“Mr. Le Boeuf. I am innocent.”
The lawyer studied him. Kopp spoke in detail of the road to his arrest, rambling at times, going off on tangents, but repeatedly stressing his innocence. Rouzaud–Le Boeuf had stared into many faces over the years, both the guilty and innocent. Looking at his new client, he was convinced. It wasn’t so much what he said, or that he had an airtight alibi—he did not. Rather it was the genuine way he talked. By the time he left the prison, the lawyer had no doubt. He had not been sitting next to a murderer, he thought.
Susan spoke further with Jim. There was so much she wanted to know. Why had Jim planned to return to the United States right before his arrest? Why not just stay safe in Europe? “It’s insane, Jim, you’re free, why come back to America?”
“Because I heard that Amy had cancer.”
What? Amy? What, Susan wondered, does Amy Boissonneault have to do with this? She hadn’t seen Amy in at least a year. Amy was 34 years old, 12 years Jim’s junior, and was the best friend of Susan’s daughter. Susan had no idea Jim felt so close to Amy. He told her he had tried to send Amy money so she could undergo alternative cancer treatment. “I heard she had cancer,” he said, “but at her age, it was low risk, I thought she’d be OK, but when I heard it went to her brain I had to get back to America. I had to tell her that I love her—and ask her to marry me.”
Susan’s eyes teared up, and so did Jim’s.
“For the first time in my life,” he continued, “I feel that Jesus wants me to have a wife and kids.”
Jim had felt affection towards Amy for a long time. Perhaps he never revered her in the same way as he did Loretta, but Jim was attracted to Amy and admired her. Jim likened Amy to Mother Teresa. Both women were gentle, saintly, on the surface, but underneath were also tough as nails. Jim loved that about her. Amy called herself a tough farm girl. Jim knew the feminists would hear that and miss the point. She was delivering calves with her bare hands when she was ten, he liked to say. You could find her in the dead of winter up on a friend’s roof fixing a hole. That’s the kind of woman she was. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Susan. It was from a magazine, a picture of an engagement ring.
“You’re thinking, ‘Jim is crazy, he’s finally lost it,’ and I understand that,” he said. “But I need you to do this for me. I need you to find this ring, have it blessed, and then call Amy’s father, ask him for permission.”
“Permission? Jim, her father is going to give his blessing for his daughter, who has cancer, to marry a man who is accused of murder, who’s been gone two and a half years? It’s insane!”
“I know, I—”
“Look, I’ll ask her, but not her father.”
“No-no-no, just ask him, just say, ‘Mr. Boissonneault, if Amy didn’t have cancer, and if Jim wasn’t in jail accused of murder, would you allow him to date Amy?’ And if he says no, then don’t ask her. I’ll just pray. I’m meant to wait. But if the answer is yes, can you find her, bring her over here to me?”
Susan left the jail that night, thoughts swirling, caught between what her heart and her mind were telling her. Her heart won out. Back at the hotel, she spoke to Amanda Robb. Jim had not killed her uncle, Susan was sure of it. And Jim was about to become engaged.
“Jesus is going to work a miracle,” Susan said. “I just know they’re gonna get married and have babies.”
Amanda couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
The next day, Bart Slepian’s niece was introduced to Jim Kopp. She expected to meet him in a room divided by Plexiglas. But in the Rennes jail they sat in a private room, only a wooden table separating them. Jim carried a Bible with him. Amanda, a writer, soaked up the atmosphere, took the measure of this man Kopp, made mental notes. He was tall, lean. Baby-blue eyes. Handsome? Yes, she decided, maybe even shockingly handsome. He offered his hand. “Hi, I’m Jim,” he said.
She shook his hand and quietly muttered, “Amanda.”
Amanda later wrote an article about the meeting, and her quest to find Kopp, and sold it to New York Magazine. It ran under the headline “The Doctor, The Niece And The Killer.” She wrote:
“There was a long silence, and to fill it I told Jim two people had sent their love to him via me. The instant I mentioned the second person’s name, Jim curled into a fetal position and sobbed… Eventually he choked out that he thought this person hated him. He pulled himself together, saying, “If you wait long enough, everything in life comes back to you.” Then he started rambling… His narrative was a tangle of strands about victim souls, abortion, his “calling” to stop it, his destiny, my uncle’s murder, and fleeting mentions of his “fiancée.” “I didn’t shoot your uncle,” he said. “But I’m going to plead guilty and do the time—25 years straight up—because someone of my religion did.” This hung heavily in the air. I worried I was going to throw up. As I felt my face twitching, Jim smiled beatifically and changed the subject to movies. He suggested I watch Pay It Forward, which he said was the story of his life… He then urged me to see There’s Something About Mary and quietly added that I looked like Cameron Diaz… It suddenly dawned on me that my uncle’s killer was flirting with me.”
Amanda Robb told Jim she wanted to understand him, asked if she could write to him. He agreed. A guard entered the room to escort him back to his cell. He handed Amanda a Bible. Inside, he had written “To Mandy.” Only her family had ever called her by that nickname, she reflected.
Before leaving Rennes, Susan Brindle spoke to Jim about Amy one more time. Amazing thing. Susan had called home and spoken to her sister about Jim’s proposal to marry Amy. And her sister Joan said that out of the blue Amy had called, said she was coming to town, would stop in to say hi. Susan relayed the story to Jim and he smiled. God was directing everything! Susan finally said goodbye to Jim. She took the train back to Paris. That night she searched for the ring Jim had requested, went store to store for several hours, until, late in the evening, she found a small jeweler who had it. She bought the ring and took it to Notre Dame Cathedral to get it blessed. No priest was available, so she returned the next morning to early mass and got the ring blessed. Then she caught her flight to New York. Susan called Amy’s father early the next day. He knew she had been in France visiting Jim Kopp. “How are you, Susan? And how was Jim?”
Susan got around to asking. “Mr. Boissonneault, can I ask you a really strange question? If Amy didn’t have cancer, and Jim wasn’t in jail, would you ever allow him to ask her out? I just need to know.”
“Kind of an odd question, don’t you think?” he said. “I know, I know. But I need to know.”
“It’s not really up to me. It’s up to Amy.”
“Thank you. And God bless.”
Susan went and saw Amy, who was visiting Joan’s home. They walked in the backyard past a statue of the Blessed Mother. “How is Jim?” asked Amy. “Does he talk about his friends?” “He does. He talks about you.”
“Me?”
“He talks about you, he really cares about you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He loves you, Amy.”
Amy stared at her, bewildered. “What? Jim? I always—I always thought of him like a priest, in a way. Never thought of him in that way.”