The reports have attempted to link Roberts, who killed five girls and wounded five others at West Nickel Mines School in Bart Township Oct. 2, to a variety of incidents, including a 2005 sexual assault near the Georgetown Road mobile home he shared with his wife and children.
State police Sgt. Douglas Burig said Tuesday there is no evidence to connect Roberts to any crimes that happened before he killed himself after shooting the girls inside the Amish one-room schoolhouse.
“Roberts is not a suspect in any sexual assault,” Burig said Tuesday. “It seems like people are trying to blame him for everything but the Kennedy assassination.”
Police also said Tuesday someone vandalized Roberts’ grave. He was buried Saturday at Georgetown United Methodist Cemetery, 1074 Georgetown Road, Bart Township.
“Someone during the course of the night arrived at the cemetery and proceeded over to the freshly dug grave site of Charles Roberts and trashed it,” Trooper David Fedorshak said in a news release. “The actor proceeded to walk on the grave and kick the dirt around and either kicked or threw all the flowers off the grave, thus scattering them all around the grave site.”
Police received a call last week from a 39-year-old Amish woman who was accosted in August 2005 inside her home, which is less than a mile from where Roberts lived.
The victim’s father interrupted the assault, but neither he nor his daughter was able to see the assailant because it was dark.
“We don’t know, but it would be a relief if it was him (Roberts),” said the victim’s father, according to a news account.
The attack happened shortly before 3 a.m. Aug. 13, 2005, when a man climbed through a window and confronted the woman in a second-floor bedroom.
The man attempted to choke the woman as her father moved with a flashlight toward the bedroom. The assailant escaped after pushing the woman’s father down the steps.
The woman suffered scrapes and abrasions.
She knew Roberts because he lived in the neighborhood.
Troopers obtained fingerprints from the home but have not made a match.
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