Five people had shot and either killed or wounded abortion providers or clinic workers in the United States: Michael Griffin, John Salvi—who committed suicide—Shelley Shannon, Hill and Kopp. Hill would be the first put to death. Five known shooters—shooters: a terribly crude word, really, Kopp mused in his letter, “but let’s use it. Five known shooters. And now two of them, sadly, will be dead. And another [Griffin], sadly, and due to perhaps some unprecipitated—though not thereby necessarily unholy—action, essentially repented of his action. He took the ‘aw shucks, I’m sorry, wish I hadn’t done it’ route.”
On Tuesday, September 2, Paul Hill met with several reporters selected by the state. He smiled for the cameras and said he expected a great reward in heaven upon his passing. The next day he ate his last meal, alone: steak, baked potato, broccoli with hollandaise sauce, salad, orange sherbet, a glass of iced tea. He sat in the solitary-confinement cell. Outside, the sky turned black as a storm blew in. Hill had a final visit with his wife and son, his mother and father, and two sisters. His two daughters had visited earlier in the week. None of his family came to the observation room. The family of Hill’s victims also stayed away. About 50 pro-lifers stood outside the prison gates, holding signs. There was a roll of thunder. IV tubes were inserted into both of his arms. He made his final statement: “If you believe abortion is a lethal force, you should oppose the force and do what you have to do to stop it,” he said calmly as he lay strapped to a gurney, staring at the ceiling and speaking into the microphone that hung from it. “May God help you to protect the unborn as you would want to be protected.”
Moments later, the chemicals pumped through his veins: first the sedative, then a paralytic agent and, finally, potassium chloride to stop his heart. Witnesses watched him gasp for air, swallow, lick his lips. His eyes fluttered, closed, and he went still. Hill was declared dead at 6:08 p.m. When the news reached Jim Kopp, his heart pounded, his mind trying to process it all, sort through his feelings. “I never knew of anyone dying on a predictable day and hour,” he wrote. “I don’t know how to deal with it. I can’t deal with sudden death, either, though.”
Miami Beach, Florida
November 11, 2003
A former soldier reading verse from the Army of God Manual. He wasn’t going to be another Paul Hill. Stephen Jordi admired Paul, he had flown north to Starke to protest at Hill’s execution. Hill had sent Jordi a letter, thanking him for his moral and financial support. Tactically, perhaps he would be more like Jim Kopp. Details of the story appeared later in news reports, quoting an affidavit filed in court. Stephen Jordi bought gasoline cans, flares, starter fluid, propane tanks. He wanted to blow up an abortion clinic. C-4 plastic explosives might be his best bet. But there were other ways to do it, too. A propane tank bomb. Pipe bomb.
He met again with his new friend. The friend shared Jordi’s views on the need to use force in the abortion war. Was the time ripe to strike? Jim Kopp had been sentenced to life in prison, Paul Hill executed, and Eric Rudolph, who bombed a clinic in Alabama, arrested—all within the space of five months. If Jordi decided to hit a clinic, he would be a marked man. On the other hand, George W. Bush, a pro-life Republican, was in the White House, and the FBI’s focus was now on al-Qaeda. He had no intention of ending up strapped to a gurney like Hill, or getting caught like Rudolph or Kopp. “As long as I keep hitting places, they’ll keep after me,” he told his friend. “But it’s like trying to catch a cockroach in a house. They won’t get me.”
Jordi ‘s friend sold him a .45-caliber pistol with an attached silencer and two empty magazines. Jordi tried to liaise with others on the fringe of the pro-life movement. One warned Jordi to be careful. In the current climate, he was playing a risky game. And one more thing: always assume that anyone you might be talking to could be a cop. On Tuesday night, Jordi met again with his friend, who lived on a houseboat at a Miami Beach marina. Perhaps Jordi felt especially safe talking with him, under cover of darkness, water lapping gently against the sides of the boat. Safe, until FBI agents emerged from the shadows to arrest him. Jordi’s friend had been an informant. He had told the feds everything. Jordi plunged into the water to escape, managed to pull away from the boat. Half an hour later he was pulled from the water by the U.S. Coast Guard. He was charged with solicitation to commit a crime of violence, distribution of information relating to making and using explosives for arson, and possession of an unregistered firearm or destructive device. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force had been investigating Jordi for four months, after getting a tip from his own brother.
One of Jordi’s relatives told reporters that he was a loner, had a strained relationship with his family. Jordi was “overzealous about the Lord, but not a violent person.” Four days prior to the arrest, the pastor at the Baptist church Jordi attended had faxed a letter to police, warning that the parishioner had violent views on stopping abortion. Clearly, in contrast to Kopp, Stephen Jordi stood out, with a shaved head and religious tattoos on both forearms. He was described in the press as a devout evangelical Christian who had four kids named Noah, Elijah, Charity and Trinity.
And Jim Kopp? A chameleon. Had seemed to one and all gentle, spoke like a devout Christian—and carried inside him a capacity for violence like a concealed shiv. Kopp knew the media would, “in its infinite wisdom,” try to answer the puzzle of his life by finding some old lady somewhere who had known him, “and she would stand there for the camera, rub rosary beads in her hands, and say: ‘Oh, dear, yes, Jim was such a nice boy. Can’t believe he’d ever do anything wrong to anyone.’” Oh, Kopp mused, they’d trot out the old Jekyll-and-Hyde explanation for his behavior.
It was a bit more complicated than that, he reflected. Wasn’t the FBI still trying to construct a psychological profile of him for the federal case? Why else would they, in the spring of 2004, with the federal trial still pending, fly him all the way to San Diego for a psychiatric evaluation? Federal prosecutors had asked for the evaluation to determine Kopp’s fitness to stand trial. Was that the only reason? Why move him all the way from Buffalo to San Diego, near his boyhood home in Southern California? Perhaps they were trying to jog some old memories, shake him up a little bit? But of course. They wouldn’t get inside him, though. He was sure the Edgars still hadn’t figured out the code he had used in his letters to Loretta when he was on the run.
Stephen Jordi’s lawyer accused the FBI of entrapment. His big mistake had been talking and trusting too much. The lesson of Jordi’s capture, said a commentary on the Army of God website, is that “your family, pro-lifers and your church ‘friends’ will rat you out in a heartbeat, thinking they are doing God’s will. Do not tell anyone, before, during, or after you are planning on taking action.”