21-Year-Old White Supremacist About to Be Executed for Killing 9 African Americans in a Church…

on Dylan Roose’s murder trial. Prosecutors revealed chilling images of him before and after his attack on an African-American church where he shot and killed nine people. ABC’s Steve Osami has the latest from Charleston. >> Jurors are getting to see this admitted racist and accused killer at target practice.

Police say 22-year-old Dylan Roof recorded himself at home using the same 45 caliber Glock he’s accused of using in the shootings at this historic black church. Families of the nine people he’s accused of murdering at a Bible study sat in shock as an FBI agent testified that Roof went and staked out their church several times in the months before the killings.

 Police say a GPS device in Roof’s car shows he drove from his home in Colombia to the church in Charleston in December of 2014, twice in February the next year, again in April, and then twice in May. Police say they also found a list of other black churches in the back of his car. Calvary Episcopal was one of them. >> On the evening of June 17th, 2015, Dylan Roof walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

 The church was better known as Mother Emanuel. Inside, people were gathering for Bible study. ROF was a stranger. Nobody there had invited him personally. Nobody knew him. He was simply a young man who had walked through the door and appeared to want to join them and they welcomed him. ROF sat down with them for roughly 45 minutes.

 He remained inside that room while the group studied the Bible together. The people sitting around him had no idea what he had brought with him. They did not know that ROF had a loaded pistol. They did not know that he had been thinking about attacking African-Ameans for months. They did not know that he had chosen a church because he wanted his attack to have an impact beyond the people inside it.

 And they certainly did not know that the stranger sitting among them had already decided that some of them would not leave the building alive for nearly an hour. Nothing happened. The Bible study continued. ROF stayed with the group. He listened. He sat among people who had treated him like a guest. Then the Bible study came to an end.

 The people inside began to pray. And that was when everything changed. Roof pulled out his gun. He opened fire. The room that had been filled with prayer was suddenly filled with gunshots. People tried to understand what was happening. There was nowhere to hide from what had just begun. When the shooting was over, nine people were dead.

 Reverend Clementa Pinkney, Cynthia Herd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Reverend Depay Middleton, Doctor, Taiwan Sanders, Reverend Daniel Simmons, Senior, Reverend Shironda Coleman Singleton, and Myra Thompson. Five other people survived. Roof walked out of the church and disappeared into the night. Within hours, the country would know his name.

 But the story of Dylan Roof did not begin inside Mother Emanuel. It began years earlier with a young man who was increasingly isolated, increasingly obsessed with race, and eventually drawn into an ideology that convinced him that murder could serve a purpose. By the time he walked into that church, the shooting was not an impulse.

It was the end of a plan. And to understand how he got there, we have to go back. Dylan Storm Roof was born on April 3rd, 1994 in Columbia, South Carolina. He grew up in South Carolina and came from a family that was not living on the margins of society. His parents divorced when he was young. His education was troubled.

 He struggled in school and eventually dropped out before later obtaining a GED. There was no single moment from his childhood that neatly explained what he would eventually become. There was no one event that could be pointed to and said, “This is where Dylan Roof became a murderer.” For years, he was simply a young man who appeared increasingly disconnected from the people around him.

He did not build the kind of stable adult life that many of his peers were beginning to build. He was not moving toward a clear career. He was not known for being socially successful. Instead, he spent increasing amounts of time alone. And eventually the internet became a major part of that isolation. That would matter later because the internet gave ROF something he was not finding in ordinary life.

 It gave him an endless supply of information, arguments, images, and communities built around the racial ideas that were beginning to consume his attention. At first, there was nothing unusual about being interested in current events. Millions of people read about crime. Millions of people argue about politics. Millions of people search for stories about race.

 The difference was where ROF’s interest eventually took him. He did not simply read. He searched. And the more he searched, the more extreme the material became. His thinking began to change. Instead of seeing individual crimes as individual events, he increasingly viewed them through a racial lens. He became obsessed with what he believed were examples of violence committed by black Americans against white Americans.

 He collected information. He read racist material. He spent time studying white supremacist ideas. And eventually the internet was no longer simply something he used. It became a place where his existing anger could grow. The people whose ideas he encountered online were not telling him to step away from hatred.

 They were giving him reasons to embrace it. That distinction would become critical because eventually ROF stopped merely consuming the ideology. He began to believe it. By 2015, ROF’s interest in racial issues had become much more serious. He became particularly focused on events involving race in the United States.

 Among the subjects that influenced his thinking was the killing of Trayvon Martin and other incidents he encountered while researching racial conflict. But ROF did not approach these stories in a balanced way. He was searching for evidence that supported beliefs he was already developing. Every new article, photograph, or statistic could become another piece of the worldview he was constructing.

 The more he found, the more convinced he became that black Americans posed a threat to white Americans. That belief was false. But ROF accepted it. And once he accepted it, he began looking for ways to act on it. He became interested in white supremacist history. He looked at racist websites. He studied material produced by extremists.

 He began writing his own thoughts. Eventually, investigators would discover a website associated with roof called the last Rhdesian. It contained photographs of him posing with racist and white supremacist symbols. It also contained writings explaining his beliefs. These materials became important after the shooting because they showed that ROF had not simply walked into a church one evening and suddenly decided to kill people.

 He had been thinking about race for a long time. He had been thinking about violence and he had been thinking about how his actions could attract attention. The government would later argue that ROF wanted his attack to inflame racial tensions. He wanted his violence to mean something beyond the nine people he killed. He wanted people to talk about it.

 He wanted it to spread. He wanted it to become part of a larger racial conflict. That was the world ROF had built inside his own head. and then he began looking for a target. Roof did not simply wake up on June 17th and decide to shoot people. Evidence presented in the case showed that he had been planning an attack for months.

 He had researched possible targets. He considered black churches. That detail matters because it tells us something about how deliberate the plan was. He wasn’t looking for a particular individual. He was looking for a place. a place where he could find a large number of black people gathered together.

 A place where the attack would attract attention and eventually his attention turned to Charleston. Charleston had a history that made Mother Emanuel particularly significant. The church was not just another building. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church was one of the most historically important black churches in the city.

 Its history stretched back generations. Its congregation included religious leaders, public servants, teachers, grandparents, parents, and young people. For ROF, that history made it a more attractive target. He wanted to attack African-Ameans, but he also wanted the attack to be noticed. He wanted the location to carry meaning.

 On June 17th, 2015, he was ready. He had a handgun. He had ammunition. And he drove toward Charleston. At some point that evening, he reached Mother Emanuel. He parked, he got out, and he walked toward the church. Inside, people were preparing for Bible study. They had no reason to believe that anything unusual was about to happen. The night looked ordinary.

That was the part ROF understood. The church would be full of people. They would be relaxed. They would be focused on their faith, and they would not be expecting a gunman. ROF walked through the door and the people inside did something that would later become one of the most painful details of the entire case. They welcomed him.

 Mother Emanuel was more than a place where people went to worship. For generations, the church had been an important part of Charleston’s black community. Its history was deeply connected to the city’s history. Its congregation had lived through decades of change, conflict, and struggle. And on that Wednesday evening, the people inside were doing something ordinary.

 They were studying the Bible. Among them was Reverend Clementa Pinkney. Pinkney was not only the pastor of Mother Emanuel. He was also a South Carolina state senator. He was 41 years old. He had a wife. He had children. He was a respected religious and political figure. But that evening, he was not standing in the state capital.

 He was at his church. He was with his congregation. Others had also come to Bible study. Cynthia Herd was there. She was 54. Susie Jackson was there. She was 87 years old. Ethel Lance was there. She was 70. Reverend Depay Middleton Doctor was there. She was 49. Taiwanza Sanders was there. He was 26. Reverend Daniel Simmons Senior was there. He was 74.

Reverend Shironda Coleman Singleton was there. She was 45. And Myra Thompson was there. She was 59. Nine different people. Nine different lives. Nine people who had gone to the same church on the same evening. ROF entered their Bible study. He was a stranger. But they did not treat him like an enemy. They treated him like a visitor.

 He sat with them. He joined the Bible study. And for approximately 45 minutes, he remained there. Those 45 minutes are difficult to understand because everyone in the room was living in two completely different realities. The congregation believed they were sitting in Bible study with a stranger.

 ROF knew that he had brought a gun. The congregation believed the evening was about worship. Roof had come to kill. The congregation saw a young man. Roof had already chosen his victims and yet nobody knew. The Bible study continued. Before the shooting, they were not victims. They were people. That distinction matters.

 Cynthia Herd was 54 years old. She had spent much of her life serving the community and worked in the Charleston County Public Library system. She was known as someone who cared about other people. Susie Jackson was 87. She was one of the oldest people in the room. She had been part of the church community for years.

 Ethel Lance was 70. She worked at Mother Emanuel and was deeply connected to the church. Reverend Depay Middleton, doctor, was 49. She was a pastor and educator. She was also a mother. Reverend Clementa Pinkney was 41. He was a pastor, husband, father, and state senator. He had spent his life working both inside the church and in public service.

Taiwanza Sanders was 26. He was one of the youngest people in the room. He had gone to Bible study with his aunt, Susie Jackson. Reverend Daniel Simmons, Senior was 74. He was a pastor and a respected member of the community. Reverend Shironda Coleman Singleton was 45. She was a pastor, mother, and educator.

 And Myra Thompson was 59. She was part of the church’s ministry and was there for Bible study like she had been many times before. They had families, they had friends, they had responsibilities waiting for them outside the church. They had ordinary plans for the following day. None of them knew that June 17 would be their last night alive.

Roof had been sitting among them for nearly an hour. The Bible study was ending. The group began to pray. And then Roof moved. The people inside closed their eyes. They were praying. ROF had spent the previous 45 minutes sitting among them. Now he took out the gun. The first shots broke the silence. The room changed instantly.

 There was confusion. There was panic. The people who had been sitting together in prayer were suddenly trying to survive. Roof fired again and again. The prosecution later presented evidence that he fired more than 70 rounds. Nine people were killed. The names were repeated in court. Cynthia Herd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Depay Middleton, Doctor, Clementa Pinkney, Taiwan Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Shironda Coleman Singleton, Myra Thompson.

 Five people survived the attack. Among the survivors was Felicia Sanders, her son Tywanza had been killed. The shooting lasted only minutes, but those minutes changed Charleston forever. When ROF finally stopped firing, the room was filled with the consequences of what he had planned. Nine people were dead and Roof was still alive. He left the church.

 There was no dramatic confrontation outside. No police officer was waiting for him. He simply walked away from the building. He had entered Mother Emanuel as a stranger. Now he was a wanted murderer. The search began. The first priority for investigators was to understand what had happened. Nine people had been killed inside a church. The victims were black.

The attacker was believed to be a young white man. And investigators quickly realized that the shooting appeared to have been deliberate. Surveillance footage became important. The authorities began gathering photographs. The public was shown images of the suspected gunman. The search spread beyond Charleston.

 ROF had left the city, but he had not disappeared completely. His vehicle became a key part of the search. The morning after the shooting, police in North Carolina received a report about a vehicle that appeared to match the description associated with roof. The information eventually led officers to him. He was found in Shelby, North Carolina on June 18th.

 He was stopped and the weapon used in the attack was found in the vehicle. The manhunt had lasted less than a day. Dylan Roof was in custody, but investigators still had to answer the biggest question. Why? Why would a 21-year-old drive to a historic black church, sit through a Bible study, and then kill nine people? The answer was not hidden.

 Roof began telling investigators himself. Roof’s arrest gave investigators something that is rare in a case like this. They did not have to guess everything about his motive. He talked. His statements to investigators became important evidence. He explained his beliefs. He described his hatred toward black Americans. He discussed the attack and he made clear that he had not chosen Mother Emanuel randomly.

 The investigators also had his writings. They had photographs. They had his website. They had evidence of his planning. The pieces fit together. The attack had been planned. The target had been chosen. The ideology had been developing for months. And ROF had wanted the shooting to be noticed. The government later argued that he wanted to provoke racial conflict.

 The evidence included statements that he had made before the attack. More than a week before the shooting, ROF had told Joseph Meek that he intended to shoot people during a Wednesday Bible study at an AM church in Charleston. According to the Justice Department, ROF told Meek that he had been planning the attack for more than 6 months and wanted it to serve as a catalyst for a race war.

 That information became significant because it showed that ROF had talked about the attack before he carried it out. He was not simply describing something after the fact. He had been talking about it beforehand. Then investigators found more. the website, the photographs, the writings, the racist material. And eventually, the federal government had a case that went far beyond nine murders.

It had a case involving hate crimes, religious worship, and firearms. The federal government charged ROF with 33 counts. The charges included federal hate crimes, obstruction of religious exercise, and firearms offenses. The case was different from a normal murder prosecution. The government was not only saying that ROF killed nine people.

 It was saying that he killed them because they were black and that he deliberately attacked them while they were engaged in religious worship. That distinction mattered. The federal government eventually decided to seek the death penalty. The decision was announced in May 2016. By then, the case had become one of the most closely watched federal prosecutions in the country.

 Roof was facing the possibility of execution. His lawyers had to prepare for a capital trial. And there was another issue. Could Roof participate meaningfully in his own defense? The court held proceedings concerning his competency. Roof’s lawyers also faced an unusual problem. Their client did not always want the same things they wanted.

 In a normal capital case, defense lawyers try to find every reason they can to persuade a jury to choose life instead of death. They look at childhood, family, mental health, education, trauma, anything that might help a juror understand the defendant as more than the crime. ROF did not want that kind of case.

 That decision would become one of the strangest parts of the entire trial. The federal trial began in December 2016. The government presented its evidence. Jurors heard about the shooting. They heard about the victims. They saw evidence recovered from the investigation. They heard about Roof’s writings. They heard about his ideology. And they heard evidence showing that he had planned the attack.

 The prosecution did not need to create a motive. Roof had left one behind. His own writings and statements showed what he believed. The government’s case was built around the idea that the shooting was an act of racial hatred carried out in a place of worship. ROF’s lawyers were still responsible for defending him, but their relationship with their client was complicated.

 ROF wanted control over important parts of the case. At various points, he sought to represent himself. The court had to deal with questions about his competency and his ability to make decisions about his defense. Eventually, the trial moved forward. On December 15th, 2016, the jury reached its verdict. Roof was found guilty on all 33 federal counts.

 There was no uncertainty about the outcome. The trial then moved into its most serious stage. The jury had to decide whether ROF would live or die. The sentencing phase began in January 2017. This is where capital trials become different from ordinary criminal trials. A jury can find someone guilty and still decide that the person should not be executed.

 Defense lawyers can present reasons for mercy. They can explain the defendant’s background. They can present mental health evidence. They can show the jury parts of the person’s life that might influence the punishment. Roof did not want much of that. He did not want his lawyers to build the kind of mitigation case that could potentially save him.

 His lawyers warned him about the consequences. The judge also made sure ROF understood what he was doing. But ROF continued to resist a traditional mitigation case. That decision became important later because it raised questions about whether a competent capital defendant can prevent his lawyers from presenting evidence that might persuade a jury to choose life.

 For the jury, the facts of the shooting were already established. Nine people had died. ROF had been convicted. Now the question was punishment. The families of the victims came to court. They spoke about the people they had lost. They spoke about parents, children, grandparents, friends, church members, people who had gone to Bible study and never returned home.

 ROF listened, but he did not offer the kind of apology that might have changed the tone of the proceeding. Instead, his position remained closely connected to the beliefs that had led him to the church. The jury deliberated and after about 3 hours they returned. The decision was death. On January 10th, 2017, the federal jury sentenced Dylan Roof to death.

 The sentence applied to the capital counts involving the nine people he killed. The following day, the judge formally imposed the sentence. Roof was 22 years old. The young man who had entered Mother Emanuel less than two years earlier was now one of the most notorious prisoners on federal death row.

 His case was finished at the trial level. But it was not over. There would be appeals. There would be challenges. There would be years of litigation and ROF still had another case waiting for him. The state of South Carolina had charged him with murder. There were nine victims and South Carolina was not going to simply allow the federal sentence to end the matter.

 In April 2017, ROF pleaded guilty to the state murder charges. He received nine consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Nine lives, nine separate sentences, one for each person killed inside Mother Emanuel. That meant that even if something eventually happened to his federal death sentence, ROF would still face the rest of his life in prison because of the state convictions.

The federal sentence and the state sentences existed separately. The state case guaranteed that ROF would not simply walk out of prison if his federal case changed. But the federal sentence was still the sentence that attracted the most attention. Roof had been sentenced to death. And now he was entering the part of his life that could last for decades. Life on death row.

Roof was eventually transferred into the federal prison system. His life changed completely. He was no longer a free young man driving around South Carolina. He was a federal death row prisoner. The world outside continued moving. Charleston continued moving. Mother Emanuel continued moving. The families of the victims had to build lives without the people they had lost.

 But ROF remained in prison. There was also an incident during his incarceration that attracted attention. In 2016, while being held at the Charleston County detention center before the federal trial, another inmate attacked him. The attack did not end his life. Roof survived. Then came the appeals. His lawyers challenged his conviction and death sentence.

 They raised multiple issues. The appeals involved questions about the federal charges, the trial, victim impact evidence, his defense, and the way the death penalty proceeding had been handled. The federal appeals court eventually upheld the conviction and death sentence. The decision was significant. ROF had lost at the trial level.

 Now, he had lost at the appellet level, but he still had another option, the Supreme Court. ROF asked the United States Supreme Court to review his case. One of the issues involved his decision to limit the presentation of mitigating evidence during the death penalty phase. It was an unusual constitutional question.

 ROF was not arguing simply that his lawyers had failed him. Part of the issue was that he himself had chosen to prevent the defense from presenting certain evidence. The lower courts had rejected his arguments. The Supreme Court had the opportunity to take the case. It declined. In 2022, the Supreme Court refused to hear his petition.

 That left the federal conviction and death sentence intact. For many people watching the case, that looked like the end of the road. But death penalty cases rarely move quickly. There were still other legal avenues. And there was another development coming. A change in the White House would eventually affect almost every person on federal death row, but it would not affect roof in the same way.

 In December 2024, President Joe Biden commuted the federal death sentences of 37 of the 40 people then on federal death row. Their sentences were changed from death to life imprisonment without parole. Three prisoners were excluded. Jockart Sarnv, convicted in the Boston Marathon bombing. Robert Bowers, convicted in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and Dylan Roof.

Roof’s death sentence remained in place. That meant something important. The federal government had just removed the death penalty from almost the entire federal death row, but ROF remained one of the exceptions. He was still under a federal death sentence. And that raised a simple question.

 Would he eventually be executed? The answer, as of now, is still unknown. There is no execution date for him and the legal fight has continued. Years after his conviction, ROF’s case is still appearing in federal courts. The newest development involves a challenge connected to the judge who presided over his trial.

 Roof has argued that Judge Richard Gurgle should have been recused from aspects of the proceedings. In simple terms, ROF’s lawyers are arguing that the judge’s involvement in certain matters created a problem concerning judicial impartiality. The fourth circuit rejected that challenge in August 2025. ROF asked the court to reconsider.

 That request was denied in November 2025. So, he went to the Supreme Court again. His new petition was filed in April 2026. The federal government opposed the petition in July and the Supreme Court has now placed the case on its conference schedule for September 28th, 2026. That does not mean the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

 It does not mean the court has rejected it either. It means the justices are scheduled to consider the petition. That is where the case stands right now. ROF remains on federal death row. His death sentence remains in place and there is still no execution date. More than 11 years have passed since the shooting.

 The legal case has lasted years, but the families never received a legal document that could undo what happened. A conviction cannot bring someone back. A sentence cannot restore a mother to her children. It cannot return a son to his family. It cannot put a pastor back in his church. The nine people killed at Mother Emanuel remain at the center of the story.

Cynthia Herd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Depain Middleton, Doctor, Clementa Pinkney, Taiwan Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Shironda Coleman Singleton, Myra Thompson. The federal government described them as civic and religious leaders, public servants, teachers, family members, and friends. They were not nine names on a court document.

 They were nine people who had gone to church. One was 87. One was 26. One was a state senator. Others were pastors, educators, librarians, church workers, and family members. Their lives had nothing to do with the hatred Roof had developed. They were simply there. And that is one of the facts that makes the opening of the story so difficult to forget.

 They welcomed him. The evidence eventually showed just how much preparation had gone into the attack. ROF had spent months thinking about violence. He had researched targets. He had studied racial material. He had considered churches. He had spoken about his plan before the attack. And when he arrived at Mother Emanuel, he did not immediately start shooting. He sat down.

He waited. He spent approximately 45 minutes with the congregation. That waiting period is important because it shows the difference between an impulsive act and a planned attack. There was time for him to leave. There was time for him to reconsider. There was time for him to walk back outside. Instead, he stayed.

 And when the moment came, he acted. The victims did not know what was coming. Roof did. That is why the 45 minutes inside Mother Emanuel remained such a central part of the story. The gunfire lasted only a short time. The consequences lasted years. ROF wanted attention. That much became clear from the evidence.

 He wanted his actions to be seen. He wanted racial conflict. He believed that killing people could trigger something larger. But the result was not what he wanted. Charleston did not become the battlefield he imagined. Instead, the victim’s families spoke publicly. People gathered. The church continued. The community mourned.

 Mother Emanuel became known around the world. ROF had wanted his ideology to spread. But the name that came to represent the tragedy was not his. It was Mother Emanuel. It was the Emanuel 9. It was the names of the people who died. The attack became a story about the people ROF wanted to erase. Their families continued speaking about them.

 Their church continued standing. and the country continued discussing the tragedy years after Roof expected the attention to fade. As of August 22nd, 2026, Dylan Roof remains in federal custody. He remains under a federal death sentence. He also remains under nine consecutive South Carolina life sentences without parole.

 His first major Supreme Court petition was denied in 2022. His newer petition is still pending. The Supreme Court docket shows that his latest case was docketed in April 2026. The federal government filed its opposition on July 15th. On July 30th, the petition was distributed for the court’s September 28th conference. That means the case is still active.

 But it is important to understand what that does not mean. It does not mean ROF has been granted a new trial. It does not mean his death sentence has been overturned. It does not mean the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, and it certainly does not mean he has an execution date. For now, he waits. The courts will decide whether to take up his latest challenge, and if they do not, other legal questions may still remain.

 Death row cases can continue for years. ROF is now 32 years old. He was 21 when he entered Mother Emanuel. He was 22 when the federal jury sentenced him to death. More than a decade has passed since the shooting and he is still alive. Go back to June 17th, 2015. The church, the Bible study, the people sitting around the table.

 Roof entering the room. A stranger being welcomed. 45 minutes passing. Nobody knowing. The Bible study ending. The prayer beginning. The gun coming out. The shots. Nine lives ending. That sequence is at the center of everything that came afterward. The investigation, the arrest, the confession, the federal indictment, the trial, the death sentence, the state life sentences, the appeals, the Supreme Court, and the years ROF has spent waiting on death row.

 But none of those later events changes what happened inside that room. Nine people went to Bible study. Nine people were killed. and one of the people responsible is still fighting to overturn parts of the legal process that followed. On June 17th, 2015, Dylan Roof walked into Mother Emanuel as a stranger. The people inside did not know his name.

 They did not know what he believed. They did not know that he had been planning an attack. They did not know that he had chosen their church. They simply saw someone who had come through the door and they welcomed him for approximately 45 minutes. ROF sat with them. He listened to the Bible study. He remained in the room. He was surrounded by people who had done nothing to him.

 Then the group began to pray. Roof pulled out his gun. Nine people died. The youngest was 26. The oldest was 87. Among them was a pastor who also served as a state senator. There were other pastors, a librarian, a church worker, an educator, a grandmother, a son, parents, friends, people who had lives outside that room. ROF left the church.

 He was arrested the next day. He confessed. Investigators found his writings. The evidence showed planning. The federal government prosecuted him. A jury convicted him on all 33 federal counts. Another jury sentenced him to death. South Carolina later gave him nine consecutive life sentences without parole. His appeals continued.

 The Supreme Court declined to hear his first major petition. Then in 2024, when the Biden administration commuted 37 federal death sentences, ROF was one of the three men whose death sentences remained untouched. Now, in 2026, another Supreme Court petition is pending. The court has not yet decided whether it will hear the case.

 There is no execution date. So Dylan Roof remains where he has been for years inside a federal prison under a sentence of death, waiting on the courts, waiting on decisions, waiting on a process that has already lasted more than a decade. But the most important part of this story is not the prison where ROF is held.

 It is not the courtroom where he was sentenced. And it is not the legal arguments that continue today. It is the room he entered on a Wednesday evening in Charleston, the people who welcomed him, the Bible study that continued for 45 minutes, and the nine people whose lives ended there. ROF entered that church wanting his hatred to become the story.

 But more than a decade later, the names remembered from that night are not his victims because they happen to be in the wrong place. They are remembered as people. Cynthia Herd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Depay Middleton, Doctor, Clementa Pinkney, Taiwan Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Shironda Coleman Singleton, Myra Thompson.

 They went to church, they sat together, they studied together, they prayed together, and then they were gone. The legal case is still moving. The appeals are still being filed. The Supreme Court may soon decide whether it will consider ROF’s latest challenge. But for the nine people inside Mother Emanuel, there was no appeal.

 There was no second chance. There was only June 17th, 2015. And the 45 minutes before everything changed.