[explosion]
- We had seen bombings, arsons, attacks against
women's health-care providers, against physicians.
[reporter]: Dr. David Gunn was shot after getting out of his car
as he came to work at the Pensacola abortion clinic.
- I encourage you all to continue the noble work
of supporting your local baby defenders
from arsonists to snipers.
- A sniper used a high-powered rifle and shot
a women's health-care provider in Buffalo, New York.
- And he's nowhere to be found.
- He has used approximately 29 different aliases
and false identification.
- He was affiliated with known abortion terrorist organizations.
- He had a propensity for violence.
We cannot let him off the hook.
[man shouting]: Get back! Everybody get back!
Let's go! - We had get him,
we had to get him. We had to get him now.
[explosion] - Oh my God!
[narrator]: In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
Drug busts, mob stings.
Terrorist takedowns.
[people shouting]
We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
[director]: Mark it. - Freeze!
- FBI.
- FBI! [man in the distance]: Action!
[narrator]: But they don't know the half of it.
What really goes down?
We save that for each other
when we're talking agent to agent.
This is FBI. True.
[upbeat suspenseful music]
- Normally when I'm talking about cases,
I'm talking to agents about their cases.
In this particular matter, I was on the squad and worked
this case intimately with... you were there.
[narrator]: Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.
Kottis was the supervisor of the FBI's threat response
squad, overseeing the bureau's response to terrorism threats in New York City.
- You were there. - I was there
- You were a big part of it, Kristy.
You were one of the leaders of that team.
[narrator]: The son of a New York cop, Harold Brantley's
New-York City FBI squad is investigating violent crime
against children and civil rights violations.
- FBI management for the New York office asked me
to come over to supervise that squad.
It was my job to come in to support the agents to ensure
they had everything they needed. - We knew the state
of the game in our territory.
I was very well aware of the abortion extremism movement,
and the high-profile abortion doctors in the United States.
[narrator]: A lawyer by training, Cynthia Deitle
specialized in hate crime and corruption cases for the FBI.
She rose to oversee civil rights for the entire bureau.
- October 23rd, 1998.
Why is that date a significant date?
- It was a tragic day in that Dr. Barnett Slepian
Was shot and killed his in his home.
The news broke before our office even heard about it.
- This story is happening right now.
Well-known abortion doctor Barnett Slepian has been shot.
- Sources tell News 4 a gunman shot from the woods behind
Dr. Slepian's home on Roxbury Terrace in Amherst,
striking him in the back.
- A sniper used a high-powered rifle and shot him
as he was warming up some soup in his kitchen.
[gunshot]
And within the matter of minutes,
he bleeds out in his kitchen and dies.
[melancholic music]
- Cynthia, who is Dr. Slepian?
- So when I joined the civil rights squad in 1997,
I was very well aware of the players in the game,
I was very well aware that, you know, Dr. Barnett Slepian
was a women's health-care provider who practiced outside
of Buffalo, New York.
- So just take a deep breath.
- So he did everything from pregnancies, birth control,
into menopause, care for women, and he delivered babies.
He was beloved by his community and his patients
and also provided abortions.
- I believe that as long as it's legal,
I will provide total care to my patients.
- His clinic had been subject to numerous protests.
His home, his family had been targeted
for harassment and abuse.
[man shouting]: You pig!
Take your hands off the babies and women!
- I suppose I'm a little bit stubborn.
Adversity has never bothered me.
And the more that they come after me, the more I'll dig in.
- It was the murder of an abortion doctor.
That was a violation of federal law.
The United States had already seen Dr. David Gunn.
in Pensacola, Florida, an abortion provider
who was shot and killed.
[gunshot]
[reporter]: Dr. David Gunn was shot after getting out of his car
as he came to work at the Pensacola abortion clinic.
- We had seen bombings of abortion clinics.
[explosion]
[man filming]: Oh! We got a bomb that just went off.
[sirens]
[man shouting]
- Arsons, attacks against women's health-care providers,
against physicians.
In 1994, after the shooting of Dr. Gunn, Congress
and the President passed the FACE Act and it is against
the law to use force or violence to interfere with a woman
or doctors or patients who are attempting to access reproductive health.
- So the FBI gets involved and we open a Civil Rights
FACE Act case in the murder of Dr. Slepian.
- Yes, we did.
- Mike, where were you on October 23, 1998?
- I was a new agent at the academy
in Quantico, Virginia.
[narrator]: Michael Osborn spet 21 years working
counterterrorism, crimes againt children
and civil rights cases for the FBI.
This was one of his first case.
[Michael]: The canvass of the neighborhood is ongoing.
They talked to one of Dr. Slepian's neighbors
who said: "Yeah, I did see an individual that didn't seem
to fit in the neighborhood."
She sees this guy jogging, but she said it really wasn't a jog.
And so they said: "Well, you know, can you describe him?"
"Yes." "Can you give us a description of the car?"
And she says: "Yes.
Not only that, but I can give you the license plate."
They're like, "That's huge." - That's rare.
When you get a witness like that, that actually have
the wherewithal to actually capture a license number.
- So now we've got a license tag.
What happens then?
- Well, obviously, we're doing all of the searches
of the vehicle and we ultimately find out it's registered back to
James Charles Kopp.
- Mr Kopp is being sought based on the sighting of a 1987 black
Chevrolet Cavalier bearing Vermont license plate BPE 216
in Amherst, NY, in the weeks preceding Dr. Slepian's homicide.
[Cynthia]: James Kopp had been a frequent protester.
He was affiliated with known abortion terrorist
organizations, Army of God, Lambs of Christ and others.
So he was a very well known player in the game.
- Didn't the Army of God actually have a manual
that gives instructions on how to attack an abortion clinic
using chemicals, bombs?
- Yes, and our squad had been tracking them for years.
So, we knew all the terrorist organizations that were
very active and prevalent in the United States.
So we look for a pattern, right?
Like, we want to see, is the pattern of what happened
to Dr. Slepian, was that replicated at some point before that?
And what we saw was that same type of idea
of the high-powered rifle shooting from a distance
shooting into a location.
Was the same situation that we had seen with shootings
in Canada of abortion providers.
- Yeah, as I recall, there were three doctors shot in Canada,
one in Rochester.
And Slepian who was shot in Buffalo
and he actually was the first one that was killed.
- So we knew there was a pattern here where the person
who probably did the shootings in Canada
might have been the same person who killed Dr. Slepian.
The Chevy Cavalier.
It's registered to James Charles Kopp, we know that.
We know he's got an address in St. Albans, Vermont.
- Which is really close to the Canadian border.
Which circumstantially, puts Kopp in the right position
to commit all five of these shootings.
- Law enforcement goes back to Dr. Slepian's home
to where they think the shooter would have been standing
in the woods and they find evidence
that is buried in the dirt.
In the woods, they find the ear protection
that the shooter used.
A ball cap that he was wearing.
The fibers in the hat matched the Chevy Cavalier.
[suspenseful music]
And they also find a tube that is partially buried in the dirt
that has the high-powered rifle inside of it.
That was a huge break in the case.
When we recover the high-powered rifle in the woods
behind Dr. Slepian's house, that also gives us evidence
that ties us back to James Kopp.
We could match the DNA from the scope, from that little
piece of rubber that surrounds the scope of the rifle,
we could collect DNA from the rifle.
- And we got Kopp's DNA off a toothbrush from a place
he was staying in New Jersey.
It was in a backpack he had left behind at a friend's house.
- So we collect the DNA together and further tie it to Kopp.
- We obtained an arrest warrant up in Buffalo
and he's nowhere to be found.
I mean, figuring out who killed Dr. Slepian was hard enough.
But actually catching James Kopp before he kills again
is going to be harder and more dangerous.
- We don't know where he is. - Right.
- We know where the other high-profile abortion doctors are.
Is that where he's heading?
- James Kopp, you know, he had a propensity for violence.
We could not let him off the hook.
- And then shortly thereafter we announced James Charles Kopp
as a member of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.
[journalist]: From opposite corners of the globe,
the Bureau selected alleged terrorist ring leader
Osama Bin Laden currently hidig
in Afghanistan, and James Charles Kopp, the suspected
killer of a New York abortion doctor,
current whereabouts unknown.
- He has no known permanent address, has traveled
extensively around the United States
and through 11 countries.
We know that he has used approximately 29 different
aliases and false identification.
- I mean, this is long before we had the electronic
surveillance tools and capabilities that we have today.
Kopp was changing his look.
He was wearing a beard, shaving it.
Fake IDs, fake names, living off the grid.
Made it very difficult.
- The mission was to find and arrest Kopp
but you're just trying to see who might be tied to him,
who maybe was a co-conspirator in the crime,
and who might be providing financial assistance.
And there are two individuals that here in the New York area
that were identified, and that's Dennis Malvasi
and Loretta Marra.
- Dennis Malvasi was a bomber.
- Dennis Malvasi, was the first person to bomb an abortion
clinic in New York City and he had executed other bombings
in clinics throughout Manhattan as well.
[sirens]
[journalist]: In New York City early today an abortion clinic
was the target of a bombing.
Flying debris injured two passers-by.
Police think the device was planted inside
during business hours.
- And you know, and Malvasi actually went to prison
for seven years for his violence against abortion clinics.
And even when he got out, he still advocated violence
against abortion clinics.
- I encourage you all
to continue the noble work
of supporting your local baby defenders
from lock-gluers to bombers to the Avon crowd
to the monkey wrench crew, from arsonists to snipers.
- So he obviously was somebody we had to be concerned about.
- Loretta Marra, was married to Dennis.
She had been tied to Kopp
in a number of different ways in previous protests.
She was definitely on the radar.
There are a lot of people that would have supported him.
But there was, you know, a handful, maybe five
or six people in the world that knew where Kopp was.
But in terms of, where he was and what his plan was,
we believed home base was Dennis and Loretta's apartment.
So it would have been late summer, early fall of 99,
after being assigned to the New York office.
One of the first tasks was to find individuals
that were close to Dennis and Loretta.
And ultimately they identified one individual and they asked
us to go out and in and talk to this person.
- In every investigation in the Bureau, your life is made
a lot easier if you have somebody who can provide you information.
Mike had the temperament and I felt
he was the right man for the job.
- I personally thought, you know:
"Hey, I can talk to him, I can talk to anybody."
This person was very close to Dennis.
And you're saying: "Hey, can you give us information about
a friend of yours?"
That's not a comfortable situation to be in, right?
It doesn't always go well.
It was an extended period of time
that we were talking to this individual.
- Mike had the patience of job to deal with this informant
because he was one of those guys who was extremely high maintenance.
- And one day, the source calls back and says:
"Hey, okay, I'm in."
The source had known Dennis for a number of years.
Essentially, I was trying to parlay that off into
a relationship between the source and Loretta,
because we knew that Kopp relied on Loretta.
Loretta would do anything for Kopp.
- Mike, tell me a little bit about what the source did
to develop the reader's trust.
- On one particular day Loretta wants to go glue locks.
So basically what that is, is activists will go up
to clinics and they'll shove glue into the key locks.
The source was like: "Hey, I want to glue locks
with Loretta. Loretta wants me to go"
And I'm like: "no, we're not doing that because we would need
a lot of authority before he starts going."
- Uh, you just can't do that, you're acting on our behalf.
- I personally viewed it as a test.
So what ultimately happened is Loretta is driving
the source, gets out and goes up and pretends to glue the lock
and gets glue all over them and comes back and super excited.
And then she was really excited.
Uh, you know, from that experience, and I think
at that point really started to really established
the source as a major player with Loretta,
another step forward, a big step forward.
The source was able to, from Loretta, get a couple of pieces
of paper and was able to see that there were some
phone numbers that turned out to be phone numbers to Ireland.
We thought that that's where Kopp was.
We felt like we would have major success if we were able
to listen to the conversations that were happening
in Dennis and Loretta's apartment.
And the source and Dennis played cards all the time.
So we developed this plan where the source would take
Dennis and Loretta down to Atlantic City.
So we got a vehicle
wired the vehicle up.
So when they were driving down there, anything that they said
we would be able to hear.
We wired up two hotel rooms.
So we would be able to monitor that as well.
At the same time, up here in New York, we were going to be
getting into their apartment and planting a bug
and then also putting a tracker on their computer.
I mean it was a huge weekend.
- And in this case, you, Harold are the one who's doing it,
this black back job.
How did you decide that you should be the one
that's going in there?
- There was no way I was going to turn that case over
to an undercover agent because if there was going to be
any screw ups, then I was going to be the one front and center
who had to answer those questions.
- How stressful is it getting ready to go?
It's 3:00 in the morning.
You've got the whole team out there.
You've got technical guys, bomb techs, you.
- Highest level of stress because we could not make a mistake.
We had the best plan in place when we went inside that apartment.
The one thing we didn't factor in was there was a cat
in that apartment, and the damn cat ran out the building,
out the apartment door, down the hallway.
And we're like, you got to be kidding me.
We were taking pictures of passwords.
We were taking pictures of codes
because we didn't know what exactly they were.
So we had to decipher that stuff.
And of course, we had to get that cat back in the house,
because can you imagine if Dennis and Loretta comes home
and they come in that apartment and that cat missing something?
Something as simple as that.
Can you imagine? A cat kind of blew that whole operation?
- We got great information.
There was a Yahoo! account and we could see
that there were draft emails.
So essentially Kopp and Loretta were communicating through drafts.
It was an email that they would write but never send,
and then they would both access that account
and basically be able to have a conversation.
We knew he was in Europe.
We thought he was in France.
We didn't know where.
- During that time we were working overnight and everybody,
we were feeling the pressure. - And then we would
talk to somebody else and we'd say:
"Oh, he was here a week ago" and then "he was here yesterday".
We knew we were getting closer.
We knew we were within 24 hours of where he was.
It was kind of one of those things where, like, you can see
him, then you can smell him and you can touch him.
So we knew we were, you know, really, really close.
We were also concerned that potentially
he wanted to come back.
- And we heard that in some of the conversations.
Dennis was saying to Loretta:
"I'm the one that's going to meet him.
I'm the one that's going."
But all the emails were written in code, right?
- Some of the code we had already been able to break.
There were all these references to the margins and
to the "jackie area" and we worked with
the Bureau's code breakers to figure out
that these were references to the Canadian border
south of Montreal where Loretta Marra's son was born.
We were concerned that there was a plan that
he was going to come back and try to come through
Canada into the U.S. again.
If they're willing to go to this level of planning,
you know, what are they planning next?
- We knew that James Kopp was possibly implicated
in shooting doctors in Canada.
We knew he had a violent tendency.
Like, if he gets away with killing Dr. Slepian,
what's the next thing he's going to do?
We had to get him, we had to get him.
We had to get him now.
- But then also, there was a financial component here.
And one day, Loretta, she asked the source
to wire money to Kopp.
That's what we've been working for, for over a year.
And the source goes out and wires money.
And then after wiring the money, there was basically
a flurry of communications because now Kopp needed to get
the code and he needed to get the money out.
But the problem is he didn't get the right code.
Kopp ends up going into a post office in Dinan, France,
tries to get the money and is not getting the money.
Kopp became very, very frustrated because he had
the wrong code and potentially there were some language barrier issues.
- Yeah, an on the email that Kopp was writing,
he was all ticked off because he said the keys
were all "frenchied up" and that he can't get the money
"without the control number."
- So we were getting a lot of intelligence
that was coming very, very quickly.
Kopp was in Dinan.
He was calling back to Dennis and Loretta in Brooklyn.
We were monitoring that from Manhattan.
And I'm on the phone with Buffalo.
And I said: "Here he is, it's Kopp.
You can hear it."
So I put the phone to the speaker.
They were relaying the message, you know, live time
to the LEGAT in Paris and the LEGAT in Paris was
listening to Buffalo and talking to the locals in Dinan, France at the same time.
So it went live time from Dinan to Brooklyn to Manhattan
to Buffalo to Paris to Dinan.
And he's at the phone booth right outside
the main post office.
They went there.
They saw him.
Kopp saw the cops.
Kopp started running.
There was a small foot chase...
[epic music]
and they tackle him.
Immediately it was like, we got to get to Brooklyn.
We were worried about evidence destruction.
We were worried about potentially
what might Dennis do. He's a known bomber.
- We were on two wheels on the median strip
driving lights and sirens going.
We got there in record time, like from Manhattan to Brooklyn
in like 10 minutes - I had called the SWAT guys.
I was about a block and a half away.
The SWAT vehicle comes just hauling by me, right?
Just super fast and then pulled right in front.
And they go into the... to the building.
And I remember just sitting there thinking:
"Please don't blow up. Please don't blow up."
- Oh, my God. - Because I was worried
what he might do.
- We pull up and Loretta is in the laundromat.
She was definitely non-compliant.
[journalist]: Late this afternoon, the FBI arrested
two people in New York on charges of helping Kopp
stay on the run.
- We're here to announce that James Charles Kopp
is in custody and awaiting extradition
to the United States.
[suspenseful music]
- Knowing that we stopped a very violent individual
from committing violence again.
I mean, capturing a Top Ten fugitive as an FBI agent
is a once in a million opportunity.
- The most technically advanced case that I've ever worked on.
This is the pinnacle of my career.
I'm basically two and a half years into it.
- You know, it was such a hot button issue too, Harold.
the fact that this was in the sphere
of the abortion debate. - Sure.
You know, for me and rest of the team, it was never
discussed we were laser focused on one mission only,
and that was to bring Kopp to justice.
So I think that's the beauty of the team,
the beauty of the Bureau.
We never give up.
Subtitling: difuze