RJ is a Canadian Author who has written over 30 true crime books, and co-authored another 10 books. He has published almost books for other authors which are available in eBook, Paperback, and many of them in Audiobook edition. The Canadian writer has a better grasp of criminology and the psyche of a serial killer's mind than most people who spend a lifetime in a professional field chasing criminals and diabolic fiends". Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon.
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Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go. Amazon Restaurants Food delivery from local restaurants. ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics. The Fox show America's Most Wanted devoted an entire episode to the shooters in hopes of aiding in their capture. Much of the coverage of the case in The New York Times was written by Jayson Blair and subsequently found to be fabricated; the ensuing scandal led the newspaper's two top editors, Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd , to resign.
During the weeks when the attacks occurred, fear of the apparently random shootings generated a great deal of public apprehension, especially at service stations and the parking lots of large stores. People pumping gasoline at gas stations would walk around their cars quickly, hoping that they would be a harder target to hit. Some stations put up tarps around the awnings over the fuel pumps so people would feel safer.
Also, many people would attempt to fuel their vehicles at the naval base of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland , as they felt it was safer inside the guarded fence. Various government buildings such as the White House , U. For the duration of the attacks, United States Senate pages received a driven police escort to and from the United States Capitol every day and were not allowed to leave their residence hall for any reason except work. Drivers of white vans and box trucks were viewed with suspicion from other motorists as initial media reports indicated the suspect may be driving such a vehicle.
After the specific threat against children was delivered, many school groups curtailed field trips and outdoors athletic activities based upon safety concerns. At the height of the public fear, some school districts, such as Henrico County Public Schools and Hanover County Public Schools, after the Ponderosa shooting, simply closed school for the day. Others changed after-school procedures for parents to pick up their kids to minimize the amount of time children spent in the open. Extra police officers were placed in schools because of this fear.
In addition to this, Joel Schumacher 's film Phone Booth was deemed potentially upsetting enough that its release was delayed for months. Secret Service , the Virginia Department of Transportation , and police departments in other jurisdictions where shootings took place, provided assistance in the investigation. Police responded within minutes to reports of attacks during the three weeks of the sniper attacks, cordoning off nearby roads and highways and inspecting all drivers, thereby grinding traffic to a halt for hours at a time.
Police canvassed the area, talking to people, and collected surveillance tapes.
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By Friday night, October 4, the five shootings on October 3 and two on October 2 were forensically linked to the same gun. Eyewitness accounts of the attacks were mostly confused and spotty. Hotlines set up for the investigation were flooded with tips. Early tips from eyewitnesses included reports of a white box truck with dark lettering, speeding away from the Leisure World shopping center, with two men inside. Police across the area and the state of Maryland were pulling over white vans and trucks.
The shooter attempted to engage the police in a dialogue, compelling Moose to tell the media cryptic messages intended for the sniper. At several scenes Tarot cards were left as calling cards , including one Death card upon which was written "Call me God" on the front and on the back on three separate lines the words, "For you mr. A telephone call from the shooter s was traced to a pay telephone at a gasoline station in Henrico County, Virginia. Police missed the suspects by a matter of a few minutes, and initially detained occupants of a van at another pay telephone at the same intersection.
On the phone call, the sniper, boasting of his cleverness, also mentioned a previous unsolved murder in "Montgomery". On October 17 authorities said they matched Malvo's fingerprint found at the Benjamin Tasker Middle School site with one lifted from the liquor store scene.
Despite an apparent lack of progress publicly, federal authorities were making significant headway in their investigation and developed leads in Washington state, Alabama, and New Jersey. They learned that Muhammad's ex-girlfriend, who had obtained a protective order against him, lived near the Capital Beltway in Clinton , a community in suburban Prince George's County, Maryland.
Information was also developed about an automobile purchased in New Jersey by Muhammad. Police discovered that the New Jersey license plate number issued for Muhammad's Chevrolet Caprice had been checked by radio patrol cars several times near shooting locations in various jurisdictions in several states, but the car had not been stopped because law enforcement computer networks did not indicate that it was connected to any criminal activity and they were focused exclusively on the "white van".
On October 3, , police in Washington, D. The officers were concerned that the driver's license was from Washington state while the vehicle was registered in New Jersey. Although the vehicle was suspicious enough for them to investigate, and it fit the description of a vehicle associated with the shooting in Washington, D.
Authorities were quick to issue a media alert to the public to be on the lookout for a dark blue Chevrolet Caprice sedan. For the public, as well as for law enforcement agencies throughout the region, this was a major change from the mysterious "white box truck" earlier sought based upon reported sightings. The Chevrolet Caprice was also later discovered to have formerly been used as an undercover police car in Bordentown, New Jersey. The crime spree came to a close at 3: Police were tipped off by Whitney Donahue, who noticed the parked car.
Four hours earlier, Montgomery County police chief Charles Moose had relayed this cryptic message to the sniper: You have asked us to say, 'We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose. Moose asked the media "to carry the message accurately and often. Trooper First Class D.
Wayne Smith of the Maryland State Police was the first to arrive at the scene and immediately used his light blue unmarked police vehicle to block off the exit by positioning the car sideways between two parked tractor-trailers. As more troopers arrived at the scene, the rest area was effectively sealed off at both the entrance and exit ramps without the suspects being aware of a rapidly growing police presence.
Later, as truck driver Ron Lantz was attempting to exit the rest area, his tractor-trailer was commandeered by troopers who used the truck, in place of the police car, to complete the roadblock at the exit. With the suspects' escape route sealed off, the SWAT officers then moved in to arrest them. Ballistics tests later conclusively linked the seized rifle to 11 of the 14 shootings, including one in which no one was hurt.
The attacks were carried out with a stolen Bushmaster XM semiautomatic. The back seat was modified to allow a person access to the trunk. Once inside, the sniper could lie prone with shots taken from a small hole near the license plate created for that purpose. Investigators and the prosecution suggested during pre-trial motions that Muhammad intended to kill his second ex-wife Mildred, who he felt had estranged him from his children. According to this theory, the other shootings were intended to cover up the motive for the crime, since Muhammad believed that the police would not focus on an estranged ex-husband as a suspect if she looked like a random victim of a serial killer.
Muhammad frequented the neighborhood where she lived during the attacks, and some of the incidents occurred nearby. Additionally, he had earlier made threats against her. Mildred herself made the claim that she was his intended target. While imprisoned, Malvo wrote a number of erratic diatribes about what he termed "jihad" against the United States. Allah knows I'm gonna suffer now," he wrote. Because his rants and drawings featured not only such figures as Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein , but also characters from the film series The Matrix , these musings were dismissed as immaterial.
At the trial of Muhammad, Malvo testified that the aim of the killing spree was to kidnap children for the purpose of extorting money from the government and to "set up a camp to train children how to terrorize cities," [43] with the ultimate goal being to "shut things down" across the United States. Assistant Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney James Willett told The Washington Post , "Personally, I don't understand why someone who's been in law enforcement his whole life would potentially damage our case or compromise a jury pool by doing this.
During their trials in the fall of , involving two of the victims in Virginia, Muhammad and Malvo were each found guilty of murder and weapons charges. The jury in Muhammad's case recommended that he be sentenced to death, while Malvo's jury recommended a sentence of life in prison without parole instead of the death penalty.
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The judges concurred in both cases. Alabama law enforcement authorities allege that the snipers engaged in a series of previously unconnected attacks prior to October 2 in Montgomery, Alabama. Other charges are also pending in Maryland and other communities in Virginia. After the initial convictions and sentencing, Will Jarvis, the Assistant Prince William County prosecutor, stated he would wait to decide whether to try Malvo on capital charges in his jurisdiction until the U. Supreme Court ruled on whether juveniles may be subject to the penalty of execution.
While that decision in an unrelated case was still pending before the high court, in October , under a plea agreement, Malvo pleaded guilty in another case in Spotsylvania County , for another murder to avoid a possible death penalty sentence, and agreed to additional sentencing of life imprisonment without parole. Malvo had yet to face trial in Prince William County. In March , the Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the Eighth Amendment prohibits execution for crimes committed when under the age of In light of this Supreme Court decision, the prosecutors in Prince William County decided not to pursue the charges against Malvo.
Prosecutors in Maryland , Louisiana , and Alabama were still interested in putting both Malvo and Muhammad on trial. As Malvo was 17 when he committed the crimes, he could no longer face the death penalty but still could be extradited to Alabama, Louisiana, and other states for prosecution. At the time of the Roper v. Muhammad's death penalty was affirmed by the Virginia Supreme Court on April 22, , when it ruled that he could be sentenced to death because the murder was part of an act of terrorism.
The court rejected an argument by defense lawyers that Muhammad could not be sentenced to death because he was not the triggerman in the killings linked to him and Malvo. On September 16, the circuit court judge Mary Grace O'Brien set an execution date by lethal injection for November 10, Supreme Court to stay his execution, but it was denied.
In May , Virginia and Maryland announced that they had reached agreements to allow Maryland to proceed with prosecuting charges there, where the most shootings occurred. There were media reports that Malvo and his legal team were willing to negotiate his cooperation, and he waived extradition to Maryland. Muhammad and his legal team responded by fighting extradition to Maryland. Muhammad's legal team was ultimately unsuccessful, and extradition was ordered by a Virginia judge in August Maryland agreed to transfer Muhammad and Malvo back to the Commonwealth of Virginia after their trials.
A date for Muhammad's pending execution in Virginia had been set for November 10, Malvo pleaded guilty to six murders and confessed to others in other states while being interviewed in Maryland and testifying against Muhammad. Malvo was sentenced to six consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, but in , his sentence in Virginia was overturned after an appeal. In return, he was sentenced to six consecutive life terms without possibility of parole on June 1, On May 6, , it was revealed that Muhammad had asked prosecutors in a letter to help him end legal appeals of his conviction and death sentence "so that you can murder this innocent black man.
Malvo, after extensive psychological counseling, admitted that he was lying at the earlier Virginia trial where he had admitted to being the trigger man for every shooting. Malvo claimed that he had said this in order to protect Muhammad from a potential death sentence, and because it was more difficult to obtain the death penalty for a minor.
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Malvo said that he wanted to do what little he could for the families of the victims by letting the full story be told. In his two days of testimony, Malvo outlined detailed aspects of all the shootings. Part of his testimony concerned Muhammad's complete multiphase plan. His plan consisted of three phases in the Washington, D.
D.C. sniper attacks - Wikipedia
Phase one consisted of meticulously planning, mapping, and practicing their locations around the D. This way after each shooting, they would be able to quickly leave the area on a predetermined path, and move on to the next location. Muhammad's goal in Phase One was to kill six white people a day for 30 days.
Malvo went on to describe how Phase One did not go as planned due to heavy traffic and the lack of a clear shot or getaway at locations. Phase Two was meant to take place in Baltimore, Maryland. Malvo described how this phase was close to being implemented, but was not carried out. Phase Two was intended to begin by killing a pregnant woman by shooting her in the stomach. The next step would have been to shoot and kill a Baltimore police officer. Then, at the officer's funeral, they planned to detonate several improvised explosive devices complete with shrapnel.
These explosives were intended to kill a large number of police, since many police would attend another officer's funeral. The last phase was to take place during or shortly after Phase Two, which was to extort several million dollars from the United States government. This money would be used to finance a larger plan, to travel north to Canada. Along the way, they would stop in YMCAs and orphanages recruiting other impressionable young boys with no parents or guidance. Muhammad thought he could act as their father figure as he did with Malvo.
Once he recruited a large number of young boys and made his way up to Canada, he would begin their training. Malvo described how John Muhammad intended to train boys in weapons and stealth as he had been taught. Finally, after their training was complete, John Allen Muhammad would send them out across the United States to carry out mass shootings in many other cities, just as he had done in Washington and Baltimore.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives ATF officials, the store and its owners had a long history of firearms sales and records violations and a file pages thick. Later that month he transferred ownership of the store to a friend and continued to own the building and operate the adjacent shooting gallery.
D.C. sniper attacks
On January 16, , the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence , on behalf of the families of many of the victims of the sniper attacks both in and out of the D. Muhammad, who had a criminal record of domestic battery, and Malvo, a minor , were each legally prohibited from purchasing firearms. The suit claimed that Bull's Eye Shooter Supply ran its gun store in Tacoma, Washington, "in such a grossly negligent manner that scores of its guns routinely "disappeared" from its store and it kept such shoddy records that it could not account for the Bushmaster rifle used in the sniper shootings when asked by federal agents for records of sale for the weapon.
It was also claimed that Bull's Eye continued to sell guns in the same irresponsible manner even after Muhammad and Malvo were caught and found to have acquired the weapon there. Bushmaster was included in the suit because it allegedly continued to sell guns to Bull's Eye as a dealer despite an awareness of its record-keeping violations. The case had been set for trial in April ; however the parties settled before then. Bushmaster said it settled because of escalating legal fees and the dwindling amount of insurance money it had left for the case.
Bushmaster also agreed to educate its dealers on safer business practices.