Front Burner - Front Burner Introduces: Someone Knows Something: The Abortion Wars

Episode Date: June 18, 2022

Host David Ridgen joins victims' family members as they investigate cold cases, tracking down leads, speaking to suspects and searching for answers. In Season 7 of Someone Knows Something, Ridgen and investigative journalist Amanda Robb dig into the 1998 murder of her uncle, a New York doctor killed for performing abortions. They uncover a network of anti-abortion movements linked to violence in North America and Europe. Twenty years later, with debates about reproductive rights heating up in the U.S., could more violence be on the horizon? More episodes are available at hyperurl.co/sks

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi there, we have a special bonus episode for FrontBurner's podcast subscribers. It's the first episode from the brand new season of Someone Knows Something, The Abortion Wars. After two years in the making, David Ridgen teamed up with journalist Amanda Robb to examine the 1998 murder of Robb's uncle, a New York abortion provider, which exposed a network of violent anti-abortion activists. And they also explore

what this pattern of violence could mean for the future if Roe v. Wade is overturned. We have the first episode, Aiding, Abetting Abortion, for you now. Have a listen. The following episode contains mature subject matter. Please take care. mature subject matter, please take care. He was shot and killed at home in front of his wife and children, and it totally messes you up. I mean, it's just, I think the Hallmark TV movie version of it is that it brings you closer together, but what happens is being around each other

just reminds you of what's missing. I'm on the phone with Amanda Robb. Her uncle, Dr. Barnett Slepian, whom she calls her Uncle Bart, was murdered in October of 1998. My dad died when I was four, and my mom was pregnant. And Bart came to live with us for many, many years. So I was closer to him than maybe a normal niece would be to her uncle. So anyway, the way I dealt with it was, I was just going to figure out why. I remember when Amanda's uncle Bart was killed.

I was living in Toronto at the time, not far away from the suburb in Amherst, New York, where he lived. He'd been shot dead through his kitchen window while making soup. A single shot, but it was one that was reported around the world. Because Dr. Slepian was a gynecologist who delivered babies, but he also provided abortions. you know, some stance on feminism or reproductive rights or anything. It was just part of a practice, really. And, I mean, one of the many strange things about his death was he's always been a very conservative guy. He was killed right after coming home from synagogue services. He was scheduled to work at a clinic in the morning.

Like, that makes no sense. Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Abortion bans have got to go! Hey, hey! Right now in the United States, there's a resurgence of abortion rights discussion and protest. You can have my freedoms, my body, my choice. Court challenges at the state and Supreme Court level are ongoing, and final rulings will soon be made. Monumental cases like Roe v. Wade that protect the right to abortion could be weakened or even overturned. It's terrible. I have friends that died from coat-hanging abortions. These issues have a kind of resonance in the rest of the world. Legal and moral arguments over abortion aren't just

an American phenomenon. I think revisiting the violence and actions of the anti-abortion movement may be especially important given what's going on now in the world. Where have we been and where are we going? And is accountability important for the violence we saw over 20 years ago, and that some think may come again. I'm David Ridgen, and this is Someone Knows Something, Season 7, Episode 1, Aiding, Abetting, Abortion. Amanda. David. How are you doing? Is it okay to meet in here?

Of course it is. Okay. Nice. After several phone calls with Amanda Robb, I'm meeting her in person. An investigative journalist from New York, she's written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and GQ. Early 50s, someone who likes to throw herself into difficult situations and then write her way out of them. She's a fan of Someone Knows Something, so the scene seems already informal, like we know each other through downloads. Amanda settles onto a couch, binders of papers on a table in front of her.

She's wearing jeans and her blonde hair is held back by a pair of reading glasses. This is not the first time Amanda has investigated tragedy in the ongoing narrative of abortion rights. In fact, Amanda became a journalist because of the murder of her uncle, Dr. Bart Slepian. I know people react to grief in many different ways. I'm sure you've learned that, you've seen it. And then the way I reacted was I was going to figure out why Bart was dead. Like that was, I don't know why that was my thing. I wasn't particularly angry or I was just going to, I was going to solve the puzzle. I wasn't a journalist at the time. It was just like, that's what I was going to do. That

was my thing. I want to find out more about Uncle Bart, more about the scene at the time and who he was. You know, he was not the Martin Luther King of abortion. He was a very conservative guy. He voted Republican. He was religious. He hated feminists. He particularly hated Hillary Clinton. Like, I mean, this wasn't his cause. Even still, with abortion being a relatively small part of his practice, Amanda's uncle became a target of anti-abortion protests in the Buffalo area. Amanda's uncle became a target of anti-abortion protests in the Buffalo area. Bart felt obligated to provide abortions because the procedure was becoming less and less accessible. Here's Bart in a TV interview from the time talking about anti-abortion protesters.

I'm not afraid of them and I'm not afraid of the violence. I fear for my family, my children. I think of if I wasn't, what they would go through. But personally, I'm not afraid of them. People would go around to all his neighbors, you know, saying they live next to a baby killer. People were, like, following his kids to school and saying, why does your daddy kill babies?

And they put wanted posters out with target marks all over his face. Or, you know, there were, like, billboards that said, Slepian kills babies, Slepian's a murderer. It felt like Dr. Schenck had to pick and choose what you do. Like, if you're an obstetrician and a gynecologist, this is what you signed up for. And he didn't like bullies. Whereas it would make other people go, wow, this is, this is bad idea. This isn't my thing. I'm going to back off. It just made him like, fuck you. I'm going to keep doing it. And like, you're not going to bully me

with babies and fetuses. And Lord, we ask for your hand of protection over the children that are scheduled to die here today. In Jesus' name. At protests like this one in Buffalo in 1992, anti-abortion supporters would not only carry large posters with graphic imagery purporting to be from abortion procedures, but would carry and display actual human fetuses. This is not a political issue. This is not an issue of rights.

This is not a social issue. This is a dead baby. This is a dead human baby. Dr. Slepian eventually tried to appeal to the forces at play, often right on his front lawn. He... at play, often right on his front lawn. He, in 1994, he wrote an op-ed to the Buffalo News and said, like, these people are expressing their freedom of expression, like, when they call me a murderer and they follow my kids to school and they threaten me and this and the other thing, but don't be surprised when one of the more fragile-minded, like, shoots a provider.

Four years later, that's exactly what happened. I just became obsessed with, like, Bart's killer. After the shooting, police soon landed on one suspect, a 44-year-old anti-abortion fanatic from California named James Charles Kopp, or Jim as Amanda calls him. I would get everything I could. Like, Jim Kopp was named as a person of interest, and then he was named as the only suspect. And like, I swear to God, I kept a scrapbook. It was like, almost like I had a crush on him. And then I started like, there would be an article about him and they would interview somebody. So then I would call

that person and I would need to talk to them. And what were they going to do? Like they had this like bereft girl on the phone and they were Christians. And so they had to be nice to me. And then I would fly and go visit them. It was crazy. I mean, I was batshit crazy. When you visited them and interviewed them or talked to them, was it like a, were you interviewing them or were you just... I brought bagels. James Charles Kopp's childhood doesn't seem to give any hint

of where he would actually go in life. According to our research and media reports, Kopp had a lawyer father and a nurse mother who eventually divorced. Twin brother, three older sisters, California sunshine, Kopp was a straight A Eagle Scout. Kopp earned a master's in biology but never got a job in the field. Instead, he went to La Brrie, a spiritual retreat in Switzerland founded by the theologian Francis Schaeffer, who preached that abortion was a form of killing. Kopp returned to the U.S. and opened a crisis pregnancy center where he tried to aggressively convince patients

to keep their unwanted pregnancies. Around 1986, Kopp converted to Catholicism. Anyway, by the end of it, I realized like, oh, a crazy person got a gun. I finally pulled myself together enough to like stop drinking and to like find a functional outlet for my what has become like i'm a trauma junkie now um which i think is not unusual and then something about like the 20-year anniversary of bart's death and my aunt his widow has let me back into her life. I don't know. All of a sudden it seemed like, okay. And I thought, you know, they're going to die. And nobody's getting any younger here. And it's worth knowing how this happened

and who were the players. And it's not for vengeance. Amanda wrote and published stories about her family's difficulties moving forward in the aftermath of her Uncle Bart's murder. And she still struggles with it. I think we left each other. And the last time we spoke was about three weeks before he died.

So with Amanda's hurt and obsession ongoing and my interest piqued, I want to revisit the Slepian case at the scene in Buffalo. How did Kopp do it? And was there any evidence of people helping him? But first I need to meet Amanda's aunt, Bart Slepian's widow, Lynn. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. It's mid-August. in buffalo new york on my way to interview lynn slepian barnett slepian's widow and i'm interested in finding out who supported these shootings none of that has ever really made it to air. It's important to hear the details of the shooting from a witness, no matter how difficult it will be for Lynn to talk about this.

And I'm not sure she has spoken about this very much. We're going to meet at a hot dog stand apparently. I'm just about to arrive. Hi, I'm David, by the way. Oh, hi, I'm Lynn. Nice to meet you.

Good on the intro. What exactly is going to be the outcome of this? Lynn looks far younger than her 66 years. She has shoulder-length auburn hair, green eyes, and is wearing medical scrubs. She's still working long hours as a nurse, and she's agreed to meet me after work one day. He was very kind, very compassionate. He was the typical give-you-a-one-rose kind of guy. That was just him. He was family oriented. Everything was about the boys. He wasn't an activist. He didn't go to any of the protests. He went, he did his job,

he came home. None of the other stuff. He wasn't on TV. He didn't want to be on a TV show. He didn't want to be on the cameras. He hated all that stuff. He cut his own grass, he pulled his own weeds, he shoveled his own driveway. I asked Lynn if she knows why Bart decided to become an OBGYN. I think it was one of his electives when he was a resident, and he liked it, and he went into it. And he always said that, as far as the abortion aspect of it, he was never going to take a woman in crisis and send them to a stranger. And do you think he was motivated more strongly to stand his ground because of the forces that were gathering around?

Absolutely. But the more he did it and the more it became harder and harder for patients to get the care they needed, I think the more he felt he was kind of obligated to fulfill that need. I asked when the protests started around their home. I think it was always here. The police would come and they would keep them in the street or keep them within a, there was a buffer zone.

They could only come within a certain number of feet of the home. But they would be right out there. All the neighbors would come out. It was pretty ugly. It was on a Friday night, pretty regular basis. They were there. In 1988, a van filled with anti-abortion protesters appeared outside their home

as Bart and his family opened Hanukkah presents inside. The protesters taunted Bart, yelling that he was a murderer. Dr. Slepian then smashed the van's windows with a baseball bat and was later charged with assault. I didn't feel fear from them. I was angry more than fearful. I mean, now I think I'd be more fearful

because things have gotten a little more volatile, but I didn't think they were going to physically do anything, but they were just obnoxious. What about Bart? Was he afraid? Was he out on the front lawn trying to talk to them? We always tried to talk to him. We always tried to tell him to please leave, and the police would tell him to leave, and they'd leave,

and then as soon as the police left, they would come back. And it was, there was a hotline that you could call and you could find out where they were going that night. And 90% of the time, they were coming to our house. And was there ever any warning or any pre-thought that something like a shot could happen? No. None. None. I mean, it's always in the back of your head, but they were probably stalking us for quite a while before it happened. Cop or whoever. That's what really got to me with my kids. I mean, they must have been checking.

They knew where we were going the night we went out. They knew when we came back. They must have seen the headlights come up the driveway. It was well planned out. I mean, he claims it was an unfortunate lucky shot or whatever you want to call it, but, I mean, he had a high-powered scope and everything, so it was, I would say it's a good distance away. We had come back from temple services,

and Bart went to warm some soup up in the microwave, and it's like he hadn't even taken his suit or sport coat off. It was just... They had to know that the kids were home. They had to see. Yeah, they were watching us. They were watching us, a word Lynn uses throughout her descriptions of the events.

Who are they? James Kopp and who else? Turn left now. This is the dead end right here that caught Park. I guess this is how we got into the woods at the back. Just backing into the very spot that I think James caught Park in. So this must be the path he took. Yeah. He would have walked along here.

Have you been back here before? No. I'm walking back behind Dr. Slepian's former house with Amanda to get a first-hand look at the scene. Amanda leads the way, but grows more silent. A dilapidated wooden backyard fence on my right, probably dating from the time of the shooting, runs along behind a row of well-appointed houses. A tangle of trees and bushes ahead and on the left side of the fence would obscure any approach. The angle of trees and bushes ahead and on the left side of the fence would obscure any approach.

We stop behind where Amanda's uncle used to live at a group of larger trees with the kitchen in view. And the kitchen is there in between, right where the flowers go to? Where the flowers go to is the window that was shot through. Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine a more clear line of sight to a kitchen window than this. According to FBI documents, media reports, and interviews, Kopp parked his 1987 black Chevrolet Cavalier a short distance away at the dead end of a street, walked behind the Slepian's house as we just have, passing through a neighbor's backyard,

to the area where he set up his Russian-made rifle and scope, using a tree to steady himself. The shot through the kitchen window was about 90 feet away, a clear view into the lives of the family he was shooting at. After he made his shot, he buried his rifle close by in a rubber tube that had been prepared ahead of time, and other items in nearby holes that had likely already been pre-dug, and then made his escape. A match for Kopp's DNA was found here behind Dr. Slepian's house. It's the burial, the repeat visits, and the organization of it all

that makes me think Kopp must have had someone helping him. He had help. He had help. But he had it so well planned out, he had to have somebody help him get through the neighborhood. But he had it so well planned out, he had to have somebody help him get through the neighborhood. James Kopp was named a material witness 12 days after the shooting, and it was a key piece of information logged by a neighbor just over a week before the shooting that helped point to Kopp. The neighbor had seen a suspicious, shabbily dressed man pretending to jog and then getting into a black Cavalier.

She was so suspicious that she took down the plate number and police were able to connect the car to cop. Did you ever hear any names coming out about people that were helping him or anything like that? It was pretty quiet. And did you ever question yourself why? I always knew there was more involvement. There had to be more.

He couldn't. He's not that smart to act alone. He had nothing. No creature comforts, no nothing. I mean, how did he live? How did he survive? He had an old piece of garbage car and the clothes on his back and no money. So, I mean, somebody had to harbor him and feed him.

And, yeah, he had to have help. And do you think it's worthwhile for me to pursue these people? Do I? Yeah. I had been asking for this for years, but it's just, it's very hard to try to do on your own, and it's also hard when you're directly involved. So, it's like like my kids were little. I didn't want to push too much.

I didn't want to keep opening the wounds and let them heal and move on. And I just, I didn't. James Kopp was at the extreme end of larger anti-abortion movements that were protesting at clinics around the world. He began in 1984, and that year alone he was charged with trespassing, battery, and assault with a deadly weapon. In 1986, Kopp met Randall Terry, who had recently founded Operation Rescue. Terry and others thought that the passive tactics of some of the existing groups on the scene were useless. Here's Randall Terry speaking at a news conference in Washington, D.C. in 1991.

Please, quote me on this. If they are going to kill children, we are not going to give them rest day or night until they abandon the practice. Operation Rescue became the most influential anti-abortion group in the US by 1988. Its protesters would crawl like babies across abortion clinic parking or entrance areas in order to block the way. If arrested, many would identify themselves only as Baby Doe. Here's Operation Rescue in Buffalo in 1992. Pro-choice protesters were out in force too. We have prevented them from blockading the clinics.

Operation Rescue has failed in Buffalo. Other more extreme, even militant groups, such as Army of God and Lambs of Christ, were also formed around this time. To give a sense of the times, a supporter of Army of God called the Mad Gluer put together a manifesto on how abortion providers should be hurt or disabled, from how to build bombs to methods for shooting or poisoning them, all placed loosely within the tenets of the Christian Bible. James Kopp advanced through these more extremist anti-abortion ranks quickly,

and the first person listed in the special thanks in that manifesto is someone named Atomic Dog, a nickname that came to be directly associated with James Kopp. In 1990, in the U.S., there were 15 acts of violence at abortion clinics. In 1993, there were 278. In the U.S., the legal right to abortion had been protected in law by this time for the previous 20 years. In Canada, the prohibition against abortion was only struck down in 1988. Leaks of U.S. Supreme Court documents indicate that landmark decisions on abortion may well be overturned, and there is a sense by some Americans and Canadians of a looming reignition of violence.

That night changed everything forever. It did. I mean, it changed my trajectory. The stuff that we lost was very hard, and I'm lucky the kids did as well as they did. Bard and Lynn had four children, all between age 7 and 15 at the time. And they tried to keep things as normal for them. So that's hard. Keep them at school, keep them at football, keep them at baseball, keep them on schedule for everything. Do you guys ever talk about that particular day ever again?

Nope. Nope. They choose not to discuss it. They reminisce about stuff we used to do as a family, but no, that night does not come up. The 15-year-old grabbing towels and, you know, one calling. No, they don't want to go through it, and I would never bring it up again. Sorry to make you go through it again. No, it's okay. It's okay.

After Dr. Slepian's shooting, Kopp had fled American soil via Mexico, then Ireland on to France, with the help of some of the people I'll be looking at. But eventually, after over two years on the lam, Kopp's interactions with his supporters led police to him. When Amanda Robb heard the news, she began working her sources, including a devoutly Christian woman named Susan. And Susan knew James Cobb. The day the FBI called us and said that he'd been apprehended in France, I had arranged to speak

to Susan. I think at this point I had decided I was going to write a book about Bart and Jim. And I thought, well, I can't just talk to her without telling her. So I said, well, Susan, I think I need to tell you that Jim's been apprehended in France. And so she goes, great, I'll go see him. So I said, can I come? And she said, whatever Jesus wants. So I was like, okay. So I said, all right, Susan, we'll meet in Charles de Gaulle. How will I find you? And she was like, well, Jesus will take care of it. So I said,

Susan, and I said, Charles de Gaulle is a really big airport. So shit you not, I come through customs and there is a woman with her hands folded in prayer and it's Susan. Amanda and Susan meet James Kopp's lawyer and a one-on-one meeting with Jim is arranged. So I go in and I think, all right, well, it's going to be okay because it's going to be like law and order and there's going to be like this glass partition or plexiglass. But no, you know, French Jail is really... Amanda found herself in a room in the jail face to face with the man who killed her uncle. Cop was a small, slight man with bright blue eyes and what Amanda describes as an unnerving,

flirtatious manner. So in comes this guy, and he gives me a Bible, and he calls me Mandy, which only my family calls me Mandy. And then he, like, I don't know, he flirts. he gave me a lot of movie recommendations he told me to see let's see if the movie Pay It Forward was the story of his life then he would like sort of burst out screaming

I'm not some homo pedophile priest and he curled up in fetal position and like start crying. It was like his mind was, he's very bright, but it was like his mind would get tangled up. I mean, it was obviously a very stressful time, and I didn't know how to do an interview. I mean, it was stressful for both of us. It became pretty apparent pretty quickly that I wasn't gonna be able to write this book.

The Jim parts were easy, it was the Bart parts I couldn't write. It was just too upsetting for my family and it was too upsetting for me to be, have them angry with me. And like I just couldn't, I don't even think I could write it now 20 years on. Like it's just, it's on. It's just too upsetting.

Amanda still carries this meeting with Kopp, along with her questions, which are now mine. Kopp was eventually charged and convicted for the killing of Barnett Slepian and was sentenced to 25 years to life. So where's the investigation here? Why talk about a murder that's already been apparently solved? Because there's more. Dr. Slepian wasn't the only abortion provider to be shot. There was Bart, who died. There was a doctor in Rochester, New York, who was injured.

And then there were three doctors in Canada. In addition to the murder of Dr. Slepian, James Kopp is a suspect in four other attacks on doctors because of the striking similarities between the shootings. People may not remember as much about the Canadian abortion providers who were also the victims of sniper attacks. Dr. Gary Ramalas was the first to be shot at his home in British Columbia in November 1994, 1994, followed by Dr. Hugh Short in Ontario in November 1995, and then Dr. Jack Feynman in Manitoba in November 1997. An American doctor in Rochester, New York was also shot at in the same year as Dr. Feynman. The two bullets missed, but he was injured by debris.

All three Canadian doctors were badly injured but survived, and all three had their lives and those of their family and community pretty much ripped apart. Why Buffalo? You know, why Ontario? Like, I would be very curious to know who it was, why they did it, and how they feel about it now. And so would I. In fact, none of the Canadian cases were brought to justice. And like Amanda, I think there has to be more to the story about the shootings, the shooter or shooters, and who might have helped along the way.

From what I understand from the police, we were stalked for a year. We were told we were being watched for a year and that he had a support group here, of course. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written and produced by me, David Ridgen. Thank you. or on Instagram at CBC Podcasts. If you're looking for more investigations, check out the past seasons of Someone Knows Something, from a mysterious bomb hidden in a flashlight to two teenagers killed by the KKK. There are six seasons of SKS available to binge listen now on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, that was the first episode of the brand new season

of Someone Knows Something, The Abortion Wars. You can listen to more on the CBC Listen app and everywhere you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.