Marra, Loretta’s brother Nick, and informant CS1 were taking a road trip to Washington. Malvasi had invited his old friend to attend the White Rose Banquet.
The grandly named “banquet” was a small annual gathering held on the same weekend as the March For Life in the American capital. The march was a big mainstream event, the banquet a meeting of the pro-life fringe, where those who had taken the anti-abortion fight to violent extremes were honored. Malvasi was in the spotlight this year. Loretta, sensing that the authorities would be looking for her, kept a low profile. Before the banquet began at a suburban Washington Comfort Inn hotel, Loretta sat in the van in the parking lot, took out a pad and wrote notes for Dennis’s speech. When Malvasi spoke, he lambasted pro-lifers who opposed violence in the abortion fight.
“I’m glad to be here today,” he began. “This is the largest gathering of baby defenders I’ve ever had the pleasure of being with, and what a good feeling it is to see so many of you… We’ve had around 30 years of abortion, and around 30 million mangled baby bodies. Year after year, pro-lifers get outraged, and the bodies pile up. Year after year, pro-lifers write angry letters to the editor, to their congressman, to their senator, and the bodies pile up even higher… It is the baby defender who dares to suggest that the time for playing by the rules of the enemy is long past. It is the baby defender who dares to suggest the use of direct action to interfere between a vicious assailant and a helpless infant… I will always be grateful to… the ones who gave me moral and material support, before and after my arrest. I encourage you all to continue the noble work of supporting your local baby defender, from lock gluers to bombers, monkey wrench crews, arsonists and snipers. Your help makes all the difference in the world and to the babies themselves. Thank you and God bless.”
Afterwards, in the Windstar, Loretta, Dennis and the informant talked about Jim Kopp. Loretta said that Jim had expressed interest in getting in touch with Time To Kill author Michael Bray. Perhaps Bray would be interested in assisting Jim upon his return to the United States, helping to find safe housing, money. Jim’s name would never have to be used among anyone associated with Bray, he could just be referred to as a baby defender.
“I’m still interested in sending Jim some money,” the informant added.
“That would be no problem,” said Malvasi.
“But it has to go directly to Jim.”
“Of course.”
They drove the Windstar back to the hotel where they were staying, the Hampton Inn at 15202 Lansdale Boulevard. in Bowie, Maryland—Bray’s hometown. On January 22, they headed home to Brooklyn. The next day, FBI agents walked through the doors of the Hampton Inn, searched hotel records and found a registration card under the name of Joyce Maier, a known alias of Marra’s.
On Friday, February 2, New Jersey District judge Alfred Lechner Jr. approved a third bugging permit for the FBI, this time for a white Chrysler Grand Voyager, for the time frame February 3–4. Dennis and Loretta’s friend was thinking of driving the Voyager to Atlantic City, where he had a contact at the Taj Mahal hotel and casino. He could put them up in two rooms, had some extra money to gamble, too. They could send all their winnings to Jim Kopp —wherever he was.
The next day, Saturday, on the drive from to New Jersey, CS1 asked Loretta about Jim. How was she communicating with him? It was email, she explained. A Yahoo! account she accessed at a local library.
“I’d love to meet Jim some day,” the informant said. “I could eventually arrange a dinner meeting with him.” “Really? How much?”
“You could get his autograph, talk to him. For $10,000.” At the casino Marra gambled along with CS1, while Malvasi
stayed back in the room with their two sons. Loretta turned to her friend. She needed a break. “Have to go back to the room for a minute, check on the boys. Can you hold this a minute?” She handed him her purse and left the room for the elevators. There wasn’t much time. How long would Loretta be? What if Dennis showed up? What if security saw him? He searched the contents of the wallet. Two PT-1 calling cards. A slip of paper. Two sets of numbers. A name. He got out a pen and started writing, finishing before Loretta returned.
Later, CS1 contacted Michael Osborn. The agent wrote down the numbers: 0113531872801; 0874106124. The first three digits— 011—was the code for making an international call. And 353 was a country code—for Ireland. Osborn phoned the Buffalo FBI Field Office.
Osborn well knew that a lawyer could ultimately take issue with the search of Loretta Marra’s wallet. The FBI had a warrant to bug the vehicle, not rifle through a woman’s wallet: “The search and seizure is presumptively unreasonable. Unquestionably, as of the time of the warrantless seizure and search of the wallet, CS1 was functioning completely as a government agent.” Osborn would counter that his job was to gather evidence. Clearly he had not sought, nor obtained, a search warrant to go through Loretta’s personal property. But the informant was acting on his own initiative. He was under no direction from the FBI on that specifically.
Jim Kopp ducked into the cyber cafe, smoke hanging in the air, computers lined up row upon row. He took his assigned seat at a terminal. On the run he had taken such care to keep moving, trust no one, bury his identity. So what was it inside that told him to reconnect with his past through a computer? Dangerous? No. He knew how to keep the FBI—“the Edgars,” as he called the G-men—guessing. Do not send conventional email. The FBI could surely monitor it. Instead leave notes in cyber bottles. Write your email, store it in a draft folder on a Yahoo mail account. Do not hit Send, ever. Simply save it as a draft, let it sit there, like an envelope that never makes it to the mailbox. A second party can access the draft if she knows it’s there and knows the account user name identification. A private pipeline—for Loretta’s eyes only.
He logged on to Yahoo! email and typed the user name: [email protected]. It was named after a woman, real or imagined, named Alyssa Heaume.
Subject: quickie
He wrote in his cryptic, quirky way, the letter sprinkled with non-sequiturs, observations, inside jokes, French phrases, self-deprecation. He wrote about a possible trip he was planning. What did Loretta think about it? He finished the email, saved it in the aheaume draft folder, logged off, paid at the counter and left. Dublin is five hours ahead of Brooklyn. Loretta would read the message when she got a chance to log on. The next day, February 17, he was back, at a different cafe. He typed a new message.
Subject: longer
His present and future. Surely Loretta was the only one who would understand, who could offer something of value back to him. The mission? The babies? What should he do? He saved the email in the folder and left. Later that same day—joy. Loretta had read his messages and deposited her reply in the draft folder, couching her letter in code words and inside references: On margins: the capital city of mom’s birth to jackie area is fine with me, but I am nowhere near in the position you are to judge that. Anything at all you’d suggest would sound fine with me, because you are an if kind of gal, and you can talk big and act rich, as far as I’m concerned. Mech points out, though, that jackie, and the whole larger area of which jackie is but a part, is said to be under closer scrutiny these days because others have also thought of what you’ve thought of, with those others are said to be very, very naughty and so forth. I am simply ignorant on the facts of the matter. I understand where you want bmtm to occur. I believe I told you i was calling from one during our 2nd phone conversation, and you worried that i was out in the cold and wet, and I told you it was fairly sheltered, because I was in the very shadow of the establishment.
Loretta noted that “BMTM” would be best if it was just a phone call from Jim to her apartment. No talking, though, just ring the phone. The call would be the signal that he had not been detected, that he was safe, and they could go and get him. The email continued:
New RMC program is fine with me. I see several weighty advantages, both tactical and moral.Only drawback is the hideous emotional stress it will visit upon you. I think it will be incalculably more difficult in that sense than RSQA. Assuming, however, that you’re at peace about it, the advantages are immense. In the RSQA type world there were two possible outcomes (not counting complete failure). One happened only once, we’ll call that outcome
