February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — Fugitive James Charles Kopp, one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted men, who is sought for questioning about the 1998 murder of an abortion clinic doctor near Buffalo, N.Y., is being held in France after he fled from Ireland last month when he realized gardai were looking for him.
Originally from California, he is believed to have been hiding out in Ireland for about a year using a variety of aliases.
Kopp, 46, had obtained a bogus passport, driver’s license and other documents. He had been living in hostels for a period and had worked in a variety of temporary jobs as a handyman and temporary typist in Dublin and Cork. He had used the name Timothy O’Brien.
He is believed to have been tracked to Ireland as a result of intercepted e-email messages and tapped telephone calls involving alleged supporters in New York.
A devout Roman Catholic, Kopp is wanted for the shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian, 52, who was gunned down by a single shot fired through his kitchen window.
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Slepian had provided legal abortions and had just returned from the synagogue and was heating soup in the kitchen of his suburban Amherst home when he was gunned down.
Kopp is also believed to be wanted by Canadian police.
Kopp fled Ireland for France on a ferry early in March. He was arrested in the village of Dinane, Brittany, in northwest France, on March 29 when he went to collect a package at a local post office.
His extradition will be complicated by the fact that he faces the death penalty if found guilty. France will not return him if there is a possibility he will be executed.