THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
THE REV. DONALD R. SPITZ of Chesapeake speculates that the man who shot up the Hillcrest clinic in Norfolk 14 months ago arrived just minutes after members of Pro-Life of Virginia finished their Saturday morning picketing.
Spitz said he never met the New Englander - John Salvi III - accused of the shooting in Norfolk and charged with assaults in Boston which ended in two deaths. Did Salvi arrive at Hillcrest just as Spitz and other Pro-Life of Virginia protesters were leaving the abortion clinic?
``Perhaps we missed seeing him by five minutes,'' said Spitz, who continues to picket weekly at the Hillcrest location on East Little Creek Road. Salvi allegedly pumped 23 bullets into the Hillcrest clinic's facade.
Although Spitz and Salvi never met, that did not stop Spitz from speaking out in support of Salvi, as you will see if you watch ``Frontline: Murder on Abortion Row'' tonight at 9 on PBS (WHRO).
There is Spitz on camera saying in Norfolk, ``I personally believe that God brought John Salvi here, that there is support for him and the concept that unborn babies deserve the same protection as born babies by whatever means necessary.''
Later comes a shot of Spitz outside the Norfolk City Jail using a bullhorn to shout encouragement to Salvi in his cell. ``John Salvi, we're on your side! If you need anything, let us know. We want to help you any way we can. John Salvi, you are a hero.''
Salvi, a 24-year-old former altar boy who moved from his native Ipswich, Mass., to Florida, Maine, and back again to Massachusetts after graduating 205th in his high school class, is accused of shooting dead two receptionists at abortion clinics in Boston. He was arrested in Norfolk in his gray Toyota pickup shortly after the Hillcrest shooting, charged with firing into an occupied building. A felony.
Within a week, he was extradited from Norfolk to face the murder charges in Boston. While Salvi had never been seen before at the Norfolk clinic, he was well known in Boston.
On ``Frontline,'' you will hear a Boston protester say of Salvi, ``The kid was hostile. I said he should be watched because there seemed to be something wrong with him.''
His trial for the fatal shootings began this week in Massachusetts.
``Frontline'' tonight answers a question which may have lingered in the minds of residents of Hampton Roads since Salvi's name first made headlines in the winter of 1994: Who is this man and what might have driven him to kill two young women in Boston, injure five others, and then aim his black semi-automatic weapon at a Norfolk clinic?
Producers Virginia Storring and John Zaritsky have answered the question about who he is and where he comes from. We learn from their documentary that the man described by his Norfolk court-appointed attorney, Tazewell T. Hubard III, as ``a very intelligent young man'' fell into mental illness soon after high school.
``There were so many signs,'' said Salvi's mother. Signs such as the day he stood up in church and cursed the priest and clergy. Signs such as withdrawing into the life of a recluse who didn't wash, and lived in filth. What we don't learn from ``Murder on Abortion Row'' is what I had hoped for, which is how and why Salvi chose a Norfolk clinic for his second target. The producers have no answer for why he made the 581-mile trip to Norfolk. I had hoped the ``Frontline'' people would retrace his path to Hillcrest.
Instead of delving deeply into Salvi's fascination with Norfolk, the producers give much air time to reflecting on the life of Shannon Lowney, who was shot at a Planned Parenthood clinic. And the controversy that followed her death.
The anti-abortionists in New England thought it was an outrage for the girl's school, Boston College, to hold a memorial Mass for her.
It was scandalous to honor her in that way, said Operation Rescue leader Bill Cotter, because this woman baptized in the Roman Catholic faith volunteered to work at an abortion clinic. ``She betrayed the Catholic tradition,'' said Cotter.
Much of ``Murder on Abortion Row'' is given to the abortion controversy, perhaps too much because the subject has been well-covered elsewhere. This business could have been dealt with in far less air time.
I want to know what allegedly drove Salvi to head for Norfolk intent on emptying two banana clips full of bullets into the Hillcrest clinic. The ``Frontline'' producers give no clue.
Salvi says little to his Norfolk lawyer.
``He was a man with a distant look in his eyes,'' said Hubard.
``There was something mysterious about him.''
The depth of division in the abortion issue is brought home to ``Frontline'' viewers when Spitz, decribed as a leader of the radical fringe by the producers, compares the killings at the Boston clinics to executing Nazis. ``It's analogous to shooting some Nazi guards to save the innocent Jews. It makes sense to me why people do it.''
If Spitz and Salvi had met and talked in Norfolk before the shooting at Hillcrest, they no doubt would have become close. They are on the same wavelength. Some time before the Boston and Norfolk shootings, Salvi had decided to put a picture of an aborted fetus on his van in making his pro-life statement.
As for the deaths of Lowney and Leeanne Nichols in Boston, Spitz asks on tonight's broadcast, ``Why is the life of an abortion clinic receptionist worth more than the lives of 50 innocent unborn human babies?''
That will enrage some viewers, please others.
Salvi is pleading not guilty to the Boston murders. The case against him here has been delayed pending a resolution of his Boston trial. ILLUSTRATION: Salvi
by CNB