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The D.C. Snipers

2020/10/26
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主持著名true crime播客《Crime Junkie》的播音员和创始人。
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播音员:本期节目讲述了2002年10月发生在华盛顿特区、马里兰州和弗吉尼亚州的DC狙击案,该系列枪击事件造成17人死亡,10人受伤。凶手约翰·艾伦·穆罕默德和李·博伊德·马尔沃在三周内制造了多起随机枪击案,目标包括加油站、公交车站和行人等,引发了民众的恐慌和社会恐慌。警方在调查过程中,收集了目击证词、弹壳、塔罗牌等证据,并最终通过线人举报和弹道学分析,锁定了嫌疑人。穆罕默德和马尔沃被捕后,警方在他们的车内发现了Bushmaster步枪等作案工具。在随后的审判中,马尔沃最终认罪并作证指控穆罕默德是主要枪手,穆罕默德被判处死刑,马尔沃被判处终身监禁。本案的发生,凸显了随机恐怖袭击的危害,也展现了现代科技在犯罪侦破中的重要作用。

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The D.C. Snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, terrorized Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia for three weeks in October 2002, killing 17 people and injuring 10 others.

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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.

For three weeks during October 2002, the areas of Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia were terrorized by a series of coordinated shootings. Innocent people were being gunned down at gas stations, bus stops, and just while walking down the street. At the end of the rampage, 17 people would be murdered and 10 people would be seriously injured.

The killers became known in the media as the DC Snipers, and their attacks would forever be remembered as the Beltway Sniper Attacks. Who was behind the sniper's lens, causing chaos and destruction to so many innocent lives, killing mothers, fathers, and even children?

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 43, The DC Snipers. ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case. Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases remain unsolved.

If you're interested in supporting the show and getting access to exclusive content and bonus material, consider visiting our Patreon page, patreon.com slash forensic tales. Every contribution to the show, big or small, helps me to continue to produce the true crime content you love. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon.

Another way you can support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a rating with a review. Now let's jump right into this week's episode. Hey guys, I can hardly believe that this is our last episode to round out October. And if you're feeling anything like me, 2020 has been the shortest yet longest year of my entire life.

It's been almost too strange for me to even describe. So it's crazy that we're ending another month, but we're also entering my favorite time of the year. I love Halloween. I love Thanksgiving, Christmas. All the good stuff is coming our way.

So to round out October, we're covering a really interesting case that also happened during the month of October, almost 18 years ago to the day. We're talking about the 2002 D.C. Snipers case, a case that has also been referred to as the Beltway Snipers case.

41-year-old John Allen Muhammad and 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo completely terrorized Maryland's Montgomery County, as well as some of the surrounding areas of both Virginia and Washington, D.C. Before October 2002, Montgomery County was regarded as a relatively safe place to live and

They didn't experience a very high crime rate. The homicides in the area were relatively low. Montgomery County was just a good place to live. But that wasn't until John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boy Malvo got there. So the shootings began on October 2nd, 2002.

At 5.20 p.m., shots were fired through the window of a Michael's Arts and Crafts store located in Aspen Hill. Now, luckily, only a couple people, including a handful of workers, were inside of the Michael's store at the time, so no one was injured or shot. These first shots through the Michael's store really didn't set off any alarm bells, but

It kind of appeared to just be some sort of random, maybe even a drive-by shooting type of thing. And since no one was injured, it didn't really cause much alarm or attention for the local police.

One hour later, around 6.30 p.m., 55-year-old James Martin, a program analyst for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Shoppers Food Warehouse grocery store in the city of Wheaton, Maryland.

Nobody in the shopping center saw anything, and it kind of appeared as though James Martin was just a random victim. Again, maybe a drive-by shooting gone wrong. No one even thought to make the connection between that earlier shooting at the Michael's store and the shooting of James Martin just a couple miles away.

The next day, October 3rd, a little after 7.40 a.m., 39-year-old landscaper James L. Buckinen, known by many as Sonny, was shot and killed while mowing the grass at the Fitzgerald Auto Malls. When Sonny was first shot, witnesses in the area thought something might have happened with the lawnmower.

Maybe something backfired or a piece shot off the lawnmower. At first, no one thought it was gunfire. In fact, it wasn't until police and paramedics showed up that they even realized that he had been shot.

20 minutes later, this is now 8.12 in the morning, Prem Kumar, a 54-year-old part-time taxi driver, was heading home to celebrate what would have been his 25th wedding anniversary. And on his way home, he stopped at a gas station in Aspen Hill to fill his car up with gas. As he pumped gas at the mobile gas station,

He's shot. After being shot, he actually makes his way to a nearby minivan who was also at the mobile gas station filling her car up with gas. The driver of the minivan was a pediatrician. So right away, her doctor instincts kick in and she tried to help Prem and she tried to attend to his wounds, but he doesn't make it.

and Prem ends up dying from a single gunshot wound. At 8.37 a.m., 34-year-old babysitter and housekeeper Sarah Ramos was shot and killed at the Leisure World Shopping Center. Witnesses reported that Sarah had just gotten off a bus and was sitting down at a bench when she was shot.

She was shot while sitting reading a book. This was the first incident that witnesses believed they saw the person or persons responsible for Sarah's shooting. They reported seeing a white van or a white box truck pull up near where Sarah was sitting and then after the shooting, they immediately sped off.

Now, this was the first description of any vehicle being near any of these shootings. So once authorities learn about this white van or possible box truck in the area, authorities begin sending out a bolo for this white car.

At 9.58 a.m., Lori Ann Lewis Rivera, a 25-year-old, was shot and killed while vacuuming her Dodge Caravan at the Shell gas station on the corner of Connecticut and Knowles Avenue. Lori had just dropped off her kid at daycare before heading to the gas station that morning.

Within a little over two hours on October 3rd, four people had been shot and killed throughout Montgomery County. All shootings appeared to be completely random. And from a victimology standpoint, this was already a really difficult case because none of the victims knew each other. None of them had any major risk factors in becoming gunshot victims.

And the only thing they seemed to have in common was that they were shot and killed either at or near gas stations. But that was it. The victimology here doesn't really tell us anything about who's doing this or to possibly offer up any sort of motive for doing this.

Hours later, on October 3rd, at 9.20 p.m., there's more shootings. Pascal Charlotte, a 72-year-old retired carpenter, is gunned down while walking along Georgia Avenue in Washington, D.C. Pascal didn't immediately pass away.

After he was shot, he was transported to the hospital where within one hour, he eventually passed away from, once again, a single gunshot wound. This is now the fifth victim to be shot and killed in a very similar way, just within 12 hours of one another. Each victim has been shot by a single bullet,

seemingly from a long distance away. In each one of these cases, the shooter or shooters appeared to select their victim, shoot them, and then vanish out of the area pretty quickly. Besides the eyewitnesses of that white minivan or box truck earlier that morning, there was no other witnesses to these shootings.

But it was pretty clear to authorities very early on that day that all of these victims are linked to a same single suspect, that these shootings are somehow connected to one another. By the fifth victim within this 12-hour period, people throughout Montgomery County and the Washington, D.C. area were terrified that

People were scared to get into their cars. They were scared to go to gas stations. They were scared to even walk down the street because nobody knew if they would become the next victim. There was this growing fear to leave your house, not knowing if you're going to be gunned down, never even seeing the bullet come.

So after Pascal Charlotte was shot, a press conference was held by the Montgomery County's police chief, Charles Moose. And at the press conference, parents were told that all schools in the area would be on what was referred to as a code blue alert.

And under a code blue alert, kids in local schools were being kept indoors at all times. They weren't allowed to go outdoors except for the initial pickup or drop off at the school. Other than that, kids were going to remain inside of classrooms. And even though a child hadn't been shot, at least not yet,

Nobody knew if whoever the shooter was would also go and start targeting children on their way to and from school. And a lot of parents didn't allow their children to walk to school or to even take the bus to school. Most parents in Montgomery County didn't feel comfortable knowing when or where the next shooting would happen, and they didn't want their child to become the next victim.

So the entire Montgomery County Public School District, as well as the District of Columbia Public School District, went into a lockdown following the shootings. No school in the districts were allowed to have recess and PE classes were completely cut from the schedule. People were pretty darn terrified by this point.

The following day, October 4th, around 2.30 in the afternoon, Carolyn Sewell, a 43-year-old mom, was loading bags into her minivan at another Michaels arts and crafts store. As she's loading her bags inside of her vehicle, she's shot.

The bullet traveled through her diaphragm, liver, lung, and even broke a couple of her ribs. Even though the bullet tore through her body pretty devastatingly, pretty bad, Carolyn Sewell ended up surviving. She would become the first victim to survive the shootings.

She's the first person that police have that can maybe provide some information about who this shooter was. Now, throughout Montgomery County and the surrounding jurisdictions, every single white minivan or box truck that seemed to match the earlier description was being stopped and pulled over by police.

Which turns out there were a lot of white minivans floating around the area. This was the only description of the car that they had to go off of. So every white minivan or box truck in the area was getting pulled over. But none of these stops really seemed to be getting the police any closer to identifying a possible suspect.

Each driver who was pulled over had absolutely nothing to do with the shootings. A couple days later, October 7th, the first child in the area would become a victim. 13-year-old Iron Brown was shot as he arrived at Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland. His aunt, Tanya Brown, had just dropped Iron off at school.

When she pulled away, she heard the gunshot. Iron had just set down his books next to his aunt's car and had been shot in the chest. And as a nurse herself, Tanya Brown was able to pick Iron up and drive him to the hospital. Now, Iron suffered very serious organ damage from the bullet, but just like Carolyn Sewell,

He ended up surviving. Now, not only was he the first child victim, but he also became the second person to even survive the shootings. The shooting of Iron Brown completely changed the tone of the investigation. This is the first child victim, a victim who isn't an adult. This is a kid on his way to school and is shot.

right there in front of his aunt. So this really raised the bar for law enforcement to find out who's doing this. So law enforcement, which at this point not only included the Montgomery County Police Department, but it also involved the FBI, the SWAT team was involved, and many different task force were all working together on this one.

They are setting up roadblocks around the shooting scenes. They're trying to get all the resources allocated and responding to every scene as quickly as they possibly can. And after Iron Brown's shooting, most kids were pulled out of school by their parents. Schools just kind of ended for the rest of the day.

In the area where Iron Brown was shot, authorities received their first interesting piece of evidence left behind by the shooter. Law enforcement recovered not only the shell casing from the bullet, but they also recovered a tarot card. And the tarot card that was left behind was the death card.

And inscribed on the card was the phrase, call me God, right there on the front of the card. And on the back of the tarot card, it read, quote, for you, Mr. Police, code, call me God, do not release to the press, end quote. Now, this discovery was huge because

The shell casing and the tarot card were found about 150 yards away from where Iron Brown was shot. So this told investigators where the shooter was at the time of the shooting. There was actually an area in the grass that looked like something had maybe been placed on top of the grass. It was a little bit smashed.

So they immediately called in a huge task force to begin combing through the entire area, looking for any forensic evidence that the shooter may have left behind. And they also found that shell casing in the area, which was different. It seemed to authorities that the shell casing was left behind on purpose, which

And that's because in all of the other shootings, the shooter or shooters made it a point to collect that shell casing. They hadn't left behind any shell casings in any of the previous shootings.

So it seemed here like the shooter was possibly sending a message to law enforcement by choosing to leave behind the shell casing as well as the tarot card. So two days later on October 9th at 8.18 p.m.,

53-year-old Dean Harold Myers was shot while pumping gas at a Sunoco gas station in Prince Williams County, Virginia. Just like earlier, witnesses reported seeing a white minivan leaving the area right after the shooting.

So police immediately set up a roadblock and they were actually able to pull over and stop the minivan that was seen near the shooting. But the driver and the minivan were cleared pretty quickly. They had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting. So gas stations were now starting to put up tarps around their pumps.

They didn't want people to be seen or out in the open while putting gas in their cars. You really didn't know whether or not you'd become the next victim while pumping gas. And because nobody saw the shooter, it was well thought that whoever was shooting was using some sort of rifle or sniper in the attacks.

This had to be the firearm that could be used successfully to hit a target from 100, 200, maybe even more yards away. The shooter wasn't using a small handgun. They were shooting people from a pretty good distance away. So the tarps were put up by these gas stations in order to eliminate the shooter's visibility.

October 11th, nine days after the first shooting, around 9.30 in the morning, 53-year-old businessman Kenneth Bridges was shot and killed while pumping gas at an Exxon gas station just off I-95 in Virginia. Kenneth Bridges would become the sniper's ninth victim.

And in Kenneth Bridges' case, there was an officer pretty close to where he was shot. And this police officer immediately after learning about the shooting went directly to the area. But just like many times before, this police officer wasn't able to find anyone.

Now, in this case with Kenneth Bridges, some eyewitnesses reported seeing a Chevy Astra with a ladder rack on top in the area where Kenneth Bridges was shot. But similar to the white minivan box truck theory, nothing really came of that Chevy Astra.

October 14th, around 9.15 p.m., 47-year-old Linda Franklin, who at the time worked as an FBI intelligence analyst, was gunned down in a Home Depot parking lot in Fairfax County, Virginia. Forensic experts who were specialized in these types of shootings said,

were finally able to conclude that Linda Franklin's shooter made the shot from a nearby embankment. Now, contrary to the popular belief that snipers always use rooftops or tops of buildings,

This discovery meant that the shooter was actually just several yards away from their victims, and they weren't using rooftops. They were actually on the ground, and on a ground in a place where they could easily escape after the shootings. Now, at Linda Franklin's shooting,

One of the employees who worked inside of the Home Depot reported to police that he saw the sniper. But after investigating his claim, it was determined that the Home Depot employee completely made it up. And this person would actually be criminally charged with making a false statement to police. Over the next five days, things were pretty quiet.

By this point, all gas stations in the areas had put up tarps to try and protect their customers. And some people were hopeful that the sniper maybe stopped and was done shooting. But on October 19th, any hope that the sniper was done killing disappeared.

And that's because on October 19th at 8 o'clock p.m. in the evening, 37-year-old Jeffrey Hopper was shot in a parking lot near the Ponderosa Steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia, a place about 90 miles south of Washington, right near I-95. Now, Jeffrey was shot while standing next to his wife, Stephanie Hopper.

who saw her husband get shot and was able to flag somebody down to call an ambulance to call 911. So an ambulance quickly arrived to the shopping center, and Jeffrey was rushed to the hospital. And although he had suffered very serious injuries as a result of the gunshot, Jeffrey Hopper was lucky. He ended up living. He survived.

and he became the third person to survive the sniper attacks. But once again, authorities swarmed the area where Jeffrey Hopper was shot in hopes of recovering any additional forensic evidence. And this time, they did find something. Near the area where Jeffrey was shot, authorities recovered a four-page letter in the woods nearby.

The letter had been wrapped in plastic and was stuck to a tree in the woods. The letter was written by the shooter and basically demanded $10 million to stop the shootings. The sniper was trying to extort law enforcement in order for there to be no more sniper victims.

This is now the second time that the sniper is communicating directly with law enforcement. And it's also a sign that whoever is responsible for the shootings is feeling pretty confident that they aren't going to get caught. They feel comfortable asking for $10 million.

In the letter, they even threatened to start killing more children if they didn't receive the money. The letter also revealed that the sniper is pretty angry. They're upset. They mentioned in the letter that they called in to the sniper tip line and that whoever answered didn't seem to take them seriously.

And they were angry that the tip line didn't take them seriously, that they thought it was some sort of joke. It's important to mention here that during this time period, police had received well over 100,000 tips regarding the D.C. Sniper case.

They received so many phone calls that they actually had to open up a second call center just to be able to process all of the incoming phone calls and tips. But the sniper in the letter said that they were hung up on when they called in this tip, that nobody in the call center took them seriously, and this angered them.

So the sniper ended the letter by saying that by ignoring their phone call into the tip line, that this would now cost society an additional five victims. Five lives were now going to be lost because they were ignored. October 21st rolled around and police spotted a white minivan in the area.

Just like all minivans and white box trucks in the area, police stopped and pulled over this minivan. Inside the van were two men. Both men were identified as being illegal immigrants and were also found to have absolutely no connection to the shootings whatsoever. Now, later on, both men were arrested and both men were ultimately deported.

The following day, October 22nd, just before 6 o'clock in the morning, 35-year-old bus driver Conrad Johnson was gunned down while standing on the top step of his bus in Aspen County, Maryland. Conrad Johnson was transported to the hospital where he ended up passing away from once again a single gunshot wound.

becoming the next victim of the DC snipers. By October 22nd, when Conrad Johnson was killed, 10 people had been shot and killed in cold blood. And there were also three other victims who were seriously injured. Now, by the middle to end of October,

Every major news outlet was covering the D.C. sniper case practically 24-7. If you turned on the news during this time period, you probably wouldn't get any other news except for the D.C. sniper case. And during this time, people were terrified. People were afraid that they were going to get out of their car and that they were going to be randomly gunned down with a sniper.

That's a really scary thing to think about. The sniper had already shown that they will attack at all times of day, sometimes at gas stations, sometimes not. Sometimes they target women, sometimes men. And in the earlier case of 13-year-old Irene Brown, not even children are safe from the sniper.

I think the element that makes this even scarier is that they're being gunned down by a sniper. Someone is camped out, sometimes a couple hundred yards away, looking through the lens of a sniper, just waiting for someone to walk into the lens for a clear shot.

most of the victims wouldn't have even known what hit them. People in the neighborhoods who were targeted started driving to the naval base of National Naval Medical Center located in a city in Maryland. People felt safer filling up their cars inside of the naval base's gated fence.

They no longer wanted to go to Chevrons or Exxons, anywhere where they thought that a sniper could be camped out. And government buildings, including the White House, the U.S. Capitol, and even the Supreme Court building, were all under high security protocols during October.

U.S. Senate members actually received a driven police escort to and from the Capitol every single day during the attacks. And members of the Senate and House weren't even allowed to leave their residence hall except for going to and from work. Also, white minivans and box trucks and their drivers became the prime suspects.

Everyone was pulled over, they were questioned, and everyone was let go once it was discovered that they had nothing to do with the shootings. Experts in the field of forensic ballistics are able to positively link all of the shootings to a single sniper. Experts studied the bullets' rifling marks.

So rifling marks, if you aren't familiar with guns, they are basically unique marks that a particular gun will leave on the bullet as it exits the weapon. And these experts were using these bullet rifling marks to determine that the same weapon was used in every single one of these shootings.

All of the bullets had very similar rifling marks, which tells experts that it came from the same weapon. Now, since this is a very complex investigation, it involves many different jurisdictions. And that's because the sniper wasn't just killing in Montgomery County. There were also shootings in many different areas.

Now, the official investigation was headed up by the Montgomery County Police Department, specifically with the chief of police, Charles Moose. But the Montgomery County Police Department also had a lot of help from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the ATF.

They also had help from the FBI, the Secret Service was involved in the case, and even the Virginia Department of Transportation offered up some officers to help in the case. And with each new victim, the intensity grew to get any solid lead in the case. People wanted to know who was responsible for gunning down innocent people. Authorities did finally get a lead in the case.

And it came from a very unlikely source. Over 2,700 miles away from the shootings in Tacoma, Washington, a man by the name of Robert Holmes called into his local FBI office right there in Tacoma. And the auto mechanic called in a tip believing that the DC sniper was a friend of his.

The first time Robert Holmes called the FBI, the tip got lost because authorities were receiving thousands upon thousands of tips. So Robert Holmes' tip, at least the first one, didn't really go anywhere. But he doesn't give up because he knows deep down inside of his gut, he has to tell someone what he knows.

So Robert Holmes called into the FBI a second time. And on the second time, he gets through. And he told the FBI that the DC sniper might be a friend of his, a guy by the name of John Allen Muhammad.

The caller told authorities that John Allen Muhammad's life began to fall apart after he lost custody of his three children just the year before the shootings. Muhammad, who was a marksman and had actually discussed with Robert Holmes about equipping one of his long-distance rifles with an illegal silencer.

Holmes told the FBI about a chilling comment Muhammad made to him. Muhammad told Holmes, quote, Can you imagine the damage you could do if you shot with a silencer? End quote.

Robert Holmes also reported to the FBI that his friend or former friend, John Allen Muhammad, also owned a Bushmaster rifle and that his friend had extensive military training.

The person that Robert Holmes explained to the FBI in John Allen Muhammad was someone who would absolutely know and have the skills to shoot a long-distance rifle or a sniper. Authorities back in Montgomery County remember another tip that came in. The caller who claimed to be the D.C. sniper himself said,

talked about a previous and unsolved shooting at a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama, back on September 21st. Now, when the tip line first received the phone call, they didn't initially think that this robbery and shooting back in Montgomery, Alabama, was also connected to the D.C. shootings. It appeared to them to just be some sort of typical robbery.

And a sniper wasn't used in the case. It had a very different MO than the D.C. sniper case. But law enforcement authorities in D.C. decided, hey, we need to investigate this a little bit further. So authorities in D.C. decided that they would reach out to local law enforcement in the city of Montgomery, Alabama.

And when they do, they learned that a magazine was left behind inside of the liquor store back on September 21st. So authorities in Washington, D.C. decide that they want that magazine shipped over to D.C. for a local forensic lab to try and recover any possible evidence.

And when they test the magazine back in Washington, they were able to recover a fingerprint. And the fingerprint was identified as belonging to Lee Boyd Malveaux.

So the reason why authorities had Malvo's fingerprints on file was because Malvo, if you remember, was actually from Jamaica. And when he entered into the United States, a part of his immigration process was to provide the country his fingerprints. So authorities go from having no names, no suspects,

to now having two names in the D.C. sniper case. Between the information provided from Robert Holmes, one of John Allen Muhammad's friends, and the phone call from the alleged snipers themselves claiming responsibility in the liquor store robbery and shooting, they also had Lee Boy Malvo's fingerprint on the magazine that was left behind.

So now in the investigation, we've got Muhammad and we've got Malvo. Two names that police can finally investigate in the sniper case. Authorities also learned that a blue Caprice had been recently registered in John Allen Muhammad's name.

They now have a vehicle they can search for. They no longer need to keep stopping every single white minivan and box truck in the area. So with the blue Caprice's license plate, they put out a bolo. They put the license plate belonging to Muhammad out there in the media.

And they basically asked the public to be on the lookout for a blue Caprice with a New Jersey license plate that read NDA-21Z. They wanted the public to keep an eye out for this blue Caprice. And once they put the bolo out there with the car's license plate, they don't have to wait very long at all before they get a phone call.

At 1.17 a.m. in the morning on October 24th, a man from Pennsylvania by the name of Whitney Donahue was sitting inside his car listening to the news about the D.C. snipers. Remember, this case was covered on television, radio, every single news outlet practically covered the case 24-7.

So Donahue is sitting in his car and he's listening to the bolo about this blue Caprice that's believed to belong to the snipers. And he hears them read off the car's license plate. Now, and even a stranger twist here, Whitney Donahue actually once owned a Chevrolet Caprice himself.

So this is a guy who knows exactly what this car looks like. As Whitney Donahue pulled into a parking lot right off I-70 near Myersville, Maryland, he noticed that there were only two other vehicles parked inside of the parking lot. And one of these vehicles was a blue Chevrolet Caprice.

Donahue immediately checked to see if he could make out the car's license plate number. And as he gets a little bit closer to the Caprice, he knew that the license plate was an exact match to what he heard just moments ago on the Bolo. Now, this is probably a pretty scary situation for Whitney Donahue. He knows about the DC Sniper, as does the entire country.

He's very close to where the snipers are believed to be committing these attacks. And here he is a little after one o'clock in the morning parked inside of the same parking lot as possibly the D.C. snipers. This must have been absolutely terrifying. So once he realizes that this is likely the D.C. snipers car,

He grabs his cell phone and as quickly as he possibly could, fingers probably shaking, he calls 911. He thinks he's parked right next to the DC snipers. But when he called 911, the dispatcher on the other end of the phone couldn't quite hear what exactly Whitney Donahue was saying.

I don't know if that's because the connection was poor or if because he was probably just freaking out because he's sitting next to the DC snipers. But nobody on the other end of this first 911 call could hear him. So he hung up. He waited a few minutes, still sitting inside of his car. And then he called 911 again. And this second time,

The dispatcher on the other end of the line could hear him loud and clear. Once authorities received information that a blue Chevrolet Caprice with a matching license plate to John Allen Muhammad's, police scrambled to assemble a task force and get to the area surrounding the parking lot as quickly as they possibly could.

Now, it ends up taking law enforcement a little over two hours before they can get a task force assembled and get this task force to that parking lot. Now, the first officer to arrive near the parking lot was an officer by the name of Wayne Smith with the Maryland State Police Department.

Once he gets there, he has the incredibly smart idea to park his own patrol car right across the one and only exit to the parking lot. So if the occupants of the Caprice were going to try and flee the lot, they would have to be able to get past Smith's patrol car first.

Now, as more and more officers begin to arrive at the parking lot and they establish roadblocks at all of the other possible entrances and exit ramps in the area, they were going to be prepared. They were not going to let this blue caprice escape the area. At 3.15 a.m. on October 24th,

Police smashed the car's windows and dragged two males out of the Caprice. Inside the car, they found a Bushmaster rifle, and right next to the gun, they found a bipod.

Basically, a bipod is a gun attachment that is used to support and steady a long gun. Basically, it provides support for a sniper.

The rifle that was discovered inside of the Caprice was identified as being a Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle that had been specially equipped with a Bushnell holographic weapon sight.

Basically, this was an attachment that would allow the shooter to effectively shoot at targets up to 300 meters away. The trunk of the vehicle had been modified that would later be described as being a rolling sniper's nest.

Basically, the back seat was modified to allow an individual to lay down across the trunk of the vehicle. The sniper could lie down on their stomach and they could take shots through a small hole right next to the car's license plate. The sniper wouldn't even have to get out of the car to select their next victim.

And the other person in the car could simply drive away before anyone knew what just happened. The two men dragged outside of the Blue Caprice were identified as 41-year-old John Allen Muhammad and 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo. Now, thankfully, they were taken into custody without incident.

It seems like maybe they were probably sleeping and they must have been completely caught off guard by police. So both men were arrested on suspicion of being the D.C. snipers.

And after Mohammed and Malvo were in police custody, the Bushmaster rifle recovered from the vehicle was sent off to the forensic lab for a complete ballistics test to be done. And the ballistics test would be able to determine if the rifle found in the car was in fact the same rifle used in all of the shootings.

This would be the nail in the coffin for Muhammad and Malvo. And within just a couple days, forensics were able to positively, 100%, link the rifle to 11 of the 14 total shootings, including one where no one was shot or injured.

This finding proved that John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were in fact the D.C. snipers. Once the news spread about the two arrests in the D.C. snipers case, the question that was on everyone's mind, including mine, was why? Why did Muhammad and Malvo do this?

And I think the bigger question was, Malvo was just a teenager. He was just 17 years old. Why was he even with John Allen Muhammad? Just driving around, getting on his stomach, and gunning down innocent people. Muhammad and Malvo are believed to have met in Antigua.

In 1999, Muhammad's second wife, Mildred, filed for divorce. Muhammad and Mildred had been married in the late 1980s, and they had three children together during the course of their marriage. But in the year 2000, when Mildred filed for divorce, she also filed for full and complete custody of their three children.

And when the family court approved this order, basically stripping away all of Muhammad's parental rights, he was enraged. He took the three children against the law, against the family court order, and he brought the three children with him to Antigua. He basically kidnapped his children from Mildred.

And during this time when he kidnapped the children and brought them to Antigua, this is when it's believed that Muhammad first met Malvo. So as I mentioned just briefly earlier, Malvo was originally from Jamaica. And he had immigrated to the United States with his mom, Una James, in 2001.

and Muhammad basically seemed to instantly hit it off. And they started this kind of bizarre father and son type of relationship. Remember, Muhammad was 41 years old, and Malvo was just 17. He was practically still a kid.

But besides the age difference here, the two men bonded. And at one point, they ended up living in a homeless shelter together. So Muhammad was absolutely enraged after losing custody of his three children. He was having a terrible time in his relationship with his ex-wife, Mildred.

And by all accounts, Muhammad seemed to control just about every aspect of Malvo's life after they met. He designed Malvo's exercise program. He told him what he could and could not eat, which apparently at one point was a diet of honey and crackers.

Mohammed seemed to exhibit control over Malvo's life, and as a young 17-year-old teenager without much of his own direction in life, he followed and even looked up to Mohammed. In December 2001, a little less than one year before the shootings began, Mohammed and Malvo were both arrested together.

They were both taken into custody by immigration officers because both of the men were illegal immigrants into the United States. But immigration officers didn't keep them in custody. They were released after a couple days, and both Muhammad and Malvo were set a future date for an upcoming immigration hearing.

When they were both released from immigration custody, this is when Mohammed started teaching Malvo how to shoot guns. They would use tree stumps in one of their friends' backyards as target practice. This is how Malvo learned how to shoot a gun for the very first time in his life at 17 years old.

And this would also become the very start of Muhammad and Malvo's plans to eventually become the DC snipers. And by the fall of 2002, it wasn't just tree stumps that they were shooting. They had graduated to their first real-life human victims as targets. They were a duo. They were a two-man killing machine.

One would become the guy behind the sniper lens shooting, while the other guy would be kind of the lookout man, also the one that could quickly drive away in that blue Chevy Caprice. So now that we know who Muhammad and Malvo are, and we've gotten a little bit of insight about how they first met and got together, we

I think the bigger question on everyone's mind was why? Why do this? Why would they seem to target completely innocent people doing routine things like pumping gas? We may never know exactly what was going on in either of their minds.

But it would be argued later on during pretrial hearings that the real and the true intended target from all of this chaos was Muhammad's second wife, Mildred. Muhammad, who was enraged by the divorce, furious by losing custody of his three children, it was Mildred who was the center of his anger.

Muhammad believed that the police wouldn't suspect him in the murder of his ex-wife if all of these shootings were going on. Mildred would just have become another victim to this serial killer, this sniper who's on the loose in Montgomery County and the surrounding areas. But 17-year-old Malvo seemed to have a slightly different motive behind the shootings.

While awaiting trial, the first trial, Malvo wrote a number of different, I guess you'd say letters, maybe manifestos, while in jail. He wrote and drew about Osama bin Laden. He wrote about Saddam Hussein. And he even wrote in one letter, quote,

I have been accused on my mission. Allah knows I'm going to suffer now. End quote. So it appears that Malvo's motive, at least at looking what he was writing in jail, seemed to suggest that his motive behind the shootings was more in line with terrorist ideologies.

Malvo would later say that the aim of the killing spree was to kidnap children in order to extort money from the United States government. He said him and Mohammed were planning to set up these camps to train young children how to grow up to become terrorists.

they had a goal of completely shutting down the United States. Now, this motive offered by Malvo or suggested by Malvo in his jailhouse writings seemed to be completely different than Mohammed's. And it's unclear if Mohammed was feeding this terrorist ideology into Malvo in order for him to cooperate with the shootings or

While Mohammed's real motivation was to simply kill his ex-wife Mildred. Again, this is something that we may never know for absolute certainty here. So John Allen Mohammed and Lee Boy Malvo were given separate criminal trials.

During Mohammed's first trial, which began in 2003, his defense team basically came out and blamed Malvo and said that the 17-year-old was the sole gunman in all of these attacks.

And what's interesting is that investigators and prosecutors, they gave Malvo a lot of chances and a lot of opportunities to come forward and to say that Mohammed, the older, the adult, the 41-year-old, was actually the gunman. And he's the one who was the mastermind behind all of this. But

Malvo was really, really reluctant. He didn't want to turn his back on someone who was like a father to him. Malvo, in 2003, was more than willing to take responsibility for being the gunman in every single one of the shootings. So during this first set of criminal trials in 2003, Malvo

Involving two victims in Virginia, Muhammad and Malvo were each found guilty of murder as well as weapon charges. The jury in Virginia in 2003 sentenced Muhammad to the death penalty. He was going to die.

while the jury in the other trial sentenced 17 Malvo to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Now, this is a great example where age was really a factor here, especially during the time of sentencing, because during the D.C. Sniper case, Malvo was just a teenager. He was barely 17 years old at the time.

Fast forward a couple years, this is now 2006, Muhammad and Malva were facing a second criminal trial. This time, both men were being charged with murder in Maryland. Now, Maryland was the state where the majority of the DC sniper cases occurred. And this was a time where both of them were facing the remaining charges of murder in the shootings.

So once again, just like what we saw back in 2003, both Malvo and Muhammad had second criminal trials. Now, Muhammad had already been sentenced to death in his Virginia case, and Malvo was already going to spend the rest of his life in prison. This second set of trial in 2006 in Maryland was...

Kind of seen as a matter of legal purpose and hopefully served as some sort of justice for the remaining victims. In 2006, before the start of the second round of criminal trials,

Malvo, the younger one, already sentenced to life in prison, decided that, hey, he didn't want to pursue a trial here. And he made the decision through his legal team that he would plead guilty to six murders. But what's different this time around, three years later, was that Malvo actually agreed to testify against Muhammad in Maryland.

something that he wouldn't do during the first trials in Virginia. And during the plea bargain, Malvo was sentenced to an additional six life sentences for the six murders he confessed to. Now, there's going to be some additional legal proceedings when it relates to Malvo's case, which we will get to in just a second here. Malvo took his case to trial. He wasn't willing to accept a plea bargain.

And just like what he agreed to, Malvo testified against Muhammad. He was willing to take the stand against his father figure. Malvo took the stand and told the jury that Muhammad was the one responsible. He was the gunman in the first six murders they did together. This was kind of shocking because up until this very point,

Malvo didn't turn his back on Muhammad. Even when Muhammad's own defense team tried to blame Malvo and paint the teenager to be the main shooter, he didn't stand up to him. But here he is in his 2006 trial in Maryland. Malvo said Muhammad was the main shooter.

Malvo also testified that he lied during the earlier 2003 criminal trial in Virginia when he said that he was the sole gunman. He admitted that he lied in order to protect Muhammad. He didn't want his father figure to be sentenced to death, so he decided to lie and took responsibility.

By 2006, Malvo said he couldn't take back what he'd done, but he wanted to finally tell the truth. And he wanted to tell the victims' families what actually happened to their loved ones. And the jury in 2006 believed it.

Because on May 30th, 2006, John Allen Muhammad was found guilty of six counts of murder in Maryland. And this time was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences on top of his previous death sentence. Justice was relatively swift in John Allen Muhammad's case.

Typically, when someone is sentenced to death in the United States, we can wait decades for the execution to really happen. And sometimes it never happens at all because our legal system, at least here in the States, affords so many appeals, especially when it comes to the death penalty. In this case, justice was swift.

On November 10th, 2009, at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrett, Virginia, John Allen Muhammad was executed by lethal injection. Prison officials began the execution process at 9.06 p.m. that night, and within five minutes, Muhammad was pronounced dead. One of the D.C. snipers was finally dead.

At the execution, he reportedly did not speak any last words, and there were 27 people there, including members of the victim's family there to watch him be executed. In Lee Boyd Malvo's case, his life sentences without the possibility of parole were overturned. That came after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled

made the ruling that they dismissed this legal challenge to his life without parole sentence in the murders. And the U.S. Supreme Court basically was forced to dismiss it because Virginia governor, a man by the name of Ralph Northam, had signed into legislation a law that allows juvenile offenders who committed crimes while under the age of 18 years old

and who were sentenced to life in prison basically to be allowed to seek parole once they've served a minimum of 20 years on their sentence. This means that Malvo's life sentences without parole are overturned in the state of Virginia. And technically, in Virginia, Malvo...

will be eligible for parole in the year 2022, just two years actually from right now. Now, before any of my listeners lose any sleep over this, at the thought of one of the DC snipers getting released from prison anytime soon, the law in Virginia doesn't have anything to do with his six life sentences he's currently serving in the state of Maryland.

This rule, this law only applies to the two life sentences in the Virginia case. I know it's kind of confusing. But at the end of the day, it's extremely unlikely that Lee Boyd Malvo will ever be released from prison. Even though his defense team is still pushing appeals even all of these years later, the

The argument on the topic of sentencing juveniles to life sentences is a continued point of discussion that will continue to make its way through our legal system here. There's a lot of people out there who don't agree with sentencing a juvenile to a life sentence simply based on their age at the time of the crime.

Others will argue that a juvenile, especially a 17-year-old, someone who legally is very close to becoming an adult, can absolutely be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Either way, either side of this coin, it seems very unlikely, at least in my opinion, that Lee Boyd Malvo will live any of his life outside of prison.

If you want to join in on this discussion about the DC Sniper case or discuss what you think about sentencing juveniles to life sentences, I would love to hear from you. Connect with the show on Instagram at Forensic Tales. Check out our website, ForensicTales.com. This is also a place where I always post pictures from the case that we're covering.

or email the show at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. I always love to hear from you guys, my listeners, and hear what you think about the case and any of the topics that we discuss. Okay, guys, that just about covers it for this week. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales if you love the show. We release a new episode every Monday.

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