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a man is been killed in front of me how is he being killed in front of you for three terrifying weeks the eyes of the
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world were on Virginia and Maryland a Serial sniper terrorized the community 13 people were hit 10 of them
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died this is how forensic science and solid police work combined to solve the case
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[Music] [Music] on October 2nd 2002 police in Montgomery County Maryland were investigating a
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number of shooting deaths 55-year-old James Martin was felled by one bullet while putting
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groceries into his car 39-year-old Sunny Buchanan was killed by a single gunshot while mowing
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a lawn a 54-year-old cab driver was gunned down while filling his car with gas nothing like this has ever happened
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in Montgomery County uh this is a very safe Community uh our homicide rate just increased by 25% in one
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day all looked like the work of the same perpetrator police knew each victim was
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shot from 100 to 200 yards away but they didn't know where the shooter was located the FBI used television and film
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animation software to build models of the crime scenes to determine where the shooter was
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positioned and since the shooter got away cleanly some believed that two people were involved a spotter and a
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shooter my theory was it was a driver with him that that's how he was getting
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away you kill one person you kill two people I think that was a that would be a pretty good day you know for a normal
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Psychopathic murderer but now you go on to the third to Fourth within two hours so at that point I felt as though there
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were two people the fourth victim was 34-year-old Sarah Ramos shot and killed while sitting on a bench outside this
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post office a 25-year-old Nanny was shot at another gas station we at the corner
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of M in Connecticut a woman was vacuuming her car something blew up she's unconscious she's got blood coming
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out of her nose and her mouth and 72-year-old Pascal Charlo was shot and killed while crossing a Washington DC
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Street a witness reported seeing an older model four-door Chevrolet leaving the area of the shooting with its lights
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off we feel like we probably have a skilled shooter uh and and that does heighten Our
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concern and these last three shootings provided police with their first forensic
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evidence bullet fragments removed from the victim were large enough for forensic analysis we do what was called
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a fracture Parts match in an attempt to see if the it's basically like trying to
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assemble a jigsaw puzzle as the bullet goes through the barrel the lands and grooves inside Mark
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each bullet the sniper was using 223 caliber bullets the marks on fragments from the
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last three victims were all from the same weapon the bullets were hollow point bullets
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designed to do considerable damage and that's the idea behind the hollow point
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bullet is to increase the frontal area of the Bullet by opening up this goes out at about 3400 ft per second when it
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hits a body it traumatizes the body just from the impact along with the then it tumbles around in the
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body the next day a 43-year-old woman was shot in a shopping Center parking lot this time farther south in
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Spotsylvania County Virginia fortunately she survived some witnesses said they saw a
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white van or truck in the vicinity of the shootings but with few other leads investigators hoped the new science of
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geographical profiling would help identify the Killer [Music] a Serial snipers had already shot seven
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people in Virginia and Maryland and many in the community were starting to panic
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investigators had little physical evidence so they turned to some newer techniques of crime solving for years
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the police Sciences have used stuff from physics chemistry biology all the hard Sciences now we're starting to see
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development of tools for placing from the the social and the soft Sciences psychology criminology
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sociology investigators asked Kim rosmo to do a geographic profile of the Killer
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rossmo is a former Canadian police detective who invented the computer software that's used sirel and stranger
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crimes have a problem of information overload too many suspects too many tips it's not uncommon for these lists to be
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in the hundreds and even thousands it's like the classic needle and the Hy stack
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problem they may be there but where do you start rosmo believes that criminals operate within a predictable distance
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from where they live so he entered the locations of all the shootings into his computer program which contains
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information gathered from thousands of earlier case studies criminals are lazy now criminals are also concerned about
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committing crimes too close to their home so there will be a bit of a buffer zone around there but there's a point
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where their desire to operate in their comfort zone balances their desire for anonymity the computer Maps where that
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balance occurs and then the computer system generates for us after a number of calculations up to a million What's
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called the Jeopardy surface three-dimensional probability surface showing us the most likely location of
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offender residence the crime scene are shown in yellow or green the perpetrator's likely
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home is shown in red or orange police also asked the FBI for a behavioral profile of the
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sniper both the strength and weakness of Behavioral profiling is that it's based
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primarily on the study of individuals who have committed past crimes and identifies what is common among
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them based on past criminal history behavioral profilers say a spree killer is usually a white male in his late 20s
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to early 30s High School educated and is most likely divorced no profile can solve a crime
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you need physical evidence and witness or a confession to do that science is is an asset science
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helps but people talking to people getting information from people is our best ally but police were certain of one
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thing the killer or killers were watching the media it's common that they follow it in the media they often may
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interject themselves into the investigation in some way um again that that kind of feeds their ego so he may
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have been watching when Chief moose assured the public that area children were safe Montgomery County officials
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say tomorrow will be a normal school day on October 7th the sniper shot and wounded an eighth grader as he entered
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his school anxious parents questioned whether their children were safe at all I'm just happy that my dad came to get
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me he said he's happy because I did come to get him I came to pick him up all of
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our victims have been innocent have been defenseless but now we're Stepping Over
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The Line because our children don't deserve this the idea of moms taking their kids to school and Sheltering them
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from a potential sniper attack is is not the American I know in a wooded area 150
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yard from the school police found a cover to a pen a shell casing and a tarot card the kind used in fortune
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telling the shell casing was a 223 caliber a very common round which can be fired from many different
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rifles the killer left the death card inscribed with the words dear policeman I am
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God within days there were three more shootings 53-year-old Dean Meyers was killed at a gas station near Manasses
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Virginia then Kenneth Bridges at a gas station in Fredericksburg Virginia as a policeman stood just 50 yard
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away then female FBI analyst Linda Franklin was killed in the parking lot of a hardware store Witnesses continued
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to report seeing a white van or truck in the vicinity of the shootings I've ordered the full resources of the
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federal government to help local law enforcement officials in their e in their efforts to capture this
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person one tool from the federal government was a high-tech military surveillance plane able to detect the
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burst of flame made by a rifle when fired but it didn't help the next shooting happened far from the
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surveillance area a man was shot and wounded outside a steakhouse in Ashland Virginia 90 mi from Washington he's
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willing to change his Mo uh he listens to the media that's one way we know that
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he's careful in taking his notes and doing his reconnaissance in the woods next to the
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restaurant the sniper left another message with an ominous [Music] warning after the 12th shooting in a
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horrifying spree the sniper left another note it was a four-page letter enclosed
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in a plastic bag along with a shell casing the letter demanded $10 million to be transferred into a credit card
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account belonging to an Arizona bus driver whose wallet had been stolen prior to the
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attacks after 10 12 shootings he decides he wants money now I think the money aspect of it is an afterthought it's
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just like uh you know I'm I'm in charge everybody I got life and death in my
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hand well want I to ask for $10 million why I to ask for a billion dollars what tends to get people in trouble is their
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own narcissism the notion of you give somebody enough rope and they eventually hang themselves that people get to uh
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cocki riddled with poor grammar and misspellings the four-page letter referred to us indicating more than one
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person was involved the note warned that if the demands were not met more shootings
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would follow shot he's been L BL here sir please hurry up please send some help
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please I'm on the bus the next morning 35-year-old Conrad Johnson was killed as
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he was stepping out of his bus a note similar to the previous one was discovered in a wooded area close to the
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site the snipers also made repeated attempts to make contact with investigators through the sniper tip
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line most were messages beginning with call me God but it was another piece of communication that gave the killers
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away the sniper called a Catholic priest in ashin Virginia asking for forgiveness
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for the sniper shootings and also mentioned a murder he committed in Montgomery Alabama interestingly police in
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Montgomery Alabama had an unsolved murder a month earlier two employees of a liquor store had been shot one fatally
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while locking up the store for the night Kelly Adams survived the shooting but she didn't didn't see the shooter I
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could have died I just don't take things for granted anymore Witnesses saw one of the
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suspects drop a magazine while running from the scene forensic experts in Alabama tested the magazine for latent
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fingerprints using a series of techniques including magnetic powder and the chemical ninhydrin
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they also tried superglue fuming in an airtight chamber a small amount of superglue is heated which
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vaporizes then attaches to biological materials these techniques produce several usable fingerprints which
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federal authorities scanned into the computer system called aphys the aphis system is actually an
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acronym for automated fingerprint identification system and what it is it's a computer that will
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actually scan a pattern type of a latent print the computer makes millions of comparisons that would take a human
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being years and uses numerous government databases in the immigration database investigators had a
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match the fingerprints on the magazine belonged to 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo an immigrant from Jamaica police later
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learned his nickname was sniper given to him by a man who used to date malvo's
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mother 41-year-old John Muhammad Malvo and Muhammad had once lived in this house in Tacoma Washington
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neighbors said they often heard gunfire from the home's backyard Lee Boyd Malvo
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and John Muhammad were now the prime suspects but where were they and could they be found before they killed
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[Music] again a telephone call from the killer a fingerprint from a magazine cover and
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ballistic test had led police to two suspects 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo and 41-year-old John
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Muhammad a check of Motor Vehicle registrations revealed Muhammad owned a 1990 Chevrolet Capri with New Jersey
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license plates information that was released to the media the public is requested to call if
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they have any information regarding mohammed's whereabouts or any other information that investigators could use
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to to locate this [Music] individual just a few hours later an alert truck driver noticed the car in a
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highway rest stop police arrested Malvo and Muhammad without incident the two had been sleeping in
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the car in the trunk police found a semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle with a small tripod and a
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scope also in the car was a laptop computer and a global positioning satellite receiver or
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GPS satellites in space can instantly locate a car with a GPS receiver and provide maps of the area ensuring a
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quick getaway on the laptop computer were drafts of letters with language similar
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to previous Communications from the snipers also in the computer were directions to locations of the attacks
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some marked by a skull and crossbones and investigators found a list entitled people to die later on it
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were the names of the Ashlin Virginia priest and someone at a local radio station the rifle from Muhammad's car
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was sent to ATF headquarters to principal examiner Walter Dandridge the investigators want this information uh
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yesterday and the lands and grooves of the rifle matched the bullet fragments taken from the
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victims the results of forensic testing are that the weapon ceased from the vehicle occupied by Muhammad
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has been forensically determined to be the murder weapon the only fingerprints on the
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rifle were those of Lee Boyd Malvo however both suspects were found to be sources of DNA lodged in The Ridges of
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the rifle scope on the murder weapon malvo's DNA was also found on the pen casing found near the school
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shooting Muhammad's DNA was discovered on the plastic bag containing the letter
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found in Ashlin Virginia the car was modified to conceal the sniper actions to illustrate how
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Forensic Files obtained an identical car and had its trunk and rear seat modified
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in the same way as police found the sniper [Music] car there was a 4-in hole cut in the
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trunk and a portion of the back seat was missing as this demonstration shows a shooter could easily get in inside the
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trunk and fire through the [Music] hole this is the view looking through the scope of a rifle combined that with
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the anonymity of shooting through a hole in a car trunk and a driver leaving the
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scene within seconds of the shooting and it's easy to see how they could get away
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so cleanly even a policeman standing near the car might not have noticed anything
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suspicious any muzzle flash would have been sheltered from aerial surveillance Geographic profiling had
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assumed the snipers lived near the first group of victims in a way they did the mobile bunker they called home allowed
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them to reach the balanced year graphic profiling counted on near to home but also
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Anonymous but there was still a question of why killings occurred there's got to
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be a motive people just don't go out and kill people Muhammad's ex-wife thinks she knows she
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thinks the killings were a setup so that when Muhammad killed her it would appear
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to be a random killing by the sniper Muhammad's wife lived in Maryland near the Jeopardy area identified as the
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Killer's Comfort Zone by the geographical profile forensic evidence is very important to prosecute the case never
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ever profile never Clairvoyant we don't play that what you play is hard detective work John Muhammad and Lee
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Boyd Malvo were both tried and convicted of two counts of capital murder Muhammad
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was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and of a Firearms violation Muhammad was sentenced to
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death Malvo was sentenced to life in prison the courts more and more like to see hard physical evidence and forensic
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evidence and ballistics in particular can provide that because there can really be no question if a particular
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bullet is matched to a particular gun that can put the Smoking Gun into somebody's stand
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[Music] [Music]