For 23 frightening days in October 2002, a murderous team of domestic terrorists drove up and down Interstate 95 as it winds through Maryland, Washington, DC and south into the Commonwealth of Virginia. Traveling in a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, a former New Jersey police car they had specially altered to become their “killing machine,” the two murderers used an easily obtainable XM-15 semiautomatic .223 rifle to fire through a hole they had cut in the trunk area of the then 12-year-old car. They had painted the inside of the trunk lid dark and darkened the rear windows of the car to allow them to crawl unseen through the back seat area into the sniper site they had created in the trunk of the car. It was from this position that they would eventually kill 10 and wound another three in 15 separate localize shooting incidents before the two were finally arrested in their vehicle by an FBI SWAT team, this while the killers slept alongside a highway rest area.

For those of us in the Washington, DC area it was a scary time. Men and women, old and young, boys and girls, black, white and Hispanic, it made no difference. All were targeted by the snipers, therefore everyone in the area had to think that they too could become the next victim of the elusive shooters, really almost ghost snipers who murdered and silently slid away before they could be ID'd and arrested. Faulty eyewitnesses initially placed the shooters in a white van and every one of the 60,000 white vans registered in a multi-state area became a suspect vehicle. Former law enforcement officers went on TV to provide their opinion that most snipers were lone white males, therefore any white male in a white van was suspect and hundreds were pulled over by law enforcement in their attempt to stop the killings. But the shootings still continued.

Call me God

As a guest on a night time news program, I opined that the sniper could just as easily be black as white, and I highly doubted he was driving a white van as, after all, every such vehicle in a three state area had already been checked out by law enforcement. And besides, it was more logical that a team of two, somewhat like a military observer/sniper team, was operating together, in this case with one driving the vehicle while the second person did the deadly shooting. I thought that in such a case there would be an older man, probably with some type of former military training, who had teamed up with a younger man, i.e., a leader and a follower. Asked about motive, I suggest that there was nothing more “God-like” than the power of life and death. Imagine the sniper looking down the barrel of his rifle at a number of potential victims and making the choice of who would live and who would die at that very instant. Within a few days the unknown sniper would leave a Tarot card at a new shooting site on which was written “Call me God.” That Sunday I was on NBC’s “Meet the Press” where the former great moderator of that show, Tim Russert, brought this up to me, asking if I thought the sniper(s) had adopted my characterization of their actions as God-like.

While many local, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies would contribute investigators to this investigation, one local chief seemed to anoint himself the overall head of this investigation, much to the chagrin of many of the other agencies who contributed as much if not more to the hunt for the killers. This same official would later write a book about this case for his own apparent personal gain, an action that a local prosecutor indicated could damage the case and compromise the jury pool. Other challenges would arise in the case, to include the mixture of opinions offered by the many talking heads on the various television networks, some of whom had some basis for their speculations, while others would flippantly characterize the potential shooters as likely to be “two skinny white kids.”

Too Close to Home

A palpable fear seemed to grip the local area. The shooting victims now included a landscaper, a taxi driver, a babysitter, a young mother, and a retired carpenter. It was, after all, only one-year since the 9/11 attacks on America and some wondered if this was part two of “a one-two punch” against the U.S., with foreign agents committing these continuing acts of terror. As one or more of the sniper attacks took place at gas stations, other stations hung tarps up to shield their customers from view and questions were being asked and answered as to how you could pump gas and protect yourself from being shot – something Bosnians probably had to learn in the conflict in that country, but something entirely new to Americans. It was at this very time that my wife called me from a shopping mall in Virginia. “The sniper has just shot a woman in the parking lot where I’m standing,” she said. “What should I do?” she questioned me. “Run, duck, cover!” I thought, but answered instead, “have deputy sheriffs and troopers arrived yet?” “Yes,” she said. “Then go ahead and drive home,” I said, “as the snipers are probably long gone themselves.” A 13-year-old school boy, other citizens pumping gas, a female FBI intelligence analyst, and yet other innocent victims would also be gunned down. Morning, noon or night; it made no difference as the killing season on citizens continued while thousands of investigators frantically sought to stop the killers before they struck again.

Motive – the “Why” for the Murder Spree

Motive is always important in such cases. Why, criminal profilers asked themselves, the randomness of the shootings, the different locations of the incidents, and the differences in ages, races and sexes of the victims? Maybe an angry man would target whites, or blacks, or men or women, but why are the snipers targeting anyone at random, therefore targeting everyone in specific? There is a theory in criminal profiling that sometimes a spree shooter or killer is not functioning in a totally random manner, but that there is a method to his madness and order to the chaos that has simply been missed by investigators.

I thought the killers might have a particular victim in mind, someone that they had already shot or planned to shoot that would appear to be a random victim, but who would be the very reason for the madness and murder we were all experiencing.

John Allen Muhammad, a 42-year-old African American U.S. Army veteran and his teenage killing partner, Lee Boyd Malvo, were finally arrested, due in large part to the media releasing the license plate on the killer’s car, information that investigators were reluctant to release to the public. It was when the veil was lifted from the killers that the chaos theory proved to be very workable. While Muhammad, born Williams, provided information that led some investigators to believe the murderous spree was part of his own personal Islamic jihad, another person thought she knew the actual motive for the reign of terror that had swept over the Washington, DC area for those three terrible weeks. She believed she was at the center of Muhammad’s bull’s eye, his “ultimate victim to be.”

Mildred and John Allen Muhammad were married for 12 years. It was when he returned from the Gulf War, she said, that he changed. He continuously put her down and she began to believe him and to believe that their problems were her fault. While she had no physical scars from their fights, the emotional scars had cut deep into her. When she finally broke free and divorced Muhammad, he said “she had become his enemy and as his enemy, he would kill her.” A custody battle then took place over their three children, with John initially fleeing to Antigua with the children. It was here that he met and developed a relationship with the young boy who would become his future partner in crime, Lee Boyd Malvo.

Mildred Muhammad would later gain legal custody of their children and it was from that point on that she truly feared for her life, knowing that for John to regain custody of their children, she would have to die. When her ex-husband was arrested as the DC sniper, Mildred thought she knew the motive for all the murders. She thought he wanted to kill a number of people, eventually including her, so he would not become the logical suspect in her death. By this, Muhammad had hatched a murderous plot that saw innocents die so he could eventually get the chance to kill his ex-wife and regain custody of his children. He would not lose control and he would not be denied what he felt was rightfully his.

An Eye for an Eye

John Allen Muhammad is now scheduled to die for the crimes for which he was convicted. As is his right, he was offered the chance to choose between death by lethal injection or by electrocution. Due, I believe, to his controlling personality he refused to choose, and therefore, as provided by Virginia law, he will die by lethal injection. I think he refused to choose as a method of controlling one of the few things he has left to control – his life, this while one of the witnesses scheduled to watch him executed is coming all the way from Idaho to do so. This man believes he has a good reason to watch Muhammad die.

Twenty-five-year-old Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera was cleaning out her van at a Maryland gas station when she came into the rifle sights of Muhammad. Lewis-Rivera and Muhammad had never met, but she was none-the-less targeted like the other victims of the DC sniper, in her case shot in the back. When she died, her family was shattered forever. She left behind her husband and their 3-year-old daughter. Lewis-Rivera, the sixth victim of the snipers, was shot to death a little more than half way through the ongoing bloody killing spree. There were 16,204 known murders in America that year, one every 32.4 minutes of every day of every month. While Lewis-Rivera was but one of those tragic losses, we cannot forget her nor can we allow ourselves to become numbed by such dark crimes and stark statistics. Her loss was real and her daughter, now 10-years-old, will never know the wonderful person her mother was, only that her mom was struck down in the prime of her life for no real reason. Lori Ann was but a pawn in the twisted plan of a man who knew what he wanted, and was willing to kill as many as needed to get it.

Other Victims?

Then there is the lingering question of how many shootings the pair were actually responsible for. In 2006, Malvo confessed to four other shootings, including two murders not previously linked to him and Muhammad. These and other suspected shootings by the two killers could number 27, including 17 murders in a 10-state area. The Virginia state prosecutor who tried Muhammad has said, "it may be impossible to know how many people were actually killed by the two." Many parents and loved ones of suspected shooting victims, like the family of Billy Gene Dillon, shot by a sniper in rural Texas in May 2002, may never get their question answered; did the DC snipers kill their son too? Families in Florida, Arizona and other states await a similar answer that may never come to them. Like fellow serial killer Ted Bundy who committed hs many murders years before them, the DC snipers have not revealed the true extent of their crimes, perhaps the last way they have to retain control of their victims and punish society.

Executions as Reality TV

One of the small number of people scheduled to witness the November 10 execution of Muhammad is Marion Lewis, father of Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera. The unemployed construction worker could not scrape together the money he needed to travel to Virginia, and no state or federal agency offered to pay his way, so he approached a television tabloid news program and asked them to cover his travel expenses, which they agreed to do in exchange for an exclusive interview both before and after the execution of his daughter’s killer. Mr. Lewis is seeking revenge and retribution, but what he will likely see is Muhammad slip off into a restful sleep from which he will never awake. I doubt the viewing of Muhammad’s death will be the emotional salve needed to heal Mr. Lewis’s pain. When you think about it, doesn’t this whole situation seem a bit ghoulish, something like the execution scene from Tom Hank’s 1999 movie, “The Green Mile.” Watching that scene could turn anyone against the death penalty, anyone, that is, but someone who lost a child as Marion Lewis did, or like someone who lost a loved one to Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. Each of us must come to our own opinion regarding the death penalty in a civilized society, the concept of an eye for an eye, and the closure that we gain or don’t gain from the death of someone who otherwise seems to be the poster boy for the death penalty, the ultimate negative statement by society.

What’s next?

My fear now is that Al-Qaida or some other foreign terrorist group, or a couple of domestic wing nuts with an axe to grind, will pick up a rifle and a box of rounds and imitate Muhammad and Malvo’s actions. Many acts of terrorism have been prevented since the events of 9/11, and while some of those stopped appear to be charter members of “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” just how long can we keep up our lucky streak until we are again attacked, perhaps by someone driving another 1990 Chevy killing machine? As we are told, law enforcement must be right 100% of the time while the terrorists need be lucky only once. Whose going to be lucky next week?