Police searching
the bedroom of an 18-year-old accused of two slayings
and a rampage at a gay bar found a cache of weapons, a
homemade poster with a Nazi swastika, and a troubling
final message. "We didn't interpret it necessarily as
a suicide note, but it was certainly the note of a
desperate man who had some plans to continue doing something
violent," Bristol County district attorney Paul Walsh Jr.
said Monday.
Jacob D. Robida was fatally wounded Saturday
when he opened fire on Arkansas police at the end of a
high-speed chase triggered by the killing of a
small-town police officer. Moments before he was killed,
police said, Robida killed his passenger, a female friend.
Robida carried a small arsenal of weapons as he
fled a gun-and-hatchet attack at Puzzles Lounge in New
Bedford, Mass., on Thursday, authorities said. A
knife was found outside the lounge, and investigators
also found 85 rounds of ammunition, a Samurai sword, one
knife, and two knife sheaths in Robida's room at his
home, a police report released Monday said.
Walsh said he believes Robida left the note in
his bedroom after the attack at Puzzles Lounge but
before he left on a 1,500-mile journey to Arkansas.
The contents of the note were not officially released.
According to police, Robida shot and killed
officer Jim Sell during a traffic stop Saturday
afternoon in Gassville, Ark. Then, after a 20-mile
chase to Norfork, Robida shot and killed his passenger,
Jennifer Rena Bailey, 33, and pointed a gun at
pursuing officers, who shot him twice in the head.
Robida died Sunday in a Springfield, Mo., hospital.
Officers were checking e-mails and Internet
correspondence between Robida and Bailey and hoped to
scan surveillance tapes at stores and gas stations to
determine whether the West Virginia woman went willingly or
as a hostage. Robida lived in West Virginia with Bailey, a
mother of three boys, from sometime in 2004 to
February 2005, West Virginia state police sergeant
C.J. Ellyson said Monday. "We're trying to trace down
their steps and find out when they hooked up, if she invited
him over willingly or if she was abducted," Ellyson said.
A friend of Bailey's, Craig Dickinson, believes
the woman was abducted. "She would never leave her
kids," he said in a phone interview from West Virginia
with the Associated Press. "I will guarantee she did
not know what happened in Massachusetts."
Bailey ended her relationship with Robida once
she realized how disturbed he was, Dickinson said.
"This was not some type of Bonnie-and-Clyde episode.
She did not go to Arkansas of her own free will," he said.
There was no sign of forced entry at Bailey's home and no
evidence of a struggle, West Virginia state police
sergeant Jay Powers said Monday. Powers said her three
children were with her mother.
Walsh said he would send investigators to
Arkansas, and he also wanted to find out how Robida
obtained a gun. Handgun owners in Massachusetts must
be at least 21.
Wreaths and flower arrangements were placed
Monday at the scene of Sell's shooting, and residents
brought sympathy cards to the police department. A
funeral service has been scheduled for Friday. Walsh
said he and others from Massachusetts plan to attend
the funeral. "This is our case, and that officer gave
his life basically solving our case," the prosecutor
said. "There is a sense that he is one of us." (AP)