Police Seek to Question Abortion Protester About Slaying of Doctor

An anti-abortion extremist with a decade-long history of arrests for disrupting women’s clinics around the country is being sought for questioning in the sniper death last month of a Buffalo abortion doctor, investigators said Wednesday.

Police are looking for James Charles Kopp, 44, whose nickname among anti-abortion radicals is “Atomic Dog” and who has spent time in jails in New York, Georgia, West Virginia and Vermont for blockading abortion clinics.

Law enforcement sources said Kopp could be a key to unlocking a series of five sniper attacks in the last four years--three in Canada and two in upstate New York--on doctors who perform abortions. In each shooting, a sniper with a high-powered rifle fired through a window into the homes of doctors.

Kopp’s black 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier with Vermont plates was spotted directly behind the home of Barnett Slepian around the time the doctor was shot in his kitchen Oct. 23. Investigators also have found records showing that Kopp crossed the U.S.-Canadian border at times coinciding with the earlier abortion shootings in Canada.

Kopp is not a suspect in Slepian’s death, according to the FBI, but he is wanted to explain the presence of his car in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst before the shooting. “We don’t have any idea where he is. We are looking for him everywhere we can,” FBI Special Agent Bernard Tolbert said.

During previous investigations into Kopp’s involvement in anti-abortion protests, he was identified by federal law enforcement sources as someone with the potential to commit violent acts.