Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 2, 1995 TAG: 9501030109
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From the New York Daily News, The Washington Post and The Associated
DATELINE: HAMPTON, N.H. LENGTH: Medium
Within the last week, John C. Salvi III lost his job and found himself in the nation's headlines as a suspected murderer and abortion terrorist.
Known by co-workers as a recluse, he was a private, handsome man with few social graces and an inclination to quote passages from the Bible.
Yet his alleged role in Friday's abortion clinic shootings came as little surprise to the residents of Hampton, the sleepy oceanfront town where Salvi lived for the past five months.
``In the last three months, we kept saying that he could do this kind of thing,'' said Richard Griffin, who owned the Eccentric Hair beauty salon in Portsmouth, N.H., where Salvi worked as an apprentice hairdresser. ``He was a nice kid, but he was just very, very odd.''
Salvi lost his job at the salon after fighting with a customer who refused to allow Salvi to hang up a coat, Griffin said.
To supplement his part-time minimum-wage income from the beauty salon, Salvi had applied for welfare benefits. He lived in a tiny, $400-a-month efficiency apartment.
A staunch anti-abortionist, Salvi kept a large photograph of an aborted fetus on the rear of his black pickup. Whenever anyone questioned the photo, Salvi would quote the Bible.
``He would always quote the Scripture,'' said Griffin. ``I've never known someone that religious. He wouldn't even work on Sundays.''
From interviews with Salvi's former co-workers, a troubling portrait emerges. Salvi told co-workers he had spinal problems as a child. He was secretive about much of his background and never gave Griffin his correct phone number.
As a youngster in Ipswich, Mass., Salvi was a dutiful altar boy. But a little more than a week ago, in the presence of his embarrassed parents, he reportedly denounced the Roman Catholic church from the altar during an outburst that disrupted Christmas Eve Mass in Seabrook, N.H.
As a teen-ager, Salvi was a slight young man who built muscles by lifting weights, a loner who drifted away from friends, a ``bland, average kid'' who, some say now, seemed to nurse a hidden rage.
Salvi's few friends from high school recall an average student coasting through classes. Nobody remembered much that was out of the ordinary.
But Don Newton, who was close to Salvi until the two had a falling out, says Salvi seemed to drift from one group of friends to another, easily influenced by those around him.
``He believed in what he read in the Bible, but he didn't follow it himself,'' Newton said. ``He was committed to religion, but in his own twisted way.''
After high school, Salvi was given a maintenance job by a friend of his parents, Mark Roberts, who told reporters that in 1991 he sold Salvi a .22-caliber semiautomatic Ruger rifle for $100. Roberts said Salvi had modified the gun, adding a silencer and shortening the barrel, telling Roberts he wanted to shoot at cans in the woods without making a lot of noise.
Roberts said he eventually fired Salvi when the young man dropped his jeans while working on a roof, exposing himself to a woman.
A friend of Salvi's, John Christo, said Sunday that Salvi called him in tears just 90 minutes before the attack on the clinic in Virginia.
He said Salvi phoned him Saturday morning and sounded ``a little bummed out.'' Salvi asked to borrow money, Christo said.
When Christo asked if Salvi knew police had been searching for him, Salvi said ``he wasn't worried about it. It wasn't a big issue,'' Christo said.
``There's nothing wrong with John whatsoever other than he killed a couple people,'' Christo said.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB