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Lee Malvo, 17, left, and John Muhammad, 41, also known as John Allen Williams, are seen in this recent family photo in Louisiana, provided by Muhammad's former sister-in-law Sheron Norman. (AP photo) |
The trail of terror police say was undertaken by a Persian Gulf war veteran and his 17- year-old traveling companion has come to an end as investigators prepare to lodge murder charges in a string of sniper shootings carried out from the cover of woods, darkness and a car expressly outfitted for killing.
Former soldier John Allen Muhammad, 41, made a brief appearance late yesterday at U.S. District Court in Baltimore under unprecedented guard, on a charge of illegally possessing the Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle that authorities said late last night had been linked through ballistics tests to the sniper attacks.
With the 13 shootings - 10 of them fatal - taking place in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, prosecutors yesterday were determining which jurisdiction would claim the case and whether Muhammad should be tried in state or federal court. They were holding as a material witness Lee Boyd Malvo, a 17-year-old Jamaican whom Muhammad often had in tow.
The day's events began hours after midnight when police found Muhammad and Malvo sleeping in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice at an Interstate 70 rest stop in Frederick County. After the men were arrested without incident, a police search of the car turned up the Bushmaster rifle, a gun tripod and - in one of the most chilling police finds yet - a "gunport" rigged in the back of the car to allow someone to shoot from inside the trunk, law enforcement sources say.
Other details began to emerge. At the height of the killings, witnesses say, Muhammad was spending the night in his car on the streets of Baltimore - a city many assumed was out of his range - where sandwich shop workers glimpsed him wandering about the Remington area looking for a hot meal.
And federal charging documents revealed that investigators caught up with Muhammad partly through a former Army friend, who said Muhammad had recently tried unsuccessfully to make a gun silencer - telling his friend, "Can you imagine the damage you could do if you could shoot with a silencer?"
Montgomery County State's Attorney Doug Gansler and U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio are scheduled to discuss the case this morning. Among the questions prosecutors are weighing is where they would most likely be able to win a death sentence against Muhammad; Maryland and Virginia have the death penalty, but Maryland has a moratorium on capital punishment. Virginia, meanwhile, has the second-most-used death statute in the nation.
Late last night, a weary but uplifted Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose congratulated the hundreds of investigators who worked on the case for three weeks. He expressed regret, however, that the arrests didn't occur sooner.
"My heart goes out to the victims and the families of these shootings," Moose said, his eyes starting to tear. "Our thoughts and prayers are with these people. We'll never know their pain, and we only wish we could have stopped this to reduce the number of victims."
His comments, accompanied by a bearhug with Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, drew a highly unusual response from the horde of news reporters and cameramen gathered around him - a loud round of applause.
After three weeks of huge dragnets and round-the-clock media coverage, the end of the search arrived quietly, far from the public eye.
Shortly before 1 a.m. yesterday, a motorist at the rest stop called 911 and reported seeing the car that police had put out an alert for only one hour before. There was no one visible inside the parked car, police were told.
State police alerted the sniper task force in Montgomery County, closed westbound I-70, and rushed to set up a perimeter around the rest stop, tucked among trees just off the highway near Myersville, about 11 miles west of Frederick. Just after 3:30 a.m., heavily armed agents made their move, rushing the car and breaking the windows - and only then discovering that the two men were sleeping in the car.
Police arrested the pair without resistance and drove them to Montgomery County police headquarters in Rockville for questioning, police said.
The arrests lifted a cloud of fear from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, which saw residents' lives transformed by terror: Schools went into "lockdown mode" and canceled outdoor recess; gas stations hung draping to protect customers; and shoppers ran across parking lots to make themselves a tougher target.
The end of the anxiety also released waves of pent-up emotion, with tears more prevalent than smiles.
"It's been such a long time coming," said Alex Millhouse, a mechanic at the Aspen Hill Mobil station where Prem Kumar Walekar, 54, was shot while refueling his taxi Oct. 3. Millhouse found the victim slumped against a nearby van.
For the past three weeks, Millhouse's 7-year-old daughter "has been asking me what a sniper is, and I haven't wanted to lie to her," Millhouse said. "It's going to be a relief to tell her that the problem doesn't exist anymore."
The first public view of the man suspected of being the sniper came in yesterday's brief federal court hearing, where Muhammad appeared in a packed courtroom wearing a teal jail jumpsuit and handcuffs. He spoke little in court other than to acknowledge that he understood the federal firearms charge brought against him in Seattle. Neither he nor Malvo has provided any statement to police, and neither has requested a lawyer, investigators said.
Former soldier John Allen Muhammad, 41, made a brief appearance late yesterday at U.S. District Court in Baltimore under unprecedented guard, on a charge of illegally possessing the Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle that authorities said late last night had been linked through ballistics tests to the sniper attacks.
With the 13 shootings - 10 of them fatal - taking place in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, prosecutors yesterday were determining which jurisdiction would claim the case and whether Muhammad should be tried in state or federal court. They were holding as a material witness Lee Boyd Malvo, a 17-year-old Jamaican whom Muhammad often had in tow.
The day's events began hours after midnight when police found Muhammad and Malvo sleeping in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice at an Interstate 70 rest stop in Frederick County. After the men were arrested without incident, a police search of the car turned up the Bushmaster rifle, a gun tripod and - in one of the most chilling police finds yet - a "gunport" rigged in the back of the car to allow someone to shoot from inside the trunk, law enforcement sources say.
Other details began to emerge. At the height of the killings, witnesses say, Muhammad was spending the night in his car on the streets of Baltimore - a city many assumed was out of his range - where sandwich shop workers glimpsed him wandering about the Remington area looking for a hot meal.
And federal charging documents revealed that investigators caught up with Muhammad partly through a former Army friend, who said Muhammad had recently tried unsuccessfully to make a gun silencer - telling his friend, "Can you imagine the damage you could do if you could shoot with a silencer?"
Montgomery County State's Attorney Doug Gansler and U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio are scheduled to discuss the case this morning. Among the questions prosecutors are weighing is where they would most likely be able to win a death sentence against Muhammad; Maryland and Virginia have the death penalty, but Maryland has a moratorium on capital punishment. Virginia, meanwhile, has the second-most-used death statute in the nation.
Late last night, a weary but uplifted Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose congratulated the hundreds of investigators who worked on the case for three weeks. He expressed regret, however, that the arrests didn't occur sooner.
"My heart goes out to the victims and the families of these shootings," Moose said, his eyes starting to tear. "Our thoughts and prayers are with these people. We'll never know their pain, and we only wish we could have stopped this to reduce the number of victims."
His comments, accompanied by a bearhug with Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, drew a highly unusual response from the horde of news reporters and cameramen gathered around him - a loud round of applause.
After three weeks of huge dragnets and round-the-clock media coverage, the end of the search arrived quietly, far from the public eye.
Shortly before 1 a.m. yesterday, a motorist at the rest stop called 911 and reported seeing the car that police had put out an alert for only one hour before. There was no one visible inside the parked car, police were told.
State police alerted the sniper task force in Montgomery County, closed westbound I-70, and rushed to set up a perimeter around the rest stop, tucked among trees just off the highway near Myersville, about 11 miles west of Frederick. Just after 3:30 a.m., heavily armed agents made their move, rushing the car and breaking the windows - and only then discovering that the two men were sleeping in the car.
Police arrested the pair without resistance and drove them to Montgomery County police headquarters in Rockville for questioning, police said.
The arrests lifted a cloud of fear from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, which saw residents' lives transformed by terror: Schools went into "lockdown mode" and canceled outdoor recess; gas stations hung draping to protect customers; and shoppers ran across parking lots to make themselves a tougher target.
The end of the anxiety also released waves of pent-up emotion, with tears more prevalent than smiles.
"It's been such a long time coming," said Alex Millhouse, a mechanic at the Aspen Hill Mobil station where Prem Kumar Walekar, 54, was shot while refueling his taxi Oct. 3. Millhouse found the victim slumped against a nearby van.
For the past three weeks, Millhouse's 7-year-old daughter "has been asking me what a sniper is, and I haven't wanted to lie to her," Millhouse said. "It's going to be a relief to tell her that the problem doesn't exist anymore."
The first public view of the man suspected of being the sniper came in yesterday's brief federal court hearing, where Muhammad appeared in a packed courtroom wearing a teal jail jumpsuit and handcuffs. He spoke little in court other than to acknowledge that he understood the federal firearms charge brought against him in Seattle. Neither he nor Malvo has provided any statement to police, and neither has requested a lawyer, investigators said.
