XPost: alt.private.investigator, alt.sci.sociology, alt.america   
   XPost: alt.education   
   From: thanks.democrats@splcenter.org   
      
   Beltway Snipers   
   At 3:19 in the morning on October 24, 2002, to be exact—the FBI   
   closed in on the snipers and their 1990 Chevy Caprice.   
      
   During the month, 10 people had been randomly gunned down and   
   three critically injured while going about their everyday   
   lives—mowing the lawn, pumping gas, shopping, reading a book.   
   Among the victims was one of our own—FBI intelligence analyst   
   Linda Franklin, who was felled by a single bullet while leaving   
   a home improvement store in Virginia with her husband.   
      
   The massive investigation into the sniper attacks was led by the   
   Montgomery County (Maryland) Police Department, headed by Chief   
   Charles Moose, with the FBI and many other law enforcement   
   agencies playing a supporting role. Chief Moose had specifically   
   requested our help through a federal law on serial killings.   
      
   That morning, the hunt for the snipers quickly came to an end,   
   when a team of Maryland State Police, Montgomery County SWAT   
   officers, and agents from our Hostage Rescue Team arrested the   
   sleeping John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo without a   
   struggle.   
      
   Just a few hours earlier, at approximately 11:45 p.m., their   
   dark blue 1990 Chevy Caprice—bearing the New Jersey license   
   plate NDA-21Z, which had been widely publicized on the news only   
   hours earlier—had been spotted at a rest stop parking lot off I-   
   70 in Maryland (see photos right). Within the hour, law   
   enforcement swarmed the scene, setting up a perimeter to check   
   out any movements and make sure there’d be no escape.   
      
   What evidence experts from the FBI and other police forces found   
   there was both revealing and shocking. The car had a hole cut in   
   the trunk near the license plate (see photo below, left) so that   
   shots could be fired from within the vehicle. It was, in effect,   
   a rolling sniper’s nest.   
      
   Also found in the car were:   
      
   The Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle that had been used in each   
   attack;   
   A rifle’s scope for taking aim and a tripod to steady the shots;   
   A backseat that had the sheet metal removed between the   
   passenger compartment and the trunk, enabling the shooter to get   
   into the trunk from inside the car;   
   The Chevy Caprice owner’s manual with—the FBI Laboratory later   
   detected—written impressions of the one of the demand notes;   
   The digital voice recorder used by both Malvo and Muhammad to   
   make extortion demands;   
   A laptop stolen from one of the victims containing maps of the   
   shooting sites and getaway routes from some of the crime scenes;   
   and   
   Maps, walkie-talkies, and many more items.   
   Both Malvo and Muhammad were convicted at trial or pled guilty   
   in multiple court cases in Maryland and Virginia. Both were   
   sentenced to life without parole; Muhammad also received the   
   death penalty in Virginia.   
      
   Timeline of Terror   
      
   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   
      
   Breaking the Case   
      
   It was just another fall evening in the nation’s capital—until a   
   sniper’s bullet struck down a 55-year-old man in a parking lot   
   in Wheaton, Maryland. By 10 o’clock the next morning—October 3,   
   2002—four more people within a few miles of each other had been   
   similarly murdered.   
      
   The attacks were soon linked, and a massive multi-agency   
   investigation was launched, led by the Montgomery County Police   
   Department in Maryland.   
      
   Within days, the FBI alone had some 400 agents around the   
   country working the case. We’d set up a toll-free number to   
   collect tips from the public, with teams of new agents in   
   training helping to work the hotline. Our evidence experts were   
   asked to digitally map many of the evolving crime scenes, and   
   our behavioral analysts helped prepare a profile of the shooter   
   for investigators. We’d also set up a Joint Operations Center to   
   help Montgomery County investigators run the case.   
      
   But the big break in the case came, ironically, from the snipers   
   themselves.   
      
   On October 17, a caller claiming to be the sniper phoned in to   
   say, in a bit of an investigative tease, that he was responsible   
   for the murder of two women (actually, only one was killed)   
   during the robbery of a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama, a   
   month earlier.   
      
   That set in motion a chain of events that led to the capture of   
   John Muhammad and Lee Malvo four days later, ending 23 days of   
   random attacks in the Washington, D.C, area.   
      
   Here’s how the investigation played out:   
      
   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.   
   That was the end of the attacks, but not our role in the case.   
   We spent many more hours gathering evidence and preparing it for   
   court—work that ultimately paid off in the convictions of both   
   Malvo and Muhammad.   
      
   https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/beltway-snipers   
             
      
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