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

by Jon Wells

  Just minutes into his statement he was already all over the map. Those in the courtroom hearing him speak for the first time were amazed. Journalists who were barred from using tape recorders, as is the usual rule, scrambled to write it all down but could not keep up. But this was Jim Kopp speaking the way he always spoke when engaged in heavy conversation. He was back at the hostel in Dinan spelling out his world view for a friend, his mind processing his scattered thoughts, connecting the dots.

  “Here’s a quote: ‘In view of the large families of the native population’—now this phrase, native population, means Polish, Gypsies or Romanians and Jewish people, bear in mind—‘it could only suit us if girls and women in that native population had as many abortions as possible. We could not possibly have any interest in increasing the non-German population.’ That’s a quote from Adolf Hitler.”

  A central belief of pro-life activists is that, if only people are exposed to the reality of abortion, the effect on patients, the trauma of the unborn baby, and can learn the historical context, they—not the hardcore pro-abort ideologues, of course, but those in the middle or with little commitment—will see the light. Their eyes will be opened to the truth. And so Jim Kopp was once again the teacher. But what good could this possibly do with D’Amico and the sentencing? Kopp quoted Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, a favorite target for pro-lifers.

  “Here’s another quote, from 1939: ‘The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.’ We find that quote in a book called Margaret Sanger, Father of Modern Society. Obviously, Judge, she agreed perfectly with Hitler about the notion of the master race. What she contributed, that Hitler didn’t, was technique.”

  He tried to draw a connection between Hitler, Sanger and Bart Slepian. He looked down at notes he had made from an article written by Amanda Robb, Slepian’s niece, who had visited him in the jail in France. “Now, the next quote, Your Honor, I will make very clear, I didn’t find out until 2002. It comes from the niece of Dr. Slepian.”

  But then Kopp was off on another tangent. “There was a film called A Matter of Choice, in the 1980s. Very influential. There was another film made at the same time showing a forced abortion where a woman at the last minute wants to jump off the table. Very common thing, and the nurse does a verbal slapping. You don’t actually give someone anesthetic like Novocaine or whatever, but you use your voice to get them to sit down and shut up and stop. Women and men who have come out of the profession of killing children, they can corroborate all of this.

  “Anyway. In this movie A Matter of Choice, they interviewed this Dr. Allred in Los Angeles. He made an extremely similar comment to the one I’m about to tell you. In any event, Dr. Slepian’s conversation actually took place in 1997. Dr. Slepian, when asked why he did abortions, answered that it was ‘part and parcel of keeping the minority quotient manageable’.”

  Kopp looked at D’Amico.

  “Judge, wouldn’t it be nice to say that was a casual remark? That it slipped out and we wouldn’t hold Dr. Slepian to that? I say no, Judge, it’s perfectly 100 percent consistent with the racism and genocide that began with Margaret Sanger, took a little detour through Germany and wound up back again in Western New York in 1997. Keeping the minority quotient manageable. Dr. Slepian also said, ‘Abortion is killing potential life. It is not pretty. It is not easy.’ This is a direct quote from him. The inner seed of that quote sounds like the Pope.”

  Kopp claimed to be quoting Bart Slepian from an article written by his niece, Amanda Robb, for George magazine. Amanda had written about how James Kopp changed her family’s life when he shot and killed her uncle. She wrote about the night she received the phone call telling her that Uncle Bart had been shot to death, and later about meeting Kopp in jail. The piece for George, and the other articles she had written, offered private glimpses of the Slepian family. They were well written but also uncompromising in their bluntness and included some characteristically pithy quotes from her late uncle. Not everyone had appreciated her airing of the family laundry. And now, in court, Bart Slepian’s assailant was quoting the dead man’s niece to try to justify the shooting.

  Rick Schwarz, Bart’s longtime friend from med school in Mexico, later heard about the quote mentioned by Kopp—“keeping the minority quotient manageable.” It didn’t surprise Rick that Bart might have said such a thing. But he would have been joking; it would have been meant as a private, dark-humored quip, certainly not meant for publication or to represent his position on abortion. That was his sense of humor, and others shared it. In Mexico, there were a couple of guys who had joked that what overpopulated Mexico really needed was a good abortionist. Bart wasn’t one of them, but it was something he might have joked about.

  But in court, in front of the judge, reporters and the doctor’s widow, Kopp had just taken Bart’s quip and used it to try to paint his victim as a racist. The problem was that Kopp had not turned to Amanda’s original article for his quote. He had lifted it from accounts of the article he had read on the Internet. Those online accounts got one important word wrong. Bart had not said “minority quotient.” In describing his rationale for performing abortions, he told Amanda that it was “Part and parcel of keeping the misery quotient manageable.”

  Kopp did not let up. “Of course Dr. Slepian had to kill lots of black babies down at the abortion mill, red babies, Mexican babies. Black women today get twice as many abortions as nonblack women per capita. There are twice as many abortion mills located in the inner city as elsewhere, and this is all part of Margaret Sanger’s agenda.” Kopp had still not moved to the issue of his defense, and the only argument that could possibly persuade D’Amico to show leniency in sentencing: that Kopp had intended to wound Slepian, not kill him. Instead, Kopp appeared to be arguing that Slepian deserved to die. The critical issue, to Kopp’s way of thinking, remained whether he was justified. The key was: the fetus is human, and therefore shooting someone to protect it from termination is justified.

  He quoted the Pope. Abortion is killing a living creature. A law that permits abortion is an immoral one and must not be obeyed. These babies are being torn apart. “What about the use of force to try and stop abortion? What does the Church say about that? St. Ambrose said, ‘He who does not repel an injury to his fellow, if he is able to do so, is as much at fault as he who is able to, who commits the injury.’ That citation is in New Catholic Encyclopedia, page 593.”

  Remorse? Would Kopp show any to help his case? Doctor killer Michael Griffin had recanted his actions, apologized, expressed regret. It saved him from the death penalty. “It’s customary at sentencing to talk about remorse,” Kopp said. “I have already spoken in the newspaper about my feelings about the suffering that Dr. Slepian endured and his family endured. I stand behind these words today and forever. These feelings, Judge, have to be held in balance, though, for the children that were killed by Dr. Slepian. I estimated 25,000. That’s my estimate based on how many hours he worked down at the mill and so forth. It’s actually a conservative estimate based on a 13-year career of child killing. But more importantly, I have to hold these feelings in balance with the concern I have for the children that were about to be killed by Dr. Slepian on October 24, 1998. Just to give you an impression, Judge: 25,000 is a number. Stalin said one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic. You can fill this courtroom top to bottom, put the caskets, one casket for each child involved, fill this courtroom and one half of another.”

  Did he really believe his numbers? By his “estimate” Slepian would have had to perform more than five abortions every day, 365 days a year, over his entire career.

  “Even if I failed at my goal to preserve Dr. Slepian’s life, nonetheless, I would be the only one I know of in this case who even had a plan whereby at the end of the day, both Dr. Slepian and his victim will still be alive. Who will advocate for the children? Why should the
safety of Dr. Slepian be put above the safety of weak, vulnerable children, when Dr. Slepian had every opportunity to stop killing, and the children had no opportunity to run away from him?”

  Slepian, Kopp said, had been stubborn. “The first abortionist doctor was shot in 1992. Possibly many hundreds of doctors quietly left the field after that. Any doctor who remained in the field was and is exposing himself to actual danger. If it were not so, why would the FBI have warned Dr. Slepian the very day he died?”

  He talked about the fatal night. Family members in the kitchen? Kopp said he never saw them and wouldn’t have pulled the trigger if he had known they were there. Shoot to kill? If he had meant to kill, “why not shoot him in the head? If my intention was to kill the guy flat out, why not shoot him in the head? I had a better shot, considering how restricted the angle was, to shoot him in the head than shoot him anywhere else.”

  Finally, he explained how he did it. He buried a tube in the woods behind Slepian’s home, then inserted the rifle, which was wrapped in vinyl. He covered the opening of the tube with dirt, leaves, branches. He returned several times—early morning, late at night—to retrieve the weapon from the holster and wait for the right moment to shoot. “After I shot poor Dr. Slepian I put the gun in the hole to keep it from being found. This took no time because the opening of the hole was inclined in such a way you didn’t have to dig and, you know, dig this hole.”

  He was reiterating what the police and prosecution had said. But he now denied painting markings on trees, even though he had agreed in the stipulated facts at trial that he had used them to help locate the rifle’s hiding spot. “I simply have no clue how they got there and who put them there. I never saw them. I’m utterly clueless about all this. I located the gun-hole easily myself because it was under a very characteristic bush. I never had any problems finding the weapon that way.”

  Like Barket, he also now disputed the notion of a getaway car, even though that, too, was in the stipulated facts. No, Kopp said, he went back through the woods, on foot, between a cul-de-sac and a tennis court, retrieved a hidden bicycle. “A few doors down I passed a dozen or so young people engaging in some sort of spontaneous party or meeting in the middle of the street.”

  He presented his new account in detail that suggested either that it was true, or simply that he knew that small touches might make it more believable. Romanita: was he protecting whoever had been driving the car that night? Or whoever was planning to retrieve the rifle using the paint spots on the trees? Once he had made it back to his car, he said he drove to a nearby motel, booked into a room that was “the last one on the left.” He’d rat her not say the name of the place. Might get the owners there in trouble. The man who had rented it to him was the son-in-law of the East Indian couple who owned the motel. He had been in the military. The next day, when Kopp was on the road near Cleveland, he saw on the news that Slepian was dead. It was, he said, “the saddest day of my life.”

  He apologized to pro-lifers for initially denying he had pulled the trigger. “But I do not apologize to the FBI or law enforcement or the district attorney. They are intent on promoting and protecting the murder of children. They are my natural enemies. They can provide electricity to run suction pumps, to flush their children down after they run them through garbage disposals. They need help. I don’t owe them any more straightforward an answer than the Gestapo a straight answer when they came up with the Jewish people in Holland.”

  He said that he had been telling the truth after his capture. He had not murdered Slepian, because he had no intention of killing him. “I was innocent of murder then. I am innocent of murder now.” The Vatican smuggling Jews to safety. The mother of Moses hid her son. “Where would we be, Judge, if the mother of Moses had not hid him and deceived the Pharaoh and disobeyed him?” Mary and Joseph stealing away with Jesus in the middle of the night. “According to the prosecution, St. Joseph was carrying out a sinful deception by cover of night.”

  He took the court into the abyss that he felt so acutely: “I hate to mention this, Judge, an infernal supernaturality such as the bizarre case in Burlington, Vermont.” Aborted late-term babies and their blood being drained for use in a Black Mass, “a satanic ritual in which the blood of children is offered to Satan and then drunk by participants in a chalice stolen from the Catholic Church. That ritual also explained the disappearance of some of the so-called milk carton kids…There is a supernaturally wicked drive behind abortion which brings back the medieval heresy of Albigensianism… I hope the professional baby-killing industry will not be too offended when I say to them they are merely pawns in a much bigger choice.”

  His rambling address neared its conclusion. He had taken the court on a tour through his life and thinking, sliding from some relatively sober reflection to the fires of hell. Was it an act? It was surely not simply the usual Romanita. It was as though his psychological skin was peeling away. Had jail done that to him? Jim Kopp, Atomic Dog, had lived a life that was unusual in its scope, on a broad stage, taking him around the world, always on the move, pursuing a mission that knew no boundaries. But his life now was in a cage, his world confined to a small concrete room. And that was not going to change.

  As Kopp wound down his comments, Judge D’Amico sat slumped in his chair, his cheek resting on his hand. He gets up and talks for, what, an hour and a half, almost two, and spends the entire time not on whether he intended to kill, but on why these doctors must be stopped? You’ve got your cause, fine, knock yourself out, thought D’Amico. But don’t go around killing people, and don’t tell me that it’s OK.

  “What would I do if I were let out in the street?” Kopp said. “This depends on the country, Your Honor. Will we, in America, still be killing children? If so, then I will stay duty-bound to do something about it… I have always said, Judge, ‘Show me—I’m from Missouri.’ Show me a better way, but it better include a real chance for babies, not just rhetoric.”

  He said he had heard that several of the women who had planned to have abortions the morning after Slepian was killed had decided to keep their children. “Four or five children who are alive today because Dr. Slepian was unable to kill on Saturday, October 24, are now almost four years old. Two or three of them are black. They are all beautiful, happy, human lives. They are walking the streets of Buffalo, New York, and their mothers love them. Fifty years from now they will be taking care of their mothers in their old age. Is this such a terrible thing? Which of these children should be dead today? I say none of them.”

  His future? “My days of trying to save children are obviously over.” But the number of doctors performing abortions has dropped, he said, from 2,300 in 1990 to 800 in 2002. “Every one that has quietly retired from mass murder is completely safe from me or anyone like me. Any mass murderer who is left still doing abortions, if you are concerned for your safety, then quit. Do you want to be the last abortionist doing abortions in America?”

  Would others follow in his footsteps? “I am not aware of any conspiracy to use force to save children. My younger brothers and sisters in the movement may discover that independent simultaneous operation is the best way to save children… They may soon come to realize if they don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.”

  Defiance and the rule of law? “The Supreme Court, I will not kneel and worship before them. I defy them. Anyone who provides protection to mass murderers, whether under the color of law or not, is participating in murder. Let me briefly suggest another way of looking at this. If the Supreme Court ruled tomorrow that black people show up at the local train station with an O-ring around their neck—‘Bring a lunch, you are going for a long train ride, going back to Mississippi, sorry, the Supreme Court changes its mind again’—would you enforce the law? Would you throw Harriet Tubman in jail for trying to smuggle these slaves? I suppose if the court ruled tomorrow that Jewish people must report to the closest train station wearing the Star of David—‘Bring a lunch, wear a coat, you are going for a ride’—woul
d you enforce that law, too? You would not. You are morally obligated to refuse to punish me.

  “I know that sounds laughable in the context of the review of this case. It isn’t laughable to me, Judge. You are morally obliged to refuse to punish me just as surely as you are required to refrain from participating in sending Jewish people, or those who protect them, to their death. In any event, Judge, there are worse things than life in general. Jail—jail is not so bad, nowhere near as bad as being out of custody and constantly wondering what else could be done for the babies…I do not see myself how God can bless a country which gives safe haven to child murderers, or to the practice of child murder. But even now He stands ready to forgive, if we will turn away from child murder. It’s never too late to seek forgiveness, but first we must turn away from child murder. He will enable us to do that, if we ask Him to. Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Chapter 26 ~ A Complex Martyrdom

  “Well,” said the judge. “I guess we have heard a great deal of information this morning.” Michael D’Amico did not typically say much at sentencing. Speech-making was not his style. But this time was different. James Kopp would not have the last word, not in his court. “You are not going to hear a speech or a sermon,” said D’Amico. “Nevertheless, I feel compelled to say a few things.”

  First, he recognized the Slepians. “The letters I have received with regard to this sentencing indicate to me the depth of the loss that has been suffered and the fact that there are many in this community who share your grief.” Second, he countered the shots taken by the defense at the FBI and police. “Mr. Barket has asked me to admonish them. I think the reverse is true.”

  Third, the judge addressed Kopp’s intent. “It’s clear the action was premeditated, there’s no doubt about that. It is inconceivable to me that you did not expect your actions would result in the death of Dr. Slepian. I think that if Mr. Marusak or someone else could respond to what you said they would have a lot to say. Frankly, I don’t want to hear it. But I think that there is one comment that you made that almost demands a response and you somehow equated the action of Dr. Slepian with some racial issue. Bald accusations are easy to make. Unfortunately, he’s not here to respond to them and that’s your responsibility. I guess in spite of all your education and all your intelligence, Mr. Kopp, there is one thing you haven’t learned and that’s that the pursuit of one’s goal, your objective, that no matter how moral or just it may appear, does not permit the infliction of violence on your adversary. What may appear righteous to you may appear immoral to someone else. And obviously the reverse is true. The bottom line, I suspect, is that no civilized society can tolerate or excuse excesses that are tantamount to anarchy or to terrorism.”