Chapter 1: A Burning Cross

Note to readers: Terminology and language in the series Murder for Life" reflects the inflammatory and frequently offensive nature of the dialogue with respect to anti-abortion extremism at the time of the manhunt for James Charles Kopp, and his first trial that ended in 2003, when Hamilton Spectator reporter Jon Wells wrote the original series. In addition, all of the detail, dialogue, and thoughts attributed to characters in the story are based on nearly 100 interviews, and documents including court transcripts and FBI search warrants, as well as first-hand observation. Wells interviewed Kopp in person and exchanged letters with him, and conducted research in Western Canada, New York City, San Francisco, Ireland and France, and at a shooting range in Hamilton.

Oct. 23, 1998

9:55 p.m.

Buffalo, N.Y.

A grey-blue eye bored through the rifle scope and in through the rear window of the doctor's home 30 metres away, meeting a turquoise electric glow in the white kitchen.

Must be the microwave oven, he thought.

The sniper waited in the forest, bracing himself against a tree, steadying the Russian-made, military-style SKS assault rifle.

The doctor - the abortionist - exited the kitchen after pressing buttons on the microwave.

He'll be back in 30, 40 seconds, the shooter predicted.

You can cut holes in the fence surrounding the death camp. Derail a train; let a few babies crawl to freedom. A trickle of relief in the abortion Holocaust, yes, but you do it. It is your duty to do it.

An orange flash in the darkness among the trees, the full metal jacket exploding out of the barrel of the rifle, spiralling like a football, spinning, stabilizing, 700 metres per second, popping through double-pane glass and a wire screen on the window. Hot copper-coated lead knifing into the doctor's back, the soft tip of the round mushrooming on contact, ripping through cartilage, vertebrae, right lung, two ribs and exiting out the armpit, blood bursting onto the clean white floor.

With the smell of smoke from the rifle barely dissipated in the cold air in the woods, the sniper was on the move.

A soldier does not engage the enemy under cover of darkness and stick around, does not hold out his hands for cuffing and await an appointment with a firing squad. Does the CIA ask its agents to embark upon a morally licit mission and suggest they undertake some kind of quixotic gesture after the fact, some act of schoolboy chivalry?

He would not be a martyr. Getting caught was not part of the plan.

A difficult way to spend one's life, shooting abortionists, he thought. But he was good at it.

And yet, even with his single-minded focus, and all the planning and preparation, the sniper had a blind spot, one ultimately fatal to the mission.

Sirens, flashing lights. Police swarmed outside the large house in Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y.

But they had nothing: no weapon, no trail.

The victim was Dr. Barnett (Bart) Slepian. He was declared dead on arrival at hospital. In a nation of gun violence, this was no typical shooting.

Bart Slepian's medical practice included performing abortions.

What the sniper had done was as inconspicuous as a burning cross.

The FBI was alerted. From Washington, D.C., a statement was issued within hours.

The attack was called an act of brutal terrorism."

Two visitors came to Amherst to meet the Slepian family. The visitors were U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Three Years Earlier

Hamilton, Ontario

Dr. Hugh Short lived in a striking, Tudor-style home on Sulphur Springs Road in Ancaster, outside Hamilton, surrounded by the woods and trails of the Dundas Valley Conservation Area.

It had been an unusually warm fall in 1995, and seemed to rain almost every day. The smell of damp leaves, grass and bark hung in the air. The days grew shorter, darkness descended.

Dr. Short was 62 and practised at Henderson Hospital on the Mountain (now Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre.) Each night, the doctor ate dinner and then walked up the curving staircase to a second-storey den to sit in his favourite armchair and watch TV.

The chair was turned on a 45-degree angle, facing the television and pushed up against the window. From the outside, in the dark, the light from the window silhouetted him perfectly.

What was the sniper's mission? Murder? Or was it more precise, and unconventional - maiming, rather than killing?

If wounding was the goal, there was the practical matter of actions matching intent. Aiming for the torso, hitting the centre mass of a human target with a firearm, is challenging. But hitting an extremity?

An experienced marksman would say that shooting to wound with a high-powered rifle isn't a rational proposition. And even connecting with an extremity can result in death if the victim bleeds out.

Rational? Maybe all it takes is someone who truly believes he can pull it off.

Or someone who has pulled it off before.

On Nov. 3, 1995 at 9:50 p.m., a police officer watched a car merge onto Highway 403 in Ancaster.

An old green Dodge. Vermont plate.

It was about two kilometres from Hugh Short's house.

The cop was 25-year-old Dwayne Frook, with the Ontario Provincial Police.

Once the car had merged onto the highway, the driver had entered OPP jurisdiction.

The beater of a car with a U.S. plate didn't fit. And the driver seemed to be weaving slightly.

Wet snow was falling. Frook pulled the car over. He walked up alongside and the driver rolled down his window. The cop examined the driver's ID.

Kopp, James Charles. 1977 Dodge Aspen. Plate no. BFN595. Residence, St. Albans, Vt.

Hardcore pro-life rescuers in the U.S., and Canada, knew of James (Jim) Kopp.

Rescues" is what pro-life activists called aggressive protests at health clinics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they would try to stop pregnant women from entering the clinic by sidewalk counselling" them against terminating their pregnancy, or barricade the doors to disrupt operations and stop scheduled abortions.

In these operations, Jim Kopp cast a heroic figure for his fellow pro-lifers. Some of the activists had nicknames to avoid capture by police. Kopp's nickname was Atomic Dog."

Who started the Atomic Dog business anyway, he wondered? Was it from the 1983 George Clinton song? Why must I feel like that/Why must I chase the cat/Just the dog in me/Nothin' but the dog in me/Just walkin' the dog/Oh, atomic dog."

Kopp had taken a welding course and developed an expertise in building kryptonite-style locks that enabled rescuers to blockade a clinic for hours.

He had it down to a science: twist pieces of cardboard, wrapping them together in a Gordian knot, then copy the design in steel by heating the material with a blowtorch; bend it, shape it. The locks meant you didn't need an army of people on-site to barricade the clinic entrance, just enough to lock down the door.

There was one rescue in Pittsburgh, back in the late '80s, that really pushed the envelope. Such a great scene; activists came from all over, including a few from Canada.

One Friday, the group gathered before dawn, about 20 of them at first. They arrived at the clinic in a van and Kopp followed behind in a junker of a car. Two people got out with ramps and carried them to the clinic steps. Kopp's car followed, bounced up over the ramps in front of the door and stopped. He then got out and pinned himself to the axle underneath the car, right in front of the door.

It was imperative for Kopp to be locked down before police arrived. Other protesters duct-taped themselves together in a semicircle around the perimeter - that's what the rescuers called it, the perimeter - to delay the cops further.

Kopp thought of everything: don't put too much gas in his car. If police use blowtorches to try and break the locks, the whole thing will blow up. The clinic workers, the cops, were so angry, it was amazing. Shut the place down the entire day.

It was beautiful stuff: here he was, locked under the car, fire from the police torches labouring to destroy what he, Jim Kopp, had created; heat thrown against his face as preborn babies slumbered in the warmth of their mothers' wombs, safe, for one more day.

Alongside the highway, OPP officer Dwayne Frook took down the plate and the name of James Charles Kopp, and punched it into his computer, to be added to the database.

Took maybe all of five minutes. Frook let him go. There was no reason not to.

It made no impression on him in the moment, but it was one traffic stop that Frook would, in time, be reminded of, and never forget.

The driver rolled up his window and vanished into the darkness.

One week passed. It was a cold and dark night in Ancaster on Friday, Nov. 10, 1995.

The wind picked up. It started to rain.

Early in the evening, Hugh Short and his wife, Mona, returned home.

The shooter was in the backyard inside a shed behind the house. It wasn't the first time he had sat there, staking out the property and the movements of the doctor and his family.

Raindrops peppered the shed.

To load his rifle, he had to insert one round at a time, into the slot at the top of the weapon.

One down. Click. The next parallel beside it. Click.

He pulled back on the bolt and felt the stiffness of the spring, as though testing the shooter's resolve. He pulled it back, hearing the faint click of the retraction, allowing the first round to slide into the chamber, then eased the bolt back, making a harder clacking sound.

The shooter moved out of the shed, into the yard on the soggy grass and down a slope behind Short's house.

At 9:25 p.m., the view through the rifle scope carved a circle on the lighted window 38 metres away.

Short watched TV in his armchair against the window. His wife sat on the couch.

A boom echoed through the trees. And then another.

Out near Hwy 53 and a road named Trinity, Hamilton police officer Mike Senchyshak heard the dispatch call in his cruiser just before 9:30 p.m.: Possible shooting. Sulphur Springs Road."

Rain blew in sheets against the windshield of the cruiser. He drove past the house, missing it.

He had been up and down that road many times, but it was dark, and the house was set back, and there were no numbers visible.

The dispatcher had relayed more information: Confirmed, shots fired. Repeat. Shots fired."

No word yet if anyone had been hit.

Senchyshak pulled in the laneway. He looked at his watch: 9:37 p.m.

A decision: wait for backup?

He spoke into his radio.

This is 3-11. I'm approaching the premises."

He stood on the front step. Could be a domestic. Husband could have a gun, waiting to blow a hole in the next person to come inside.

Senchyshak had rarely drawn his weapon in his seven years with Hamilton police. He felt the even weight of the Glock on his hip.

He knocked on the door.

A woman answered. It was Short's wife, Mona. A male voice yelled frantically for help upstairs.

Senchyshak followed Mona upstairs. He made a quick mental note of the layout on the main floor, planning an escape route if he needed one.

He saw Short on the floor, clothes soaked with blood. He was tying a tourniquet just above his right elbow with a belt.

I'm a doctor," Short said.

Victim conscious," Senchyshak said into his radio. Arm wound. Bleeding. Tell the ambulance to step on it."

Senchyshak helped Short tighten a second belt around the elbow, soaking his bare hands in blood.

What happened?" asked the cop.

Two shots through the window," said Short. Heard the first. Hit by the second."

Senchyshak rode with Short in the ambulance to Hamilton General Hospital.

Later, he returned to Central station to complete his report.

Thoughts bounced around in his head. Where had the shooter gone? Could he have escaped back into the woods? Did he have help, a driver?

Senchyshak's shift was ending at dawn. The homicide detectives had the case now.

In a bathroom, he scrubbed his hands. The doctor's dried blood turned to liquid and washed down the drain.

By the next morning, Nov. 11, Remembrance Day, the rain had stopped and the skies cleared.

Mike Campbell walked up the stairs in Short's house. Campbell was a plainclothes detective with the major crimes division of Hamilton police.

He moved closer to the window. Detectives are trained to keep an open mind, even when most clues point to one motive. But Campbell had a feeling. He was Roman Catholic. Considered himself pro-life.

He saw splinters on the floor. The two rounds had not punctured the window glass, but rather the wooden frame. He noted the two holes were close together.

Accuracy, he thought. And intent. And abortion.

In the old days, when his father, Jimmy, had worked as a detective in Hamilton, crime was centred around money and love. But this? This was new.

Campbell returned to the office and went online. The internet, in 1995, was a relatively new tool for investigators. He typed words related to abortion and violence into a search engine.

The home page for the Army of God appeared. A hardcore anti-abortion group in the U.S.; unknown strength. Images: blood, photos of aborted fetuses, severed limbs, photos that were pornographic in their stark presentation. A related website called The Nuremberg Files listed doctors providing abortion services in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom. Some of the names had red strokes through them.

Well, Campbell thought, I'm getting the flavour of the radical wing of the movement.

Clearly there were people for whom the abortion war was literal. But would one of them bring the war to Hamilton? And why?

There was a document online called the Army of God Manual. It was a manifesto for those who have come to understand that the battle against abortion is a battle not against flesh and blood, but against the devil and all the evil he can muster."

There was advice on how to fight charges in court, and tactics for vandalizing health clinics: By simply walking by the doors of the abortuary and squirting super glue into the locks you have effectively stopped the opening of the killing centre."

There were philosophical musings on submitting your life to the cause. In places, the writing assumed a mirthful tone.

Some single covert activists will be counted as wise for at least considering, prayerfully, the possibility of a life of single-minded covert activism. Practically speaking, a covert activist with no ties could save thousands of children and their mothers in a lifetime. Once an activist is married, and especially after having children, the constraints of parenthood are profound ... Compassion for one's own brood will curtail the level of covert activity (and a lot of other activity, as well!) Most termites are going to be busy making the next generation of warriors. But for those few exceptions, carry on proudly with unbridled and righteous fury ...

All of our options have expired. Our most Dread Sovereign Lord God requires that whosoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Not out of hatred for you, but out of the love for the persons you exterminate, we are forced to take up arms against you. Our life for yours, a simple equation. Dreadful. Sad. Reality nonetheless. You shall be tortured at our hands. Vengeance belongs to God only. However, execution is rarely gentle."

There was a list of names declaring support for the manifesto, all of them nicknames: Baby Huey, Intimidator, Mad Gluer, Road Warrior, Scruffy South.

Campbell sensed the size of the case. It was, he reflected, like looking for a needle in a haystack, in a field of haystacks.

The Army of God Manual contained a cryptic dedication:

Special thanks to Atomic Dog, you nuclear canine."

NEXT: Chapter 2: Maker of Kings

Jon Wells is a feature writer at The Spectator. jwells@thespec.com