Can fence protect Kopp from murder conviction?
The circumstantial murder case against James Kopp could turn on a prosaic document residing in the office of Doris Grady’s lawyer. Mysteries, I suppose, must end somewhere. Dated July 14, 1997, it is a receipt for the purchase of a permit to construct a fence at the Grady home in Shadyside. Grady, a longtime anti-abortion protester, had a house guest at the time — James Charles Kopp, a deeply religious wanderer who occasionally turned up and stayed for long periods. Before the family left for vacation in the final week of July, Kopp, they say, joined in the building of the fence. They are certain that he was there on July 16. It was that day that someone calling himself B. James Milton bought an SKS rifle at the A-to-Z Pawn Shop in Old Hickory, Tenn., about 550 miles away. It was the very rifle, police say, that was used 15 months later by someone who shot and killed abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian at his home outside Buffalo. The FBI, in documents used to extradite Kopp from Fr
