SEQUIM — “I’m a simple person,” Shawn Matthew Roe wrote Sept. 2, “just praying no one gets in my way.”
Eighteen days later, someone did cross Roe’s path: veteran U.S. Forest Service Officer Kristine Fairbanks of Forks, whom authorities say Roe shot and killed at the Dungeness Forks Campground about 6 miles south of Sequim.
Roe’s journal, found in one of his abandoned campsites, mostly is the diary of a man living off the land, seemingly at peace with himself and his surroundings.
At intervals in the 89 pages of the 3-by-5-inch notebook, however, a much darker character appears — the man who authorities say on Sept. 20 killed Fairbanks, 51, and then 59-year-old Richard Ziegler, who lived below the campground, so that he could steal Ziegler’s truck.
It’s Roe — whose last known address was in Everett — they say tried to shoot it out with Clallam County sheriff’s deputies at the Longhouse Market & Deli in Sequim that night.
There, fulfilling his written wish to “go out with an action-packed bang,” he died of five bullet wounds to his torso.
Copies of the journal were released last week by Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict.
Roe’s rage appears at the start of his journal when he says he already has been living in the woods for a week and a half, on the first page where he says he’s “just sick of how pitiful society has become!
“Stupid! No sense, just keeping people lousy.
“I felt like a brainless ant in a big colony. No [wonder] I preferred to be wild and free.”
During late August and early September, he maintained three camps — including one he called a “decoy” — around an “old homestead off Palo Alto Road.”
“This is the pretty spot [where] I’d like to die,” he writes early in his diary.
“The dream of my life was to wander the woods and be left alone. Let’s hope that happens. I’ll keep track of time until the pen or I wear out.”
What follows are accounts of days after days in which Roe hunts small game — mostly squirrels, and once a brace of mallard ducks — and his chocolate Labrador retriever Jake catches ground squirrels that Roe calls chipmunks.
He supplements his wild diet with Meals Ready to Eat, tuna, ramen noodles and, when pressed, cattail roots and berries.
At times, Roe seems to be writing to his mother in Everett, at times to himself, and at times to friends and family with hatred of the ex-wife, Mary Catherine White of Shelton, he once imprisoned in her own home.
He writes of a routine consisting of hunting, scavenging, cooking and marveling at the land.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Roe writes.
“Blue sky, fresh air and green treetops as far as you can see!!
“I’ve heard Canadian geace [sic] the last two days and nights, love to find one, would go good with the leftover beans.”
‘This will end in gunplay’
Soon, though, Roe’s other side appears, a man tortured by his past and terrified of his future.
“I hate to sit in one spot to [sic] long, or I will certainly run into authorities, game wardens, etc.!!
“Then this will end in gunplay.”
Roe spends more hours waiting for ducks that never arrive at a nearby pond, then waxes sentimental — and self-absorbed.
“I love you! All my good friends and family. You’re all good people and did so much to help, but I just don’t seem to have anything left.
“All the problems, expenses and low work. I felt like a bum (now I am one).”
Now Roe slides into a rant that foreshadows the shootings.
‘I’d rather die out here’
“Please don’t insult what intelligence I do have. I know how stupid I’m being, but it’s the one thing that’s eaten at me my whole life.
“Looking around me I see life as short and unpredictable.
“I’d rather die out here then [sic] spend another day in jail because of some jack-off thing that I missed-forgot-wasn’t told-or-couldn’t afford.
“And be treated like a punk when I’m out [of jail]. I only had a year left with the dippy DOC,” he wrote, referring to the Department of Corrections, which supervised Roe’s probation for parole violations on two convictions for domestic violence.
“But I just don’t know that I was ready to [meet] them on their grounds. So I figured I might as well be [on] my turf or we all live and/or die free!”
‘I’ll go Bonnie and Clyde’
Roe returns to his accounts of living off the land, complaining of wet socks and damp smells, but his anger begins to burst through more frequently.
“A s—– day out here is better than a good day inside the walls, although the food is sometimes better, mainly because it comes to you. . .
“But I don’t plan on quitting this time. If I can’t keep Jake and I fed, then I’ll go Bonnie and Clyde, at least go out with an action-packed bang.”
Hungry, he fantasizes about shooting one of the cows he sometimes hears lowing in the distance.
Benedict and other authorities say they think Roe was on his way to kill his ex-wife when he stopped at the Longhouse to buy a bottle of whiskey.
In the journal, he fantasizes about taking vengeance on his ex-wife:
“It does tempt me sometimes to go rain destruction on Shelton.”
Thinking ‘horrible things’
Still, Roe wrote he was “trying to be at peace with things/myself.
“But when you’re tired, hungry and dirty, you can think of all kinds of terror — even though I’ve brought most of this on myself it still eats at me not to finish.
“Someone who could be so 2 faced!!! This is the main reason I removed myself from reality — not only cause I disagree and can’t stand it but I was starting to think some horrible things.
“Plus was [illegible], under-worked and didn’t have the money to pay fines and stay out of jail.
“Well, I’m going to do something!!!!
“My mind is in a bad place. I keep thinking and writing I’ll go Bonnie and Clyde for shure [sic].”
Love for friends, family
A brief interval of expressing love to his mother, friends and family follows, but Roe’s rants soon continue, noticeably less coherent:
“I truly don’t want to hurt anyone innocent, even thou [sic] it would be easier to live and get by.
“I hate to see people get f—– because of someone else’s decisions.
“I also don’t think I have it in me. Someone has to make me [illegible] before I can do true meanness upon someone.
“Either way I will shoot high at first, hoping to make them run! After that God or the devil have all the power.
“I will do what I need to keep going on. Until I am ready at that time it will be me and my gun that decides who and where.”
Falling into fury
Barely a page intervenes before Roe’s writing turns yet more violent.
“I stay away from the rivers due to the increased traffic, don’t want to run into anyone I don’t want to shoot.
“Maybe I should just go to Shelton. Wouldn’t matter who I ran into. Ah can’t say that I have many good people there.”
Roe says he carries a 9mm Glock semiautomatic pistol with him even though “I can’t hit s— with it. . .
“Maybe I’ll just use the 9mm as a noisemaker when the authorities catch up to me.”
Abruptly Roe writes about a bear that he hears, then sees, but has no good angle to shoot.
Then he worries about bagging enough game to feed his dog as well as himself, and describes trying to shoot a squirrel.
“He was in stealth mode to jump from branch to branch and tree to tree until we hadn’t a clue as to [his] whereabouts.
“He deserves to live.”
Daughter a bad dream
As his pen begins to run out of ink, Roe tells of how Jake frightened away a deer before Roe could shoot it.
“Sometimes he’s perfect, then others he just runs full throttle everywhere.”
Three pages from the journal’s end, he relates a bad dream:
“I was very sad last night under the moon, thinking I’ll never see anyone again!
“I awoke this morning with a dream. I was carrying [his 8-year-old daughter] telling her I’ve missed her and love her so very much.
“I awoke frustrated. Because she wouldn’t look at me — was ignoring me!
“My heart hurt, and I was in a clammy sweat.
“I miss her very much. It’s been almost two years since I’ve seen her, eight months plus since she quit answering her phone.”
His last few sentences:
“I love you all very much and am very sorry for the madness and/or hurt I’ve created.
‘If you get this journal’
“If you get this journal, please read the book Wild at Hart [sic]. It may explain some things about me — people and differences.”
[John Eldredge’s book Wild at Heart, according to Amazon.com reviews, urges Christian men to fulfill their “secret longings” of adventure, risk and heroism.]
The journal ends:
“I miss her. I hope she’s doing OK.
“Day 20, missed three ducks again. We looked very carefully but they were hid—.”
Here Roe’s pen runs dry.
Reporter Jim Casey can be reached at 360-417-3538 or at jim.casey@peninsuladailynews.com.
