Hopefully Loretta would loosen up, tell the informant where Kopp was, or better yet, try to contact him. But at this point it was not wise for the FBI to simply haul her in for questioning. If the FBI knew one thing about Loretta Marra, it was that she would not be intimidated and would never give up a fellow pro-life soldier. She felt that suffering was what being a true Catholic was all about, suffering for the truth, for a higher good. She would happily put out her hands for cuffing, her lips sealed to protect Jim from the government. He was innocent, after all.
Dublin, Ireland
Winter 1999
Dublin is a city that seems ready to burst at the seams, cars crowded on narrow streets, sidewalks and footbridges crossing the River Liffey with crowds pinched like sand passing through an hourglass. “It feels,” says a cabbie, “like half the fookin’ country lives in the capital.” It is a good place to blend in, to vanish, to be no one. Jim Kopp was in Dublin, in a tough part of town, among others who had no money and were also perhaps running from their past.
At a hostel he found a savior when he looked into the kind, pale, wrinkled face of an elderly Irishman named Francis. “Yes, yes, come in, come in,” Francis would tell all visitors, his eyes as warm as a fireplace, his hands thick and soft. He was a retired furniture maker—retired, but still a joyful Catholic working towards a greater goaclass="underline" delivering his soul to the Lord. He managed the Morningstar men’s hostel, named after the star of Jesus, run by the Legion of Mary. The hostel didn’t force religion on its guests but was Christian in approach, held services in the chapel. There was a picture and quotes from Saint Thérese d’Lisieux on the wall—one of Jim Kopp’s favorite saints, as it happened. Francis believed he had
been sent to the hostel by God. He was 77 years old, his Irish lilt gentle when he spoke, barely above a whisper. But he was still spry enough to bound up the stairs two at a time. In the 400-year-old building, row upon row of cots lined the communal sleeping areas, the walls a faded yellow, not the grandest setting, but definitely an improvement from the street. At Morningstar, for two pounds a day, you could live your life in a respectable manner.
One day, a tall, thin man, glasses, half beard, showed up needing help. As always, Francis was there.
“What’s your name, son?” he asked in his hushed voice.
“Timothy,” came the reply.
Francis took the tired hand in his, and Timmy’s life was saved. A nice man, Francis thought. Prayerful. But Timmy’s life wasn’t perfect, he made mistakes, as all who came to the hostel had done. Francis listened to Timothy’s story. A real shame about his family, back in the United States, who apparently no longer accepted him, who had cast him out for being different. Francis felt for him. Timmy had his beliefs, others held them in disdain, so he escaped from the torment, hid from it. The others might come looking for him. It was important that he remain hidden at least for a while. Timmy said his family lived in New Orleans. He had lots of stories. One day, Timmy didn’t show up for mass as he always did. He was gone, just like that, unannounced. Strange for him to leave so suddenly.
“Good luck to you, my son,” Francis thought. “May the Lord look over you. And may your parents one day find you. Whatever happened, they must be so worried.”
Chapter 15 ~ Tim Guttler
Hamilton, Ontario
Monday, January 24, 2000
The Canadian arm of the international joint sniper task force held a press conference—with spokesman Keith McCaskill from Winnipeg, Hamilton police chief Ken Robertson, and Dennis McGillis from the Ontario Provincial Police. There was an announcement. The OPP had officially issued an arrest warrant for James Charles Kopp in the attempted murder of Ancaster’s Dr. Hugh Short in 1995. No charges were announced in the attacks on Dr. Jack Fainman in 1997 or Dr. Garson Romalis in 1994. McCaskill added that the investigation would continue across the country, but refused to point the finger at Kopp in connection to the Winnipeg and Vancouver attacks. “We certainly know that Mr. Kopp may be a key to the investigations in Winnipeg and Vancouver,” McCaskill said, describing Kopp as “a person the police want to interview.”
What was going on? It had been seven months since the Erie County grand jury had indicted Kopp for Dr. Slepian’s murder. Why had the OPP waited to file its charge? There was no new evidence, no break in the case. Investigators in Vancouver, Hamilton and Winnipeg had done all they could.
They had even pursued a possible link between Kopp and a fundamentalist Catholic sect called St. Pius X, which catered to Kopp’s known preference for attending mass in the traditional Latin. There were St. Pius X churches in Vancouver, Winnipeg and St. Catharines—a city 40 minutes east of Ancaster. A story making the rounds in the Winnipeg congregation had Kopp attending Our Lady of the Rosary. It was even suggested that he had helped organize the mass, but no one could confirm it.
Hamilton police had scoured the woods behind Dr. Hugh Short’s home several times looking for the weapon. They returned and searched again after the rifle was discovered behind Slepian’s house, three years after the Ancaster shooting—but found nothing. Hamilton police had found the hair fibers in the ski hat at the scene, and developed DNA from it, but could not confirm whose DNA it was. The decision to finally issue an arrest warrant for Kopp seemed more of an attempt to rekindle media interest and encourage tips. Chief Robertson would only say to gathered media that Hamilton police had reviewed the evidence with the OPP, discussed the case with Hamilton’s crown attorney, and decided to issue the arrest warrant.
The effectiveness of the task force had been called into question. In Winnipeg, McCaskill had publicly defended their work. He suggested FBI had caught a big break when Joan Dorn had called the police with Kopp’s license-plate number in Amherst—it “was not exceptional police work,” he was quoted saying in the Winnipeg Free Press. But the reality, despite the big announcement, pointed out columnist Susan Clairmont in the Hamilton Spectator, was that little was happening in the Canadian sniper hunt. At the same time the arrest warrant was issued, two of the three OPP officers who had been working with the task force were given new assignments. “We’re not going to have these guys traveling the country searching for him,” said one OPP official.
The Slepian murder had altered the nature of the Canadian investigation, the FBI had the resources—not to mention direction from the White House—to lead the effort to catch him. The Canadian police were primarily on the sidelines, the evidence they had gathered a reference for the American investigation. But for all that the FBI had learned about Kopp, for all the searches and forensic evidence and surveillance, 15 months after Bart Slepian was killed, they still had no clue where he was.
Dublin, Ireland
Spring 2000
The slender man with thick glasses and bleached hair moved among the crowd on Grafton Street. He loved Grafton, the redbrick street reserved for pedestrians. Shoppers, tourists, professionals, lawyers dressed in black robes taking a break from the nearby courthouse, schoolgirls at lunch, teenage boys on guitar singing John Lennon’s “Come Together” to earn loose change.
Jim Kopp loved to blend in and walk the street, up and down, taking in every detail, thoughts swirling in his head. He worked on the local accent, but was still far from being good enough to fool a native Dubliner. He loved languages, the dialects running within each. He considered his spoken French, for example, to have a Caribbean lilt to it. No, he reflected, he would not speak Irish until he got it down perfect. Do not abuse the language, he mused, it would offend the people. Ireland was the right place for him to be, this country where God’s law still transcended man’s law—they hadn’t legalized baby killing here.