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.
That same night, in Brooklyn, New York, FBI surveillance agents took photos of a dark-haired woman walking from a house. It was Loretta Marra, leaving a house belonging to a man listed in the phone book as John Howard at 2468 Lynden Avenue. His real name was Dennis Malvasi. Just after midnight, meanwhile, less than four hours after the shooting at Dr. Gandell’s home, a car crossed the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls into Canada. The car was a black Chevy Cavalier, Vermont plate BPE 216.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
November 1997
Manitoba’s capital city had been in the eye of Canada’s abortion battles ever since pro-choice standard-bearer Henry Morgentaler had opened a clinic in the city in 1983, even before he was established in Toronto, even as former Manitoba provincial cabinet minister “Holy” Joe Borowski vowed that Morgentaler’s “butcher shop” would not be permitted to open. Winnipeg’s police raided the clinic several times. And, in 1997, the city still had an aggressive pro-life movement. There was a document making the rounds that listed the names of all physicians in the city known to provide abortion services.
On November 4, 1997, police in Hamilton, Ontario faxed a memo across Canada. It advised all police services to issue warnings to doctors who perform abortions that they might be in danger at this time of year, around Remembrance Day—the time when doctors in Vancouver and Hamilton had been shot. The memo said doctors should be advised to take precautions in their homes, alter their routines, avoid standing in front of well-lit windows or doors at night, keep blinds drawn. In Winnipeg the warning arrived on the fax machine of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Manitoba (a provincial agency comprising city police officers) and the RCMP. The warning was filed and never circulated to the Mounties or city police.
On the night of November 11, Remembrance Day, a car drove along snow-packed streets past homes in the Winnipeg suburb of St. Vital, stopped at a residential crescent where two streets named Salme and Lotus met. The shooter entered the woods bordering a park that ran behind homes along Victoria Crescent. He moved, cloaked in darkness, the bare thin branches nearly invisible in the blackness. It was peaceful in the woods in the late evening, the only sound the distant ambient buzz of the city. The Red River ran alongside the woods. The river floods in springtime, so residential areas in the floodplain use dikes for protection. That included Victoria Crescent, where an obstetrician lived. A mound of earth, a dike about eight meters high, ran right behind the house, some fifteen meters from his door.
The shooter walked close beside the river. There were a few clouds, but the black water shimmered in the reflected light of the moon and of the homes on the far side of the river. The shooter was now roughly parallel with the doctor’s property. He stopped, scaled the riverbank, negotiating the slippery, steep hill through the trees to the chain-link fence. Up and over. And there was the dike. He climbed it, then walked along the ridge. The house was an unusual design, raised up on stilts, a carport underneath. The entire back wall of the house was glass. Winnipeg is frigid in November, on a crisp night you can feel the harsh air rip through your nostrils, your breath floating like smoke in the air. It was 8:45 p.m. Dr. Jack Fainman walked into his living room.