Instructor Abe Greenwald, forty, a father of six, originally thought the shooting was fireworks set off by a misbehaving boy. He came outside to investigate, and three bullets tore through his chest before he’d made four steps out the side door. The last person Connie killed was Abe’s brother-in-law, Yosef Schwartz, nineteen. Yosef ran out after Abe, who was married to his sister. He saw the carnage-boys splayed over the new blue and beige playground equipment, screams coming from every direction, and a man dressed like a soldier, walking among it all-and for whatever reason could not keep himself from trying to stop it. The boys watching from inside said he went running, arms waving, shouting for the man to stop. Connie shot him six times, like he was a paper practice target.
Nechemaya also took one of Connie Hall’s bullets. After getting my message the night before, he drove to the yeshiva, remembering that it had been the target of previous vandalism. He parked on the opposite side of the school from the playground, the side at the intersection of two roads. If anyone suspicious came driving up, he would see them. But Connie parked his truck a mile away and walked in through the trees. When the shooting started, Nechemaya ran toward the noise. Connie shot him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. He hit his head on the concrete surrounding the sandbox and blacked out. The bullet missed any major arteries and when paramedics took his pulse they realized he was still alive.
It was acknowledged almost immediately that if Sam Kagan hadn’t shot Connie Hall while he reloaded his rifle, he would probably have killed a lot more people. Connie was wearing a bulletproof vest beneath his jacket. He was strapped with three hundred rounds of ammunition, and carrying two 9mm handguns in addition to the AR-15. Nechemaya called 911 as soon as he heard the shots, and three minutes later another call came in from inside the yeshiva, but it took six minutes for the first deputy to arrive-and the door to the school was unlocked.
Sam, who police found attempting to fashion a tourniquet around Zev Lowenstein’s leg, was handcuffed and interviewed. Witnesses say that he, too, came out of the woods, and that he fired three shots in quick succession. Physical evidence bore this out. Sam’s Smith & Wesson 9mm was originally purchased by a pharmacist at a Georgia gun store in 2004 and made its way to New York through a series of legal, and illegal, transfers. The gun had three bullets missing, and Connie had three bullets in him. Just as Aviva told me and Saul, Sam had surreptitiously installed a GPS tracking application on Connie’s phone, which led him to Roseville that morning. Connie left his phone in the truck, though, and Sam lost track of him in the predawn woods. When the shooting started, he ran toward the noise.
Hank and Nan told police that Sam knew about the plot against Roseville-although, they admitted, not the exact target-and was on board until Pessie died. Sam and Mellie denied this, however. Months later, when I finally interview her on the record, Mellie tells me that she knows she should have sounded the alarm sooner and that speaking up for Sam was her way of making up for it. Sam was arrested on gun and conspiracy charges, but with public opinion firmly on his side, in the end, prosecutors just didn’t think they could convince a jury that a Jew would plot to do such a thing to his fellow Jews.
Nechemaya recovered quickly and immediately became a spokesperson for Roseville. He told Anderson Cooper and Dr. Phil and Charlie Rose and anyone who would listen-and, until the Tsarnaev brothers blew up the finish line of the Boston Marathon two weeks later, the world was listening-that the community supported Sam entirely. He said that they had hired an attorney to represent him and that the rumors he was connected to the Halls were overblown. Whenever he could, Nechemaya said Pessie’s name. Pessie Goldin was the first victim in Roseville, he said on CNN and Fox and the BBC. If corrupt, anti-Semitic local authorities had not ignored her death, this tragedy may never have happened.
Chief John Gregory resigned before they could fire him, and was indicted on charges of official corruption, witness tampering, evidence tampering, and conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. The last charge didn’t stick; there wasn’t really evidence that Gregory knew what Connie was planning. It did stick, however, to both Hank Hall and no-legged Grandma Nan. Mellie’s lawyer-a regular “contributor” on cable news-managed to convince the state that her client was terrified of Hank and his father, virtually a hostage in her home, and that she was a hero for alerting authorities “the minute she realized” what Connie had planned. She had her second baby in shackles, lost custody of Eva to the state, and, in exchange for ten years in prison, made a compelling-if occasionally hostile-witness against what was left of the Hall family. Mellie testified about how the father of her children had tried-and failed-to build a bomb that could be detonated remotely, and that Nan was routinely used as a straw purchaser for firearms. Nancy Grace called her the “terrorist tart” and excoriated prosecutors for giving her a deal. During the trial, Mellie told the court that she initially “thought they were joking” all the times Connie and Hank talked through scenarios about how to achieve the highest number of dead Jews: Should we put the bomb on a bus? Or in a building? For two days #Ithoughttheywerejoking trended on Twitter, with people posting pictures of Hitler and Osama bin Laden (“The guys with the box cutters said they were taking over the plane, but #Ithoughttheywerejoking”), then ever-more gruesome images of dead bodies (“The cops said not to reach into my waistband, but #Ithoughttheywerejoking”; “KKK said not to look at a white girl, but #Ithoughttheywerejoking”).
Halfway through the trial, Hank changed his plea to guilty and took a life without parole sentence. He described Pessie’s death to authorities, and, perhaps because his story matched Ryan’s and Sam’s, they believed him. Hank admitted they’d given up the plan to place an explosive device beneath the yeshiva’s school bus because, just as Mellie had told me, he was a fucking idiot and couldn’t make a bomb.
When prosecutors asked him why Connie targeted innocent children, Hank simply said, “He knew shooting up a playground would get a lot of attention and he wanted people to remember.”
Roseville provided an angle for every journalist. Anti-Semitism, homophobia, gun control, child sex abuse, police corruption, prison gangs, the right-wing “patriot” movement; a health reporter out of Boston even did a series of articles looking at how terminal cancer diagnoses are delivered and whether dying patients should be monitored for changes in their mental health. The NRA was quick to trumpet the fact that Connie did not commit suicide or find himself in handcuffs, but rather was taken down by “a good guy with a gun.” After a virtual arsenal of unregistered weapons was found at the Hall compound, activists on both sides of the gun control debate seized on the fact that an ex-con with ties to an extremist hate group was not only armed to the teeth in a state with new gun laws, but at the center of a multi-state gun trafficking organization no one in law enforcement was paying attention to. People inclined to loosen regulation saw Connie’s ability to gather so many weapons as an example of the ineffectiveness of gun control laws. The other side argued that Connie’s arsenal exposed loopholes that needed to be closed and an “iron pipeline” that needed to be thwarted. President Obama called the deaths “horrific” and sent his highest-ranking Jewish staffer to the funerals. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged funds for a memorial. There was a lot of talk about cracking down on right-wing hate groups and the Aryan Nations. The feds made a handful of arrests, but soon both law enforcement and the media turned their attention back to the threat of domestic terror inspired by Islamic fundamentalism.