“I’d just like 15 minutes alone with him,” Lynne said.
Tolbert had been a star athlete in high school and university. He held high jump and triple jump records but then knee injuries slowed him down. He became a social worker. Then one day he met an aggressive recruiter from the FBI. There weren’t a lot of black men in the bureau back in the mid-seventies. Most blacks only came in contact with the FBI when agents arrived to arrest someone in the neighborhood. Bernie was dubious, but he applied.
He was rejected. The examiner said the knee injuries disqualified the 30-year-old. He predicted Bernie would be in a wheelchair at 50.
That did it. Now Bernie wanted in. He wrote a letter to the top, to the director: “I will see any doctor, any time, at my own expense. I will pit myself against any agent.” The bureau gave him another chance. This time, he made it. In the 22 years since, Tolbert had worked out of offices in New York, Philadelphia and Washington. Now he was posted back in Buffalo and standing before the TV cameras, the national media, backed by a huge Justice Department logo. He was acutely aware that the case was attracting enormous attention. It was his biggest show ever. He held up a photo of Kopp.
“This is a picture of the individual we are looking for,” he said. “We have no idea where he is. We’re looking everywhere for him. “He appears to be committed to the anti-abortion movement. The problem is, I don’t think you can kill someone to show your commitment.”
The photo Tolbert held became the public, iconic, “most wanted” image of James Charles Kopp. The ill-trimmed goatee, the short unkempt hair, the glower he directed at the camera. He looked like a killer. Some of Jim Kopp’s supporters were so struck by how different he looked, they believed the photo was a fake. But it was a mug shot from his most recent arrest, in New Jersey, on January 23, 1997. The photo did, in fact, look far different from the way Kopp appeared in person. It was as though he had affected the look on purpose, scowling, changing his look, to distort his constantly shifting identity.
On one level, Bernie Tolbert could try to think of the Slepian murder as just another case. A federal law had been broken, so the FBI was automatically involved. But he also knew there was special interest in this show that went as high as the White House. Tolbert soon found himself in conference calls with Washington, talking directly to Attorney General Janet Reno—who herself frequently talked to President Clinton about the case and about anti-abortion violence in general.
Shortly after Tolbert’s announcement that James Kopp was wanted as a material witness, a $500,000 reward was offered by the Justice Department for information. The police and FBI were careful not to publicly call Kopp a suspect. They did, however, tell reporters they believed he might hold the key to the investigation.
Tolbert cursed the zeal with which reporters chased the story. Reporters didn’t have to play by the same rules as agents, could talk to anyone they pleased without regard for the legalities or nuances of criminal investigation. There were times FBI agents showed up at the home of someone connected to Kopp to find journalists already there. Reporters were all over the place in Vermont. Agents were losing the element of surprise and the media attention was helping Kopp.
On the other hand, the FBI counted on media coverage to spread images of Kopp’s face to encourage public tips. One of those tips came from Daniel Lenard, a Buffalo high school teacher. He told police he had seen a jogger on October 18, five days before the murder, hunched over and running slowly along a road near Dr. Slepian’s house. Saw him for maybe 10, 15 seconds. He had glasses and a reddish goatee, wore a black hooded sweatshirt and black biker shorts. Ruddy complexion. Pronounced jawline. Looked stressed. And he held his hands up as though he were training for a boxing match, strange compared to other joggers you’d see around there, hardly the picture of health or fitness. Lenard later met with a detective who placed a page of head shots in front of him. There were photos of six men who had brownish-red beards or goatees. The photos were numbered 1 to 6.
“Do you recognize any of them?” the detective asked.
“Yes. Number four. That’s him. No question that’s the jogger, and the same guy I saw on TV. ”
It was a photo of James Charles Kopp. Later, FBI special agent Joel Mercer visited the home of another witness who claimed to have seen the mysterious jogger. “His beard was about the color of your hair,” the witness told the redheaded Mercer. He showed the witness the same photo array that had been placed before Lenard. The witness paused.
“There—number four,” he said. Kopp. Later, a third witness signed his initials beside photo number four as well.
The search in the woods behind the Slepians’ house continued. On November 5, a police officer noticed a sliver of plastic sticking from the ground. It was a buried garbage bag. Contents they found inside included a green baseball cap with the inscriptions “New York” and “NY,” a silver men’s wristwatch, an empty rifle ammunition box, binoculars, two green earplugs, black fanny pack, flashlight, protective gun muffler earmuffs and two plastic shopping bags. Amherst police sent the evidence to the FBI’s Washington lab. One latent fingerprint was eventually lifted from the evidence—but the print did not match prints on file from Kopp’s criminal records. The bag was a good find, suggesting the level of planning used by the sniper. But the key piece was still missing—the weapon.
Members of the joint U.S.–Canadian police task force on the five sniper attacks continued to share information and discuss strategy. A joint management meeting was held in Hamilton. Senior Hamilton police officials discussed the investigation with task force members from the FBI, RCMP, and Winnipeg and Vancouver police forces. Amherst police chief John Askey burst into the meeting, angry. The chief had learned there had been an RCMP officer in Amherst, conducting surveillance, in the days before the murder of Bart Slepian. How could the RCMP have not told him about the suspect they were tailing? “You’re following the guy, and you let him shoot one of my citizens!” he charged.
RCMP officials at the meeting said there had in fact been an agent in the Buffalo area, but it was for surveillance concerning a matter unrelated to the doctor shootings. And no one knew Kopp was a suspect prior to the shooting, so how could they be following him at the time? One man dead, three seriously injured, another barely escaping injury, and the sniper still at large. Pressure was mounting on all of the law enforcement agencies.
Phone ringing, before dawn, Wednesday morning, November 4. Jennifer Rock picks up.
“Jen. I’m in trouble. Can you call me back?”
Jennifer Rock had an office job with IBM in Vermont. She had known Jim Kopp for several years, met him through protests several years before when she was in her early twenties, he had once stayed at her parents’ home. Rock’s Vermont address had been one of several to which Kopp had his mail sent, she had deposited money in banks for him. She phoned him back at 6:30 a.m.
“Close the account, bring the money and meet me,” Jim told her.
The next day, Rock left home. She told her parents she’d be in New York for a while. Looking for some work, visiting friends. She arrived at a mall in White Plains, New York. She had the money and a false West Virginia driver’s license she had made at Jim’s request. She tried to look inconspicuous, browse for shoes. She stopped at the newsstand and saw the headline: “James Charles Kopp Wanted by the FBI as a Material Witness.” She saw the murky photo of Jim’s grimacing face. Where did they get that photo? Didn’t look like him at all. The FBI had obviously pointed the finger at him. But he could never have shot someone. She spotted her friend.