Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 40 - The Sniper's Trail - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a man is been killed in front of me how is he being killed in front of you for three terrifying weeks the eyes of the
world were on Virginia and Maryland a Serial sniper terrorized the community 13 people were hit 10 of them
died this is how forensic science and solid police work combined to solve the case
[Music] [Music] on October 2nd 2002 police in Montgomery County Maryland were investigating a
number of shooting deaths 55-year-old James Martin was felled by one bullet while putting
groceries into his car 39-year-old Sunny Buchanan was killed by a single gunshot while mowing
a lawn a 54-year-old cab driver was gunned down while filling his car with gas nothing like this has ever happened
in Montgomery County uh this is a very safe Community uh our homicide rate just increased by 25% in one
day all looked like the work of the same perpetrator police knew each victim was
shot from 100 to 200 yards away but they didn't know where the shooter was located the FBI used television and film
animation software to build models of the crime scenes to determine where the shooter was
positioned and since the shooter got away cleanly some believed that two people were involved a spotter and a
shooter my theory was it was a driver with him that that's how he was getting away you kill one person you kill two
people I think that was a that would be a pretty good day you know for a normal Psychopathic murderer but now you go on
to the third to Fourth within two hours so at that point I felt as though there were two people the fourth victim was
34-year-old Sarah Ramos shot and killed while sitting on a bench outside this post office a 25-year-old Nanny was shot
at another gas station we at the corner of M in Connecticut a woman was vacuuming her car something blew up
she's unconscious she's got blood coming out of her nose and her mouth and 72-year-old Pascal Charlo was shot and
killed while crossing a Washington DC Street a witness reported seeing an older model four-door Chevrolet leaving
the area of the shooting with its lights off we feel like we probably have a skilled shooter uh and and that does
heighten Our concern and these last three shootings provided police with their first
forensic evidence bullet fragments removed from the victim were large enough for
forensic analysis we do what was called a fracture Parts match in an attempt to see if the it's basically like trying to
assemble a jigsaw puzzle as the bullet goes through the barrel the lands and grooves inside Mark
each bullet the sniper was using 223 caliber bullets the marks on fragments from the
last three victims were all from the same weapon the bullets were hollow point bullets
designed to do considerable damage and that's the idea behind the hollow point bullet is to increase the frontal area
of the Bullet by opening up this goes out at about 3400 ft per second when it hits a body it traumatizes the body just
from the impact along with the then it tumbles around in the body the next day a 43-year-old woman
was shot in a shopping Center parking lot this time farther south in Spotsylvania County Virginia fortunately
she survived some witnesses said they saw a white van or truck in the vicinity of
the shootings but with few other leads investigators hoped the new science of geographical profiling would help
identify the Killer [Music] a Serial snipers had already shot seven people in Virginia and Maryland and many
in the community were starting to panic investigators had little physical evidence so they turned to some newer
techniques of crime solving for years the police Sciences have used stuff from physics chemistry biology all the hard
Sciences now we're starting to see development of tools for placing from the the social and the soft Sciences
psychology criminology sociology investigators asked Kim rosmo to do a geographic profile of the Killer
rossmo is a former Canadian police detective who invented the computer software that's used sirel and stranger
crimes have a problem of information overload too many suspects too many tips it's not uncommon for these lists to be
in the hundreds and even thousands it's like the classic needle and the Hy stack
problem they may be there but where do you start rosmo believes that criminals operate within a predictable distance
from where they live so he entered the locations of all the shootings into his computer program which contains
information gathered from thousands of earlier case studies criminals are lazy now criminals are also concerned about
committing crimes too close to their home so there will be a bit of a buffer zone around there but there's a point
where their desire to operate in their comfort zone balances their desire for anonymity the computer Maps where that
balance occurs and then the computer system generates for us after a number of calculations up to a million What's
called the Jeopardy surface three-dimensional probability surface showing us the most likely location of
offender residence the crime scene are shown in yellow or green the perpetrator's likely
home is shown in red or orange police also asked the FBI for a behavioral profile of the
sniper both the strength and weakness of Behavioral profiling is that it's based
primarily on the study of individuals who have committed past crimes and identifies what is common among
them based on past criminal history behavioral profilers say a spree killer is usually a white male in his late 20s
to early 30s High School educated and is most likely divorced no profile can solve a crime
you need physical evidence and witness or a confession to do that science is is an asset science
helps but people talking to people getting information from people is our best ally but police were certain of one
thing the killer or killers were watching the media it's common that they follow it in the media they often may
interject themselves into the investigation in some way um again that that kind of feeds their ego so he may
have been watching when Chief moose assured the public that area children were safe Montgomery County officials
say tomorrow will be a normal school day on October 7th the sniper shot and wounded an eighth grader as he entered
his school anxious parents questioned whether their children were safe at all I'm just happy that my dad came to get
me he said he's happy because I did come to get him I came to pick him up all of
our victims have been innocent have been defenseless but now we're Stepping Over
The Line because our children don't deserve this the idea of moms taking their kids to school and Sheltering them
from a potential sniper attack is is not the American I know in a wooded area 150
yard from the school police found a cover to a pen a shell casing and a tarot card the kind used in fortune
telling the shell casing was a 223 caliber a very common round which can be fired from many different
rifles the killer left the death card inscribed with the words dear policeman I am
God within days there were three more shootings 53-year-old Dean Meyers was killed at a gas station near Manasses
Virginia then Kenneth Bridges at a gas station in Fredericksburg Virginia as a policeman stood just 50 yard
away then female FBI analyst Linda Franklin was killed in the parking lot of a hardware store Witnesses continued
to report seeing a white van or truck in the vicinity of the shootings I've ordered the full resources of the
federal government to help local law enforcement officials in their e in their efforts to capture this
person one tool from the federal government was a high-tech military surveillance plane able to detect the
burst of flame made by a rifle when fired but it didn't help the next shooting happened far from the
surveillance area a man was shot and wounded outside a steakhouse in Ashland Virginia 90 mi from Washington he's
willing to change his Mo uh he listens to the media that's one way we know that he's careful in taking his notes and
doing his reconnaissance in the woods next to the restaurant the sniper left another message with an
ominous [Music] warning after the 12th shooting in a horrifying spree the sniper left another
note it was a four-page letter enclosed in a plastic bag along with a shell casing the letter demanded $10 million
to be transferred into a credit card account belonging to an Arizona bus driver whose wallet had been stolen
prior to the attacks after 10 12 shootings he decides he wants money now I think the money
aspect of it is an afterthought it's just like uh you know I'm I'm in charge everybody I got life and death in my
hand well want I to ask for $10 million why I to ask for a billion dollars what tends to get people in trouble is their
own narcissism the notion of you give somebody enough rope and they eventually hang themselves that people get to uh
cocki riddled with poor grammar and misspellings the four-page letter referred to us indicating more than one
person was involved the note warned that if the demands were not met more shootings
would follow shot he's been L BL here sir please hurry up please send some help please I'm on the bus the next morning
35-year-old Conrad Johnson was killed as he was stepping out of his bus a note similar to the previous one was
discovered in a wooded area close to the site the snipers also made repeated attempts to make contact with
investigators through the sniper tip line most were messages beginning with call me
God but it was another piece of communication that gave the killers away the sniper called a Catholic priest
in ashin Virginia asking for forgiveness for the sniper shootings and also mentioned a murder he committed in
Montgomery Alabama interestingly police in Montgomery Alabama had an unsolved murder a month earlier two employees of
a liquor store had been shot one fatally while locking up the store for the night Kelly Adams survived the shooting
but she didn't didn't see the shooter I could have died I just don't take things
for granted anymore Witnesses saw one of the suspects drop a magazine while running
from the scene forensic experts in Alabama tested the magazine for latent fingerprints using a series of
techniques including magnetic powder and the chemical ninhydrin they also tried superglue
fuming in an airtight chamber a small amount of superglue is heated which vaporizes then attaches to biological
materials these techniques produce several usable fingerprints which federal authorities scanned into the
computer system called aphys the aphis system is actually an acronym for automated fingerprint
identification system and what it is it's a computer that will actually scan a pattern type of a latent
print the computer makes millions of comparisons that would take a human being years and uses numerous government
databases in the immigration database investigators had a match the fingerprints on the magazine
belonged to 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo an immigrant from Jamaica police later learned his nickname was sniper given to
him by a man who used to date malvo's mother 41-year-old John Muhammad Malvo and Muhammad had once
lived in this house in Tacoma Washington neighbors said they often heard gunfire
from the home's backyard Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammad were now the prime suspects but where were they and could
they be found before they killed [Music] again a telephone call from the killer a
fingerprint from a magazine cover and ballistic test had led police to two suspects 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo and
41-year-old John Muhammad a check of Motor Vehicle registrations revealed Muhammad owned a
1990 Chevrolet Capri with New Jersey license plates information that was released to the
media the public is requested to call if they have any information regarding mohammed's whereabouts or any other
information that investigators could use to to locate this [Music] individual just a few hours later an
alert truck driver noticed the car in a highway rest stop police arrested Malvo and Muhammad without
incident the two had been sleeping in the car in the trunk police found a semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle with a
small tripod and a scope also in the car was a laptop computer and a global positioning
satellite receiver or GPS satellites in space can instantly locate a car with a GPS receiver and
provide maps of the area ensuring a quick getaway on the laptop computer were drafts of letters with language similar
to previous Communications from the snipers also in the computer were directions to locations of the attacks
some marked by a skull and crossbones and investigators found a list entitled people to die later on it
were the names of the Ashlin Virginia priest and someone at a local radio station the rifle from Muhammad's car
was sent to ATF headquarters to principal examiner Walter Dandridge the investigators want this information uh
yesterday and the lands and grooves of the rifle matched the bullet fragments taken from the
victims the results of forensic testing are that the weapon ceased from the vehicle occupied by Muhammad
has been forensically determined to be the murder weapon the only fingerprints on the
rifle were those of Lee Boyd Malvo however both suspects were found to be sources of DNA lodged in The Ridges of
the rifle scope on the murder weapon malvo's DNA was also found on the pen casing found near the school
shooting Muhammad's DNA was discovered on the plastic bag containing the letter found in Ashlin
Virginia the car was modified to conceal the sniper actions to illustrate how Forensic Files obtained an identical car
and had its trunk and rear seat modified in the same way as police found the sniper
[Music] car there was a 4-in hole cut in the trunk and a portion of the back seat was
missing as this demonstration shows a shooter could easily get in inside the trunk and fire through the
[Music] hole this is the view looking through the scope of a rifle combined that with
the anonymity of shooting through a hole in a car trunk and a driver leaving the
scene within seconds of the shooting and it's easy to see how they could get away
so cleanly even a policeman standing near the car might not have noticed anything
suspicious any muzzle flash would have been sheltered from aerial surveillance Geographic profiling had
assumed the snipers lived near the first group of victims in a way they did the mobile bunker they called home allowed
them to reach the balanced year graphic profiling counted on near to home but also
Anonymous but there was still a question of why killings occurred there's got to
be a motive people just don't go out and kill people Muhammad's ex-wife thinks she knows she
thinks the killings were a setup so that when Muhammad killed her it would appear
to be a random killing by the sniper Muhammad's wife lived in Maryland near the Jeopardy area identified as the
Killer's Comfort Zone by the geographical profile forensic evidence is very important to prosecute the case never
ever profile never Clairvoyant we don't play that what you play is hard detective work John Muhammad and Lee
Boyd Malvo were both tried and convicted of two counts of capital murder Muhammad
was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and of a Firearms violation Muhammad was sentenced to
death Malvo was sentenced to life in prison the courts more and more like to see hard physical evidence and forensic
evidence and ballistics in particular can provide that because there can really be no question if a particular
bullet is matched to a particular gun that can put the Smoking Gun into somebody's stand
[Music] [Music]

Brief Summary

The episode details the 2002 sniper attacks and the forensic investigation that led to the capture of John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.

Key points

The Sniper's Terror. A serial sniper terrorizes Virginia and Maryland, killing 10 people and injuring many more.
Forensic Breakthroughs. Forensic science and police work combine to solve the sniper case.
The Killer's Demands. After 12 shootings, the sniper demands $10 million in a chilling letter.
Capture of the Snipers. Police arrest Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammad, the prime suspects in the sniper attacks.
Justice Served. Both suspects are tried and convicted, with Muhammad sentenced to death and Malvo to life.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I think that was a pretty good day for a normal Psychopathic murderer.

Reflecting on the killer's actions.

2:22WatchSep 16, 2024

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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