Someone Knows Something - S7 E4: What’s Left Behind

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Canadian detectives investigating the 1995 shooting of Dr. Hugh Short in Ontario reveal evidence that places an anti-abortion fanatic at the scene of the crime. David speaks to Buffalo News reporters ...who investigated the U.S. and Canadian shootings and feel there is much more to the story. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/someone-knows-something-the-abortion-wars-transcripts-listen-1.6736516

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardins today.
Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk business. 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. This is a CBC Podcast. The following episode contains mature subject matter. Please take care. It's late afternoon on a Friday in September. Just heading to the Hamilton Police Club to meet with three retired officers who worked on the James Kopp case.
Starting point is 00:01:01 And hopefully they have some documents that I can lay hands on. Hope for the best. A year after Dr. Gary Ramalis was shot in Vancouver, a similar shooting of another doctor who provided abortions took place in Ancaster, Ontario, near Hamilton. On the evening of November 10, 1995, Dr. Hugh Short was shot in the elbow in his home through a back window. Dr. Short survived, but the shooting reportedly ended his career.
Starting point is 00:01:42 He has since passed away, and despite many different attempts, I haven't been able to reach any of Dr. Short's family. How's it going, man? Hey, man. Nice to see you. I shake hands with Don Forgan, a retired Hamilton officer who's helped me before on cases. He leads me through a big, oblong room with a bar, spaced with simple tables and chairs. As a police club, it's a place where you have to be a cop or an employee to be a member. Everyone nods at each other and all are aware of my outsider status.
Starting point is 00:02:14 We approach two men sitting at a table, retired investigators who worked on Dr. Short's case. Did they have a suspect or suspects in mind for the shooting? How are you doing? I'm good, I'm good. Hi, I'm Jason, how are you? Hi, I'm good. I'll sit over where? I'm David Ridgen, and this is Someone Knows Something, Season 7, Episode 4, What's Left
Starting point is 00:02:39 Behind. I'm Detective Sergeant Peter Abirashid, Hamilton Police Service, OIC in the Homicide Unit. 33 years, I'm presently retired. Abirashid is a solid, shorter man who seems used to controlling the room with a double-edged sense of humor and authority. I turn the mic toward the taller, quieter man beside him. My name is Ivor Jacobson. I've worked with the Hamilton Police Force for 33 years, retired now. Through the years, I've worked in various capacities, everything from uniform patrol right on into investigative services. Jacobson has not spoken to media very much before, and on those occasions his experience wasn't great, he confides in me later.
Starting point is 00:03:32 But I believe it's Jacobson who did the most work with the short case. After a long conversation in the bar, everyone agrees to move to a quieter back room. I was working in the drug office, and I got a call from Detective Sergeant Peter Abbey Rashid there. The department at the time was looking at putting investigators back on to look at the Dr. Short shooting, the incident involving the abortion doctor shootings. Things were heating up in the media,
Starting point is 00:04:03 and the department was looking at reopening the case and actively pursuing it again and possibly come up with some further evidence. When Jacobson was asked to reinvestigate the 1995 shooting of Dr. Short, Dr. Jack Feynman had just been shot in Winnipeg and a Rochester abortion provider had been shot at. A task force was brought together, including Canadian investigators from British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, along with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and some American law enforcement. Connections were being drawn between the cases and across the border. Jacobson would not know, of course, that in less than a year,
Starting point is 00:04:46 Dr. Barnett-Slepian would also be shot and killed, drawing in even more FBI and American investigators. And Jacobson says he came in cold with no knowledge of the short case, no dealings with the abortion issue, and no real place to start. Up until then, really, the main abortion issues here in Ontario were basically in Toronto, around the Morgenthaler Clinic. There was nothing really that drastic. There was more things like putting glue in locks and setting fires to the abortion clinics, things like that. There was nothing as severe as shootings.
Starting point is 00:05:24 Dr. Henry Morgenthaler was a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps. He was also an abortion provider and one of Canada's most prominent male advocates for making abortions accessible. Here's Morgenthaler speaking about the shootings to CBC in 2003. And with a high-powered rifle, when you shoot through a window, you never know what you're going to hit.
Starting point is 00:05:47 He was creating fear among all abortion providers because nobody knew who was going to be the next victim. Dr. Morgenthaler was tried and acquitted in Canada four times for performing abortions, and his case and work was part of what led the Canadian Supreme Court to decriminalize abortion. He died at age 90 of a heart attack. The fact that he shot people who were not known was designed, I think,
Starting point is 00:06:15 to create the maximum fear and anxiety among abortion providers. Dr. Morgenthaler and his Toronto clinic were arguably at the epicenter of anti-abortion protests in the 1980s and 1990s in Canada. In 1992, his clinic was firebombed and destroyed by two people with gasoline using fireworks as the ignition system. This was the first incident of its kind in Canada. Despite the horrendous force of the explosion, nobody was injured, no abortions were reportedly stopped, and nobody was ever charged. There's no doubt in my mind that the reactionary religious bigots and fanatics
Starting point is 00:06:54 who are against women's rights have set this up. By comparison, this time in the U.S., 34 clinic bombings were reported and 61 set on fire. Back to Jacobson and the shootings. We looked at everybody because you basically saw that everybody could be a suspect. When you talk to people that have had abortions, their partners, yes, my partner didn't want me to have an abortion. I had an abortion. He's angry about it. Could he have shot the doctor? Well, maybe, I don't know, but he's angry and he was mad at the doctor that did it. So our list was endless as to where we went and who we
Starting point is 00:07:39 had to talk to, to sort of eliminate various people. And then you run into all the pro-life groups that are out there that are rallying every week different church groups and things like this priests and nuns and everything else and eventually we formed the task force and we think we've got an international shooter here that's crossing the borders here's what we know here in Canada and we started putting the facts together at the various scenes that we had. It looked very similar to what was happening in the United States. We were seeing the shots were done in such a way
Starting point is 00:08:16 where somebody has to have done a little bit of homework to find the doctor, scout out where he lives, the best way in and out, so that when they do the deed, they could get away and not get caught. Detective Jacobson traveled out west to Vancouver, British Columbia, to the scene of Dr. Gary Romalis' November 1994 shooting. We traveled to B.C BC as well, out to Vancouver where Dr. Ramales was shot
Starting point is 00:08:48 in Canada and it was done in the early morning and it was done sort of in daylight and done through a back alley where the perpetrator took the shot and fairly close and was able to walk down the alley and get away. Jacobson
Starting point is 00:09:04 also examined the scene at Dr. Jack Feynman's place in Winnipeg and feels the shooter's technique has been refined. Now we are seeing it's done under the cover of darkness. It was done along the Red River Bank. The doctor's house was like basically on stilts. It was like a goldfish bowl that you could see all around from any angle. And once again there, somebody has to have scouted out the best way in because there's only one way
Starting point is 00:09:33 that the ambulance can come and you don't wanna leave that way, moving away from the police and not towards them, sort of thing. So again, we think that whoever was doing it was taking the time to do some reconnaissance and planning it. It wasn't just a drop in and I think I'll do the shooting today. Jacobson says he also traveled to Rochester
Starting point is 00:09:56 to look at the scene where Dr. David Gandel had been shot at just weeks before Dr. Feynman. We traveled down there and had a look at the doctor's residence and we noticed it was on a ravine lot the back of it was a ravine, heavily wooded area and again in the back of it there was a schoolyard where somebody could park a vehicle well away from the house the doctor wouldn't be able to see anything I don't think and you could come through the bush lay low and wait for a shot so things started looking similar now from what
Starting point is 00:10:31 happened in Winnipeg what happened in Rochester we re-examined our scene in Ancaster and said again on a wooded lot could it have been done by a single person maybe but again there was not an area where you could drop a car without somebody calling it in or noticing it. We think that whoever the perpetrator was there had assistance at Dr. Short's where in those days cell phones weren't really the thing. I believe there was only one tower in Ancaster at the time, and the reception wasn't all that great out there,
Starting point is 00:11:09 so we thought maybe perhaps somebody was using a walkie-talkie system. Maybe having somebody sit in a car down the road, and once they do the deed, they call up on the walkie-talkie, come get me, and away they go. Our scene in Canada, Dr. Short's in Ancaster, was probably the longest shot the suspect took. It was, I believe, over 125 feet. Dr. Short was backed out onto a ravine.
Starting point is 00:11:38 We feel that the perpetrator laid on the hillside and set himself up looking at the back of the house so he had a nice clear shot of anything in the back of the house. And at that time, I don't believe Dr. Short had any window coverings on the back of the house because of where he lived, because he had no neighbours or anything like that. Jacobson says that there was a lot of wire fencing put up to control the deer in the area and that anyone running through the dark who didn't know where they were going would have easily gotten hung up on it. So whoever was there
Starting point is 00:12:11 had done some recon before and knew where he had to go to avoid that. Jacobson continues with a significant finding that came up in the wake of Dr. Slepian's murder once they started focusing on James Kopp. And what we did eventually find out, that James Kopp had been in the Ancaster area, Hamilton area, one week prior to the shooting of Dr. Short. And he had been stopped by the OPP coming off the 403, or Mohawk Road, onto the 403 highway and stopped for just a vehicle check. He was just basically stopped and not for
Starting point is 00:12:52 anything abortion related at the time. And he had his Vermont plates? And yet he had Vermont plates on there and everything else and so we started looking at him even more so in Canada as to what was he doing here, how did he get here, when did he get here, when did he cross and all those things. And he became a person of interest here. Retired OPP Superintendent Dennis McGillis, a task force leader, confirmed when I spoke to him that Kopp had been pulled over by police in early November 1995 at the side of Highway 403 in Ontario, very close to Dr. Short's residence. McGillis recalls that Kopp was alone at the time, and Kopp was also seen entering Canada earlier in October of 1995.
Starting point is 00:13:42 According to a redacted FBI document I have, on October 16th, James Kopp entered Canada in his Dodge Aspen at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, Ontario. And it's noted here that two people were in the vehicle. And prosecutors state in Kopp's federal trial proceedings that less than two hours after Dr. Short was shot, Kopp's vehicle crossed from Ontario into the U.S. Then Detective Sergeant Abby Rashid and Detective Jacobson
Starting point is 00:14:14 tell me about something else they discovered in their investigation of Dr. Short's shooting. There was a balaclava found in the driveway, almost at the entrance to the driveway near the roadway. The police dog had hit on it and picked it up in its mouth or whatever. So the balaclava did reveal that there were some hairs on it, which turned out to be, I believe, female hair that was identified and a male gender hair. At that time, the evidence was sort of held back. Held back because DNA analysis was newer at that time, and they would only get one shot at analyzing it,
Starting point is 00:14:55 as the sample would be destroyed by the process. And then, like I say, the balaclava was dropped at the end of the driveway, and my indication would be that somebody came to pick the perpetrator up he may have called on a walkie-talkie or something saying come get me and he dropped the balaclava not realizing on his way out and jumping into a car and he just dropped it at the end of the driveway. A thought process that supports the theory that more than one person was involved. And also, one of the hairs on that balaclava, once it was eventually tested, as Detective Abirashid tells me, hits on a familiar figure. Yeah, like I say, it's been a while now, but I recall that the DNA hit on Cop.
Starting point is 00:15:49 Prosecutors state in Cop's federal trial proceedings that mitochondrial DNA was found on the balaclava, DNA, they say, that comes from someone in Cop's family. Combined with the fact Cop's car was in Ontario earlier that day, I think it is safe to assume the DNA is his. And prosecution says a hair fiber found at the scene was similar or the same as Kopp's. And the female DNA was never... No, I don't think so.
Starting point is 00:16:24 I'd like to find out more about these DNA tests. Is the identity of the female who contributed the other hair to the balaclava known? With Kopp's name in hand in the aftermath of Dr. Slepian's murder and these other points of connection via Dr. Short's case, the border crossings from Romalis, Short, and Feynman, the task force comes to the theory that the same person was responsible for all the shootings, and that that person is James Kopp. The FBI states in one of their documents that there is little doubt that the five shootings
Starting point is 00:16:59 were perpetrated by the same individual, and I wonder who else might have been there. Do I feel there were other people involved? I don't hesitate to think that there were. I don't think James Kopp did it on his own. It's just way too much to do. And again, in order to travel across the country like he did and do the surveillance and everything, he has to have money. He has to have had some sort of help and assistance.
Starting point is 00:17:30 So I definitely think there were other people that aided him in his deeds. Police issued a Canada-wide warrant for James Kopp in January 2000, charging him with attempted murder in the shooting of Dr. Hugh Short. But the charge was eventually dropped in this Canadian case after Kopp was convicted in U.S. courts for the murder of Dr. Slepian. Kopp received 25 years to life with no chance of parole in that case, and nothing happened for Dr. Short. What was the feeling after he was arrested
Starting point is 00:18:07 and went to jail for the one charge on Slepian and didn't ever have to face anything up here? Well, again, looking at the evidence that we had here, the best that we could muster up in court would have been maybe an aggravated assault with a weapon or whatever. James Kopp was charged with murder of Dr. Slepian. He got life for that. Up here in Canada, we brought him up here, and our evidence wasn't as strong at the time to 100% say it was James Kopp.
Starting point is 00:18:40 There's good indication that he was more than likely involved in ours, but could we prove it in a court of law? And so it's far better to leave him down in the States and let him face his punishment down there than what he would have received up here in Canada. Since James Kopp has been arrested, there really hasn't been any killings or shootings of abortion providers since that time. And I think the rest of the people, they're still out there, and there's no doubt, you know, they're still very strong in their beliefs on abortion, but are they willing to take the chance that James Kopp did? Not at this stage, anyway. I asked Jacobson what effect, if any, he noticed the shooting
Starting point is 00:19:22 of Dr. Short had on the community. So now the abortion providers were leaving town because they were fearful. Nobody knew, was this going to happen to them? Where is he shooting next? Nobody knew. The police had no idea. We had no links as to what city or town or state or country it was going to happen in. There was no indication as to where this
Starting point is 00:19:45 person was going to strike next. But it certainly, the media helped to feed that frenzy. The doctors got worried about it and basically, you know, and there was a lot of concern by the medical people that, you know, the police weren't doing enough. The evidence I'm hearing from Hamilton Police does clearly point in Kopp's direction. It also gives credence to the notion that the person who shot Dr. Short may have had help. If so, those accomplices have never faced justice and are probably still out there. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization.
Starting point is 00:20:37 We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. Help turn off hesitation, turn off doubt, turn off fears. With your support, the YMCA of Greater Toronto helps people turn off whatever's holding them back so they can let their potential shine.
Starting point is 00:21:12 Help turn on confidence and connections and possibilities. From youth shelters to job training, mental health counseling and beyond, the YMCA offers hundreds of programs that empower people to shine their brightest. See our charity's impact at ymcagta.org slash charity. Hello? Hi, is this Lou? Yeah. Lou Michelle was a staff writer at the Buffalo News when Dr. Slepian was murdered, and he still works there.
Starting point is 00:21:49 He and his colleague Dan Herbeck spent many months looking into the shooting of Dr. Slepian, along with the Canadian cases. But the main reason I'm calling today is because Lou and Dan got an exclusive sit-down interview in 2002 at the Erie County Holding Center with James Charles Kopp. Dan Herbeck and I were absolutely floored at the beginning of the interview when he, right off the bat, we had a list of questions. And he said, I never intended to kill him. We said, wait a minute, can you please repeat that? And like he looked at his lawyer and the lawyer nodded and he said, I intended to shoot him, but I did not intend to kill him. Then he went through the very elaborate machination of his rationalization. You know, it was probably we were in there a couple hours at least
Starting point is 00:22:46 and in this confined little meeting room that is meant for just a lawyer and a defendant. And he really bragged to us about how he had worked with the Russian SPAS rifle. You know, he had shortened the stock, put a board on it to steady it, and he described himself as an expert shot. And so, but, you know, immediately after,
Starting point is 00:23:14 I started looking at those Remembrance Day shootings up in Canada. Bruce Barquette, James Copp's lawyer at the time, was also present in the room. Barquette would also come to represent Loretta Mara and Kopp at the same time. And to his credit, Bruce Barquette didn't stop Kopp from talking. But when we asked him about the shooting of Dr. Short and Dr. Ramales and Dr. Feinman, Barquette did interrupt and say,
Starting point is 00:23:46 look, we'll face those charges when we're brought to them. And of course, I don't think that ever occurred up there, did it? Were there any trials? Never were any trials. But did James Kopp try to answer that question, though, before the lawyer interrupted? Did he give any indications on the Canadian cases you mentioned? He never denied it. Your intention was to also question him about these other cases in Canada?
Starting point is 00:24:14 Absolutely, absolutely. And we returned to that a number of times, and he just would not deny it. He wasn't being coy. He was just following the directions of his attorney. And Bruce Barquette said, we will address one shooting at a time. I reach out to Bruce Barquette, the lawyer, to see if he can confirm Lou's account. Lou says he doesn't have any of his notes and that they weren't allowed a recorder either.
Starting point is 00:24:44 But Barquette doesn't respond to any of my messages or calls. However, I was able to find some archival footage of Barquette speaking at James Copp's sentencing about Copp and Dr. Slepian's murder. My guess would be that no, he does not regret doing it. He regrets the result. And what about the Canadian shootings? He's not going to deal with the Canadian shootings until he gets up there. I find it odd that Barquette doesn't simply flat deny his client had any involvement
Starting point is 00:25:19 in the Canadian shootings. Back to Lou Michel. James Kopp reminded Dan Herbeck and I of, you know, at the time, America's most infamous domestic terrorist. To this day, he is Timothy McVeigh. Dan and I had written a bestseller based on exclusive interviews with Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City farmer. And the interview with James Kopp came on the heels of that.
Starting point is 00:25:53 So James Kopp walked us through his itinerant life of attending over a hundred protests throughout this country, in England, in Poland, in the Philippines. And I actually interviewed other people who went on these international trips with him for protests, because he would do anything to save children's lives. That's what he said. And he said that he leafleted, he wrote letters to political leaders, and James Kopp had crossed the same Rubicon that McVeigh crossed and took up arms. So there's all of this circumstantial evidence to bring it around to Canada. And the lack of justice there for these men that were shot at or wounded, it's just, you know, it's wrong. And people on both sides, on pro-choice and pro-life, they were telling Dan Herbeck and I that was wrong.
Starting point is 00:26:56 Did Kopp ever talk about other people? Did he ever talk about people that helped him in particular? Did he name anybody or was he just silent on that? He did not. He did not. But Bruce Marquette had told us that he wanted to use Kopp's confession as a trade to get Loretta Mara out of jail. Mara and Dennis Malvesi were serving time
Starting point is 00:27:24 for aiding and abetting Kopp when he was a fugitive. According to court transcripts, Kopp's lawyer Bruce Barquette did angle for a plea deal that would benefit his other client, Loretta Mara. This apparent conflict of interest, benefiting Mara at the expense of Kopp, became a hot topic in the courtroom. Kopp makes a submission stating that Barquette advised him to make the incriminating statements to the media so that Barquette could obtain the immediate release and a favorable plea disposition for his other client, Loretta Mara. That James Kopp wanted his good friend, Loretta Mara, free. A close reading of the court transcript shows, in my opinion,
Starting point is 00:28:09 that cops seemed to want to help Loretta by making his admission to Dan Herbeck and Lou Michelle. So I think with James Kopp, people would put him up. And I believe probably some people put him up who had no idea that he was going to go out there and start shooting people. And I believe he did shoot those people in Canada because he didn't deny it to Dan and I, you know, in more than two hours talking face to face with him. He was a convert to Catholicism. He attended daily mass as much as he could.
Starting point is 00:28:47 And he had this elaborate justification to point a gun at other human beings. Here, Kopp and his lawyer's behavior is intriguing. My requests to speak to Kopp, either in person or on the phone, have so far been mostly met with non-answers, but I'm hopeful something will materialize there soon. One of Lou Michelle's colleagues named Jerry Zremski, who also still works for the Buffalo News, wrote a few key articles after Dr. Slepian's murder. One of them seems to have been tailor-made for my direction. He called it, Did Cop Have Help? I started covering this story the weekend that Dr. Slepian was murdered.
Starting point is 00:29:34 I was the lead writer putting together the main story for the Sunday paper. And I weighed in occasionally and helped out when need be up until cop's capture in 2001. And what happened there was we found out that Kopp had been arrested in France and my editor called me up and said they found Kopp. I say, where? In a small town outside of Paris? How soon can you get there? I did a story about the murder weapon and where he acquired it. I traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, and did that story from there because he bought
Starting point is 00:30:15 the weapon at a small pawn shop outside of Nashville. I did another kind of big piece on did he have help tracing through really the suspicions of a lot of investigators and people involved in the pro-choice movement who really did believe he had help. And came to see that he did have contacts all through the anti-abortion movement and had been arrested at protests all over the place, including in Rome, Italy. So he obviously knew people. However, it still seems to me that this might be only part of the story because he did travel a lot. He was in Mexico. He was in Scotland. He was in Ireland and in France visiting these monasteries run by the Society of St. Pius X, this radical Catholic breakaway organization. The Society of St. Pius X practices what's called the Latin Mass and promotes ultra-traditional gender roles, and canards about Jewish world domination.
Starting point is 00:31:28 Copp spent much of his two-plus years on the lam in Ireland. He was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, but he felt safe enough in Ireland to regularly attend mass at one Pius X church and undertake volunteer work at another. The Pius X priests and parishioners reportedly said that they liked the American they knew as Timmy and described Copp as good and pious, but what does that actually mean? Now, I did visit the Society of St. Pius X Monasteries outside of Dublin and in Dinan and was treated rather like an unwelcome guest at both of those monasteries. So I don't know what that means, but I was certainly not welcomed at either place. I'll try looking into Pius X, but not sure my experience will be any different than Zremski's.
Starting point is 00:32:20 I found his work to be thorough and accurate, and I was especially interested in his mention of a phenomenon I've always connected to Canada, but for a different reason. What was this term Underground Railroad, and how does it apply in your writing to COP, Getting Around, and things like that? Well, sources that I interviewed back in the early 2000s within the radical anti-abortion movement used Underground Railroad to describe the network that they had that really would come to the aid of anyone within the movement who needed aid. They didn't want to talk about it very much, but they acknowledged its existence. So Malvesi and Mara appeared to be part of that network, and there were others as well. And it was apparently quite vast at the time. And remember that this was a time of quite a bit of protest and even sometimes violence at clinics in America.
Starting point is 00:33:14 And so there would be need for legal help, for example, for people who were arrested. And so there were just a lot of people with a lot of connections within this movement at the time. So the Underground Railroad was their way of describing what they were doing. The anti-abortion movement has long equated itself with the abolitionist movement in America, you know, about 150, 200 years ago. And their thought is that abortion is every bit as much of an injustice as slavery was. So they are perfectly happy to use a term that we associate with people who were smuggling slaves to their freedom before the Civil War. Did this so-called Underground Railroad help support Kopp? And if so, how?
Starting point is 00:34:06 And when you were talking to people, you asked them about help and if they would have helped COP or somebody like that. And what did you find was the response from people about that? The general response was very vague. There would be no specifics as to how they would help. They simply acknowledged that that network existed. I would say that it was a loose collection of people who were like-minded on the abortion issue and who really did subscribe to this idea that there was an argument for killing abortion providers because you would actually save more lives in the long run. That was their theory. And it was still a relatively small part even of the anti-abortion movement.
Starting point is 00:34:53 We are not talking thousands of people here. We are probably talking worldwide a couple hundred maybe. And even that might be generous. I am struck by the frustration that both investigators within the government and without felt at the time in the run-up to the trial. There was this widespread sense that, yes, he did have help, but we just can't pin down what that was. I feel like I got the best on the page, but I don't feel like I got the whole story. Amanda wanted to come to the cemetery where Bart is buried here in Buffalo, so I've come with her just to
Starting point is 00:35:45 kind of provide support. Last time I spoke to Bart was about three weeks before he died and death was very much on his mind and he told me when he died, he wanted people to drive one to a car to the cemetery so he looked popular, and he wanted writing on both sides of his tombstone so he'd be easy to find. For me, graveyards gather all the joys and specters of life and death into a physical place and they bring any cause, literally, down to the earth. We walk through the back street entrance, a large iron gate with the Star of David above. Jews aren't supposed to be, you're supposed to be buried very, very quickly. And you have to, somebody has to stay with the body
Starting point is 00:36:47 the whole time until it's buried in sync so it doesn't get lonesome. Check, Cohen. Definitely buried in a cemetery. Oh, it's a rabbi's one, he got a nice one. This stone has been clearly pushed over, though, right? That's not nice. Well, yeah, but it's just like...
Starting point is 00:37:10 How come it's still down? I don't know. I kind of want to lift it up. I think it'd be too heavy. Yeah. Maybe. It's nasty. Yeah, one of the theories is that Bart was targeted because he was Jewish.
Starting point is 00:37:30 Oh, it goes all the way up. There it is. Very special spot. It was by a tree. And then on the other side so you can find him. But it does have the caduceus. Yeah, he's proud to be a doctor. He worked hard for it. Bye-bye, Bart. It's a sad, sad thing.
Starting point is 00:38:16 He'd be a grandpa now. He'd probably still be mad at me. The sun is literally going down as we walk out of the graveyard in silence. Amanda and her family were thoroughly gutted and changed by Bart Slepian's murder. It suddenly forced a new focus on Amanda, and the abortion issue added a gravitas, an extra heaviness of responsibility for her to try to get to the bottom of things that may be bottomless. I want to believe that the process of going through our investigation is somehow helping, that Amanda will find an epiphany moment that'll be calming. My focus is
Starting point is 00:38:59 on justice and accountability and the potential for the hardest of all, reconciliation. I wonder if James Kopp, in all of his allegedly Christian ruminations, has thought of reconciling with or confronting his past. I'll try to find that out. But there is at least one key player on the anti-abortion scene who has changed their tune. Someone directly connected to Buffalo and Dr. Slepian. Someone who Amanda thinks set in motion the events that directly led to her uncle Bart's murder. I am very sorry that I inflicted that kind of pain on your family. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by me, David Ridgen.
Starting point is 00:40:06 The series is also produced by Hadil Abdel-Nabi, Steph Kampf and Amanda Robb. Sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Cannell is our digital producer and our story editor is Chris Oak. Our executive producer is Cecil Fernandez and the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. If you want to help new listeners discover the show, please rate and review wherever you listen. If you want more from CBC Podcasts, consider listening to Cooper Island, an investigation into one of Canada's most horrific residential schools. Find it on all podcast apps. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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