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

by Jon Wells

  It was a photo of James Charles Kopp. Later, FBI special agent Joel Mercer visited the home of another witness who claimed to have seen the mysterious jogger. “His beard was about the color of your hair,” the witness told the redheaded Mercer. He showed the witness the same photo array that had been placed before Lenard. The witness paused.

  “There—number four,” he said. Kopp. Later, a third witness signed his initials beside photo number four as well.

  The search in the woods behind the Slepians’ house continued. On November 5, a police officer noticed a sliver of plastic sticking from the ground. It was a buried garbage bag. Contents they found inside included a green baseball cap with the inscriptions “New York” and “NY,” a silver men’s wristwatch, an empty rifle ammunition box, binoculars, two green earplugs, black fanny pack, flashlight, protective gun muffler earmuffs and two plastic shopping bags. Amherst police sent the evidence to the FBI’s Washington lab. One latent fingerprint was eventually lifted from the evidence—but the print did not match prints on file from Kopp’s criminal records. The bag was a good find, suggesting the level of planning used by the sniper. But the key piece was still missing—the weapon.

  * * *

  Members of the joint U.S.–Canadian police task force on the five sniper attacks continued to share information and discuss strategy. A joint management meeting was held in Hamilton. Senior Hamilton police officials discussed the investigation with task force members from the FBI, RCMP, and Winnipeg and Vancouver police forces. Amherst police chief John Askey burst into the meeting, angry. The chief had learned there had been an RCMP officer in Amherst, conducting surveillance, in the days before the murder of Bart Slepian. How could the RCMP have not told him about the suspect they were tailing? “You’re following the guy, and you let him shoot one of my citizens!” he charged.

  RCMP officials at the meeting said there had in fact been an agent in the Buffalo area, but it was for surveillance concerning a matter unrelated to the doctor shootings. And no one knew Kopp was a suspect prior to the shooting, so how could they be following him at the time? One man dead, three seriously injured, another barely escaping injury, and the sniper still at large. Pressure was mounting on all of the law enforcement agencies.

  * * *

  Phone ringing, before dawn, Wednesday morning, November 4. Jennifer Rock picks up.

  “Jen. I’m in trouble. Can you call me back?”

  Jennifer Rock had an office job with IBM in Vermont. She had known Jim Kopp for several years, met him through protests several years before when she was in her early twenties, he had once stayed at her parents’ home. Rock’s Vermont address had been one of several to which Kopp had his mail sent, she had deposited money in banks for him. She phoned him back at 6:30 a.m.

  “Close the account, bring the money and meet me,” Jim told her.

  The next day, Rock left home. She told her parents she’d be in New York for a while. Looking for some work, visiting friends. She arrived at a mall in White Plains, New York. She had the money and a false West Virginia driver’s license she had made at Jim’s request. She tried to look inconspicuous, browse for shoes. She stopped at the newsstand and saw the headline: “James Charles Kopp Wanted by the FBI as a Material Witness.” She saw the murky photo of Jim’s grimacing face. Where did they get that photo? Didn’t look like him at all. The FBI had obviously pointed the finger at him. But he could never have shot someone. She spotted her friend.

  “Jim, your face is everywhere. You have to get out of here.”

  They got in her car and headed for Newark, New Jersey. (Jim had changed plates again on his car, but he knew he could no longer use the wanted black Cavalier anywhere in the country.) He should get on a plane and leave the country, now, he said, until his name could be cleared. No, argued Jennifer. Had he seen the papers, the news on TV? His face was everywhere. Not to Newark airport. They should drive, in her car, south.

  The FBI hit the places where Kopp had been, retracing his steps, interviewing people he had stayed with, even questioning a mailman who confirmed he had delivered mail to a “Jack Crotty,” one of Kopp’s aliases. They searched a Laurel Avenue residence in Newark, Delaware, and seized computer disks containing eight Texas driver’s licenses under various names. They searched room 148 at the Travel Inn, 8920 Gulf Freeway, Houston, Texas, and seized a telephone book. On Thursday, November 6, agents visited TV station WOWK in Huntington, West Virginia. Kopp had once been arrested at a protest outside a clinic in nearby Charleston. The station provided video from coverage of the scene. He was on the tape. For the FBI, finding contacts of Kopp’s was not the problem. He had fleeting pro-life acquaintances all over the country, people like Gannon, Betty, Anthony Kenny. But these were not the type of contacts who held the key to catching him, they knew nothing of his movements. It seemed as if he had no intimate friends, no trusted allies he would turn to at a time like this. Even his sister didn’t know much about him. It was as if James Kopp had planned it that way: “One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.” ***

  From his office in Quantico, Virginia, FBI profiler James Fitzgerald advised agents in the field on what kinds of questions to ask James Kopp’s friends and family, about his background, personal history. Ask the right questions, in the right order. Did he change his appearance much over the years? What about his relationships?

  Fitzgerald studied the information coming in. The subject knew many people, had traveled the country, and the world, extensively. His emerging analysis suggested James Charles Kopp was a conflicted individual. He was well educated, holding a master’s degree, but had held mostly menial jobs. He was deeply religious—yet apparently a killer. Kopp clearly belonged to an extreme wing of the anti-abortion movement. But even within that wing he was a bit of a loner, marched to his own drummer, did his own thing. Nonviolent, his friends said, but Fitzgerald sensed an escalation in Kopp’s thinking about how he should combat abortion. The profiler believed that Kopp had been the one who pulled the trigger in all three of the Canadian attacks, in addition to the Rochester shooting, and the Slepian murder.

  Question: Would Kopp try again?

  Surely not, thought Fitzgerald, now that he was a wanted man, now that his cover was blown. He would try to disappear. It would be too risky to try again in the foreseeable future. Kopp fitted the sniper mentality: calculating, careful, nonconfrontational. He would not attack again, not unless he was motivated to simply taunt the FBI. And that was highly unlikely. He was too smart for that, his mission too strictly defined.

  Among the first people agents interviewed was Jim’s stepmother, Lynn Kopp, in Texas. She talked about the family: Chuck Kopp, ex-Marine, disciplinarian; Nancy Kopp, devout mother; the twin brother; three sisters, two of whom had died young. Jim’s past relationships? There was Jenny, the girlfriend at UC Santa Cruz. At least, that’s what Lynn had heard. She had never met Jenny, had never seen Jim with any girl, actually. From what she heard, the relationship with Jenny didn’t last long, and Jim went berserk when he learned she’d had an abortion.

  Fitzgerald examined the interview transcripts. Interesting. Kopp had been extremely close to his mother. And over the years, on the road, protesting, he had had strong associations with women. Yet he never married, and there was no evidence of a long-term relationship with a female. Most of the relationships, if not all, appeared to have been platonic. Women were the key to James Kopp’s future, Fitzgerald was convinced that if he were to communicate with anyone while on the run, either for shelter or to resume his sniper campaign, it would definitely be a woman, somewhere.

  There was a list of activists who had joined Kopp at protests in Vermont. An FBI agent had titled one document, “Vermont Rescuers—February 21, 1990 to May 9, 1990,” and included addresses. There were several women on the list. Agents had already located a few of them. But there was one who had not yet been found. Her name was Loretta Marra. Agents had discovered, among Kopp’s possessions in James Gannon’s attic, a magazine with a
bortion clinic bomber Dennis Malvasi’s mailing address on it. Malvasi was known by the authorities to be married to Loretta. She had been photographed under surveillance at Malvasi’s Brooklyn apartment back in October 1997. But she had since fallen off the radar. Perhaps Kopp would try to contact her.

  Chapter 13 ~ On the Lam

  After leaving New Jersey, Jennifer Rock and Jim Kopp drove for more than 30 hours, taking turns at the wheel, sleeping in the car. Jim altered his appearance on the road, bleached his hair blond to match the photo on the fake West Virginia driver’s license. There were long stretches where Jim said nothing at all to her. “The government has done this,” she said. “Set you up.”

  Jim nodded and said nothing.

  “I’ll never be able to see my family again,” he finally said. It is 1,986 miles from Newark to the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas. They crossed the border, parked near an airport. The thin blond man got out of the car and disappeared. On November 8, Rock drove back into the United States and headed north. When she returned to New York she dialed a pager number belonging to a “John Rizzo.”

  The next day, FBI special agent Walter Steffens Jr. searched a lot in a truck stop campground in Kent County, Delaware. The lot belonged to a man named Javier Hernandez, who had bought it from James Kopp. Kopp had owned the property for three years, but his name did not appear on the deed. The land included a trailer and camper top. Steffens talked to neighbors who said they recalled Kopp living in the trailer about a year and a half before. He searched the camper and found a priority mail envelope containing an updated résumé for Kopp, detailing his work history through April 1993. And he found a permit in the name of Dwight Hanson for use of the Elkneck Shooting Range, located about an hour’s drive away. There were four newsletters from another shooting range nearby, the Delmarva Sportsman Association, addressed to Kevin James Gavin at a Maryland post office box. Steffens visited the post office box and found another shooting range permit. Back at the FBI lab, the documents were dusted for fingerprints. The prints on the papers matched each other. They also matched fingerprints on file for James Charles Kopp.

  That same day, agents searched the house at 1073 Buck Hollow Road, Fairfax, Vermont. It was a house belonging to a relative of Jennifer Rock. On Wednesday, November 11, agents again searched James Gannon’s home in Whiting, New Jersey. They seized four boxes containing papers, maps, computer disks, books, notebooks, an address book. There was an envelope addressed to Jack Crotty, c/o Doris and Scott, Pittsburgh.

  “Who owns these boxes?” an agent asked Gannon.

  “I don’t know,” was Gannon’s answer.

  The contents were sealed and sent to the FBI office in Buffalo. Among the contents, an agent found a hand-drawn map. The map was dusted for prints. Also, on a torn piece of paper, the address 4990 Lebanon Road. The agent flipped the paper over, and saw on the other side a notation reading, “A to Z 883-9945.” The phone number was for the 615 area code, Old Hickory, a town near Nashville.

  Soon after that, a man nattily dressed in a dark suit walked through the door of the A-Z Pawn Shop in Old Hickory. He stopped at the counter and looked at Patricia Osbourne, who was working the store that day.

  “I’m John Eastes. I’m a special agent with the FBI’s field office in Nashville.” He asked to see Osbourne’s books. They went to the back of the store, and he began silently leafing through the pages.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked. Eastes was the first agent to visit the store, but Osbourne would meet more in the weeks to come. They combed through the books, took materials away, brought them back. There had apparently been no gun purchase at the A-Z Pawn Shop by anyone named James C. Kopp.

  * * *

  Jersey City, N.J.

  Thursday evening, November 12, 1998

  FBI Special Agent Larry Wack learned from agents in Newark, New Jersey, of another address where Kopp had lived as late as the previous September under the alias Clyde Svenson. On the night of November 12, agents visited a three-storey, redbrick apartment on Communipaw Avenue in Jersey City. The agents moved to the back of the building, then up the stairs to a unit on the second floor, and knocked on the unfinished wooden door of number 346, the home of Seth Grodofsky. “Last time I saw Clyde was two weeks ago,” said Grodofsky.

  “Where is he now?”

  “I think he’s doing contracting work in New York.” The agents asked more questions. It seemed Clyde Svenson also

  kept some belongings down by the docks along the Hudson River, down on Warren Street. The agents asked to search the apartment. Grodofsky refused. They would need a warrant. One of the agents left. The others stayed overnight, making sure no potential evidence was disturbed during the wait for a court to issue the warrant.

  Meanwhile, more agents headed to Warren Street, on the water, Slip No. 7. They seized three sealed cardboard boxes belonging to Clyde Svenson. One contained a computer, monitor, printer, accessories. Another held a large vinyl travel bag containing a typewriter, book, lantern. Another box had books, computer disks, software guides. Among the loose papers was a Bell Atlantic phone bill and a New York Police Department traffic ticket for New York plate number BPE 216.

  Warrant in hand, agents searched Grodofsky’s apartment the next afternoon. They found a padlocked maroon toolbox that had “Job Box” written on it. They cracked the lock. The box contained a hand plane, staple gun, electrical tape, heat gun and other tools. Agents also collected clothes, bedding, a plastic mug, church newsletters, duct tape, two small flashlights, a movie stub, a bottle of sauce, a photo of the Pope, travel brochures, a toothbrush and, in the bedroom, a bottle for holy water. Special Agent Barry Lee Bush looked in the closet. He stood on a chair to check the top shelf, spotted a notebook. He opened the book and saw a notation: “716 Barnet 834-6796, Amherst.” The notebook was sent to a lab for prints and analysis. The phone number was for Dr. Barnett Slepian’s office in Amherst, New York.

  The same day, agents searched 1073 Buckhollow Road, Fairfax, Vermont, home of Grace R. Rock. They seized one Smith & Wesson handgun, two empty magazines, two boxes of cartridges.

  On Thursday, November 19, agents visited Loretta Marra’s last-known address: 12 Indian Trail, West Milford, New Jersey. One of Loretta’s three brothers, Nicholas Marra, answered the door. “I haven’t seen Loretta. Not since the summertime,” he said.

  “Is that unusual?”

  “No. She’s like a vagabond, you know? No fixed address. I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with her if I tried. But we don’t talk much. Some of the family relationships are a little strained.” The agents interviewed another brother, Joseph. He said he didn’t get along well with his siblings—Loretta, Nick or Bill. “They have this fervent religious zeal on the abortion issue. Comes from my parents. They forced their opinions on the four kids. Loretta? No, haven’t been in touch with her in a long time.”

  The FBI next located and interviewed Jennifer Rock, having tracked her license plate and studied her recent phone and banking records. Her calling card record indicated a call had been placed to 914-844-7355 on November 4 at 6:36 a.m. It was a pager number Kopp had given out to several people, including his sister Anne.

  “Did you recently take a trip to Mexico, the agents asked?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “When did you come back to the United States?”

  “On November 4. At Laredo.”

  Wrong answer. She couldn’t have crossed back from Mexico that day. Phone records placed her at work, an IBM office in Vermont, on November 4.

  “Did James Kopp phone you within the last two weeks?”

  She said nothing.

  “What about the $7,000 withdrawal you made on November 5? What was that for?”

  Rock’s stories did not add up. But from the phone records it was clear she had not been in touch with Kopp since Mexico. The was clear she had not been in touch with Kopp since Mexico. The 3716 immediately upon arriving home. After searching the records of a pager company
called Smart Beep, agents learned the pager was for a John Rizzo. On November 20, an agent called the Rizzo pager. A woman picked up the page. She went to a phone booth to return the page to avoid having her call traced, using a prepaid phone card, and unwittingly spoke to an agent on the other end. The bureau had made contact with Loretta Marra—Rizzo was one of three false pager names she used—but the agents still did not know exactly where she was living.

  * * *

  It was December 18, 56 days after the murder of Dr. Bart Slepian. A man named John Caldararo, of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Transit Police, conducted his routine check of the long-term parking lot at the Newark International Airport. He noticed a black Chevy Cavalier with an expired Pennsylvania registration sticker. The car had one plate on it: New Jersey, RAJ 889. He noticed the window was ajar and keys still in the ignition. The long-term parking lot was a well-known place for people to ditch cars. He recorded the car’s VIN and ran a search on the number, 1G1JE2111H7175930. A notice came up on the computer screen. Amherst police and the FBI wanted that car. He got on the phone.

  License plates change, but the VIN is the key. It was James Kopp’s car. He had switched the Vermont license plate on it, but it was his vehicle.

  FBI Special Agent Bernie Tolbert holds up photos of Kopp’s car.

  Special Agent Arthur Durrant visited the airport to examine the car. He pulled out his notebook and started writing. “One 1987 Chevy Cavalier, RS Model, black in color, 2 door, hatchback, red pinstripe on the front bumper, green PA Inspection Sticker dated 4/97.” The car was removed and taken to the first floor of the FBI garage at 910 Newark Avenue. Items recovered included: a Tasco binocular case on the floor in front of the passenger seat, a plastic Tops Markets grocery bag behind driver’s seat, samples of hairs and fibers vacuumed up from the interior and trunk, religious medallion and hanging ribbon and flower on the front dash, service sticker on inner windshield for Autospa of North Bergen, in center console three AAA batteries, keys, fuses, bulbs, small flashlight, drill, wire, bit, chalk, token; in rear hatch knotted cord and hardware, pack of auto fuses, religious card, pine needle in engine compartment.