Charles Roberts IV

Charles Carl Roberts IV - who was born on December 7th, 1973, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. - was an American truck driver who murdered five Amish girls, before killing himself.  The son of Charles, a policeman, and Terri Roberts, he earned a diploma through a homeschooling association.  In 1990, Roberts was employed as a dishwasher at the Good 'n' Plenty restaurant in Smoketown, Pennsylvania; two of his co-workers there were subsequently convicted of the murder of 16-year-old Laurie Show in 1991.  Although neither he nor his family were Amish, Roberts later earned a living as a truck driver, working nights collecting milk from dairy farms in a heavily Amish area near his home in the tiny village of Georgetown, Pennsylvania.  On the morning of October 2nd, 2006, Roberts dropped-off his children at their school bus-stop, before driving a pickup truck to the West Nickel Mines School, a one-room schoolhouse in Bart Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Instructing the schoolboys to help him carry ammunition and other supplies into the school, he then dismissed them, before barricading himself inside with the female pupils.  After making two phone calls - one to his wife, Marie, and one to the police - Roberts shot dead five of the girls, injuring the other five, and then killed himself.  Although obviously grieved at the loss of their offspring, the Amish's response to the tragedy was remarkably forgiving, refusing to show hatred for Roberts, and even setting up a support fund for his family.  Roberts had left four suicide notes: one for each of his three children, and one for his wife.  One note detailed the despondency he felt over the death of his daughter shortly after birth nine years earlier, and also stating cryptically that he had recently been having dreams of doing again what he had done twenty years ago.  Roberts had phoned his wife whilst barricaded in the schoolhouse, claiming to have molested two young female relatives two decades earlier, although the people concerned later denied that these events had occurred.  K-Y Jelly, a lubricant most often used during sexual intercourse, was found amongst Roberts's belongings in the school, possibly suggesting multiple motives for the murders.  One of Roberts's suicide notes spoke of his anger against God, whilst Roberts's co-workers spoke of a "change" in his temperament in the months leading up to the killings, although he apparently became calm again in the preceding week, with Roberts's neighbours reporting him to be unusually upbeat and jovial during his last days.  Charles Roberts was 32 years old.

Faron Young

Faron Young was an American country music singer, songwriter, and producer, as well as an actor, who was active from the early 1950s until the mid-1980s.  Born on February 25th, 1932, he was the youngest of six children born to Harlan and Doris Young in Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.A.  Starting to perform whilst still at school, he initially imagined a career as a pop singer, before switching his allegiance to country music after watching Hank Williams on T.V.  After leaving college, Young's first releases were on Gotham Records, although by early 1952 he had signed for Capitol Records, where he was to record for the next ten years. Moving to Nashville, his first hit, Goin' Steady, reached number 2 on the U.S. Country Charts in October, 1952.  The following month, Young was drafted into the U.S. Army.  Whilst stationed at Fort McPherson, he met his future wife, Hilda Macon, whom he married in November, 1954, after being discharged.  The couple had three sons and a daughter together.  From 1954 to 1962, Young recorded mainly honky-tonk records for Capitol, the most famous being Willie Nelson's Hello Walls, which was a crossover hit in 1961, and won a gold disc for selling over a million copies.  In the mid-1950s, he also appeared as an actor in four low-budget films.  After drifting for a while musically, Young had a renaissance in 1971, when his song Four in the Morning gave him his fifth and final number-one hit on the U.S. Country chart, and was also a surprising number-three hit on the U.K. pop charts.  In 1972, he was charged with assault for spanking a girl in the audience whom he claimed had spat at him whilst he was singing on stage.  Young's later life was plagued with depression and alcoholism.  In 1984, he fired a pistol into the roof of his home.  When he refused to seek help for his drinking problems, Young's wife divorced him in 1986 after 32 years of marriage.  On December 9th, 1996, Young shot himself in the head at his home, dying in Nashville, Tennessee, the following day.  A combination of feeling he had been abandoned by the music industry, as well as despondency over his declining health, were cited as reasons for his suicide.  His ashes were spread by his family on land owned by singer Johnny Cash and his wife, whilst the Cashes were away.  Faron Young was 64 years old.