Janet Harris doesn't care what the reporters beating a path to her one-room schoolhouse tell her. To her, John Allen Muhammad will always be the charming father who showed up in Antigua with his three cheerful children two years ago before disappearing a year later.
They can say what they want on television, Harris said, but in her mind, Muhammad will never be a killer.
"He was genuine. He was compassionate," said Harris, the principal of the Greensville Primary School in the Caribbean island's capital, St. John's, who was also Muhammad's landlord for several months. "A loving man - and he was good-looking."
As investigators linked Muhammad, 41, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, to an expanding list of crimes last week, many of those acquainted with Muhammad are having difficulty reconciling the appealing man they knew with the coldblooded killings police say he and Malvo carried out.
From Antigua to Washington state, those who met Muhammad describe how his charm seduced women, prompted strangers to open their doors to him - and helped him avoid undue suspicion in what may have been an eight-month span that has left up to 13 dead and five injured.
Even in chance meetings, his manner was winning. He often spun a convincing story to explain who he was and where he was going. But some detect, in retrospect, a malevolent edge to his pleasant demeanor.
Take, for instance, the unsettling report from a woman who was pumping gas at a Laurel Shell station on Oct. 22 at about 1 p.m., seven hours after the sniper killed a bus driver in Aspen Hill. A tall, well-built black man, looking sharp in jeans, asked her for directions to Maryland Avenue in Baltimore, she recalled.
Then, before getting back into his blue Chevrolet Caprice, the man made a chivalrous offer: "He said, 'Let me pump your gas. You know, there's a sniper on the loose here,'" said the woman, who requested anonymity for fear of being besieged by the media. "I said 'No thanks, I'm almost finished.'"
The man shrugged and returned to his car, where a teen-age boy sat laughing, the Laurel woman said. They drove off in their Caprice, headed north.
A few days later, the woman said she saw photos of Muhammad and Malvo and recognized the pair from the gas station at Route 198 and U.S. 1. She also read that Muhammad had been spotted at a bookstore near Maryland Avenue in Baltimore the same day as her encounter. The realization that Muhammad's offer may have been a cruel mockery stunned her.
"I didn't connect it because they were so damn friendly and nice," the woman said. "They were both just laughing and I thought they were being friendly. ... They were just making a big joke of it, and I thought he was sincere."
Even in situations where he might have aroused suspicion, especially when the sniper shootings left Washington area residents on edge, Muhammad's smile and good manners carried him through. When he marched into a Baltimore bookstore asking for a book of Arabic poetry, the storeowner was initially wary, but later won over by his courtesy. When he was found sleeping in his car by a Baltimore police officer, he easily talked his way out of the jam. When he showed up the Silver Spring YMCA without enough cash for the $3 guest fee, he persuaded workers to waive it.
Remaining asset
In the past two years, as Muhammad lost custody of his three children and edged toward indigence, his charisma was his one remaining asset, sustaining him and Malvo and gaining him favors everywhere he went.
In Washington state, an unidentified Tacoma man took the pair into his home last winter and lent Muhammad two handguns - which now have been linked to a Feb. 16 homicide and shots fired at a synagogue in Tacoma. Mark Thomas, 25, a recent college graduate Muhammad met at a Bellingham gym, also put up Muhammad and Malvo last spring.
"They were very friendly and helped around the house a lot," said Jason Hamilton, one of Thomas' three housemates.
It was an unusual setup, four middle-class young white men befriending a black man living in a homeless shelter with a teen-ager that he claimed was his son.
Muhammad helped make the situation seem less strange by inventing a narrative for himself and Malvo, saying they were about to embark on a cross-country sightseeing trip before Malvo started college this fall.
Some details that seem sinister in retrospect raised no suspicions at the time. In a snapshot from a party at Thomas' house last spring, Malvo is wearing a British Columbia Rifle Association T-shirt with the designation "Sniper," evidently a rank for target shooters.
Muhammad repaid Thomas' kindness with a gift of smoked salmon and an electronic pocket organizer. The four housemates trusted Muhammad and Malvo so much that they let them come and go freely from the house. "They were super-nice guys," recalled Tim Saur, another housemate.
For Muhammad, freeloading with others was nothing new. After abducting his children to Antigua in 2000, he stayed with a string of islanders.
Augustin Sheppard, a 43-year-old farmer, still marvels about the man who came to his St. John's house when helping a woman who was storing furniture with Sheppard.
"I can't believe it's the same man," said Sheppard. "He came in just like gentle Jesus. He was a really friendly individual."
Even when Muhammad's stories took a less gentle turn, people found them plausible. When he turned up with Malvo last summer in Baton Rouge, La., he told his first cousin, Charlene Anderson, that he was part of a secret Special Forces team assigned to recover 500 pounds of stolen C4 explosives stolen from a military base by drug smugglers.
He said he was passing off Malvo as his son, but the teen-ager was actually a member of the undercover team, skilled at infiltrating gangs of young toughs. "He said, 'That's not my son. That boy is highly trained,'" Anderson recalled.
Sitting in Anderson's kitchen, Muhammad pulled a rifle with a black butt out of a case inside a green-and-black duffel bag, she said. "He asked me where he could buy bullets," she said.
The pair spent a night at Anderson's house, and Muhammad left the rifle at her home for a week, she said.
Anderson, a campus police officer at Southern University, said Muhammad told the story of the secret military mission very plausibly, though it didn't fit well with Muhammad's unkempt appearance and seeming lack of resources. He shared a tiny tin of fish with Malvo, prompting her to offer them the food in her refrigerator.
Anderson said that while Muhammad "spooked me a little," she was really more concerned about Malvo, fearing to leave her 18- and 21-year-old daughters at home alone with the teen-ager.
'Strong, lean, mean'
Not everyone stayed under the spell of Muhammad's charm - his two marriages ended in bitterness, he ran afoul of superiors in the Army, and had disputes with business partners. Charles Green, the brother of Muhammad's ex-wife Mildred, says he was never fooled.
Green, who grew up with Muhammad in Baton Rouge and lived with him in Tacoma, Wash., described him as a "pretty cool guy" who listened to Motown and jazz, whose favorite movie character was Will Smith in Independence Day. Women fell for him, Green said, and Muhammad was all too willing to return the attention.
But Green says he saw a hard edge in Muhammad's smoothness, a steely self-interest that could flare into violence and anger. "He's smart, but real sneaky smart," Green said. "He was a strong, lean, mean guy."
Others who encountered Muhammad found him aloof - perhaps because Muhammad didn't need anything from them. Bob Jacobs, the head of the YMCA in Baton Rouge where Muhammad worked out during a brief visit to his hometown this summer, said workers found him "standoffish"; then again, that YMCA didn't charge a fee, and so there was no need for a favor.
Muhammad's power of personality is seen by some as an explanation for how he won the allegiance of Malvo, the Jamaican teen-ager whom he likely met in Antigua. Those who saw the two together describe Malvo as quiet, bright and polite - and clearly in thrall of Muhammad and under his influence.
"Mr. Muhammad led my son to do what happened," Leslie Malvo, the boy's father, said in a telephone interview last week from Jamaica. "My son would never do that. ... It is not my son, not what was in his heart."
One of Malvo's teachers at Antigua and Barbuda Seventh-Day Adventist School said there was a stark contrast between the smart, sunny student who enrolled at the school in 1999 and the moody teen-ager who dropped out the next year. The change took place after Malvo's mother, Una James, left him alone in Antigua and the teen-ager moved in with Muhammad.
"When his mother left, it was like he was forsaken," said the teacher, who asked not to be named. "He changed."
In Antigua, though, it is hard to find anyone speaking ill of Muhammad, aside from the government officials who are looking into whether he forged passports.
Harris, the school principal, glowingly recalled watching Muhammad jogging slowly early in the morning with his children. She was so impressed with him that just two months after his children enrolled in her school, she wrote a letter of recommendation in June 2000 when he applied for a teaching or coaching job.
"I found him to be an honest and trustworthy young man," she wrote. "He adheres to high moral and religious principles."
Sun staff writers Stephen Kiehl, Jonathan D. Rockoff, Scott Shane and the Associated Press contributed to this article. Kimberly A.C. Wilson reported from St. John's, Antigua; Scott Calvert reported from Washington state.