fireplace mantel, fallen to rest on the hearth, spent.
Dispatch to Amherst police at 10:07: possible shots fired, 187 Roxbury. Police officer Ted Dinoto in the area, at the house at 10:10 p.m. Dinoto on his knees in the kitchen, ripping open Bart’s shirt, seeing the hole in the left side of his back from the entrance wound, and at the right shoulder, the exit wound. Police and paramedics swarming to the street. Police search the neighborhood, the woods, finding nothing. The ambulance rushes Bart Slepian to Millard Fillmore Hospital. In the ER they declare him dead.
An FBI agent reported to the Slepian home that night. A federal crime had been committed. The sniper who murdered Dr. Barnett Slepian had joined America’s most wanted list.
The phone rang early the next morning in the home of Dr. Rick Schwarz on Long Island, Bart’s old friend from med school in Mexico. They hadn’t seen each other for several years. The woman on the line was an old friend of Rick’s.
“I’m sorry, Rick, but I can’t remember—was Bart’s last name Slepian?”
“Yes,” Rick replied. Why?”
“I just heard on CNN he’s been shot.”
Shot? Wounded, thought Rick, obviously at some kind of protest. Bart. Maybe now the stubborn guy will back off. “Aw for chrissakes, that’s—goddamnit, I told him to stay away from that stuff,” Rick said. “Is he OK?”
“Rick, he’s—dead.”
At first the information did not register. Then, suddenly, a deluge of emotion, and Rick Schwarz came unglued. He cried, and phoned Lynne. “Lynne, it’s Rick, please tell me what I’m hearing is not true.”
Then Rick turned on CNN and saw the news for himself. On Saturday, U.S. President Bill Clinton issued a statement. “I am outraged by the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home last night in Amherst, New York. The Department of Justice is working with state and local authorities to find the person or persons responsible and bring them to justice. While we do not have all the facts of this case, one thing is clear, this nation cannot tolerate violence directed at those providing a constitutionally protected medical service… No matter where we stand on the issue of abortion, all Americans must stand together in condemning this tragic and brutal act. We must protect the safety and freedom of all our citizens. Hillary and I extend our thoughts and prayers to the family of Dr. Slepian.”
The Amherst police and FBI agents searched for clues, checked names of anti-abortion radicals against their known locations. Bart had no shortage of pro-life enemies. Some had been charged with harassing him. Jim Kopp was not one of those people. The gray-blue eyes looked up at the TV. He was on the road at a truck stop. The news was on. He had driven west from Amherst, into Pennsylvania, stayed overnight at a motel, then on to Cleveland. CNN was broadcasting the story over and over. The sound was turned off. Just visuals. Yellow police tape. Amherst police cruisers. Bart Slepian dead. Jim Kopp felt his body shrink, fear creeping through his bones. He left the diner and turned his car back east. He needed money. New Jersey was his next stop.
There were several hundred mourners at Bart’s funeral. A letter was read from Bill and Hillary Clinton: “Bart Slepian lived to love and loved to live,” it said. A few weeks later, the Clintons visited Buffalo, met with Lynne. For Bart’s friends, the funeral was an awful thing—all the media attention, the surreal nature of his death. But the eulogy, read by Bart’s niece, Amanda Robb, was inspired. A professional television writer, the funniest person in the family, she was eloquent, hit all the right notes. She recalled her uncle Bart back in the early seventies, the one who had the least to give to the family, and one who gave the most.
The autopsy took place early the next day, but the cause of Bart Slepian’s death was no mystery. He bled to death. Erie County chief medical examiner Dr.Sung-ook Baik studied the entry and exit wounds, removed organs to examine the tissue for impact marks, traced the path the bullet traveled through the body. He recorded his findings:
• Entrance of bullet hole, left side of the back, measuring three-quarters of an inch by one-half an inch.
• No evidence of gunpowder on the skin.
• Bullet penetrated left chest wall, left eighth rib, thoracic vertebral bone, spinal cord—severing approximately two inches of the cord—right lung, right fifth and sixth ribs.
• Bullet exited body from the posterior part of the right armpit, 12 inches from the top of the head.
At the scene, police used a ballistic alignment laser to trace the trajectory of the shot. The bullet had traveled 15 feet inside the house and 31 yards outside, from the wooded area to the sunroom window. A tree was identified as the likely shooting point used by the sniper to brace himself. At this scene, unlike the Canadian shootings, there were no spent cartridges found.
Within days the FBI’s Jim Fitzgerald stood out in the darkened woods, seeing what the sniper saw. What had the sniper been thinking? The focus was on execution, making the kill, thought Fitzgerald. Acquire target, squeeze trigger. This shooting—at night from the rear of the home, with a well-planned escape route— followed the MO of the other shootings to date.
A news conference was held in Buffalo by local police and the FBI. Police hold news conferences in the early hours of an investigation for two reasons. One is to protect public safety—get the killer’s name and face out there. Public safety wasn’t at issue here. The sniper’s profile suggested that, given his cautious manner, he would stay quiet for a long time, would not risk getting caught by striking again soon. The other reason for going public is for the police to solicit help. As a police officer spoke at the podium and the cameras rolled, in the background surveying the room was a man who could pass for a young Sidney Poitier. His name was Bernard Tolbert, FBI. He was in charge and knew they were up against it. They had nothing—nothing, until the phone call.
A woman named Joan Dorn heard the plea for help in the media regarding the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian. She was a fitness buff and lived in Bart’s neighborhood, over on Paradise Road. On Wednesday, October 14, she had risen before dawn, hit the pavement for a jog in the dark at 5:30 a.m. As she ran, she saw a car parked not far from her home.
Never seen it before. Dorn was a scientist, an epidemiologist. She taught at the University of Buffalo. Noticing things, little things, patterns, things not readily apparent to the naked eye, was what she did for a living. She knew her neighborhood well, what pieces did and did not belong. She noticed the strange car. Black Cavalier. Vermont plate. Didn’t belong. Who parks their car on the street at five in the morning?
A man in a dark exercise suit got out, started stretching. In the morning gloom, in the bulky clothes, he looked big. He started to jog. The stranger’s gait, it was all wrong, Dorn could tell. He wasn’t a jogger, not a regular, anyway. He looked slow, plodding. And he was overdressed for the mild weather they were enjoying. And why drive your car somewhere to park and then run? She watched him jog out of sight, in the direction of Roxbury.
Instead of shaking her head at the incongruity of it all and resuming her day, Joan Dorn went home and opened her personal journal, where she kept notes on her runs, how she felt, distance traveled. “Wacky car,” she wrote, and the plate number: BPE 216, Vermont. Then she showed her husband the note she had written. “Honey, if I don’t come home tomorrow from jogging, check this out,” she quipped.
Now she heard the request from police for anyone noticing anything unusual in the area. She picked up the phone. Later she would be applauded for providing a critical tip, journalists would come knocking on her door. Dorn didn’t think she had done anything remarkable—you pay attention to your neighborhood. If anything, she was hard on herself. She should have acted sooner, reported the stranger to police on the morning of her jog. Maybe, she reflected, if she had said something sooner, Lynne Slepian would still have a husband, and her sons a father.
An investigator ran the plate number she provided. It was registered to James Charles Kopp, Box 379, Highgate Road, St. Albans, Vermont, and his driving privileges had previously been suspended. The plate matched with a black Chevy Cavalier. Vehicle Identification Number 1G1JE2111H7175930. Police gathered background on the owner: arrested at least two dozen times for anti-abortion protests in the United States; 5?10?, 165 pounds, blue eyes, brown hair. Date of birth 8/2/54, place of birth—California.
An Autotrak search showed four suspended or expired driver’s licenses for James Charles Kopp—from New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and California. A nationwide alert was put out for the Cavalier. And in Vermont, nine FBI agents showed up at the home of Anthony Kenny in Swanton. No sign of Kopp. Kenny was interviewed. Kopp had been using the Swanton address for some of his mail; he handed the agents two unopened pieces. They contained bank records for account # 644-0055964, belonging to to John C. Kopp d/b/a, JMJ Construction at PNC Bank. P.O. Box 158, Riverside, Connecticut.
