Robert Lewis Dear lived with a woman and two German shepherds in a dilapidated recreational vehicle with no running water, sewer or electricity.
Metal scraps litter the 57-year-old man’s 5-acre lot near the sparsely populated mountain town of Hartsel, where a few of his neighbors grow marijuana and boast solitary lifestyles.
“It looks like white-trash living at its finest — like a bomb went off and everything was thrown in the air,” said his neighbor, Zigmond Post, 45.
Those who knew Dear alternately describe him as combative or secretive, occasionally known to spout off politically. He feuded with some neighbors who called the police on him but appeared to others to just be an ordinary, easygoing man.
Dear is scheduled to appear in El Paso County Court before 4th Judicial District Chief Judge Gil Martinez in Colorado Springs on Monday morning in connection with the Friday shooting at Planned Parenthood.
He lived most of his life in the Carolinas, where he was arrested on charges of domestic violence and being a peeping Tom. He was acquitted twice of cruelty-to-animal charges and was accused of firing a pellet gun at a neighborhood dog.
His first wife, Pam Ross, called police in 1997, accusing him of locking her out of their house and shoving her to the ground. She declined to file formal charges, explaining that she wanted her report of abuse on the record.
In May 2002, Mary Webb was near the house she was selling to Dear on Winding Creek Road in Walterboro, S.C., when he fired a gun in his yard. She suspected he was trying to frighten her because of a court dispute they were having, according to a Colleton County Sheriff’s Department report.
“Mr. Dear stated that his wife had seen a large rat outside and was yelling at him to kill it,” the sheriff’s report says.
Dear moved to Colorado in October 2014, and he maintained a more reserved profile, often waving at passers-by and greeting neighbors in town. He lived with Stephanie Michelle Bragg, 44, according to voter registration records.
“He just didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me,” said Jim Anderson, the Hartsel-based Realtor who listed the property Dear bought for $6,000. “He wanted something cheap. He bought the cheapest property in Hartsel.”
Anderson said Dear moved a recreational trailer onto his land. Dear had just moved from North Carolina, he said.
“He was starting all over,” Anderson said.
Dear rarely left his trailer and didn’t attend barbecues with the few neighbors who had nearby cabins. The hulking man had an intimidating, brooding presence. He never seemed to smile, Post said.
When he left his trailer, he usually drove around alone, often scrounging the dirt roads for fallen tree branches he threw into the back of his gray Toyota Tacoma to later stack beside his trailer for firewood.
Dear’s property is surrounded by spectacular mountain vistas. Herds of antelope, deer, buffalo and elk graze the vast grassy fields in the valley.
“It’s a place to hide out in right in the open. It’s very windy and cold, all year long. People keep to themselves,” said Paul Amori, a Lakewood man who has a 5-acre plot next to Dear’s land.
“I saw him at the post office in Hartsel on Wednesday,” Post said.
Dear’s hair was greasy and matted. He wore checkered chef’s pants with the zipper undone, black snow boots and a black stocking cap, Post said.
Dear’s pickup was loaded with a horse-watering tank, scrap metal and “a lot of crap.”
Dear’s property had more activity Saturday morning than neighbors have ever seen.
An ambulance, a firetruck and five Park County sheriff’s cars approached the trailer early in the morning and parked about a half mile away.
Deputies removed a robot from one of the vehicles and it slowly moved around the house
.
Post was building his tiny cabin in the summer with a friend when his friend’s two Australian shepherds wandered over to Dear’s trailer.
Dear had the dogs corralled in a small wire fence. They had just barely exchanged greetings when Dear pulled out anti-Obama pamphlets and started railing against the president.
“I thought it was weird that we had just met him for five minutes and he starts with that. When he did that, I just started walking away,” Post said. “I don’t like people telling me what to do. That’s why I live out here.”
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, kmitchell@denverpost.com or @kirkmitchell or denverpost.com/coldcases
