EXECUTION SECHEDULED FOR '92 CAPE MURDERS; A NICE GUY WHO BECAME A KILLER

Look at the yearbook picture of the 1968 Central High School wrestling team. There's a future doctor. A future lawyer. A future psychotherapist.

Can you pick out a future killer?

Probably not. Gary Lee Roll was a nice kid, people say.

Mitch Miller, the wrestler sitting to Roll's right in the photograph, says they had a unique relationship. "Gary treated me similar to how Marcie treated Peppermint Patty in Peanuts.' He called me sir.' He looked up to me as if I were some kind of icon. He was a great, great kid."

Roll was "Mr. Clean" during their time together in school, Miller said. They lost touch after high school. The next time Miller heard anything about Gary Roll it was because he'd been charged with murders.

"I told my wife this is not the same guy," Miller said. "It looks a little bit like him but ... ."

At some point between high school and getting arrested, Roll "sold his soul," Miller said.

In 1993, Roll pleaded guilty to murdering Randy Scheper, 17, and his mother, Sherry Scheper, 47. Roll also was charged with murdering 22-year-old Curtis Scheper but did not admit to that crime in making his guilty plea.

He is scheduled to be executed Wednesday at the Potosi Correctional Center.

"I'll guarantee you it would make me cry to go and see him," Miller said. "The first thing he'd say was, Oh Mitch, if we could go back 30 years.'"

That's the Gary Roll he wants memories of.

"I'll always remember Gary Roll as my little buddy at the wrestling practice. It's not very often in anybody's life that anybody holds them up as someone to look up to," Miller said.

"I wish like anything he would have called later down the road and asked for help and advice."

Lon Wilke, who was the Central wrestling coach in 1968-69, doesn't recall ever having any disciplinary problems with Roll. Now teaching at Rockwood Summit High School in Fenton, Mo., Wilke moved to Desloge, Mo., and then the St. Louis area after leaving Cape Girardeau in 1985. When contacted, he was unaware that his former wrestler had pleaded guilty to two murders and was scheduled to be executed soon.

The news astounded him. "He was one of our captains, a really good leader and a very good wrestler," Wilke said.

People who knew Roll later in his life speak about him the same way. "He was a real sweet guy," said Vickie Naeger. She graduated from Cape Central the same year Roll did, and she and her husband, Rick, got to know Roll when he installed a furnace in their house in the mid-1970s.

"We got friendly with him. He bought a couple of antique pieces with us," she said.

"He was just the nicest guy. He would hang out at the house with us."

Like others, Naeger was "totally shocked" in 1992 when she learned that Roll had been arrested for the murders. "I was totally blown away," she said. "I never would have imagined him doing any of that."

Inmate No. 990106

Inmate No. 990106 was born Nov. 22, 1951, in Nashville, Tenn., the son of Colvert Lee Roll Sr. and Virginia Roll. Because his father was the district manager for a furnace company, the family changed addresses quite a bit before moving to Cape Girardeau when Gary was in the sixth grade. Mr. Roll started his own heating and air conditioning business in Cape Girardeau.

Gary had an older brother, Lee Colvert Roll Jr., and a younger sister, Jennifer. Lee was a star athlete at Cape Central, a scatback on the football team and far-ranging centerfielder on the baseball team. Known to many as Butch, Lee was in the U.S. Navy Special Forces in Vietnam and now is an FBI agent in Kansas City.

He trained members of the Missouri Highway Patrol SWAT team who arrested his brother.

In high school, Gary Roll ranked 239th of 412 graduates in 1969, while his IQ was measured at 125, considered very bright. He attended Southeast Missouri State University for a few years before deciding to join the U.S. Army. Like his brother, he went for Special Forces. He made it to the third phase of the arduous ordeal before the Army ordered him to begin the training again because he suffered heat exhaustion and a foot injury.

He took an assignment in Germany instead. Drugs became important in Roll's life there, but not the illegal ones he was taking the night of the murders.

A key turning point

An Army oral surgeon extracted six impacted teeth at once, and in doing so exposed a nerve in the 22-year-old Roll's lower mouth. It was the beginning of an 18-year bout with chronic facial pain and prescription drugs that Roll's attorney, Ken McManaman, and his brother believe were mitigating factors the night the horrific murders occurred. (See related story)

After leaving the Army, he returned to Southeast Missouri State University for more studies. Eventually he accumulated 114 hours, 10 short of an undergraduate degree. Afterward, he continued to work in the family heating and air conditioning business, the only job he ever had.

A high school acquaintance recalls phoning him about having some work done during the 1980s. Roll's wife told him he didn't feel well enough to come to the phone.

"I think he was just lying low during the 1980s," the acquaintance said.

Roll's 16-year marriage to Julie Koontz ended in 1991 due to the frequent hospitalizations due to chronic pain, his brother believes. She told investigators her ex-husband sometimes manipulated physicians to get drugs.

Just before the murders, Roll was experimenting with LSD. He said it eased the pain.

His wife told investigators he never physically abused her but could be intimidating. Testing at the Cape Girardeau County Probation Office found that Roll had a severe drug abuse problem but functioned within the average range on a scale for aggression.

The couple's teen-age son remained with his father when the couple split up. Roll admitted involving his son in a burglary he committed and he also had his son bury the gun used in the murders.

Sorry it happened

On Aug. 9, 1992, the 40-year-old Roll, 21-year-old John Brown Jr. and 18-year-old David Rhodes went to the Scheper house in Cape Girardeau to steal money and drugs. Roll was wearing shorts because he still had a cast on his leg due to a fall and was wearing a white sweatshirt with a dolphin on the front.

The three men were arrested for killing the Schepers on Nov. 4 after police were given an incriminating tape recording.

Roll had two prior convictions: one for possessing intoxicants when he was 20 years old and another for running a red light.

While in jail in Columbia, Mo., awaiting trial for the murders, he was charged with breaking a deputy's nose. He said it happened because he wasn't being given his medications.

In 1997, Roll was sentenced to five years for a conviction of violence against an offender, an incident with another prisoner that occurred the previous year in prison.

In the end, Roll surprised the court by pleading guilty to two of the murders. "He said he was tired of playing games," McManaman said. "He wanted to come clean, and that he didn't want his family -- especially his son -- to have to endure any more."

During the proceedings, Roll's mother was asked what the court should do with him.

"That's a hard thing to put to a mother," she said. "I would recommend that he would have to pay for it. I mean, if he did this, he would have to."

Asked what she wanted to tell the judge, she said, "I don't know what to say to you, only ask that I would like for God to guide him."

At his sentencing hearing, Roll said he fell apart because of the use of narcotics. He didn't provide much else in the way of explanation or contrition for the crimes.

"I can't even say this right, but I'm just so sorry that it happened," he said. "I don't know what to do to make it better."