Trevor Hughes

USA TODAY

DENVER — The man who admits to killing three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic last fall told police he dreamed he’ll be met in Heaven by aborted fetuses wanting to thank him for saving unborn babies, according to newly released court documents.

Robert Dear Jr. told police he attacked the clinic because he was "upset with them performing abortions and the selling of baby parts,” and admitted to fatally shooting an arriving police officer through a tinted window because he knew the officer couldn’t see him, according to an arrest warrant.

“As Robert Louis Dear Jr. was being placed into a patrol car, he began yelling out statement about the killing of babies and no more baby parts,” Colorado Springs police Det. Jerry Schiffelbein wrote in a warrant. He also said “he was happy with what he had done because his actions … ensured that no more abortions would be conducted at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs."

The horrifying details of Dear’s Nov. 27 attack on the clinic are spelled out in court records made public by a judge Monday evening after a months-long legal dispute with journalists who said the public had a right to know the details of Dear’s attack — and why he faces 179 counts, including first-degree murder. Dear’s attorney says the man should be confined to a mental institution. A competency hearing is slated for later this month.

Killed in the attack were police officer Garrett Swasey, a father of two, Army veteran Ke'Arre Stewart, a father of two, and Jennifer Markovsky, a mother of two. None of the three worked for Planned Parenthood. Nine other people were injured in the attack, which came after months of publicity over what Planned Parenthood says were deceptively edited video recordings purporting to show clinic staff elsewhere offering to sell fetal tissue for research purposes.

Police officers ended the attack by crashing armored vehicles into the lobby to rescue several people who had locked themselves in a protected room inside the building. Dear, who suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach despite wearing a homemade ballistic vest made of silver coins and duct tape, surrendered to police shortly after, police said in their warrants.

The newly unsealed arrest and search warrants also reveal:

Dear was carrying four Soviet-style SKS semi-automatic rifles, and shot from inside the clinic at at propane tanks he’d set out as improvised bombs, although they didn’t explode as planned. Inside his Toyota Tacoma pickup, parked outside the clinic, police found two handguns, another rifle and a shotgun.

One victim said she was approached outside the clinic by Dear, who told her she shouldn’t have gone to the clinic that day and then shot her multiple times. She survived with wounds to her arm.

Dear stopped for directions multiple times while driving from his home to the clinic, and eventually called Planned Parenthood itself to get directions. He tore a page from the phone book with the address and a locator map.

He said he admired Paul Hill, who killed an abortion provider in Florida in 1994, along with the doctor’s bodyguard. Hill, who was executed in 2003, said he believed God wanted him to fight abortions with lethal force.

Dear admitted to gluing the locks of an abortion clinic in South Carolina, where he used to live, and that he believed he’d saved lives that day by preventing any abortions from being carried out while the locks were repaired.

Dear told police he believes President Obama is the “Antichrist.”

Dear recently underwent a competency exam, and while the doctor’s decision remains secret, his attorney last month alluded to the conclusion that the judge should “commit Mr. Dear to the state hospital in Pueblo.”

Judge Gilbert Martinez set an April 28 hearing for testimony on the doctor’s report. If the court deems Dear incompetent, the charges against him would be put on hold and he would be committed indefinitely to the state hospital, with his status reviewed every 90 days.

"I'm for a speedy trial, this will help the victims' families," Dear told KKTV in March. "Everybody deserves to have information about what's going on and what caused this tragedy events of everything, but they don't want that to come out because it might embarrass the feds and Obama.”

Dear has previously confessed in open court, and claimed he was a “warrior for the babies.”

If found competent and convicted, Dear could face the death penalty.