On October 2nd 2002, cashier Ann Chapman was working like any other day. Chapman worked in a hobby shop in a popular strip mall in Aspen, Maryland. At 5:20 PM a bullet flies through the window and barely misses the head of Chapman. Nearly forty-five minutes later fifty-five year old James Martin was crossing the parking lot at a nearby supermarket where he planned to buy snacks for his son’s church group. Martin was shot once at 6:04 PM he died. Although both attacks were close by and around the same time, police did not put two and two together. However on October 3rd 2002 five more saw the same fate. All received one shot. First shot was thirty- nine year old James Buchanan was shot while mowing a lawn in Rockville, Maryland at 7:41 AM. Premkuma Walekar, age forty-four, was shot while putting gas in his taxi at a Mobil station in Aspen Hill. Sarah Ramos age thirty-four was the next victim. Ramos was shot at 8:37 Am while reading on a bench in Aspen Hill. 9:58 AM in Kensington Maryland Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera was shot while vacuuming out her van. 9:15 Washington, D.C the last victim of the day was attached, Pascal Charlot age seventy-two, was shot while walking.
After all of these attacks the police were finally realizing they had a sniper on a spree killing. The police were advised by FBI profilers and proclaimed professionals that they should look for a well organized white male driving a white van. They also believed the suspect had sniper training. This profile proved to have caused many problems for the investigation including the arrest of two illegal immigrants driving a white van while at a gas station, later no connection to the shootings could be discovered. The shootings became popular news in the media, many news stations providing twenty- four/ seven coverage. During this coverage, highly known serial killer David “son of Sam” Berkowitz contacted the media declaring that the rampage in Washington, D.C was causing him to “relive a nightmare”.
On October 4th 2002 2: 30 Caroline Seawell a forty-three year old mother of two was shot once in the parking lot of MJ Designs craft store in Virginia. Seawell was critically wounded but survived. With the public in panic over the sniper shootings, the lead investigator Chief Charles Moose made an announcement to the public encouraging parents to keep their children in school saying “None of the victims has been anything close to school age… I think the school kids are safe”. In spite of this announcement thirteen year old Iran Brown was shot on October 7th 2002 at 8:09 AM in front of his Benjamin Tasker middle school in Bowie, Maryland. His aunt who was a nurse rushed him to the hospital. He survived. The shooter left a tart card at the crime scene. On one side of the card was the figure of death. On the other side the suspect had left a message saying “For you Mr. police call me God” and asking for the to be keep out of the media. This gave the shooter a nickname of “the Tarot Card Killer” which was later changed when police noticed a pattern circling around Washington suburbs staying close to the beltway. This card was just one of many taunting messages left by the shooter. In one of these messages there was also a demand of ten million dollars with a warning of more body bags if they did not comply and a PS stating “Your children aren’t safe anywhere at any time”.
Between October 9th and October 22nd five more victims were shot. Dean Harold Meyer age fifty- three was shot on October 9th at 8:18 PM at a Sunoco gas station in Manassas, Virginia while pumping gas. On October 11th Kenneth Bridges was shot at 9:30 AM at and Exxon station in Fredericksburg, Virginia. October 14th Linda Franklin, age forty-seven, was in a Home Depot parking lot in Falls Church, Virginia when she was shot. She was a mother of two and a FBI analyst. Jeffrey Hopper, thirty-seven was wounded on October 19th at 8 PM outside a Ponderosa Steak House in Ashland, Virginia. The last victim was thirty five year old Conrad Johnson. He was shot dead on October 22nd at 5:35 AM while standing on the top step of his idling buss near Silver Spring, Maryland.
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| Lee Boyd Malvo |
The shooter was brought down by his ego. After placing a call to Moose bragging about a robbery-murder in Montgomery, Alabama on September 21, 2002 where Claudine Parker was killed the police were able to link a fingerprint at the crime scene to a young man named Lee Boyd Malvo. While investigating Malvo, they were able to link him to an older gentleman named John Allen Muhammad. Contrary to the profile provided by the FBI. Muhammad and Malvo were both black males driving a blue Chevy Caprice, neither with previous sniper training. Once police had the lead they search a property where the two had previous lived. Many neighbors had previously complained about Muhammad’s frequent target practice in the back yard. Police searched for forensic and ballistic evidence in the back yard even going as far to take a tree believed to be used as a target in to the lab for evidence. Convinced they had the right people, when police got a tip from a Ron Lantz about a blue caprice parked in a McDonald’s parking lot at a rest stop in Frederick, Maryland, they rushed to the scene. The pair was arrested on October 24th at 3 AM. Inside the car there was a Bushmaster .223 and a laptop belonging to Paul LaRuffa who was shot on September 5th. As the investigation continued the police realized that on many occasions the two had been stopped in their blue caprice for minor traffic violations, the car that had been modified with a hole in the trunk used to hide the suspects as they shot their victims from a distance. The police also were able to link the gun to 11 of 14 shootings suspect to be at the hands of Muhammad and Malvo.
John Allen Muhammad, born on December 30th 1960 as John Allen Williams, lost his mother at the age of three to cancer. Shortly after Muhammad was abandoned by his father, he was left to be raised by his abusive grandfather. During high school was a very successful football player and even married his high school sweetheart, Carol Williams, in 1982. They had a baby together, but soon after things took a bad turn. After ending it with Carol, Muhammad enlisted in the army in 1985 where he converted to Islam and changed his surname from Williams to Muhammad. Muhammad qualified as an expert with a M-16(the military version of a Bushmaster .223) before he was honorably discharged in 2004. Unconfirmed reports say it was due to a grenade attack linked to Muhammad. After his discharge he was remarried and had three kids. When this marriage also failed, Muhammad fled with his three children to Antigua in the Caribbean. This is where he stayed for over a year. During this time he met a young man named Lee Boyd Malvo. Malvo was raised his entire life by his mother, craving a strong father figured, Malvo became very attached to Muhammad. Muhammad, Malvo, and the three children moved back to the US. His children were removed for his custody and full custody was granted to his second ex-wife who quickly moved to Washington, D.C. Muhammad, an arrogant man whose life had quickly became nothing, snapped and blamed society for his failures.
John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo started their killing spree intending to kill a friend of John’s ex wife. However they instead killed her niece. They were also linked to the killings the months before the Washington, D.C rampage. On August 1st John Gaeta was shot in Hammond, Louisiana. He survived and even received a written apology from Malvo on March 1st 2010. September 23rd Hang IM Ballenger was shot dead in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. During the Washington, D.C rampage Muhammad and Malvo took the lives of ten people and critically wounded three. However they have been linked to a total of fourteen deaths and five wounded.
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| John Allen Muhammad |
The two were tried in Maryland and Virginia. Virginia prosecutor Paul Ebert got the first trial. Both Muhammad and Malvo were convicted in Virginia. Muhammad was sentence to death, while Malvo was sentence to life in prison without the chance of parole. When tried in Maryland Malvo confessed, plead guilty, and testified against Muhammad receiving an addition six consecutive life terms. Muhammad, to spite his death sentence, was also sentenced to six consecutive life terms in Maryland, but was returned to Virginia to carry out his execution. On November 10, 2009 at 9:11 PM Muhammad was pronounced dead after execution by lethal injection, refusing to give a last statement.
Motives behind the rampage were never discovered. Some believed Muhammad became a terrorist after his conversion to Islam. But many investigators believed he had planned on killing his ex-wife. Coming to this conclusion when they realized many of the killings were close to her home. For Malvo however, many believe the lack of a father in his young life, left him susceptible to Muhammad’s influence and he would have done anything for him. While some also believe Muhammad would have become a killer either way, many experts refer to this partnership as a folie a deux. Folie a deux is a term used to explain a partnership were two or more individuals get together bringing out the worst in each other. Either way Malvo became the worshipful acolyte coming to share Muhammad’s pathology.
Sources:
1. Harold Schechter. The Serial Killer Files The Random House Publishing Group, New York (2003)
2. Charlotte Greig. Evil Serial Killers: In the mind of monsters. Metro Books, New York (2005)
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