Charles Roberts, 32, carried a 9mm handgun, bolt-action rifle and 12-gauge shotgun when he walked into the school.

It was early morning of Oct. 2, 2006, in Nickel Mines, Penn., a small settlement about 60 miles west of Philadelphia. The 30 or so Amish students in the one-room schoolhouse had just begun their lessons for the day.

Charles barricaded the windows with wooden planks and ordered the teachers and male students to leave. He grabbed the 10 remaining girls, aged 6 through 13, and lined them next to the chalkboard. He shot them, point-blank, killing five and severely wounding the others. Then he killed himself.

A series of notes he left behind that morning indicates he was tormented by the loss of his first-born child in 1997.

He was buried three days after the shooting. During the funeral service, members of the area's Amish community, including parents of the children he had killed just days earlier, arrived to offer their condolences to Charles' family and friends. They, too, had lost a loved one in the massacre, the community reasoned.

Zach Roberts, one of Charles' younger brothers, was awed by their presence. For his mom Terri, the forgiveness they displayed was a humble form of inspiration, not only to help cope with the shooting, but to accept the now-permanent stigma of "The Mother of That Killer."

Terri has since stayed optimistic. Over the past seven years she's traveled the globe as a public speaker, touching on topics like faith, persistence and adversity in relation to the shooting.

Late last year, Zach began work on a documentary project, along with an Indiegogo campaign, to highlight in detail his mother's story of coping with the aftermath.

"She was hysterical on the phone. I couldn't understand a word she was saying."

Zach was living in New York the fall of 2006. He sat at home in his SoHo apartment when his mother called him: "Turn on CNN, turn on CNN."

Still groggy from just waking up, Zach turned on the TV. The first details he remembers were vague: an aerial view of a small, wooden house surrounded by cornfields, the words "shooter," "school" and "fatal" printed in white block font on top of the screen.

And then he saw a familiar name — Charles Carl Roberts — scroll across the bottom banner.

"I didn't suffer from any denial then," he says. "I saw the name and just thought, 'This is real. Damn. This is real.'"

After the funeral, Zach returned to New York and tried to live as normal a life as possible. He'd studied film in college, down in Florida, but worked full-time as a bartender in various spots in Manhattan. Over time, he met new people — eventually his wife, who he now lives with in Stockholm along with their two-year-old daughter — and bounced between jobs, friends and the like.

Few people knew his brother was the shooter. It wasn't something he was trying to run away from, necessarily; it just didn't seem appropriate, or timely, to bring up the subject in everyday conversation.

"I remember seeing newspapers with [Charles'] face on them. And I'd look around at people and realize that they had no idea this man was my brother," he says.

For him, not talking about it was a form of security, an assurance that he could live his life in New York, miles away from the Pennsylvanian countryside, without having to answer questions. Was that really your brother? Why did he kill those kids? Did you see it coming? How do you feel?

His mother took a much more vocal path. Before the shooting, she was already an established public speaker in the area. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and, as treatment, experimented with a raw food diet. It helped, so she created a website with recipes and advice on wellness and healthy living, occasionally talking to church groups and local schools.

After the incident, she launched a new project, "Joy Through Adversity," which focused on positive-thinking in the wake of terrible circumstances. She's since traveled across the world (she was in Japan at the time of writing) and spoken to high schools, churches, universities and senior groups about coping with tragedy — again, all the while tying things back to the day of the shooting.

During a recent trip home, Zach's mother spoke to a local church group. He noticed how engaged her audience had become. "After seeing how powerfully her message was being received, at least to the churches and organizations she was speaking to, I knew I had to bring it to a larger crowd."

He had the background in film. Plus, he realized it would help him come to terms with a story he'd emotionally suppressed for almost a decade. He'd have to address it — relive it, even — through uncomfortable interviews and trips back home. But he felt it would lift a weight off his shoulders. So far, it has.

"Making this film is taking this giant burden off me. It's been difficult, but it's the right choice," he says. "I have a daughter now, and I don’t want her, or other future members of my family, to think of what happened as something nobody talks about, like a dark family secret. It’s important that it’s out in the open and can be freely discussed."

Image: Zach Roberts

The film will focus mostly on Terri's story, beginning with the day of the shooting and branching out to how she's coped through speaking and embracing what happened.

And while most of her speeches are religious in nature (her website features a looping slideshow of Biblical verses on the homepage), Zach says he wants the film to appeal a variety of audiences, Christian or otherwise. He's not a religious person himself, which is why he felt comfortable being the one behind the camera. The message he's trying to convey with the film, of hope, inspiration, persistence through tragedy, is one he feels can appeal to anyone.

It's about searching for forgiveness, even in the darkest of circumstances.

"On the day of [my brother's] funeral, one of the fathers who lost a child walked up to my mom and said, 'Not only did I lose a daughter, but you lost a son,'" he remembers.

"To show up to the funeral of a man who, days before, had taken his girl, his little girl, for no reason at all ... that is a tremendous amount of empathy. It inspired my mom, she used it to inspire others, and I want this film to keep that feeling going."

The project is currently just over $1,360 into its $120,000 goal. There are 48 days remaining to donate. You can learn more about it on Zach's website.

Images: Zach Roberts