John Salvi

John C. Salvi III (March 2, 1972 – November 29, 1996) was an anti-abortion terrorist and a convicted murderer. He carried out two fatal terrorist attacks on two abortion clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts, on December 30, 1994. These were the subject of intense media coverage. In the second attack security guard Richard Seron returned fire. Salvi then dropped a bag containing a second gun and 700 rounds of ammunition and fled. Police were able to identify him from a gun shop receipt in the abandoned bag. Salvi was seen as a hero to the anti-abortionists in Norfolk Virginia. However, Spitz was never charged in connection with this terrorist crime.

Salvi was found dead in his prison cell on November 29, 1996. The official report states that Salvi's death was a suicide. This was a source of some controversy, as other reports claim he was found with his hands and feet tied together, with cotton shoved in his mouth and a bag placed and tied with a shoelace over his head. His lawyers are quoted as saying that his body showed marks of having been beaten before his death.

During Salvi's trial, the defense argued that Salvi suffered from schizophrenia. Several expert witnesses testified that Salvi exhibited schizophrenic behavior and was not competent to stand trial. John's mother Anne Marie Salvi testified that her son had told her that he, "was the thief on the cross with Jesus." The prosecution brought forth Dr. Joel Haycock, who spent eleven days with Salvi out of his sixty days under observation at Bridgewater State Hospital. Dr. Haycock claims Salvi purposefully chose not to give a narrative of the events of December 30, 1994. Dr. Haycock concludes Salvi has no mental disease and is competent to stand trial. In further cross examination, the defense brings forth accounts of Salvi telling his parents, "...the mafia and KKK are out to get me". Salvi was found competent to stand trial and was found guilty.

Salvi's conviction was ultimately overturned by the sentencing judge. Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara invoked the legal principle that a conviction may not stand if the accused dies before his appeals are exhausted.

John Salvi was a conspiracy theorist: "Shortly after his arrest he released a handwritten note alleging conspiracies of freemasons, conspiracies to manipulate paper currency, and conspiracies against Catholics. ... He has talked about the Vatican printing its own currency and a specific conspiracy of the Ku Klux Klan, the Freemasons, and the Mob."

External links

• The Washington Post - Salvi Convicted of Murder in Shootings
• The John Salvi papers, 1994-1996 are located in the Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Boston, MA.