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One thing became clear during Josef Raszler’s five hours of testimony Tuesday in Lehigh County Court, where he is on trial for homicide in the slaying of Stephanie Roof.

His imagination is fertile, he is remarkably persistent and he can build just about anything.

Years ago, he outfitted a junky old snow blower with heated handles and a mechanism to throw the snow farther. He inserted metal plates into the cover of a hymnal so a fellow church choir member with multiple sclerosis could get a better hold on it and keep it from shaking. He created a spool that could fly two kites at once, controlling them independently or together.

That cleverness extended to literally hundreds of other projects Raszler worked on in the basement of his Lower Macungie Township home and at his family’s Schuylkill County vacation cabin, where he had started to build a small-scale replica of an amusement park ride before his arrest.

Those projects, defense lawyers say, explain why Raszler was in possession of the many items — copper and plastic pipes, chunks of lead, high pressure air tanks and more — that prosecutors say he assembled into a powerful air gun that he used to shoot Roof, his neighbor and former lover, in September 2016.

Until Tuesday, Raszler, 41, sat quietly at the defense table as the prosecution called witness after witness and entered some 350 exhibits in building its case.

Computer forensics experts testified that Raszler had made search engine queries for information on air guns and tools that could be used to create rifling in a barrel to give spin to a bullet.

FBI experts showed a distinctive rifling pattern was found on the homemade lead projectile that killed Roof and two others found on the Schuylkill County cabin property, where prosecutors said Raszler took target practice the weekend before the shooting.

Prosecutors also read through many of the hundreds of texts that Raszler sent Roof after their relationship ended. They ranged from forlorn declarations of love to hostile and seemingly threatening messages. “This will catch up with you,” one said. “God sees all.”

When he took the stand, Raszler proved to be a steady, serious witness who answered his lawyer’s questions at length, made frequent eye contact with jurors and seemed eager to make sure they understood the technical jargon he sometimes used.

He offered a few lighthearted, self-deprecating quips — recalling, for example, how he used lead to reshape the port of his snow blower, but the metal proved to be susceptible to freezing.

“I essentially made an ice maker,” he said, drawing smiles.

The story had an underlying point. It was meant to show Raszler used lead for a number of purposes, but creating projectiles for air guns was never one of them.

Indeed, Raszler offered explanations for virtually all the items entered into evidence since the trial before Judge James Anthony began last Tuesday.

For example, prosecutors claim the lengths of crushed copper pipe in which the rifling marks were found served as the barrel of the air gun. Raszler said they were simply leftovers from the kite spool project, and he crushed them to test the strength of a vice. The marks were the result of his forcing another piece of metal through during the project, he said.

High-pressure paintball gun air tanks found in his basement were part of his effort to make a portable paint sprayer, Raszler said.

A high-pressure air compressor he ordered was also part of that project, he explained, but he broke the $1,100 device during the experiment, salvaged some parts and dropped the rest at a recycling yard.

The water filter prosecutors maintain was part of the gun? Raszler said he used it to reclaim and reuse refrigerant as he tried to fix the air conditioning on his beloved truck, a 1987 pickup with 200,000 miles that he has stubbornly nursed into old age.

The truck was central to another part of the case. Among Raszler’s internet searches in the months before Roof’s slaying was “rifling tool.” He said he researched them as he sought devices that could alter the shape of rivet holes as he replaced a portion of the truck’s rusted bed.

Notably, however, Raszler did not explain the presence of the projectiles on the cabin property. As part of an alternate suspect theory, the defense has suggested the evidence may have been left by someone else.

Because no air gun was ever found, Lehigh County Detective Mark Garrett, a firearms expert, was asked to build one using materials available in Raszler’s home workshop and online instructions. He also used molds to create lead projectiles like the one that killed Roof.

Garrett, who testified Monday, said he had never seen anything like the projectile, which was nearly 2.5 inches long and a half-inch in diameter. It weighed 1,381 grains — there are 7,000 grains in a pound — making it six times heavier than a .45 caliber bullet.

“I’ve seen a lot,” Garrett said. “This is larger than anything I’ve ever seen.”

Garrett’s first model, made from PVC piping, was displayed at the April 2017 news conference where Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin announced Raszler’s arrest.

Garrett made a simpler version later, consisting of a paintball gun air canister with a trigger and copper barrel attached. He displayed both during his testimony.

In his testimony, Raszler acknowledged the alterations he made to the air canisters were the same Garrett made in his project, but said such a modification would be a common one to put the canister to different uses. He insisted he never made any kind of air gun or projectile.

Raszler offered terse responses under cross-examination by prosecutor Jay Jenkins, who revisited the morning of the crime and asked why Raszler responded “I believe her name is Steph” to state troopers investigating the slaying.

“Not everyone uses their real name,” Raszler said.

The troopers also asked how well Raszler knew Roof. Though the pair had been neighbors for years and dated for several months — Raszler lost his virginity to her — he said “I knew her very little.”

He told Jenkins the response was accurate. “From my point of view I knew her very little,” he said.

So, too, was his initial denial that he had a relationship with Roof. “I did not at that time,” he said.

Raszler acknowledged that he acted inappropriately in the aftermath of his breakup with Roof, attributing the texts to his anger and sorrow but denying any of them were threatening.

In texting “This will catch up with you,” he said he was reminding Roof that their shared Christian faith taught that behaving inappropriately, as he believed both of them had done during their relationship, has consequences.

Answering a question from his own lawyer, Phil Lauer — “Did you kill Stephanie Roof?” — Raszler leaned into the microphone.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I respect life.”

Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan can be reached at 610-820-6598 or dsheehan@mcall.com.

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