by Wells, Jon
He had not been surprised to receive the call requesting that he represent an American fugitive charged with murdering a doctor. A legal service had recommended Rouzaud–Le Boeuf. He was an obvious choice. He spoke fluent, elegantly formal English and was well versed in international law relating to extradition. He took the case. The lawyer knew that Mr. Kopp was accused of committing a murder in New York State, had fled the United States and ended up in France using false passports. The Americans wanted to extradite him for trial.
His thoughts turned immediately to the most pressing issue. Did Kopp face the death penalty if he was shipped back to the United States for trial? Rouzaud–Le Boeuf was well aware of the American fondness for the death penalty. Their new president, George W. Bush, inaugurated in January, had signed death warrants many times as governor of Texas. His new attorney general, the conservative John Ashcroft, a former Missouri senator, supported capital punishment as well. But he also knew that New York State had more liberal politics than other parts of the country. France, and the entire European Union, had outlawed capital punishment. The European Court of Human Rights had declared capital punishment “a form of torture and degrading treatment.”
Rouzaud–Le Boeuf considered death sentences just one of the peculiarities—and shortcomings—of the American justice system when compared to that of the French. It was not that Hervé Rouzaud– Le Boeuf was anti-American. Not at all. Let us just say the American legal system did not ring as true to him as the British, and therefore the Canadian, and particularly the French, which he favored above all else.
He brushed up on New York criminal law. Under former governor Mario Cuomo, a Democrat, there had been no death penalty. But Republican George Pataki had beaten Cuomo on a law-and-order platform that included the restoration of capital punishment. When Bart Slepian had been murdered, Pataki called it an act of terrorism and a cold-blooded assassination. The sniper, he added, should be caught and put to death. As Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf prepared to meet James Charles Kopp for the first time in jail, he was well aware that his task was to save the American’s very life.
*** The Rennes prison is a sprawling, worn, old complex with towering walls. James Charles Kopp was led into a visitor’s meeting room, and waited. He looked drained, weak. A cold he had been fighting didn’t help. Susan Brindle and John Broderick were brought in. Jim’s eyes met Susan’s, his tired face looked relieved. An old friend. “Thank goodness you’re here,” he said. “When John said you were coming I knew everything would be all right.”
She was instantly struck by how terrible Jim looked. She took him off to one side. There was something she had to ask him.
“Jim, you know, good people, God bless them, paid for my ticket to come over here. I need to be able to tell them—you need to look me straight in the eye, be really honest with me, because—tell me, did you do this, or not?”
He looked her in the eye, unyielding, no pretension, no false sincerity, no nervous smile, no fidgeting. “Susan. I did not do this. I did not do it.”
She felt relief. She’d never believed he could have done it. And now, looking into his blue-gray eyes, hearing his voice, she was certain of it.
“You have to tell everyone, hold a press conference and tell everyone I didn’t do this,” he continued. “No one knows. Tell them, please.”
Later, Susan said she needed to ask something else. “Jim, there’s someone I want you to meet, she’s here in Rennes. Her name is Amanda, and she’s Barnett Slepian’s niece.”
His niece? Here?
“She’s a smart girl, I’ve spoken with her. She’s a pro-abort but she’s as honest as can be. She’s tormented. Will you see her?”
“Susan, please, please,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to. Just tell her for me, can you?”
“Can you do this, please, for my sake, can you? Just tell her what you told me. She has a right to meet the person accused of killing her uncle, and to learn the truth, for the sake of her own soul.”
*** Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf arrived at the prison, was escorted to the meeting room to see his client, and quickly discovered he was not alone among those wishing to offer Mr. Kopp advice. He saw the woman with dark hair. She had an American southern accent. He took her hand in a chivalrous gesture. His English seemed from another time, words rolling off his tongue with precision and distinguished élan.
“It is most pleasant to meet you.” No matter what he said, Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf sounded like a diplomat holding court at a cocktail party. She was introduced to him as a “legal clerk” but seemed more a friend of Mr. Kopp’s. There was a lawyer there, an American named John Broderick. A colorful man, this Mr. Broderick, caricature of the avuncular Irish-American, tall, gruff, booming voice, viselike handshake. A strong personality. But then, James Kopp had a strong personality, too, Rouzaud–Le Boeuf could tell that from the start. Very opinionated. Kopp did not seem to mesh well with Mr. Broderick, they did not seem to share the same views, not today, anyway. There were loud disagreements. Eventually the French lawyer sat with Jim, away from the others. Now was his chance to take the measure of his client. Rouzaud–Le Boeuf looked into the mans eyes. Mr. Kopp was clearly agitated, frightened, surely in need of rest. Understandable. But the lawyer needed to know the truth.
“Mr. Le Boeuf. I am innocent.” The lawyer studied him. Kopp spoke in detail of the road to his arrest, rambling at times, going off on tangents, but repeatedly stressing his innocence. Rouzaud–Le Boeuf had stared into many faces over the years, both the guilty and innocent. Looking at his new client, he was convinced. It wasn’t so much what he said, or that he had an airtight alibi—he did not. Rather it was the genuine way he talked. By the time he left the prison, the lawyer had no doubt. He had not been sitting next to a murderer, he thought.
*** Susan spoke further with Jim. There was so much she wanted to know. Why had Jim planned to return to the United States right before his arrest? Why not just stay safe in Europe? “It’s insane, Jim, you’re free, why come back to America?”
“Because I heard that Amy had cancer.” What? Amy? What, Susan wondered, does Amy Boissonneault have to do with this? She hadn’t seen Amy in at least a year. Amy was 34 years old, 12 years Jim’s junior, and was the best friend of Susan’s daughter. Susan had no idea Jim felt so close to Amy. He told her he had tried to send Amy money so she could undergo alternative cancer treatment. “I heard she had cancer,” he said, “but at her age, it was low risk, I thought she’d be OK, but when I heard it went to her brain I had to get back to America. I had to tell her that I love her—and ask her to marry me.”
Susan’s eyes teared up, and so did Jim’s. “For the first time in my life,” he continued, “I feel that Jesus wants me to have a wife and kids.”
Jim had felt affection towards Amy for a long time. Perhaps he never revered her in the same way as he did Loretta, but Jim was attracted to Amy and admired her. Jim likened Amy to Mother Teresa. Both women were gentle, saintly, on the surface, but underneath were also tough as nails. Jim loved that about her. Amy called herself a tough farm girl. Jim knew the feminists would hear that and miss the point. She was delivering calves with her bare hands when she was ten, he liked to say. You could find her in the dead of winter up on a friend’s roof fixing a hole. That’s the kind of woman she was. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Susan. It was from a magazine, a picture of an engagement ring.
“You’re thinking, ‘Jim is crazy, he’s finally lost it,’ and I understand that,” he said. “But I need you to do this for me. I need you to find this ring, have it blessed, and then call Amy’s father, ask him for permission.”
“Permission? Jim, her father is going to give his blessing for his daughter, who has cancer, to marry a man who is accused of murder, who’s been gone two and a half years? It’s insane!”
“I know, I—”
“Look, I’ll ask her, but not her father.”
“No-no-no, just ask him, just say, ‘Mr. Boissonne
ault, if Amy didn’t have cancer, and if Jim wasn’t in jail accused of murder, would you allow him to date Amy?’ And if he says no, then don’t ask her. I’ll just pray. I’m meant to wait. But if the answer is yes, can you find her, bring her over here to me?”
Susan left the jail that night, thoughts swirling, caught between what her heart and her mind were telling her. Her heart won out. Back at the hotel, she spoke to Amanda Robb. Jim had not killed her uncle, Susan was sure of it. And Jim was about to become engaged.
“Jesus is going to work a miracle,” Susan said. “I just know they’re gonna get married and have babies.”
Amanda couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
The next day, Bart Slepian’s niece was introduced to Jim Kopp. She expected to meet him in a room divided by Plexiglas. But in the Rennes jail they sat in a private room, only a wooden table separating them. Jim carried a Bible with him. Amanda, a writer, soaked up the atmosphere, took the measure of this man Kopp, made mental notes. He was tall, lean. Baby-blue eyes. Handsome? Yes, she decided, maybe even shockingly handsome. He offered his hand. “Hi, I’m Jim,” he said.
She shook his hand and quietly muttered, “Amanda.”
Amanda later wrote an article about the meeting, and her quest to find Kopp, and sold it to New York Magazine. It ran under the headline “The Doctor, The Niece And The Killer.” She wrote:
“There was a long silence, and to fill it I told Jim two people had sent their love to him via me. The instant I mentioned the second person’s name, Jim curled into a fetal position and sobbed ... Eventually he choked out that he thought this person hated him. He pulled himself together, saying, “If you wait long enough, everything in life comes back to you.” Then he started rambling ... His narrative was a tangle of strands about victim souls, abortion, his “calling” to stop it, his destiny, my uncle’s murder, and fleeting mentions of his “fiancée.” “I didn’t shoot your uncle,” he said. “But I’m going to plead guilty and do the time—25 years straight up—because someone of my religion did.” This hung heavily in the air. I worried I was going to throw up. As I felt my face twitching, Jim smiled beatifically and changed the subject to movies. He suggested I watch Pay It Forward, which he said was the story of his life ... He then urged me to see There’s Something About Mary and quietly added that I looked like Cameron Diaz ... It suddenly dawned on me that my uncle’s killer was flirting with me.”
Amanda Robb told Jim she wanted to understand him, asked if she could write to him. He agreed. A guard entered the room to escort him back to his cell. He handed Amanda a Bible. Inside, he had written “To Mandy.” Only her family had ever called her by that nickname, she reflected.
*** Before leaving Rennes, Susan Brindle spoke to Jim about Amy one more time. Amazing thing. Susan had called home and spoken to her sister about Jim’s proposal to marry Amy. And her sister Joan said that out of the blue Amy had called, said she was coming to town, would stop in to say hi. Susan relayed the story to Jim and he smiled. God was directing everything! Susan finally said goodbye to Jim. She took the train back to Paris. That night she searched for the ring Jim had requested, went store to store for several hours, until, late in the evening, she found a small jeweler who had it. She bought the ring and took it to Notre Dame Cathedral to get it blessed. No priest was available, so she returned the next morning to early mass and got the ring blessed. Then she caught her flight to New York. Susan called Amy’s father early the next day. He knew she had been in France visiting Jim Kopp. “How are you, Susan? And how was Jim?”
Susan got around to asking. “Mr. Boissonneault, can I ask you a really strange question? If Amy didn’t have cancer, and Jim wasn’t in jail, would you ever allow him to ask her out? I just need to know.”
“Kind of an odd question, don’t you think?” he said. “I know, I know. But I need to know.”
“It’s not really up to me. It’s up to Amy.”
“Thank you. And God bless.”
Susan went and saw Amy, who was visiting Joan’s home. They
walked in the backyard past a statue of the Blessed Mother. “How is Jim?” asked Amy. “Does he talk about his friends?” “He does. He talks about you.”
“Me?”
“He talks about you, he really cares about you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He loves you, Amy.”
Amy stared at her, bewildered. “What? Jim? I always—I always thought of him like a priest, in a way. Never thought of him in that way.”
Susan smiled. That was how she had always felt about him, too. “Jim did say that you went on a date once,” she said.
“A d ate ? ”
“Yes, to an antique store or something.”
“That wasn’t a date!”
“Well, Jim doesn’t go out alone with girls, and you two were alone. To him it was a date.”
Amy was shocked. She didn’t know what to say. Susan drew the engagement ring out of her pocket.
“Jim asked me, Amy, to ask you to marry him.”
Amy started to cry. Susan did too. “You can tell him to ask me in person when I see him in France.”
It was all too much. But miracles happen, right? Maybe Amy would get better, and Jim would get out of jail, and—and they could get married, maybe even live in France. But Amy was dying, they had no future, did they?
Susan, Amy, and Susan’s daughter flew to France and visited Jim in the Rennes prison. They met as a group, then Amy and Jim met privately. The women left the jail and walked outside its walls to a specific spot Jim had told them about. Just stand there and listen, he had said. It was dark. They could barely hear, but were sure they could make something out.
God bless him. He was singing hymns.
Susan felt Jim had a beautiful voice. Not everyone was a fan— his singing drove his cellmates crazy. He had shared a cell with a Brit who was being extradited. They got along at first, but after a while he asked to be moved because Kopp sang his hymns, loudly, at three or four o’clock in morning. Amy made one last visit to see Jim. He did not propose to her. She asked him not to. She did not have much time to live, she was certain of that. Before they said goodbye, Jim elicited a promise from Amy. They would not tell anyone about their relationship, or what was said in private. They would take the secret with them to the grave.
***
Rennes, France
Tuesday, May 8, 2001 On May 8, the U.S. Justice Department formally submitted a request to the French government for the extradition of James Charles Kopp. A deadline was set for the end of the month for the French courts to decide the matter. Under the extradition treaty between the two countries, no one arrested in France for a crime committed in the United States could face a penalty harsher than a convict would face in France. As the deadline neared, American officials speaking for Attorney General John Ashcroft insisted that the death penalty remain an option should Kopp be found guilty of murder. This, even though the European Court of Human Rights had previously ruled that no individual could be extradited from any European country without a guarantee that capital punishment be taken off the table. The French Court of Appeal in Rennes would make the final decision on the matter.
Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf considered the situation an intriguing one. His client had broken no French law. Perhaps he might be charged with illegal entry to the country, using a false passport and so on. Perhaps. Might get a couple of months in jail. After that? If the extradition failed, Mr. Kopp could stay in France or go elsewhere. No Western European country would send him back to the United States to face the death penalty. He could remain in legal limbo indefinitely.
Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf faced something of a dilemma. On the one hand he could hope that Ashcroft would agree to drop the death penalty. But that would mean extradition and a murder trial for his client, a possible life sentence. On the other hand, maybe it would be better if there was no deal at all. Then French justice would determine Kopp’s fate. Rouzaud–Le Boeuf ha
d many long talks with his client. The American was an engaging man, highly intelligent, but could be volatile at times, unpredictable. He talked of his family, his father. He told a fantastic story of how he ended up in France: he had learned that the Archbishop in Ireland was a homosexual, had started telling others about the fact, and some clergy urged Kopp to get out of the country. Yes, in their early conversations, Mr. Kopp seemed quite agitated, at times unbalanced.
The day neared when the Court of Appeal in Rennes would make its extradition decision. Rouzaud–Le Boeuf received a phone call. He should appear in court immediately. There he was handed the faxed letter. It was from the U.S. embassy in Paris. The Americans would not seek the death penalty for James Charles Kopp. Rouzaud–Le Boeuf smiled. His client was going to live. Of course, the Americans had little choice. They could not risk losing Kopp altogether. And, if Kopp was innocent, as his lawyer strongly believed, then he would be ultimately acquitted. How might Kopp fare in New York? He had retained a high-profile Buffalo defense lawyer named Paul Cambria. He would of course still need to navigate the American legal system and its sideshows—the media frenzy, the money, courtroom histrionics, plea bargains. In America, Rouzaud–Le Boeuf reflected, innocent men sometimes end up in prison, admit to crimes they did not commit.
There was something else that worried him. There was a signature missing on the letter from the U.S. embassy—Ashcroft’s. It should be there, he thought. This was an important case, shouldn’t the attorney general himself make the decision? Now, on the other hand, it was unthinkable that top American officials would renege on such a promise. It would be a gross violation of international law. But there was still that risk, however small. On June 7, Rouzaud–Le Boeuf got what he was looking for—a public statement from Ashcroft on the extradition agreement:
