The man who shot several children at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania told his wife he had molested two young family members 20 years ago, state police said Tuesday.

And according to police, gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV wrote that he was having dreams of molesting again.

Roberts, 32, also said in one of his rambling handwritten notes that he continued to be haunted by the death of his young daughter, Elise, who was born prematurely nine years ago and lived for only 20 minutes.

Investigators said previously they were looking into the possibility the attack may have been related to the death of one of Roberts' own children.

In the note, "Roberts expressed hate towards himself and toward God," Jeffery B. Miller, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, said at a news conference.

Roberts wrote that he had been having dreams for the past few years "about doing what he did 20 years ago, and in the dreams he wants to do those things again," said Miller.

As for Roberts' relatives, police still have not tracked everyone down to confirm the molestation claim. But they said Roberts' wife and parents know nothing about it. Police have also not been able to find any report made about a sexual assault involving Roberts.

Based on Roberts' claim, the "minor relatives" he allegedly molested were between three and five years old.

However, "it's unknown what type of molestation, whether it was fondling or inappropriate touching, or sexualt assault, or if anything occurred, we don't know," said Miller.

Evidence found

Police said there was no evidence any of the girls at the West Nickel Mines Amish School were sexually abused by Roberts before he opened fire on them and himself.

But police found evidence at the scene that seemed to suggest that Roberts had planned a sexual assault.

Along with three guns and ammunition, zip ties and a box of tools, police found two tubes of KY jelly, widely used as a sexual lubricant.

Earlier Tuesday, two more children died of wounds from the shooting at the schoolhouse in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, raising the death toll to five victims who lost their lives in the tragedy.

The death toll in the nation's third deadly school shooting in the past week rose within a matter of hours with the deaths of a 9-year-old girl at Delaware's Christiana Hospital, who died about 1 a.m., and a 7-year-old girl at Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey, who died about 4:30 a.m.

State police spokeswoman Linette Quinn said the two girls who died early Tuesday had suffered "very severe injuries, but the other ones are coming along very well."

"Her parents were with her," hospital spokeswoman Amy Buehler Stranges told The Associated Press of the 7-year-old. "She was taken off life support and she passed away shortly after."

Victims identified

They girls wounded when Roberts burst into the one-room schoolhouse Monday and shot some of them execution-style before committing suicide in the third deadly U.S. school shooting in the past week.

Police on Tuesday identified the five deceased girls as (age in brackets):

• Naomi Rose Ebersole (7)
• Anna Mae Stoltzfus (12)
• Marian Fischer (13)
• Mary Liz Miller (8)
• Lina Miller (7)

Police did not identify the five girls who remain in hospital, but said they were 6, 13, 11, and there two 8 year olds.

"We've got one in critical condition, the family is at the bedside," Matt Wayne of Penn State said at a news conference on Tuesday morning.

"We have another child, a 13-year-old, who is in serious condition. She is indeed exchanging non-verbal communication with the families who are also at her bedside," he told reporters, adding that "basically she's able to have some eye communication at this point."

While hospital officials said there was reason for optimism when a patient's condition improved from critical to serious, they were hesitant to say the patient was "out of the woods."

Of the injured, the 6-year-old girl remained in critical condition and the 13-year-old girl was in serious condition at Penn State Children's Hospital, spokeswoman Buehler Stranges said.

Another three girls, ages 8, 10 and 12, were flown to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where they were out of surgery but remained in critical condition, spokeswoman Peggy Flynn said.

There were boys in the classroom at the time, but Roberts ordered them and some adults to leave. He then barricaded the doors with two-by fours and piled-up desks, made the remaining girls line up along a blackboard, and tied their feet together.

Then he opened fire, shooting the girls in rapid succession at close range, before he took his own life.

Three were found dead, including a teenaged teacher's aide, while another seven were critically injured.

The attack bore similarities to a deadly school shooting last week in Bailey, Colo. last Wednesday where a drifter took six female high school students hostage, molested them and then shot one dead before killing himself as police closed in.

Then on Friday, a 15-year-old student killed his school's principal in western Wisconsin.

The Bush administration on Monday called for a school violence summit to be held next week with education and law enforcement officials to discuss possible federal action to help communities prevent violence and deal with its aftermath.

Canada has also felt the horror of gun violence at a school as recently as last month, when a gunman killed one woman and wounded 20 other people at Dawson College in Montreal.

Community reaction

The tragedy stunned the peaceful, largely Amish community about 90 kilometres west of Philadelphia, where descendants of settlers of Swiss-German descent have preserved a religious lifestyle that shuns aspects of modern life like cars and electricity.

Friends and family said Roberts was an ordinary man and a devoted father who showed few signs of trouble in the days leading up to the attack.

Neighbours and family members said they saw no indication that would lead Roberts, who was not Amish, to open fire on the young girls.

"Absolutely not," said Lois Fiester, a relative of Roberts who was standing outside the family's modest ranch house told AP.

"They're a fine Christian family. It's ironic and it's heartbreaking."

In a statement released to reporters, Marie Roberts called her husband "loving, supportive and thoughtful."

"He was an exceptional father," she said. "He took the kids to soccer practice and games, played ball in the backyard and took our 7-year-old daughter shopping. He never said no when I asked him to change a diaper."

Amish farmers live simply, travel by horse and buggy and cultivate the land using old-fashioned traditions.

These traditions are likely helping them come to grips with the tragedy, said a senior fellow in the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County.

"I think the Amish community has a remarkable capacity for dealing with diversity. In many ways, they are better prepared to deal with this kind of situation than many other Americans," Professor Donald Kraybill, a leading scholar of Amish communities, told CTV's Canada AM.

"Partly because of their religious world view, even horrific events like this are part of the providence of God and that there may be a greater purpose or a greater good here that isn't apparent at first."

With files from The Associated Press