In the final test results, the balaclava produced a DNA profile for an individual. But it meant little at that point. A DNA profile, in isolation, means nothing when there is nothing to compare it to. Whoever wore the balaclava was still merely a chart of colorcoded numbers.
Detectives Mike Campbell and Frank Harild chased the ballistics angle. No rifle was recovered. But there were the bullets and casings. The two rounds fired at Dr. Short had been found—the one that shattered the doctor’s arm, and the one that had landed in the den. Both were taken to CFS. Bullets from a shooting scene are often crushed, looking like fillings that have been knocked out of someone’s mouth. Empty shells, however, indicate the type of weapon used. Two shell casings had been found behind Short’s house on the small slope down towards the woods. Curious that the shooter wouldn’t have used a brass-catcher to prevent the casings from ending up in police hands. They were from ammunition for an M-14 rifle.
Even though the bullets had been mangled, it still was useful to examine them. The police had caught a break. Even though the bullets had passed through a wooden window frame, they were sufficiently intact to be examined. Under a microscope, scratches and grooves were visible; the bullets were a four-groove with a right-hand twist. A technician got on the phone to Harild. The barrel markings suggested that the bullets were fired from either an AK-47 or SKS rifle, he said.
“What?!” Harild exclaimed. It didn’t add up. What about the casings from an M-14? They didn’t match the bullets. It was a nice little diversion, getting police to look for the wrong weapon. “The sneaky bastard left different casings on purpose—he’s dropping phony ammunition.”
Harild phoned Detective George Kristenson in Vancouver for a comparison with the live ammunition Vancouver police found in the composter behind Dr. Garson Romalis’s house the day he was shot. “You better double-check the rounds you found in the house against the unused live rounds you found in the alley,” Harild advised Kristenson. Sure enough, the hard-point military rounds found in the composter were different from the soft-point rounds that had blown a hole in the doctor’s thigh.
Detective Mike Campbell tried to use the ballistics information they had to trace the firearm. Ballistics fingerprinting was a relatively new technology, used at that time in the United States, but not Canada. He sent the bullets for testing to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Best-case scenario, the ballistics fingerprint would come back saying that the bullet came from a weapon within a probable serial number range, which could then be traced to one of several possible firearms purchases at specific stores. Campbell got a return call from the ATF. The round was, as CFS had said, a four-groove with a right-hand twist. Yes, but were the markings unusual, or traceable to a particular weapon? The ATF gave Campbell his answer: Those particular bullets could have come from any one of 30 to 40 million AK or SKS weapons purchased in the United States. A needle in a haystack, in a field of haystacks, Campbell reflected.
The detectives kept in close touch with the Shorts. One day Katherine Short, a small woman, with a plainspoken manner, looked up at big Frank Harild. “Honestly,” she said. “Do you think you will ever identify the person who did this?” Harild paused, and looked into the eyes of the woman who had wrapped her husband’s bloody wounds.
“The fact is,” he said, “he may well act again, and the more times he does this, with every shot, there are more clues.”
“But will you catch him?”
“Not unless we get international resources behind this.”
Chapter 10 ~ “I’m hemorrhaging here”
Old Hickory, Tennessee
July 16, 1997
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.
Wawa, Northern Ontario
September 5, 1997
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?