Dennis Malvasi

Dennis John Malvasi was an extreme character whom had several very different professions; a Vietnam veteran, an actor, crew-person, theater manager, abortion activist, and domestic terrorist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 18, 1950, the seventh child of a woman who first gave birth at the age of 15 and eventually had 12 children by at least three different men. His mother, Jenny Malvasi, placed most of her children in foster care at the St. Joseph Home, a Catholic orphanage in Peekskill, New York. Malvasi lived in the orphanage for 12 of his first 14 years, until his mother brought him to her home in the East New York section of Brooklyn. The neighborhood, abruptly shifting from white to black and working class to slum, was a cauldron of race hate. At age 17, he walked into the Times Square Armed Forces Recruitment Office and enlisted in the U.S. Marines. After basic training, Malvasi was sent to Vietnam to serve an 18-month tour-of-duty with the 27th Marines and saw combat during the Tet Offensive in 1968. During his tour of duty, the 27th conducted 505 patrols, 214 ambushes and eight large sweep-and-clear operations around Da Nang. He worked as a field radio operator and he always took heavy fire, because he provided the single link to air support or evacuation aid and because his position was betrayed by the antenna protruding from his bunker. He both feared and savored the role. After returning from Vietnam upon his honorable discharge in May 1970, Malvasi returned to New York City and continued to drift around the area while working odd jobs. On a whim, he answered an ad for Linda Mussman's Avenue A theater company where he acted on stage. In 1973 while residing in a tough Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan, Malvasi was stabbed and almost killed by a mugger wielding a pair of scissors. As a result, Malvasi started carrying a gun around for protection and in November 1975 he ended up getting arrested by a NYC subway policeman for carrying an unlicensed .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol where he served two years in a New York state prison. After being paroled in 1977, Malvasi continued to drift around New York City when on the following year, by chance, he ran into exploitation film director and playwright Andy Milligan who at the time owned and operated a seedy but fun off-off Broadway theater on West 39th Street in Manhattan which was called the Troupe Theater. According to Malvasi, Milligan found him wondering down the street and invited him inside to read for a play, despite the fact that Malvasi was almost illiterate. Malvasi was forced to ad-lib the script and he won the part anyway. Malvasi's professional, no-nonsense approach to acting and streetwise demeanor endeared him to Milligan immediately. Over the next several years, Andy Milligan employed Dennis Malvasi with a variety of jobs at Troupe which included running the stage lights, doing sound, run the theater box office, and take last-minute directions. Malvasi was the perfect foil for Milligan. He had a reputation of dressing up in costume and crashing Milligan's period plays and throwing the other actors and actresses off-guard with his ad libs. Few people at Troup Theater knew about Dennis Malvasi's private life. He carried at least four different ID cards. 'Dennis Staddon' was the alias he used while working as a mail-room clerk, 'Dennis Staniloff' was the alias he used as a part-time car dealer/owner, 'Robert Becht' was the alias he used as an ambulance paramedic and 'Albert Alfano' as the actor and licensed pyrotechnician. Malvasi also worked with other Vietnam veterans at the Vietnam Veterans Ensemble Theater Company (known as Veco) which he acted in ''Botticelli'' and ''Bury the Dead,'' among other plays, and he served as a full-time technical supervisor for about nine months. Malvasi acted in a host of Troupe productions as well as Milligan's 1983 horror film 'Carnage' in a supporting role. During this time, Malvasi, a religious Catholic, was actively involved with Our Lady of the Roses, an extremist Christian fundamentalist group led by a Long Island housewife, named Veronica Lueken, who claimed that the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ spoke to her in dreams. Denounced by the Catholic Church, the group was rabidly anti-abortion. Malvasi's role in the group grew very public after the Troupe Theater closed in early 1985. After helping Andy Milligan sell the theater and drove him on a four-day cross-country road trip to Los Angeles to help set up Milligan with his new theater and film company, Malvasi then went off on his own (never seeing Andy Milligan again) and took a more active part in Our Lady of the Roses group's claim that "armed struggle" was necessary to bring peace to the world as well as ban abortion. From June to December 1985, there were four abortion clinic bombings in Manhattan and Queens. Investigators traced the explosives to Malvasi, whom was a licensed pyrotechnic expert. Malvasi was already declared an interstate fugitive on March 13, 1985 when he skipped out on his bail in Fort Lauderdale, Florida after he was arrested there in May 1984 for buying guns with his phony 'Dennis Staniloff' driver's license. After nearly two years as a fugitive Malvasi, known in the anti-abortion circles as 'The Mad Bomber', turned himself into the federal authorities on February 24, 1987 after Cardinal John O'Connor of the New York Catholic Church urged him to surrender. Malvasi was tried, convicted, and served five years for illegal gun purchases and two of the four clinic bombings. After leaving federal prison in 1992, Malvasi returned to New York City where he later met and married Loretta Clair 'Rose' Marra, another violence-seeking pro-life extremist (and whose father, Fordham University philosopher William Marra, ran for President on the Right-to-Life ticket in 1988). Over the next several years, Malvasi and his wife continued to be active in the Our Lady of Roses group as well the the Christian terrorist group called Army of God. They lived under various aliases while working odd jobs and raising their two children. On March 30, 2001, Malvasi made news headlines again when he and Loretta were arrested after he unwittingly led authorities to James Kopp, a fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. Kopp, known in anti-abortion circles as 'The Atomic Dog', was arrested in France that same day after a two-year search. Kopp was the primary suspect in the murder of abortion doctor Dr. Barnett A. Slepian, who was shot by a sniper in front of his wife and children after leaving a synagogue service in Amhurst, New York. Kopp was also wanted by Canadian authorities for allegedly wounding an abortion doctor in Ontario in 1995 and was a suspect in three other shootings. The FBI alleged that Dennis and Loretta Malvasi had been communicating with Kopp (who fled the USA in 1999) through pay phone calls and coded e-mails, sending him money while planning to sneak him back into the US. Wiretaps and intercepted e-mails emanating from Malvasi's Brooklyn, New York apartment led to the location and arrest of James Kopp in a small French village. Malvasi and his wife were charged in New York City's Federal court with harboring, concealing and aiding the flight of a fugitive. After agreeing to a plea deal, Dennis and Loretta Malvasi served two years in a federal prison and were both released in October 2003. Malvasi and his wife are believed to be living under fake names somewhere in Newark, New Jersey with their three children (two sons and a daughter) and continue to be off-the-grid involved with the Army of God and other hate-mongering and violence-seeking pro-life anti-abortion groups.