An ex-wife of Robert Lewis Dear, the suspect in the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting, said Dear once vandalized a Planned Parenthood clinic by putting glue in the locks.
"That was over 20 years ago when he did that," Barbara Mescher Michaux, who was married to Dear from 1985 to 1993, told NBC News.
Michaux said she was convinced Dear targeted the Colorado Springs facility specifically because of his anti-abortion views: "For him to plan this and go there, he meant to go there," she said. "There is no doubt in my mind."
If the act of vandalism that Michaux describes seems trivial, consider that Scott Roeder, the man who murdered abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in his own church, also glued the locks of a clinic the day before he committed the murder.
Abortion rights advocates argue that the same people who perpetrate extreme acts of violence also commit lesser crimes like harassment or intimidation of women's health clinic patients. And clinic vandalism is not just a property crime but an act of terror against abortion providers:
Property damage like dark-of-night destruction of security systems by masked men sends a clear and purposeful message: "You are not safe."
— ClinicEscort (@ClinicEscort) March 24, 2015
It was already reported that Dear told police, "No more baby parts," after being taken into custody. The new allegation from Dear's ex-wife strengthens the argument that the attack on Planned Parenthood was a politically motivated act of domestic terrorism as part of a larger movement to end abortions.