Sniper_ The True Story Of Anti-Abortion Killer James Kopp Part 4

Gynecologists and obstetricians generally are not high-profile physicians. But in Vancouver, Dr. Gary Romalis was becoming known, at least in some circles. He provided abortion services as part of his practice, and had been quoted in the press speaking on medical issues related to abortion. To a few pro-life activists in B.C. who looked out for such things-such as Betty Green, known as the G.o.dmother of all things pro-life in the province-an article in a scholarly journal was proof that Dr. Romalis was a busy terminator of preborn babies: "Abortion Experience At The Vancouver General Hospital"

By Garson Romalis, MD, FRCSC Journal of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada The article noted that Vancouver General Hospital performed about 5,000 abortions a year. Of those, 89 percent were at 13 weeks or less. But the remaining 11 percent was the key to pro-lifers-550 abortions were performed in the second trimester. Bottom line to the activists was that Dr. Romalis was doing late-term abortions.

The pro-life movement flowered in B.C. but so too did the pro-choice response, which came back just as hard, working with police, taking videotapes of demonstrations. One of the regulars seen on those videos was a man named Gordon Watson. Gord had worked at a sawmill at one time. His father had fought in Korea as a Provost captain, his grandfather had been ga.s.sed at Ypres in the First World War. And Gord Watson?

"A full-tilt Bible-thumper," he said. "That's me. I'm it."

He was there on the street preaching the gospel of life. Mainstream pro-life types didn't do that. Gord felt they were happy just to sit around and talk about it over coffee.

He used to tag along with his father to political meetings. Dad was a bit of a h.e.l.l-raiser on that front, enjoyed the battle. Gord would go further than that-he would be nastier.

It's the B.C. election of 1991 and there's Gord Watson on TV, tearing a strip off a candidate. Someone lunges at him, a full-out brawl begins, and Gord manages to get the mike, his s.h.i.+rt torn, yet appearing collected as can be-this is great stuff-and he politely asks, "Can I address the chair, please?" The TV journalists there take to him like moths to a flame, cameras rolling, and: "Abortion is murder, and I think British Columbians deserve the right to have a referendum on it."

The pro-lifers loved it, this 42-year-old firecracker who stood up and said what they all believed, fearless.

"Betty," he later said to veteran pro-lifer Betty Green, "I'll make you look like sweetness and light."

Others in the movement couldn't quite figure him out. He ended up in and out of jail, alternately the darling and pariah of the movement, constantly writing letters, getting in a war with a Vancouver Sun reporter whom he called an "abortion promoter." Once, Gord Watson went south to attend a pro-life conference in San Antonio, a big event. Joe Scheidler, the Chicago pro-life leader, put it on. Great guy, thought Gord. At one of the big sessions, a fellow stood up and spoke about pro-lifers being condemned for violent acts. "We are moderates, the speaker insisted. We don't lynch abortionists, we don't blow up abortion mills." Pause. Grin. "Not that we have any moral problem with that!"

Gord thought about it. If you have a belief, don't you have to back it up? What is the line between belief and action? He could feel the tension between pro-life camps on the issue. One night he was pulled aside and asked to attend a private meeting at a motel off the freeway. Why not? The motel had its own steakhouse. My kinda place, he said to himself.

He went to the a.s.signed room. A man asked him questions. How long you been active? Where you from? Family? Gord told him about his dad's service in Korea.

"You know anything about firearms?"

Gord looked at his interrogator, puzzled. Bit of an odd question, wasn't it?

"Ever had any sort of military training?" His mind raced. This guy's a.s.sessing whether I'll take up arms for the movement, he thought. He reflected later that it was probably fifty-fifty that he was being a.s.sessed as either someone they hoped would shoot, or feared would shoot.

Gord wasn't sure where he stood on the violence option. The moral logic was unavoidable: Hey, you kill babies, you set yourself up for bad things to happen to you. But could he bring himself to hurt a doctor, attack him, shoot him, even? He wasn't against it in principle, but no. He was a loose cannon, but not stupid. He did not want to go to prison for good. The interview spooked Gordon Watson. He stopped going to the States after that.

In the summer of 1994 a man stopped at a post office-box in Maryland. He'd been living in a trailer in Delaware of late, but it was a short drive across the state line. He opened the box he had obtained under the name "Kevin James Gavin," date of birth June 8, 1951. The papers had finally arrived, from the sportsman club in Maryland. A members.h.i.+p application. The club had a shooting range. The man wrote on the form that he wished to join the club in order to use the range for "personal practice." The man's real name was James Charles Kopp.

On August 2, Jim Kopp turned 40. His parents were dead. The rescue movement was finished. He had no possessions, little money. He was a legend in the movement, Atomic Dog had pro-life friends across the country-but few connections of any depth. The one person Jim respected above all others was Loretta Marra. He would never talk about it with anyone, but those who knew him, and saw the two of them together, knew that Jim loved her. They had been through so much, arrested together far and wide, including in Italy ("Eleven Rescuers Blitz Abortuary in Bologna," a headline had screamed in Life Advocate magazine.) They connected on many levels-except one. Loretta had a boyfriend, and it wasn't Jim.

It was Dennis Malvasi. In the spring of 1994, Loretta turned 31, Malvasi was 44. Loretta married him in a ceremony performed by a Catholic priest. They did not register the marriage with the state. One of the conditions of Malvasi's parole was that he not a.s.sociate with pro-life activists, and Loretta was in the hardcore of the movement. In choosing Dennis, she had married a man with a fiercer reputation within the radical fringe than Jim's, a former Marine who bombed abortion clinics.

On October 17, 1994, just before 10 p.m., an old tan-colored Datsun bearing the license plate 330JLL crossed the AmericanCanadian border at the Peace Arch crossing at Blaine, Was.h.i.+ngton, into from British Columbia. The car was legally registered to Lorretta Marra.

Vancouver, B.C.

Monday, November 7, 1994 Early morning, cold and damp, raining, like just about every November day in Vancouver. Phone ringing at the house on West 46th Avenue.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Silence.

Sheila had picked up the phone. She hung up. A short time pa.s.sed. Breakfast time. It rang again. Again the caller hung up. And shortly after that, Sheila's husband, Dr. Gary Romalis, finished his breakfast and went to work. He had a serious, reserved demeanor, spoke in a deliberate, scholarly manner. He lived with Sheila and their daughter, Lisa, in a residential area, a ten-minute drive in good traffic across the Granville Street bridge to downtown Vancouver. The house was Tudor style but not nearly as palatial as some of the newer ones on the street.

Dr. Garson Romalis was one of about 25 physicians in the Vancouver area who performed abortions, although few of them let that be known. He had been a second-year medical student at the University of British Columbia in 1960 when he was asked to conduct a pathological study on a woman who had died after inducing an abortion on herself with a piece of elm bark. He learned that the bark was meant to expand upon entry and encourage infection that would abort the fetus. A postmortem revealed overwhelming sepsis-widespread infection-causing multiple abscesses in the patient's brain, lungs, liver and abdominal cavity. He never forgot her, nor did he forget his experiences on the front line in the mid-sixties, when he served his obstetrics/gynecology residency at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Each day, he would recall in presentations and an interview with the Canadian Medical a.s.sociation Journal years later, there were patients admitted with infections from self-performed abortion.

Chicago became legendary in pro-choice circles in the years before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. It was the home of "The Jane Collective," or simply "Jane," an underground abortion service. Women were quietly referred to Jane nurses by police, social workers, clergy and hospital staff. Operating out of apartments in the city, Jane provided abortions for an estimated 11,000 women. When Dr. Romalis returned to Vancouver in the 1970s, abortions became a part of his practice-even though the operation still bore a stigma to many people, even among his colleagues. Some would leave the doctor's lounge when he entered. Ultimately, while Romalis said he did not plan to be a crusader on the issue, and did not intend to become a poster boy of the pro-choice movement, that's what he became. Pro-life protesters scattered nails on his driveway, picketed his house, pa.s.sed flyers to his neighbors with the message "Do you know who your neighbor is?"

The night of Monday, November 7 it had rained steadily, and continued off and on overnight. Just past 6:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, Dr, Romalis rose. By 7 a.m. he was downstairs in his bathrobe in the kitchen making breakfast, alone. As he did every morning, he walked over to the counter, placed bread in the toaster, and sat at the table. He opened some mail. Quiet. Waiting for the toast to pop. He leaned forward, just slightly, perhaps to reach for something or to look more closely at a letter, or for no reason at all.

An explosion, gla.s.s breaking. The kitchen chair jerked out from underneath him as the bullet tore through the back of it. The round had missed him. He jumped to his feet, and then he felt a blow to his leg, his thigh, the impact of the second shot like a cannonball, his body falling, cras.h.i.+ng to the floor, facedown. 7:10 a.m. The time on his watch glared at him as he lay there, the numbers burning into his memory. He looked down at his left leg. He saw a hole the size of a grapefruit, and a geyser of blood as thick as his finger pouring out. I am-going to die, he thought. Blood everywhere, coating the floor. Where did the shot come from? He didn't know. He felt at his left leg, the wound. "I've been shot, bleeding heavily call 911!" he shouted. He knew there wasn't much time. His thighbone was shattered, a major artery, the femoral artery severed. Stop the blood flow, or die, he would bleed out in minutes. "Stay upstairs!" he shouted to his wife and daughter. The shooter might come into the house to finish him off. The shooter was an abortion sniper, he had felt it instantly. He reached for his bathrobe belt, yanked it out, began tying it tight around the thigh above the gus.h.i.+ng wound. He dragged himself across the floor to get out of the room, blood painting the tiles. His daughter called 911. "Someone's shot at my house and my dad. Can you please come?"

"What?" asked the operator.

"I think someone's been shot in my house!" the young woman repeated.

"Possible shot fired," relayed a dispatcher. "Victim just yelled that he's been shot."

Dr. Romalis felt his consciousness fading, his tight grip on the tourniquet weakening. Outside the house, the shooter was on the move. He had been there in a laneway behind West 46th Street, a narrow, hidden roadway where the garbage was collected. The rain started falling again. The wind picked up. Two hours and 45 minutes after the shooting, 72 kilometers from Vancouver, just before 10 p.m., the tan Datsun, license plate 330JLL, crossed back into the United States at the Peace Arch Crossing.

The ambulance and police reached the Romalis house within five minutes. The doctor was placed on the stretcher, unconscious, his skin gray. The attendants were doing all they could to keep him alive. A nine-hour operation followed. Eight units of blood. The lead story on local TV news that night: gynecologist Dr. Garson Romalis in critical condition, unconscious, images of his daughter, Lisa, pacing the ER.

Local pro-choice activists and clinic workers were shocked. They had thought of the pro-lifers as noisy and pushy and obnoxious. But shooting someone? By the time the evening news rolled around, the media were already reflecting on the abortion battle: TV Anchorwoman (wearing a Remembrance Day poppy): No one knows for sure what provoked the attack on Dr. Romalis, but tonight police throughout the Lower Mainland are stepping up protection for people who work in Vancouver's abortion clinics. If this shooting is related, it's the most serious act of anti-abortion violence in Canada. No one knows for sure what provoked the attack on Dr. Romalis, but tonight police throughout the Lower Mainland are stepping up protection for people who work in Vancouver's abortion clinics. If this shooting is related, it's the most serious act of anti-abortion violence in Canada.

(Visual: A woman, face darkened.) Narrator: We can't identify her. She's afraid she and her family are in danger, too. We can't identify her. She's afraid she and her family are in danger, too.

Woman: I've frequently said that in Canada we are safe. We have crazy people after us, but they don't carry guns. I've frequently said that in Canada we are safe. We have crazy people after us, but they don't carry guns.

Narrator: Today she realizes she may have been wrong. (Quick cut to pro-life firebrand Gord Watson's bearded face, a camcorder date on the screen reading August 3, 1994, 11:44 a.m. He's shown lecturing a woman about to enter an abortion clinic in Vancouver.) Today she realizes she may have been wrong. (Quick cut to pro-life firebrand Gord Watson's bearded face, a camcorder date on the screen reading August 3, 1994, 11:44 a.m. He's shown lecturing a woman about to enter an abortion clinic in Vancouver.) Watson: If you kill this baby, you will be murdering your own child ... Do you believe there is a G.o.d? (He glowers into the lens.) Get that stupid camera out of my face. (Picture scrambles as he shoves the camera away.) You get out of my way, lady, or you're going to get it. If you kill this baby, you will be murdering your own child ... Do you believe there is a G.o.d? (He glowers into the lens.) Get that stupid camera out of my face. (Picture scrambles as he shoves the camera away.) You get out of my way, lady, or you're going to get it.

(Cut to mainstream, nonviolent pro-lifer Will Johnston, a member of Physicians for Life.) Johnston: We feel revulsion at this cowardly and murderous attack on Dr. Romalis. We feel revulsion at this cowardly and murderous attack on Dr. Romalis.

(Cut back to Gord Watson.) Watson: This country has perpetrated violence for a generation against unborn children and that violence is now coming against the people who perpetrated it. This country has perpetrated violence for a generation against unborn children and that violence is now coming against the people who perpetrated it.

Police searched in the laneway behind the Romalis home, piecing together what happened. It had been dark when the shooter crept silently up the alley, past one backyard, two, three, four, five-about 110 paces to the spot. He would have seen the top quarter of the house over the fence, the upstairs windows. There was a Beware of Dog sign, but no dog. The Romalis family had just returned from a week-long vacation. The dog was still in a kennel in Langley. There were two battered silver-gray metal garbage cans in the square cubby.

The sniper had taped the lids down with silver duct tape-better stability, less noise when taking up a position. He rested the rifle on top of the cans and cleared dead leaves from inside the cubby, which was elevated off the ground a few inches. It was big enough for him to kneel inside on his right knee, left elbow steady on the lids, hand cradling the forestock of the AK rifle, his right hand and trigger finger free. He pointed through a missing panel in the fence, toward the sliding gla.s.s door of the kitchen. And waited.

It was a well-planned attack. The first bullet neatly punctured the gla.s.s of the sliding door, creating a spiders web of cracks; the second shot, the one that shattered the doctor's thigh, hit lower, splitting the gla.s.s above it in a V-shape, shards of gla.s.s flying from the impact.

The two bullets were mangled-the one from Romalis's thigh and the one that went through his chair and lodged in a closet door in the kitchen. Difficult to get a make on their type. Bullets only hold their shape in the movies. But these could still be useful in determining what kind of firearm had been used. When a round is fired, the barrel makes identifiable markings on the bullet. Those markings tie the bullet to a particular firearm. Under a microscope the bullets from the Romalis shooting seemed to have rifling marks known in ballistics terminology as "four barrel markings with a right-handed twist"-four "lands" and "grooves" with a right-hand twist to them. The marks were characteristic of an a.s.sault rifle such as an AK-47.

Police searched up and down the laneway, looking in composters and other garbage cans for clues.

"Got one."

The uniformed cop bent over a wooden enclosure. He reached into a composter several houses down and picked out the object with his gloved hand. It was a cartridge, a live round. And another. And another-20 unused cartridges in all, all of them AK-47 military hard-points. An important clue. Or was it? It didn't add up. Why would the sniper have carried so much ammunition? Surely he had no intention of showering the house with bullets? And having fired and fled, why leave the cartridges? Another question: was the sniper trying to kill? A Vancouver detective named George Kristensen was a.s.signed to the case. He heard a theory making the rounds that the sniper was trying to wound the doctor, end a medical career but not a life. Not a chance, thought the detective. It was just his opinion, but there was no way on G.o.d's green earth you could tell where a bullet would end up after it was fired through a window like that.

Chapter 9 ~ Sneaky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Jim Kopp spent Christmas in Delaware with his sister Anne. Jim would just show up unannounced with his dirty laundry, unshaven, looking like he'd been living in the woods for months. Then he'd be gone again.

On December 30, 1994, John Salvi, a 24-year-old drifter, sprayed two Boston-area abortion clinics with gunfire, killing two women who worked there and wounding several other people. Anne was pro-life, but never took part in protests.

"So is this what's happening to the movement?" she asked Jim about the violence.

"No-no," he said. "It's not good for the movement." Early in the new year, Pope John Paul II released an encyclical letter, Evangelium Vitae. Jim always followed the Pontiff 's words carefully. It was in the encyclical that he used the phrase "culture of death" to describe the combination of laws, political and social inst.i.tutions that undermined the value of life. Abortion, he said, is "deliberate and direct killing ... we are dealing with murder."

In the summer of 1995 Jim Kopp bought a car-although bought is probably the wrong word. He filed no income tax forms from 1994 through 1997. In 1995, his official earnings totaled less than $4,000. He worked odd jobs here and there, handyman work. He got the old beater from Loretta Marra, a green 1977 Dodge Aspen registered with the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles under a new license plate number, BFN 595. In the fall he spent time in Vermont, lived in a farmhouse in Swanton, a town of 6,000 near St. Albans, about ten minutes from the Canadian border. He stayed with Anthony and Anne Kenny. Anthony Kenny was among the 95 anti-abortion protesters, including Kopp, arrested and charged with trespa.s.sing outside one of the two women's clinics in Burlington, Vermont, a few years earlier. Jim also spent time in Fairfax,Vermont. He had met a young woman named Jennifer Rock through the movement and for a time he lived at Rock's parents' home on Buck Hollow Road. Just pa.s.sing through, he told them.

He got in the green Aspen and headed north. On the evening of November 3, near Ancaster, Ontario, he was pulled over and released by a police officer on a routine traffic stop. One week later, Ancaster physician Hugh Short was shot and wounded by a high-powered rifle fired through his den window.

Ancaster, Ontario Friday November 10, 1995 Hamilton Major Crime Unit detective Mike Holk squinted through the winds.h.i.+eld into the blackness, the wipers battling a cold hard rain. Where the h.e.l.l was the house on Sulphur Springs Road? For the Hamilton detectives charged with cracking the mystery of the shooting earlier that night, finding the crime scene was a ch.o.r.e in itself. It was an appropriate start to a case which, from the word go, would be like nothing they had ever experienced.

The 911 "shots fired" call had come in at 9:30 p.m. Dr. Short had wrapped his elbow wound and was taken to Hamilton General Hospital. Mike Holk was the senior ranking officer, 48 years old, a 24-year veteran on the force. It was an ugly night, cold and wet. He found the Short house, got out of his unmarked car and stepped into the downpour, walking towards the flas.h.i.+ng police lights. A uniformed officer approached. The detective identified himself. "Staff Sergeant Holk," he said, and flashed his badge. "Who's in charge?"

The cop took Holk to meet John Bronson. Bronson, himself a veteran cop and detective, was the duty officer a.s.signed to evaluate the scene before handing it off to Holk. Bronson said there had been shots from the rear of the home. Blew through the den window-window frame, actually. Two holes visible.

[image]Hamilton Police stake out the crime scene at Dr. Hugh Short's home.

Orders were given to expand the official crime scene area, to include the front and back yards, swaths of the wooded area. About ten acres in all. They used so much yellow tape they almost ran out. All officers entering the crime scene had to record their movements to minimize contamination of any evidence. Holk stood in the driveway, rain pelting his trench coat, water streaming down his face and mustache.

It didn't take long for him to see it, the cardboard box on the upper part of the driveway.

"What do we have?" Holk asked.

It was a ski mask. Black. One of the officers covered it with the box to keep the evidence dry. Was it the sniper's? And why would he have left it there? Dropped it? In a hurry? Frightened by something? A plant, by either the shooter or another party, to confuse police? It all raced through Mike Holk's mind-all questions, no answers. Even though he was a veteran cop, the whole scene left him feeling ill at ease, his head spinning. It was all so-big. The crime scene. The questions. Who comes to a place like this, he thought, on a miserable night like tonight, waits in the shadows and takes a shot at a physician?

At the hospital, Detective Mike Campbell met with Short's wife, Katherine, her husband's blood still fresh on her clothes. Dr. Short, meanwhile, was awake when Detective Peter Abi-Rashed came to his bedside in the trauma suite. He had been treated, was in stable condition and could talk. Abi-Rashed was broad shouldered, with dark hair, olive skin, dark eyes. He was a sharp investigator who had a playfully brusque manner. He followed the book on investigating. You put the biggest umbrella possible over the investigation, consider all angles.

"Is my family all right?" asked Short.

"They're fine, Dr. Short."

It's not something a homicide detective telegraphs to a victim, but the cold fact is, the first suspect who needs to be eliminated in an attempted-murder investigation is-the victim himself. Suicide. But Abi-Rashed was satisfied, after conversations with medical staff, that Short's wound from a high-powered rifle could not have been self-inflicted. He needed to start fis.h.i.+ng for suspects.

"Dr. Short, can you think of any reason someone would want to do this to you?"

"I can't think of any reason for the shooting," he replied.

A doctor, any doctor, can have disgruntled patients, patients who might not be entirely mentally stable. Hugh Short was an OB. Delivered babies, performed standard gynecological services. Like most doctors, he had a couple of patients who had been unhappy about something-but there was nothing to suggest they'd want to shoot him.

Dr. Short mentioned one call that was a bit different, though. About ten years earlier a man named Randy Dyer had called Short's office. Dyer had been bitter towards the doctor for a long time because his girlfriend had had an abortion against his wishes, and he was certain Short had performed the procedure and terminated his unborn son. There were days when the darker instincts inside Dyer urged him to hurt Dr. Short for what he had done. But in fact by the time Dyer actually phoned Short, in 1985, the bitterness was gone. He wanted the doctor to know he no longer felt ill will towards him. Hugh Short's receptionist had put the call through. Short picked up.

"h.e.l.lo?" Dr. Short had said.

"I want to say, as a Christian man, I forgive you for taking the life of my child in 1982." A disquieting experience, but certainly no threat.

Peter Abi-Rashed met with the other detectives, then drove out to the house to take a look. He ducked under the police tape, went upstairs and saw the chair where Short had been sitting, saw the splinters on the floor from where the two rounds had punctured the wooden window frame. Camera flashes popped in the dark backyard. Ident was out there-forensic identification officers.

Detective Larry Penfold was out in the rain with his partner, Bill Cook. Time was short to gather evidence and take photos. The forecast was not good, snow on the way. It would cover the scene, transform it. The scientific ballistic work needed to be done to determine where the shots had come from, the bullet trajectory. In the critical early hours, Penfold and Cook tried to reconstruct what had happened. "Tell me a story," Penfold beseeched his surroundings.

The bullets were easy enough to find. Inside the house, Penfold and Cook had already collected the rounds that had splintered the window frame-7.62 x 39 ammunition. They examined the inside of a tool shed in the backyard. Bingo. Someone had definitely been inside, and very recently, for an extended period. Items had been moved around, s.p.a.ce made. Whoever was here had made himself at home, prepared. Eaten some food. They found earm.u.f.fs, the type worn by shooters at gun clubs. They collected the black ski mask from the driveway. A key piece of evidence, perhaps, there might be hairs on it.

Back at the station, Penfold walked through the main doors, past the desk, and turned left into the ident department. Then a [image]Randy Dyer quick right, into the storage section, his shoes clicking on the grayblue concrete floor, to the biohazard locker and the gla.s.s-doored cabinet for blood samples and other materials that would need drying out. Penfold stored the bullets, and the ski mask. He closed the door, signed in the check-in time and his case ident number, locked the door, wrote his report and went home in the early dawn. A few hours' sleep, and then back to Sulphur Springs Road.

The search of the Short property intensified the morning after the shooting, Sat.u.r.day, and lasted all day. Ten auxiliary officers were brought in to comb the outer perimeter, six for the inner perimeter. The day had dawned sunny and clear. The snow hadn't materialized in the night, perhaps a good omen for the case. But the temperature had dropped and snow was still forecast. Inside the house, Detectives Mike Campbell, Frank Harild and Peter Abi-Rashed gathered, standing in a circle around the island in the kitchen, bouncing theories off each other.

The house bordered the Dundas Valley Conservation Area. AbiRashed wondered about a stray shot-poachers, perhaps, shooting at deer. But it could have been anything. A malicious, random act of violence in which Hugh Short happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? You start big, then you eliminate, eliminate. Don't pursue one path and use all your resources only to hit a dead end.

[image]Hamilton Detective Abi-Rashed appears on TV talking about the case.

Campbell knew all that. But his instincts told him there was only one possibility. It sliced through all the other noise. Deer? No.

"If it was stray shots from a hunter, the guy's misfires were awfully consistent," he said. "It's abortion. I'm sure of it."

Hamilton had had its share of violent crime, but if Campbell was right, this would be a first: a shooting for a cause, a belief. So many questions. The sniper had planned meticulously, had likely cased out the scene in advance. Yet how could he be so sloppy as to leave a ski mask there? And if he was an abortion sniper, why Ancaster, of all places?

Later that day the search party found something: spent cartridges in wet gra.s.s in the backyard, not far from the house. Larry Penfold examined the location and the empty casings. Penfold's official t.i.tle was forensic identification officer. Cops called him an ident officer. In the American vernacular, he was a crime scene investigator. Penfold and Cook bounced ideas off each other. How could they determine where the shot had come from? Penfold put in a call to the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto. CFS had lasers that could pinpoint such things. But CFS didn't have anyone available that day. Penfold didn't want to wait. Time to break out the tackle box.

Later, in the backyard, a nearly invisible thread stretched from the second-floor window to the ground. It was fis.h.i.+ng line. Penfold and Cook had invented their own low-tech machinery to determine the trajectory of the shots. Penfold had once worked on the Hamilton police tactical team, knew how to use power scopes. Using the scope he estimated the line of fire from the holes in the window and frame to a spot on the ground near where the casings and footprints were found. They stretched fis.h.i.+ng line from the holes to the spot. Between the two points, taking into account the angle of probable entry of the rounds, and other calculations, Penfold and Cook established where the shot had probably come from on the gra.s.s. When CFS did show up with their laser beams and other special equipment, technicians took their measurements. Penfold's fis.h.i.+ng expedition had come within inches of the CFS finding.

*** Central Station Hamilton, Ontario Sat.u.r.day, November 11, 1995 The detectives were soon made aware of a similar case from the year before in Vancouver-the sniper attack on Dr. Garson Romalis. Romalis performed abortions, too. In spite of the similarities, the link did not seem conclusive to a few of the Hamilton cops. What did a shooting on the west coast have to do with a shooting in Ancaster? The bizarre nature of the case raised so many questions. If the sniper in both cases was the same person, what was the intent? Murder? Detective Frank Harild thought that, in hitting Short's arm, the sniper had simply missed. He had wanted to put a hole through Short that would kill. The sniper's lousy aim saved the doctor's life.

"It's not a hard shot, hitting centre ma.s.s from 123 feet," he said. "I mean, you can just about throw a baseball with accuracy from that distance." Moreover, the sniper had put one bullet in the window frame. "If you're such a great shot, so great that you are specifically intending to wound the doctor, trying to be that particular, wouldn't you at least hit the windowpane? But the shot hits the frame."

On the other hand, if anti-abortion was the motive, clearly the sniper did not have the mind-set of a typical criminal. Someone with a grandiose, ideologically driven mission could have all kinds of notions in his head. Also, military-style firearms like those used in the two attacks are designed to propel rounds through metal, wood, without losing much accuracy. The path of the bullet is unlikely to change dramatically. So maybe he had intended to hit the doctors in an extremity. It was an interesting debate. But the task at hand was not proving intent, it was building a list of suspects and finding the shooter.

Mike Campbell explored the abortion angle. There were no previous examples of anti-abortion violence in Hamilton. The city did have a vigorous pro-life movement, however, and that fact was common knowledge to pro-lifers in other parts of Canada. Hamilton typically had big turnouts for events such as the annual "Life Chain," which drew 5,000 people a year in the early 1990s. Those silent protests were, however, a far cry from the abortion clinic rescues in the United States, or the raucous protests and arrests in Toronto in the late 1980s, or in nearby Buffalo. Hamilton Right to Life, its officials always stressed, was the "educational arm" of the movement. It wasn't political, and confrontation wasn't their game, they said. Out west, in Winnipeg, pro-lifers had drafted a list of doctors who provided abortions. Was it so activists could hara.s.s them? Or to let the public at large know what was going on? There was no evidence of any similar list in Hamilton.

Campbell started to make a list of local pro-lifers, activists, those who picketed at local hospitals. But once police identify a name in their investigation, the name has to be pursued completely. "Calm down with all the G.o.ddam anti-abortion suspects," one cop warned Campbell. "You throw your net too wide, and we'll have to clear them all."

There was one name that needed to be checked-Randy Dyer, the man who had been angry at Dr. Short for performing an abortion on his girlfriend. Dyer had even cut a CD of his own songs soon before the Short shooting, and they included one number called "Daniel's Song," named for his aborted child. The doctor was referred to in the song as the executioner. Dyer was sorting through boxes of the new CD the day a police cruiser pulled in front of the house on Highcliffe Avenue in central Hamilton. It was about two weeks after the attack on Dr. Short.

Dyer lived alone in the bas.e.m.e.nt apartment., used to drive a truck for a living but, after being injured in a traffic accident, had lived on a pension and was taking courses at Redeemer College in social work and religion. He was not surprised to see the police at his door. Surely he was a suspect. The detectives invited him to join them in the cruiser for a chat. Ever own firearms? No. Ever belong to a gun club? No. "Where were you, the night of Friday, November 10?" Much to his relief, Dyer had an alibi.

He didn't drink, didn't go out much. Most nights he would have been at home, alone, with no witness to corroborate his whereabouts. But as it happened, that night he had been in church, at Flamborough Christian Fellows.h.i.+p in nearby Millgrove. He worked the sound board that night for the pastor's microphone and the musical instruments. In theory Dyer could have popped out, gone to Hugh Short's place, shot him and returned to the church-except there was a woman at the church who could put Randy in the building, at nearly the exact time of the shooting.

Funny how things work out. That night, the woman had gone into labor right in the church. She had walked gingerly down the aisle, helped by someone else, and she had recalled seeing Randy at the back of the room, at the sound board. Then, after church that night, Dyer had gone to Tim Hortons, met a buddy there for coffee. He made a call on his cell phone. The police checked out phone records to confirm the story. After he talked to police, he went back to Hortons and saw the waitress who had served him. She remembered getting his order wrong.