The Beltway Snipers

The Beltway Snipers otherwise known as John Muhammad and Lee Malvo gunned down ten people and critically injured three others during October of 2002. The target victims were chosen at random and were shot while doing everyday tasks such as: mowing the lawn, grocery shopping, pumping gas or reading a book.

The attacks took place in Montgomery County, Maryland throughout the month of October. People that lived nearby were afraid to even leave their homes as the attacks kept on happening day after day.

Almost every law enforcement agency came to help find the criminals including: Local police, FBI, U.S. Marshals, and even Secret Service. At the height of the murders, 6 shots killed 5 random victims within 16 hours! The weapon was a high powered rifle which was fired from a distance.

The timeline of the murders and eventual capture of the beltway snipers.

• October 2: Man killed while crossing a parking lot in Wheaton, Maryland
• October 3: Five more murders, four in Maryland and one in D.C.
• October 4: Woman wounded while loading her van at Spotsylvania Mall
• October 7: 13-year-old-boy wounded at a school in Bowie, Maryland
• October 9: Man murdered near Manassas, Virginia, while pumping gas
• October 11: Man shot dead near Fredericksburg, Virginia, while pumping gas
• October 14: FBI analyst Linda Franklin killed near Falls Church, Virginia
• October 19: Man wounded outside a steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia
• October 22: A bus driver, the final victim, killed in Aspen Hill, Maryland
• October 24: Muhammad and Malvo arrested in Maryland

The photo above shows the modifications done to a car that would help Malvo and Muhammad kill many innocent people. They would have the car parked in their preferred location, aim the rifle out of the trunk through the small hole seen here, and fire at random innocent civilians.

Capture & Imprisonment

• Investigators soon learned that a crime similar to the one described in the call had indeed taken place—and that fingerprint and ballistic evidence were available from the case.
• An agent from our office in Mobile gathered that evidence and quickly flew to Washington, D.C., arriving Monday evening, October 21. While ATF handled the ballistic evidence, we took the fingerprint evidence to the FBI Laboratory (then located at our Headquarters).
• The following morning, our fingerprint database produced a match—a magazine dropped at the crime scene bore the fingerprints of Lee Boyd Malvo from a previous arrest in Washington State. We now had a suspect…
• The arrest record provided another important lead, mentioning a man named John Allen Muhammad. One of our agents from Tacoma recognized the name from a tip called into that office on the case. A second suspect…
• Our work with ATF agents revealed that Muhammad had a Bushmaster .223 rifle in his possession, a federal violation since he’d been served with a restraining order to stay away from his ex-wife. That enabled us to charge him with federal weapons violations. And with Malvo clearly connected, the FBI and ATF jointly obtained a federal material witness warrant for him. The legal papers were now in our hands…
• Meanwhile, on October 22, we searched our criminal records database and found that Muhammad had registered a blue Chevy Caprice with the license plate of NDA-21Z in New Jersey. That description was given to the news media and shared far and wide, leading to the arrest of the two snipers.

Lee Malvo, on the right of the photo above, was interviewed by William Shatner while in prison. Malvo explains that D.C. wasn't their first time killing, and that before the beltway attacks their was some 40 other shootings across the country. He also goes on to explain how his older partner, John Muhammad, carefully trained him to be a cold blooded killer.

Lee Malvo:
"He would send me to do a crime. And then he would watch the crime, and then evaluate me after we're finished and we'd work on the next crime... what was wrong, what I needed to change. Emotionally, in my approach, in my tactics."

William Shatner:
"He was approaching it like, this is how you make a better killing?"

Lee Malvo:
"Yes."

Lee also goes on to explain how there was supposed to be 3-4 snipers, this way they could do a lot more damage along the entire eastern seaboard. But in the end it was only Muhammad and himself.

Lee Malvo (17) was sentenced to life without parole for his part in the shootings.
John Muhammad (42) was sentenced to death and was executed by lethal injection on November 10th of 2009.