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

by Wells, Jon

  There was one rescue in Pittsburgh back in the late eighties that really pushed the envelope, a great scene. A Friday morning, and as usual the group gathered before dawn, about 20 of them. Jim loved the early morning, would say little at times like this. He was a planner, not the vocal leader. He let others do the talking.

  He was smarter than the others. He had a knowledge of science, politics and religion that the others could not approach. He was apologetic about his intelligence, made a point of trying not to talk down to others, although his attempts not to condescend to them sometimes came off as condescension anyway. “Sorry about that. If I sound like I’m talking down to you, please, please, just say, ‘Jim, shut up, OK?’” He certainly didn’t look the part of a genius, not in clothes that looked like soup kitchen rejects, an appearance that belied his upper-middle-class upbringing. He dressed down to be like the rest, people who led simple lifestyles, regular folks who were devoted to the cause, a couple of whom came down from Canada to join in the rescues. Jim Kopp made sure he looked like he belonged. But he was not one of them.

  “The Dog!” Jim would smile at the sound of his nickname, and the tone that suggested his—what, celebrity?—among the activists. He wondered who started the Atomic Dog business. Was it from the 1983 George Clinton song? Why must I feel like that/ Why must I chase the cat/ Just the dog in me/ Nothin’ but the dog in me/ Just walkin’ the dog. Oh, atomic dog.

  The group drove to the clinic in a van and he followed behind in the car, a junker they got for 75 bucks. The day’s appointments would soon begin to arrive. The van parked first. The doors flew open, two people got out with the ramps and carried them to the clinic steps. Jim’s car followed right behind, bounced up over the ramps, right in front of the door, stopped, then Jim and another man jumped out of the junker with his custom-made locks to pin themselves to the axle underneath the car, right in front of the door. It was imperative for Jim to be locked down before police arrived. Other protesters duct-taped themselves together in a semicircle around the perimeter—that’s what the rescuers called it, the perimeter—to delay the cops further.

  They thought of everything. Don’t put too much gas in the car. If the police use blowtorches to try and break the locks the whole thing will blow up. The clinic workers, the cops, so angry, it was amazing. Shut the place down the entire day. Beautiful stuff. There he was, pinned under the car, fire from the police torches laboring to destroy what he, Jim Kopp, had created, heat thrown against his face as preborn babies slumbered in the warmth of their mothers’ wombs, safe, for one more day.

  *** This police officer looking him in the eye, was he RCMP? Like the Mountie on that TV show. What was it called again? Later Jim Kopp tried to jog his memory. Saw the show on TV in Chicago once. Due North? Due South? Yes, Due South. Tall handsome actor, very Canadian. Paul—Gross. Yes. Perfect for the part, by the way, he reflected. Not exactly a cultural icon, not like Joni, but who is?

  Dwayne Frook studied the I.D. Kopp, James Charles/1977 Dodge Aspen/green/BFN595/Residence St. Albans, Vermont. When no charge is laid from a routine traffic check, an officer often thinks nothing more of the encounter, writes nothing down. But Frook made a note of the stop. It’s simply a good habit. Down the road, you never know when information might come in handy. He took down the plate and the name of James Charles Kopp, then punched it into his computer, added it to thousands of others in the database. Frook let him go. There was no reason not to. The driver had done nothing wrong. Routine check. It took maybe all of five minutes. Jim Kopp rolled up the window and escaped into the darkness.

  One week later, on the evening of Friday, November 10, Dr. Hugh Short and his wife, Katherine, returned to their home on Sulphur Springs. It had started to rain. Drops peppered the roof of the backyard shed, where the sniper had lurked, waiting, preparing. In the military, infantry prepack rifle rounds in strip clips for quick and easy reloading. But the sniper would likely have opportunity for one, maybe two shots. Rapid reloading was not required. Load the rounds, one at a time, into the slot at the top of the assault rifle. Feel the smooth, cold metal surface of each, blunt round noses, each lodging in place with a click. One down. Click. The next parallel beside it. Click. Pull on the round metal bolt, feel the stiffness of the spring, pull it all the way back, hear the faint chick of the retraction, allowing the first round to slide into the chamber, then ease the bolt back, making a harder, more violent clack, like a bone snapping. Out of the shed, on the grassy slope behind the house, the secondfloor den window lighted.

  A sniper must have a steady heartrate, measured breathing, a clarity of thought and conscience that translates directly to the firearm, making the shot a mathematical certainty. If anything is off, it’s a miss. In the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981, the shot out of John Hinckley’s short-barreled gun ricocheted off the armor plating of Reagan’s limousine, flattened out like a dime, went through the half-inch space between the open door and the car and sliced into the president, hitting under the armpit. The bullet tumbled onward, then turned, tearing through muscles into his lung, and finally stopped one inch from his heart. That’s how tenuous it all is.

  At 9:25 p.m. Katherine Short sat on a couch in the den. Her husband was there watching TV, in his favorite chair up against the window, a stationary target, his right elbow visible on the armrest.

  *** Wind gusting, temperature plunging, rain pounding in sheets on the windshield of Hamilton police constable Mike Senchyshak’s parked cruiser. Terrible night. He was one of two uniform cops on patrol in the Ancaster area. Senchyshak covered area 311, was out on Trinity Church Road near Highway 53. The call came over the radio at 9:30 p.m. “Dispatch to three-eleven, over.”

  “Three-eleven, go ahead.”

  “Possible shooting. Sulphur Springs Road.”

  Senchyshak didn’t hit the flashers. Sometimes they just slow

  you down. Motorists act strange when you light up the streets like that. He’d make better time without them. And he did not know if anyone had actually been hit. People hear a rifle shot and sometimes make a call. Often it’s just a pellet gun going off. But he was there in minutes, turned on Sulphur Springs and missed the house. Then he drove past it again. He had been up and down that road many times, but it was pitch black and the large home was set back from the road, no house numbers visible. Finally he pulled up in front. He looked at his watch. It was 9:37 p.m. The dispatcher relayed more information.

  “Confirmed shots fired. Repeat. Shots fired.” Those words would bring patrol cars from all over the area. But at that moment, there was only one: Senchyshak. He pulled up the long driveway, right close to the house. A decision: stay put in the cruiser or go inside? Stay in the cruiser. Go by the book. If you’re alone at a shooting scene that might be still hot, wait at a safe distance for backup. You make your own rules, go Lone Ranger and stick your head in without knowing what’s there, you might be handed your brain in pieces. No. Someone could be hurt, the shooter could be inside, might fire again. Senchyshak opened the door of his cruiser, stepped into the cold rain, towards the scene, alone. He spoke quietly and evenly into his radio. “This is three-eleven. I’m approaching the premises.”

  Senchyshak, who stood six feet and weighed nearly 200 pounds, felt the even weight of the Glock hanging at his hip. It had been just a few months since cops had switched from the .38 revolvers to the automatic Glocks, after a couple of shootouts in Ontario where the criminals had the upper hand in firepower. He stood on the front step of the large home. Could be a domestic, he reflected. Husband could have a gun, waiting to blow a hole in the next person to come inside. He knocked on the door, his senses on high alert. A woman answered the door. It was Katherine Short. A male voice yelling frantically from upstairs.

  “Help! Help!” Katherine rushed up the stairs and Senchyshak followed cautiously behind. He knew nothing about the Shorts, didn’t know who else was in the house, who had taken a shot, and he had no backup. He made quick mental notes of the la
yout on the main floor as he climbed, planning an escape route in case he needed one. He spoke quietly into his radio again, offering a live playby-play of the consequences of his decision. “Three-eleven going upstairs.” He entered the den and saw Katherine’s husband on the floor, his clothes soaked with blood. He was alive.

  “Three-eleven. Three-eleven with the victim. Victim conscious. Arm wound. Bleeding. Tell the ambulance to step on it.”

  The bullet had blown through Dr. Hugh Short’s elbow. The doctor and his wife were hysterical now, yelling. Not in pain so much as fear, terror. Short would have felt unworldly pain when the shot hit but then the adrenaline blasted through his system, shock, fear—survival. Stop the bleeding. Stop it, or you’re dead in minutes. Wrap the wound, wrap it now, or bleed out. He had one belt tied in a tourniquet just above the wound on the right elbow, and he was trying, with help from his wife, to wrap a second belt. His eyes met Senchyshak’s. “I’m a doctor.”

  The cop put his hands into the fray, helping tighten the second belt, soaking his bare hands in blood. “What happened?” asked Senchyshak, trying to get more information, mindful that the shooter could be somewhere near.

  “Two shots through the window,” replied Short. “Heard the first. Hit by the second.”

  The paramedics arrived, several police cars, the dark street now ablaze with flashing lights. Short continued giving directions, the combination of his survival and healing instincts in overdrive. “OK, doctor,” said the paramedic. “Just let us do what we do.”

  Senchyshak rode with Short in the ambulance to Hamilton General Hospital. As his shift came to an end at dawn, he kept going over it in his head, replaying the possibilities. Where had the shooter gone? Back into the woods? Probably not. Driven right past Senchyshak the other way on Sulphur Springs? Unlikely. Shots fired at about 9:25 p.m. Arrival at scene at 9:37 p.m. The sniper would have already hit the road before police arrived, would have his escape planned in advance. A getaway car? And why shoot Dr. Short? So many questions. But the detectives had the case now. In a bathroom, Mike Senchyshak scrubbed his hands. Hugh Short’s dried blood turned to liquid and flowed down the drain.

  Chapter 2 ~ Atomic Dog

  Jim Kopp heard the news. He read voraciously, made a point of knowing everything that was happening in the abortion wars, was always connecting the dots. The Canadian doctor had been severely wounded, his elbow smashed to a pulp, but he was going to live. And Dr. Hugh Short might never be able to practise medicine again. Kopp enjoyed reflecting upon moral considerations in the abortion war, debating them. By wounding the doctor, the shooter had prevented the doctor from aborting fetuses for some time. Thus the doctor could no longer violate the physician’s oath to do no harm.

  The Hippocratic Oath? Yes, it was true, the Hippocratic Oath actually mentioned abortion. True. You didn’t hear much about it, the oath was revised over the years. But the original version said that a physician shall not “give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.” Harm? A bullet to the elbow is painful indeed, a nasty piece of business, but what of the unborn child, thought Jim, what of the child no bigger than a field mouse, helpless when facing the suction equipment, the equivalent of being tossed into the inside of a jet engine? You want to talk about a victim? Harm! He saw in his mind’s eye the baby in the safety of the uterus fighting off the forceps gripping its leg, feel the abortionist grab the femur and twist it, snap it off like a turkey leg, and yes, even still, he fights back, tries to get away, but doesn’t stand a chance.

  Oh yes, no doubt there would be much hand-wringing over the shooting of the doctor. But Jim Kopp, for one, felt there were already people being hurt in the war—preborn babies. In the blink of an eye as God measures time everyone will be called to task—what did we do when the world feasted on the blood of our children?

  *** Ancaster, Ontario November 11, 1995

  The morning after, the air cold and dry, sunshine peeking through thick layers of cloud. The detective walked up the stairs of the house. Mike Campbell entered a room filled with light and looked at the chair where Dr. Hugh Short had been sitting. Campbell was a plainclothes detective with the Major Crimes division of Hamilton police. He had sandy blond hair, friendly eyes, and spoke with a classic just-the-facts-ma’am cop inflection. And he was a Roman Catholic. Considered himself pro-life.

  He moved closer to the window. Outside, the forensic detectives were gathering evidence. The shooting had clearly been well planned, the home cased out, the Shorts’ schedule monitored in advance. He had planned his escape. Detectives are trained to keep an open mind, even when most clues point to one motive. But Campbell had a feeling. He saw the splinters on the floor. The two rounds had not punctured the window glass, but rather the wooden frame. He noted the two holes were close together. It all spoke to him. Planning. Intent. Accuracy. Abortion.

  Campbell’s father was the late Jimmy Campbell, one of Hamilton’s legendary old school detectives. Crime in Hamilton was not as colorful as it once was, or as it was remembered. Steeltown’s past was filled with the stuff of movies, gangsters with tommy guns, tough cops manning the thin blue line against organized crime, the force’s “morality squad” sweeping the streets clean. Godfathers like the infamous Johnny (Pops) Papalia, bombs in bakeries, paid hits, blood justice meted out in alleyways with two-by-fours, and underworld kingpins, some believed, encased in concrete at the bottom of murky Hamilton Harbor, granted for eternity an up-close view of freighters coming into port loaded with iron ore.

  The nature of the crimes, focused as they were on money, liquor, drugs, sex and power, was not difficult to comprehend. Black and white, good guys and bad guys. But the maiming of Hugh Short by a rifle one dark night in a wealthy suburb was a first, opening up a world of gray, streaked with blood.

  Back in the old days, when Jimmy Campbell worked the streets, a detective assigned to a violent crime might have jumped in the car, headed for a run-down bar, trolled the ranks of the disenfranchised, shone a light into dark corners and watched where the roaches scurried. His son hit the modern, high-tech version of that bar. He surfed the Internet, in 1995 a relatively new tool for investigators. Campbell typed key words into a search engine, words like “abortion,” “violence,” “radical.” The home page of the Army of God appeared on Mike Campbell’s screen. It was a hardcore anti-abortion group in the United States, of unknown strength and numbers.

  Blood flowing, photos of aborted fetuses, limbs severed, torn reddish-brown flesh, photos that were pornographic in their stark presentation. A related website called The Nuremberg Files listed doctors providing abortion services in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom. Some of the names had strokes through them. Well, Campbell thought, I’m getting the flavor of the movement. Clearly there were people in cyberspace for whom the abortion war was literal. But who were they, where were they, and what were their names? Would one of them bring the war to a suburb of Hamilton? And why?

  Campbell sensed the enormity of the case. The person who shot Dr. Short might be American, he thought. The number of potential suspects was unknown, and they were spread across the continent. He would need to go through American authorities, tap federal, state and city law enforcement agencies to look for pro-life activists with violent histories. It boggled the mind. There was, on the Internet, a document called The Army of God Manual. It was a manifesto offering direction for those anxious to take the gloves off in the abortion debate. “This is a manual for those who have come to understand that the battle against abortion is a battle not against flesh and blood, but against the devil and all the evil he can muster.” There was advice on how to battle in court, and tactics for vandalizing clinics. (“By simply walking by the doors of the abortuary and squirting super glue into the locks you have effectively stopped the opening of the killing center.”)There were philosophical musings on submitting your life completely and totally to the cause:

  Some single covert activists will be counted as wise for at least considering, prayerf
ully, the possibility of a life of single-minded covert activism. Practically speaking, a covert activist with no ties could save thousands of children and their mothers in a lifetime. 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! Most termites are going to be busy making the next generation of warriors. But for those few exceptions, carry on proudly with unbridled and righteous fury. Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus! All of our options have expired. Our most Dread Sovereign Lord God requires that whosoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Not out of hatred for you, but out of the love for the persons you exterminate, we are forced to take up arms against you. Our life for yours, a simple equation. Dreadful. Sad. Reality nonetheless. You shall be tortured at our hands. Vengeance belongs to God only. However, execution is rarely gentle.

  Mike Campbell saw only nicknames listed for the activists: Baby Huey, Intimidator, Mad Gluer, Cannonball, Daisy, Road Warrior, Scruffy South, Iron Maiden. The Army of God Manual also contained a cryptic dedication: “Special thanks to Atomic Dog, you nuclear canine.”