BUFFALO - “Wacky car.”
Joan Dorn's entry in her running diary Oct. 14, 1998, was brief. But along with the license plate number she jotted down, it would be just what police needed when a sniper gunned down her neighbor a little more than a week later.
On Friday, the FBI awarded Dorn $25,000 for her role in the capture and conviction of anti-abortion extremist James Kopp for the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, a doctor who provided abortions.
“Don't be afraid if you think what you wrote down was something ridiculous,” said Dorn, an epidemiologist whose profession has taught her that every observation may be valuable. “You just really never know what it might lead to.”
James Kopp raised Dorn's suspicion from the moment she saw him drive his 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier into her upscale Amherst neighborhood while she was out for her 5:30 a.m. run. She watched as the stranger got out, “way overdressed for the weather,” did an awkward hand-to-feet stretch and then began plodding along with an apparent limp that made him seem all the more odd.
Dorn and the stranger ran different routes and when Dorn, an avid runner, returned nearly an hour later, the black car was still there.
“It just seemed to me that no one who ran like that would run that long,” Dorn said.
The car was still parked outside after Dorn showered.
She put a piece of paper on the kitchen counter with the license plate she had noted: BPE 216, Vermont.
“If I don't come home tomorrow from my run, check out this car,” she told her husband.
On Oct. 23, 1998, Slepian was heating soup after returning home from a memorial service for his father. The doctor's wife, Lynne, and two of the couple's four sons, then 7 to 15 years old, were in the kitchen with him when a bullet from a high-powered rifle pierced a window, traveled through Slepian's body and ricocheted off a cabinet and wall before coming to rest in an adjoining room. Slepian, 52, died.
Soon after hearing of the shooting at a house she runs by every day, Dorn went to her running log and called Amherst police to tell them about the “wacky car” and its plodding stranger.
“It really did allow the case to progress,” said Laurie Bennett, special agent-in-charge of the FBI's Buffalo office.
On Friday, the FBI awarded Dorn $25,000 for her role in the capture and conviction of anti-abortion extremist James Kopp for the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, a doctor who provided abortions.
“Don't be afraid if you think what you wrote down was something ridiculous,” said Dorn, an epidemiologist whose profession has taught her that every observation may be valuable. “You just really never know what it might lead to.”
James Kopp raised Dorn's suspicion from the moment she saw him drive his 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier into her upscale Amherst neighborhood while she was out for her 5:30 a.m. run. She watched as the stranger got out, “way overdressed for the weather,” did an awkward hand-to-feet stretch and then began plodding along with an apparent limp that made him seem all the more odd.
Dorn and the stranger ran different routes and when Dorn, an avid runner, returned nearly an hour later, the black car was still there.
“It just seemed to me that no one who ran like that would run that long,” Dorn said.
The car was still parked outside after Dorn showered.
She put a piece of paper on the kitchen counter with the license plate she had noted: BPE 216, Vermont.
“If I don't come home tomorrow from my run, check out this car,” she told her husband.
On Oct. 23, 1998, Slepian was heating soup after returning home from a memorial service for his father. The doctor's wife, Lynne, and two of the couple's four sons, then 7 to 15 years old, were in the kitchen with him when a bullet from a high-powered rifle pierced a window, traveled through Slepian's body and ricocheted off a cabinet and wall before coming to rest in an adjoining room. Slepian, 52, died.
Soon after hearing of the shooting at a house she runs by every day, Dorn went to her running log and called Amherst police to tell them about the “wacky car” and its plodding stranger.
“It really did allow the case to progress,” said Laurie Bennett, special agent-in-charge of the FBI's Buffalo office.
Citizen
Hot Jobs
New! Off the Menu
The Citizens' Say
Post your comment - click hereThere are No comments posted.