Crimetober Series - October 23 (Doctor Slepian's Murder)

Day 23 of the Crimetober Series is about the murder of Doctor Barnett Slepian’s murder which occurred on October 23, 1998.

I apologize for the late release 

Sources 

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/october-23-video 
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/an-abortion-performing-doctor-is-murdered 
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1169315/ 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/abortviolence/stories/sniper.htm 
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/the-murder-of-barnett-slepian-25-years-later/collection_7fffe252-7018-11ee-974a-ff166aeeb020.html 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome back to Nature Versus Narcissism. As always, I'm your host, Heather,
and today I'm rolling solo. Many of our longtime listeners
know that each Spooky season we like to throw a
bit of a curveball and share a series with you
that doesn't quite follow the main Feed format, and this
year is no different. This year, we're aiming to bring
you at least one main Feed episode per day in October,

(00:39):
plus some Patreon episodes sprinkled throughout, even if that means
you're receiving them late because life is hectic and unpredictable
and shit happens, but at least you'll get an episode
for each day of October. Because this year we're bringing
you a story about a crime that occurred on or
has some type of connection to, each day in October.
And today we're talking about October twenty third, So why

(01:01):
don't we get started. In today's episode, I want to
discuss the shooting death of doctor Barnett Slepian. According to
the History Channel website, doctor Barnett Slepian is shot to
death inside his home in Amherst, New York by an
anti abortion radical. What's more, his killing marks the fifth
straight year that an abortion providing doctor in upstate New

(01:24):
York and Canada became the victim of a sniper attack.
Slepian was born on April twenty third, nineteen forty six,
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and raised in Rochester, New York. He
graduated from the University of Denver with a zoology degree,
and then from Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara Medical School in
nineteen seventy eight. With his degree, Slepian worked at Buffalo

(01:48):
Women's Services in Buffalo, New York, where he provided abortion
for the local and surrounding communities. On top of that,
he also ran his own private obgyn practice in Amherst,
New York. On October twenty third, nineteen ninety eight, Slepian
and his family had just returned from their synagogue where
they were attending a memorial service for his father. They

(02:10):
were in the kitchen making soup when a bullet shattered
the kitchen window and struck him in the back. The
bullet shattered his spine and tore his aorda, just barely
missing his son's head as it exited Sleppian's body. He
met his demise just two hours later. The wild Thing
is his wife had actually forewarned the police of potential

(02:31):
attacks on her husband earlier that same day, As mentioned
a moment ago, this murder was the climax of a
series of five sniper attacks in four years in northern
New York and Canada. Slepian was the fourth doctor and
up to that time, the seventh person in the United States,
to be murdered for performing abortions. Each of the five attacks,

(02:53):
the first four of which did not result in fatal wounds,
occurred in late October or early November. Investigators in both
Canada and the United States believed that James Charles Cop,
known among abortion opponents as Atomic Dog, was responsible for
Sleppian's murder. Although he had been seen in the vicinity

(03:14):
of Sleppian's home in the weeks before the killing, Cop,
a member of the terrorist group Army of God, was
nowhere to be found after the incident. In the aftermath
of Sleppian's murder, at least four doctors in upstate New
York quit practicing, and countless other clinic staff members left
their jobs. Following Sleppian's murder, A serious crackdown on anti

(03:36):
abortion terror cut down the number of violent incidents in
nineteen ninety nine, for the first time in six years,
there were no sniper attacks against any doctors during the
course of the year. As the twentieth century came to
an end, Cop remained at large despite a five hundred
thousand dollars reward for information leading to his capture from
the Justice Department and his place on the FBI's ten

(03:58):
most wanted list. In March of two thousand and one,
the authorities caught up with Cop in Europe and he
was extradited from France on the condition that he would
not receive the death penalty. Cop, whose defense argued he
only attended to wound Slepian, was convicted of second degree
murder on May ninth, two thousand and three. Cop was

(04:19):
sentenced to twenty five years to life in prison. What
are your thoughts on this? Do you think that this
was a fair sentence? Do you think that Cop and
the rest of his little organization had more murders under
their belts. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email
me Nature versus Narcissism at gmail dot com. And until

(04:40):
next time, stay inside, Stay alive and dot Gagos