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Gunman Who Killed 2 Firefighters Left Chilling Note
Gunman Who Killed 2 Firefighters Left Chilling Note
(about 3 hours later)
WEBSTER, N.Y. — The gunman who killed two firefighters in an ambush on Monday in this drowsy town on the shores of Lake Ontario expressed a passion for killing and a desire to destroy as much of his neighborhood as possible, the police said on Tuesday.
WEBSTER, N.Y. — On Monday morning when darkness was still raw, William Spengler Jr. armed himself with a rifle, a revolver and a shotgun. He had killed before. Harboring a deep-seated hatred of his sister, who lived with him, and a desire to harm his neighbors on a beachfront strip off Lake Ontario, Mr. Spengler composed a rough, typewritten plan that foretold of the destruction to come.
The gunman, identified as William Spengler, 62, left behind a chilling typewritten note recovered by investigators, Gerald L. Pickering, the police chief in Webster, told reporters on Tuesday. Chief Pickering, who described the writing as rambling, read just a portion of the note: “I still have to get ready to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down and do what I like doing best – killing people.”
“I still have to get ready to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down and do what I like doing best — killing people,” Mr. Spengler, 62, wrote, in a note the police recovered.
On Tuesday, investigators also discovered human remains inside Mr. Spengler’s house and Chief Pickering said the remains were believed to have been those of Mr. Spengler’s sister, Cheryl Spengler, who shared the home with her brother.
It had been 32 years since he beat his grandmother to death with a hammer in the Lake Road house next to his.
Chief Pickering also said that it was likely that the gunman used a semi-automatic rifle, one of three weapons recovered from the shooting scene, to kill the firefighters. He identifed the semi-automatic as a .223 Bushmaster rifle, the same weapon used in the school massacre in Newtown, Conn.
As Christmas Eve dawned in this suburb of Rochester, local authorities say, Mr. Spengler set fire to a car, as a trap. When an engine company came roaring down the street, he started shooting at the first responders, most likely from his Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle. It was the same type of semiautomatic weapon used in the school shooting 10 days earlier in Newtown, Conn.
The violence on Monday unfolded with a simple call to put out a car fire, the sort of routine job firefighters tackle all the time. The fire truck hurtled to the assignment early Monday in a town that was preparing for the joys of Christmas.
“He was equipped to go to war to kill innocent people,” the Webster police chief, Gerald L. Pickering, said of Mr. Spengler.
But it apparently was a trap, the authorities said. There were a house and a car burning. There was also a waiting killer, who had stationed himself like a sniper on a berm above the firefighters.
The authorities say Mr. Spengler fired shots that killed two volunteer firefighters from long range and seriously wounded two others, and set a “raging inferno.” The police found him dead on a berm about five hours after the siege started, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Before they could begin to extinguish the flames, the firefighters were met by a burst of gunfire. Four were hit by the volley of bullets, and two died. An off-duty police officer from nearby Greece, N.Y., who was on his way to work, was wounded when he and his car were hit by shrapnel.
On Tuesday, the authorities added another likely victim: Cheryl Spengler, 67, the gunman’s sister. Chief Pickering said “human remains” were found at the shooter’s house, 191 Lake Road, that they believed were of Ms. Spengler. The Monroe County medical examiner’s office did not return requests for comment on the identification of the remains or the cause of death.
For a few hours, the scene was chaotic: flames ignited adjacent houses as the police frantically searched for the gunman, later identified as Mr. Spengler. They would find him dead near the beach, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Mr. Spengler had a lengthy criminal record and lived in the burning house. In 1981, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter for bludgeoning his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer. He was imprisoned until 1998.
Mr. Spengler’s note, Chief Pickering said, contained no motive, just ramblings, and spoke only to a murderous intent. He said he was not at liberty to disclose it in full because of the investigation.
He remained on supervised parole until 2006, and the Webster police said they had not had recent brushes with him. His mother, Arline, who lived in the same house, died this year. A former neighbor, Roger D. Vercruysse, said Mr. Spengler and his sister had also lived in the house, but “he stayed in one part with his mother and his sister stayed in the other part, and they never talked to each other.”
As investigators tried on Tuesday to determine reasons for the brutal acts that shattered the holiday peace of a close-knit town, details emerged about Mr. Spengler and his bitter relationship with his sister. A relative said it was possible the two were in a dispute over who would inherit the family home after their mother’s death in October.
Mr. Spengler’s ire for his sister was matched by love for his mother, Mr. Vercruysse said.
The siblings had such antipathy for each other that they lived on separate sides of the house, a former neighbor, Roger D. Vercruysse, said Monday.
Mr. Spengler did not seem to have a lot of friends, but “every time I needed help, he was there,” Mr. Vercruysse, 64, said, whether it was for shoveling snow or driving Mr. Vercruysse’s blind sister to the store. The police said they found Mr. Spengler with three weapons by his side, including the Bushmaster, a Smith and Wesson. .38-caliber revolver and a Mossberg 12-gauge pump shotgun. The authorities said that they did not know where he had gotten the weapons, but that there had been recent gun thefts in Monroe County, where Webster is. As a felon, Mr. Spengler was prohibited from owning guns.
“He hated his sister, but he loved his mama,” Mr. Vercruysse said.
The authorities said they were unaware of a motive, but Chief Pickering suggested that “there were certainly mental health issues involved.”
Mr. Spengler was 30 in the summer of 1980 when he killed his 92-year-old grandmother, Rose. According to newspaper accounts from the time, he lied to his mother, saying he had found her at the bottom of the stairs. He accepted a plea bargain for manslaughter and went to state prison for 17 years.
The episode comes a little over a week after the Newtown attack, and with the country engaged in an intense debate over gun control and care of the mentally ill. Grieving, Chief Pickering said in an interview: “We know that people are slipping through the cracks, not getting the help they need. And I suspect that this gentleman slipped through the cracks. Maybe he should have been under more intense supervision, maybe he should not have been in the public, maybe he should have been institutionalized, having his problems dealt with.”
A 1997 transcript said Mr. Spengler abruptly cut a parole hearing short when he discovered that he did not need to be there, displaying an irascible, unrepentant attitude. He was released in 1998 and moved back home.
The ambush shook residents of Webster, a town 12 miles northeast of Rochester.
“If you kill a family member, I don’t know why you would ever be out of jail,” Shirley Ashwood, 63, a first cousin of Mr. Spengler, said in a telephone interview from Rochester. “It frightened me, and that’s why I and my family stayed away from him.”
“These people get up in the middle of the night to go put out fires,” Chief Pickering said of his lost firefighters. “They don’t expect to be shot and killed.”
She added: “If you’re going to kill your grandmother, you’re going to kill anybody.”
At a news conference, he choked up repeatedly when giving the names of the crew members. The two men killed were Michael J. Chiapperini, 43, a local police lieutenant who owned a window-tinting business, and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19, a 911 dispatcher for Monroe County.
Mr. Spengler adored his mother, however. When Arline Spengler was in a nearby nursing home, Mr. Spengler would visit her each day, Mr. Vercruysse said.
The two wounded firefighters, Theodore Scardino and Joseph Hofstetter, were listed in guarded to stable condition at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. Mr. Hofstetter suffered an injury to his pelvis. Mr. Scardino was shot twice and had shoulder and lung wounds. The wounded off-duty officer, John Ritter, was treated and released from another hospital.
Arline Spengler died on Oct. 7, at age 91. In the weeks to follow, Cheryl Spengler apparently told a relative that she had hired a lawyer because there could be issues about inheriting the house. “I could see a fight brewing, right after her mom passed,” the relative said.
Officer Ritter, in an interview on Tuesday, said he was driving to work at around 5:35 a.m. on Monday when he uknowingly came upon the shooting.
An account from an unintentional first responder bolstered officials’ descriptions of the harrowing siege. John Ritter, a police officer from the nearby town of Greece, said in an interview in his home on Tuesday that he was driving to work around 5:35 a.m. on Monday when he suddenly came upon the scene. He had no scanner in his car, nor did he have a weapon.
“I go up Lake Road,'’ he said. “I came around the corner and the fire truck is in the road backing up on the left. I hear popping. Pop, pop. Several pops. Suddenly my windshield explodes and there’s a hole right in front of my head. I was in shock. I bent over, leaned over into the passenger seat and slammed it in reverse around the corner,out of the line of sight.”
“I came around the corner, and the fire truck is in the road backing up on the left,” said Officer Ritter, showing a deep bruise on his left breast area and cuts on his left arm. “I hear popping. Several pops. Suddenly my windshield explodes and there’s a hole right in front of my head. I was in shock. I leaned over into the passenger seat and slammed it in reverse around the corner, out of the line of sight.”
“I was driving to work like every other average Joe,'’ Officer Ritter added. “I didn’t have the equipment to respond to a sniper.'’
Chief Pickering said another officer from his department had returned fire from his own rifle. The chief did not reveal that officer’s name.
The firefighters belonged to the West Webster Fire Department, a volunteer force whose firehouse is about four miles from where the presumed ambush occurred on Lake Road. By afternoon, people had left bouquets and a wreath at the firehouse, and candles burned in memory of the dead crew members. Purple and black bunting hung over each of the garage bays.
Funeral arrangements were being made for the volunteer firefighters who were killed: Michael Chiapperini, 43, and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19. The two firefighters who were severely wounded, Theodore Scardino and Joseph Hofstetter, remained in stable condition, in the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital.
It was just over a year since another shocking crime in Webster involving a house fire. On Dec. 7, 2011, the police said, a 15-year-old named Michael Pilato deliberately set fire to his home, killing his father and two brothers. His mother and sister survived. Mr. Pilato’s trial on charges of murder and arson is to begin in a few weeks.
In the chaos, seven houses burned and 33 residents were displaced.
Webster is a middle-class community of about 43,000 named after the statesman Daniel Webster. The area where the shooting took place perches on a skinny strip sandwiched between Irondequoit Bay and Lake Ontario. Most of the tightly packed wood-frame houses are summer residences, though there are some full-time occupants.
Chief Pickering said all people were accounted for. Displaced residents were waiting Tuesday night to return to their homes along Lake Road.
Chief Pickering called it a “little vacation nest” and said that calls for help from there were rare.
John Kohut, 68, whose house burned down in Mr. Spengler’s attack, described him as quiet, socially awkward and “kind of rough” from his years spent in prison.
After receiving a 911 call from a resident, firefighters responded to the fire at 191 Lake Road shortly after 5:30 a.m. on Monday. When the gunfire began, they retreated to safety. One of the wounded firefighters fled in his car to seek help, while the others were pinned.
Last summer, Mr. Kohut had asked him if he wanted a beer because it was a hot day. “He said, ‘No, because I’m on meds,’ ” Mr. Kohut recalled Tuesday, while waiting to be let back onto Lake Road.
Police SWAT teams arrived, and, according to the local police, some three dozen neighbors were evacuated in an armored vehicle.
Liz
Robbins reported from Webster, and Joseph Goldstein from New York. Reporting was contributed by Alain Delaquérière, Patrick McGeehan and Michael D. Regan.
“We heard gunshots before 6 o’clock, but we thought it was duck hunters,” said Connie Gisel, who lives across the bay from the shooting. Shortly afterward, she said, she received an automated phone call from the authorities urging residents to stay indoors and away from windows.
The police said they suspected that Mr. Spengler had started the fire to draw first responders, whom he meant to kill.
The first Webster officer on the scene chased Mr. Spengler and exchanged fire with him briefly. Chief Pickering praised the officer for potentially saving many lives. The police then flooded the area and hunted for the gunman for hours before he was found dead around 11 a.m., the authorities said.
Not until the police deemed the area secure did firefighters resume putting out the blaze. By then, it had spread to neighboring houses. Ultimately, the authorities said, seven houses were destroyed. As of Monday evening, firefighters had not been able to enter the burned homes to check for victims of the fire. The police said, however, that Mr. Spengler’s sister was unaccounted for.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the State Police and the Office of Emergency Management were collaborating with local officials on the case.
“New York’s first responders are true heroes as they time and again selflessly rush toward danger in order to keep our families and communities safe,” the governor said in a statement.
Chief Pickering said that in his small force, he always had a left-hand and a right-hand lieutenant, and Lieutenant Chiapperini was his left hand. “When he wasn’t working as a police officer, he was always on the first truck at any scene,” he said. “We kidded him all the time: Which hat are you wearing today, Lieutenant?”
He said the lieutenant had been to New York to help in the recovery after Hurricane Sandy. Just weeks ago, he was named firefighter of the year. His son, Nicholas, 19, is a volunteer firefighter as well, though he was not part of the crew that responded. Mr. Kaczowka’s best friend was the lieutenant’s son.
Lieutenant Chiapperini also had two young daughters.
Mr. Kaczowka joined the volunteer force only a year ago. Roberta Gammons, 52, a neighbor, said he was the youngest of three boys from a “lovely nice Catholic family.”
“He absolutely loved his job,” she said. “It didn’t surprise me in the least bit to know that he was one of the first ones on the scene.”
Ms. Gisel, who lives near Mr. Scardino, described him as a “dedicated son, dedicated husband, dedicated father,” for whom volunteering at the fire department was a kind of passion.
Mr. Hofstetter was a full-time Rochester firefighter who also belonged to the West Webster department. His mother teaches in the Webster school district, and his father is a retired teacher.
Vince DiPrima, an assistant manager at Bill Gray’s, a diner across the bridge from the fires, was overwhelmed by the morning’s tragedy. “The stuff that happened in Connecticut the other day, and then this — it’s a weird feeling,” he said. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
As evening drew close, the vigil at the West Webster firehouse grew. Mike Auger, 60, knew Lieutenant Chiapperini for 20 years.
“How ironic that as a policeman he faces this stuff all the time and he gets shot answering a fire call,” Mr. Auger said. “If it had been a police call he would have had the body armor on. A fire call, you think you’re helping people and saving their house.”
Liz Robbins reported from Webster, N.Y., and N. R. Kleinfield from New York. Reporting was contributed by Matt Flegenheimer, J. David Goodman, Andy Newman, Michael D. Regan, Wendy Ruderman and Sarah Wheaton.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 25, 2012
Correction: December 25, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of Mr. Spengler’s sister. She is Cheryl Spengler, not Cherly.
An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of Mr. Spengler’s sister. She is Cheryl Spengler, not Cherly.
