00:00:03
[music playing] NARRATOR: October 3, 2002,
Montgomery County, Maryland, 7:41 AM, 39-year-old landscape
gardener James Sonny Buchanan
00:00:18
was cutting grass
outside Fitzgerald Auto Malls on Rockville Pike. A single shot pierced the air,
and Sonny fell to the ground.
00:00:30
They just killed a man, and
it's a game to them, right? NARRATOR: 8:12 AM, cab
driver, Premkumat Walekar,
00:00:39
petrol station, Aspen
Hill, a single bullet ripped through his body. 911 OPERATOR (ON RECORDING):
911, what's the emergency?
00:00:45
MAN (ON RECORDING):
He's bleeding real bad. Just ordinary
folks, like you and I,
00:00:49
going about our daily business. NARRATOR: 8:37 AM,
34-year-old Sarah Ramos shot dead, sitting on a bench at
Leisure World Shopping Center.
00:01:00
MAN (ON RECORDING):
I need ambulance. Hurry. It could have
been anyone, anyone who's can pull the trigger.
00:01:07
NARRATOR: 9:58 AM,
Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, vacuuming her car at a
petrol station in Kensington.
00:01:15
These are men who were high
on killing, high on shooting innocent people. NARRATOR: 21:20,
72-year-old Pascal Charlot,
00:01:25
out walking in Washington DC. He was dead within the hour. And if there was one
single day that transformed
00:01:35
the nation's capital and
sent a shiver down its spine, it was October the 3rd, 2002.
00:01:42
NARRATOR: This was only the
beginning of a three-week reign of terror, executed
with deadly precision
00:01:48
by John Allen Muhammad and Lee
Boyd Malvo, two of the world's most evil killers.
00:01:55
[music playing] October 2000, Caribbean
Island of Antigua, after the breakdown of
his second marriage,
00:02:23
40-year-old John Allen
Muhammad kidnapped three of his young children and
fled to the Island of Antigua,
00:02:32
where he met 14-year-old
Lee Boyd Malvo. Lee Boyd was very
smart in school. He was a good kid.
00:02:40
He enjoyed sports. He was a normal, average,
everyday boy being raised by a single mother.
00:02:47
Muhammad looks at Malvo and
sees a young man who hasn't got a father figure, who doesn't
really have an authority
00:02:53
figure in his life at all. So that's the role
that he can step into, and he can start
pulling his strings.
00:02:59
NARRATOR: When Muhammad left
Antigua, Malvo followed him. And once Malvo got across
and was on the mainland
00:03:05
of the United States, he
reached out to Muhammad and wanted to come be with him.
00:03:11
NARRATOR: By September
2001, John Muhammad's life was crumbling around him. He had two failed
marriages and had
00:03:20
lost custody of his children. Lee Boyd Malvo was
all he had left. I think Malvo was desperate
to find a father figure.
00:03:31
I think he would
have done anything that Muhammad suggested. He was completely
under Muhammad's spell.
00:03:36
But it wasn't that one
was senior to the other. Malvo may have been
younger, but he
00:03:43
was every bit as determined
to kill and to impress his father figure. NARRATOR: The pair went
on a nine-month rampage
00:03:52
across the United States,
robbing and killing at random, before executing their plan in
the suburbs of Washington DC,
00:04:01
killing 17 people and
leaving 13 injured. Do I believe my father
is a serial killer?
00:04:09
Yes, I believe John Muhammad
committed the crimes that he was accused of. NARRATOR: These killer
stories begin in 1960.
00:04:24
John Allen Muhammad was born
John Allen Williams on December 31, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
00:04:32
His mother died
of breast cancer when he was very young,
around three years old.
00:04:37
And he was sent to Baton
Rouge to live with his aunts because his father just left.
00:04:42
His aunts had several
children, and John and his two brothers
and two Sisters were raised by them
in Baton Rouge.
00:04:51
John Muhammad's family
was expected to do all of the chores in the home. So John grew up feeling
pretty inadequate
00:05:02
from a very young age. NARRATOR: In 1978, Williams
graduated from Scotlandville High School at the age of 17.
00:05:11
He joins the Louisiana
National Guard, gives him a, kind of, rank status,
a bit of authority,
00:05:18
which, in many ways,
appeals to him. He is a man who likes to fit
into hierarchies at least,
00:05:24
in his early years. NARRATOR: At the age of 20,
John Williams fell in love with a girl called Carroll,
and they married in 1981,
00:05:33
welcoming their son
Lindbergh into the world the following year. What kind of
man was my father?
00:05:41
My father was a very stern
man, very, very conflicted man. He was in the military.
00:05:50
He was a type of person,
if he said something, you can bet that he was
going to do whatever
00:05:56
it takes to get that done. After a few years,
though, Caroll started hearing rumors that
John was seeing another woman.
00:06:07
And at one point, she went and
knocked on this woman's door, who lived in the
same neighborhood
00:06:13
they did and saw John
sitting on the couch, and realized that her
husband was cheating on her.
00:06:19
NARRATOR: John's new
girlfriend was Mildred. His wife Caroll
made the decision to separate from
her husband and took
00:06:27
their son, Lindbergh, with her. In 1985, he decides,
when his first marriage is collapsing, that he's
going to convert to Islam.
00:06:35
And I think this means
a great deal to him. And a couple of years later,
he joins the Nation of Islam,
00:06:43
run by Louis Farrakhan. For him, Islam was
very significant. NARRATOR: After facing
disciplinary action,
00:06:50
John Allen Williams left the
Louisiana National Guard. And in 1985, at the age of
25, enlisted in the US Army.
00:07:00
In the same year, he was
divorced from Carroll and moved in with
Mildred, marrying in 1988.
00:07:08
Two years later, he was
deployed to the Persian Gulf. Williams thrived in the
army, gaining the highest
00:07:16
level of expert
M-16 marksmanship and was decorated
for his service. So you have this period
of calm in Williams's life,
00:07:27
based in the US Army. And it's as if it's hanging on
to the army as his identity.
00:07:36
That is what makes
John Williams work. And for a long time, he
really remains quite stable.
00:07:45
He isn't rushing off. He's not-- I think
he likes the uniform. I think he likes the identity.
00:07:51
And I think he feels
that, oh, I'm-- I mean something now. I am-- I amount to something.
00:08:00
NARRATOR: On April 26,
1994, at the age of 33, Williams was honorably
discharged from the US Army.
00:08:09
He was now living in
Tacoma, Washington State with Mildred and
their three children.
00:08:16
He starts a couple of
businesses, neither of which really work, and
they fall apart.
00:08:23
And his marriage
to Mildred isn't going terrifically well either. They fought a lot, and
John was abusive to her
00:08:32
on numerous occasions. And their relationship
really went downhill. He loved his children.
00:08:41
Children were a very
big part of what he felt like his role in life was. And so, he tried to be
a good father to them,
00:08:51
and they did have a
close relationship. My mother raised
me most of my life. Me and my father spent a lot
of time talking over the phone.
00:09:00
And then, we had our
summers to where we will meet up with each other. So when I was younger, we went
to Washington for a summer.
00:09:08
Then, my sixth grade year
going to seventh grade, I went to Washington and
spent the summer with him.
00:09:15
NARRATOR: On one summer
visit with his father, Williams called
his ex-wife Caroll
00:09:19
and told her that Lindbergh
wasn't returning home. Carol ended up having
to get a court order
00:09:27
to get Lindbergh
back to Louisiana, and it took that whole summer. During that period, John
tried to brainwash Lindbergh.
00:09:36
It was just one of those
summers that I went down there, and he was telling me
things that, at that moment,
00:09:45
that I felt that
he knew I wanted to hear to keep me
away from my mother and keep me from going home.
00:09:54
NARRATOR: In September
1999, John Allen Williams's second marriage to
Mildred was falling apart,
00:10:02
and the couple separated. Three months later, Mildred
filed for divorce and custody
00:10:08
of their three children. That is a very big blow to
Williams and to his psyche. You've already had this
slightly frail psyche
00:10:20
looking for identity. He took some identity from being
married with three children.
00:10:24
He took some identity from
having been in the army. But now, he really is,
in a sense, cut loose.
00:10:32
He is on his own, and he
doesn't know what to do. So if there is a trigger to
the events that were to follow,
00:10:42
it is that divorce. Because then, Mildred applies
for a restraining order, making sure that Williams,
to become John Muhammad,
00:10:51
cannot have any contact with
her or with their children. NARRATOR: After receiving
the restraining order,
00:10:58
Williams kidnapped
his three children and fled to the Caribbean
Island of Antigua,
00:11:03
where an unlikely friendship
would have deadly consequences. October 2000, Antigua,
John Allen Williams
00:11:13
arrived on the island
with his three children. They were welcomed into
the local community,
00:11:19
and Williams made a living,
forging illegal documents. Soon after his arrival,
he met and enlisted
00:11:25
the help of a 14-year-old
islander called Lee Boyd Malvo. Lee Boyd Malvo was born in
Kingston, Jamaica in 1985.
00:11:36
His mother was Una James. She was not married
to his father. His father stuck around for
a few years but then left.
00:11:45
So Una raised Lee
Boyd by herself. They moved around
a lot, sometimes, Barbados, sometimes,
Jamaica, and eventually
00:11:54
made their way to Antigua. I think right when Muhammad
met Malvo, there was a bond.
00:12:02
And Muhammad used him to traffic
a fake birth certificates on the island, just
messenger-type work
00:12:09
and paid him a little bit. NARRATOR: Young Lee Boyd
Malvo had big dreams of one day becoming a
commercial airline pilot
00:12:17
and was a talented artist. But the one thing that he
does have some control over
00:12:22
is his schoolwork, and I
think this provides him with that consistency, with that
security, and that stability.
00:12:29
And he does incredibly
well in school. He got good exam results. He appears to be a
really promising student.
00:12:35
NARRATOR: Malvo's mother
obtained fake documents from Williams and travel
to Fort Myers, Florida,
00:12:42
looking for work. Una James left Lee Boyd Malvo
with John Muhammad in Antigua to watch him while she was gone.
00:12:52
And this was the moment
in which the father-son relationship that
lay at the heart
00:12:58
of what was to
come in the future began to form around the pair. NARRATOR: On May 24,
2001, John Allen Williams,
00:13:09
his children, and Lee Boyd Malvo
also left Antigua for Florida. Malvo traveled on
forged documents.
00:13:17
He stayed with his
mother in Fort Myers. Williams took his children
back to Bellingham
00:13:22
in Washington State. While he was gone,
Mildred had been granted a no-fault
divorce and full custody
00:13:30
of their three children. The authorities were soon
alerted of Williams' return. The children were
seized and returned
00:13:39
to their mother, who fled to
the East Coast and the suburbs of Washington DC. Williams, now alone and
homeless, moved into a shelter.
00:13:54
A month later, Lee
Boyd Malvo turned up at the Lighthouse Mission. John and Lee Boyd lived
together in a homeless shelter
00:14:03
for many months,
and it was there that John really began
inserting his discipline
00:14:10
into Lee Boyd's life. Eventually, John got a
place and began training Lee Boyd in the use of weaponry.
00:14:20
He started to cut Malvo off
from any others who might have an influence over him, and
that is a key tactic coercive
00:14:28
and controlling behavior. You isolate your
target from anybody who might criticize
the relationship
00:14:34
that you have with them. Muhammad did quite a lot
of good things for Malvo. He made sure he went to school.
00:14:40
In fact, at one point, he
registered him for school as his father,
actually cementing
00:14:46
this concept of him being the
father, molding his new son. NARRATOR: In October
2001, in recognition
00:14:57
of his Islamic faith,
John Allen Williams had officially changed his
name to John Allen Muhammad.
00:15:04
He encouraged Lee
Boyd to also learn about his version of Islam. John took Lee
Boyd under his wing.
00:15:14
He had kidnapped his
own son Lindbergh, and that hadn't worked out. And so, in Lee Boyd, he
saw the perfect venue
00:15:21
through which to, you
know, achieve what he wanted to achieve in life. They start shooting
at tree stumps.
00:15:32
Malvo is very impressed by this. And remember, he's 16. He's very impressionable.
00:15:43
Lee Boyd was actually
right for the manipulation that John would do with him. John controlled every aspect
of his life, what he ate.
00:15:55
He exercised him rigorously. John was a master marksman,
and he trained Lee Boyd to be a marksman.
00:16:05
NARRATOR: Malvo's
mother, Una James, arrived in Bellingham in
December 2001 to see her son.
00:16:16
They met at the
Lighthouse Mission, but someone had tipped
off Immigration Services.
00:16:22
Both Una and Lee Boyd were
detained as illegal immigrants. Before he could be deported,
Malvo managed to run away
00:16:32
and returned to John Muhammad. What was it that turned
them from being an older man and a younger
boy into what was
00:16:50
effectively a killing machine? I think it started
because Malvo wanted to prove to Williams that
he is worthy of his respect.
00:17:02
I think that Malvo
always wanted to show the older man that he was
capable of living up to him.
00:17:10
NARRATOR: February 16,
2002, Tacoma, Washington. Lee Boyd Malvo
approached the house
00:17:21
of Isa Nichols, a friend of John
Muhammad's ex-wife, Mildred. Her niece, Keenya Nicole
Cook was visiting her aunt
00:17:31
with her baby daughter. Keenya answered a knock
at the front door. Malvo shot the
21-year-old point-blank.
00:17:51
He killed, for the
first time, two days before his 17th birthday. I absolutely believe
that John Allen Muhammad
00:18:03
brainwashed Lee Boyd Malvo. I think Lee Boyd's life would
have been totally different had
00:18:09
he never met John Muhammad. I don't think he would
have ever killed. NARRATOR: One month
later, March 19th,
00:18:17
in Tucson, Arizona,
60-year-old Jerry Taylor was on the golf course. A long range single shot
to the chest killed him.
00:18:28
From March to August
2002, there were two more fatalities and
five serious injuries
00:18:35
across several states. The first proper killing
is almost certainly committed by Malvo as
a test from Muhammad.
00:18:51
You've got to kill someone,
so that I can see that you are worthy of my respect.
00:18:58
And the first
string of shootings almost all are
committed by Malvo. [music playing]
00:19:15
NARRATOR: September 5,
2002, Clinton, Maryland. Restaurant owner
Paul Jay LaRuffa
00:19:25
was carrying over $3,000
of cash and a laptop inside his briefcase. As he got in the car, Lee Boyd
Malvo rushed up and shot him
00:19:36
six times through the window. He emptied the briefcase,
stole the cash, and fled with a
laptop and his gun.
00:19:48
Miraculously, Paul
Jay LaRuffa survived. Five days later, with the
cash stolen from LaRuffa,
00:19:57
Muhammad purchased a 1990 Blue
Chevy Caprice at Sure Shot Auto Sales in Trenton, New Jersey.
00:20:07
Apparently, when Muhammad was
purchasing this Chevy Caprice in New Jersey, we
learned from the salesman
00:20:13
that he did something
very unusual, that, in 25 years of being
a car salesman, had never been seen
before by this person.
00:20:20
He said that Muhammad
opened the trunk and climbed into the
back of the trunk and pulled the cover the trunk
cover down and said, yeah,
00:20:29
this will work. NARRATOR: September
15, Clinton, Maryland. September 21, Atlanta, Georgia.
00:20:49
19 hours later, a liquor
store in Montgomery, Alabama, two women were gunned
down with a long range,
00:20:57
high-powered rifle. Malvo approached and rifle
through their purses. A police car spotted
him and gave chase.
00:21:08
He ran, dropping a gun
catalog, and discarding a 0.22 caliber revolver. Claudine Lee Parker
died of her injuries
00:21:19
and Kelly Adams survived despite
being shot through the neck. Finally, September 23,
Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
00:21:32
In this first
spree of killings, they are moving
location across states. They weren't
concentrating on one area,
00:21:41
and that made them incredibly
difficult to track down because these, apparently,
were random killings
00:21:48
committed in different states. How you join the dots to that? The answer is, you don't.
00:21:55
NARRATOR: Between September the
26th and October the 2nd, 2002, there were no killings.
00:22:03
During this break,
Muhammad and Malvo modified their new Chevy Caprice. They drilled a
hole in the trunk.
00:22:12
They used a glove to lay
the barrel on through the hole to extend the end of the
rifle through to the outside
00:22:21
of the trunk. And then, they pulled
the trunk, almost closed, but left about an inch for
visibility through their site.
00:22:29
NARRATOR: Satisfied
with the modifications, they headed to the
suburbs of Washington DC.
00:22:36
On October the 2nd,
2002, at half past five in the afternoon,
a shot was fired through a craft store window,
narrowly missing the cashier.
00:22:46
That was the first of
the DC sniper shootings. An hour later, at half past six,
a man was killed by a rifle.
00:22:57
He was called James Martin. NARRATOR: The following
day, October 3, 07:41, James Sonny Buchanan
was shot, mowing
00:23:06
the lawn of an Auto Mall. NARRATOR: 30 minutes later,
at a petrol station in Aspen
00:23:18
Hill, Premkumar Walekar. NARRATOR: Leisure World
Shopping Center, Sarah Ramos. NARRATOR: She was sitting
on a bench, reading a book.
00:23:32
That same morning,
Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera vacuuming her Dodge minivan. And then, finally,
on that day, at 9:20
00:23:43
in the evening, Pascal
Charlot, a retired carpenter was shot, walking along Georgia
Avenue in Washington DC.
00:23:54
And if there was one single day
that transformed the nation's capital and sent a
shiver down its spine,
00:24:03
it was October the 3rd, 2002. NARRATOR: October 3, Montgomery
County, Maryland, John Allen
00:24:12
Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo had
brought terror to the suburbs of Washington DC. Five people had been killed
in less than 16 hours.
00:24:25
Ashan Benedict was
a Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms
00:24:30
assigned to the
Washington field division. At that time, you know, five
people getting shot in one day
00:24:36
was very unusual, right? Unfortunately, in
today's day and age, you hear about it
much more frequently.
00:24:43
But at that time, it definitely
raised some eyebrows. It definitely got law
enforcement response generated.
00:24:49
And the great thing
about ATF is that we will respond to shootings as
a matter of business practice.
00:24:57
NARRATOR: Witness
statements on October 3 detailed seeing a
blue Chevy Caprice, but it was not reported
as acting suspiciously.
00:25:07
On that day, at 7:00
PM in the evening, the Chevy ran two stop
signs near Washington DC
00:25:14
and was stopped by the police. John Muhammad pulled over. He had a valid license.
00:25:21
He had a valid
registration, and he was very respectful and
cordial to the officers
00:25:25
when they stopped him. These attacks came
a year after 9/11, and 9/11 cast a very
long shadow over the US.
00:25:33
There was a real climate of
fear, a real state of anxiety. The nation was on a really high
state of alert at this time,
00:25:42
so it's almost like the
perfect opportunity, this window of time,
for Muhammad and Malvo
00:25:49
to wreak utter destruction. We're going to
follow the evidence. We're going to follow the
science and the technology.
00:25:55
We had numerous shell casings
recovered at all these scenes, and they all went to the
ATF National Laboratory
00:26:02
in Beltsville, Maryland. And so we ascertained
very quickly that the same gun
was used to fire
00:26:09
at different shooting scenes. So that science gave
us a starting point. We knew we had one shooter
or we had one gun utilized
00:26:18
by several shooters,
potentially, and that, kind of, honed
in our investigative team.
00:26:24
Those bullets that we received
had six lands and grooves, and they had a
right twist on it.
00:26:32
And we can measure
those land impressions, each one of the six. And we can measure each one
of the groove impressions,
00:26:41
note the direction of twist,
and come up with a fair degree of accuracy, the
make and the model
00:26:47
of the firearm that
fired that projectile. NARRATOR: The gun was
identified as a Bushmaster
00:26:53
0.223 caliber rifle,
not a weapon usually associated with a sniper. You can go to
gun shows and just
00:27:01
buy it, cash and carry, in
some locations here in the US. The AR style 15 firearm was
developed by the military,
00:27:12
and it was a firearm
they used in Vietnam. It's not an unusual firearm. In the States, most
of them mass shootings
00:27:20
occur with this kind of rifle. On October the 4th,
the following day to this outrageous attack
in Washington DC, the pair
00:27:29
moved their location. And a woman called
Carolyn Sowell is shot while she's loading her car.
00:27:37
She does, however, survive. NARRATOR: Forensic analysis
from the crime scene, again,
00:27:43
determined that the bullet
fragments came from a 0.223 caliber Bushmaster. A blue Chevy Caprice was
also seen in the vicinity.
00:27:54
The tip lines receive thousands
of calls and witness sightings of a blue Chevy were
buried in the volume
00:28:01
of information coming in. Three days later, on October
7, Muhammad and Malvo drove to a wooded area close
to Benjamin Tasker Middle
00:28:12
School in Bowie, Maryland. One of them took a ballpoint
pen and wrote on a tarot card
00:28:20
depicting death, Call Me God. On the back, they wrote,
"For you, Mr. Police. Code Call Me God.
00:28:28
Do not release to the press." The card was placed in a plastic
bag and attached to a tree.
00:28:36
They hunkered down in a
makeshift blind and waited. He's got Iran
Brown, and he's 13.
00:28:45
He's attending a
middle school, and he's been taken there by his aunt. NARRATOR: He fell to the ground
with a single gunshot wound
00:28:57
to the chest,
critically injured. Now, all of our victims
have been innocent, have been defenseless.
00:29:05
But now, we're
stepping over the line because our children
don't deserve this. But it's after that
shooting that we get
00:29:13
the first communication
between Muhammad and Malvo and the authorities. "Dear Mr. Police--"
it's a taunt.
00:29:26
It was leaked that
it said, "I am God." And in fact, it
said, "Call Me God." So anyone that called
the tip line and said,
00:29:32
I know somebody who says,
I am God 10 times a day. I think you should look at him.
00:29:37
We were able to eliminate
without spending too much time on it. We were all in this together.
00:29:41
And whatever the agency
had did the best of, they brought that best
to the table and said,
00:29:46
I will handle this. ATF said, we are the federal
firearms investigative agency for the United States.
00:29:54
We will do the ballistics. The FBI will do fingerprinting. The Montgomery County,
Prince George's County,
00:30:00
Virginia State authorities, you
know, they work crime scenes. That's what they do well.
00:30:07
NARRATOR: On October
9, around 8:15 in the evening,
53-year-old Dean Meyers was filling his car
at a Sunoco Petrol
00:30:15
Station in Manassas, Virginia. The blue Chevy
Caprice was parked in a lot across the street.
00:30:26
A single shot to the
head killed Meyers as he stood at the petrol pump. With such a heightened
state of alert,
00:30:34
police were quickly
at the scene. The bullet recovered was from a
0.223 caliber Bushmaster rifle.
00:30:42
In the immediate
aftermath of the shooting, Muhammad was interviewed in the
parking lot, but not detained.
00:30:52
Local news here in
Washington is national news. And so, when you
have a serial shooter
00:30:57
or shooters committing
random acts of violence in the nation's capital
and its suburbs,
00:31:02
it captures the nation's
attention very, very quickly. All eyes are on
Washington at that time.
00:31:07
It was like anybody else
sitting at home, watching CNN. And you see, one day, it
was a shooting somewhere.
00:31:17
And then, you check back,
two or three days later, and it's another shooting,
then it's another shooting.
00:31:22
So I was captivated and on alert
like the rest of the world was. So I think there was
a sense of satisfaction
00:31:30
on the part of the snipers that
they were agreeable to create this sense of fear,
paralyze a community,
00:31:36
paralyze the nation's capital,
the region with one gun. And so-- but it wasn't
enough for them.
00:31:44
I mean, they could have gone to
across the country and escaped. But no, they kept at it.
00:31:49
It was a game of cat and mouse. NARRATOR: Seven dead in
the DC suburbs and two more critically injured.
00:31:57
For Muhammad and Malvo,
it wasn't enough. John Allen Muhammad and Lee
Boyd Malvp's killing spree
00:32:06
had gripped the entire nation. No one in and around
Washington DC felt safe. Although their targets were
random, the planning was not.
00:32:18
They were killing
people close to the exits and entrances of interstates. So as they would shoot
somebody, all they had to do
00:32:28
is jump on the interstate to
go to their next destination. And it made an easy
escape route for them.
00:32:35
On October 11,
2002, Kenneth Bridges is shot at an Exxon Station
in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
00:32:43
And at that point, some of the
gas station owners on the East Coast begin to erect tarpaulins
so that their customers can
00:32:54
drive in and fill up their cars
without fearing they're going to be targeted by a sniper.
00:33:00
That's how big an effect
that Muhammad and Malvo have had on the whole area. There is no connection
between the victims.
00:33:09
The only connection is
between the shootings themselves, the ballistics, the
evidence left behind, the DNA,
00:33:16
the fingerprints, the notes. That was the link. NARRATOR: October 14,
Columbus Day holiday.
00:33:24
47-year-old FBI analyst Linda
Franklin was shopping at a Home Depot with her husband.
00:33:32
From across the
street, Malvo trained his sight on William Franklin. At the last moment, he switched
targets and pulled the trigger.
00:33:45
And she had her head blown
off in front of her husband, literally, and that
reality and just
00:33:53
the whole emotion of the gravity
of that, and the sadness-- I mean, the 911 called
that Mr. Franklin made,
00:34:02
immediately, following
Linda Franklin going down, is chilling. And I will never get
that out of my head.
00:34:14
No one was standing around. Folks were definitely
on edge and not looking to make themselves a target.
00:34:19
But the streets
were just shut down. And the amount of traffic
in the Washington region
00:34:24
is pretty heavy on a normal day. When you start shutting down
roads around crime scenes
00:34:29
and on the Beltway, it
comes to an absolute crawl. NARRATOR: After the
shooting of Linda Franklin,
00:34:37
Muhammad and Malvo
laid low for five days. During this period, the task
force caught a lucky break.
00:34:45
A fingerprint taken from a gun
catalog found at a crime scene in Alabama on September
22 was a match
00:34:53
to a print taken by Immigration
Services in Bellingham, Washington State. This information coincided
with a call to the tip line
00:35:02
from a Bellingham resident
called Robert Holmes. An army friend of John Allen
Williams who said, I think,
00:35:11
this could be my friend and
my co-worker in the army, and he gave us that name. And he said, incidentally,
he's recently
00:35:19
been traveling with someone,
I think, is about 17 that he nicknamed Sniper. The National Motor
Vehicle Title database
00:35:28
also revealed that John
Allen Muhammad had purchased a blue Chevy Caprice
on September 10, 2002,
00:35:37
in Trenton, New Jersey. It was very specific. We had linked the shootings to
the robbery down in Alabama.
00:35:48
The forensics
information came in. The DNA came in. The fingerprints came in. We were able to put that
all together and realize
00:35:56
who we're looking for. So now, we had
concrete information on the suspects and the
vehicle we're looking for.
00:36:04
So that happened in
a blink of an eye, where we went from
casting a wide net to now
00:36:09
we know who we're looking for. We're fishing with a spear. NARRATOR: On the
evening of October 19,
00:36:16
Malvo and Muhammad were
concealed in the treeline opposite the
Ponderosa Steakhouse
00:36:22
in Ashland, Virginia, waiting. They tacked a handwritten
five-page note to a nearby tree.
00:36:33
The note was emblazoned with 13
red stars, one for each kill. Just before 8:00 PM,
37-year-old Jeffrey Hopper
00:36:43
left the steakhouse
with his wife and was shot in the stomach. He was critically
injured, but alive.
00:36:52
The note basically
demanded $10 million be put on a credit card, which,
fortunately, the criminals
00:36:58
aren't as smart as they
could be or it might be more difficult to catch them. But they expected us to put
$10 million on a credit card.
00:37:06
Muhammad asks for $10 million
for them to give themselves up, so that they can found a
school for disadvantaged
00:37:17
Black children in Canada. NARRATOR: On October
22, Muhammad and Malvo waited across the street from a
bus stop in Montgomery County.
00:37:32
Another note was
positioned in plain sight. At 5:58 AM, a bus driver was
about to begin his daily route.
00:37:40
A single gunshot to the
chest, he died standing on the top step of his bus. His name is Conrad,
his first name.
00:37:51
The note in the bushes,
in the plastic bag, not necessarily for its forensic
value, but for the mere fact
00:38:00
that they put it there,
and they just killed a man. And it's a game to them, right?
00:38:05
It was so upsetting to me to
see that that level of so casual about taking a life,
and planting this note,
00:38:14
and going, now, see
if you can find me. Here's a little bit--
here's a little bit more.
00:38:21
NARRATOR: On October 23,
the DC sniper task force released the license plate
of the blue Chevy Caprice
00:38:28
and descriptions of
their primary suspects to the national media. Well, we wanted to use
the media, and the public,
00:38:36
and law enforcement as a team
to find these suspects, right? So it wasn't a secret that
we wanted to find them,
00:38:42
and we need everybody's
help to do that. So the only things that we were
trying to keep, kind of, close
00:38:48
hold was we wanted to make sure
the information we're releasing to the public was accurate.
00:38:53
It was actionable,
and it was timely. NARRATOR: On October 23,
refrigerator repairman, Whitney
00:39:01
Donahue, was driving
home on the I-70 to Pennsylvania
when he heard a news report releasing the details
of the wanted suspects.
00:39:11
He made a note on
his pay stub, which was on his passenger seat,
of the information of the car
00:39:16
and wrote down
the license plate. He pulled into a rest
stop off of I-70. And as soon as he got parked, he
observed a blue Chevy Caprice.
00:39:29
It fit description of what he
had just heard on the news. He called 911. And so, he was very brave
and got on his CB radio,
00:39:39
which is the ability to
communicate with the truckers in the region. And on his own,
he asked truckers
00:39:45
to help block the
entrance to the rest stop and the exit from the rest
stop with their 18-wheelers,
00:39:53
so that these suspects wouldn't
be able to escape by car. NARRATOR: Donahue
confirmed the license
00:39:58
plate and that the vehicle
was occupied to the police. He waited and watched as law
enforcement agents moved in.
00:40:08
The window was breached
because the door in the back was locked. They were pulled out.
00:40:14
They were handcuffed and
separated on the curb. And immediately, the first
review of the car, they
00:40:21
were able to find the
Bushmaster behind the back seat. And it had one in the
chamber, ready to fire.
00:40:27
It was actually not
in the safe mode. So a simple pull of
the trigger, and there
00:40:32
would have been an incident. And Malvo said, it's my
fault. I fell asleep. It was a huge relief, and it
was a sense of accomplishment
00:40:42
and pride, not only for ATF, but
for the entire task force team. The nation's psyche was
drawn to this investigation
00:40:51
because, really, it could be
any one of us on any given day. Three weeks of shootings, of
trying to find these people,
00:40:58
bring them to justice,
get them off the street, get the public
safety aspect back
00:41:04
to where folks are comfortable
in their communities. NARRATOR: Both
men initially pled
00:41:10
not guilty and faced
years of litigation for their
multi-jurisdictional crimes. In October 2003,
John Allen Muhammad
00:41:20
was first brought to trial
in the State of Virginia for the murder of Dean Meyers.
00:41:26
He was found guilty
of capital murder. And in March 2004, sentenced
to death by lethal injection.
00:41:34
Lee Boyd Malvo was first
brought to trial in 2003 in Virginia for the
murder of Linda Franklin.
00:41:41
As a minor, he did not
face the death penalty. Three years later, in a surprise
reversal, Malvo pleaded guilty
00:41:49
and testified against Muhammad. Malvo is currently serving
10 consecutive life sentences without parole in Red
Onion State Prison in Virginia.
00:42:02
I don't hold
him as responsible as I hold John Allen Muhammad. Because John Allen
Muhammad took a teenager
00:42:09
who did not have a
father from his home, and he manipulated him. He brainwashed him, and he
trained him to be a monster.
00:42:19
There isn't an ounce of
me that thinks that Malvo was brainwashed by Muhammad. I think that he was all in, and
was a very willing participant.
00:42:28
He was calculating and
smart on choosing targets, and the teamwork was
obviously very successful.
00:42:35
The prosecutors in Muhammad's
trial insisted that, perhaps, the motive was that Muhammad
wished to shoot his ex-wife,
00:42:44
second ex-wife, Mildred. And he was using these shootings
around Washington as an excuse.
00:42:50
I've never believed it. I don't think it's true. How could the person
that, at one point in time,
00:42:55
I looked up to commit
these type of crimes? What happened to lead
up to these crimes?
00:43:04
What went so wrong
to make you snap and think this was the right
decision to make these actions?
00:43:14
NARRATOR: On November 10, 2009,
at Greensville Correctional Center in Virginia,
John Allen Muhammad was
00:43:22
executed by lethal injection. At 9:11 PM, Muhammad
was pronounced dead. NARRATOR: The only person
He spoke to that night
00:43:31
was his son Lindbergh. Last words my father told
me was, be strong, Black man. That was his exact last words.
00:43:41
Be strong, Black man. And he turned around
and walked out the door and never looked back.
00:43:46
What makes these two
killers so despicable is the fact that to
be somebody, they
00:43:52
had to destroy other people. They felt that to gain the
respect that they were entitled
00:43:58
to and to gain the recognition,
they needed to go and harm and gunned down everyday people
going about their business.
00:44:06
I remember seeing, again,
his body outside that bus and thinking to
myself, you know,
00:44:12
this gentleman
just went to work, to take people to about
their day-to-day lives,
00:44:17
and that was taken from him. And it was senselessly
taken from him. I am getting older,
and I don't remember what
00:44:23
I had to eat yesterday
for breakfast, but I remember the
dates, and the victims,
00:44:28
and the tragedy of this case
with a snap of a finger. So I can't explain it. It's just-- it's deep.
00:44:40
NARRATOR: 17 people
shot dead, the largest serial killer manhunt in the
history of the United States
00:44:47
had ended. There was no pattern to
the senseless killing. There were no victim profiles.
00:44:53
They were all just ordinary
folk, living their lives, going about their daily
business, when they were
00:44:59
targeted by the Beltway
snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd
Malvo, two of the world's
00:45:06
most evil killers. [music playing]