Jordi had military training, but he lacked Jim Kopp’s guile. Kopp would have never been fooled by an informer, would never have talked like that. His advantage was that no one could see him coming. He used deception in every facet of his life, the Romanita. Yet in the end, the reason Kopp was caught and convicted was that he, too, had trusted, had talked too much—to the woman he loved. Loved? He never married, never had serious relationships. It had to be that way. His connections with adults were weak at best. Perhaps he eventually became so desensitized to grown humans that it created in him the soul of a killer, enabling him to shoot doctors, play Russian roulette with lives, shatter whole families for his cause. And yet he chose to shoot from a distance, ran after he pulled the trigger. He gave himself a buffer zone from the carnage, did not have the certainty of the up-close killer. In the end he was not completely desensitized, not quite enough. His connection with the fetus, his mission to save the unborn, wasn’t enough, not when he was tired and vulnerable, “sleeping” on the run. It was then that Kopp reached for perhaps the only person he could connect with, and that was Loretta Marra.
Loretta was his blind spot, the chink in his psychological armor. His contact with her led directly to his capture. And, while few knew it at the time, she also led to his conviction. When he shocked everyone by confessing to shooting Bart Slepian, Jim Kopp was trying to sacrifice himself for Loretta’s freedom. That fact all became clear one day in a Brooklyn court.
Chapter 27 ~ Free Conscience
Marra-Malvasi Sentencing Hearing
Brooklyn Federal Courthouse
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Loretta Marra had labored over the speech in her cell. She had spent much of her adult life proselytizing, debating philosophy and morality, and now she was preparing the argument of her life. She was to make her case before federal judge Carol Amon. Marra’s mission was nothing less than freeing herself and her husband, Dennis Malvasi, returning to their two young sons. They had been in custody for 29 months, since March 29, 2001, repeatedly denied bail. And now, having pled guilty to conspiracy to harbor a fugitive, Amon would decide their punishment. The maximum sentence was five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In Judge Amon’s courtroom, Marra’s lawyer, Bruce Barket, would argue for leniency. But Loretta would also speak. She could not try to make a pro-life argument to the judge, cite the feds’ bigotry against pro-life Catholics—even though she believed that to her core. Why else had they been denied bail, labeled a flight risk? No, she had to make a legal argument. No one knew her case better than she did, no one knew what had gone on behind the scenes. Few knew the real reason why Jim Kopp had confessed. Now was the time to tell the whole story.
The morning broke clear and sunny. The courthouse sat on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan. Spectators filed into the room, took their seats and waited: Loretta’s friend Luanne, who loved Loretta, considered her a saint; old acquaintances of Loretta’s late father; friends from the movement, like Joan Andrews with two of her five adopted children, one of them a child of Chernobyl born with physical disabilities; Jim Kopp’s friends James Gannon and Betty Lewis, both of whom still lived in the Crestwood Village retirement community in Whiting, New Jersey; a priest who had been arrested many times for protesting and had met with Kopp in jail. The priest knew what he would have done if he had been in Loretta’s shoes—he would have helped Jim, too. Any one of them would have taken in an old friend.
An activist named Bill Koehler was there. He supported the use of force against abortion providers, wished he had the nerve to actually pull the trigger. He actually hoped Kopp was not the lone sniper. That would mean there was more than just one man willing to defend the unborn. There was Luis, nickname Lifeboat, who looked as though he had hiked to the court through time from Woodstock, 1969, a long scraggly gray beard and a huge wooden cross hanging on his chest clicking against an assortment of pro-life pins. Lifeboat was 61, had been at the siege of Atlanta in ’88.
Marra’s sister Julia was there, too. Julia had cared for Loretta’s two sons while she was in jail. So was brother Nick. He looked like Loretta, the dark French complexion of their late mother. He came to watch his sister get hammered again by the courts. It is what the establishment does, beats up on people like her. She didn’t stand a chance. He turned to a journalist outside the courtroom and flashed a broad, sarcastic grin. “Ah yes,” he said, “The media is here, that paragon of truth and balance.”
Marra and Malvasi were led into the courtroom in handcuffs, wearing scrubs and baggy white prison-issue T-shirts. Loretta carried a stack of papers, looked weary and pale, had lost weight in prison. But Dennis Malvasi looked alert, his arms and upper body lean and hard. Loretta smiled nervously at the crowd. Guards unlocked the cuffs; they sat side by side at a table, but never touched each other in. “I love you,” she mouthed silently to her sons, who sat in the front row.
The lawyers entered. Bruce Barket would argue that Marra deserved leniency in her sentence for harboring a fugitive because she had convinced James Kopp to forgo his extradition battle and come back to the United States for trial. Marra deserved credit for that. But in fact Loretta Marra planned to make an even more powerful argument to the judge. But first, her husband faced a serious allegation in court.
FBI agent Michael Osborn strode into the courtroom, took his seat at a long table facing the judge. For his role in catching Kopp, Osborn—along with Buffalo-based special agent Joel Mercer—had been presented with Attorney General’s Awards for excellence in law enforcement. And Osborn had been posted to the bureau’s Violent Crime Major Offenders Unit in Los Angeles. But there was still work to clean up in New York. Sitting beside him in court was the federal prosecutor, a tall, slim man with a youthful face, hair brushed to one side, olive suit, deep purple tie, brown shoes. His name was Peter Katz. Judge Carol Amon entered, took her seat, and the sentencing arguments began. Osborn leaned over and talked quietly with Katz. Then the prosecutor rose. He wanted to present new evidence that would keep Marra and Malvasi in jail.
He said that early one morning back in November 1998, less than two weeks after Bart Slepian was murdered, a woman walking in the doctor’s neighborhood noticed a man standing on a sidewalk near Williamsville East High School, perhaps 100 yards from Slepian’s property. The man wore a black warmup suit. Small man, compact build. Had lots of gray hair. She had never seen him before. She looked him in the eye. He seemed to look right through her, his stare was so intense. She kept walking, told a friend later about the encounter, how much it bothered her, but said nothing more about it. Fast-forward 29 months. James Kopp is arrested in France, and on TV, the woman in Amherst sees the faces of Lorretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi on TV after their arrest in Brooklyn. Malvasi. She could never forget the face, the build. Very distinctive. She felt like she was going to pass out. She called the police.
“Your Honor,” Peter Katz said, “the government would like to bring forward a witness who will say she saw Mr. Malvasi on November 4 or 5, within 100 yards of where the rifle was buried in a wooded area behind Dr. Slepian’s house.”
What was Malvasi—a convicted abortion clinic bomber—doing in the Slepians’ neighborhood less than two weeks after the murder and within a matter of hours of the FBI issuing a warrant for Kopp’s arrest as a material witness? It was a shocking revelation. Those who had argued that Kopp was either framed, or at the very least had not acted alone, had been dismissed as conspiracy theorists. But this evidence suggested there was indeed more to the story—detail that Kopp himself had perhaps wanted to keep secret.