Sniper_ The True Story Of Anti-Abortion Killer James Kopp Part 2

"The child is extremely agitated," intoned the narrator. "Even though the suction tip has not touched it. We see the child's mouth open in a silent scream, a child threatened with extinction. The heart rate has sped up, it does sense aggression in its sanctuary. It is moving away, in a pathetic attempt to escape. The body is now being torn, systematically, from the head."

The figurative slap in the face for Jim Kopp on abortion came in 1980. As part of his research at Cal State Fullerton, he worked on a project at Stanford Hospital involving nerve reconnection for Vietnam veterans with spinal-cord injuries. He would one day tell a court of law how the incident had been the turning point for him. He said he knew a doctor: She takes him down to visit the morgue, in the bowels of the hospital. Jim stands by a long metal table with a paper bucket at one end. He looks inside the bucket at the aborted fetus. Birth defects, six fingers on one hand, genitalia not properly developed. Sees the doctor, instrument in hand, flipping this fetus-this baby-back and forth. She's doing it so casually, like a rag doll. This nice, intelligent woman probably feels she's doing nothing wrong, seems proud, because she has detected some of these defects. Recommended the abortion.

"Glad we found the defects in time, in-utero," the doctor observes. "When you see stuff like this it reminds you why you believe in abortion."

His gray-blue eyes focus, Jim's face freezes in an intense stare, taking it all in, processing the information.

The scientist in him-and that's how he thought of himself, as a scientist-could look at it dispa.s.sionately, perhaps, but something else was speaking to him. He had never seen a baby that had been-killed-before. His mind spun. He was stunned. At conception, 23 chromosomes from the sperm meet 23 chromosomes from the egg. A blueprint of a unique individual is formed, right there. And, now, destroyed. It was coming together for him, had been for some time. His research on embryos helped support what he was feeling in his heart, that abortion killed an innocent human life. And if this is so, what is the abortionist engaged in? Murder? How could it be otherwise?

"Show me a counterargument, based on science, or faith, or something, anything," he thought. "I'm from Missouri, so show me!"

He had seen the mind of G.o.d in his research, felt a love and compa.s.sion he had never felt before for anyone or anything. He was connecting with the unborn child.

In 1981 Jim's sister Marty died of cancer at just 32 years old. Marty, attractive, rebellious against her father's discipline had gone north to Oregon, "the commune scene," as Jim called it, and never returned. First Mary, now Marty, had died from the disease. Jim felt powerless to stop the death of his sisters, just as he felt powerless facing another painful development in his family. His father had begun an affair with another woman.

Jim completed his thesis in embryology and had an article published in the International Journal of Invertebrate Reproduction and Development. It was t.i.tled, "A Preliminary Ultrastructural Study of Phragmatopoma Gametes." ("The mature sperm morphology most strongly resembles that of certain mussel sperm, with weaker resemblance to other polychaete and mollusk sperms ...") He had enveloped himself in a microscopic world, a separate dimension, studying the science of conception itself.

In 1983, he graduated with his master's degree in biology from Cal State Fullerton, with a 3.84 on a 4.0 scale-an "A" average. Biology backed up his conviction about the illegitimacy of abortion, from a clinical scientific perspective. But what to do about that? What action does one take, in a tangible way, but also spiritually?

He traveled to L'Abri, Switzerland, lived at a study center founded by Protestant theologian Francis Schaeffer. He heard about the center from a friend who had spent time with Schaeffer and returned transformed by the experience. Schaeffer was an influential man leading something of a Christian revival movement. He was pro-life and encouraged activism, even civil disobedience, to oppose abortion. "At a certain point it is the duty of the Christian to disobey the government," he had said in a speech in Fort Lauderdale in 1982.

Jim took to quoting Schaeffer to others. "If you are a Christian," Schaeffer had said, "then act like it." Jim phoned his mother from Switzerland. He had an announcement to make. He had converted to Presbyterianism.

A man named Michael Bray was also at L'Abri. Bray was the 30-year-old son of an American naval officer. He was a former Maryland state wrestling champ, champion diver and football player. Mike Bray had followed his father's path, becoming a mids.h.i.+pman. But he dropped out of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, hit the road, traveled. Bray met and spoke with Jim in Switzerland. Years later, Bray declined to get too specific about how well they knew each other. Jim Kopp, he said, was simply a young man searching for truth and trying to walk in it.

Bray had led a charmed life, but he felt a yearning to pursue something more enduring. He would become an American Lutheran lay minister, and later co-pastor of the independent Reformation Lutheran Church in Bowie, Maryland. He had long been pro-life. His search for spiritual fulfillment ultimately put dynamite in his hands.

In 1985 Bray and two other men were charged with eight abortion clinic bombings in Virginia, Maryland, and Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. At the time of his arrest, Bray had publicly argued against violence. He even belonged to a chapter of the Pro-Life Non-Violent Action League.

But Bray's thinking, or at least the public expression of his thought, was changing, particularly regarding "use of force" in the abortion war. Thomas Aquinas set it out in his Summa Theologiae in the 14th century, defending violence for a defensive purpose: stopping an act of aggression in defense of oneself or another must be done with the moral cert.i.tude that great harm will be inflicted upon that individual if force is not used, and that the force will indeed stop it. And there was, in modern American law, something called "justifiable homicide," or defensive killing. The state of Colorado even put a name to the type of vigilante-justice made famous in Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry movies. Colorado's law of self-defense for victims of violent crime is called the "Make My Day" defense. That law means, for example, that an occupant of a dwelling is justified in using any degree of physical force against a person who has unlawfully entered the dwelling, "if the occupant reasonably believes that the intruder has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime in addition to the unlawful entry and also reasonably believes that the intruder might use any physical force against any occupant."

The logic, for some in the pro-life movement, was inescapable. If one starts from the notion that the unborn child is a life in bloom, then what of the attack by the doctor? What is the proper defensive response, given that the unborn baby is unable to respond? Bray was a dynamic speaker and became an influential voice for those gravitating to the fringe of the movement. Those who called themselves pro-life, but opposed "defensive action"-violence-in the abortion war, were, in Bray's view, simply fearful of the truth, that there was no contradiction between a pro-life ethic and "supporting force." He began working on a book that would outline his beliefs more completely. He called it A Time To Kill.

*** Jim Kopp worked in a mission in South America with the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and also in Africa. Back in California, he went to hear firsthand accounts from mothers who had fled from China, and who spoke of forced abortions in that country. It made perfect sense, a logical progression: free states sanction abortion, encourage it, then a totalitarian state forces it on its population. Jim was convinced he was the first westerner to hear from these women who were driven into hiding to have their babies, he was getting a unique perspective on all of it.

He returned to the house on Via Lerida for dinners with his family, from whom he increasingly felt estranged. Chuck Kopp didn't understand why his youngest son wasn't using his masters' degree to build a career in biology. Bible translation? Where was Jim going with that? On occasions when the family was together the conversation would sometimes venture into abortion. Arguing against abortion were Nancy, Jim and Anne, who were devout Christians. Chuck and Walt were in favor of a woman's right to choose. Jim expected nothing less from Walt, certainly. As someone in the hospital administration business, he was by definition, to Jim, a member of the Abortion Industry. Eventually the issue was kept off the table. Abortion was, thought Jim with a grin, rather like the proverbial Ol' Uncle Harry showing up for Christmas dinner: you let him go and get drunk on the porch, you just leave his drinking be, you don't go there.

There were larger problems than political issues threatening the family foundations. In the summer of 1981, Chuck, who was 59 years old, flew to Dallas for an insurance case trial. One August night, he attended a dinner party held for some of the principles. A legal secretary named Lynn Willhoite Hightower was there. She was 44, and four months removed from the divorce from her husband of 24 years. She saw Chuck Kopp walk in the door, and instantly wanted to learn more about him. Chuck had put on weight, was balding. But he had a presence.

Lynn was five-foot-three, with short dark hair. Some would later tell her that she looked like a younger version of Nancy Kopp. She had a Texas accent, a funny, gregarious manner, and six kids. Both were feeling their age, getting a little plump, was how Lynn thought of it. Chuck was feeling old in his marriage, was ripe for a change. Lynn, younger, feisty, funny, was it. They talked and hit it off. Chuck loved to talk, about any subject, and Lynn could hold her own, too. The verdict in the insurance trial was appealed. The case kept Chuck returning to Dallas for work, and to Lynn. They phoned regularly, wrote letters. He told Lynn that he had been divorced from Nancy for several years. Nancy found one of the letters and learned about the affair, filed for divorce, changed her mind, filed again. Lynn confronted Chuck, he admitted to her that he lied because he knew he'd lose her if he didn't.

Some said Jim was unaware of his father's affair and was shocked when it came to light. Jim claimed he knew exactly what was going on. Heck, his mother showed him the letters. It made him angry. Very angry. He had a bone to pick with that woman. Always would. Everyone felt they knew the gentle, bookish, prayerful Jim Kopp. They didn't see what burned inside, the red glare that could, when provoked, film over his eyes, turn his p.r.o.nounced jaw to stone: Phone rings at Lynn Willhoite Hightower's home in Texas. She picks up.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"This is Jim Kopp speaking," he said. "You stay the f-k away from my father."

Chapter 5 ~ Victim Soul.

Guadalajara, Mexico 1979.

Bart Slepian neared completion of his medical degree from Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara. He still had little cons on the go, even after ending his career as an arm-wrestling hustler. Maybe it was because, during his early life, Bart saw his dad sc.r.a.pe for every penny he made. Maybe it was a matter of necessity, given his own financial needs and those of his sister, Serena, in Nevada. Or maybe Bart Slepian simply liked the game, liked to challenge authority and figured there's no harm being done. Whatever it was, Bart took to smuggling goods back and forth across the border. He drove what the guys had dubbed "the family car," a boat of a Chevy, navy blue, his pride and joy, put a huge sound system in it. He'd buy items cheap in Mexico, lamps, home fixtures, sell them out of the trunk when he got to Reno.

Bart's instinct to never back down got him in trouble. One night he got into it with a group of teens. He came home from school and found a group of them in front of his driveway. He asked them to move, an argument started, one of the teens threw a rock through Bart's window. The police got involved and Bart spent the night at the police station-along with buddy Rick Schwarz, who had been dragged into it since Rick spoke Spanish.

Rick always said that Bart never started anything, but he would not walk away when he felt somebody was being unreasonable. Typically he would confront situations on his own, for better or worse. In that respect he admired the Israelis tremendously. Bart Slepian, like Rick, held great respect for the Jewish culture, but rarely set foot inside a synagogue. Bart admired the way the Israelis got things done in the face of the terrorist threat, speaking softly and carrying a very big stick.

Rick, an unabashed liberal, disagreed with him on the Middle East, but Bart would never soften his view. "Israel," he told Rick, "doesn't sit around wringing its hands.

They take care of things."

"Bart-"

"You might not like how they take care of it, but they take care of it, end of story."

"But-"

"No sitting around, 'woe is us.' They do something." Bart voted Republican, while Rick, a proud liberal, voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

"That's not principled, Rick," Bart cracked, "that's plain stupid voting for that dopey peanut farmer."

In 1979, Bart left Mexico and returned to New York State to complete his fifth year of meds. It was called the Fifth Pathway system to becoming a doctor. It was for Americans who had completed medical school abroad. They had to spend a year working in the States under supervision, something between a fourth-year medical student and intern. If you did OK, you could take the licensing exam, which Bart did, and pa.s.sed, qualifying him for a normal interns.h.i.+p and residency. He applied to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. During his residency in 1979, he met a nurse at Buffalo General Hospital named Lynne Breitbart. At the time, he was doing what he could to get by, did physicals at the hospital for five dollars an hour. She was 23 years old, ten years Bart's junior. They soon got married.

Bart Slepian had no burning desire to deliver babies or help women. But he had solid technical skills, was good with his hands.

He wanted to get a mix of surgery and general medicine. With the 1980s dawning, a conservative Republican and staunch ally of Israel, Ronald Reagan, soundly beat the liberal peanut farmer for the presidency. And Bart Slepian was, finally, a doctor. He was 34 years old and an OB, never mind the setbacks and the people who said he couldn't do it.

For the pro-life movement, the 1980s promised an era of revolutionary change. Ronald Reagan was a hero to conservatives who opposed abortion. "Regrettably," Reagan said, "we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value. We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life-the unborn-without diminis.h.i.+ng the value of all human life."

At the same time, the pro-life rescue movement interfering with abortion services at women's health clinics grew. The rescues had several elements to them: picket signs and chanting, but also "sidewalk counseling." That meant cornering a patient outside the clinic, lobbying the woman to reconsider her choice. Activists felt that one in five prospective patients would not make it to a subsequent appointment if deterred from attending her first appointment to abort. Other times, pro-lifers blockaded the entrance. Police got involved.

Others took the violence up several notches. On August 12, 1982, an Illinois doctor and his wife were kidnapped by three pro-life radicals and held at gunpoint for eight days. The trio, headed by Don Benny Anderson, claimed to be with a group called The Army of G.o.d. In 1984, clinics were being targeted more frequently for firebombs, arson, vandalism. There were 18 incidents in all, a couple of dozen death threats called in. Three men went to jail: Thomas Spinks, Kenneth s.h.i.+elds, and Michael Bray-the man who had met Jim Kopp in Switzerland. The bombings ill.u.s.trated the double-edged sword of abortion procedures being confined to clinics instead of hospitals. Clinics offered women preferred service, argued pro-choice advocates, but also, in contrast to hospitals, they became visible symbols in the war-"abortuaries" and "mills" where the babies were slaughtered, in the minds of radical pro-lifers. That same year, 1984, Supreme Court justice Harry Blackmun, who had written the opinion on Roe v. Wade, received a death threat in the mail. It was signed The Army of G.o.d.

*** Daly City, California Spring 1984 He drove to south San Francisco, towards the airport. Daly City was in the industrial end of the city, an entirely different world from Jim Kopp's old Marin County neighborhood, far from the beauty of the waterfront, the Golden Gate Bridge, the sea lions in the harbor. Daly City sat in a valley, populated mostly by workingcla.s.s people, many of them immigrants. On April 3, 1984, Jim was arrested at a protest at a clinic there, charged with trespa.s.sing, and also battery.

Battery?

In California battery is a misdemeanor, like a.s.sault, petty theft, and public drunkenness, and therefore less serious than a felony crime, like s.e.xual offenses and drug and property violations. But battery is a violent offense: deliberately causing physical harm to another person through physical acts.

Peaceful, prayerful Jim Kopp?

Perhaps he was merely sitting there cross-legged, reciting verse, and, when he was carried away, he resisted. Or maybe he felt a current running through him, physical, angry, one that inspired more potent action than peaceful resistance. Most everyone who met Jim was struck by what they considered his soulful, gentle nature: the boyish grin, the soft voice. Jim knew his friends felt he was incapable of violence. He also knew they were mistaken. Those who caught him in moments of candor, who looked square into his eyes, waited long enough for his self-effacing "who me?" routine to pa.s.s, could see flashes of the intensity and seriousness of purpose that went well beyond that of a conscientious objector.

Jim continued to read voraciously, and fell in love with a book called Story of a Soul, the autobiography of Saint Therese d'Lisieux, a woman who entered a convent at the age of 15 and died in obscurity at age 24. "At last I have found my calling," she wrote in her journals. "My calling is love." The core of her spiritual message was the "little way," that any act, no matter how trivial, is infinitely valuable if done out of love. He studied the history of birth control, sterilization law. He started drawing connections between the Holocaust and abortion. It was all becoming so clear to him. Everything happens for a reason, and every event influences another.

Through the fall of 1984 he attended protests outside abortion clinics in the Bay Area. In September Jim was arrested for trespa.s.sing and battery. A month later, the same thing. Early December, a.s.sault with a deadly weapon. He relished the courtroom atmosphere. The strategy, the use of language, nuance. He knew how to play the game. Down the road, he would offer advice to other pro-lifers on how to navigate the judicial system. He was, he frequently reminded others, a lawyer's son. In the fall of 1984, he formally received his master's degree from Cal State Fullerton. He founded a group in San Francisco called the Lourdes Foundation, which opened a "Free Pregnancy Center," and named himself its president. Jim billed it as a birth control referral and information center. The center gave pregnancy tests, educated women on the dangers of abortion and a.s.sisted pregnant women. It also showed graphic photos of aborted fetuses to patients, who were then also referred to doctors who opposed abortion.

On Good Friday, 1985, he marched in a pro-life procession that went nine miles from St. Martin Church in San Jose to Our Lady of Peace in Santa Clara. Then he drove to south San Francisco to Juvenile Hall detention center. Officials only knew that this pleasant, bookish man was president of the Lourdes Foundation. They learned later, to their horror, that he was an anti-abortion radical-but not before he had an opportunity to take the stage before a group of female inmates and present his pro-life stump speech. Here was Jim, the missionary bestowing wisdom, saving women from so much pain that they did not understand-they had been brainwashed by the media, the liberal culture, the feminists. The young women were, he said, mostly young prost.i.tutes, and three of them were pregnant. You do not have to get an abortion, he told them. You do not. G.o.d bless.

For some time, Jim had considered converting to Catholicism, perhaps even pursuing the priesthood. One day he hopped in his car and drove south down the coast, Highway 1, past windswept beaches, Monterey, Carmel. Four hours later he was negotiating cliffs along the coastline known as Big Sur. He gained elevation, where the water is metallic against the sun, its texture dimpled by the wind. Then off the highway along a dirt road, steeper still, straight up, a harrowing ride, he had never experienced anything like it. Finally, at the top, he found the humble monastery called New Camaldoli Hermitage.

The hermitage was a place where aspiring monks came to study and learn. You could smell the flowers and pine in the air, hear nothing but silence. He met Father Isaiah Teichert, talked for many hours with the priest. Father Isaiah, Jim reflected, came to know him better than anyone in the Bay Area. That included, sadly, he thought, his family, who had never really known him. His fellow pro-lifers never quite figured him out either.

What, exactly, did Father Isaiah advise? Years later, his relations.h.i.+p with Jim Kopp was not something the priest was willing to discuss. Whatever Father Isaiah's advice, Jim now wondered if his mission might be to embrace the world of the Benedictine monk. He had been called to pray but action was necessary, too. So much violence, so much blood shed by innocent babies. Jim knew what his mission could ultimately mean-that he was destined to die a drawn-out, painful death. So be it.

The notion of the "victim soul" came from Jesus, who redeemed mankind by dying for their sins. It also derived from the Old Testament and the ancient Jewish custom of letting a goat loose in the wilderness on Yom Kippur, after the high priest had symbolically laid upon the goat all the sins of the people. The unborn babies were victim souls. Jim decided he would be one as well.

Later that year he went east, to New York, joining the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, housed in a convent in the Bronx not far from Yankee Stadium. He was there several months, rising before dawn each day to feed the homeless and drug addicts who came to the order's soup kitchen. He prayed, meditated and studied. He had few possessions and didn't talk much to others. He owned three sets of clothes, washed them in a bucket.

Mother Teresa had said that "I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, murder by the mother herself." Jim would tell friends for years that he had once met Mother Teresa face-to-face, he told her about his calling from G.o.d, and she suggested he become a priest. Jim then told her that he was conflicted on the priesthood, because he felt a separate calling from Jesus to devote his life to stopping abortion.

About six months after joining the Bronx mission, he left, returning to California. He never stayed in one place for long. On May 21, 1986, in Redwood City, south of San Francisco, he was arrested at a protest outside a clinic and charged with obstruction and resisting arrest. On July 19 he was arrested in San Francisco for using force. He headed east.

On August 5, 1986 he was in Pensacola, Florida. He was anxious to show his support for the woman whose reputation within the anti-abortion movement was reaching heroic proportions. Her name was Joan Andrews. It was back in March 1986, in Pensacola, that Andrews cemented her status as "patron saint of the rescue movement" at the Pensacola Ladies Center. Along with another protester, Reverend John Burt, and his two daughters, Andrews walked inside the clinic and, with police in pursuit, tried to unplug a suction abortion machine. Police cuffed her, then arrested the others. Andrews grabbed the edge of the machine behind her cuffed hands, yanked and toppled it over, disabling it. There were no abortions that day. The trial made her a star within the movement, she was sentenced to five years at the Broward Correctional Inst.i.tute, Florida's toughest maximum-security prison for women.

Jim Kopp and 300 others from far and wide made the trip to Pensacola, stood outside the clinic to protest the outrageous injustice done to Joan Andrews. It was heavenly for Jim to be among so many like-minded souls. He decided that, from that moment on, he would no longer go to jail angry, but with a cheerful heart. Among the group in Pensacola was a 58-year-old professor of philosophy from Fordham University in New York. His name was William Marra.

"We're not eccentric, or extremist, but we're here to see Joan Andrews free," Marra told a reporter.

William Marra had a daughter named Loretta. She had just turned 23, studied philosophy at Fordham, and had, like her father, embraced the pro-life cause. Jim Kopp instantly felt great respect for William Marra, who had, like Jim's father, served in the military. As for Loretta, Jim would, in time, make a connection with her that would grow stronger and stronger and ultimately, change his life.

Kopp headed back to California, and more protests and charges. September 6, in Richmond, trespa.s.sing. October 25, in San Jose, he invaded a clinic with another man and chained themselves to an examination table as 15 others protested outside. November 22 in Alameda, trespa.s.sing, causing injury, damaging property. He again headed for Florida. On Friday, November 28, the day after Thanksgiving, he was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest at the same Pensacola clinic where Joan Andrews had been arrested. Jim and others blocked the clinic doors with a truck. That same weekend a meeting was held at the Western Sizzlin' steakhouse in town. One of the organizers was a man named Randall Terry. Terry unveiled his vision for a new, national, direct action campaign inspired by the impromptu a.s.saults on clinics that had taken place. Terry called it "Operation Rescue."

Among pro-lifers there were differences of opinion on tactics, on means and ends. Save the preborn, but how? What was the time frame for political change? What kind of action? Jim Kopp was part of the movement, had found a group to connect with-but how long could it conceivably last? He joined Randall Terry's staff, but he would last only six months. His thinking was evolving on the utility of violence in the cause, and the distinction between man's law and G.o.d's law. Was history not replete with examples where man's law required trumping by those willing to carry the torch, and weapons, for G.o.d's law? Slavery was one example that pro-lifers most frequently cited. Jim listened to mainstream pro-life leaders take great pains to denounce violence in the cause. He felt they were not practicing Gandhi's true satyagraha-civil resistance -which Jim thought should be active, outcome based, and sacrificial. He had a name for people who abused the concept: cowards.

Chapter 6 ~ Romanita.

On December 16, 1986, smoke filled the Manhattan Planned Parenthood headquarters at Second Avenue and 22nd Street in New York City. One of the bombs was relatively small. No major damage, the carpet caught fire. But police found a larger bomb as well with a detonator designed to be triggered by the smaller explosion-it had not gone off. It was made of 15 sticks of dynamite, powerful enough to collapse the entire building and break windows blocks away. Bomb squad officers examined the blasting cap, timer and battery. Pro job. And there was something else stuck among the sticks of dynamite. It was a medal of St. Benedict, with the likeness of a monk on it, and the phrase Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur (may we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death). A bomb squad officer gingerly defused it. No one was caught.

In February, Cardinal John O'Connor appeared on TV urging the bomber to turn himself in. A 37-year-old ex-Vietnam Marine named Dennis John Malvasi surrendered. Malvasi was also involved in a bombing in Queens in November 1985. "If the Cardinal says something and you don't listen," he told a newspaper, "then when you stand before the magistrate in the celestial court, you got problems. And I got enough problems without G.o.d being mad at me."

Malvasi had fought in the b.l.o.o.d.y aftermath of the Tet Offensive, serving as a field radio operator. He later told the New York Times that he never felt more alive than when under fire. After the war, he trained as an actor at workshops on the Lower East Side, worked as an entertainer on cruise s.h.i.+ps. He was reportedly arrested in September 1972 for stabbing a man in a traffic altercation and sentenced to five years' probation. In 1975, two months after early release from probation, he was arrested for carrying a .25-caliber pistol and jailed for two years. He went underground upon his release, using at least five aliases. In 1984, he was thrown in jail again for two years in Florida after attempting to buy firearms in that state.

Malvasi pled guilty to the Manhattan Planned Parenthood bombing. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and five years' probation. Two other men received jail terms as well, including his brother-in-law. Malvasi told authorities where he had stored his explosives, and police found 78 dynamite sticks, black powder, and electric detonating plastic caps. Malvasi had a sharp, angular nose and dark eyes. He was a small man, perhaps a generous fivefoot-seven, but an angry intensity radiated from him. Upon his release from prison he began dating a woman he met in the pro-life movement. She too was Catholic, and not only shared his pro-life beliefs, but also his belief in taking action to further the cause. She was 13 years his junior, and her name was Loretta Marra.

On January 5, 1987, Jim Kopp was arrested in San Francisco for unlawful entry, obstruction, resist arrest, trespa.s.s. As was now routine with pro-life agitators, he was released. The next day, he was arrested again. February 25 he was arrested in Oakland, and two days later, in Woodbridge, New Jersey, for criminal trespa.s.sing and burglary. March 11, he was tried in Florida for breach of the peace. July 25, Manchester, Missouri, and later in Houston, charged with criminal trespa.s.s, fined $500 and jailed for two weeks. On August 22, 10,000 pro-lifers rallied at the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument, and nine people who entered a clinic in the city were arrested. Jim was among them.

During lulls in protests and rescues, Jim did odd jobs, construction and welding work. He had by the late 1980s made friends in the movement across the country, there was a light in the window for him when he needed a place to stay. In Pittsburgh, that light was at Doris Grady's place. Doris was active back then. On more than one occasion, she and her pro-life friends raided trash cans behind a health clinic in the city. Some clinics had spotty privacy protocols in place back in those days. It was a typical tactic of hardcore pro-life activists to gather up piles of garbage and see what the abortionists were up to. Doris stuffed several bags to take home. Sometimes the city garbage guys would be there, and would let them rob the trash in exchange for a case of beer, you know? So Doris got home, sorted through the stuff. The golden items were billing records, they had the phone numbers on them. Doris made some calls.

"Yes, h.e.l.lo, Barb," Doris would say to the patient whose number was on a form, feigning her best soft, caring, nurse voice. "Just checking in, Barb, to make sure you know your appointment time. Uh-huh. That's right. And we'd also like to talk to you about the procedure."

"Procedure?" This was the payoff. You tried to talk the woman out of it. Subtly at first, then hit them with the graphic stuff. Pretty slick, Doris thought.

"Did anyone talk to you about the procedure, and what it entails?"

"Not really." They always said that. So first you just mention that they aren't supposed to eat before the abortion, stuff like that. And then Doris would launch into a list of the risks of having the abortion, risks to the patient's health and mental well-being. If the listener still hadn't caught on to the ruse, Doris went for the jugular.

"And Barb, can you please tell us what you'd like us to do with the body?"

Silence.

"Barb?" Sometimes they got angry at this point. Doris would continue-calmly, clinically. "Well, there is a baby in there, Barb. We've got to do something with it. What do you want us to do? Flush it, or into the incinerator, or ... ?"

Click. Yes, Doris was a player. But then again, she had a life. Young children. Devoted husband. She could not be a warrior, could not pay the full price. Doris knew it, too, and felt guilt about it-guilt, and fear that one day she'd be called on the carpet by the Lord for her half measures.

Jim Kopp and Doris sat in front of the TV like old friends, although that was not quite true. Not old friends, but rather acquaintances who shared a pa.s.sion for the cause. Jim would also chat with her husband, Pat, a Vietnam veteran, a former Marine, wounded in action. Jim respected that greatly. Jim and Doris watched rented movies. He enjoyed cla.s.sics like Gone With the Wind, Wuthering Heights. Had the occasional beer, a Stroh's perhaps. He was a "temperate" drinker, as he put it. To Doris, Jim was a prayerful, spiritual man, someone with no personal effects, and seemingly no pa.s.sion beyond his faith in G.o.d and the cause. It made him more endearing. Doris mentioned his girlfriend. Well, she wasn't really a girlfriend, but Jim did profess to being in love, grinning in that shy way of his. Jim led a monastic life in many ways, owning few clothes and was.h.i.+ng them by hand, embracing celibacy, or at least monogamy. But he wanted to get married some day, have kids.

"C'mon, Jim, what's her name, anyway?" asked Doris.

Jim kept smiling. Don't go there. Pro-life women, thought Jim with a grin, they can't keep quiet. Give them a chance, they'll tell all. Doris enjoyed chatting with him. He was so well read, could talk about anything, with anyone. You started talking, and before you knew it, three hours had pa.s.sed in the blink of an eye. She enjoyed feeling as though she was exploring philosophy and politics with him. She felt a connection and a respect for his convictions and quiet intelligence. But Jim Kopp wasn't connecting, not in the same way as Doris. He adjusted his conversation to whoever he was with, playing whatever role was necessary, trying to make his audience feel good about their relations.h.i.+p. He was always playing.

Late in the evening Jim would rise from his chair and go outside for a long slow walk, gathering his thoughts, a solitary thin figure disappearing into the gloom. Was there anyone with whom Jim could truly connect, who could appreciate his intellect and reciprocate-and who could even look into the b.l.o.o.d.y abyss and not blink like the others? That was not the case with Doris Grady, sweet as she was, and as committed, on a certain level, as she was to the cause, the mission. No, Jim could not lower the mask for her.

For a time Jim lived in Binghamton, New York, where the headquarters of Operation Rescue was located, to do further work for Randall Terry. Jim was also affiliated with a militant group called The Lambs of Christ. But he didn't last long with any one group. G.o.d love all pro-lifers, but did any of them feel the cause in the pit of their soul like he did? Ultimately, Terry, the public face of the movement for years, would go mainstream, even run for Congress, foreswear violence in the fight. He proudly proclaimed that he led the "largest civil disobedience movement in American history ... Operation Rescue's peaceful sit-ins resulted in over 70,000 arrests."

Years later, Terry would say he remembered little about James Charles Kopp, other than he had been on his staff, and that he was devout. No, Operation Rescue did not suit Jim's needs. Terry and the rescuers were, thank the Lord, engaged in the same cause. But there wasn't extra room in Jim Kopp's personal spiritual foxhole. He was disappearing, turning within himself, and to G.o.d, for direction. Before long, Randall Terry heard little of Kopp, and then not at all.

Amherst, N.Y.

Hanukkah, December 1988 The pro-life activists set up in front of Bart Slepian's home in Amherst. Usually they wielded signs outside the clinic called Womenservices, where he worked in Buffalo. As an OB, he delivered babies and performed abortions at the clinic. But now they had taken the fight right in front of his home. They sang and jeered, called him a pig, a baby killer. Inside the house, Bart, his wife Lynne, and his young sons, Andrew, who was about five, Brian, three, were opening presents. Bart couldn't take it anymore. He grabbed a baseball bat and came out and smashed the window of a protester's van. He was charged by police. He spoke to his old friend Rick on the phone later. Rick knew it would come to this, the hara.s.sment would escalate. They had talked about it before. It could get worse. Bart had to keep his cool.

"A baseball bat, Bart?" Rick said.

"This guy was on my property."

"Bart, I totally understand why you did it. I don't really blame you, but still, it's stupid. You are the guy who got charged."