Scott Roeder

Anti-Abortion Activist Behind Auction For Roeder: For-Sale Items Do Not Glorify Violence

Justin Elliott | November 2, 2009, 1:46PM

Anti-abortion activist Regina Dinwiddie

Regina Dinwiddie, the Kansas anti-abortion activist who set up an eBay auction to benefit the suspect in the George Tiller murder, tells TPMmuckraker in a phone interview that she's angry that eBay pulled her items -- and that she believes they did not glorify violence, but rather "glorify the end of a very violent man."

"Actually I thought [eBay] was the last bastion of free enterprise in America, where normal people could put things up for sale," Dinwiddie told us. "I see they do have a political agenda."

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Scott Roeder

Anti-Abortion Extremists Auction Lurid Prison Art On eBay To Raise Money For Tiller Murder Suspect

Justin Elliott | November 2, 2009, 9:51AM

Art for sale on eBay for Scott Roeder's legal defense.

Supporters of the man charged with the May killing of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller are raising money for his legal defense through an eBay auction on items including prison art glorifying the murder and a commissary cookbook by the woman who is serving time for shooting Tiller in both arms in the early 1990s.

Allies of Scott Roeder want to hire a private lawyer who will use a so-called "necessity defense," arguing that the killing was justified.

(See a slideshow of the now-scrubbed items here.)

Auction organizer Dave Leach told the Kansas City Star, which first reported the auction, "I really am hopeful that eBay can see that once this is up, that it is not a glorification of violence."

But the items, like illustrations produced by a fellow inmate and signed by Roeder, do just that. One David-and-Goliath drawing shows a figure with a sling holding up a severed head labeled "Tiller" standing over a bloodied body labeled "Child Murdering Industry."

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