Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo appears in a Sunday, Nov. 9, 2003 Chesapeake, Va., Sheriff's office handout booking photo. Malvo, convicted in the deadly sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002. (AP Photo/Chesapeake Sheriff's office )
News
Convicted DC Sniper Claims Conspirators In Interview
DENA POTTER, Associated Press
7/29/2010
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Convicted DC sniper Lee Boyd Malvo tells actor William Shatner on a cable TV special that he and his partner tried to recruit fellow shooters for their 2002 spree and that his accomplice killed one man for backing out, according to the program set for airing Thursday.
In a telephone call from a southwest Virginia prison, Malvo told Shatner two men planned to join in the attacks to make them more deadly but reneged. Malvo said his fellow shooter, John Allen Muhammad, killed one of the men in retaliation. Malvo did not identify them in the interview for a show on the cable channel A&E.
Malvo's revelations came in response to questions about claims by a psychiatrist that the duo had co-conspirators. The psychiatrist, Neil Blumberg, who worked with Malvo before his trial, also said Malvo had confessed to more shootings in addition to the spree that terrorized the Washington region in 2002, when 13 people were hit and 10 of them died.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday on the claims. Malvo's lawyer during his trial, Timothy Sullivan, did not immediately return a call.
In the TV interview, Malvo initially denies his psychiatrist's claims that he and Muhammad had co-conspirators. Once pressured, he says someone in Arizona helped them get weapons and explosives, and a man in New York was supposed to help them get out of the country "when it's all said and done."
He said both later backed out of plans to help with the shootings.
"There was supposed to be three to four snipers with silenced weapons," said Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the shootings. "In this way we could do a lot more damage along the entire Eastern Seaboard."
Blumberg said Malvo told him Muhammad made him shoot two of the co-conspirators once they backed out of the plan. Malvo told Shatner only one of the men was killed, and that Muhammad did it.
Blumberg also said Malvo told him there was a third co-conspirator who was supposed to have joined them in Washington but did not. Malvo does not mention that person during the interview with Shatner.
The one-hour "Confessions of the DC Sniper with William Shatner: An Aftermath Special" premieres at 10 p.m. Thursday on A&E.
Previously, Malvo and Muhammad had been linked to as many as 27 shootings resulting in 17 deaths in 10 states and the District of Columbia.
Blumberg told the show Malvo had confessed to him to at least 42 shootings. When Shatner asked about the number of shootings, Malvo rattles off states where he claims he and Muhammad shot people but doesn't give an exact number.
Malvo's statements have been inconsistent in the past, and authorities have cast doubt on some of his reported confessions since he was sentenced to life in prison. Muhammad was executed in Virginia last year.
The sniper-style attacks all but paralyzed the nation's capital, as people were shot at random while going about their everyday life -- pumping gas, buying groceries, and for one young boy, as he went to school. The shooters used a high-powered rifle, firing from the trunk of a modified Chevy Caprice until they were tracked down at a Maryland rest stop.
Authorities involved with the massive hunt and prosecution of the pair are reluctant to say how many shootings they may have been involved in as they drove across the country to the nation's capital.
Before Muhammad was executed last November, the prosecutor who put him on death row said it may be impossible to ever know how many were killed. Malvo has only confessed to authorities in jurisdictions that promised not to prosecute him.
"I don't know that you can trust anything Malvo says," Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert said.
Speaking on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Shatner said he was fascinated by Malvo's turnabout, "the fact that remorse creeps into his life."
"He was a kid who was brainwashed. He was a malleable teenager and lacking love in his life," Shatner said. "John Muhammad supplies the love and influences him to become a killer, and he becomes a cold-blooded killer at the age of 17. Now he's in jail and now he begins the turmoil in his mind."
Malvo, now 25, said he has forgiven Muhammad, who at trial he accused of turning him into a "monster."
"This is going to be surprising, but I've had to forgive him in the same way in which I've had to, over time, gradually forgive myself," Malvo said. "...Every day I get up, somebody's wife, child, husband is not going to come home tonight. There is nothing that I can say or ever do that will ever change that fact.
"That is my constant reminder. Someone else cannot breathe for you. You can allow someone else to think for you, and when you do these are the consequences."
Malvo, who lives in segregation at a maximum security prison, said he is filled with "hope and dread" for his future.
"It's a little bit of both," he said. "It's hope and dread because everything has to be repaid."
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
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Sniper John Allen Muhammad Silent During His Execution
DENA POTTER, Associated Press Writer
11/11/2009
JARRATT, Virginia (AP) -- Sniper John Allen Muhammad refused to utter any last words as he was executed, taking to the grave answers about why and how he plotted the killings of 10 people that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area for three weeks in October 2002.
The 48-year-old died by injection at 9:11 p.m. Tuesday (0211 GMT) as relatives of the victims watched from behind glass, separated from the rest of the 27 witnesses at Greensville Correctional Center.
Muhammad was executed for killing Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot in the head at a Manassas gas station during the spree across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
He never testified or explained why he masterminded the shootings with the help of a teenage accomplice. That left questions unanswered about why he methodically hunted people going about their daily chores, why he chose his victims, including a middle schooler on his way to class, and how many victims there were.
Muhammad stepped into Virginia's death chamber and within seconds was lying on a gurney, tapping his left foot, his arms spread wide with a needle dug into each.
"Mr. Muhammad, do you have any last words?" the warden asked. Muhammad, looking calm and stoic, said nothing.
Meyers' brother, Bob Meyers, said watching the execution was sobering and "surreal." He said other witnesses expressed a range of feelings, including some who were overcome with emotion.
"I would have liked him at some point in the process to take responsibility, to show remorse," Meyers said. "We didn't get any of that tonight."
After the first of the three-drug lethal cocktail was administered, Muhammad blinked repeatedly and took about seven deep breaths. Within a minute, he was motionless.
Nelson Rivera, whose wife, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, was gunned down as she vacuumed her van at a Maryland gas station, said that when he watched Muhammad's chest moving for the last time, he was glad.
"I feel better. I think I can breathe better," he said. "I'm glad he's gone because he's not going to hurt anyone else."
J. Wyndal Gordon, one of Muhammad's attorneys, described his client in his final hours as fearless and still insisting he was innocent.
"He will die with dignity -- dignity to the point of defiance," Gordon said before going inside to watch the execution.
The terror ended on Oct. 24, 2002, when police captured Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo while they slept at a Maryland rest stop in a car they had outfitted for a shooter to perch in its trunk without being detected.
Malvo, who was 17 when carrying out the attacks, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing Linda Franklin, a 47-year-old FBI analyst who was shot as she and her husband loaded supplies at a Home Depot in Virginia.
The men also were suspected of fatal shootings in other states, including Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Muhammad's final appeal Monday, and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine denied clemency Tuesday.
Muhammad's attorneys had asked Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison because they said Muhammad was severely mentally ill.
"I think crimes that are this horrible, you just can't understand them, you can't explain them," said Kaine, a Democrat known for carefully considering death penalty cases.
A small group of death penalty opponents gathered on a grassy area near the prison and had a sign reading, "We remember the victims, but not with more killing."
Muhammad was born John Allen Williams and changed his name after converting to Islam. He had been in and out of the military since he graduated from high school in Louisiana and entered the National Guard. He joined the Army in 1985. He did not take special sniper training but earned an expert rating in the M-16 rifle -- the military cousin of the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle used in the D.C.-area shootings.
The motive for the attacks remains murky. Malvo said Muhammad wanted to extort $10 million from the government to set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would be trained as terrorists. Muhammad's ex-wife said she believes they were a smoke screen for his plan to kill her and regain custody of their three children.
Sonia Hollingsworth-Wills, the mother of Conrad Johnson, the last man slain that October, sat in the back seat of a car outside the prison before the execution, which she chose not to witness. But she said she wanted to be there and was counting the minutes until Muhammad's death.
"It was the most horrifying day of my life," she said. "I'll never get complete closure but at least I can put this behind me."
Cheryll Witz, who's father, Jerry Taylor, was fatally shot on an Arizona golf course in March 2002, said she was unhappy that Muhammad didn't say anything before he died. But she said his execution begins a new chapter in her life.
"I've waited seven long years for this," she said. "My life is totally beginning now. I have all my closure, and my justice and my peace."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
