered it because I haven’t thought about him for a long time,” said Micheau, whose last contact with Dear was more than seven years ago, when their son turned 18 and Dear no longer needed to come for visits.

Micheau, who lives in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, said Dear never talked much about Planned Parenthood although “obviously he was against abortion.” She also recalled that Dear “was always plotting revenge against people he felt did him wrong and you know it didn’t take much for him to feel like somebody did him wrong.”

In the affidavit she filed to divorce him in 1993, Micheau described Dear as angry and isolated.

Micheau said Dear had no friends, according to the document. He would listen to music on headphones for hours, ignoring her. He’d vanish for gambling trips to Las Vegas or Atlantic City and suddenly explode in anger at home, kicking her and pulling her hair.

“Rob’s anger erupts into fury in a matter of seconds and is alarming,” she wrote. “You have to constantly monitor his emotional state.”

She added that he appeared devoutly religious.

“He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but he does not follow the Bible in his actions,” Micheau wrote. “He says 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.”

Micheau told AP she wasn’t surprised to hear that he was arrested in the shooting or that he been living in remote locations without water or electricity, saying he always had survivalist ideas.

“I was just devastated for the people he hurt and the people he killed and their children. As to whether he would do it or not, I wasn’t surprised,” she said.