Map supplied by Steven Emerson, "American Jihad"
Free Press 2002
p.s. after I read of the French 2nd Lt. Marksman missing and failed to return to his military school in France this September after visiting here on leave, and it was mentioned that he wanted to go visit Michigan, I looked at this map again(saved it on my hard-drive) and noticed there are several terrorist groups located in Michigan and several in the Washington DC area. Maybe something - maybe not. Anyway, he's a marksman, 25, French citizenship, but maybe Yugoslavian ancestery-as per related news story. And he's still missing. Requesting large sum of money?? This does not fit the jihad/terrorist profile to date.
Pam Wiseman
1 888 324-9800- this line is deluged with calls- only call if you have specific leads or tips- or else
visit on-line: www.fbi.gov/sniper/sniper.htm
Tuesday, October 22, 2002 Posted: 8:49 AM EDT (1249 GMT)
The French deserter had been training at the Combined Armies Military School (Ecole militaire Inter-Armees) in Coetquidan in Brittany.
Police urge 'the person who called' to call again, and two men detained by police are found to have no link to the killings. CNN's Skip Loescher reports (October 22)
For four years, between 1989 and 1993, a sniper terrorized Ohio -- until a letter from a victim's mother led investigators to his capture. CNN's Maria Hinojosa reports (October 22)
PARIS, Lyon -- France has alerted Interpol about a crack military marksman who is missing in North America, prompting speculation over a link to a sniper who has killed nine people and wounded three in the Washington area.
The killings, which have taken place mainly around shopping centres since October 2, have baffled U.S. police and spread fear among Americans living in the area.
Police officers are trying to establish telephone contact with a messenger linked to the sniper, and on Monday arrested two men near the area from where the tipster rang authorities.
But neither man was charged and federal law enforcement sources said no evidence was found linking either man to the shootings.
The French deserter had been training to be a second lieutenant in the army at the prestigious Saint-Cyr, in Coetquidan in the northern coastal region of Brittany. The school provides general training in shooting but does not train elite sharp-shooters.
The Frenchman went to the U.S. and Canada for a holiday in August and was due to return to the academy for the resumption of classes at the beginning of September but failed to turn up.
A French defence ministry spokesman told Reuters that "at this stage, we have absolutely no certainty that this military deserter is the Washington sniper."
Interpol has been notified and a judicial investigation is beginning, both normal procedures, the spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau added.
He could not confirm media reports that the 25-year-old deserter, who has not been named, had been identified by fellow students from an unofficial police sketch of the sniper.
Bureau said French authorities were exchanging information with their U.S. counterparts.
The French soldier is known to be an excellent marksman, The Associated Press reported. The deserter has not been in contact with his family since he left for the U.S., Bureau said.
Francois Guillermet, spokesman for Saint-Cyr, said it was the first registered case of desertion in the school's 200-year history and the man's disappearance was a "complete mystery."
Copyright 2002 CNN. All rights reserved.
Associated Press
Published Oct 22, 2002 FRAN22
PARIS -- France has alerted Interpol, the international police agency, about a French army deserter who is known as a marksman and is missing in North America.
A French Defense Ministry spokesman said there was speculation of a link to the investigation into the Washington-area sniper, though he said it is hypothetical at this point.
"We have no certitude of a link," spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said. However, he said, "This soldier has a very, very good reputation as a marksman." He added that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, "these are things we follow very closely."
The 25-year-old second lieutenant, who was not identified, did not return to class in September at the Saint-Cyr Coetquidan military school in Brittany after going on vacation in August.
The deserter was given permission for an August trip to the United States and Canada, Bureau said. Police sources said he had planned a trip to Chicago.
A European radio outlet reported that the deserter was of Yugoslav origin, but Bureau could not confirm that, saying that he had to be a French citizen to attend the military school.
Notifying Interpol, based in Lyon, France, is routine procedure in such cases, Bureau said.
Tuesday, October 22, 2002 Posted: 8:49 AM EDT (1249 GMT)
The French deserter had been training at the Combined Armies Military School (Ecole militaire Inter-Armees) in Coetquidan in Brittany.
PARIS, Lyon -- France has alerted Interpol about a crack military marksman who is missing in North America, prompting speculation over a link to a sniper who has killed nine people and wounded three in the Washington area.
The killings, which have taken place mainly around shopping centres since October 2, have baffled U.S. police and spread fear among Americans living in the area. (Full Story)
Police officers are trying to establish telephone contact with a messenger linked to the sniper, and on Monday arrested two men near the area from where the tipster rang authorities.
But neither man was charged and federal law enforcement sources said no evidence was found linking either man to the shootings.
The French deserter had been training to be a second lieutenant in the army at the prestigious Saint-Cyr, in Coetquidan in the northern coastal region of Brittany. The school provides general training in shooting but does not train elite sharp-shooters.
The Frenchman went to the U.S. and Canada for a holiday in August and was due to return to the academy for the resumption of classes at the beginning of September but failed to turn up.
A French defence ministry spokesman told Reuters that "at this stage, we have absolutely no certainty that this military deserter is the Washington sniper."
Interpol has been notified and a judicial investigation is beginning, both normal procedures, the spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau added.
He could not confirm media reports that the 25-year-old deserter, who has not been named, had been identified by fellow students from an unofficial police sketch of the sniper.
Bureau said French authorities were exchanging information with their U.S. counterparts.
The French soldier is known to be an excellent marksman, The Associated Press reported. The deserter has not been in contact with his family since he left for the U.S., Bureau said.
Francois Guillermet, spokesman for Saint-Cyr, said it was the first registered case of desertion in the school's 200-year history and the man's disappearance was a "complete mystery."
Copyright 2002 CNN. All rights reserved.
Associated Press
Tuesday, October 22, 2002 – Page A9
PARIS -- France has alerted Interpol about a French army deserter who is known as a marksman and is missing on a trip to the United States and Canada.
Officials said the 25-year-old second lieutenant, who was not identified by name, did not return to class in September at Britanny's elite Saint-Cyr Coetquidan military school after having been on holiday in August.
Interpol was notified of the officer's disappearance, the normal procedure, and a judicial investigation was opened, Defence Ministry spokesman Jean-François Bureau said.
Mr. Bureau acknowledged that there is some speculation about a connection with the investigation of the Washington-area sniper, but he said it is hypothetical at this point. "We have no certitude of a link," he said in a telephone interview.
However, he said "this soldier has a very, very good reputation as a marksman."
And since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, "these are things we follow very closely," he added.
Interpol, the international police agency based in the French city of Lyon, said it refuses to comment on active cases.
The deserter was given permission for an August trip to the United States and Canada, Mr. Bureau said.
Police sources said he had planned a trip to Chicago.
RTL radio reported the deserter was of Yugoslav origin, but Mr. Bureau could not confirm that.
NOTEBOOK
French marksman left for U.S., faded
PARIS - France has alerted Interpol about a French army deserter who is known as a marksman and is missing in North America.
The 25-year-old second lieutenant, who was not identified, did not return to class in September at the elite military school Saint-Cyr Coetquidan in Brittany, in western France, after going on vacation in August, officials said.
Interpol was notified of the disappearance of the officer, a normal procedure, and a judicial investigation was opened, which is also routine, said Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau.
Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, "these are things we follow very closely," he added.
The deserter was given permission for an August trip to the United States and Canada, said Bureau. Police sources said he had planned a trip to Chicago. -- ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mourners recall Virginia victim
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Linda Franklin was remembered Monday as a spirited woman with a generous heart.Franklin, 47, was killed by the sniper Oct. 14 outside a Home Depot in Falls Church, Va., while loading packages with her husband. Franklin was an FBI analyst who survived breast cancer.
The altar at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, about five miles west of Washington, held votive candles to represent prayers for the 12 victims of the sniper. -- ASSOCIATED PRESS
Richmond-area schools shut today
Schools in Richmond and three nearby counties were closed Monday, idling 141,000 students. Authorities there -- and in three additional area counties -- said they would close schools today as well. -- ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bail denied in false-clue case
Bail was denied Monday for Matthew Dowdy, who was accused of lying to police by describing a cream van with a burned-out taillight at the scene of last week's shooting in Falls Church, Va. -- ASSOCIATED PRESS
The deserter, not identified by name, was given permission for an August trip to the United States and Canada, said Bureau. Police sources said he had planned a trip to Chicago.
RTL radio reported the deserter was of Yugoslav origin, but Bureau could not confirm that, saying that he had to be a French citizens to attend the military school.
The missing officer never showed up for school in September. The gendarmerie, a force under the defence ministry, sent a note last week to the interior ministry. Interpol was then contacted, said Bureau.
Bureau cast doubt on reports in the French media that students at Saint-Cyr alleged they recognised their comrade in an unofficial police composite drawing of the sniper reportedly shown on French television. - Sapa-AP
Canadian Press
Monday, October 21, 2002
PARIS (AP) - France has alerted Interpol about a French army deserter - known as a top marksman - who is missing in North America, feeding speculation of a link to the investigation into the Washington-area sniper shootings. The 25-year-old second lieutenant did not return to class in September at the elite military school, Saint-Cyr Coetquidan in Brittany, in western France, after going on vacation in August, officials said Monday.
Interpol was notified of the disappearance of the officer, a normal procedure, and a judicial investigation was opened, which is also routine, said Defence Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau.
Bureau acknowledged there was some speculation of a connection with the sniper investigation, but he said that was just hypothetical at this point.
"We have no certitude of a link," he said in a telephone interview. However, he said, "This soldier has a very, very good reputation as a marksman."
And since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, "these are things we follow very closely," he added.
Gen. Bruno Cuche, head of the Saint-Cyr Coetquidan sniper school, said the missing officer hadn't given rise to any suspicions during his training.
"The concern that others may have (about a possible link to the sniper), I share with them, but I don't know of anything that casts suspicion on this individual," he told France-2 television.
Cuche conceded that he was "worried about the dramatic disappearance of this officer-student."
Interpol, the international police agency based in the French city of Lyon, said it refuses to comment on active cases.
The deserter, not identified by name, was given permission for an August trip to Canada and the United States, said Bureau. Police sources said he had planned a trip to Chicago.
RTL radio reported the deserter was of Yugoslav origin, but Bureau could not confirm that, saying only that he had to be a French citizen to attend the military school.
The missing officer never showed up for school in September. The gendarmerie, a force under the Defence Ministry, sent a note last week to the Interior Ministry. Interpol was then contacted, said Bureau.
The French media had initially reported that students at Saint Cyr had recognized their comrade in an unofficial composite drawing of the sniper aired on one French television station. However, officials have totally dismissed the composite, which was made by the station on the basis of press reports.
Earlier, Cuche told reporters that it was the first time since he took over the sniper academy two and half years ago that anybody had deserted.
He denied that students had identified the sniper in a composite, saying they were "very shocked to hear from the press that they had recognized their colleague."
© Copyright 2002 The Canadian Press
Police hunt sniper
Soldier Is Sniper Suspect
A French soldier who went missing on a holiday trip to America is reported to have matched an image of the serial sniper terrorising Washington.
The soldier is reported to have been identified as the man in a US police sketch of the gunman who has killed nine people in the Washington area since October 2.
French officials confirmed a 25-year-old soldier from the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy deserted after leaving for a holiday to the US in August.
Academy
He did not return to the academy in the northern coastal region of Brittany, where he was training to be a second lieutenant in the army.
Fellow students are said to have identified the soldier from the sketch, which has not been made public.
But French Defence Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau could not confirm the reports.
"At this stage, we have absolutely no certainty that this military deserter is the Washington sniper," Bureau said.
"We have reported that a soldier training to be a second lieutenant at Saint-Cyr who left for a holiday in Canada and the United States in August did not return in September when classes resumed," the Bureau said.
French
Bureau did not give the man's name or town of origin but said he was French.
"There has been no contact between him and his family since he left for the United States," he added.
The man was reported as a deserter to police in October and his details were sent to the international police force, Interpol.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry declined to add further details, saying merely that French authorities were exchanging information with their US counterparts.
"We are naturally providing US authorities with all the information we possess," ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau said.
Last Updated: 15:21 UK, Monday October 21, 2002
France Says Marksman Missing in North America, Fueling Speculation Over Link to Sniper Killings
The Associated Press
P A R I S, Oct. 21 — France has alerted Interpol about a French army deserter who is known as a marksman and is missing in North America. A Defense Ministry spokesman said there was speculation of a link to the investigation into the Washington-area sniper.
The 25-year-old second lieutenant, who was not identified, did not return to class in September at the elite military school, Saint-Cyr Coetquidan in Brittany, in western France, after going on vacation in August, officials said.
Interpol was notified of the disappearance of the officer, a normal procedure, and a judicial investigation was opened, which is also routine, said Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau.
Bureau acknowledged there was some speculation of a connection with the sniper investigation, but he said that was just hypothetical at this point.
"We have no certitude of a link," he said in a telephone interview. However, he said, "This soldier has a very, very good reputation as a marksman."
And since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, "these are things we follow very closely," he added.
Interpol, the international police agency based in the French city of Lyon, said it refuses to comment on active cases.
The deserter was given permission for an August trip to the United States and Canada, said Bureau. Police sources said he had planned a trip to Chicago.
RTL radio reported the deserter was of Yugoslav origin, but Bureau could not confirm that, saying that he had to be a French citizen to attend the military school.
After the missing officer never showed up for school in September, the gendarmerie, a force under the Defense Ministry, sent a note last week to the Interior Ministry. Interpol was then contacted, said Bureau.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Francois Guillermet, spokesman for Saint-Cyr, said it was the first registered case of desertion in the school's 200-year history and the man's disappearance was a "complete mystery".
The missing student had been due to start his second year at the academy on September 2. The school provides general training in shooting but does not train elite sharp-shooters.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry declined to give more details, saying French authorities were exchanging information with their U.S. counterparts.
"We are naturally providing U.S. authorities with all the information we possess," ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau said.
Marksman Planned Trip To Chicago, Did Not Return To Military School
POSTED: 1:01 p.m. CDT October 21, 2002
UPDATED: 5:12 a.m. CDT October 22, 2002
CHICAGO -- France has alerted Interpol about a French army deserter who is known as a marksman and is missing in North America, and a Defense Ministry spokesman said there was speculation of a link to the Washington-area sniper.
The deserter was given permission for an August trip to the United States and Canada, and police sources said he had planned a trip to Chicago. But the 25-year-old second lieutenant, whose name was not released, did not return to class at the elite military school, Saint-Cyr Coetquidan in Brittan, in western France, after his planned trip.
Interpol was notified of the disappearance of the officer, a normal procedure, and a judicial investigation was opened, which is also routine, said Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau.
Bureau acknowledged there was some speculation of a connection with the sniper investigation, but he said that was just hypothetical at this point.
"We have no certitude of a link," he said in a telephone interview. However, he said, "This soldier has a very, very good reputation as a marksman."
And since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, "these are things we follow very closely," he added.
Interpol, the international police agency based in the French city of Lyon, will not comment on active cases.
RTL radio reported the deserter was of Yugoslav origin, but Bureau could not confirm that, saying that he had to be a French citizen to attend the military school.
Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved
by Dee Finney
Subj: Insights by dreams
Date: 10/22/2002
I'm getting lots of insights by dreams as well as while I'm watching the news.
I've been getting information in the dreams even before it happens.
For example today, I woke up from a dream about two minutes before the shooting actually occurred.
In the dream, I was in a park, and took some white 'cake' to the dumpster that two older white women had only partially eaten. In the dumpster area, was a black man who was serving chocolate cake to black kids. (the victim today was a black bus driver) They said they didn't want white cake, but I pushed their black cake back a bit with the white cake, and then I noticed that the cake was divided into squares - one square in the second row was labeled SNIPER, and a group of squares in the front row of the white cake were each labeled SHOOTER. I then had an instant vision - on each square of white cake, a man's head popped up and each head had an army green mottled bandana folded and wrapped around their foreheads.
I woke up at the instant, feeling a panicky feeling that I had to run to the TV and turn it on and watch the shooting. I woke from the dream at 2:50 a.m. PST. (that's 5:50 EST) There was nothing on the news right then, but about quarter past the hour, CNN announced that the call had come in to the cops at 5:56 a.m. EST. (about 6 min. after I woke up)
They showed the bus that the victim was shot on. Though I didn't know right away that he was black - I was certain that he was.
Yesterday, I dreamed that there were two letters received, one with a zip code of 20080 (Wash. D.C. area) and it was correlated to Germany - which felt like NAZI to me. The other letter was labeled as GEORGIA. (It's possible that someone in the shooter's group is from Georgia) Otherwise, it pointed to the intersection where the bus was parked, which was GEORGIA Ave.
The day before that, I dreamed that I was on a farm called JAIR FARM, and it was run by a man named Majorstar Overlord.
JAIR stands for Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.
On this farm were 6 shooters on a hill, and in the valley where I was, there was a water fountain. There was a seagull flying in and it was chased off the fountain by a moose (without a large rack on its head) .
Perhaps one of the men is named Segal, and Moose , of course is the cop in charge of the sniper task force.
In the dream I got scared of the large animals so I ran through the house and went up some concrete steps and there was a door to the outside and saw I was actually in the city, so I closed the door and went back downstairs -
We left the farm then, and thats where I saw a large sign at the entrance to the farm. It said JAIR FARM, and I was handed a business card with the owners name. Majorstar Overlord.
What is really weird is that back in May, I did a web page about D-Day being expected again, and titled the page, OPERATION OVERLORD - That's what they called, the Normany Invasion . Coincidence? I may have written about D-Day, but the scenario sure fits what is going on now - though the killing of our people is a bit slower than what happened on D-Day.
It's kind of spooky - that's for sure.
Dee
We'll see how this comes out.
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| Sketch of suspect in Alabama burglary |
Malvo and Muhammad |
Veteran John Allen Williams/Muhammad |
• Ex-soldier John Allen Muhammad, 42, and stepson John Lee Malvo, 17, arrested overnight
• President Bush told investigators "optimistic they have cracked" the case, officials tell CNN
• Task force investigating possible link to September killing in Montgomery, Alabama
• Muhammad's sister in law says Malvo "caring, respectful," calls arrests a "shock"
Sniper's odd 'duck in noose' from fable?
From the National Desk
Published 10/24/2002 3:54 AM
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The esoteric and cryptic phrase "like a duck in a noose" that was quoted Wednesday night on behalf of the elusive Washington sniper may not have been an original expression but rather a reference to an old fable.
The story "The Rabbit, the Otter, and Duck Hunting" revolves around a boastful little rabbit that lassos a hapless duck, but the duck eventually triumphantly escapes from the snare and gets the best of his foe, and the rabbit ends up eating his own fur for perpetuity.
The sniper's efforts to apparently "control" the Montgomery County police chief in having him read the bizarre quote could have been a cruel attempt to humiliate him in a puerile manner since the duck gets the better of the rabbit in an obvious way.
The obscure phrase was contained in the third communication from the ghostly sniper received by a law enforcement task force based in Montgomery County. The county's police chief, Charles Moose, read the quote aloud during the latter half of a nationally televised news conference.
"The second portion of this briefing is a message," said Moose, after a short pause.
"You asked us to say, 'We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose,'" Moose said, swallowing hard. "We understand that hearing us say this is important to you."
Then Moose asked the media to carry the message "accurately and often." He refused to answer any questions, gave the sniper contact information, and left the public and the media to speculate on what the quote meant and how it related to the shooting spree that has claimed 10 lives and injured three others.
The image of a duck trapped in a noose may have come from a story that is posted at various Internet sites. The story's origins are not clear, however it could be interpreted as the sniper, in the metaphoric form of the duck, escaping from the proverbial police noose.
In one version of the fable, the rabbit stealthily wades out into a river to capture a duck for dinner.
"He quickly fastened his noose around the neck of the closest duck," the story goes. "Startled, the duck began to struggle to get away and finally took off on his wings and dragged the rabbit out of the water after him."
"Now it was the rabbits turn to be startled. And boy was he. He held on to the noose and was taken high into the air. Higher and higher he went. All of a sudden, he lost his grip on the noose and down he fell into the middle of an old hollow Sycamore tree without a hole in the bottom to get out."
Some versions of the story end with the rabbit eventually getting out of the Sycamore stump while others leave him trapped in it. All, however, concede that the rabbit was reduced to consuming his own fur in order to survive.
"He stayed in there so long that he had to start eating his own fur," the story says, "as rabbits still do to this day when they are starved."
(Reported by Hil Anderson in Los Angeles)
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
Former soldier named in federal firearms warrant
Thursday, October 24, 2002 Posted: 10:22 AM EDT (1422 GMT)
MIDDLETOWN, Maryland (CNN) --
Members of the sniper task force arrested an ex-soldier and his stepson early Thursday at a freeway rest stop. Sources told CNN the two were considered suspects in the shootings that have killed 10 and wounded three in the Washington area.
Sources identified the two as John Allen Muhammad, 42 -- a Gulf War veteran named in a federal arrest warrant for firearms violations who was being sought as a material witness in the sniper case -- and his 17-year-old stepson John Lee Malvo, a Jamaican citizen.
They were taken to an undisclosed location in Montgomery County and questioned. The string of deadly shootings began in the county three weeks ago, and the most recent victim linked to the sniper was killed there Tuesday.
A weapon has not been recovered, but witnesses said police removed a couple of duffel bags from the car. Police have obtained a warrant to search the car more thoroughly.
Muhammad and Malvo were sleeping in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, which a motorist and attendant recognized as matching the description of a vehicle authorities were looking for -- a blue or burgundy 1990 Chevrolet Caprice with New Jersey license plate NDA 21Z.
The sighting was reported to police, who relayed the tip to the sniper task force, which dispatched officers to the scene some 50 miles northwest of Washington.
The rest area is along a seven-mile stretch of Interstate 70 near Myersville, Maryland, that had been shut down in a dragnet launched just a few hours earlier by Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, the head of the sniper task force.
After the October 3 shooting of Pascal Charlot, 72, in Washington, D.C., law enforcement officials searched for a burgundy Chevrolet Caprice. One such car was later found burned out in the D.C. area, but it was never determined whether it had anything to do with the fatal shooting.
Other developments
•President Bush was told Thursday morning that law enforcement officials are confident the arrests of Muhammad and Malvo represent a significant breakthrough, a senior administration official said. "It is an ongoing situation, but he was told they are optimistic they have cracked this," the official said.
•The Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday that authorities got a break in the case from a recent phone call believed to be from the sniper, who said that investigators should "take him seriously" and "check with the people in Montgomery," or words to that effect. The newspaper said police then checked recent shootings in Montgomery, Alabama, and found a double shooting outside a liquor store on September 21 that involved .223 caliber ammunition -- the same type used by the sniper.
•Police found a piece of paper bearing Malvo's fingerprint at the scene of the Montgomery shooting, the Sun reported. Malvo, authorities learned, lived with Muhammad. Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright told CNN that sniper task force investigators "came to us two days ago ... (and) we gave them the evidence we collected in the case." Bright said the fingerprint was among that evidence, but investigators "have not officially authenticated it."
•Authorities searched a duplex in Tacoma, Washington on Wednesday and left with a tree trunk apparently used for target practice. Sources said Muhammad once served at Fort Lewis, not far from the duplex.
•North of Tacoma near the Canadian border, the mayor of Bellingham, Washington said the FBI and local police had searched Bellingham High School, where Malvo reportedly attended school last year.
•Military officials told CNN Muhammad was not trained as a sniper and was not in the Special Forces, but had expertise in combat support missions.
•Federal authorities searched a paramilitary training camp in Marion, Alabama, on Wednesday, local officials said.
The FBI would not say where the search was conducted, but did say the search was related to the sniper case. Police in Marion said the property searched was a training camp -- "Ground Zero USA" -- that specializes in urban warfare, martial arts and SWAT tactics. Police did not elaborate on what, if anything, was taken from the property.
•At a midnight news conference Wednesday, Moose delivered another message to the sniper, urging him to contact police.
"Our inability to talk has been a concern for us as it has been for you," Moose said. "You have indicated that you want us to do and say certain things. You asked us to say, 'We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose.' We understand that hearing us say this is important to you.
"However, we want you to know how difficult it has been to understand what you want because you have chosen to use only notes, indirect messages, and calls to other jurisdictions."
•Law enforcement sources said a note was found near the scene of Tuesday's fatal shooting of a bus driver in Silver Spring, Maryland. Sources said the note is similar to the letter found after a weekend shooting in Virginia that has been linked to the sniper.
•Sources told CNN the Virginia letter revealed a frustrated individual -- believed to be the sniper -- critical of law enforcement's efforts in the investigation. The writer complained that he tried numerous times to call authorities, only to have officials hang up on him.
-- CNN Correspondents Jeanne Meserve, Kelli Arena, Gary Tuchman and Barbara Starr, and Producer Kevin Bohn contributed to this report.
VOA News
23 Oct 2002, 16:43 UTC
Police say ballistics evidence has linked Tuesday's fatal shooting of a 35-year-old commuter bus driver near Washington to a series of sniper attacks. He is the tenth fatality in the string of shootings that started October Second. Three people were seriously wounded.
Schools in the Washington remain open Wednesday, under tight security, despite continuing concerns. On Tuesday, the head of the sniper attacks investigation, Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, read part of a letter found at one of the crime scenes saying area children "are not safe anywhere".
Unconfirmed media reports say the note also demanded that $10 million dollars be wired to a domestic bank account.
At a news conference late Tuesday, Chief Moose responded to a message believed to be from the killer, saying it is not possible to "reply electronically in the manner you have requested." He urged the sniper to call or send a letter to discuss "options."
The Washington Post newspaper reports the letter found at the scene of a sniper shooting near Richmond, Virginia, on Saturday complains that six calls to police had been ignored, and it warned of more killing if instructions were not followed.
The Baltimore Sun newspaper reports another multipage note, which repeated the earlier demands, was found near the scene of Tuesday's shooting. The reports have not been confirmed by police.
The victim Tuesday was shot in the chest while standing on the top step of his bus in Montgomery County, Maryland - in the same general area where the first five sniper murders took place. He was married and the father of two children.
By P. Mitchell Prothero
From the National Desk
Published 10/23/2002 2:08 PM
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The sniper that has terrorized the Washington region for the past three weeks -- killing 10 people and wounding three others -- has made demands for money and has threatened children if his demands are not met, law enforcement officials confirmed Wednesday.
A note left at the scene of Virginia shooting, in which critically wounded a 37-year old Florida man, demanded $10 million and threatened the region's children with more attacks. Police revealed a portion of the note Tuesday evening.
"Your children are not safe anywhere at anytime," says a postscript to a note found near the last confirmed sniper shooting Saturday night in Ashland, Va.
Police officials also confirmed that the killer, or killers, also contacted investigators Tuesday through a note left at the scene of the most recent shooting, which killed a Montgomery County bus driver early Tuesday. Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose confirmed the shooting was linked.
Those announcements followed a series of brief statements by Moose Tuesday evening where he appeared to respond to the note by telling the sniper he could not comply with a certain, unspecific demand.
"We have researched the options you stated and found that it is not possible electronically to comply in the manner you requested," Moose said, adding he hoped to hear from the sniper again in a non-violent manner.
"It is important that we do this without anyone else getting hurt," Moose said. In closing, Moose said: "You indicated that this is about more than violence. We are waiting to hear from you."
In another element of communication between the sniper and investigators, federal law enforcement sources confirmed the sniper had tried to reach investigators via the tip line used to generate leads and was ignored between two and four times since the shootings began.
Despite the police chief's somber warning about the threat to children, schools throughout the Richmond, Va., area reopened Wednesday under lockdown conditions.
Earlier in the week, schools had closed in the metro Richmond area, including Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico and Powhatan counties and the city of Richmond.
Authorities Wednesday connected the death of bus driver Conrad Johnson, 35, to the string of shootings in which a sniper has killed nine people and wounded three others in Maryland, Virginia and Washington.
The first shooting -- about 5:20 p.m., Oct. 2 -- linked to the sniper went through a crafts store window but didn't injure anyone.
Johnson was shot as he stood on the top step of his Montgomery County bus. He was at an area drivers often use to do routine paperwork. He was pronounced dead at a hospital several hours after the 5:50 a.m. shooting.
The sniper has been blamed for five shootings -- including four deaths -- within a mile of Tuesday's incident. Two other attacks have occurred a few miles south of the site and another just inside the District of Columbia border from Maryland. Another attack on Maryland resulted in the wounding of a 13-year-old boy outside a school on Oct. 7.
There have been five assaults in Virginia. In addition to the wounding of the man in Ashland, a woman in Spotsylvania was also wounded but survived while two men and a woman were killed.
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
Police Renew Pleas for Witnesses to Come Forward
Specialists from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms use a radar gun as they investigate the shooting in Aspen Hill. Conrad E. Johnson, who was struck in the abdomen by a single bullet, was preparing his bus, at left, for its daily run. (ROBERT A. REEDER -- THE WASHINGTON POST)
___ Police Tip Line ___
Law enforcement officials have set up a consolidated tip line to aid in their investigation. People with information about the sniper shootings are asked to call 1-888-324-9800 or send e-mail to taskforce@co.mo.md.us or send other correspondence to P.O. Box 7875 Gaithersburg, Md. 20898-7857.
The Montgomery County Reward Fund, established to encourage tips leading to the arrest and indictment of those involved in the region's deadly sniper attacks, has reached the county's goal of $500,000. Any more money collected will go to support the families of shooting victims.
By Michael E. Ruane and Jamie Stockwell
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; 1:15 PM
Ballistics and other evidence have conclusively linked yesterday's shooting of a Montgomery County bus driver to the sniper attacks that have killed 10 and wounded three in the Washington area over the past three weeks, police officials said this afternoon.
In an early afternoon briefing, Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose confirmed that Conrad Johnson, 35, was the latest sniper victim. Moose also renewed his plea for possible witnesses to yesterday's attack in the Aspen Hill section of the county to come forward. Moose's plea was specifically directed toward the immigrant community, saying "immigration issues" should not deter anyone from coming forward. When pressed by reporters, however, Moose said he could not give "carte blanche" to anyone who might be in the country illegally.
Michael Bouchard, supervisor for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, reiterated that progress is being made in the case, but expressed the frustration felt by police officials and the public. "We would have liked to have solved this by now. We're certainly confident that we're going to resolve this."
Concern about public safety has been heightened since Moose read the chilling postscript of a note found at the scene of Saturday's shooting in Ashland, Va., last night: "Your children are not safe anywhere at any time."
Moose sought to reassure the area residents that public safety, and not the investigation was paramount in the minds of police officials. "At the foundation of our process .‚.‚. public safety is first, investigation is second. It has always been the case, it will always been the case."
Moose's comments came shortly after Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) said that he is considering calling out the National Guard to protect polling places on Election Day, Nov. 5, and amid revelations about new communications that are believed to be from the killer.
In addition to the letter found at the Ashland shooting site, sources said this morning that another letter was found at the scene of yesterday's shooting. Like the Saturday note, it was angry in tone and contained a demand for $10 million.
The discovery of the letter at the Ashland site came after the sniper's 12th victim, a 37-year-old man from Melbourne, Fla., was shot outside a Ponderosa restaurant Saturday night. He remained hospitalized in critical condition yesterday.
One source said the letter berated police as inept and detailed at least six failed attempts by the self-professed sniper to reach investigators by telephone since the attacks began Oct. 2. The letter said those attempts to communicate were not treated seriously by call takers, according to sources. Moose refused to comment on those reports during today's briefing.
The letter writer also included a telephone number and said he would be calling police on it at a specified time, sources said. That time passed before police finished examining the letter and addressing a problem with the phone number, and no call was received, sources said.
These communications have prompted Moose in the last three days to issue a series of cryptic messages to the gunman.
"We have researched the option you stated and found that it is not possible electronically to comply in the manner that you requested," Moose said last night in a statement that authorities said would be understood by the sniper. "It is important that we do this without anyone else getting hurt."
Yesterday's attack occurred less than a mile from where the shootings started three weeks ago. The attacks later spread to the District, Prince George's County, and Prince William, Spotsylvania, Fairfax and Hanover counties in Virginia.
The shooting came as Johnson, a driver for the county's Ride On system, was readying his bus for its morning run at a staging area in the 14100 block of Grand Pre Road, near Connecticut Avenue, police said.
Johnson, whose father also had been a county bus driver, was married and had two children. He was struck in the abdomen by a single bullet and died at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.
Johnson was remembered yesterday as a loyal colleague and devoted family man. "He was just as good a human being as you could have the privilege of knowing," said Gino Renne, president of the union in which Johnson and his father were active, Local 1994 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
The sniper's return to Montgomery, after four attacks in Virginia, upset residents – some of whom awoke anew to the sounds of sirens and helicopters – and paralyzed major thoroughfares north and west of the District.
"I figured he lives in our back yard," said Dick Hottel, a heating and air-conditioning company owner who lives in Rockville, not far from Aspen Hill.
"It's a frightening thing .‚.‚. a rattling thing," said Jeffrey Liss, 46, a furniture dealer in Rockville.
Maunette Minor, 39, who lives in an apartment complex near the scene of the shooting, said: "It's so creepy. You never imagine it to be in your back yard. I've always felt so safe in Montgomery County. It makes me not know what the heck to do."
Angela Dieckmann, who lives about a block from the site of yesterday's shooting, voiced fears felt by many in the Washington region.
"Can't they just find the guy?" she asked. "It's fascinating that he has so much control. One human being. It is incredible."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
Islamic Militant Training Camp Allegedly Operating in Alabama
By Brian Ross
July 25 — A training camp linked to Islamic militants has been operating in Alabama, and European law enforcement officials believe Muslim extremists were using it to prepare for a holy war.
British authorities also thought that militants from overseas were training in the United States to take advantage of America's gun laws, sources told ABCNEWS. The looming question for law enforcement is whether there is a connection between the camp and the al Qaeda terror network.
An investigation by Britain's Scotland Yard led to the discovery of the camp in Marion, Ala. The facility is called "Ground Zero USA."
Bullet-riddled police cars and a school bus with mannequin targets are scattered around the property. Inside a huge shed is an equally macabre scene — shot-up mannequins, male and female, in domestic settings, some with red, blood-like stains on them.
Ground Zero's operators promised state-of-the-art, world-class training in automatic weapons, urban warfare, SWAT tactics and martial arts, supposedly to fight terror attacks.
Marion Police Chief Tony Buford said he became suspicious of the use of police cars and buses as targets.
"It was rumored that the camp here was used as training site for possible people that were sent here to do bodily harm to Americans," Buford told ABCNEWS.
Web Site Provides Terror Link
The suspected terror ties of the Alabama camp were unknown until after Sept. 11, when officials in London arrested an accused al Qaeda supporter, Zain-ul-Albidin
He is charged with operation of a Web site, under the name of Sakina Security, allegedly recruiting Muslims for an Islamic jihad or holy war. He is now on trial in London.
The site, since taken down by British authorities, described what seemed to be the Alabama camp, including live-fire exercises at a state-of-the-art shooting range in the United States — something that would not be legal in Britain.
"In the United States, it is not illegal for anyone to receive military training, high-grade military training," said Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside Al Qaeda.
The actual owners of camp, who are also British, say it was used primarily to train law enforcement personnel. Officials consider them unwitting accomplices. The camp owners declined to talk to ABCNEWS.
Scale of Secret Camps Unknown
It is not known how many holy war recruits came through the camp or when. But the FBI is now investigating a number of suspected training camps around the country.
"We know of a number of cases where Islamic terrorists came and training in this country in the early 1990s. It is likely that this scale of training is still continuing," Gunaratna said.
The most radical and belligerent of London's Islamic clerics, Abu Hamza, told ABCNEWS in a phone call that America's laws make such paramilitary training easy, "like a picnic."
British intelligence officials told ABCNEWS they are closely examining alleged ties between Hamza, who is said to have recruited alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, and Zain-ul-Albidin.
Thursday, October 24, 2002 Posted: 11:54 AM EDT (1554 GMT)
MONTGOMERY, Alabama (CNN) --
Investigators of the sniper shootings in the Washington D.C.- area want to know whether a recent killing at a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama, is connected to their cases, Montgomery's police chief said Thursday.
A September 21 shooting in front of the store killed one woman and wounded another, Montgomery Police Chief John Wilson said.
Investigators from the Washington-area sniper task force called Montgomery police Sunday night to ask about the killing at the liquor store, Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright said.
"They had received information from an unknown caller, referencing our shooting and our murder and robbery here, and that began our involvement at that point," Police Chief Wilson said. "As of this day, we still are not clear exactly what the connection will be, if there is any connection at all."
The sniper task force in the Washington area was questioning two suspects arrested early Thursday -- John Allen Muhammad, a 42-year-old Persian Gulf War veteran named in a federal arrest warrant for firearms violations, and his 17-year-old stepson, John Lee Malvo, a Jamaican citizen.
Wilson said there were "some very good similarities" between Malvo and a composite sketch of the attacker in the Alabama killing. But he said the weapon used in the Montgomery shooting is not the same one -- a .223-caliber rifle -- used in the shootings in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
A federal law enforcement source told CNN Thursday that fingerprints found at the Montgomery crime scene matched Malvo's prints on file in a national data base -- prints from his juvenile record.
Wilson said one of his investigators was sent to Maryland to consult with the task force.
The September 21 shooting in Montgomery is being treated as a robbery by local investigators. Claudine Parker was killed and Kelli Adams was wounded in the attack, which occurred at a state-run liquor store where both victims worked. Two police officers parked nearby heard the shots, Wilson said at a news conference at the crime scene Thursday.
"They came straight across the street and observed one individual standing over the two victims that were laying in the parking lot directly behind me," Wilson said. Police consider the case a robbery because one officer saw the attacker rifling through the victim's purse, he said.
One officer chased the man, coming within two feet of him at one point, Wilson said.
Asked whether he knew whether the two men in custody in Maryland had ever been in the Montgomery area, Wilson said, "That would be drawing too many conclusions.
"We've got a lot of information that's unfolding very rapidly, and there will be a lot more that we'll be able to tell you in the upcoming days," he said. "But I certainly don't want to do anything to jeopardize the Washington, D.C., cases or ours."
In the US Federal State Alabama are to practice Islamic terrorists the fight against the country. In a special Trainingscamp the extremists are to fight and shoot to have learned. The American television station "ABC" reports.
Photo series: Current pictures of the daily
Exercises are easy to organize
In London it said living radical-Islamic of clergyman Abu Hamsa to the transmitter in a telephone interview that the American law would deal very loosely with military-similar exercises. These are to be organized as easily "as a picknick".
Camp "Ground zero the USA"
Ermittler of the English police authority Scotland yard are to have received referring to the Camp with the name "Ground zero the USA" close of the city Marion, when it is a member of the El-Kaida-network of Osama shop in London had arrested.
Police cars were training targets
The police head of Marion said to the transmitter that in the camp discarded police cars and school penalty as training targets were verwedet. "one whispered that in the camp people were possibly trained here, around to the Americans physical wrong to cause", so the police head.
Further Camps assumes
According to the data of ABC the FBI determines now against further Camps, which were used possibly also from Islamic terrorists to exercise and training purposes.
Source: apa
INS HAD HIM AND RELEASED HIM
October 24, 2002
American Patrol has learned from a reliable source that John Lee Malvo, one of the sniper suspects, had been in INS custody in Seattle and was released on Jan. 24, 2002 without a bond. He was ordered to return for a deportation hearing on November 20th. Malvo had been in custody for one month for immigration violations. He was released in the custody of his mother.
Malvo is Jamaican.
Once again, America suffers because our government does not care about its own people.
Tell the President how you feel about this.
mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
Call Bush
877-762-8762 or 800-648-3516 or 202-456-1414
Fax 202-456-2461
Fax Ziglar, head of INS 202-307-9911
Glenn Spencer
WEAPONS EXPERT: Beltway Sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad served in the U.S. Army for 15 years as a "demolitions/weapons expert" and could "make a weapon out of anything," his former wife once reported. According to Mildred Muhammad, she was hospitalized in May 2000 when she received a phone call from John Muhammad, who threatened to kill her. According to this report prepared by a Tacoma, Washington hospital security officer (which you'll find below this text), Mildred Muhammad claimed that her husband--whom she described as "very charming"--had abducted the couple's three children as part of a custody dispute. She added that Muhammad was skilled in hand-to-hand fighting and that while he "owned no weapons," he did have "access to them." (2 pages)
FEDERAL CASE: Though murder raps are expected against Muhammad and his teenage cohort John Lee Malvo, the only charge so far leveled against Muhammad is a single federal firearms count. According to this criminal complaint filed yesterday (10/23) in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Muhammad, who has used the aliases Wayne Weeks and Wayne Weekley, illegally possessed an assault rifle that he sought to outfit with a silencer. According to Robert Edward Holmes, a friend and former Army buddy of Muhammad's who was interviewed by the FBI, Muhammad recently showed him an AR-15 rifle and asked, "Can you imagine the damage you could do if you could shoot with a silencer?" Along with the AR-15, Holmes told authorities that Muhammad and an unnamed associate carried a book on how to make a sound suppressor. (5 pages)
SEARCH WARRANT: Hours after agents arrested the alleged Beltway killers, investigators filed this federal court application to search the 1990 Chevrolet Caprice in which Muhammad and Malvo were found sleeping. The search warrant application was approved by Jillyn Schulze, a federal magistrate. (6 pages)
RESTRAINING ORDER: Muhammad was "very irrational" and regularly threatened to "destroy" his wife, who secured restraining orders against her estranged husband, a man she feared, in part, because "he was a demolition expert in the military." After Mildred Muhammad filed a petition in March 2000, a Superior Court judge in Tacoma issued an order of protection barring John Muhammad from contacting his wife and the couple's three children. (4 pages)
THREATENING: Mildred Muhammad had previously sought a restraining order in February 2000, but her petition was dismissed when she failed to appear in court. In the prior application, she alleged that her husband told her he would "not let me raise our children. His demeanor is such that it's a threat to me." (4 pages)
MECHANIC: In light of reports that Muhammad modified his Chevrolet Caprice with a "trapdoor" so that he could shoot at targets unseen from the inside of his car, these Washington court documents (from Muhammad's 2000 divorce case) show that the alleged sniper recently owned a Tacoma auto mechanic shop. Along with his business card, we've included an excerpt from a Muhammad affidavit mentioning his car repair business. (2 pages)
SHOPLIFT: Tacoma cops arrested Muhammad eight months ago on a misdemeanor shoplifting charge after he allegedly boosted $25 worth of groceries from the Pearl Street Market Place supermarket. When Muhammad failed to show for a March court date, a warrant was issued by a Tacoma Municipal Court judge, according to this official docket. (1 page)
MUG SHOTS: The Pierce County, Washington sheriff photographed Muhammad in 1995 after he was detained for a minor traffic violation. The mug shot on the right was released today (10/24) by investigators who did not detail the image's origin. (1 page)
THE SNIPERS CAUGHT THEMSELVES BY BRAGGING
It was reported on Foxnews several times. On every letter he put red 5 stars on the top, so the police would know it was really him. In communication with a member of the clergy, he also mentioned the 5 red stars, telling the guy to tell the police that. That is one way they knew the letters were authentic. Information is below. Mythi
While police cannot yet release all the details of how they connected the dots, a picture is emerging of what evidence and information led authorities to arrest John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17, at a highway rest stop in Maryland Thursday morning.
The first big break came with an angry phone call, just before the last two shootings.
On Thursday, Oct. 17, a man claiming to be the sniper called the sniper tip line and angrily told the cop who answered the phone, "I am God!" During the three-minute phone call, the caller shouted phrases such as "Don't you know who you're dealing with? Just check out the murder-robbery in Montgomery if you don't believe me!"
A tarot death card was found Oct. 7 that included the phrase "Dear Policeman, I am God," near the Bowie, Md., school where a 13-year-old boy was shot and wounded.
Last Friday, Oct. 18, apparently frustrated that police were not taking them seriously, two men called the Rev. William Sullivan at St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in Ashland, Va., and told him during a three-minute garbled conversation that police should check out a crime in Montgomery, Ala.
The priest didn't take the message seriously until a man was shot and wounded in a Ponderosa parking lot in Ashland on Saturday, Oct. 19. Investigators then questioned the priest, but remained stumped. It's still unclear how investigators knew of the church's connection.
Fox News learned that the priest also told the cops that the caller referred to the "five stars" on the sniper's notes, which is why investigators took the call seriously. The five stars apparently on the written messages at the crime scenes are believed to be Jamaican references. There is a Jamaican band called Five Stars, who include in one of their songs the lyrics, "word is bond."
Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose reiterated that phrase in a message to the sniper on Wednesday, Oct. 23, when Moose also referred to the "duck in a noose" message.
"You've asked us to say, quote, we have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose, end quote," Moose said. "We understand that hearing us say this is important to you. If you are reluctant to contact us, be assured that we remain ready to talk directly with you. Our word is our bond."
Also on Sunday, sniper investigators called Montgomery, Ala., police, asking for information about recent unsolved killings there. Montgomery cops said there had indeed been a murder and robbery at an ABC Beverage liquor store Sept. 21 that left one woman dead and another wounded. A patrol officer saw and chased the gunman, who got away.
There was also last week's call to authorities from someone in Tacoma, Wash., who thought Malvo could be the sniper and said someone had been using the backyard of a Tacoma home for shooting practice. The caller suspected Muhammad and someone else nicknamed "Sniper." Police then found out Malvo and Muhammad had once lived at the Tacoma house.
It was then that the pieces finally began to fall into place.
On Monday, Oct. 21, Moose sent another message to the sniper: "The person you called could not hear everything that you said ... the audio was unclear and we want to get everything right. Call us back so that we can clearly understand."
Fox News learned that one of the phone calls Moose was referring to was a 39-second call that purposely had bad audio.
FBI agents flew to Alabama Monday to examine the evidence, including a gun magazine found at the liquor store crime scene. The sniper task force's curiosity grows, and the Montgomery police chief sends some of his detectives to Washington, D.C., with files of information.
Using a computer system not available to local police, federal investigators then traced an unidentified fingerprint found on the magazine back to Malvo, who is now in custody with Muhammad in connection with the sniper shootings. The Jamaican-born teen and his mother apparently had some run-ins with immigration officials and police in December when living in Bellingham, Wash., where he was attending high school, so the government apparently had his fingerprints on file. Malvo has said he was then living in a homeless shelter with Muhammad, who he said was his father.
Earlier this week, investigators found out the boy often spent time with a former soldier, Muhammad, also known as John Williams. Muhammad had a rap sheet since a former wife had a restraining order against him.
More focus is now placed on Washington state, after investigators trace the bank account information left by the sniper in a ransom note at the Ponderosa crime scene. The bank account reportedly was that of a woman who had reported her ATM card stolen, and the card apparently was used to withdraw money in Tacoma.
By Tuesday, Oct. 22, police had traced Muhammad to a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice registered in his name in New Jersey. The car was sold to Muhammad and Nathaniel Osbourne for $250 in August 2001. Police continue to search for Osbourne.
On Wednesday morning, federal agents pounced on the Tacoma home armed with high-powered tools looking for bullets, shell casings and other possible evidence. Neighbors reported hearing frequent shooting from the house, and investigators dug up tree stumps and other items Muhammad likely used for target practice.
Later that day, federal officials obtained a warrant for Muhammad's arrest for firearms charges. They said Muhammad had a strong interest in guns and apparently talked to friends about ways to attach a silencer to a high-powered rifle.
Then, at midnight Wednesday, Moose said police were hunting down Muhammad on the weapons charges and told the nation the man may be traveling with Malvo. Muhammad's picture and a description of his vehicle were broadcast on television and information about the man was spread over the radio.
That's when truck driver Ron Lantz entered the picture.
Around 1 a.m. Thursday morning, as Lantz pulled over at a rest stop off I-70 near Frederick, Md., he spotted the blue Caprice and saw its license plate matched the one police were looking for. Lantz called the police, who swooped in around 3:19 a.m. and arrested Muhammad and Malvo while they were sleeping in the car.
Investigators and prosecutors continue to this moment to put together a solid case to put away the two men arrested.
Now that Muhammad and Malvo are in custody, details are still coming in.
On Oct. 2 or 3, Muhammad was reportedly pulled over by Montgomery County police and later by police in Washington, D.C. But his car's tag numbers came up clean, so he was let go.
On Oct. 8, after six people were killed and another two were wounded, police found Muhammad sleeping in his car in Baltimore, and let him go despite the fact that a witness reported seeing a similar Caprice -- of a different color than Muhammad's -- leaving the scene of the Washington shooting.
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,66657,00.html
Thousands Were in the Sniper Manhunt, But a Handful Kept It All Together
By Bryan Robinson
Oct. 25 — Ultimately, it came down to 16 very tired, very emotional, very persistent guys.
For three weeks, they hunkered down in the "sniper war room," hammering out theories, running down false leads and developing strategies as innocent people in the D.C. area continued to die.
But the payoff came on Thursday night when the public face of the sniper task force, Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, went under the glare of the television lights to hold a long-delayed press conference.
But Moose didn't just deliver confirmation that two men were being held over the sniper slayings, he also put human faces on key members of the team who captured them. Most of those faces stood on either side of him. Some of them fought back tears.
More than 1,000 law enforcement officials were involved in the serial sniper case, but as Moose issued the list he spoke — apparently from the heart — of the cooperation within the leadership team of 16.
Never before had so many agencies and police forces — local, state and federal — worked together without a clearly designated leader. This was policing by committee, and it was a formula that paid off for the task force.
"I think they did a tremendous job, certainly an outstanding job is saving additional lives," said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations. "My sense of it was that the Montgomery police department was the lead on it since most of killing happened there. But as far as investigation by committee goes, certainly it is common for state and local authorities to work together with the FBI and other agencies on investigations. But I've never seen it on this kind of scale."
"I've never seen a crime spree quite like that," Johnson added. "The killers dictated how the investigation was going to be conducted by the way they committed their crimes, by going from state to state, jurisdiction to jurisdiction."
Long-Awaited — But Bittersweet — Good News
Before announcing that police had captured two suspects in the series of shootings that left 10 people dead, Moose took a deep breath and gazed at the throng of reporters and cameras that he had become all too familiar with.
Just the day before, he and other leaders of his task force were deflecting criticism that the multi-agency search for the sniper was disjointed and that the FBI should take over the investigation.
Moose had had little good news to report during the three weeks of the shootings. He appeared to age from a combination of the stress of the constant media glare and working on the case practically 24 hours a day while dealing with the taunts of a killer.
"Please understand these two are under arrest and detained on unrelated charges to the situation we're investigating," Moose said. "However, we now consider them suspects in the string of shootings in Maryland, the District of Columbia and the Virginia area."
But this straight line on the situation was flavored with emotion as he bowed his head, shrugged off the tears welling in his eyes and recalled the victims and their families. "We will never know their pain, and we only wish we could have stopped this to reduce the number of victims," he said.
Welcome Coaching?
Before Thursday's arrests, there were media reports that federal authorities were gradually taking over the serial sniper investigation. Serial killing cases are normally handled by local authorities. Federal officials may also have scripted Moose's messages to the sniper through the media.
Experts say that would not be so unusual. As a part of the team, Moose likely sought — and received — advice from officials on what to say in his press briefings, how to address the sniper, prevent more lives from being lost and how to keep the public informed without giving away too much information to the killer.
"During the Atlanta [where several inmates took over an Atlanta federal penitentiary in 1987 and held 89 hostages] prison riots, we knew we had to be careful what we said to the news media because we knew the inmates were literally watching the news and we didn't want to do anything to set them off," said Weldon Kennedy, a former FBI deputy director who handled the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.
"All the people involved know that if they don't put aside their differences or go their own way, they can be an obstacle to the investigation and would reflect fairly badly on not only themselves but on their agency."
The FBI coordinated all evidence and forensics gathering, with all significant lab work being conducted at federal FBI and ATF labs. FBI personnel also handled the tip lines.
The Justice Department's Office of Justice Programs provided extensive additional resources for investigative analysis, scientific analysis of data, communications assistance, assistance to connect the police with the school systems, analytical support, profiling assistance, subject matter experts and technology assistance.
The task force did not release the names of the other people leading the other agencies involved in the investigation until Thursday because of security concerns.
Officials also did not reveal any information on the tactics, strategy and daily procedures employed by task force investigators because they felt their investigation would be compromised.
Despite the criticism that came as the killings continued and speculation mounted that problems existed, leaders of the task force stressed that no one agency led the manhunt; it was an investigation by committee.
Besides Moose, the only other task force leaders to address the media were FBI special agent in charge Gary Bald and Michael Bouchard, the special agent in charge representing the ATF.
"In high-profile cases like this, where there is an unbelievable amount of attention and multiple jurisdictions involved, whatever robberies and other less important open investigations are put aside to solve the case," said Kennedy.
Learning to Co-Exist
Moose and agents Bouchard and Bald stressed that the level of cooperation in their investigation was unprecedented. The task of coordinating hundreds of agents and suppressing traditional rivalries between different law enforcement agencies was clear to all.
State and local authorities may feel like they know the best approach to an investigation because it is their jurisdiction and they know the territory and the residents better than anyone.
Federal authorities may feel like they know the best approach to an investigation. Or some local enforcement officials may feel resentment taking directions from FBI authorities.
"Whenever you have an investigation with so many law enforcement agencies involved, there's always going to be some agency that feels they know better than the other," said Vernon Geberth, a retired NYPD Lieutenant and author of Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniques. "It's people being people."
However, experts said, the overall goal of an investigation should help suspend any rivalries and ease any tension if there is a transfer of control in a case.
"When the FBI takes over an investigation varies, depending on the circumstances," Kennedy said. "During the Atlanta penitentiary riots, it was under their institution [the Atlanta prison] and then the FBI had jurisdiction. In the Oklahoma City bombing, it was a federal building that was bombed and that clearly fell under the FBI's jurisdiction."
"In my experience, there have always been a few who tried to go their own way or conduct their own investigation in a case," Kennedy continued. "But in most cases, law enforcement agencies have been happy to cooperate. In the Atlanta prison riots, one guy told me, 'I'm so glad you're here. What can I do to help?'" One of the first, if not the first, steps in coordinating a large investigation with several agencies is deciding which entity is in charge. That decision, experts say, establishes focal point for investigators to file their reports, a central command center to plan their strategy and discuss evidence and tips. It also gives the media its chief contact and face of the investigation.
"One of the first things you've got to decide is who's in charge," Kennedy said. "And from what I gather, the first few shootings happened in Chief Moose's county so he became the primary person."
A Wealth of Manpower, But a Wealth of New Leaks
With a large, multi-agency investigations, local authorities have access to an unlimited amount of resources and technology that they otherwise would not have in a manhunt. A large investigation also brings a wealth of manpower to field phone tips, explore hundreds of leads, revisit old clues and explore theories that would otherwise be overlooked.
However, despite its assets, a wealth of manpower also can be a hindrance. There are more law enforcement officers to monitor, and that increases the likelihood of miscommunication and leaks to the media.
Following the shooting of a 13-year-old boy by the serial sniper, Moose was furious when details of tarot card with the message "I am God" found near the scene was leaked by a law enforcement official to a local TV news station. Moose was especially irked with reporters because the author of note had requested that police not share the message with the media.
From that point, Moose stressed repeatedly that he would offer few details about evidence gathered at crime scenes or about law enforcement strategy because it could compromise the investigation.
But then last week, the Pentagon revealed that it was authorizing the use of aircraft surveillance in the search for the sniper, telling news organizations not to report the type of aircraft to be used or when the surveillance would start.
Still, the Pentagon's announcement ignited criticism that perhaps investigators were revealing too much of their strategy to a killer who was probably watching every press conference.
"Why would anyone tell that to anybody?" said Geberth. "Why would you tell the killer what to do? That's essentially what they were doing."
But there were still leaks.
"When you have a fairly large investigation, it's almost guaranteed that there are going to be leaks," Kennedy said. "The only way you may be able to control that is if you have single agency where people are following one single rule of discipline. But with a rather large investigation, leaks are going to happen. They're as common as anything. People do that for various reasons, sometimes good, sometimes bad."
Monitoring Communication From Within
Law enforcement officials also have to be careful in their methods of communicating with each other, especially if they believe there is a chance their suspect is monitoring them.
Federal, state and local officials who pursued the Texas Seven — the group of inmates who escaped a Texas prison in December 2000, killed a police officer and led authorities on a month-long manhunt before being captured in Colorado — had to take precautions because the fugitives had stolen police scanners from a Radio Shack store.
"We had radio channels that we believed only the officers had access to," said Irving, Texas Public Information Officer David Tull. "Still, what it came down to was we had to be careful what we said and how we said it because some of the channels could be intercepted. We ran into some difficulty because some the FBI agents on the case did not carry the same frequencies we did. We did a lot of our communications through cell phones but we still had to be careful."
Tull said they chose not to communicate with each other in coded dialogue because it could have caused confusion with the ranks of FBI agents unfamiliar with the language.
"We opted not to used coded dialogue because that could lead to miscommunications in the field, and that could prove fatal in a dangerous situation, especially like the one we were facing with the Texas Seven," he said.
That One Lucky Break
Ultimately, Moose used the media to help with the investigation when he communicated several messages directly to the killers and urged the public's help tracking down a suspect. And that may have led to the break he and the task force needed.
Investigators refused to say what cracked the case, but said the dialogue established with the sniper was key.
"The communication in this particular situation was instrumental in our being able to pursue the investigation," said FBI special agent Bald.
Hours before the arrests, Moose told the media in a press briefing police were seeking John Muhammad for questioning in the sniper killings and that he may be traveling with a juvenile. Authorities had a warrant for his arrest on unrelated federal weapons possessions charges.
Photos of Muhammad were broadcast all over the major news channels. Muhammad and and his 17-year-old associate were captured after an alert motorist spotted the two men sleeping in the car parked at a rest stop on Interstate 70 in Frederick County, Md., about 50 miles northwest of Washington. He called police and SWAT teams closed in on the vehicle and pulled out the two men without incident.
The task force got a lucky break — that one lucky tip or mistake by the sniper — like those that came for investigators in the Texas Seven and the Oklahoma City bombing cases.
ABCNEWS Radio's Jim Hickey and Beverley Lumpkin in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.
The Sniper Task Force
The 15 task force leaders who helped Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose in the sniper manhunt included:
Gary Bald, FBI special agent in charge in Baltimore
Michael Bouchard, special agent in charge representing the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms
Don Thompson, FBI special agent in charge
Van Harp, assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office
Jeff Rimm, special agent in charge representing the FBI's Washington field
office
Michael Stinger, special agent in charge representing the Secret
Service
Charles Ramsey, Chief of Police of the Metropolitan Police Department
in Washington, D.C.
Gerald Wilson, police chief of Prince George's County, Md.
Ronald Knight, sheriff of Spotsylvania County, Md.
Thomas Manger,Fairfax County Police Chief
Charlie Dean, Chief of Police in Prince William County, Va.
Lt. Col. Steven Wright, who represented Hanover County, Richmond Sheriff
Stuart Cook
Superintendent Dave Mitchell of the Maryland State Police
Lt. Col. Don Martin, who represented Gerald Massengill, superintendent of
Virginia State Police
Johnny Hughes, who represented all of the U.S. marshals involved in the
case.
Md. Files Murder Charges Against Sniper Suspects; Man Believed to Have Helped Buy Car Arrested
The Associated Press
ROCKVILLE, Md. Oct. 26, 2002 — Maryland prosecutors filed the first murder charges in the 13 sniper attacks that have terrorized the Washington area, and authorities Saturday tracked down the co-owner of a blue Chevrolet Caprice in which the two suspects were arrested.
The man arrested Saturday was believed to have helped the two suspects buy the car, which was registered in New Jersey. Authorities say a hole had been bored in the trunk from which the snipers may have fired on their unsuspecting victims.
FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi said Nathaniel O. Osbourne was arrested Saturday in Flint, Mich. No further details were immediately available.
In the Washington suburbs and into Virginia where the attacks had occurred, residents were returning to their shopping and everyday tasks Saturday with a sense of relief, while others mourned the death of the snipers' final victim.
"I don't have to worry about walking outside and getting shot," said Ryan Burditt, a student at Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Md., where a 13-year-old boy became one of only three of the sniper's 13 victims to survive.
In Silver Spring, two dozen buses carrying transit workers and mourners joined a funeral procession for bus driver Conrad Johnson, the 35-year-old father gunned down Tuesday in the last of the sniper attacks.
Two days after Johnson's death, John Allen Muhammad, 41, and teenager John Lee Malvo, were arrested at a rest stop near Frederick. Authorities also wanted to talk Osbourne and described him as a material witness.
Maryland authorities filed six first-degree murder counts Friday against the Muhammad and Malvo covering the deaths in their area.
They said they would seek the death penalty against Muhammad. Malvo would be tried as an adult, but the death penalty could not be applied if his reported age of 17 is verified. Maryland law does not allow for the death penalty against people under age 18. Virginia and Alabama allow the death penalty for crimes committed at the age of 16 or older.
As the first charges in the case were announced, federal and state officials began wrangling over whose case would take precedence and new details emerged about the investigation of the shooting spree.
Justice Department officials are still deciding whether to bring their own charges. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said federal prosecutors could use the Hobbs Act, which allows the government to seek the death penalty in murders where killers try to extort money. Law enforcement sources have said two letters left behind in the sniper cases demanded $10 million.
Earlier Friday, Alabama law enforcement officials filed murder charges against the two suspects in a liquor store robbery and fatal shooting Sept. 21 in Montgomery and said they would seek the death penalty. The police chief, John Wilson, said investigators believe Muhammad fired the shots.
Montgomery County State's Attorney Douglas Gansler announced the Maryland murder charges after a meeting with prosecutors from jurisdictions where the killings took place. In all, 10 people were killed and three wounded in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Gansler said each of the jurisdictions has a vital interest in the case, but Montgomery County was the "community most affected and most impacted by the shootings."
One issue in play is how each differs on the death penalty. Virginia and Alabama may be more likely than Maryland to carry out executions.
The men, who were arrested Thursday at a Maryland rest stop, could be prosecuted later in Virginia and other jurisdictions. Police linked a rifle in their car to 11 of the shootings that spanned a swath of suburban communities in the Washington area.
Authorities were tipped off last summer that Muhammad might be dangerous. Law enforcement officials said the FBI in Washington state interviewed a witness who claimed Muhammad was trying to obtain a silencer for his gun and spoke of killing police officers.
FBI agents and local police had concerns about some aspects of the witness' account and decided to treat the threat as a local issue of officer safety, the officials told The Associated Press.
Authorities said emphatically that nothing they received in June or July from the witness, Harjee Singh, suggested Muhammad and Malvo would later cross the country and go on a random killing spree in the suburbs around the nation's capital as they are now suspected of doing.
The investigation also has shown how the suspects were hiding in plain sight during the three-week rampage.
According to the FBI, police in Baltimore approached Muhammad as he slept in his car Oct. 8. Muhammad told the officer he was traveling and police, looking for a white van, did not detain him. The New York Times reported Saturday there were two other times during the three-week terror spree the snipers' car was also pulled over and then released.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Edward Norris praised the officer who checked Muhammad's identification and license tag.
"This is incredibly good police work by this officer and what it does when this goes to trial it prevents the defendant from saying: 'I was in Wyoming at the time,' because you have a police witness identifying this vehicle and this person in Baltimore city right in the middle of this murder spree," Norris told WBAL-TV.
As investigators proceeded with the case, joggers resumed their weekend runs and shopping centers were busy Saturday in Montgomery County.
"It's good that we can stop worrying about it," Ric Rodriguez said in Rockville as he and his wife stopped for coffee during their daily six-mile walk. They had avoided going outside whenever possible during the killings.
Danny Garrison, 26, was relieved that he could help his girlfriend move to a new house Saturday in Rockville without having to worry about getting shot.
"Life has definitely gotten back to normal," he said.
AP Staff Writers Gene Johnson and John Solomon in Washington contributed to this story.
Montgomery County State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler discusses the sniper case. With him are, from left, Deputy State's Attorneys Katherine Winfree, Gayle Driver and John McCarthy. (FRANK JOHNSTON -- THE WASHINGTON POST)
___ Police Tip Line ___
Law enforcement officials have set up a consolidated tip line to aid in their investigation. People with information about the sniper shootings are asked to call 1-888-324-9800 or send e-mail to taskforce@co.mo.md.us or send other correspondence to P.O. Box 7875 Gaithersburg, Md. 20898-7857.
The Montgomery County Reward Fund, established to encourage tips leading to the arrest and indictment of those involved in the region's deadly sniper attacks, has reached the county's goal of $500,000. Any more money collected will go to support the families of shooting victims.
By Craig Whitlock and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 26, 2002; Page A01
Authorities in the Washington region spotted the same faded blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice and recorded its New Jersey tags on at least 10 different occasions this month, but saw no reason to link it to the sniper attacks until this week, law enforcement sources said yesterday.
Ten times, authorities thought the car warranted enough suspicion that they ran its license plate number through a national police database, sources said. Each time, however, they let the driver go after finding no record that it had been stolen or that its occupants were wanted for any crimes.
Police said the weather-beaten Chevrolet with whitewall tires didn't attract closer scrutiny because they were mistakenly fixated on other vehicles -- a white van, a box truck, a cream-colored Toyota.
"We were looking for a white van with white people, and we ended up with a blue car with black people," said D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, whose department ran the Caprice's tags on Oct. 3, just hours before a fatal shooting in the District that has been tied to the sniper suspects, John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17.
Before the suspects themselves dropped the clue that led to their arrests, the thousand or so agents and police officers working the case were painstakingly chasing tips and leads that led nowhere, many of them said.
"We were running a lot of leads into the ground," said one local law enforcement source. "There were a ton of dead ends."
Some of those might eventually have paid off, but none with the speed that the suspects' own tips provided.
One of the more promising trails involved motels along the shooting path. Authorities combed through guest lists and later determined that Muhammad and Malvo had stopped for the night near the shootings in Spotsylvania and Prince William counties, as well as one outside a Ponderosa Steakhouse in Ashland, Va. In all, Muhammad and Malvo are suspected of shooting 13 people, killing 10 of them.
The two suspects were spotted at a YMCA on Route 1 -- less than a mile from the Ponderosa -- in the days before the Ashland shooting, according to police and YMCA officials in Richmond. Other guests said the pair stood out because they were unusually dirty and eager to use the YMCA's showers.
Some task force members predict that those coincidences might eventually have led to arrests, but acknowledged that they were a long way from that point.
Until the suspects dropped the hints that led to their arrests, the investigation was mostly characterized by frustration.
"We were chasing the nut of the day," one investigator said.
Then, on Oct. 17, a man claiming to be the sniper called the Montgomery County police department's public information office, sounding frustrated and piqued. Apparently upset that he was not being taken more seriously, the caller said he was involved in a fatal shooting "in Montgomery" and urged agents to check it out.
Police said they believe the man called them a second time, but that conversation did not last long because he was dialing from a pay phone and ran out of change, sources said.
On Oct. 18, a Virginia priest received an eerily similar call from someone professing to be the sniper. The Rev. William Sullivan of St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in Ashland told authorities that the caller spoke about a robbery-murder in Montgomery, Ala., a telling detail that caught investigators' attention.
The Alabama killing ultimately led to a fingerprint and the two suspects.
Another fat clue fell into agents' hands Oct. 19, after the shooting in Ashland.
Tacked to a tree near the crime scene was a three-page handwritten letter, adorned with stars, that berated agents for "incompitence." Specifically, the author accused agents of bungling at least six separate phone calls that the self-proclaimed sniper had placed to authorities.
"These people took [the calls] for a Hoax or a Joke, so your failure to respond has cost you five lives," the letter stated menacingly.
The letter also led them to the priest, who related his own experience talking to the sniper.
In retrospect, investigators said yesterday that they believe they unwittingly came close to finding the sniper on other occasions, but failed to corner their quarry because their vision was clouded by thousands of other leads that turned up empty.
Perhaps the best opportunity came on Oct. 3, immediately after the sniper fatally shot a 72-year-old man waiting for a bus in the District, near the Montgomery County border.
About 10 seconds after the shooting, a witness saw a dark-colored Chevrolet Caprice creep away from the scene with its lights off. The witness later reported the sighting to police.
Another witness, a restaurant employee in the area, said in an interview that he also saw a Caprice slowly driving away but did not volunteer the information to police until after the suspects were arrested because he assumed agents were looking for a white van.
"At that time, I didn't know that that [the Chevrolet] was important," said the restaurant worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It was the situation and the timing, and I didn't know if I wanted to get involved. And everybody's 'white van' this, 'white van' that."
Four days after that shooting, D.C. police issued a teletype asking officers to look for "an older model Chevrolet Caprice," but it was described as burgundy-colored.
Witnesses saw a Caprice with its lights out, Ramsey said, but they also saw a burgundy Toyota Camry speed away and may have confused the two and come up with the wrong color.
In an Oct. 13 interview on CNN, Montgomery Police Chief Charles A. Moose was asked about the report of a Caprice leaving the scene of the slaying in the District. Moose said task force investigators were aware of the sighting, but he played it down, saying there was "not a big push for public feedback on that."
Ramsey noted yesterday that D.C. police never gave up on the possibility that a Caprice was involved and reissued the alert 10 days ago.
The police sightings of the Caprice began as early as Oct. 3, the deadliest day of the shootings, when a Montgomery County patrol officer took note of the car for unknown reasons but found no basis to detain the driver or write a ticket. A District officer would also run the tag that day.
On Oct. 8, a Baltimore police officer stopped the Caprice and interviewed the man at the wheel, John Allen Muhammad, but sent him on his way. The car was seen again in Baileys Crossroads in Fairfax County and then on Oct. 21 at Tysons Corner, where a red-light camera snapped its picture.
The car sightings were not the only missed opportunities for law enforcement during the three-week hunt for the sniper.
Ten full days before the sniper attacks began in Maryland, one of the two suspects in the case left his fingerprint on a magazine at the slaying scene in Montgomery, Ala., police said.
But investigators were unable to link the fingerprint with a name -- Malvo's -- until a month later because of delays in processing the evidence. By that time, all 13 shootings in the Washington region had occurred.
Some authorities speculated that if Malvo had been linked to the Alabama crime before the sniper shootings, the Caprice might have drawn more suspicion. Detectives might have linked Malvo to Muhammad, and the car is registered to Muhammad.
But the fingerprint was sent to the Alabama Bureau of Investigation for processing, according to federal officials in Washington. The ABI is set up to run prints only against state criminal records, federal officials said. The original print was not forwarded to the FBI for comparison with federal fingerprint records, the officials said.
After the sniper connection was made, the FBI processed the print in its Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, two officials said. The system includes fingerprints provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in deportation cases, the officials said. Malvo's prints were filed there.
Alabama does not subscribe to the FBI fingerprint system, which was created in 1999. Fewer than half the states have signed on as participants, officials said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
CHICAGO (AP) - Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan acknowledged Saturday that suspected sniper John Allen Muhammad is a member of the religious group.
But Farrakhan said the man would be ousted from the Chicago-based group if he is convicted in the series of shootings that left 10 people dead and three wounded.
"He has not formally been kicked out of the Nation of Islam, but certainly if he's found guilty of something like this he would not be considered at all a member," Farrakhan said.
Farrakhan said he "grieves for the senseless loss of life" caused by the sniper shootings in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Farrakhan held a news conference in response to speculation that Muhammad provided security at the "Million Man March" in Washington. Farrahkan, who organized the march, said Muhammad, 41, did not provide security.
"He might well have been there," Farrakhan said of Muhammad, who changed his name from John Allen Williams after converting to Islam.
Farrakhan said Muhammad joined the Nation of Islam in 1997 but that he had not been in contact with the group since 1999, when he was involved in a domestic dispute with his wife, also a member of the group.
"Those who knew him never said ugly things about his conduct or his behavior," Farrakhan said.
News of the World - UK
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/index.html
SNIPER ESCAPE BID
FBI agents grab him as he flees
THE 17-year-old Washington sniper made a dramatic freedom bid—by punching his way through the CEILING of an interview room.
John Lee Malvo seized his chance after being left alone by FBI interrogators.
He leapt on a table and quickly smashed the flimsy ceiling tiles with his fists—then began hauling himself up into a ventilation shaft.
Agents dashed into the room, grabbed his flailing legs and wrenched the struggling teenager back down.
Last night the FBI refused to comment on the embarrassing incident at the "secure" and secret federal centre in Baltimore, Maryland.
Malvo and fellow sniper John Muhammad, 41—who face the death penalty in seven different jurisdictions —are refusing to help enquiries into their reign of terror in the US capital.
Posed
One agent said: "Never mind co-operation. They're not even talking."
The pair—who killed ten and wounded three in a 21-day spree— could also be charged with an unsolved murder on America's west coast.
Keenya Cook, 21, was killed in February with a single head shot as she opened her front door in Tacoma, Washington State, where Muhammad and Malvo were living at the time.
The assassins were friends with her family—and even posed for the now infamous picture together on their sofa.
But ex-Army marksman Muhammad, who changed his name from Williams because he converted to Islam, fell out with the Cooks when they befriended his ex-wife.
Claims of warnings about the pair to police BEFORE the killings started were piling up last night.
The Rev Al Archer, who runs the Lighthouse Mission Centre in Bellingham where the pair once lived, said he suspected the Gulf War veteran was a terrorist after September 11.
He said Muhammad distributed pro-Islam brochures, made anti-American slurs and also threatened to kill cops. He added: "If he'd been stopped at that time, a lot of people would be alive who are now dead."
Mr Archer revealed that Muhammad, who was existing on handouts, started traveling extensively by air. Harjeep Singh, who knew the snipers at a YMCA gym, said he was alarmed at their vow to go on a gun-rampage, targeting cops and fuel tankers.
Police and an FBI agent interviewed Mr Singh but no action was taken.
There were also chilling new revelations last night about how Malvo and Muhammad mocked police by repeatedly slipping through dragnets.
Their 1990 blue Chevrolet Caprice— a killing machine with holes in the boot to fire through—was first noted by police on October 3, just 24 hours after the first killing. But it was lost in the system while the entire hunt centered on a white van.
Meanwhile, Muhammad was stopped or spoken to by officers TEN times for various traffic offences.
During a spot-check on October 8, he was parked and asleep at the wheel. But cops failed to look in the boot, (trunk) where they would have found the Bushmaster XM15 rifle.
The most chilling escape was last Monday when two illegal immigrants in a white van were held in a swoop as they used a phone booth being staked out by cops.
Muhammad and Malvo had given the number of the booth to detectives in a phone call. And just yards away, they were lurking in their blue Chevy, watching every move in the fiasco.
The car was even caught in the background on news footage—and still the jigsaw did not piece together.
Finally, police realized the car they were looking for. But Chief Charles Moose refused to reveal the number plate. It was only when one of his team leaked it that the pair were found one-and-a-half hours later.
''The economy has to be the prime suspect,'' said James Lynch, professor at American University's Department of Justice, Law and Society.
The crime index increased 2.1 percent last year, the FBI said in its annual report drawn from 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide. That marked the first year-to-year increase since 1991.
Still, the number of crimes is 18 percent lower than a decade ago and 10 percent fewer than in 1997.
The index measures four violent crimes (murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault) and three property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft).
There were 4,160 crimes per 100,000 people in the United States last year, up slightly from the 4,124 per 100,000 recorded the previous year.
The number of murders increased for the second straight year, following several years of decline, to 15,980, or 2.5 percent more than in 2000. Forcible rapes were up less than 1 percent and robberies rose 3.7 percent. Aggravated assaults, on the other hand, fell by a half-percentage point to the lowest level since 1987.
The FBI report did not include the Sept. 11 deaths at the World Trade Center, Pentagon and from the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Those deaths, the FBI said, ''are different from the day-to-day crimes committed in this country.''
The report listed the number of Sept. 11 murder victims as 3,047. Of those, 2,823 occurred at the World Trade Center, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Somerset County, Pa. The 19 hijackers are listed separately by the FBI.
Property crimes with no threat of violence such as burglary, larceny and arson rose 2.3 percent, to 10.4 million cases. The total value of stolen property was pegged at $17.1 billion, with motor vehicles and jewelry accounting for the most money. About a third of stolen property was recovered.
Annette Bickford, a sociology professor at Long Island University, said poverty and insecurity increase when the economy falters, breeding more crime. Violent crime in particular tends to rise when the gap widens between the haves and have-nots, she said.
''We get this creation of the social 'other,' where people feel hopeless and there is no place for them,'' Bickford said.
Cities with populations between 250,000 and 500,000 had the largest increase in crimes at 4.1 percent, according to the FBI. The largest cities, those with more than 1 million inhabitants, saw crime rise only by a half percentage point, while suburban and rural counties saw crime increases of 2.4 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively.
Lynch said this shows that crime is less confined to the inner cities. ''The really bad places have been diffused, they've been sent out to the 'burbs,'' he said.
The FBI report differs from a survey done earlier this year by the Justice Department, which identified a drop in all violent crimes except murder in 2001. Murder is not included in that survey, and the FBI cautions against comparing the two reports.
The Justice Department report is based on interviews with people who identify themselves as victims, though they do not always report crimes to police.
The FBI analysis does not count simple assaults or non-forcible rape sexual assaults - they are difficult to track and often not reported to police. Justice Department officials said could inflate the overall crime rate in the FBI analysis.
Among other findings in the FBI report:
-There were 6,750 white murder victims and 6,446 black, with the remainder a mix of other or unknown races. Men were far more likely than women to be murdered; about 42 percent of victims knew or were related to their attacker.
-Firearms accounted for 8,719 slayings, or about two-thirds, followed by knives, ''personal'' weapons such as fists and feet, blunt objects and such methods as drugs, strangulation and drowning. There were 10 murders-by-poison, according to the FBI.
-Police made arrests in about 20 percent of all crimes. They did better with violent crimes, solving 46 percent, including about two-thirds of all murders. Burglaries remain the toughest cases to crack, with just 13 percent of offenses resulting in arrests.
-There were more than 2.3 million arrests for crimes tracked by the FBI in 2001, down less than 1 percent from the year before.
-There were more than 76,000 arson offenses in 2001 and 9,726 hate crime incidents. Comparisons for 2000 were not given for those crimes.
AP-NY-10-28-02 1612EST
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.
Nearly a month before last month's deadly spree began in the Washington area, a man was shot six times at close range as he locked up his restaurant in suburban Clinton, Md. Paul LaRuffa, 55, survived.
''We're confident we have a match between the shooting on Sept. 5 and the snipers,'' said Capt. Andy Ellis of the Prince George's County police department. He refused to discuss evidence.
LaRuffa's assailant took his laptop computer. Law enforcement sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the laptop stolen in the Sept. 5 shooting was the same one found in Muhammad and Mavlo's car.
''The fact I was shot is mind-boggling, and the fact that it is linked is even more unbelievable to me,'' LaRuffa said Friday.
He said he is glad the suspected snipers are being prosecuted and added he's recovering ''really well'' from his wounds.
Malvo and John Allen Muhammad have now been accused of shooting 19 people, killing 13 of them, in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Two other shootings, in Washington state, are under investigation.
Federal authorities have given Virginia prosecutors the first trial against the suspects, saying the state has the best chance of obtaining the death penalty. No trial has been scheduled.
At the teenager's initial court appearance in Virginia, Fairfax County prosecutor Robert F. Horan Jr. said eyewitnesses had spotted Malvo at three of the fatal crime scenes. The teen was ordered held without bail.
A few miles away, Muhammad, 41, made his first appearance in a Virginia court and a judge said he would appoint a lawyer for him.
Last week, Horan said without elaborating that there was ''an equal possibility'' either Malvo or Muhammad gunned down FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot on Oct. 14 in Fairfax. Malvo is charged in that case.
Horan would not discuss evidence in detail, but he said after the hearing that only Malvo's fingerprints were found on the .223-caliber Bushmaster XM15 semiautomatic rifle authorities believe was used in the killing spree. The gun was found in the men's car after their arrest Oct. 24.
Malvo's court-appointed attorney, Michael Arif, dismissed the importance of the fingerprints. He said Malvo, who faces two counts of capital murder and a firearms charge, will plead innocent.
Arif complained that police questioned Malvo for nearly eight hours Thursday without a lawyer present. He said he would ask a judge to toss out any inappropriate statements Malvo may have made.
''I'm not at all comfortable with a 17-year-old being in police custody for that long without representation,'' he said.
Horan said FBI agents are trying to find Malvo's mother, who they believe now lives in Bellingham, Wash.
The prosecutor said Malvo tried to escape shortly after being taken into custody by crawling up into the ceiling at a Baltimore lockup. His escape was foiled when he fell through the ceiling tiles into a nearby office.
Malvo will be held in an adult jail until a Dec. 5 hearing.
In adjacent Prince William County, Muhammad was formally charged with killing Dean Meyers as he pumped gas at a Manassas gas station Oct. 9. Judge Herman A. Whisenant Jr. asked Muhammad if he wanted a court-appointed lawyer.
''I thought I already had counsel,'' Muhammad replied, referring to a lawyer appointed earlier by a federal court.
The judge explained that Muhammad didn't have a lawyer to face the Virginia charges and again asked him if he wanted one appointed. Muhammad responded, ''I don't know what to say, sir.''
The judge appointed defense attorney Peter Greenspun, who later declined to comment on the case.
''I've been representing him for all of six hours,'' he said. ''I have nothing to say.''
Muhammad's public defender in Maryland, James Wyda, denounced the federal government's decision to move him to Virginia, calling it ''clumsy, macabre forum-hopping for the cheapest and easiest way to obtain the death penalty.''
Some of the shootings occurred in Prince George's County, Md., in the same town where Muhammad's ex-wife, Mildred, lived with her sister. Mildred Muhammad had fled there from Washington because she feared her husband would hurt her, according to court documents.
AP-NY-11-08-02 2153EST
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.
SEE MIND CONTROL