When Lynne Slepian heard that Marusak was appointed to prosecute Kopp, she spoke to Glenn Murray, Bart’s former lawyer and friend. “The prosecutor’s name is Joe Marusak,” she told him. “Is he good?”
Murray smiled to himself. How many times had Joe kicked his ass in court? Every time? Yes, every time. “Lynne, this guy works 20 hours a day. He is every defense lawyer’s nightmare. He’s the best there is.”
Chapter 22 ~ The Usual Suspects
Buffalo, N.Y.
Thursday, August 29, 2002
In order to establish the identity of Bart Slepian’s killer for the jury, Joe Marusak returned to witnesses who saw the suspicious jogger near Bart’s home in the days leading up to the murder four years earlier. He needed them to ID Kopp in a police lineup. Five men filed into the room on the third floor of the police station. They were fillers, all of similar age, weight, height and skin tone to Kopp. A theatrical-makeup artist added a beard and mustache to each, to resemble his appearance in October 1998. A hairstylist added Kopp’s coloring, although two of the fillers were close enough that they didn’t need it. Kopp was brought in to a different room and, under the eye of Paul Cambria, also made to look as he had back then—now clean-shaven, he was given a fake beard.
In the viewing room, the witnesses were instructed to say nothing to each other. They sat in the first two rows in assigned seats and were handed identification sheets to write on. There would be two lineups. Each man would wear glasses for the first one, and take them off for the second. Cambria was told that he could place the defendant in any of the numbered spots he wished, but he declined the offer. The lineup entered the viewing room. None of the men were permitted to make any gestures or speak. Each man stepped forward separately, made four quarter turns, then returned to his spot. For the second lineup, each man walked a different route towards a designated spot five feet from the one-way glass through which the witnesses were watching.
Detective Daniel Rich from the Erie County DA’s office spoke to the witnesses. “If you recognize anybody on the stage that was involved in the incident for which you are viewing the lineup, please record the number that he has on his chest. If you don’t recognize anybody on the stage, leave it blank.”
One of the witnesses was Dolah Barrett. She held a master’s degree in sociology and special education. She had seen the plodding jogger back then. Never seen him before in the five years she walked that route. She looked at the men in the lineup and wrote down a number. Jim Kopp’s number. A high school social studies teacher named Daniel Lenard was another. He identified Kopp as well. So did Mary Jo Brummer. Landscaper Kenneth Dewey stared at the faces. One of them looked familiar, but he was not sure. Hadn’t the jogger seemed taller? He left his sheet blank.
Marusak obtained a court order for Kopp to provide blood and hair samples, as well as handwriting samples to see if it matched the writing found on the SKS rifle purchase application document retrieved from the pawnshop in Old Hickory, Tennessee. FBI forensic chemist Julie Kidd constructed DNA profiles from hair and skin traces found on the green baseball cap and binoculars left at the shooting scene, and on the toothbrush recovered from Jim Gannon’s attic. She compared the DNA from the evidence to that in Kopp’s sample. The profiles matched. The odds were at least 1 in 280 billion that the DNA recovered at the crime scene belonged to someone other than the accused.
Among other evidence Marusak gathered for presenting in court were eight exhibits in a file labeled “FBI photos from Canadian investigation.” He also had two dozen rolls of film documenting anti-abortion protests in the Philippines, where Kopp had been, and multiple rolls of film from the FBI’s search of a home on Buck Hollow Road in Vermont, where he had lived for a time and where the FBI had seized a Smith & Wesson handgun, two empty bullet clips and two boxes of cartridges.
Marusak and Cambria shared information, as they were required to do. And evidence started leaking to the media. Cambria spoke to reporters and confirmed the rumor that the prosecution had testimony from an unidentified woman—who was in fact Jennifer Rock. “We have been told by the prosecution that one of my client’s friends supposedly drove him to Mexico after the homicide,” Cambria said. “That’s all they’ve told us. We don’t even have the name of the witness who supposedly said this.”
Marusak felt confident. He imagined Kopp standing there in the police lineup, seeing the beards on the other guys, knowing the witnesses had to be picking him out. The DNA evidence, the handwriting, the knowledge that Jennifer Rock would testify against him: Kopp could see it coming, this avalanche of evidence. He’s got to be feeling the pressure now, thought Marusak, sensing this wave building against him.
As the summer wore on, Marusak worked the case every night, every weekend. It had to be that way, it was the way he approached cases, they became part of him. He needed to be at the top of his game. He forced himself to eat often to keep his energy level high. There was so much evidence against Kopp, but there were also the conspiracy theories. The defense would surely milk them, sow doubt in the minds of jurors. He had to bring them up, counterpunch. Marusak had no wife, or kids. He had never married. You throw yourself into cases like he did, you don’t meet many women. He did not necessarily embrace his fate on that score, but he accepted it. His usually rigorous exercise regimen went out the window. He added 16 pounds to his five-foot-eight frame, pushing him over the 140-pound mark, still trim by most standards, but not what he demanded of himself.
He met with Lynne Slepian several times. He was impressed by her will, her strength, as they went over evidence, photos, details. She always had a pot of coffee, food ready for him.
This widow and mother had a black hole in her life, and yet, on the outside, she wore a stolid mask as she tried to keep a sense of normality in her sons’ lives. What Lynne Slepian’s boys must have gone through—and continued to go through—having seen their father bleed to death on the kitchen floor. Joe Marusak’s father had died young, of a heart attack, in 1989. Joe had not been a kid like the Slepian boys. But he too had watched his father die in front of him, on the kitchen floor.
Buffalo, N.Y.
July 2002
A trial date for Loretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi was set for August, as the couple continued to be held in a Buffalo prison. If they were convicted of obstructing justice they would each face up to ten years in prison and fines of $250,000. They had already spent 15 months in jail. Marra’s lawyer, Bruce Barket, continued working to reach a plea bargain with the prosecution. He argued that she should be released because, he argued, she had helped persuade Kopp to give up his fight against extradition from France and return to the United States to stand trial. Federal prosecutor Kathleen Mehltretter argued that Marra should receive no such credit. But then the prosecutor had her own reasons for reaching a plea deal with Marra-Malvasi. She felt a full-blown trial for the couple would mean calling witnesses who might also be called during the Kopp federal trial—which might hurt the case against Kopp.