FBI Most Wanted anti-abortion terrorist emails Hamilton Spectator reporter from prison, says battle far from over post-Roe v. Wade
James Kopp waited in the darkness holding a Russian-made SKS rifle, bracing himself against a tree 30 metres behind the house, when the target entered the crosshairs.
Dr. Bart Slepian, a Buffalo, N.Y. obstetrician, heated a bowl of soup in the kitchen.
Kopp had studied the doctor's movements for days. He had skulked in the woods and dug a hole in the ground to bury a tube that hid his weapon.
It was Oct. 23, 1998, 9:55 p.m.
Kopp, a pro-life movement radical, was taking his role as a soldier in the war against abortion literally.
He believed Slepian would perform abortion procedures the next morning.
Others on the extremist fringe had vandalized or blown up health clinics, and a few had shot abortion providers, but perhaps none were as prolific as Kopp in creating a ripple effect of fear.
The bullet exploded from the barrel, punctured a window and tore through Slepian's back. It exited through his armpit, bore a hole through a kitchen cabinet and ricocheted off a wall, before hitting a marble fireplace mantel in the family room and fell upon the hearth.
Kopp vanished into the night. He headed to Mexico, and then Europe. It took police five months to find the rifle.
President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton visited the murder victim's family. The FBI placed Kopp on its Ten Most Wanted list.
That was then. Now, Kopp is two decades into a life sentence with no chance of parole, housed in a federal prison in Mendota, Ca., three hours southeast of San Francisco where he grew up.
He turned 68 in August, when I reconnected with him on email.
I first met bookish Jim" Kopp (MSc/Embryology) in 2003, interviewing him behind glass in a New York state penitentiary, when I was working on a series titled Sniper," that was published as a book.
The story details the international manhunt to capture Kopp, and his road to radicalization that led him to believe wielding violence to stop abortions was his duty and true to just war" theory in Christian theology.
Kopp embraced terrorism as his modus operandi - inflicting violence on civilians to force a desired political or social outcome - during an era in the U.S. that included the first attack on the World Trade Center (1993), Oklahoma City bombing (1995), and Atlanta Olympics bombing (1996).
He murdered Slepian - Kopp says he meant to wound, not kill - and allegedly shot and narrowly missed hitting a second obstetrician in upstate New York; he was charged with the attempted murder of Hamilton's Dr. Hugh Short in 1995, and implicated in sniper attacks on doctors in Vancouver (1994) and Winnipeg (1997).
Obstetricians were urged to alter daily travel routines and draw blinds in their homes; Slepian followed advice to wear a bullet proof vest.
I last interviewed Kopp in 2015 in a communal visiting area in a West Virginia prison. That day, he denied shooting doctors in Canada, despite DNA evidence placing him at the crime scene in Hamilton, and records suggesting he crossed the border in Manitoba and B.C. at the time of those sniper attacks.
I wish I had been the Canadian shooter," he said. He was a pro."
Kopp could not have imagined that down the road, in the summer of 2022, the abortion landscape would change forever with the reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, that had granted women a constitutional right to terminate pregnancies.
The court's Pandora's-box-opening ruling returned the question of legal protection for abortion to state legislatures.
Some analysts have said the new dynamic will trigger legal and political disputes between states and the federal government not seen since before the U.S. Civil War.
Abortion rights was a hot-button issue in the Nov. 8 midterm U.S. elections, where residents in California, Vermont, and Michigan approved measures to protect access to abortion in state constitutions, and Kentucky voters rejected an anti-abortion amendment.
Kopp says that while he believes overturning Roe v. Wade is a step forward for the pro-life cause, it is not the end of the matter" for babies or moms" because abortions will continue.
In the end, he says, those who write the laws of the land in the U.S. don't care about the child who will be dead by 7:45 a.m. tomorrow if no one does anything to stop it."
Read the series Murder for Life, Wells' articles about the hunt for James Kopp and his road to radicalization.
Jon Wells is a feature writer at The Spectator. jwells@thespec.com