Thirty-five-year-old Tatjana “Tanya” Kopric had accomplished a lot during her short time in America. Five years after emigrating from the former Yugoslavia to study medicine, she was a practicing resident at the Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Dedicated to her profession, Dr. Kopric was greatly liked and respected by patients and colleagues. They, along with friends, believed the intelligent and attractive career woman had only one flaw: her choice of suitors.

Tanya fell in love with Richard Bocklage, a college student nearly twelve years her junior. The couple were a study in contrast; whereas Tanya worked hard and was dedicated to her profession, Richard had little ambition and was barely making the grade.

Richard Bocklage could not accept responsibility for his failures nor could he commit himself to his studies. Instead, the struggling collegiate became committed to killing.

Richard Bocklage and Tanya Kopric

A gynecologist who worked with Tanya introduced her to his cousin Richard Bocklage, a University of Missouri Pharmacy student, in March 1980. The two soon began dating and Richard lavished Tanya with gifts and compliments. Within a month, he moved into her apartment; two months later the pharmacy student and the doctor were engaged.

Tanya was bubbling with excitement at the prospect of spending her life with the dashing younger man and future pharmacist.

Tanya Thought She Had a Catch

Tanya’s friends, however, had misgivings about her beau. Though Bocklage showered her with praise, those closest to Tanya believed he was sponging off her financially.

While it was true that Tanya was making a good living and Bocklage was the proverbial “starving college student,” he was using Tanya’s credit cards more for purchasing toys such as hunting and fishing gear as opposed to buying college materials.

Bocklage told Tanya he was committed to her, but he was clearly not committed to his courses. As he spent more time with Tanya, he spent less time in class and it caught up with him on July 19, 1980, when University of Missouri officials informed him that he was academically ineligible.

Rain is Falling in Richard’s Life

A desperate Bocklage pleaded that Tanya use her connections in the admissions department to get him re-admitted. She refused, saying the matter was his responsibility.

Tanya tolerated Bocklage’s mood swings for three weeks, hoping her fiance would get his life in order. When it became apparent that that was only wishful thinking, she finally conceded defeat. She knew she had made a mistake and realized her friends and colleagues were right when they said that she could do better in her choice of suitors.

Part of what had attracted Tanya to Bocklage was what she thought was a shared love of the medical field and of helping others. She looked forward to her fiance working in a field related to her chosen profession. It was now clear, however, that Bocklage did not have the work ethic to be a pharmacist or a good husband.

On September 2, 1980, Tanya broke off the engagement and ordered Bocklage out of her apartment.

The Romance Fizzles

Increasingly desperate, Bocklage wrote a letter to University of Missouri administrative officials, begging them for one more chance. On September 18, the admissions committee unanimously denied his appeal. The committee’s secretary phoned Bocklage to inform him of the ruling shortly after 3:00 p.m.

An hour later, Bocklage was seen by several people lingering outside the dean’s office, carrying a large manila folder as he anxiously roamed the hallway. Although he was told that the dean was out and likely would not be returning that day, Bocklage insisted on waiting for him. He did so for nearly two hours before leaving.

Desperate Bocklage

Three hours later, Tanya returned to her apartment after work. Two people saw Bocklage walk up to her as she exited her car and shoot her point blank in the head three times. The witnesses took cover behind a parked car. By the time police and paramedics arrived, the doctor was dead.

The gun used to kill Tanya was a .45 caliber automatic pistol. Police found that Bocklage had purchased such a gun several days earlier, and it was not found in a search of his apartment. Some believe the gun was the object which Bocklage concealed under the manila folder, and that he may have originally planned to kill the University of Missouri Dean of Admissions.

 

 

Tanya is Shot to Death

A warrant was issued for Bocklage’s arrest, charging him with the first degree murder of his former fiancee.

Six days later, on September 24, Royal Canadian Mounted Police found Bocklage’s car in Thompson, Manitoba, Canada, over 2,000 miles from Kansas City and nearly 1,000  miles north of the American border. A note on the windshield read that whoever found the car could keep it.

Bocklage was seen by two area residents before dropping from site.

Bocklage’s FBI Wanted Poster

In November, two months after Tanya was murdered, her parents in Yugoslavia received a letter postmarked September 16, 1980, two days before their daughter’s murder. The letter was typed, but the address had been written in Bocklage’s handwriting. It read as a vengeful diatribe written in the tone of a manifesto. It read in part “Dear. Kopric family . . . Your daughter Tanya Kopric has been executed in Kansas City, Missouri. She has caused so much grief, anguish and turmoil to so many Americans that this act was necessary. Her execution was inevitable.”

The letter went on to read that Tanya had been executed by “professional assassins” because she was a “communist bitch.”

Manifesto Mailed

Few substantive sightings of Richard Bocklage have been reported and few leads have surfaced to his whereabouts in the forty-three years since the murder.

Some believe he may have committed suicide in the rugged terrain near where his car was found in Canada, but searches failed to find any evidence of his doing so.

Is Bocklage Dead?

Bocklage grew up in Affton, Missouri, a suburb of the St. Louis. His parents have both died, and a person on “websleuths” says the FBI was at both of their funerals to see if he would show, but with no luck. The writer also says Bocklage’s sister still lives in St. Louis.

Images of Young Richard Bocklage; Early- Mid 1970s

A cousin of Bocklage says no one in the family has seen or heard from him since the murder.

She also says the FBI visited her in the early 2000s and said, at the time, they believed he was committing robberies on interstate highways across America.

Computer-aged images of Bocklage were done in the early 1990s

Richard Gerard Bocklage is wanted for the 1980 murder of his former fiancé, Dr. Tanya Kopric. He is one of Kansas City’s longest-sought fugitives. He has family members throughout Missouri as well as in Minnesota.

At the time of the murder, Bocklage was six feet tall and weighed one-hundred-seventy-five pounds. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and vertical scars under each armpit resulting from surgery during his youth for axillary hyperhidrosis, a condition causing profuse sweating. He may have used the names Dick or Rick Bock, or Dick or Rick Bocklege, modifications of his name, as aliases. He also may have used the name Robert Cass.

Richard Bocklage would today be sixty-six-years-old. If you have any information on his whereabouts, please contact the Kansas City Police Department at 816-234-5000 or the Kansas City FBI office at 816-512-8200.

Computer-aged images of Bocklage, 2021

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/228279982/tatjana-f-kopric#

SOURCES:

• America’s Most Wanted
• FBI
• Kansas City Star
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• Unsolved Mysteries