fugitive because she had convinced James Kopp to forgo his extradition battle and come back to the United States for trial. Marra deserved credit for that. But in fact Loretta Marra planned to make an even more powerful argument to the judge. But first, her husband faced a serious allegation in court.
FBI agent Michael Osborn strode into the courtroom, took his seat at a long table facing the judge. For his role in catching Kopp, Osborn—along with Buffalo-based special agent Joel Mercer—had been presented with Attorney General’s Awards for excellence in law enforcement. And Osborn had been posted to the bureau’s Violent Crime Major Offenders Unit in Los Angeles. But there was still work to clean up in New York. Sitting beside him in court was the federal prosecutor, a tall, slim man with a youthful face, hair brushed to one side, olive suit, deep purple tie, brown shoes. His name was Peter Katz. Judge Carol Amon entered, took her seat, and the sentencing arguments began. Osborn leaned over and talked quietly with Katz. Then the prosecutor rose. He wanted to present new evidence that would keep Marra and Malvasi in jail.
He said that early one morning back in November 1998, less than two weeks after Bart Slepian was murdered, a woman walking in the doctor’s neighborhood noticed a man standing on a sidewalk near Williamsville East High School, perhaps 100 yards from Slepian’s property. The man wore a black warmup suit. Small man, compact build. Had lots of gray hair. She had never seen him before. She looked him in the eye. He seemed to look right through her, his stare was so intense. She kept walking, told a friend later about the encounter, how much it bothered her, but said nothing more about it. Fast-forward 29 months. James Kopp is arrested in France, and on TV, the woman in Amherst sees the faces of Lorretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi on TV after their arrest in Brooklyn. Malvasi. She could never forget the face, the build. Very distinctive. She felt like she was going to pass out. She called the police.
“Your Honor,” Peter Katz said, “the government would like to bring forward a witness who will say she saw Mr. Malvasi on November 4 or 5, within 100 yards of where the rifle was buried in a wooded area behind Dr. Slepian’s house.”
What was Malvasi—a convicted abortion clinic bomber—doing in the Slepians’ neighborhood less than two weeks after the murder and within a matter of hours of the FBI issuing a warrant for Kopp’s arrest as a material witness? It was a shocking revelation. Those who had argued that Kopp was either framed, or at the very least had not acted alone, had been dismissed as conspiracy theorists. But this evidence suggested there was indeed more to the story—detail that Kopp himself had perhaps wanted to keep secret.
Katz continued. There was no explanation for Malvasi’s presence, he argued, other than he was trying to recover the rifle left at the scene. “The witness saw him on a sidewalk on a street which is adjacent to the wooded area. There is no other reason for him to be there, given the timing, right after the material witness warrant was issued.”
“The witness saw him standing on the sidewalk?” repeated Judge Amon.
“Yes.”
The sniper had left a complex pattern of paint marks on trees in the woods to help direct him to find his rifle. Had he in fact put the marks there to help someone else locate the weapon—someone who had the skills to interpret them? Perhaps a Vietnam vet like Dennis Malvasi? Loretta Marra was furious with Katz’s suggestion. They had agreed to a plea bargain, and now here was The Government suborning perjury from a witness to swear this— this damnable falsehood—about her husband. This witness, years after the fact, suddenly “remembers” seeing him there? All to lock them both up for the maximum five years. Lies, lies, lies. But she didn’t need to worry. Judge Amon made her ruling on the spot. She would not listen to the Malvasi evidence, would not allow the witness to come forward.
“I don’t see the need for the hearing,” she said. “It’s too great a leap for me to draw from that that (Malvasi) was there looking for the murder weapon.” Dennis Malvasi lifted the pitcher of water on the table in front of him, poured a glass and took a sip.
At his seat, Michael Osborn stared ahead. You conduct your investigation, gather evidence. Then let the courts do their job. But how could it not infuriate him? They had not sprung the evidence at the last minute, he reflected. The judge knew it was coming. What possible explanation could there be for Malvasi being near the woods? Did it not at least offer the possibility that Malvasi—and by extension perhaps his wife—had a greater role in the Kopp case than just harboring him?
Katz next tried to persuade the judge that the couple still deserved the maximum punishment for harboring Kopp. They had not merely provided monetary aid and emotional support to Kopp while he was a fugitive, but had offered up their apartment as a safe house for him when he returned to the States, and implicit in that was that they would help Kopp resume shooting abortion providers. Marra and Malvasi, he argued, had engaged in obstruction of justice when Marra told her husband over the phone to “clean up the computer” shortly before their arrest. Malvasi’s lawyer, Thomas Eoannou, countered that “cleaning the computer” was open to interpretation. Amon was not impressed.
“‘Clean the computer’ does not mean wipe the keys with alcohol,” she said.
Bruce Barket argued that Marra was not aiding a killer, because she believed Jim Kopp was innocent of Dr. Slepian’s murder. Kopp was a “Gandhi of the pro-life movement,” who raised “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for his legal fund after his arrest, he said. “The government would have to establish that Loretta and Dennis knew Kopp was guilty, and that has never been proven.”
“It defies common sense to assume they didn’t know,” countered Katz. “Their conversations speak for themselves. They knew that Kopp was wanted for murder, they have to know the government is looking for them.”
Barket suggested that as far as Marra knew, Kopp had tried to wound Slepian, not kill him. “The government has been saying Kopp shot five abortion providers, and four of them did not die. He maintained that his purpose was to wound them, and Slepian’s death was unintentional.”
“Why distinguish between first-and second-degree murder?” asked Amon. “Either she knew he was guilty or not.”
“She didn’t know he was guilty at all, of anything,” said Barket. “It was all well publicized, he did this four or five times, supposedly.” Again, as he had done in Kopp’s murder trial, Barket had invoked the shooting of the Canadian doctors, something that had never been entered as evidence in court.
Katz and Barket finished their arguments. All that was left was for Marra and Malvasi to have their say. Judge Amon turned to Dennis Malvasi.
“Do you have anything to say, Mr. Malvasi?”
“No.”
“I just want to make sure you know that you don’t have to take the opportunity, but that it is your right to address the court.”
“No, thank you.”
The floor was now Loretta Marra’s. She stood and moved to the podium with her papers. “I hadn’t planned to go much beyond begging you to let me go home to our children,” she began. But she had much more to say. She wanted to take the court back in time to a year earlier, to the days in Buffalo before Kopp confessed, when her friend was still professing his innocence while awaiting trial.
Loretta Marra listened to Bruce Barket. He had something very important to tell her about Jim Kopp. Kopp’s upcoming defense on the murder charge would be that he had never shot Dr. Barnett Slepian. It was a setup, he was never there. He told his friends he was innocent. Barket was not yet Kopp’s lawyer. That wouldn’t happen for another three months. But Barket had met with Jim, spoken with him in France and met him since then in jail in Buffalo.
“Loretta,” Bruce said, “I believe that Jim shot Dr. Slepian. In France I told him so—told him I believed he was culpable and that I didn’t think he was framed by anybody. But Jim was convinced he could beat it. The point is, Loretta, whether Jim is convicted or acquitted, he is not at peace with continuing to deny it. It’s making him very unhappy.”
Marra didn’t know what to think, how to feel. Jim was such a dear friend. She could think of no one more scrupulously honest. And from a moral standpoint, she had no issue with Jim denying guilt even if he was guilty of
