WASHINGTON/ Conservative Monitor -- James Kopp, renowned in the San Francisco Bay Area for his support of pro-life causes since the mid-80’s is now known nationally as a fugitive accused of murdering abortion doctor Barnet Slepian. Fifty-two years old Slepian was killed in his Amherst home near Buffalo, New York on October 23, 1998.

The accused Kopp disappeared eleven days after the killing. CBS sources said he escaped to Mexico. He arrived in Ireland around the spring of 2000. He had been hiding in Ireland for a year but fled March 10 or 11, possibly to England and then on to France. According to the FBI, Kopp had been living in Northwest France for several months with plans on leaving the country when he was arrested Thursday, March 29, 2001.

One organization believes he is possibly being framed for the murder. The staff of Life Dynamics of Denton, Texas and Ed Zielinski-former Assistant District Attorney in Cook County, Texas- has been investigating the case for Kopp's defense since April of this year.

Using extradition documents, affidavits and interviews from witnesses, Life Dynamics' president Mark Crutcher has published his findings and believes Kopp is being framed for killing Slepian. According to Crutcher "there are a lot of discrepancies in the evidence against him, a lot of inconsistencies and a lot of bizarre things."

One inconsistency was Kopp's non-violent philosophy and activities in California. He helped found a crisis pregnancy center called the Free Pregnancy Center in San Francisco in 1985, which gave free pregnancy tests, educated women on the dangers of abortion and assisted pregnant women. Others know him from his 1985 to early 1990's participation in the Good Friday pro-life procession that went nine miles from St. Martin Church in San Jose to Our Lady of Peace in Santa Clara.

In the 1990's Kopp was involved with Operation Rescue. Operation Rescue modeled themselves on the Gandhi and Martin Luther King's non-violent civil disobedience protests. Kopp was involved in their abortion clinic sit-ins and chainings to abortion machinery. In some of these protests he was violently handled by police and offered no resistance.

Crutcher's report said Kopp "has consistently and vehemently decried the use of such violence. Without exception, every person we interviewed in preparing this document insisted that he had always made his feelings on this issue crystal clear...Kopp's philosophical aversion to violence is tied directly to his Catholic beliefs about salvation. Among the many people we talked to who were close to Kopp, each told us that, even though he is strongly pro-life, he believes that abortion is a lesser tragedy than someone dying in an unrepentant state."

This is an important inconsistency because without exception every other person who shot abortionists in the past had two characteristics. The report said, "To begin with, all had a history of openly saying that the use of force, even deadly force, is morally and theologically permissible in order to stop abortion."

Life Dynamics compiled a comprehensive document of other inconsistencies and problems with the case. This is accessed on the Life Dynamics website. "There were serious improprieties and possibly even criminal acts by the FBI and/or the Amherst Police Department," Crutcher said, " The bottom line is that we don't know if James Kopp is guilty or innocent. What our report makes clear beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the FBI planted evidence, committed perjury in their grand jury testimony and manufactured the case against James Kopp."

The Crutcher account explained that discrepancies between what the Amherst Police said in their extradition documents, and what the FBI said in theirs is the reason any information has come to light. According to the report, "If Kopp had been apprehended in the United States, there would have been no extradition documents, these discrepancies would have been secretly `worked out' before trial, and Kopp would be awaiting lethal injection right now."

Many serious questions on the improprieties in the FBI and/or the Amherst Police Department (APD) investigations are found in the report. Presented here are only a few improprieties. For example, how could James Kopp be the James Milton who bought the SKS rifle in Nashville, Tennessee, if on the day it was purchased he was actually in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Life Dynamics has several sworn affidavits from eyewitness that Kopp was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania July 16, 1998, the day the FBI says the gun was purchased supposedly by him in Nashville, Tennessee.

The next question is why was the FBI confiscating Kopp's personal belongings less than 24hours after the crime when they had no evidence of any kind that Kopp might have been involved and when murder is not automatically a federal crime? According to the FBI 's own documents they had no evidence that any other federal crime was committed. Some have speculated that these actions by the FBI were the reason Kopp fled fearing he was being set up.

Did Kopp suspect he was being framed from the get-go?" Yes, he definitely felt that he was being framed. How does one person stand against the FBI and the pro-abortion industry when they are both corrupt and trying to nail an innocent man," said Bay Area Pro-Life Activist Anthony Ryan-a friend of Kopp.

Indeed, the FBI and the APD had to return to the scene of the crime on two occasions, five months apart, to find their key evidence against Kopp."It is totally illogical to believe that an exhaustive inch-by-inch search of this area was not conducted at the time of the crime. Nowhere in the FBI / APD extradition affidavits do they explain what allowed them to find these items during this subsequent search when they didn't find them during the initial search," said the Life Dynamic account.

The items - personal belongings and especially the rifle- should have been easy to find. "If you're looking for a gun, it's one of the easiest things to use a metal detector to find." The owner of a California company that distributes metal detectors, Sean Rabbani, was also quoted, saying that even a conventional quality unit could have found this rifle. He went on to say that a properly adjusted metal detector can be "unfailingly accurate" and that he could have found the gun within eight hours even if it had been buried in an area as large as two acres,"said the report.

In fact, the FBI never explained why Kopp would take off these items: his watch, ear muffs, fanny pack, and cap, put them in a plastic bag. Then, why he would deposit it in a hole on top of a trowel along with his flashlight and binoculars, nor why he buried his rifle at this crime scene? Was he trying to safeguard them for the FBI was another question asked by Life Dynamics?

It "makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for a sniper to bury his weapon at the scene of the crime, especially if it could be traced to him. In a New York Times article of April 14, 1999, Erie County District Attorney, Frank Clark, stated that, `I've been in this business 27 years and worked directly or indirectly on thousands of homicides, and in not one did the perpetrator bury the gun at or near the scene,' "said the account.

These problems are even more suspicious according to the report because the Amherst Police Department's inventory of items found at the scene of the crime differs from the FBI's inventory of items. For example, the APD did not even include a black belted storage bag that the FBI included.

Next, if the rifle found in Slepian's back yard five months after the crime is indeed the murder weapon, why don't ballistic tests match the bullet that killed Slepian? The FBI asserted that "the bullets didn't match because the barrels of high-powered rifles change with every shot."

"That is utterly preposterous...if this assertion were true, then the whole concept of ballistics testing is a fraud. American law enforcement will never be able to use it in court again, and our judicial system is going to have to grant new trials to every person ever convicted of a crime in which high-powered rifles were used, and ballistics testing was introduced into evidence," Crutcher's report said.

Finally, why did the FBI circulate a photograph of Kopp that so poorly resembles him that even his friends couldn't identify him in the photo? According to the Life Dynamics account, "The FBI wasn't using the photo in an effort to catch Kopp and the media wasn't interested in accuracy. Both used it for one reason only: it projected an image of Kopp they wanted the public to have." Kopp's Bay Area pro-life friends say the pictures don't look like him and they make him look like a criminal.

Pro-life activist, Anthony Ryan believes he was not capable of the crime. Ryan said, "People like James who devote their whole life to starting crisis pregnancy centers and saving babies and helping mothers don't shoot abortionists."

A pro-life activist like Kopp had the least motive to kill Slepian suggested the January 1999 Culture War magazine. The magazine indicated that reporter Paul Likoudis, a writer for the Wanderer newspaper, interviewed Bob Behn -a sidewalk counselor who knew Dr. Slepian well. According to the periodical Behn reported that the doctor ”seemed to be considering converting to Catholicism.”

Slepian"...was scheduled to address a prolife clergy on October 24, the day after he was gunned down. Perhaps, Likoudis suggested, there were some that didn't want to hear what he might have said, who have no use for another Norma McCorvey, Bernard Nathanson, or Carol Everett,"said Culture Wars.

These three persons were renowned pro-abortionists who converted to the pro-life side. The Culture Wars magazine suggested that abortionist insiders were the ones who had a motive to kill Slepian.

It seems incredible that mainstream pro-abortionist and the FBI could be this ethically corrupt, but according the New York Post a watchdog group, Judicial Watch, found FBI documents showing such corruption.

The July 2, 2000 New York Post reported that Judicial Watch using FBI documents alleged the FBI collected information on as well as monitored "peaceful" pro-life groups and individuals including the late John Cardinal O'Connor and the Catholic Bishops after being pressured by the Janet Reno Justice Department. When a Post FBI source was asked if this allegations were true they said, "What do you think? This is a highly political, highly corrupt administration.”

The Post said," According to sources and published reports, numerous FBI agents felt that abortion-rights supporters in the attorney general's office crossed an ethical line out of eagerness to damage the pro-life movement...Judicial Watch’s [Tom] Fitton, who, having seen how the Clintons used the FBI to pursue its political goals in Travelgate and Filegate, puts nothing past them."