Read Sniper: The True Story of Anti-Abortion Killer James Kopp for Free Online

middle the trombones, and the back row four trumpets. Off to the side are the piano, drums, guitar. In back, his lips working the brass trumpet mouthpiece, is a skinny, 16-year-old boy with darkrimmed glasses, rust-brown hair and pale blue eyes. Jim Kopp. Young Jim Kopp (second from left).
    Redwood High was a big school, 2,500 students. The building was pure Bauhaus architecture, several blocks joined together. Teachers joked that they taught at “San Quentin west,” a reference to the maximum security prison, not too far along the highway from the school, that had replaced Alcatraz. But Redwood was a mostly staid, upper-middle-class place. Teachers wanted to be there. The San Francisco Bay Area was at the center of America’s cultural tug of war, but the struggle was not in much evidence at Redwood, ten minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge in prosperous Marin County. Still, there was “respectable” activism—the teachers were proudly liberal and most of the students were, too.
    Jim Kopp was not immune to the idealistic vibes of his time, or at least the music that grew from it. One artist in particular struck a chord—the Canadian painter-turned-folksinger Joni Mitchell. Once he heard her, that was it, he forever held the music, and Joni, close to his heart. It gave him a kind of spiritual connection with Canada, a place he had visited in 1965 when he was 11, when he saw picturesque Bouchard Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia. Joni Mitchell was not just a folksinger to him. She was a poet. An angel poet.
    Jim did not bond with music teacher Syd Gordon like students often did. Gordon stayed in touch with some of them long after graduation, but years later he had little recollection of Jim Kopp, other than that he was not an exceptional talent. Jim played trumpet in the school orchestra, marching band, jazz band, went on the school trip to Anaheim and Disneyland, where the marching band appeared in a parade. Good enough to play in the bands, but that was it. In general his personality was understated, years later students would have only a vague recollection of him. Those who did recall him remembered his intelligence, a sardonic sense of humour, an ability to see the absurd, irony. He disdained the conventional, what he called “boilerplate” even though he did not stand out in any way as being unconventional.
    During the school day, with Mt. Tamalpais in the background, students talked and hung out on the side lawn. There were the normal cliques, the freaks, artsies, jocks. Jim didn’t belong to any one particular group. After school, or at lunch, some students went on hikes, visited each other’s homes. Jim was not one of them. He was not exactly a loner, he had friends, maybe even a girlfriend. It was easy to blend into the woodwork at the school, especially when you were a twin, and Jim’s brother, Walter, also attended Redwood, a member of the United Nations club, a more personable guy than he was.
    So many students, many from privileged backgrounds with considerable expectations for their future. One who cut a popular figure in the class of 1969 was Robin Williams, who was voted Most Humorous and Most Likely To Succeed by his classmates.
Jim’s final full year at Redwood was 1971. His yearbook photo showed him in heavy, black-rimmed glasses, his neatly trimmed,
     
Teenage Jim Kopp.
    rust-colored hair brushed across his forehead, wearing a striped tie and a restrained confident smile. A conservative exterior, but then there were other boys with a similar look. He took summer school to graduate early. It was as though he didn’t need the glorious trappings of his senior year, he was smart enough to graduate early, and so he did.
    During his last year, Jim made what amounted to, for him, a political statement. Syd Gordon had an idea. The Redwood Giants
    football team had a game that Friday night. Time, thought Syd, to shake things up a bit, to make a statement. Syd asked the kids: why not do