Scott Roeder was charged Tuesday afternoon with first-degree murder in the shooting death of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller inside a Wichita church on Sunday.

The 51-year-old Roeder is accused of killing the 67-year-old Tiller as the doctor served as an usher at his Lutheran church. Roeder was also charged with aggravated assault for allegedly threatening two people who tried to stop him.

Roeder appeared in a Wichita court via video from the Sedgwick County Jail. He fiddled with the charging documents on a podium in front of him and said "okay" when Judge Ben Burgess read the charges.

Burgess ordered Roeder to be held without bond and said he was not allowed to communicate with Tiller's family. The judge told Roeder that he would be assigned a public defender.

"And I'll obviously be hearing from one of those lawyers between now, or do you know how long it will be before I hear from one of those lawyers?" Roeder asked.

Within two days, the judge answered to Roeder's only question in the brief appearance. A preliminary hearing is set for June 16th.

Roeder was arrested about three hours after the shooting near Gardner, Kansas, about 170 miles northeast of Wichita. His last known address is in Kansas City, Missouri.

Roeder's family life began unraveling more than a decade ago when he got involved with anti-government groups and then became "very religious in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way," his former wife, Lindsey Roeder, told The Associated Press.

"The anti-tax stuff came first and then it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion," said Lindsey, who was married to Scott for 10 years, but "strongly disagrees with his beliefs. "That's all he cared about is anti-abortion."

Someone using the name Scott Roeder posted comments about Tiller on anti-abortion Web sites, including one that referred to the doctor as the "concentration camp Mengele of our day," a reference to the Nazi doctor who performed ghastly medical experiments on Jews and others at Auschwitz.

The posting said Tiller "needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation."

Tiller's death has focused attention on the availability of third-trimester abortions, as the few remaining providers age with little interest from new doctors to offer such services.

Tiller's family says there are no plans yet to reopen his Wichita clinic, despite earlier comments from Nebraska doctor LeRoy Carhart, one of four physicians who worked at the clinic.