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

by Jon Wells

  Don’t fret about the writing, Jim, you dope. As always, at times like this, just think about Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark. Your guardian angel is writing for you. Just put the words on paper and everything will take care of itself.

  The discussion with the visitor returned to Loretta’s release. What was it, he thought, about living in a cell—in a concrete room the size of a bathroom—that made one’s emotions reverberate so acutely? It was all overwhelming. Just wonderful. God had watched over them, Loretta and Jim, the whole time. He really had. Jim had known it would unfold one petal at a time, and it had. Loretta was free to be with her children again. She was still in danger, though, he thought. Very much so. Children. The meeting with the visitor came to an end. Jim hung up the phone and picked up his stack of papers, stood to leave, knocked on the door for the guard to come and escort him back into the general population. Through the glass, the visitor raised his voice to ask one more question. Did Loretta name her son James after you? Jim Kopp stopped, his mouth breaking into a wide grin, eyes twinkling.

  “You’ll have to ask Loretta.”

  Epilogue

  Buffalo, N.Y.

  June 25, 2007

  In the spring of 2007 a Buffalo jury found James Charles Kopp guilty on federal charges of violating access to reproductive services. On June 25 he was sentenced. That day in a Buffalo courtroom, Lynne Slepian sat on the left side of the gallery, with her friends, and her sons—boys at the time of their father’s murder, now young men. On the right side were faces from Kopp’s past, among them pro-life veterans like Joan Andrews and a priest who had been meeting with him lately in prison. In the back row was a woman who had traveled several hours from her home, which is likely somewhere in New Jersey, at the wheel of an old beater of a car as thunderheads gathered above. Loretta Marra. She brought her two kids, who stayed with friends in town while she went to court as a spectator. Dennis Malvasi did not make the trip.

  Kopp’s court-appointed lawyer, John Humann, stood in court and argued before Judge Richard Arcara for leniency in the sentence. It was an unusual case, Humann said. Jim Kopp had not killed anyone for greed, or out of anger. “People kill for selfish motives, for money, contract killing, for evil reasons. In this case he meant to wound, not kill, because he felt a higher calling to stop abortions.” Once again the sniper attacks on the Canadian doctors were floated in court, even though Kopp continued to maintain his silence about them. Those shootings “show intent to wound,” Humann said. “The court should take that into account.” He added that Kopp should get a break because the person who had helped him was a free person.

  He was referring to Loretta Marra. Why should his client take the entire brunt of the punishment? The federal prosecutor, Kathleen Mehltrutter, stood and also invoked Marra, suggesting for the first time in a courtroom that Loretta had more direct involvement in the attacks than merely harboring a fugitive. She told the judge that Marra and Kopp crossed the border together, leaving British Columbia soon after Dr. Garson Romalis was shot in Vancouver. Outside court in the corridor, a writer from the Hamilton Spectator asked Loretta if that was true. Had she been in the car with Jim?

  “We’re not going there,” she said with a smile. She appeared on edge during the entire hearing. Out in the hallway one of Bart Slepian’s sons glared at Marra angrily. She stared back, her expression flat, saying nothing. Mostly she was upset that Jim, “an innocent man,” was being condemned. An amazing man, she reflected. It was just a few months earlier that Marra had been officially released from being monitored by the authorities in her day-to-day life on the outside. She and Dennis were free. She could lead a normal life now, couldn’t she?

  “Normal? My life will never be normal,” she said, the green eyes glowing with intensity, fighting to find the right words to express the fire inside that had not been tempered by doing time.

  “Not when this country is bathed in the blood of millions of children.” She very nearly spit the words out. “All I can smell is the stench—the stench of the blood. That means my life will never be normal.”

  Jim Kopp had one last chance to speak, to show remorse that might mitigate his federal sentence. Instead he defended shooting Bart Slepian, though adding that he had not intended to kill him. The physician died because of a “crazy ricochet.” He had no regrets about the attack, though.

  “If I see someone attacking a pregnant woman, or their children,” he said, “I’m gonna do something.”

  “What made you so certain [Slepian] wouldn’t be killed when you used a high-powered rifle?” Arcara asked.

  “There’s never 100 percent certainty. But I knew for certain he’d kill 25 children the next day.” In his final words in court, off the cuff, Kopp showed that he was taking the long view on matters. “Judge, you may have a plan for me for 25 or 30 years, but Jesus has a plan for me for the next 30 billion years. I’ll go with door number two.”

  By the end of the afternoon Arcara made his ruling. James Charles Kopp would receive the maximum sentence, life without any chance of parole. And he was rejecting Kopp’s request that he be kept in a federal facility on the west coast. He would be housed wherever federal officials decided he should go. His possessions, such as they were, would be officially confiscated, Arcara added, including his tool box, the Euros found in his pocket in Dinan, and the infamous black Cavalier. It was the end of the line—almost, anyway.

  In the courtroom gallery sat an Ontario Provincial Police detective taking notes. Canadian officicals still wanted to talk with Kopp in prison, try and get a statement from him.There was red tape to navigate, they needed to go through American justice channels, and if successul, inform families of the victims in Vancouver, Wininpeg, Ancaster what was going to happen. Perhaps, now that he was put away for life, Kopp would finally admit to what even his own lawyer had implied—that he was the Canadian sniper. He would almost certainly never be brought to Canada for trial to face attempted murder, but a confession would, finally, close the book on the case.

  Among those continuing to follow the Canadian angle with great interest was the Brooklyn informant, code name CS1. Today the man who betrayed Marra and Malvasi lives under the FBI’s protective umbrella, his identity erased, having been paid the $500,000 reward money offered by the U.S. Justice Department. Speaking to a journalist, he suggests calling him “Jack,” the name he used with FBI agents. (He thought of the name when he secretly met with an agent early on in the case and spotted a bottle of Jack Daniel’s at the bar.) He keeps his whereabouts a secret, but allows that it’s warm where he lives, and he has a nice view of the ocean. Jack wonders if there might be a book deal in the offing, perhaps a movie about his life. He felt he had been instrumental in catching Kopp, wouldn’t his story be a fascinating one to tell?

  Anyway, there was still the matter of the $547,000 in Canadian reward money. Jack called Canadian law enforcement officials asking about their progress getting an audience with Kopp, about closing the case. At times Jack has felt impatient, but is convinced it’s not a matter of “if, but when”, he gets paid again—and with the favorable Canadian–U.S. exchange on the dollar, he reflected, he stands to earn more now than if he had been paid when Kopp was first arrested. If it happens, no doubt he will be paid in cash, just as he was by the FBI. “How else do you pay someone who doesn’t exist?”

  As for Jim Kopp, was there any doubt he would appeal the federal sentence, try to get another day in court? He was a lawyer’s son. He was cuffed, escorted out of the courtroom in his orange jumpsuit. He looked in the gallery on the way out. Several friends on the right side waved and smiled, the priest made a sign of the cross. Loretta made her way sideways along the back bench, as though negotiating her way along an empty church pew, to where they could see each other through a bulletproof glass partition near the prisoner’s exit.

  “God bless you, Jim. Good work,” Loretta mouthed silently. Then she made a “call me” motion with her hand, and Jim smiled broadly just before he was led out
and the door shut.

  Also by Jon Wells

  Heat: A Firefighter’s Story (James Lorimer & Company)

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2008 by Jon Wells

  All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1-800-893-5777.

  Care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material contained in this book. The publisher will gladly receive any information that will enable them to rectify any reference or credit line in subsequent editions.

  Sniper was first published in serial form in 2004 in The Hamilton Spectator.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Wells, Jon

  Sniper: the true story of anti-abortion killer James Kopp / Jon Wells.

  ISBN 978-0-470-15546-2

  1. Kopp, James, 1954– 2. Slepian, Barnett, 1946-1998. 3. Murder—New York (State)—Amherst. 4. Abortion—United States. 5. Pro-life movement—United States. 6. Murderers—United States—Biography. I. Title.

  HV6248.K66W44 2008 364.152’3092 C2008-900604-6

  Production Credits

  Cover design: Ian Koo

  Interior text design: Mike Chan

  Typesetting: Mike Chan and Tegan Wallace Cover Photo: Don Farrall/Photodisc/Getty Images Printer: Quebecor World-Fairfield

  John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd. 6045 Freemont Blvd.

  Mississauga, Ontario

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  Printed in the United States

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