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

by Jon Wells

  His internal radar had never been more sensitive. Footsteps clicking on the wet pavement behind him. Heavy steps. Perhaps two men? Gardai? Interpol? FBI? He walked faster, turned down an alley. Don’t think. Disappear. He felt his hands on cold metal as he pulled himself into the garbage Dumpster, sinking into the rot, the stench turning his stomach. Think about the shower, the inevitable glorious shower he could take in the morning. Suffer. Feel it. Be stronger from it.

  Later, feeling secure again, he sat down to write, thoughts flooding his mind. His letters were a kaleidoscope of corny jokes, doodled happy faces, references to favorite movies and books, scattered Latin phrases, homilies attributed to his mother and father, Biblical passages. One letter, two, three, four, five. He wrote them all to the same person. He couldn’t help himself. He sealed the envelope. On the back, he wrote a return address in German. On the front, he wrote the destination in his looping handwriting:

  Ted Barnes

  385 Chestnut Street

  Apt. 2D/Brooklyn, N.Y.

  * * *

  Brooklyn, N.Y.

  June 2000

  Loretta Marra looked at her friend as he drove. He was Dennis’s old friend, really, but over the last year or so she had grown to trust him, at least enough that he was driving Loretta and one of her sons to a walk-in clinic so the boy could get medical treatment. Loretta had kept a low profile but she wanted to quietly become active in the movement again. Federal law made old-style rescues too risky, but there were other ways to throw a wrench into the baby-killing business. One was to put industrial-strength glue into the locks at clinics.

  “Would you be interested in scouting some clinics?” Loretta’s friend—the informant—agreed.

  “Hear from Jim lately?” he asked.

  “Yeah. He’s doing all right, but he said he needs money.” “We should get him some,” the friend replied. “How would you do that?”

  “It has to go through me. He’ll certainly take it but he said he’ll only take it if I approve.”

  Later they talked about morality and philosophy, Loretta’s favorite topics. New York bishop Austin Vaughan had recently died. He was a hero in the pro-life movement, had been arrested many times. He had once warned pro-choice New York governor Mario Cuomo that he was risking the fires of hell for his support of the killing of unborn children. When was violence justified in the war to save babies? The sniper who had killed Dr. Barnett Slepian, intentionally or not, had taken a definite position on the moral spectrum. “I think I’d be capable of killing, for God and a higher good,” Loretta told her friend. Surely only a moral coward would rule out violence in all circumstances.

  Special Agent Michael Osborn met with the informant. What did he have? Osborn listened as CS1 talked about what Loretta had said. Interesting, but not what Osborn was after. “Anything on Kopp’s location?” he asked. “No. Nothing.”

  Loretta had been careful whenever Kopp’s name came up. So far, all the FBI had court permission to do was listen to what CS1 relayed to them. They needed more surveillance, they needed a fly on the wall. In October, Osborn filed court applications to conduct audio surveillance on a car. CS1 had access to several vehicles. They’d put the bug in a car, have him take Loretta for a drive, get her talking. Osborn and Buffalo special agent Joel Mercer went before a judge to argue their case. They said the bugs were necessary for two reasons: one, to establish that Marra and Malvasi were themselves breaking the law by harboring a fugitive and obstructing justice; and two, the prime reason, to locate the fugitive himself, James C. Kopp. “There is probable cause,” argued Mercer, that the couple will “further the conspiracy to harbor and conceal Kopp… and would talk in connection to facilitate, accomplish, and continue his status as a fugitive from justice and to continue to evade apprehension and arrest.” On November 1, U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit judge Ellsworth A. van Graafeiland signed an order authorizing the FBI to bug a gold Chevy Malibu for 30 days “for the purpose of obtaining evidence concerning the location of a fugitive as defined in Section 2516(1) pursuant to Section 2561(1)(n).”

  CS1 phoned Loretta. They chatted. She said she wanted to visit a friend in Oneonta, New York. Turned out she was in luck—her friend had use of a Malibu. He picked up Loretta and Dennis. He turned the conversation to a familiar topic. “So when do want to scout clinics?” he asked Loretta. “Anytime you want,” she replied.

  Osborn listened on the bug as talk turned to details about what type of clothing the friend should wear and which night of the week was best to glue locks at clinics. They moved to the bigger picture of the pro-life movement, where it was heading, use of force, and Slepian’s death.

  “I’m still not sure myself—you think the shooter was trying to kill him?” CS1 asked.

  “You’re always out there to maim,” said Loretta.

  “What’s Jim’s opinion on that?”

  “I know he feels bad for Slepian’s children. But he knows Slepian was not an innocent person, either. He was, morally, a guilty person.”

  The talk turned to Malvasi’s surrender to police after blowing up an abortion clinic back in 1986, when Cardinal John O’Connor had urged him to turn himself in.

  “I disagree with it,” Loretta said.

  “With what?”

  “Surrendering.”

  “Why?”

  “In my opinion Dennis had an obligation not to obey him. But he didn’t know that.”

  “Would you have given yourself up?”

  “No, I don’t care if the Pope tells me to. He has no authority to tell me, to tell me to turn myself in for doing something morally praiseworthy. O’Connor’s request was a sinful command.” Later they discussed whether the FBI was on to them. “If I leave the security of that address, you know,” said Marra, “my whole life will fall apart again. I can’t risk it.” Loretta knew the government had come close. How did she know? asked CS1. Because they had questioned her brother Nick. But the FBI did not know where they lived. If they did, she knew, they would be breaking down her door by now.

  * * *

  Dublin, Ireland

  November 2000

  On November 26, Jim Kopp was issued a new passport, number T895122, in the name of John O’Brien, date of birth January 2, 1960, parents Charles and Bridget O’Brien, from County Cork. On December 14, he applied for a provisional driver’s license under the name Daniel Joseph O’Sullivan, and took an eye test. He was getting some work in construction, paid through the Irish Nationwide Building Society, checks made out to Sean O’Briain. In January, he got a part-time job at Dublin’s Hume Street Cancer Center using the name Tim Guttler. He did clerical work, a quiet, unassuming man, avoided eye contact with anyone, walked with a limp.The hospital was a few blocks from his beloved Grafton Street and St. Stephen’s Green.

  Jim Kopp attended St. John’s Church near Dublin Bay.

  On Sundays Jim Kopp attended St. John’s church in a seaside port town called Dun Loughanie, a short train ride south of the city along Dublin Bay. St. John’s had been an Anglican church before its conversion to the St. Pius X denomination. The Society of St. Pius X is a breakaway sect of the Roman Catholic Church, rooted in disaffection over liberal church reforms. Canadian police hadn’t been too far off the mark to follow leads linking Jim Kopp to the group. St. Pius X churches around the world still held their mass in Latin. Its fundamentalist Catholicism appealed not only to Kopp’s faith, but also to his fascination with intrigue, power, connections. One of his favorite books was A Windswept House, by Malachi Martin, a novelist and Vatican insider. It is a dark tale about a global conspiracy of satanists and freemasons that threatens to take control of the church—and is opposed only by the few Catholic traditionalists who cling to the old ways. It was fiction, but Martin claimed that much of it was true.

  A typical winter daytime service. About 50 people. The smell of candle smoke, air so frigid inside the old building some parishioners wear coats. Before the service begins, total silence. A young woman kneeling
in prayer, dressed in black, head covered according to the rules, a veil over her face. A rumpled man named Pat sitting in one of the back rows, holding his personal Bible, which is bloated, as if it had fallen into a bathtub long ago, pages worn and yellowed and patched with tape.

  The priest enters, keeps his back to the congregation, says no words of greeting. To the uninitiated, the Latin mass is a hard, cold ceremony. The priest kneels at the altar and begins.

  In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. Introibo ad altarre Dei. (In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. I will go up to the altar of God.) Ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam. (To God, who gives joy to my youth.) Judica me, Dues, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta: ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me. (Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from an ungodly nation: save me from an unjust and deceitful enemy.)

  Later, he gives a brief sermon. ‘‘It is time to wake up from our sleeping. We have the power to wake up from our lives, to overcome materialism, to witness the supernatural life. God is a god of vengeance. He will strike the unjust. Some would say, there is no God, no hell. Oh, but wait until the day of judgment.’’

  At the end of the service, Jim Kopp—Timothy—liked to kneel and pray before one of the small altars along the side wall. Over time he talked about his life with a couple of parishioners. Said he planned to leave Ireland soon. Family emergency. Sad story. Timmy had to get to Germany to see his mother. She was dying.

  Chapter 16 ~ A Moral Impossibility

  Washington, D.C.

  January 2001

  On January 19, a new FBI surveillance warrant was signed by Southern New York District judge Whitman Knapp, for placement of a bug in a Ford Windstar van. (Knapp was well known in New York law enforcement circles—he chaired the 1971 Knapp Commission that held hearings into charges of corruption on the NYPD brought by Frank Serpico.) The warrant was good for the period between January 20–22, when Dennis Malvasi, Loretta Marra, Loretta’s brother Nick, and informant CS1 were taking a road trip to Washington. Malvasi had invited his old friend to attend the White Rose Banquet.

  The grandly named “banquet” was a small annual gathering held on the same weekend as the March For Life in the American capital. The march was a big mainstream event, the banquet a meeting of the pro-life fringe, where those who had taken the anti-abortion fight to violent extremes were honored. Malvasi was in the spotlight this year. Loretta, sensing that the authorities would be looking for her, kept a low profile. Before the banquet began at a suburban Washington Comfort Inn hotel, Loretta sat in the van in the parking lot, took out a pad and wrote notes for Dennis’s speech. When Malvasi spoke, he lambasted pro-lifers who opposed violence in the abortion fight.

  “I’m glad to be here today,” he began. “This is the largest gathering of baby defenders I’ve ever had the pleasure of being with, and what a good feeling it is to see so many of you… We’ve had around 30 years of abortion, and around 30 million mangled baby bodies. Year after year, pro-lifers get outraged, and the bodies pile up. Year after year, pro-lifers write angry letters to the editor, to their congressman, to their senator, and the bodies pile up even higher… It is the baby defender who dares to suggest that the time for playing by the rules of the enemy is long past. It is the baby defender who dares to suggest the use of direct action to interfere between a vicious assailant and a helpless infant… I will always be grateful to… the ones who gave me moral and material support, before and after my arrest. I encourage you all to continue the noble work of supporting your local baby defender, from lock gluers to bombers, monkey wrench crews, arsonists and snipers. Your help makes all the difference in the world and to the babies themselves. Thank you and God bless.”

  Afterwards, in the Windstar, Loretta, Dennis and the informant talked about Jim Kopp. Loretta said that Jim had expressed interest in getting in touch with Time To Kill author Michael Bray. Perhaps Bray would be interested in assisting Jim upon his return to the United States, helping to find safe housing, money. Jim’s name would never have to be used among anyone associated with Bray, he could just be referred to as a baby defender.

  “I’m still interested in sending Jim some money,” the informant added.

  “That would be no problem,” said Malvasi.

  “But it has to go directly to Jim.”

  “Of course.”

  They drove the Windstar back to the hotel where they were staying, the Hampton Inn at 15202 Lansdale Boulevard. in Bowie, Maryland—Bray’s hometown. On January 22, they headed home to Brooklyn. The next day, FBI agents walked through the doors of the Hampton Inn, searched hotel records and found a registration card under the name of Joyce Maier, a known alias of Marra’s.

  * * *

  On Friday, February 2, New Jersey District judge Alfred Lechner Jr. approved a third bugging permit for the FBI, this time for a white Chrysler Grand Voyager, for the time frame February 3–4. Dennis and Loretta’s friend was thinking of driving the Voyager to Atlantic City, where he had a contact at the Taj Mahal hotel and casino. He could put them up in two rooms, had some extra money to gamble, too. They could send all their winnings to Jim Kopp—wherever he was.

  The next day, Saturday, on the drive from to New Jersey, CS1 asked Loretta about Jim. How was she communicating with him? It was email, she explained. A Yahoo! account she accessed at a local library.

  “I’d love to meet Jim some day,” the informant said. “I could eventually arrange a dinner meeting with him.” “Really? How much?”

  “You could get his autograph, talk to him. For $10,000.” At the casino Marra gambled along with CS1, while Malvasi

  stayed back in the room with their two sons. Loretta turned to her friend. She needed a break. “Have to go back to the room for a minute, check on the boys. Can you hold this a minute?” She handed him her purse and left the room for the elevators. There wasn’t much time. How long would Loretta be? What if Dennis showed up? What if security saw him? He searched the contents of the wallet. Two PT-1 calling cards. A slip of paper. Two sets of numbers. A name. He got out a pen and started writing, finishing before Loretta returned.

  Later, CS1 contacted Michael Osborn. The agent wrote down the numbers: 0113531872801; 0874106124. The first three digits— 011—was the code for making an international call. And 353 was a country code—for Ireland. Osborn phoned the Buffalo FBI Field Office.

  Osborn well knew that a lawyer could ultimately take issue with the search of Loretta Marra’s wallet. The FBI had a warrant to bug the vehicle, not rifle through a woman’s wallet: “The search and seizure is presumptively unreasonable. Unquestionably, as of the time of the warrantless seizure and search of the wallet, CS1 was functioning completely as a government agent.” Osborn would counter that his job was to gather evidence. Clearly he had not sought, nor obtained, a search warrant to go through Loretta’s personal property. But the informant was acting on his own initiative. He was under no direction from the FBI on that specifically.

  * * *

  Dublin, Ireland

  February 16, 2001

  Jim Kopp ducked into the cyber café, smoke hanging in the air, computers lined up row upon row. He took his assigned seat at a terminal. On the run he had taken such care to keep moving, trust no one, bury his identity. So what was it inside that told him to reconnect with his past through a computer? Dangerous? No. He knew how to keep the FBI—“the Edgars,” as he called the G-men—guessing. Do not send conventional email. The FBI could surely monitor it. Instead leave notes in cyber bottles. Write your email, store it in a draft folder on a Yahoo mail account. Do not hit Send, ever. Simply save it as a draft, let it sit there, like an envelope that never makes it to the mailbox. A second party can access the draft if she knows it’s there and knows the account user name identification. A private pipeline—for Loretta’s eyes only.

  He logged on to Yahoo! email and typed the user name: aheaume@yahoo.com. It was named after a woman, real or imagined, named A
lyssa Heaume.

  Subject: quickie

  He wrote in his cryptic, quirky way, the letter sprinkled with non-sequiturs, observations, inside jokes, French phrases, self-deprecation. He wrote about a possible trip he was planning. What did Loretta think about it? He finished the email, saved it in the aheaume draft folder, logged off, paid at the counter and left. Dublin is five hours ahead of Brooklyn. Loretta would read the message when she got a chance to log on. The next day, February 17, he was back, at a different café. He typed a new message.

  Subject: longer

  His present and future. Surely Loretta was the only one who would understand, who could offer something of value back to him. The mission? The babies? What should he do? He saved the email in the folder and left. Later that same day—joy. Loretta had read his messages and deposited her reply in the draft folder, couching her letter in code words and inside references: On margins: the capital city of mom’s birth to jackie area is fine with me, but I am nowhere near in the position you are to judge that. Anything at all you’d suggest would sound fine with me, because you are an if kind of gal, and you can talk big and act rich, as far as I’m concerned. Mech points out, though, that jackie, and the whole larger area of which jackie is but a part, is said to be under closer scrutiny these days because others have also thought of what you’ve thought of, with those others are said to be very, very naughty and so forth. I am simply ignorant on the facts of the matter. I understand where you want bmtm to occur. I believe I told you i was calling from one during our 2nd phone conversation, and you worried that i was out in the cold and wet, and I told you it was fairly sheltered, because I was in the very shadow of the establishment.