THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 3, 1995 TAG: 9501030081
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines
In the frantic minutes after a man shot his way through two abortion clinics in Massachusetts, police in Brookline took the first steps in a wide-ranging manhunt. It would stretch from Customs offices on the Canadian border to a lonely stretch of highway in Rhode Island.
But thorough as it was, the net stopped hundreds of miles short of where the suspect, John C. Salvi III, would later be captured - in Norfolk.
Officers from more than a dozen law-enforcement agencies followed a trail that began with what one official described as a ``wonderful treasure trove'' of evidence. Yet the suspect, identified within hours of the attacks, eluded every net and was caught only by chance.
The manhunt began at 10:04 a.m. on Friday, when the 911 line started ringing and yellow panel lights flashed at the Brookline police station. The caller was traumatized and afraid. Moments before, the caller said, a tall man dressed in black had burst into the waiting room at the Planned Parenthood clinic at 1031 Beacon St. and sprayed bullets at clinic patients, their family members and the staff.
Howard Brackett, the chief of the Brookline Police Department, said that within minutes, the first two officers arrived, confirmed the attack and called for backup.
Several blocks away, Patrol Capt. Daniel O'Leary heard the news and sent patrol cars to three other clinics in the area. One patrol car stopped less than a half-mile from the Planned Parenthood site, at the Repro Associates clinic at 1297 Beacon St. It was quiet. It was also calm at Women's Health Services at 822 Boylston St.
Another car headed to the Preterm Health Services clinic about a mile to the west of the first attack. While the car was on the way, the gunman took out a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle and continued his murderous spree there. Another call came over the police radio. But the gunman had vanished by the time the patrol car arrived, running west along Beacon Street, witnesses later said, then disappearing.
Chief Brackett said the first minutes after the shootings were chaotic. Victims were calling out for help. Witnesses were hastily rounded up for details.
As ambulances from the Brewster Ambulance Service started to arrive and emergency medical technicians began unloading stretchers, police still were not sure whether the attacks were over. More officers from federal agencies and the Brookline and Boston police departments were sent to guard other sites where abortions were performed, as well as flashpoints like the headquarters of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization for Women.
While police secured the other sites, investigators began to pore over the crowded crime scenes.
As they pieced together the evidence, police learned that the gunman had exchanged fire with a security guard at the Preterm clinic. The security guard, Richard J. Seron, was wounded, but he unwittingly provided material that would soon identify the suspect. When Seron shot at the gunman, he left a duffel bag behind as he fled.
Inside it, a police officer said, were critical pieces of evidence: a five clips of ammunition purchased a day or two before. The bag also yielded a fingerprint.
The sales slip provided police with their first important clue, sending them off to Bob's Tactical Shooting Range and Gunshop in Salisbury. At the time they could identify the suspect only as John, the name written across the receipt.
An agent with the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and a Brookline police officer immediately headed for the shop. They didn't dare to call ahead for fear that shop employees might be accomplices. While they headed north, on an hourlong drive to Salisbury, a witness reported that a white compact car that was double-parked outside the second clinic might have been involved in the assault.
The information led to a brief period of confusion as police officials started looking for that car, which Chief Brackett described as ``one of about 9 million white compacts in the Boston area.''
Information obtained at the gun shop would quickly resolve that confusion and send the police searching for another vehicle entirely, a black 1987 Toyota pickup.
Chief Brackett said records kept by the Salisbury gun shop soon connected a resident of Hampton, N.H., with the crime. But the clerk who had handled the sale, the shop owner's son, was the only person who could identify the customer. And on the day of the shootings the clerk was on a bus to New York City, heading back to college.
The Massachusetts state police were sent to stop that bus, but it had already gone across state lines into Rhode Island, shifting jurisdictions. The Rhode Island police picked up the chase near Providence. They found the bus, pulled it over and asked for the shop clerk, Fred Smith, who was taken away for questioning.
Smith, who was nervous but helpful, told the police he recalled selling bullets to the suspect and helped provide a description.
Shop records were quickly located. They gave Salvi's full name and address. Motor vehicle records provided a blurry photograph and the fact that Salvi had been issued a parking ticket outside one of the Brookline clinics on May 14.
Investigators went immediately to the motel where Salvi had been living. But they were too late. A landlady at the Beachside Inn, where Salvi lived in a furnished one-room rental, told them he had come and gone.
Elsewhere, the police had already started to fan out looking for Salvi's local connections. Old records sent teams of officers off to Lynnfield, Mass., a former residence, and to the home of an uncle in Ipswich. The uncle said Salvi's parents had visited for the Christmas holidays but were on their way home to Naples, Fla.
Investigators got the number of a mobile phone that Salvi's parents had with them as they drove south. That information was conveyed to the FBI, which within minutes placed a tap on the number in case the parents tried to reach their son.
Although the police would not release Salvi's name until early the next morning, when a warrant was issued for his arrest, hour by hour investigators gathered more details linking Salvi to the crime.
They copied the image off his New Hampshire driver's license, duplicated the photographs of several other men with similar features and then provided witnesses with a photographic lineup of possible suspects. Several of them identified Salvi as the gunman.
Shortly before noon on Saturday, about 450 miles south, a man stepped out of his black pickup in Norfolk. Outside the Hillcrest Clinic, long a site of abortion protests, he fired, spraying the three-story building with more than 20 rounds and shattering the glass back door.
But this time, an officer was watching. Ken Harlan, a Norfolk Fire Department investigator who was searching the site because of a suspicious Christmas fire at an automated teller machine in the building, watched the suspect fire.
Harlan, who was in plainclothes but had a department-issued 9 mm Smith and Wesson in his holster, chose not to shoot, fearing that pedestrians might be hurt. Instead, when the suspect climbed into a black truck and drove away, Harlan followed and called for police reinforcements.
Three blocks away, several Norfolk police cars converged on the truck. Salvi threw his rifle from the window, then gave himself up. MEMO: Related stories on pages A1, A2 and B1. by CNB