World's Most Evil Killers - Season 6, Episode 11 - John Allen Muhammad & Lee Malvo - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[music playing] NARRATOR: October 3, 2002, Montgomery County, Maryland, 7:41 AM, 39-year-old landscape gardener James Sonny Buchanan
was cutting grass outside Fitzgerald Auto Malls on Rockville Pike. A single shot pierced the air, and Sonny fell to the ground.
They just killed a man, and it's a game to them, right? NARRATOR: 8:12 AM, cab driver, Premkumat Walekar,
petrol station, Aspen Hill, a single bullet ripped through his body. 911 OPERATOR (ON RECORDING): 911, what's the emergency?
MAN (ON RECORDING): He's bleeding real bad. Just ordinary folks, like you and I,
going about our daily business. NARRATOR: 8:37 AM, 34-year-old Sarah Ramos shot dead, sitting on a bench at Leisure World Shopping Center.
MAN (ON RECORDING): I need ambulance. Hurry. It could have been anyone, anyone who's can pull the trigger.
NARRATOR: 9:58 AM, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, vacuuming her car at a petrol station in Kensington.
These are men who were high on killing, high on shooting innocent people. NARRATOR: 21:20, 72-year-old Pascal Charlot,
out walking in Washington DC. He was dead within the hour. And if there was one single day that transformed
the nation's capital and sent a shiver down its spine, it was October the 3rd, 2002.
NARRATOR: This was only the beginning of a three-week reign of terror, executed with deadly precision
by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, two of the world's most evil killers.
[music playing] October 2000, Caribbean Island of Antigua, after the breakdown of his second marriage,
40-year-old John Allen Muhammad kidnapped three of his young children and fled to the Island of Antigua,
where he met 14-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo. Lee Boyd was very smart in school. He was a good kid.
He enjoyed sports. He was a normal, average, everyday boy being raised by a single mother.
Muhammad looks at Malvo and sees a young man who hasn't got a father figure, who doesn't really have an authority
figure in his life at all. So that's the role that he can step into, and he can start pulling his strings.
NARRATOR: When Muhammad left Antigua, Malvo followed him. And once Malvo got across and was on the mainland
of the United States, he reached out to Muhammad and wanted to come be with him.
NARRATOR: By September 2001, John Muhammad's life was crumbling around him. He had two failed marriages and had
lost custody of his children. Lee Boyd Malvo was all he had left. I think Malvo was desperate to find a father figure.
I think he would have done anything that Muhammad suggested. He was completely under Muhammad's spell.
But it wasn't that one was senior to the other. Malvo may have been younger, but he
was every bit as determined to kill and to impress his father figure. NARRATOR: The pair went on a nine-month rampage
across the United States, robbing and killing at random, before executing their plan in the suburbs of Washington DC,
killing 17 people and leaving 13 injured. Do I believe my father is a serial killer?
Yes, I believe John Muhammad committed the crimes that he was accused of. NARRATOR: These killer stories begin in 1960.
John Allen Muhammad was born John Allen Williams on December 31, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
His mother died of breast cancer when he was very young, around three years old.
And he was sent to Baton Rouge to live with his aunts because his father just left.
His aunts had several children, and John and his two brothers and two Sisters were raised by them in Baton Rouge.
John Muhammad's family was expected to do all of the chores in the home. So John grew up feeling pretty inadequate
from a very young age. NARRATOR: In 1978, Williams graduated from Scotlandville High School at the age of 17.
He joins the Louisiana National Guard, gives him a, kind of, rank status, a bit of authority,
which, in many ways, appeals to him. He is a man who likes to fit into hierarchies at least,
in his early years. NARRATOR: At the age of 20, John Williams fell in love with a girl called Carroll, and they married in 1981,
welcoming their son Lindbergh into the world the following year. What kind of man was my father?
My father was a very stern man, very, very conflicted man. He was in the military.
He was a type of person, if he said something, you can bet that he was going to do whatever
it takes to get that done. After a few years, though, Caroll started hearing rumors that John was seeing another woman.
And at one point, she went and knocked on this woman's door, who lived in the same neighborhood
they did and saw John sitting on the couch, and realized that her husband was cheating on her.
NARRATOR: John's new girlfriend was Mildred. His wife Caroll made the decision to separate from her husband and took
their son, Lindbergh, with her. In 1985, he decides, when his first marriage is collapsing, that he's going to convert to Islam.
And I think this means a great deal to him. And a couple of years later, he joins the Nation of Islam,
run by Louis Farrakhan. For him, Islam was very significant. NARRATOR: After facing disciplinary action,
John Allen Williams left the Louisiana National Guard. And in 1985, at the age of 25, enlisted in the US Army.
In the same year, he was divorced from Carroll and moved in with Mildred, marrying in 1988.
Two years later, he was deployed to the Persian Gulf. Williams thrived in the army, gaining the highest
level of expert M-16 marksmanship and was decorated for his service. So you have this period of calm in Williams's life,
based in the US Army. And it's as if it's hanging on to the army as his identity.
That is what makes John Williams work. And for a long time, he really remains quite stable.
He isn't rushing off. He's not-- I think he likes the uniform. I think he likes the identity.
And I think he feels that, oh, I'm-- I mean something now. I am-- I amount to something.
NARRATOR: On April 26, 1994, at the age of 33, Williams was honorably discharged from the US Army.
He was now living in Tacoma, Washington State with Mildred and their three children.
He starts a couple of businesses, neither of which really work, and they fall apart.
And his marriage to Mildred isn't going terrifically well either. They fought a lot, and John was abusive to her
on numerous occasions. And their relationship really went downhill. He loved his children.
Children were a very big part of what he felt like his role in life was. And so, he tried to be a good father to them,
and they did have a close relationship. My mother raised me most of my life. Me and my father spent a lot of time talking over the phone.
And then, we had our summers to where we will meet up with each other. So when I was younger, we went to Washington for a summer.
Then, my sixth grade year going to seventh grade, I went to Washington and spent the summer with him.
NARRATOR: On one summer visit with his father, Williams called his ex-wife Caroll
and told her that Lindbergh wasn't returning home. Carol ended up having to get a court order
to get Lindbergh back to Louisiana, and it took that whole summer. During that period, John tried to brainwash Lindbergh.
It was just one of those summers that I went down there, and he was telling me things that, at that moment,
that I felt that he knew I wanted to hear to keep me away from my mother and keep me from going home.
NARRATOR: In September 1999, John Allen Williams's second marriage to Mildred was falling apart,
and the couple separated. Three months later, Mildred filed for divorce and custody
of their three children. That is a very big blow to Williams and to his psyche. You've already had this slightly frail psyche
looking for identity. He took some identity from being married with three children.
He took some identity from having been in the army. But now, he really is, in a sense, cut loose.
He is on his own, and he doesn't know what to do. So if there is a trigger to the events that were to follow,
it is that divorce. Because then, Mildred applies for a restraining order, making sure that Williams, to become John Muhammad,
cannot have any contact with her or with their children. NARRATOR: After receiving the restraining order,
Williams kidnapped his three children and fled to the Caribbean Island of Antigua,
where an unlikely friendship would have deadly consequences. October 2000, Antigua, John Allen Williams
arrived on the island with his three children. They were welcomed into the local community,
and Williams made a living, forging illegal documents. Soon after his arrival, he met and enlisted
the help of a 14-year-old islander called Lee Boyd Malvo. Lee Boyd Malvo was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1985.
His mother was Una James. She was not married to his father. His father stuck around for a few years but then left.
So Una raised Lee Boyd by herself. They moved around a lot, sometimes, Barbados, sometimes, Jamaica, and eventually
made their way to Antigua. I think right when Muhammad met Malvo, there was a bond.
And Muhammad used him to traffic a fake birth certificates on the island, just messenger-type work
and paid him a little bit. NARRATOR: Young Lee Boyd Malvo had big dreams of one day becoming a commercial airline pilot
and was a talented artist. But the one thing that he does have some control over
is his schoolwork, and I think this provides him with that consistency, with that security, and that stability.
And he does incredibly well in school. He got good exam results. He appears to be a really promising student.
NARRATOR: Malvo's mother obtained fake documents from Williams and travel to Fort Myers, Florida,
looking for work. Una James left Lee Boyd Malvo with John Muhammad in Antigua to watch him while she was gone.
And this was the moment in which the father-son relationship that lay at the heart
of what was to come in the future began to form around the pair. NARRATOR: On May 24, 2001, John Allen Williams,
his children, and Lee Boyd Malvo also left Antigua for Florida. Malvo traveled on forged documents.
He stayed with his mother in Fort Myers. Williams took his children back to Bellingham
in Washington State. While he was gone, Mildred had been granted a no-fault divorce and full custody
of their three children. The authorities were soon alerted of Williams' return. The children were seized and returned
to their mother, who fled to the East Coast and the suburbs of Washington DC. Williams, now alone and homeless, moved into a shelter.
A month later, Lee Boyd Malvo turned up at the Lighthouse Mission. John and Lee Boyd lived together in a homeless shelter
for many months, and it was there that John really began inserting his discipline
into Lee Boyd's life. Eventually, John got a place and began training Lee Boyd in the use of weaponry.
He started to cut Malvo off from any others who might have an influence over him, and that is a key tactic coercive
and controlling behavior. You isolate your target from anybody who might criticize the relationship
that you have with them. Muhammad did quite a lot of good things for Malvo. He made sure he went to school.
In fact, at one point, he registered him for school as his father, actually cementing
this concept of him being the father, molding his new son. NARRATOR: In October 2001, in recognition
of his Islamic faith, John Allen Williams had officially changed his name to John Allen Muhammad.
He encouraged Lee Boyd to also learn about his version of Islam. John took Lee Boyd under his wing.
He had kidnapped his own son Lindbergh, and that hadn't worked out. And so, in Lee Boyd, he saw the perfect venue
through which to, you know, achieve what he wanted to achieve in life. They start shooting at tree stumps.
Malvo is very impressed by this. And remember, he's 16. He's very impressionable.
Lee Boyd was actually right for the manipulation that John would do with him. John controlled every aspect of his life, what he ate.
He exercised him rigorously. John was a master marksman, and he trained Lee Boyd to be a marksman.
NARRATOR: Malvo's mother, Una James, arrived in Bellingham in December 2001 to see her son.
They met at the Lighthouse Mission, but someone had tipped off Immigration Services.
Both Una and Lee Boyd were detained as illegal immigrants. Before he could be deported, Malvo managed to run away
and returned to John Muhammad. What was it that turned them from being an older man and a younger boy into what was
effectively a killing machine? I think it started because Malvo wanted to prove to Williams that he is worthy of his respect.
I think that Malvo always wanted to show the older man that he was capable of living up to him.
NARRATOR: February 16, 2002, Tacoma, Washington. Lee Boyd Malvo approached the house
of Isa Nichols, a friend of John Muhammad's ex-wife, Mildred. Her niece, Keenya Nicole Cook was visiting her aunt
with her baby daughter. Keenya answered a knock at the front door. Malvo shot the 21-year-old point-blank.
He killed, for the first time, two days before his 17th birthday. I absolutely believe that John Allen Muhammad
brainwashed Lee Boyd Malvo. I think Lee Boyd's life would have been totally different had
he never met John Muhammad. I don't think he would have ever killed. NARRATOR: One month later, March 19th,
in Tucson, Arizona, 60-year-old Jerry Taylor was on the golf course. A long range single shot to the chest killed him.
From March to August 2002, there were two more fatalities and five serious injuries
across several states. The first proper killing is almost certainly committed by Malvo as a test from Muhammad.
You've got to kill someone, so that I can see that you are worthy of my respect.
And the first string of shootings almost all are committed by Malvo. [music playing]
NARRATOR: September 5, 2002, Clinton, Maryland. Restaurant owner Paul Jay LaRuffa
was carrying over $3,000 of cash and a laptop inside his briefcase. As he got in the car, Lee Boyd Malvo rushed up and shot him
six times through the window. He emptied the briefcase, stole the cash, and fled with a laptop and his gun.
Miraculously, Paul Jay LaRuffa survived. Five days later, with the cash stolen from LaRuffa,
Muhammad purchased a 1990 Blue Chevy Caprice at Sure Shot Auto Sales in Trenton, New Jersey.
Apparently, when Muhammad was purchasing this Chevy Caprice in New Jersey, we learned from the salesman
that he did something very unusual, that, in 25 years of being a car salesman, had never been seen before by this person.
He said that Muhammad opened the trunk and climbed into the back of the trunk and pulled the cover the trunk cover down and said, yeah,
this will work. NARRATOR: September 15, Clinton, Maryland. September 21, Atlanta, Georgia.
19 hours later, a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama, two women were gunned down with a long range,
high-powered rifle. Malvo approached and rifle through their purses. A police car spotted him and gave chase.
He ran, dropping a gun catalog, and discarding a 0.22 caliber revolver. Claudine Lee Parker died of her injuries
and Kelly Adams survived despite being shot through the neck. Finally, September 23, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
In this first spree of killings, they are moving location across states. They weren't concentrating on one area,
and that made them incredibly difficult to track down because these, apparently, were random killings
committed in different states. How you join the dots to that? The answer is, you don't.
NARRATOR: Between September the 26th and October the 2nd, 2002, there were no killings.
During this break, Muhammad and Malvo modified their new Chevy Caprice. They drilled a hole in the trunk.
They used a glove to lay the barrel on through the hole to extend the end of the rifle through to the outside
of the trunk. And then, they pulled the trunk, almost closed, but left about an inch for visibility through their site.
NARRATOR: Satisfied with the modifications, they headed to the suburbs of Washington DC.
On October the 2nd, 2002, at half past five in the afternoon, a shot was fired through a craft store window, narrowly missing the cashier.
That was the first of the DC sniper shootings. An hour later, at half past six, a man was killed by a rifle.
He was called James Martin. NARRATOR: The following day, October 3, 07:41, James Sonny Buchanan was shot, mowing
the lawn of an Auto Mall. NARRATOR: 30 minutes later, at a petrol station in Aspen
Hill, Premkumar Walekar. NARRATOR: Leisure World Shopping Center, Sarah Ramos. NARRATOR: She was sitting on a bench, reading a book.
That same morning, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera vacuuming her Dodge minivan. And then, finally, on that day, at 9:20
in the evening, Pascal Charlot, a retired carpenter was shot, walking along Georgia Avenue in Washington DC.
And if there was one single day that transformed the nation's capital and sent a shiver down its spine,
it was October the 3rd, 2002. NARRATOR: October 3, Montgomery County, Maryland, John Allen
Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo had brought terror to the suburbs of Washington DC. Five people had been killed in less than 16 hours.
Ashan Benedict was a Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
assigned to the Washington field division. At that time, you know, five people getting shot in one day
was very unusual, right? Unfortunately, in today's day and age, you hear about it much more frequently.
But at that time, it definitely raised some eyebrows. It definitely got law enforcement response generated.
And the great thing about ATF is that we will respond to shootings as a matter of business practice.
NARRATOR: Witness statements on October 3 detailed seeing a blue Chevy Caprice, but it was not reported as acting suspiciously.
On that day, at 7:00 PM in the evening, the Chevy ran two stop signs near Washington DC
and was stopped by the police. John Muhammad pulled over. He had a valid license.
He had a valid registration, and he was very respectful and cordial to the officers
when they stopped him. These attacks came a year after 9/11, and 9/11 cast a very long shadow over the US.
There was a real climate of fear, a real state of anxiety. The nation was on a really high state of alert at this time,
so it's almost like the perfect opportunity, this window of time, for Muhammad and Malvo
to wreak utter destruction. We're going to follow the evidence. We're going to follow the science and the technology.
We had numerous shell casings recovered at all these scenes, and they all went to the ATF National Laboratory
in Beltsville, Maryland. And so we ascertained very quickly that the same gun was used to fire
at different shooting scenes. So that science gave us a starting point. We knew we had one shooter or we had one gun utilized
by several shooters, potentially, and that, kind of, honed in our investigative team.
Those bullets that we received had six lands and grooves, and they had a right twist on it.
And we can measure those land impressions, each one of the six. And we can measure each one of the groove impressions,
note the direction of twist, and come up with a fair degree of accuracy, the make and the model
of the firearm that fired that projectile. NARRATOR: The gun was identified as a Bushmaster
0.223 caliber rifle, not a weapon usually associated with a sniper. You can go to gun shows and just
buy it, cash and carry, in some locations here in the US. The AR style 15 firearm was developed by the military,
and it was a firearm they used in Vietnam. It's not an unusual firearm. In the States, most of them mass shootings
occur with this kind of rifle. On October the 4th, the following day to this outrageous attack in Washington DC, the pair
moved their location. And a woman called Carolyn Sowell is shot while she's loading her car.
She does, however, survive. NARRATOR: Forensic analysis from the crime scene, again,
determined that the bullet fragments came from a 0.223 caliber Bushmaster. A blue Chevy Caprice was also seen in the vicinity.
The tip lines receive thousands of calls and witness sightings of a blue Chevy were buried in the volume
of information coming in. Three days later, on October 7, Muhammad and Malvo drove to a wooded area close to Benjamin Tasker Middle
School in Bowie, Maryland. One of them took a ballpoint pen and wrote on a tarot card
depicting death, Call Me God. On the back, they wrote, "For you, Mr. Police. Code Call Me God.
Do not release to the press." The card was placed in a plastic bag and attached to a tree.
They hunkered down in a makeshift blind and waited. He's got Iran Brown, and he's 13.
He's attending a middle school, and he's been taken there by his aunt. NARRATOR: He fell to the ground with a single gunshot wound
to the chest, critically injured. Now, 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. But it's after that shooting that we get
the first communication between Muhammad and Malvo and the authorities. "Dear Mr. Police--" it's a taunt.
It was leaked that it said, "I am God." And in fact, it said, "Call Me God." So anyone that called the tip line and said,
I know somebody who says, I am God 10 times a day. I think you should look at him.
We were able to eliminate without spending too much time on it. We were all in this together.
And whatever the agency had did the best of, they brought that best to the table and said,
I will handle this. ATF said, we are the federal firearms investigative agency for the United States.
We will do the ballistics. The FBI will do fingerprinting. The Montgomery County, Prince George's County,
Virginia State authorities, you know, they work crime scenes. That's what they do well.
NARRATOR: On October 9, around 8:15 in the evening, 53-year-old Dean Meyers was filling his car at a Sunoco Petrol
Station in Manassas, Virginia. The blue Chevy Caprice was parked in a lot across the street.
A single shot to the head killed Meyers as he stood at the petrol pump. With such a heightened state of alert,
police were quickly at the scene. The bullet recovered was from a 0.223 caliber Bushmaster rifle.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Muhammad was interviewed in the parking lot, but not detained.
Local news here in Washington is national news. And so, when you have a serial shooter
or shooters committing random acts of violence in the nation's capital and its suburbs,
it captures the nation's attention very, very quickly. All eyes are on Washington at that time.
It was like anybody else sitting at home, watching CNN. And you see, one day, it was a shooting somewhere.
And then, you check back, two or three days later, and it's another shooting, then it's another shooting.
So I was captivated and on alert like the rest of the world was. So I think there was a sense of satisfaction
on the part of the snipers that they were agreeable to create this sense of fear, paralyze a community,
paralyze the nation's capital, the region with one gun. And so-- but it wasn't enough for them.
I mean, they could have gone to across the country and escaped. But no, they kept at it.
It was a game of cat and mouse. NARRATOR: Seven dead in the DC suburbs and two more critically injured.
For Muhammad and Malvo, it wasn't enough. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvp's killing spree
had gripped the entire nation. No one in and around Washington DC felt safe. Although their targets were random, the planning was not.
They were killing people close to the exits and entrances of interstates. So as they would shoot somebody, all they had to do
is jump on the interstate to go to their next destination. And it made an easy escape route for them.
On October 11, 2002, Kenneth Bridges is shot at an Exxon Station in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
And at that point, some of the gas station owners on the East Coast begin to erect tarpaulins so that their customers can
drive in and fill up their cars without fearing they're going to be targeted by a sniper.
That's how big an effect that Muhammad and Malvo have had on the whole area. There is no connection between the victims.
The only connection is between the shootings themselves, the ballistics, the evidence left behind, the DNA,
the fingerprints, the notes. That was the link. NARRATOR: October 14, Columbus Day holiday.
47-year-old FBI analyst Linda Franklin was shopping at a Home Depot with her husband.
From across the street, Malvo trained his sight on William Franklin. At the last moment, he switched targets and pulled the trigger.
And she had her head blown off in front of her husband, literally, and that reality and just
the whole emotion of the gravity of that, and the sadness-- I mean, the 911 called that Mr. Franklin made,
immediately, following Linda Franklin going down, is chilling. And I will never get that out of my head.
No one was standing around. Folks were definitely on edge and not looking to make themselves a target.
But the streets were just shut down. And the amount of traffic in the Washington region
is pretty heavy on a normal day. When you start shutting down roads around crime scenes
and on the Beltway, it comes to an absolute crawl. NARRATOR: After the shooting of Linda Franklin,
Muhammad and Malvo laid low for five days. During this period, the task force caught a lucky break.
A fingerprint taken from a gun catalog found at a crime scene in Alabama on September 22 was a match
to a print taken by Immigration Services in Bellingham, Washington State. This information coincided with a call to the tip line
from a Bellingham resident called Robert Holmes. An army friend of John Allen Williams who said, I think,
this could be my friend and my co-worker in the army, and he gave us that name. And he said, incidentally, he's recently
been traveling with someone, I think, is about 17 that he nicknamed Sniper. The National Motor Vehicle Title database
also revealed that John Allen Muhammad had purchased a blue Chevy Caprice on September 10, 2002,
in Trenton, New Jersey. It was very specific. We had linked the shootings to the robbery down in Alabama.
The forensics information came in. The DNA came in. The fingerprints came in. We were able to put that all together and realize
who we're looking for. So now, we had concrete information on the suspects and the vehicle we're looking for.
So that happened in a blink of an eye, where we went from casting a wide net to now
we know who we're looking for. We're fishing with a spear. NARRATOR: On the evening of October 19,
Malvo and Muhammad were concealed in the treeline opposite the Ponderosa Steakhouse
in Ashland, Virginia, waiting. They tacked a handwritten five-page note to a nearby tree.
The note was emblazoned with 13 red stars, one for each kill. Just before 8:00 PM, 37-year-old Jeffrey Hopper
left the steakhouse with his wife and was shot in the stomach. He was critically injured, but alive.
The note basically demanded $10 million be put on a credit card, which, fortunately, the criminals
aren't as smart as they could be or it might be more difficult to catch them. But they expected us to put $10 million on a credit card.
Muhammad asks for $10 million for them to give themselves up, so that they can found a school for disadvantaged
Black children in Canada. NARRATOR: On October 22, Muhammad and Malvo waited across the street from a bus stop in Montgomery County.
Another note was positioned in plain sight. At 5:58 AM, a bus driver was about to begin his daily route.
A single gunshot to the chest, he died standing on the top step of his bus. His name is Conrad, his first name.
The note in the bushes, in the plastic bag, not necessarily for its forensic value, but for the mere fact
that they put it there, and they just killed a man. And it's a game to them, right?
It was so upsetting to me to see that that level of so casual about taking a life, and planting this note,
and going, now, see if you can find me. Here's a little bit-- here's a little bit more.
NARRATOR: On October 23, the DC sniper task force released the license plate of the blue Chevy Caprice
and descriptions of their primary suspects to the national media. Well, we wanted to use the media, and the public,
and law enforcement as a team to find these suspects, right? So it wasn't a secret that we wanted to find them,
and we need everybody's help to do that. So the only things that we were trying to keep, kind of, close
hold was we wanted to make sure the information we're releasing to the public was accurate.
It was actionable, and it was timely. NARRATOR: On October 23, refrigerator repairman, Whitney
Donahue, was driving home on the I-70 to Pennsylvania when he heard a news report releasing the details of the wanted suspects.
He made a note on his pay stub, which was on his passenger seat, of the information of the car
and wrote down the license plate. He pulled into a rest stop off of I-70. And as soon as he got parked, he observed a blue Chevy Caprice.
It fit description of what he had just heard on the news. He called 911. And so, he was very brave and got on his CB radio,
which is the ability to communicate with the truckers in the region. And on his own, he asked truckers
to help block the entrance to the rest stop and the exit from the rest stop with their 18-wheelers,
so that these suspects wouldn't be able to escape by car. NARRATOR: Donahue confirmed the license
plate and that the vehicle was occupied to the police. He waited and watched as law enforcement agents moved in.
The window was breached because the door in the back was locked. They were pulled out.
They were handcuffed and separated on the curb. And immediately, the first review of the car, they
were able to find the Bushmaster behind the back seat. And it had one in the chamber, ready to fire.
It was actually not in the safe mode. So a simple pull of the trigger, and there
would have been an incident. And Malvo said, it's my fault. I fell asleep. It was a huge relief, and it was a sense of accomplishment
and pride, not only for ATF, but for the entire task force team. The nation's psyche was drawn to this investigation
because, really, it could be any one of us on any given day. Three weeks of shootings, of trying to find these people,
bring them to justice, get them off the street, get the public safety aspect back
to where folks are comfortable in their communities. NARRATOR: Both men initially pled
not guilty and faced years of litigation for their multi-jurisdictional crimes. In October 2003, John Allen Muhammad
was first brought to trial in the State of Virginia for the murder of Dean Meyers.
He was found guilty of capital murder. And in March 2004, sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Lee Boyd Malvo was first brought to trial in 2003 in Virginia for the murder of Linda Franklin.
As a minor, he did not face the death penalty. Three years later, in a surprise reversal, Malvo pleaded guilty
and testified against Muhammad. Malvo is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences without parole in Red Onion State Prison in Virginia.
I don't hold him as responsible as I hold John Allen Muhammad. Because John Allen Muhammad took a teenager
who did not have a father from his home, and he manipulated him. He brainwashed him, and he trained him to be a monster.
There isn't an ounce of me that thinks that Malvo was brainwashed by Muhammad. I think that he was all in, and was a very willing participant.
He was calculating and smart on choosing targets, and the teamwork was obviously very successful.
The prosecutors in Muhammad's trial insisted that, perhaps, the motive was that Muhammad wished to shoot his ex-wife,
second ex-wife, Mildred. And he was using these shootings around Washington as an excuse.
I've never believed it. I don't think it's true. How could the person that, at one point in time,
I looked up to commit these type of crimes? What happened to lead up to these crimes?
What went so wrong to make you snap and think this was the right decision to make these actions?
NARRATOR: On November 10, 2009, at Greensville Correctional Center in Virginia, John Allen Muhammad was
executed by lethal injection. At 9:11 PM, Muhammad was pronounced dead. NARRATOR: The only person He spoke to that night
was his son Lindbergh. Last words my father told me was, be strong, Black man. That was his exact last words.
Be strong, Black man. And he turned around and walked out the door and never looked back.
What makes these two killers so despicable is the fact that to be somebody, they
had to destroy other people. They felt that to gain the respect that they were entitled
to and to gain the recognition, they needed to go and harm and gunned down everyday people going about their business.
I remember seeing, again, his body outside that bus and thinking to myself, you know,
this gentleman just went to work, to take people to about their day-to-day lives,
and that was taken from him. And it was senselessly taken from him. I am getting older, and I don't remember what
I had to eat yesterday for breakfast, but I remember the dates, and the victims,
and the tragedy of this case with a snap of a finger. So I can't explain it. It's just-- it's deep.
NARRATOR: 17 people shot dead, the largest serial killer manhunt in the history of the United States
had ended. There was no pattern to the senseless killing. There were no victim profiles.
They were all just ordinary folk, living their lives, going about their daily business, when they were
targeted by the Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, two of the world's
most evil killers. [music playing]

The story of the Beltway sniper attacks. John Allen and his teenage accomplice carried out the brutal series of shootings that killed ten.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers. New episodes including Lee Ford, Pawel Relowicz, John Shaw, John Allen Muhammad, Derrick Todd Lee and more.

Brief Summary

The episode details the DC sniper attacks by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, their backgrounds, and the investigation leading to their capture.

Key points

The Beginning of Terror. On October 3, 2002, five people were killed in less than 16 hours, marking the start of a reign of terror in Washington DC.
A Dangerous Bond. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo formed a deadly partnership that led to a nationwide killing spree.
The First Kill. Lee Boyd Malvo committed his first murder just days before his 17th birthday, marking a turning point in his life.
The Tarot Card Message. A chilling tarot card message left by the snipers reads, 'Call Me God.'
The Execution of John Allen Muhammad. John Allen Muhammad was executed by lethal injection on November 10, 2009.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

And if there was one single day that transformed the nation's capital...

NARRATOR describes the impact of October 3, 2002.

1:31WatchAug 10, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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