They sold about 50 SKS rifles a year at the A-Z Pawnshop in Old Hickory. Eventually they’d stop selling firearms altogether, too much hassle, paperwork, especially when federal laws started mandating background checks on not only handguns, but rifles and shotguns as well. But in the summer of 1997 the pawnshop sold maybe five or six guns a week. Not too many, thought Patricia Osborne, the store manager.
She did not remember much about the man who walked in that day though, Lord knows, she got asked about him enough after the fact. He came in on July 16 looking to buy a rifle. Interested in the SKS 7.62 x 39 millimeter model. His ID said his name was B. James Milton from Virginia. He filled out a firearms registration form. White male, 5’10,” 180 pounds. Lived at 5674 Washington Street, Ettrick, Virginia. B. James Milton was also interested in purchasing a brass catcher and a stock extension—a brass catcher prevents expended shell casings from falling to the ground. A stock extension is often used to lengthen a rifle, making it more accurate, extending the weapon farther away from the face, particularly helpful if the shooter is tall, or wears glasses. A-Z didn’t carry those accessories, however. B. James Milton paid for the rifle and left.
That summer Jim Kopp worked for Good Counsel Homes in Hoboken, New Jersey, a group helping single mothers. Longtime pro-life activist Joan Andrews ran the home. Another activist, Amy Boissonneault, also worked there. She had been arrested several times, sometimes used the alias “Emma Bossano.” The authorities had put her name on a list of 30 pro-lifers who were considered an “ongoing threat” to a New Jersey clinic. Jim had developed a deep affection for Amy, who was 12 years his junior. He wasn’t the only one, she was popular among all the prolifers. One of the other men had proposed to her once, but she had turned him down.
Loretta Marra was still married to Dennis Malvasi and, in 1996, at age 33, she had gone to Canada to give birth to a son, Louis. She used the alias “Jane White” while traveling and stayed with a physician friend of her father’s near a town called Beechburg, in eastern Ontario near the Quebec border. Loretta wouldn’t say precisely why she had elected to go to Canada to have her first child.
Jim continued to take part in protests in the United States and in rescues overseas. He traveled throughout Malaysia, the Philippines. Abortion was technically illegal in the Philippines, a strongly Catholic nation, so the protesters were treated well by local police at a rescue in the Manila area. He felt an “angel” helped him that day, leading him to the right door in the clinic where the killing took place. Jim turned to thank the angel for his help, and he was gone. Back in the United States, on January 23, 1997, he was arrested at a protest in Englewood, New Jersey. As was the pattern for years, he was not held in custody long. In the spring he acquired a new car, paying $400 for a 1987 black Cavalier.
It wasn’t long after 8 a.m. when a local trucker named Luke Amelotte came upon the tractor trailer parked alongside of Highway 17. Odd. He regularly traveled Highway 17 between Dubreuilville and Wawa and the same rig had been sitting there for almost two days. Amelotte pulled over. What was going on? It had been warm the night before. The mystery truck’s engine was still running, the windows shut, doors locked. He drove to the Wawa police station to report it. A police officer drove to the scene. The officer found a dead man inside the cabin. His name was Maurice Lewis—the pro-life activist from Vancouver who had befriended Jim Kopp, protesting with him in Italy and England.
Lewis was a big name in both pro-life and pro-choice circles, the kind of guy who inspired devotion in friends and supporters, and earned the animosity of opponents. Jim and the others loved Maurice, loved his commitment, his personality. He was born in England and his activism began there. When he moved to Vancouver he became famous among pro-lifers after being arrested for violating B.C.’s “bubble zone” law that was intended to protect a perimeter around clinics. He wanted to use his case to challenge the constitutionality of the law. The case was still pending, a trial scheduled for October—and now Lewis was dead at 52. What happened on that stretch of highway?
Jim heard the news and took it hard. Murder. Had to be. Is that the game the pro-aborts were playing? Revenge on Maurice for his activism? How could it be otherwise? Lewis did have a habit of picking up hitchhikers in that part of Ontario and friends had warned him about that. Lewis’s lawyer in B.C., Paul Formby, wondered about foul play, thought about traveling to Wawa to investigate for himself. What was the truth?
The police officer who answered the call that morning was Constable Scott Walker. Exhaust fumes enveloped the rig when he arrived at 9:11 a.m. He noted the interior curtains of the cabin were pulled. Walker smashed the passenger door window, opened the door. There was a strong smell. And a naked man, hanging. The body was decomposing. There was no one else in the rig. The coroner attended, the body was removed. The police constable returned to the office and wrote out his report:
INCIDENT FROM 05 SEP 97
CLASSIFICATION: SUDDEN DEATH
PRONOUNCED DEAD BY DR. GASPARELLI.
NEXT OF KIN: SISTER-IN-LAW, NOTIFIED ON 06 SEPT 97 18:00
CAUSE OF DEATH: ASPHYXIA.
Maurice’s brother, Richard, flew in from England. The police told him there were rumors about the death, conspiracy theories. Maurice was an active anti-abortionist, some people were suggesting that his pending court challenge motivated someone to kill him. It wasn’t true, Richard was convinced of that. He was satisfied with the job police had done. He took his brother’s ashes back to England, to be buried in the town of Malvern, beside their parents. A memorial service was held for Maurice in London. Richard was amazed at the outpouring of affection from people who had worked with his brother in the pro-life movement. The case, as far as Richard was concerned, was over.
It wasn’t over for Jim Kopp. He launched his own “investigation.” He heard rumors that the crime scene had been “cleaned up” before police arrived. The police report, for such an unusual death, was brief. Too brief. Had there been any investigation into possible murder suspects? Later, in a letter to pro-life friends, he said Maurice had been “poisoned.” He cited “the RCMP report” listing “no apparent cause” for the death. Kopp even went so far as to claim the report proved that someone had tampered with the crime scene before the arrival of police, because it made no reference to the food wrappings that would litter the cab of a prolife driver. He said pro-lifers like Maurice always bag their food, preferring to save money that might have been spent in diners to help support pregnant women.
The letter was wrong on several counts. The report was not an RCMP report, it was an OPP report. It contained no reference to cleaning up the scene, and the cause of death was not listed as “no apparent cause.” Jim was either being fed false information, or was lying, trying to stir up a conspiracy theory. Did he really believe that Maurice Lewis was murdered and Canadian police were engaged in a cover-up, all because Lewis was a visible pro- life protester? Or was he just playing games again, pulling strings—Romanita—telling people what he felt they needed to hear? If he truly believed Lewis was set up, then Jim Kopp had clearly learned a lesson from his friend’s death. Once you are on the radar of the FBI, RCMP, Interpol, you never turn your back. Trust no one. And do not get caught.
Just past midnight on July 5, 1997, a black 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier bearing Vermont license plate BPE 216 and registered to James Charles Kopp, crossed the Peace Bridge at Fort Erie into Canada. Back then, the Canadian side of the border was more diligent about recording plates of cars passing through than the American side. Two months later, on October 10, the same vehicle again crossed the border into Canada at 4:33 p.m.
Two and a half weeks after the second crossing, on October 28, in Perinton, N.Y., near Rochester, an obstetrician named Dr. David Gandell was in the glass-enclosed pool area of his home, toweling off his young son after a swim. At 8:35 p.m., a bullet shattered the glass. Then a second shot. Both narrowly missed the doctor and his child. The shots were fired from a wooded area behind the house. The shooter got away. The rounds were from a military assault rifle.
