FOUNTAIN, Colorado, December 14, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – An “unstable” pagan activist with an “irrational” hatred of Christians has been arrested for threatening to “start shooting” Republicans over a Planned Parenthood closure.
On December 8, Fern Roberta DeLise called the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood to make an appointment. However, the facility remains closed following a mass shooting on November 27. Authorities say the 54-year-old was pushed over the edge when she learned she would have to make the 85-mile drive from her home in the city of Fountain to Denver.
“It’s tempting to walk into a Republican Party meeting with my dead husband’s gun and just start shooting people,” DeLise told an operator at the Denver Planned Parenthood facility. The employee took the threat seriously enough to inform the authorities, who arrested DeLise for suspicion of menacing. They found ammunition and gun paraphernalia but no gun.
According to her police affidavit, neighbors described DeLise as “irrational” and “unstable.”
KRDO-TV reports that “one acquaintance described DeLise as irrational and an extreme liberal who has expressed discontent towards Christians, Republicans, and conservatives.”
State officials say the threat of politically motivated violence against pro-life Republicans has them sweating. Colorado Republican Party Chairman Steve House told Denver's CBS affiliate that “we have to be prepared as a party” for potential violence. Rhetoric implying violence “scares us, and people need be worried about it a little bit,” he said.
DeLise, who is active in local environmentalist causes, posted a story on her Facebook page on November 27 from Occupy Democrats attacking Fox News' coverage of Robert Lewis Dear's Planned Parenthood shooting. She also likes “Americans Against the Republican Party” on Facebook.
Yet several media outlets reported DeLise had intimidated the abortion industry. A story from KKTV, the CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs, still carries the headline, “Fountain Woman Accused Of Threatening Denver Planned Parenthood.” Other outlets have updated their stories to reflect that DeLise allegedly threatened to kill pro-life conservatives.
But Operation Rescue President Troy Newman told LifeSiteNews that no one should have been surprised to learn that she was politically progressive. Left-wing radicals “have always expunged their enemies,” he said. “Mass graves are filled with the political enemies of the Left.”
“When you look at history accurately, it is always the far-Left that has filled the trenches with the bodies of innocent people,” Newman told LifeSiteNews.
DeLise is, or was, apparently affiliated with a pagan religious group. In November 2002, the New York State Pagan Assembly listed “Fern deLise” as its ad hoc board member and legal researcher – under both her given name and the name “Paleocorvus,” which is Latin for “Old Raven.” According to WhitePages.com, DeLise lived in several locations in New York before moving to Colorado.
Her Facebook profile shows that she likes the page, “Wild, Witchy and Bitchy Pagan Women” and the Wiccan author “Starhawk.”
That, too, came as no surprise to Newman. “Christianity teaches that all humans are created in the image and likeness of God and are to be cherished and respected,” Newman told LifeSiteNews. “But Planned Parenthood and their big eugenic counterparts want us to believe that persons are only valued by their contribution to the collective, and once their usefulness ends, so should their life.”
DeLise was taken to the El Paso County Correctional Felony. She will face formal charges in court on Wednesday.
