“There’s someone else I’d like Jim to meet,” she added.
That “someone” was Bart Slepian’s niece, Amanda Robb.
Bart’s death had hit her hard. She went on tranquilizers. Amanda started thinking about her uncle’s killer, maybe too much. She went to a shootings range, felt an assault rifle rock her bones as she tried to blow holes in human-shaped targets at 100 yards. Amanda’s writing career had included a daytime Emmy nomination as part of a team writing television shows like All My Children. Now she was researching an article on Kopp, on the shooting, its impact on her own family. She wanted to meet her uncle’s killer.
Her phone interview with Susan took place on the day of Jim’s arrest. The call had been prearranged, the timing was a coincidence—although Susan felt there was deeper meaning. She didn’t believe Jim had shot Dr. Slepian and she believed the call was a sign that Jesus was welcoming Amanda into Jim’s life. So she would try to get Amanda an audience with him.
The next day, April 4, Broderick, Susan, and Amanda each flew to Paris and met at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Together they took a train west to Rennes. Amanda agreed that for the first visit it would be just Susan and Broderick. At that time, Susan would prepare Jim for meeting a special visitor.
Rennes, France
Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf rose early, dressed, looked out the window towards the old stone building a few blocks away. A room with a view, mused the lawyer with a grin, his pale blue eyes twinkling. The building down the street was the Rennes Court of Appeals. No matter how many times he saw it, the power of the building as a symbol never failed to strike a chord. It was where actions of the state were called into question, under the dispassionate protection of the French Constitution, by criminal lawyers such as himself, the place where justice must be done and must be seen to be done.
Rouzaud–Le Boeuf cut a jaunty figure as he left his apartment building. He looked rather like the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau: modest height, silver-gray hair of liberal length poking out from underneath a black fedora, leather briefcase in hand, maroon shirt, tweed jacket, black scarf for the nip in the air. He was 54 years old, from a city in Brittany called Vannes, where they spoke not French but Breton. His office in Rennes was on Rue Bonne Nouvelle, first floor, near Place Sainte Anne. In his office he kept prints of ships and nautical maps, a tribute to his father, who had been a captain on oceangoing cargo vessels.
He had not been surprised to receive the call requesting that he represent an American fugitive charged with murdering a doctor. A legal service had recommended Rouzaud–Le Boeuf. He was an obvious choice. He spoke fluent, elegantly formal English and was well versed in international law relating to extradition. He took the case. The lawyer knew that Mr. Kopp was accused of committing a murder in New York State, had fled the United States and ended up in France using false passports. The Americans wanted to extradite him for trial.
His thoughts turned immediately to the most pressing issue. Did Kopp face the death penalty if he was shipped back to the United States for trial? Rouzaud–Le Boeuf was well aware of the American fondness for the death penalty. Their new president, George W. Bush, inaugurated in January, had signed death warrants many times as governor of Texas. His new attorney general, the conservative John Ashcroft, a former Missouri senator, supported capital punishment as well. But he also knew that New York State had more liberal politics than other parts of the country. France, and the entire European Union, had outlawed capital punishment. The European Court of Human Rights had declared capital punishment “a form of torture and degrading treatment.”
Rouzaud–Le Boeuf considered death sentences just one of the peculiarities—and shortcomings—of the American justice system when compared to that of the French. It was not that Hervé Rouzaud– Le Boeuf was anti-American. Not at all. Let us just say the American legal system did not ring as true to him as the British, and therefore the Canadian, and particularly the French, which he favored above all else.
He brushed up on New York criminal law. Under former governor Mario Cuomo, a Democrat, there had been no death penalty. But Republican George Pataki had beaten Cuomo on a law-and-order platform that included the restoration of capital punishment. When Bart Slepian had been murdered, Pataki called it an act of terrorism and a cold-blooded assassination. The sniper, he added, should be caught and put to death. As Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf prepared to meet James Charles Kopp for the first time in jail, he was well aware that his task was to save the American’s very life.
The Rennes prison is a sprawling, worn, old complex with towering walls. James Charles Kopp was led into a visitor’s meeting room, and waited. He looked drained, weak. A cold he had been fighting didn’t help. Susan Brindle and John Broderick were brought in. Jim’s eyes met Susan’s, his tired face looked relieved. An old friend. “Thank goodness you’re here,” he said. “When John said you were coming I knew everything would be all right.”
She was instantly struck by how terrible Jim looked. She took him off to one side. There was something she had to ask him.
“Jim, you know, good people, God bless them, paid for my ticket to come over here. I need to be able to tell them—you need to look me straight in the eye, be really honest with me, because—tell me, did you do this, or not?”
He looked her in the eye, unyielding, no pretension, no false sincerity, no nervous smile, no fidgeting. “Susan. I did not do this. I did not do it.”
She felt relief. She’d never believed he could have done it. And now, looking into his blue-gray eyes, hearing his voice, she was certain of it.
“You have to tell everyone, hold a press conference and tell everyone I didn’t do this,” he continued. “No one knows. Tell them, please.”
Later, Susan said she needed to ask something else. “Jim, there’s someone I want you to meet, she’s here in Rennes. Her name is Amanda, and she’s Barnett Slepian’s niece.”
His niece? Here?
“She’s a smart girl, I’ve spoken with her. She’s a pro-abort but she’s as honest as can be. She’s tormented. Will you see her?”
“Susan, please, please,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to. Just tell her for me, can you?”
“Can you do this, please, for my sake, can you? Just tell her what you told me. She has a right to meet the person accused of killing her uncle, and to learn the truth, for the sake of her own soul.”
Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf arrived at the prison, was escorted to the meeting room to see his client, and quickly discovered he was not alone among those wishing to offer Mr. Kopp advice. He saw the woman with dark hair. She had an American southern accent. He took her hand in a chivalrous gesture. His English seemed from another time, words rolling off his tongue with precision and distinguished élan.
“It is most pleasant to meet you.”
No matter what he said, Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf sounded like a diplomat holding court at a cocktail party. She was introduced to him as a “legal clerk” but seemed more a friend of Mr. Kopp’s. There was a lawyer there, an American named John Broderick. A colorful man, this Mr. Broderick, caricature of the avuncular Irish-American, tall, gruff, booming voice, viselike handshake. A strong personality. But then, James Kopp had a strong personality, too, Rouzaud–Le Boeuf could tell that from the start. Very opinionated. Kopp did not seem to mesh well with Mr. Broderick, they did not seem to share the same views, not today, anyway. There were loud disagreements. Eventually the French lawyer sat with Jim, away from the others. Now was his chance to take the measure of his client. Rouzaud–Le Boeuf looked into the mans eyes. Mr. Kopp was clearly agitated, frightened, surely in need of rest. Understandable. But the lawyer needed to know the truth.