CENTREVILLE, Va. - In the nearly two months since the sniper attacks in the Washington area ended with the arrests of John Allen Muhammad and his teen-age protege, Lee Boyd Malvo, investigators say they have made a striking conclusion: All the evidence they have points to Malvo, 17, as the trigger man. Little if any indicates that Muhammad fired a shot.
Officials who have reviewed the evidence at the sniper task force's new headquarters here in suburban Virginia say that the lack of evidence against Muhammad will complicate prosecutors' efforts to get a death sentence for him in the shooting of Dean Harold Meyers, who was killed at a gas station in Manassas on Oct. 9.
After the two men were arrested Oct. 24, it was widely assumed, even by investigators, that Muhammad fired most of the shots, which hit their targets with remarkable accuracy. He is a former Army infantryman, 24 years Malvo's senior.
The reversal in assumptions is only the latest that has occurred since the long, terrifying weeks of the attacks. Investigators said they were looking for a white van; the men were found in a 1990 blue Chevrolet Caprice. Experts said the assailant would probably turn out to be a white gunman; Muhammad and Malvo are black. Because the assailant outfoxed so many investigators and attacked with such cool precision, it was assumed that Muhammad, an experienced marksman, was the primary killer. Now, investigators say, it appears that a teen-ager is to blame.
"Nothing is what it seems in this case," said Douglas F. Gansler, the state's attorney in Montgomery County, where six of the shootings occurred.
The belief that Malvo was the primary shooter could be key to legal teams devising strategies as the trials approach.
Investigators discussed the evidence to counter public perceptions that Malvo was under the spell of Muhammad.
But they also indicate that several acquaintances of Muhammad's say he had been training Malvo to fire a rifle for more than a year before the sniper attacks started, and saw himself as a master who was preparing his protege. Muhammad trained Malvo in karate when they lived in Washington state and traveled together to the Arizona desert last spring, investigators say. In Tacoma, Muhammad gave Malvo the nickname Sniper, acquaintances say, and practiced rifle shooting with him in the backyard of a friend's house.
Defense lawyers for both men declined to comment for this article.
Investigators say the evidence against Malvo includes:
Malvo's admissions to both Virginia shootings in which the men are being tried and to one in Maryland, made in conversations with Fairfax police detectives.
Hair linked by DNA to Malvo found in the trunk of the Caprice. A hole was carved in the trunk to create a sniper's nest.
A videotape recovered from a security camera near the Falls Church Home Depot parking garage where Linda Franklin, an FBI analyst, was killed Oct. 14. The videotape shows someone who appears to be Muhammad in the driver's seat of the car.
Malvo's fingerprints found on a piece of paper near where investigators believe the shot was fired that wounded Iran Brown, 13, outside Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie on Oct. 7.
Saliva found on a grape stem on the hill where investigators contend someone fired the shot that killed Conrad E. Johnson, a bus driver, in Aspen Hill on Oct 22.
That so much evidence would point to Malvo does not surprise some investigators who, in the early hours after the arrests in Maryland, had begun to conclude that Malvo was the primary shooter. Investigators and prosecutors in Maryland arrived at that theory, one not widely circulated, after seeing that the Caprice's trunk had been turned into a sniper's nest that Malvo, but not Muhammad, could fit into. Malvo is 5 feet, 5 inches tall, and Muhammad is 6 feet, 1 inch.
"This suggested Malvo had fired the shots that came from the car," said an investigator involved in the early collection of evidence.
One law enforcement official said that investigators strongly believe that Franklin and Brown were hit from the Caprice.
By the end of the day of the arrests, investigators concluded that only Malvo's fingerprints were found on the Bushmaster rifle and bipod that the police say was found in the car's trunk. The rifle has since been linked to most of the Washington-area shootings.
Complicating prosecutors' efforts in the Muhammad case have been admissions Malvo made to detectives in Fairfax County on the day he was transferred to Virginia from Maryland on orders of Attorney General John Ashcroft.
In a seven-hour interrogation, Malvo told detectives that the shootings were well planned and involved scouting missions, two law enforcement officials said.
Malvo told the detectives that the men used two-way radios to look out for the police. The investigators said that Malvo would not discuss Muhammad's role in detail but took responsibility for the shooting of the teen-ager and the killings of Franklin and Meyers.
Investigators scramble
As the two suspects approach trial, investigators at the sniper task force's new command center in a suburban office complex are scrambling, particularly for more physical evidence that links Muhammad to the shootings.
In the hunt for the snipers, the task force had more than 1,200 investigators at its disposal, and a team of about 50 detectives will follow leads for the next six months to a year here in Centreville.
Figuring out the identity of the shooter is important because it will affect how prosecutors pursue capital murder convictions in the cases.
The Justice Department arranged to have the two men tried first in Virginia - rather than in Maryland or the District of Columbia, where the other shootings occurred - largely because death sentences could be obtained more easily against both there. A Virginia law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks makes a death sentence possible for those convicted of ordering terrorist killings even if they did not commit them. That law is untested, however, and if Muhammad is convicted solely under it, a death sentence is likely to face a wide range of appeals.
But to obtain a conviction under Virginia's traditional capital murder law, which requires proof that the defendant pulled the trigger, prosecutors in Prince William County would have to show that Muhammad fired the sole shot that killed Meyers, even though the only evidence points to Malvo.
"There is not much pointing to Muhammad, and that is going to make it really hard to show that he was the trigger man," said one senior law enforcement official involved in the case. "There are other ways to attempt to obtain a death sentence, but this lack of evidence has been one of the most perplexing things about the case."
The law enforcement official added, "Not being able to seek the death penalty under both statutes would increase the likelihood that his lawyers could get a conviction overturned on appeal."
Ways to prosecute
The evidence in each case adds up to different ways to approach the prosecution. To prove that Malvo is a candidate for the death penalty in the shooting of Franklin, Fairfax County prosecutors could argue that, despite his youth, there is evidence that Malvo was the major participant in the shootings. Unlike Maryland and the District of Columbia, Virginia allows for the death penalty in murders committed by juveniles.
With little evidence directly tying Muhammad to the shooting with which he is charged, Prince William County prosecutors could, under the anti-terror law, paint him as the mastermind, a criminal Svengali.
Prosecutors say that while as a matter of law it is permissible to argue competing theories about the same crimes in different courtrooms, it might not be wholly ethical.
"The defense can argue competing theories," said James A. Willet, a prosecutor in the case against Muhammad. "Our job is to make sure that justice is done, so we can't and don't want to go to one jurisdiction and say Muhammad was the shooter and another jurisdiction and say that Malvo was the shooter."
Willet also called the anti-terrorism law "some unexplored water" but said he was confident it would stand up on appeal.
Those close to both men's defense teams said that their lawyers would likely use any contradicting theories to try to weaken the government's cases.