James Charles Kopp, charged with the 1998 sniper-style assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an Amherst, New York obstetrician-gynecologist who performed abortions, has lost his latest appeal in the French courts to avoid extradition back to the United States. Formerly on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list, law enforcement officials captured Kopp in Dinan, France earlier this year.
In addition to Slepian’s murder, Kopp has also been indicted in the 1995 sniper attack of Ontario abortion provider Dr. Hugh Short. He is suspected in two Canadian abortion provider sniper shootings, in Vancouver in 1994 and Winnipeg in 1997, and in the 1997 sniper attack of an abortion provider in Rochester, New York.