Idaho firefighter killer Wess Roley had “Nazi tendencies” and was “obsessed with guns” as a schoolkid — often alarming fellow students by doodling swastikas and weapons in his notebooks, according to several classmates.
“My good friend saw drawings of swastikas and guns in his notebook,” said former classmate Harry Standley, who went to middle and and high school with Roley.
“We were all pretty scared of him,” Standley told USA TODAY.
Roley, 20, took his own life Sunday in the woods of Coeur d’Alene after murdering two firefighters he apparently lured there by setting a brush fire. A third firefighter was seriously wounded as Roley fired from the trees, prompting about 300 law enforcement officers to close in on the mountain in an hours-long standoff.
Former classmates say they were shocked when they saw Roley’s face in the headlines, and that they hadn’t talked to him for years.
“I’m just really sad about what happened,” Standley said.
He lived in Roley’s neighborhood and played video games with the killer, who he recalled as a “funny guy” without many friends.
“Everybody just thought he was weird,” Standley added. “He was also obsessed with guns.”
Classmate Dieter Denen — who knew Roley since elementary school — said he wrote-off the swastikas as a “kid being edgy” and “trying to stand out.”
Roley eventually stopped attending high school, his classmates said, explaining they believed he’d been expelled “after some trouble with a girl.”
No motivation has been revealed in Roley’s disturbing Sunday attack. An Arizona and California native, he had reportedly been in Idaho to work in forestry and firefighting, and his grandfather speculated that he may have applied for a job and been turned away.
“He loved firefighters. It didn’t make sense that he was shooting firefighters,” his grandfather Dale Roley told NBC News. “Maybe he got rejected or something.”
Kootenai County Fire and Rescue — one of the agencies that responded to the blaze and lost a longtime smoke-eater to at Roley’s hands — told reporters Monday they had no record of him ever applying. Coeur d’Alene Fire Department — the other agency that responded and lost a firefighter — said they were checking their records.
But others who knew Roley in Idaho said his life had seemed to “kind of go downhill” in recent months, including former roommate TJ Franks who told the Guardian the killer shaved his head before moving out to live in his car in January.
The two met through their work in the tree service industry and shared an apartment in Sandpoint together for about six months.
Roley was a fine roommate, but when Frank installed security cameras to keep his kids safe during weekend visits he said Roley became “disturbed” by them — and even began exhibiting strange behavior.
“So, I took [them] down when [my] kids weren’t here. And then, one night, I forgot to unplug the camera, and he came in while we weren’t home and he threw up some disturbing signs,” Franks told King 5.
“And so I actually ended up calling the police because I was worried, you know, that he might be wanting to be violent.”
Franks called police another time after Roley left his car running for 12 hours straight, with Roley later saying he had fallen asleep and forgotten about the vehicle.
Roley moved out without incident at the start of the year. Franks noted that Roley had no guns when they lived together, and never did anything that might explain the crime he carried out Sunday.
He spent the next few months living out of his car, law enforcement said Monday, and had no criminal history beyond a few calls to police related to his transient living that were characterized as “very, very minor.”
Roley’s car was recovered at the scene of the attack, but was pushed off a ledge to prevent him from escaping in it during the operation to root him out.
Investigators said Monday they still needed to search the vehicle to see if he left behind anything that could reveal a motivation.
The firefighters Roley killed — Battalion Chief Frank Harwood, 42, and Battalion Chief John Morrison, 52 — had nearly 50 years of firefighting service between them.
