Sniper: The True Story of Anti-Abortion Killer James Kopp

by Jon Wells

  The hermitage was a place where aspiring monks came to study and learn. You could smell the flowers and pine in the air, hear nothing but silence. He met Father Isaiah Teichert, talked for many hours with the priest. Father Isaiah, Jim reflected, came to know him better than anyone in the Bay Area. That included, sadly, he thought, his family, who had never really known him. His fellow pro-lifers never quite figured him out either.

  What, exactly, did Father Isaiah advise? Years later, his relationship with Jim Kopp was not something the priest was willing to discuss. Whatever Father Isaiah’s advice, Jim now wondered if his mission might be to embrace the world of the Benedictine monk. He had been called to pray but action was necessary, too. So much violence, so much blood shed by innocent babies. Jim knew what his mission could ultimately mean—that he was destined to die a drawn-out, painful death. So be it.

  The notion of the “victim soul” came from Jesus, who redeemed mankind by dying for their sins. It also derived from the Old Testament and the ancient Jewish custom of letting a goat loose in the wilderness on Yom Kippur, after the high priest had symbolically laid upon the goat all the sins of the people. The unborn babies were victim souls. Jim decided he would be one as well.

  Later that year he went east, to New York, joining the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, housed in a convent in the Bronx not far from Yankee Stadium. He was there several months, rising before dawn each day to feed the homeless and drug addicts who came to the order’s soup kitchen. He prayed, meditated and studied. He had few possessions and didn’t talk much to others. He owned three sets of clothes, washed them in a bucket.

  Mother Teresa had said that “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, murder by the mother herself.” Jim would tell friends for years that he had once met Mother Teresa face-to-face, he told her about his calling from God, and she suggested he become a priest. Jim then told her that he was conflicted on the priesthood, because he felt a separate calling from Jesus to devote his life to stopping abortion.

  About six months after joining the Bronx mission, he left, returning to California. He never stayed in one place for long. On May 21, 1986, in Redwood City, south of San Francisco, he was arrested at a protest outside a clinic and charged with obstruction and resisting arrest. On July 19 he was arrested in San Francisco for using force. He headed east.

  On August 5, 1986 he was in Pensacola, Florida. He was anxious to show his support for the woman whose reputation within the anti-abortion movement was reaching heroic proportions. Her name was Joan Andrews. It was back in March 1986, in Pensacola, that Andrews cemented her status as “patron saint of the rescue movement” at the Pensacola Ladies Center. Along with another protester, Reverend John Burt, and his two daughters, Andrews walked inside the clinic and, with police in pursuit, tried to unplug a suction abortion machine. Police cuffed her, then arrested the others. Andrews grabbed the edge of the machine behind her cuffed hands, yanked and toppled it over, disabling it. There were no abortions that day. The trial made her a star within the movement, she was sentenced to five years at the Broward Correctional Institute, Florida’s toughest maximum-security prison for women.

  Jim Kopp and 300 others from far and wide made the trip to Pensacola, stood outside the clinic to protest the outrageous injustice done to Joan Andrews. It was heavenly for Jim to be among so many like-minded souls. He decided that, from that moment on, he would no longer go to jail angry, but with a cheerful heart. Among the group in Pensacola was a 58-year-old professor of philosophy from Fordham University in New York. His name was William Marra.

  “We’re not eccentric, or extremist, but we’re here to see Joan Andrews free,” Marra told a reporter.

  William Marra had a daughter named Loretta. She had just turned 23, studied philosophy at Fordham, and had, like her father, embraced the pro-life cause. Jim Kopp instantly felt great respect for William Marra, who had, like Jim’s father, served in the military. As for Loretta, Jim would, in time, make a connection with her that would grow stronger and stronger and ultimately, change his life.

  Kopp headed back to California, and more protests and charges. September 6, in Richmond, trespassing. October 25, in San Jose, he invaded a clinic with another man and chained themselves to an examination table as 15 others protested outside. November 22 in Alameda, trespassing, causing injury, damaging property. He again headed for Florida. On Friday, November 28, the day after Thanksgiving, he was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest at the same Pensacola clinic where Joan Andrews had been arrested. Jim and others blocked the clinic doors with a truck. That same weekend a meeting was held at the Western Sizzlin’ steakhouse in town. One of the organizers was a man named Randall Terry. Terry unveiled his vision for a new, national, direct action campaign inspired by the impromptu assaults on clinics that had taken place. Terry called it “Operation Rescue.”

  Among pro-lifers there were differences of opinion on tactics, on means and ends. Save the preborn, but how? What was the time frame for political change? What kind of action? Jim Kopp was part of the movement, had found a group to connect with—but how long could it conceivably last? He joined Randall Terry’s staff, but he would last only six months. His thinking was evolving on the utility of violence in the cause, and the distinction between man’s law and God’s law. Was history not replete with examples where man’s law required trumping by those willing to carry the torch, and weapons, for God’s law? Slavery was one example that pro-lifers most frequently cited. Jim listened to mainstream pro-life leaders take great pains to denounce violence in the cause. He felt they were not practicing Gandhi’s true satyagraha—civil resistance —which Jim thought should be active, outcome based, and sacrificial. He had a name for people who abused the concept: cowards.

  Chapter 6 ~ Romanita

  On December 16, 1986, smoke filled the Manhattan Planned Parenthood headquarters at Second Avenue and 22nd Street in New York City. One of the bombs was relatively small. No major damage, the carpet caught fire. But police found a larger bomb as well with a detonator designed to be triggered by the smaller explosion—it had not gone off. It was made of 15 sticks of dynamite, powerful enough to collapse the entire building and break windows blocks away. Bomb squad officers examined the blasting cap, timer and battery. Pro job. And there was something else stuck among the sticks of dynamite. It was a medal of St. Benedict, with the likeness of a monk on it, and the phrase Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur (may we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death). A bomb squad officer gingerly defused it. No one was caught.

  In February, Cardinal John O’Connor appeared on TV urging the bomber to turn himself in. A 37-year-old ex-Vietnam Marine named Dennis John Malvasi surrendered. Malvasi was also involved in a bombing in Queens in November 1985. “If the Cardinal says something and you don’t listen,” he told a newspaper, “then when you stand before the magistrate in the celestial court, you got problems. And I got enough problems without God being mad at me.”

  Malvasi had fought in the bloody aftermath of the Tet Offensive, serving as a field radio operator. He later told the New York Times that he never felt more alive than when under fire. After the war, he trained as an actor at workshops on the Lower East Side, worked as an entertainer on cruise ships. He was reportedly arrested in September 1972 for stabbing a man in a traffic altercation and sentenced to five years’ probation. In 1975, two months after early release from probation, he was arrested for carrying a .25-caliber pistol and jailed for two years. He went underground upon his release, using at least five aliases. In 1984, he was thrown in jail again for two years in Florida after attempting to buy firearms in that state.

  Malvasi pled guilty to the Manhattan Planned Parenthood bombing. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and five years’ probation. Two other men received jail terms as well, including his brother-in-law. Malvasi told authorities where he had stored his explosives, and pol
ice found 78 dynamite sticks, black powder, and electric detonating plastic caps. Malvasi had a sharp, angular nose and dark eyes. He was a small man, perhaps a generous fivefoot-seven, but an angry intensity radiated from him. Upon his release from prison he began dating a woman he met in the pro-life movement. She too was Catholic, and not only shared his pro-life beliefs, but also his belief in taking action to further the cause. She was 13 years his junior, and her name was Loretta Marra.

  * * *

  On January 5, 1987, Jim Kopp was arrested in San Francisco for unlawful entry, obstruction, resist arrest, trespass. As was now routine with pro-life agitators, he was released. The next day, he was arrested again. February 25 he was arrested in Oakland, and two days later, in Woodbridge, New Jersey, for criminal trespassing and burglary. March 11, he was tried in Florida for breach of the peace. July 25, Manchester, Missouri, and later in Houston, charged with criminal trespass, fined $500 and jailed for two weeks. On August 22, 10,000 pro-lifers rallied at the Washington Monument, and nine people who entered a clinic in the city were arrested. Jim was among them.

  During lulls in protests and rescues, Jim did odd jobs, construction and welding work. He had by the late 1980s made friends in the movement across the country, there was a light in the window for him when he needed a place to stay. In Pittsburgh, that light was at Doris Grady’s place. Doris was active back then. On more than one occasion, she and her pro-life friends raided trash cans behind a health clinic in the city. Some clinics had spotty privacy protocols in place back in those days. It was a typical tactic of hardcore pro-life activists to gather up piles of garbage and see what the abortionists were up to. Doris stuffed several bags to take home. Sometimes the city garbage guys would be there, and would let them rob the trash in exchange for a case of beer, you know? So Doris got home, sorted through the stuff. The golden items were billing records, they had the phone numbers on them. Doris made some calls.

  “Yes, hello, Barb,” Doris would say to the patient whose number was on a form, feigning her best soft, caring, nurse voice. “Just checking in, Barb, to make sure you know your appointment time. Uh-huh. That’s right. And we’d also like to talk to you about the procedure.”

  “Procedure?” This was the payoff. You tried to talk the woman out of it. Subtly at first, then hit them with the graphic stuff. Pretty slick, Doris thought.

  “Did anyone talk to you about the procedure, and what it entails?”

  “Not really.” They always said that. So first you just mention that they aren’t supposed to eat before the abortion, stuff like that. And then Doris would launch into a list of the risks of having the abortion, risks to the patient’s health and mental well-being. If the listener still hadn’t caught on to the ruse, Doris went for the jugular.

  “And Barb, can you please tell us what you’d like us to do with the body?”

  Silence.

  “Barb?” Sometimes they got angry at this point. Doris would continue—calmly, clinically. “Well, there is a baby in there, Barb. We’ve got to do something with it. What do you want us to do? Flush it, or into the incinerator, or…?”

  Click. Yes, Doris was a player. But then again, she had a life. Young children. Devoted husband. She could not be a warrior, could not pay the full price. Doris knew it, too, and felt guilt about it—guilt, and fear that one day she’d be called on the carpet by the Lord for her half measures.

  Jim Kopp and Doris sat in front of the TV like old friends, although that was not quite true. Not old friends, but rather acquaintances who shared a passion for the cause. Jim would also chat with her husband, Pat, a Vietnam veteran, a former Marine, wounded in action. Jim respected that greatly. Jim and Doris watched rented movies. He enjoyed classics like Gone With the Wind, Wuthering Heights. Had the occasional beer, a Stroh’s perhaps. He was a “temperate” drinker, as he put it. To Doris, Jim was a prayerful, spiritual man, someone with no personal effects, and seemingly no passion beyond his faith in God and the cause. It made him more endearing. Doris mentioned his girlfriend. Well, she wasn’t really a girlfriend, but Jim did profess to being in love, grinning in that shy way of his. Jim led a monastic life in many ways, owning few clothes and washing them by hand, embracing celibacy, or at least monogamy. But he wanted to get married some day, have kids.

  “C’mon, Jim, what’s her name, anyway?” asked Doris.

  Jim kept smiling. Don’t go there. Pro-life women, thought Jim with a grin, they can’t keep quiet. Give them a chance, they’ll tell all. Doris enjoyed chatting with him. He was so well read, could talk about anything, with anyone. You started talking, and before you knew it, three hours had passed in the blink of an eye. She enjoyed feeling as though she was exploring philosophy and politics with him. She felt a connection and a respect for his convictions and quiet intelligence. But Jim Kopp wasn’t connecting, not in the same way as Doris. He adjusted his conversation to whoever he was with, playing whatever role was necessary, trying to make his audience feel good about their relationship. He was always playing.

  Late in the evening Jim would rise from his chair and go outside for a long slow walk, gathering his thoughts, a solitary thin figure disappearing into the gloom. Was there anyone with whom Jim could truly connect, who could appreciate his intellect and reciprocate—and who could even look into the bloody abyss and not blink like the others? That was not the case with Doris Grady, sweet as she was, and as committed, on a certain level, as she was to the cause, the mission. No, Jim could not lower the mask for her.

  For a time Jim lived in Binghamton, New York, where the headquarters of Operation Rescue was located, to do further work for Randall Terry. Jim was also affiliated with a militant group called The Lambs of Christ. But he didn’t last long with any one group. God love all pro-lifers, but did any of them feel the cause in the pit of their soul like he did? Ultimately, Terry, the public face of the movement for years, would go mainstream, even run for Congress, foreswear violence in the fight. He proudly proclaimed that he led the “largest civil disobedience movement in American history… Operation Rescue’s peaceful sit-ins resulted in over 70,000 arrests.”

  Years later, Terry would say he remembered little about James Charles Kopp, other than he had been on his staff, and that he was devout. No, Operation Rescue did not suit Jim’s needs. Terry and the rescuers were, thank the Lord, engaged in the same cause. But there wasn’t extra room in Jim Kopp’s personal spiritual foxhole. He was disappearing, turning within himself, and to God, for direction. Before long, Randall Terry heard little of Kopp, and then not at all.

  * * *

  Amherst, N.Y.

  Hanukkah, December 1988

  The pro-life activists set up in front of Bart Slepian’s home in Amherst. Usually they wielded signs outside the clinic called Womenservices, where he worked in Buffalo. As an OB, he delivered babies and performed abortions at the clinic. But now they had taken the fight right in front of his home. They sang and jeered, called him a pig, a baby killer. Inside the house, Bart, his wife Lynne, and his young sons, Andrew, who was about five, Brian, three, were opening presents. Bart couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed a baseball bat and came out and smashed the window of a protester’s van. He was charged by police. He spoke to his old friend Rick on the phone later. Rick knew it would come to this, the harassment would escalate. They had talked about it before. It could get worse. Bart had to keep his cool.

  “A baseball bat, Bart?” Rick said.

  “This guy was on my property.”

  “Bart, I totally understand why you did it. I don’t really blame you, but still, it’s stupid. You are the guy who got charged.”

  “He was scaring my kids. It’s not going to happen.”

  “Couldn’t you have found a little less dramatic way of dealing with it?”

  “It’s not like I spent a lot of time thinking about it. It’s the only way I know how.”

  Dr. Barnett Slepian

  The campaign against him reached bizarre proportions. Early one morn
ing before dawn a white car with its lights off rolled down the Slepians’ street. Someone got out of the car, stole their garbage, and sped away. They were looking for billing records, phone numbers of women considering having an abortion. It turned out the trash thief in this case had been arrested four times for anti-abortion activities. He did it another morning. And another. Bart called the police, but he didn’t leave it at that. He waited inside the door one morning. At 6:15 a.m., he saw the car pull up. He sprinted towards it and got the licence number as it squealed away.

  He talked to the media about it. “It’s kind of bizarre,” he said. “They must be looking for anything they can use against me. Hopefully they got the bag full of dirty diapers.”

  * * *

  In July 1988, the Democratic Party held its convention in Atlanta. Pro-life activists showed up to grab a share of the media attention. There were more than 350 people arrested and many spent several weeks in jail. Pro-lifers dubbed it “the siege of Atlanta.” Jim Kopp was among those arrested, for criminal trespassing at the Atlanta Surgi-Center. When police asked him his name, Jim, like others being arrested, repeatedly replied: “Baby Doe.”

  While in jail, activists from around the country networked, gave themselves nicknames. Supporters of the Atlanta protests compared them to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, since pro-lifers believed they were spending time in the same jail where Martin Luther King was once held. It was here that the early pages of the Army of God Manual were drafted. The manual would become a bible for the radical fringe of the movement. It was never clear who authored the document, which underwent revisions after Atlanta. Some of the passages sounded like Jim’s voice: “Once an activist is married, and especially after having children, the constraints of parenthood are profound. Compassion for one’s own brood will curtail the level of covert activity—and a lot of other activity, as well!”