It is difficult making yourself disappear. It takes planning, energy, an inner radar detector—paranoia is your friend, unless it goes too far and you are sucked into your own vortex of obsession. Loretta was living such a life. Here she was, a devout Catholic pro-lifer, holed up in Brooklyn, underground, as her mother had been with the French resistance.
Loretta opened the letter dated October 12, from one of her friends in Canada. A very nice one. It was addressed to “Jane,” the name she had used when crossing the border to give birth to her son in Canada. “I pray for you,” it said. “I pray that everything will change, and once more, freedom.”
Outside it is dark, raining. A dirty American flag lies tangled and ripped on the fire escape of her neighbor’s apartment. She can see, through her window, across Liberty Street, the car lot and razor wire bathed in security lights. Above her head in the apartment, water drips from a hole in the pockmarked ceiling. Pip. Pip. Pip. She moves past the lightbulb that dangls on a cord, and walks to the door, opens it just a crack. No such thing as a smoke-free apartment in this part of Brooklyn. But she has to think of her kids. Loretta lights a cigarette and inhales. Pip. Pip. Pip. She leans her shoulder and head against the wall, peering through the opening. She exhales, the smoke escaping into the corridor. She stares at nothing.
New York City
October 4, 1999
Monday morning. The special agent drove to work in downtown Manhattan. What car was it today? The Intrepid? The Taurus? FBI agents changed cars every day. In the interests of security? Nah. That’s Hollywood stuff. Your car for the day was simply whatever was available in the company pool. Security? Hell, he couldn’t even park in the underground garage at the office. Had to find a spot on the street like everyone else. He worked at 265 Federal Plaza, the Jacob K. Javits Building. In a part of Manhattan where so much of the architecture was striking, larger than life, the 41-storey dark blue- and graycheckered concrete building, reflected the agent, looked so—federal government.
The G-man parked and emerged from his car, walked along the sidewalk to the side door for employees, the security guard nodded at him in recognition. Six foot four, angular and athletic, long casual stride. The herringbone, tan suit shimmered in the sun, dark shoes polished, tie with red-and-blue teardrop design. His hair combed back, perhaps a dash of mousse, the flecks of gray unnoticeable from a distance. Name: Michael A. Osborn. He was overseeing the biggest investigation of his career.
He lived in New York but there was no hint of a local accent, no drawl of any kind, no regional inflection. Where was he from, originally? “Can’t tell you that.” Which region of the country? Sorry. He spoke G-man, carried the act to amusing extremes. The bureau cultivated it. In a country of sharply divergent regional cultures and state laws, the FBI is national, loyal to nothing except the Constitution. Just the facts, ma’am. Osborn had been with the bureau for five years. This new case, while high-profile, wasn’t a promotion, that’s not how things worked. His field office was the logical one given the proximity of the suspects. And he, Osborn, was deemed to have the skills for the job.
It was a case rife with politics, religion, ends and means, “justifiable homicide,” the kind of case where those being pursued, and their allies, saw the FBI as jackbooted assassins with uberfeminists Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno pushing the buttons. Abortion. Murder. Pro-life. Pro-choice. Osborn could not let himself dwell upon the politics, it was peripheral to the task. He had his orders.
Mike Osborn was pursuing a couple of people who were friends of James Charles Kopp, the wanted killer of an abortion doctor. That was his focus. He allowed himself to think about the night Dr. Slepian was killed, his kids beside him in the kitchen, the blood. That’s the crime. You couldn’t imagine Michael Osborn lying awake at night debating whether the shooter of an obstetrician was more worthy of FBI pursuit than the killer of a plastic surgeon. Enforce the law. It’s all in the FBI oath.
His team was watching and recording somewhere close to the building at 385 Chestnut Street in Brooklyn on Tuesday, October 5. Agents working surveillance included Osborn, Robert Conrad, Joan Machiono. They saw a man who looked like Dennis Malvasi walk into the building. Two weeks later they watched a blue Mazda park in front of the building. They ran the plate: car registered to a Joyce Maier, driver’s license obtained in that name, January 1999. The address given by the woman is not 385 Chestnut, but an American Mail Depot box. Agents obtained paperwork for the license and vehicle. They lifted fingerprints from the forms she’d filled out. The prints matched those of Loretta Marra.
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Friday, November 5, 1999
TV Reporter (off camera): What do you think is going through his mind when he looks through that telescope at the doctor? FBI behavioral expert: Target acquisition. Pull trigger, take in breath, pull trigger, kill.
Reporter: So he’s not thinking anti-abortion thoughts? FBI expert: No. He is focused solely on his mission, his covert military mission, as I’m sure he describes it to himself, and that is to acquire target and kill.
Host: I’m Mike Wallace. These stories tonight on 60 Minutes II.
The videotape of the program continued. Loretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi watched, along with a man Dennis had known years before, and with whom he had recently become reacquainted. The 60 Minutes episode had first aired two months earlier. The segment was called “The Fugitive.” It was about a man wanted by the FBI named James Kopp, “believed to be a lone sniper assassin who picks off abortion doctors one by one.”
(Images of flowers and mourners from Bart Slepian’s funeral. FBI wanted poster for Kopp.)
Reporter: The FBI discovered that Jim Kopp was one of the busiest anti-abortion activists in the country, a legend within the movement.
(Cut to Jim’s stepmother, Lynn Kopp)
Lynn Kopp: The children had some very strong disciplinary action against them.
Reporter: Like what?
Lynn Kopp: Beatings. And one of his daughters told me that Chuck had—had been very cruel to his wife.
Reporter: How do you think this impacted the kids, Jim in particular?
Lynn Kopp: They would be very protective of their mother, and there would be a lot of resentment towards their father. (Cut to Dr. Garson Romalis in Vancouver recalling the morning of his near-mortal wounding in 1994.)
At that moment Loretta Marra spoke up.
“He could have killed him if he wanted to,” she said. Malvasi’s old friend listened carefully, memorizing her words.
The agents would want him to remember them precisely. “So what did Marra say, exactly?”
The man considered the question. He tried to remember. “He could have killed him if he wanted to.”
Did Loretta Marra mean James Kopp? That Kopp could have killed Romalis if he had wished to? Or was she using a generic “he,” as in “the sniper?” First he was sure she had meant Kopp. Then he wasn’t.
Malvasi’s “old friend,” was now a paid informant of the FBI. Code name CS1. The FBI had recruited him some months earlier. There was a second informant, CS2, working other people in the pro-life movement. As for CS1, his first task was helping to locate Marra and Malvasi. Now he was in regular contact with Dennis and Loretta and was being paid for solid information. He would engage the couple in conversation, work it around to Kopp. So far, Kopp’s location had not been revealed. If Loretta knew where he was, she was still cautious talking about it.