Roger Lee Hanks has a long history with firearms.
He was “born with a fishing rod and a gun in his hands,” the 76-year-old who state police allege shot and killed his wife and daughter in his East Marlborough home on Thursday, declared. He was familiar with gunsmithing, owned several firearms, hunted at the Bear Lodge Resort in rural Wyoming, and had even made his own ammunition.
An Air Force veteran, Hanks served two tours in Vietnam and worked as a DuPont engineer before becoming a school teacher.
“I am the best of the best,” he said in an interview conducted by state troopers at Paoli Hospital, where he was brought after being taken into custody in the garage of his home on Wiltshire Drive, an expensive cul-de-sac in Unionville, not far from the Unionville High School.
But in his interview with Troopers John Pisker and Brian McNally, Hanks stated that when he pointed his Smith & Wesson M&P 2.0 9mm handgun at his wife, Judith Hanks, it just “went off.” He claimed that even though he had just warned his wife that he would “plug her” if she did not shut up and leave him alone, he did not realize that the gun he had been cleaning was loaded.
He also said that the gun “went off again” when he pointed it at his daughter, Emily Hanks, who had screamed and gone into a rage when she saw what he had done to her mother.
Emily “came at him with a vengeance,” Hanks told the troopers. When she did, “he proceeded to shoot Emily Hanks,” troopers wrote in court papers.
Hanks is now charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of third-degree murder, discharge of a firearm into an occupied structure, and possession of a weapon. After he was arraigned Friday by Magisterial District Albert Iacocca and denied bail because of the first-degree murder charge, he was taken to Chester County Prison.
He is awaiting a May 8 preliminary hearing. If convicted of first-degree murder, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in state prison.
“The defendant senselessly shot and killed his family because of a basic dispute,” District Attorney Chris de Barrena-Sarobe said in a press release announcing Hanks’ arrest. “It is unfathomable that anyone would react this way. I want to thank the Pennsylvania State Police who acted quickly and arrested the defendant after being dispatched to the scene.”
According to the sequence of events laid out by Prisker in his arrest affidavit, state police responded to the Hanks’ home after being called by a neighbor, who told them that Roger Hanks had called her moments before and related what had happened.
“Corrine, I went crazy. I shot Judy and Emily,” Corrine Sweeney told police Hanks allegedly said. She asked if he was serious and told him to put the gun down. Then she and her husband, Raymond Sweeney, drove to the Wiltshire Drive home, a few minutes away from where the retired veterinarians live. On the way Corrine Sweeney called 9-1-1.
Trooper Brian McNally was among the first troopers to arrive at the scene around 6:15 p.m. After taking Hanks into custody, he entered the home through a garage door, and found Judith Hanks and Emily Hanks on the floor of the kitchen, not far from one another, both bleeding. Attempts by troopers and later EMTs to stop the bleeding and save the women were unsuccessful. They were pronounced dead at around 6:50 p.m.
In the interview with Pisker and McNally, Hanks said that he had been drinking beer and Irish whiskey earlier in the day, and had been cleaning his handgun.
Judith Hanks, 75, and Emily Hanks, 37, had come home from the University of Pennsylvania Hospital around 3 p.m. and sometime later, he and his wife began to argue. He said his wife complained that he “didn’t do anything” and spent the day sitting in his chair in the family room.
“If you keep this up, this thing is going to go off,” he told her, meaning his handgun. He then pointed the gun at her and told her to leave him alone.
“When he pointed the gun at Judith Hanks, it went off,” Pisker wrote, quoting him. Hanks, “claimed that he did not know the gun was loaded.” When asked if Judith Hanks had said anything after he threatened to shoot her, “she told him to get out of here.”
He still had the gun in his hand when his daughter went into a rage and screamed when she saw her mother shot. He then pointed the weapon at her and it went off again, he told the troopers.
Both women were struck once in the chest.
Eerily, the double shooting comes two years to the day of another double homicide in the normally peaceful township where Longwood Gardens is located.
On April 25, 2022, police reported an apparent double murder-suicide that took place at a home on Federal Walk in East Marlborough. Two adults and a child were found dead at the scene.
Police had been called to the home, adjacent to the Shoppes at Longwood Village, for a wellness check. When they arrived, police found a 55-year-old man, a 50-year-old woman, and their 12-year-old child dead of apparent gunshot wounds.
Multiple cartridge casings were found at the scene. A semi-automatic handgun was observed on the floor near the male. Detectives learned that there had been a history of domestic violence.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Frei has been assigned the case. No attorney was listed for Hanks in court documents. If anyone has information about the case, they are asked to call state police at 610-268-2022
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
Source: Berkshire mont