Florida City Is Unwitting Vortex of Abortion War

PENSACOLA, Fla. —  Tourism is up by 30% here over last year, convention business is on the rise, and most who live within easy reach of the white sand beaches that skirt the Gulf of Mexico would prefer that their home be known only as part of the booming American Riviera.

But instead, as a defrocked minister was brought into court on two charges of murder and one of attempted murder here Saturday, assigned a public defender and ordered held without bond, Pensacola again is fighting to dodge a reputation as being the bloodstained crucible of the anti-abortion movement.

“I called my husband last night and told him I was in the terrorist capital of the South,” said college instructor Maresa Brassil, 41, minutes after she and her two young daughters stuck red roses in the fence around an abortion clinic where two people, including a doctor, were shotgunned to death Friday. “It’s so tragic.”

At the hearing, Paul Hill, 40, wearing a green prison jumpsuit, was asked by Escambia County Judge James Roark III if he needed a public defender.

“I haven’t decided as of yet, sir. I really don’t have any counsel in the matter, sir,” said the straw-blond Hill. “I don’t know how the system works here.”

Then he asked the judge: “What would be the wisest thing to do?”

Roark advised him to take the public defender and he could decide later to get a private attorney.

“OK, I’ll try that,” Hill said.

Roark scheduled Hill’s arraignment for Aug. 19.

Even as Hill was facing the judge, the mayor of Pensacola was on the telephone with other local officials discussing ways to hold down the public relations damage.

“This community does not deserve this,” Mayor John Fogg said. “This is a community of good people who despise this type of activity, and we are not going to allow ourselves to be characterized in this way by two or three individuals.”

Hill, an outspoken abortion foe well known to police and other area residents for his regular Friday morning protests outside The Ladies Center, is accused of waiting in ambush for John Bayard Britton, 69, a physician from Florida’s east coast who performed abortions here one day each week. Britton and James H. Barrett, 74, a retired Air Force officer who regularly picked up Britton at the airport and drove him to the clinic, were killed by 12-gauge shotgun blasts to their heads as they arrived in the clinic parking lot.

Barrett’s wife, June, 68, who also volunteered as a clinic escort and was in the back seat of the couple’s pickup truck, was wounded in the arm. She was released from the hospital Saturday.

The slayings have refocused international attention on this Florida Panhandle city, which was first colonized by the Spanish in 1559 but did not make modern history until March, 1993, when it became the site of the country’s first abortion doctor murder. In that killing, Dr. David Gunn was fatally shot outside Pensacola’s other abortion clinic, about two miles from The Ladies Center. Michael Griffin was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence.

Behind a ribbon of yellow crime scene tape, Pensacola police technicians combed the grounds of the clinic and adjacent parking lot for evidence Saturday. Police also executed a search warrant of Hill’s home, but did not say if anything was recovered.

Few, however, doubt that Hill, who publicly advocated the killing of abortion doctors, is the man who has propelled this city back into the headlines. A shotgun, believed to be the murder weapon, was found behind an oak tree on the clinic grounds minutes after the shooting. When he was arrested a few hundred yards away, Hill was carrying several shotgun shells.

“This could have happened in any other city where abortion is seen as a problem,” said Sgt. Jerry Potts, spokesman for the Pensacola Police Department. “This is just unfortunate. It happens when you have weak-minded people, people who get so strong in their beliefs that they get just fanatic and live it day to day.”

But why here? Although this part of Florida, much closer geographically and socially to parts of Alabama and Georgia than it is to Miami, is known for its political conservatism and bedrock Christian fundamentalism, Mayor Fogg insists “there is no broad-based sentiment for this kind of action.”

But Pensacola does have a history of anti-abortion violence, beginning with a bombing of The Ladies Center in 1984. There were other bombings tied to abortion protests that year, and several people were arrested in 1986 when they tried to storm The Ladies Center.

At the same time, Pensacola has shown tolerance for change as well. Earlier this year, for example, Pensacola hosted a national gay and lesbian conference.

“I have always been proud of my hometown,” said Julie Braswell-Simpson, a Pensacola native home for a weekend visit from Jacksonville. “It was a little dot in the South until this. Now I am so embarrassed. I have friends in Jacksonville who tease me about it. I always said this violence was an isolated incident. But it’s going to be hard to call it that now.”

Times wires services contributed to this story.