Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster DZ Sniper, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
Speaker 1: are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating
Speaker 1: in the podcast, and do not represent those of iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: October nineteenth, eight pm, Ashland, Virginia, thirty seven year old
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Hopper was walking with his wife Stephanie. They were
Speaker 2: in the parking lot outside of Ponderosa Steakhouse when a
Speaker 2: shot rang out from the woods. Tim Meechim was the
Speaker 2: first officer on the scene.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and two, I was a patrol officer
Speaker 3: at the Ashlan Police Department.
Speaker 4: We're walking in the parking lot of the Ponderosa, right,
Speaker 4: so put me back in the time in space, walk
Speaker 4: me through it.
Speaker 3: I had received a call for a stolen or lost
Speaker 3: cell phone, so I was taking that report a couple
Speaker 3: miles south of here and he was asking, you know,
Speaker 3: what have you heard about this whole sniper thing. And
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, I've heard as much as
Speaker 3: you have. I get the news. And he looked at
Speaker 3: me and says it wouldn't it be something if that
Speaker 3: guy came here? And he had just finished saying that
Speaker 3: when dispatch handed me the call and they said respond
Speaker 3: to eight seventeen England Street for a possible shooting. I
Speaker 3: looked at him, like, no way, and the look on
Speaker 3: his face was priceless. Yet I just like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: what did I just do to you?
Speaker 2: I marked and.
Speaker 3: Route told him I was on my way. They said,
Speaker 3: we've had one call, got a mail down in the
Speaker 3: parking lot at the Ponderosa. I asked him if there's
Speaker 3: any other information, and they said, no new calls, no
Speaker 3: new information. And that's when I'd called the sergeant on
Speaker 3: the radio and I said, we may want to consider
Speaker 3: starting the response plan. When I arrived, our victim was
Speaker 3: laying in the parking lot and his wife was sitting
Speaker 3: on the sidewalk and had her husband's head in her lap.
Speaker 3: I pulled past them right to the end of the
Speaker 3: sidewalk here and my car acted as a shield between
Speaker 3: the woods and the hoppers.
Speaker 4: So instinctively, you just pull your car into a position
Speaker 4: that sets up a barrier between the wooded area and
Speaker 4: potentially more victims.
Speaker 3: Yes, Jeff was laying in the parking lot and Stephanie
Speaker 3: was sitting on the sidewalk and she was holding pressure
Speaker 3: on his stomach. I told her that I needed to
Speaker 3: verify the injury. So she lifted up the towel that
Speaker 3: she was holding on him, and I saw a pole
Speaker 3: about the size of a nickel in the top of
Speaker 3: the victim's stomach. I feel somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
Speaker 3: I wasn't expecting anybody. Turn around. A guy standing there
Speaker 3: little bit more than me. He had a chain around
Speaker 3: his neck and he reached into his shirt. He pulled
Speaker 3: it out and it was a New York Police Department badge.
Speaker 3: He says, I'm retired. What do you need? If there
Speaker 3: was somebody still here, I wanted them to think that
Speaker 3: we were searching for them. I asked him to use
Speaker 3: the spotlight on my car to pan back and forth
Speaker 3: across the woods, and I showed him where the shotgun
Speaker 3: release was in my car and told him that hey,
Speaker 3: if shots fired, sin led that way.
Speaker 5: There is a ruthless person on the loose.
Speaker 6: What I nerves this community the most is the randomness
Speaker 6: of the murders, ordinary people doing ordinary things.
Speaker 2: They killed the five people in one day and then
Speaker 2: went on the rampage for the next month.
Speaker 5: It is quite a mystery.
Speaker 7: The police say they have never had a crime quite
Speaker 7: like this.
Speaker 8: Be careful, these guys are using weapons that are going
Speaker 8: to go right straight through our bulletproof vest, the.
Speaker 2: White bag, my heart radio, and Tenderfoot TV. This is
Speaker 2: Monster DC Sniper. Jeff and Stephanie describe the two of
Speaker 2: them and how they were working through this very serious
Speaker 2: situation together.
Speaker 3: She was the calmest person I'd ever seen on any
Speaker 3: type of major scene like this. And when you have
Speaker 3: somebody that's bleeding internally like that, their heart rate is up,
Speaker 3: their blood pressures up, it can make them bleed out
Speaker 3: a little bit faster. But Jeff was laying there just
Speaker 3: staying really calm. I told her, I said, okay, the
Speaker 3: best thing to do for a bleed is just a
Speaker 3: hold pressure, and it's not rocket science. She started to chuckle.
Speaker 3: The victims started to laugh, and at this point, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: can you guys let me in on the joke. Well,
Speaker 3: she was a rocket scientist for NASA, so me telling
Speaker 3: her that it was in rocket science, she kind of
Speaker 3: knew that already. They actually told me that they we
Speaker 3: in Pennsylvania visiting family. Intentionally, they didn't stop in Maryland,
Speaker 3: d C. Or Northern Virginia because the shootings and they
Speaker 3: felt like if they stopped closer to Richmond that it
Speaker 3: would be safer. So the ambulance when they come up
Speaker 3: one scene normally wait until law enforcement can make sure
Speaker 3: the scene is safe for them to enter. I couldn't
Speaker 3: do that, so we came up with a different plan
Speaker 3: for them to come in.
Speaker 9: And pick up Jeff.
Speaker 3: I got my shotgun. I told the driver of the
Speaker 3: ambulance to stay in the driver's seat. I had the
Speaker 3: crew of the ambulance come out of the back of
Speaker 3: the ambulance. I had them park right behind my car,
Speaker 3: bumping or bumper so that the ambulance itself was also
Speaker 3: some type of barricade. They get Jeff on the stretcher,
Speaker 3: they put him in the ambulance, and we get them
Speaker 3: out onto England Street and tell them to take the
Speaker 3: shoulder of the Interstate ninety five because we'd shut it down.
Speaker 10: By eight point thirty, the victim was arriving at the hospital,
Speaker 10: and police across this area had activated a coordinated tactical response,
Speaker 10: a plan put in play just last week in the
Speaker 10: event of a suspected sniper attack.
Speaker 8: Very quickly, traffic was brought to a complete stop.
Speaker 2: That's retired Maryland State Police Lieutenant David Reichenball.
Speaker 8: Ordinarily, if you do that, you've got phone calls going
Speaker 8: to politicians. Hey, what's going on while the road's blocked.
Speaker 8: I can't get home, I can't go about my business.
Speaker 8: But believe it or not, at this point, the public
Speaker 8: was completely on board with law enforcement. They were in fear.
Speaker 8: They wanted just stopped as badly as we did.
Speaker 2: The roadblocks turned up nothing. The sniper had vanished once again,
Speaker 2: but there was good news thanks to the efforts of
Speaker 2: first responders. Jeffrey Hopper survived the attack.
Speaker 3: Once we got jeff in the ambulance, we got the
Speaker 3: crime scene tape out, and we just right in front
Speaker 3: of the Ponderosa, right on England Street. We taped from
Speaker 3: one side of the building to the other. From that point,
Speaker 3: it seemed like every three letter agency in the federal
Speaker 3: government was starting to show up. I had FBI show up,
Speaker 3: I had a ATF show up.
Speaker 2: One of those ATF agents was Ray Neely.
Speaker 5: I'm a normal special agent. Well, I'm at a relatively
Speaker 5: normal special agent. You know, I'm so used to hanging
Speaker 5: around law enforcement. Special agents are kind of a dome
Speaker 5: a dozen and I was based out of Washington, so
Speaker 5: it's not very impressive in that particular area anyway.
Speaker 2: Ray Neely was a canine handler for the ATF in.
Speaker 5: Two thousand and two during the sniper investigation, I handled
Speaker 5: a dog named Garrett. He was a yellow Lab at
Speaker 5: that point, he was about seven years old. We use
Speaker 5: the term explosive detection canines. That's their official title, and
Speaker 5: the public ulder sere them called bomb dogs. It's been
Speaker 5: estimated that there's over nineteen thousand different types of explosive formulations,
Speaker 5: but generally they can be broken down into seven families,
Speaker 5: so as long as you train across those seven families,
Speaker 5: the dogs can then fine firearms as well as explosives.
Speaker 2: On the night of October nineteenth, after Jeffrey Hopper was shot,
Speaker 2: the ATF sent Ray Nearly to investigate the woods outside
Speaker 2: the Ponderosa.
Speaker 5: When we arrived that evening, it was actually kind of
Speaker 5: a balmy night, and not because we're working in low light.
Speaker 5: The human search was really not going to be effective,
Speaker 5: so they were going to wait till daybreak. I talked
Speaker 5: to the people on scene and said, hey, it's best
Speaker 5: that we deploy this evening. The dog doesn't need daylight
Speaker 5: to work, and the odor cennature is stronger now than
Speaker 5: it's going to be tomorrow morning. There was a wooded
Speaker 5: lot behind the ponderosa. It's all pitch black dark. When
Speaker 5: any human or animals move through wooded areas, they typically
Speaker 5: go to the area of least resistance. It's called lines
Speaker 5: of drift. If there's briers that people are gonna avoid,
Speaker 5: that they're going to go a different path. And so
Speaker 5: in this particular wooded area, I saw maybe three or
Speaker 5: four of these little breaks in the woodline. You know,
Speaker 5: there were animal trails or maybe kids played in those woods.
Speaker 5: So I was going to search those first, and then
Speaker 5: if that failed, then I would start doing more of
Speaker 5: a gritted search. It was only on my second path
Speaker 5: of least resistance that I saw the dog change behaviored.
Speaker 5: The dog started tracking until he went to a particular spot,
Speaker 5: and then he alerted me. Whatever with my flashlight and
Speaker 5: examined the area where he looked, and that's when I
Speaker 5: saw the rub mark. There was a small tree about
Speaker 5: maybe two inches in diameter with a small VND and
Speaker 5: when I looked up that tree, it looked like someone
Speaker 5: had taken some type of hard objects and leaned it
Speaker 5: up against that tree, and that created a rub mark.
Speaker 5: You wouldn't have that occurring in nature. You needed something
Speaker 5: hard pressing against it. And it was also in line
Speaker 5: of sight too where the person was actually hit as
Speaker 5: he exited the ponderosa, and so that rub mark was
Speaker 5: someone probably using that tree as a rifle rest. I
Speaker 5: knew that the type of rifle more than likely would
Speaker 5: eject that shellcase into the right rear, so I deployed
Speaker 5: the dog off to my right rear, you know, hoping
Speaker 5: to find that shellcasing again. I saw it in a
Speaker 5: change of behavior. Now he's going directly to source. It
Speaker 5: was probably twenty feet away, and when he alerted this time,
Speaker 5: I went over with my flashlight. Those shellcasings can disappear
Speaker 5: in the ground pretty quick, the leaves have fallen off
Speaker 5: the trees at that point. But I actually saw the shellcasing.
Speaker 5: It was sitting right on top, you know, pristine. But
Speaker 5: to the rear of where the shellcasing was found, there
Speaker 5: was some type of message attached to a tree.
Speaker 2: In the woods outside the Ponderosa Steakhouse atf Agent ray
Speaker 2: Neely found a spent shell casing along with another clue,
Speaker 2: one that would prove vital to solving the case.
Speaker 5: There was a message that was attached to a tree.
Speaker 2: Investigators found a ziploc bag pinned to a tree with
Speaker 2: two thumbtacks, and inside there was a letter. Investigators wanted
Speaker 2: to read the note, but they couldn't just open the
Speaker 2: bag at the crime scene and risk contaminating the evidence.
Speaker 5: An FBI helicopter was brought in that evening to take
Speaker 5: that piece of evidence directly to the lab they would
Speaker 5: be looking for DNA any fingerprints.
Speaker 2: The letter arrived at the lab the next morning, Sunday,
Speaker 2: October twentieth. When investigators finally opened it, they were shocked
Speaker 2: by what they found. Here's Maryland State Police Lieutenant David
Speaker 2: Reichenbach again.
Speaker 8: The snipers did not want the press notified about this,
Speaker 8: and for the first time, we were actually successful in
Speaker 8: preventing that. There was a couple significant things about this note.
Speaker 8: The first one was it was handwritten, and within a
Speaker 8: few hours the handwriting on the tarot card that had
Speaker 8: been found a few days before was matched, so we
Speaker 8: knew we had the same individual, and any thought that
Speaker 8: it was organized terrorism pretty much got shot down and
Speaker 8: went out the window. The note had little red stars.
Speaker 8: And when I say stars, if you've ever had a
Speaker 8: child that went to a daycare and they bring their
Speaker 8: papers home and they did something great, The teachers put
Speaker 8: little silvery or gold or the red stars on top
Speaker 8: of their papers. That's what I'm talking about. And no
Speaker 8: self respecting terrorists is going to do that. Number one.
Speaker 8: Number two, we finally get a demand.
Speaker 2: Here's what the snipers wrote in the.
Speaker 6: Letter for you, mister police, call me God, do not
Speaker 6: release to the press. We have tried to contact you
Speaker 6: to start negotiation, but the incompetence of your forces these
Speaker 6: people to our call for a hoax or a joke.
Speaker 2: The letter then lifted five people the sniper had contacted.
Speaker 6: One Montgomery Police officer Derek two, Rockville Police Department female officer,
Speaker 6: three Task Force FBI female for priest at Ashland, five CNN,
Speaker 6: Washington DC. These people took our call for a hoax
Speaker 6: or joke, So your failure to respond has cost you
Speaker 6: five lives. If stopping the killing is more important than
Speaker 6: catching us now, then you will accept our demands, which
Speaker 6: are non negotiable. Option one, you will place ten million
Speaker 6: dollars in a Bank of America account.
Speaker 2: The letter then listed the information for a credit card
Speaker 2: which belonged to a woman named Jill Lynn Farrell, and
Speaker 2: then it went on.
Speaker 6: We will have unlimited withdrawal at any atm worldwide. You
Speaker 6: will activate the bank account, credit card and pin number
Speaker 6: at six am Sunday morning. We will We'll contact you
Speaker 6: at Ponderouso Buffet, Ashland, Virginia telephone number. You have until
Speaker 6: nine am Monday morning to complete transaction. Try to catch
Speaker 6: us withdrawing at least you will have less body bags.
Speaker 6: But option two if trying to catch us now is
Speaker 6: more important than prepare your body bags. If we give
Speaker 6: you our word, that is what takes place. Word is
Speaker 6: bond ps. Your children are not safe anywhere, at any time.
Speaker 2: The letter was a bombshell, and it left investigators with
Speaker 2: a slew of new questions. Was all this killing just
Speaker 2: about money? And if the snipers themselves had called into
Speaker 2: the tip lines and had been ignored, what other tips
Speaker 2: might have slipped through the cracks. But the letter did
Speaker 2: provide some major leads, like a list of people the
Speaker 2: sniper had called law enforcement would need to interview those people,
Speaker 2: and investigators needed to find the credit card owner, Jill
Speaker 2: Lynn Ferrell. How is she connected to the snipers? Most importantly, though,
Speaker 2: the snipers wanted to talk and police were eager to
Speaker 2: get them on the line. But there was a problem.
Speaker 2: The letter said the snipers would call the Ponderosi Steakhouse
Speaker 2: at six am, but by the time the police read
Speaker 2: the letter, they'd already missed the deadline. So Chief Moose
Speaker 2: reached out to the snipers the only way he knew how,
Speaker 2: through the media.
Speaker 11: To the person who left us a message at the
Speaker 11: Ponderosa last night, you gave us a telephone number. We
Speaker 11: do want to talk to you called us at the
Speaker 11: number you provided.
Speaker 2: Police had the phone company redirect the Ponderosa's number to
Speaker 2: align In their command center. There, an FBI negotiator sat
Speaker 2: and waited, hoping the snipers would call. Meanwhile, agents were
Speaker 2: adding up a track. They mapped out all of the
Speaker 2: payphones in the Richmond area and stationed police officers at
Speaker 2: locations nearby those phones, but out of sight. Police were
Speaker 2: ready to trace the sniper's call, identify which phone it
Speaker 2: came from, and then swarm that area with officers back
Speaker 2: at the command center, the phone began to ring.
Speaker 10: Hello.
Speaker 6: All okay, let me give you a new number.
Speaker 5: Can okay, what are you calling for? Can alone?
Speaker 12: This is the only way to remind it called them
Speaker 12: Pepty Direct. Your Pepty Direct Sales will be contacting you shortly,
Speaker 12: but today murder.
Speaker 2: After dozens of false alarms, the next morning, on Monday,
Speaker 2: October twenty first, at seven fifty seven am, the sniper's
Speaker 2: call finally came.
Speaker 13: Hello Hello.
Speaker 2: The sniper then held the tape recorder up to the
Speaker 2: payphone and hit play through the phone. The audio was
Speaker 2: distorted and unintelligible. The call lasted just thirty eight seconds,
Speaker 2: but for some reason, the negotiator didn't alert others about
Speaker 2: the call for another six minutes.
Speaker 9: I'm pay, I'm lipay.
Speaker 2: US marshals traced the call to a payphone just outside
Speaker 2: an Exon station in West Richmond at eight oh seven,
Speaker 2: now a full ten minutes after the sniper's call. The
Speaker 2: marshals notified local FBI of the address, and the traps
Speaker 2: sprung into motion. Don Nielsen worked just down the street
Speaker 2: from the Exxon where the snipers made the call. He
Speaker 2: saw the takedown happen.
Speaker 13: Part of my job in the morning. I got there
Speaker 13: early and you know, turned down the lights, made coffee
Speaker 13: for the customers, and that's when I saw everything going
Speaker 13: on right out in front of the dealership. I just
Speaker 13: opened the front door and this guy going like halt
Speaker 13: with a serious look on his face, and his hand
Speaker 13: went up like don't come out here. So I thought, ooh, okay.
Speaker 13: There were three or four cars out there and all
Speaker 13: this commotion, you know, undercovered type guys swat guys loading
Speaker 13: shotguns and ars. They were putting on vests, and I
Speaker 13: imagine they weren't putting on to go hunting, so I'd
Speaker 13: imagine they were armored vests. Everybody's eyes were right up
Speaker 13: the hill at the van and that drive buck phone.
Speaker 13: When they started moving themselves up the hill, we moved
Speaker 13: to the very cornermost office to see what was going on.
Speaker 13: I just remember seeing these guys rushing up there. They
Speaker 13: ran up the hill and they grew open the doors,
Speaker 13: and they grabbed some people out of the van and
Speaker 13: threw them on the park lit They handcuffed these guys
Speaker 13: and moved them over to the grassy area. Later that day,
Speaker 13: there was news media everywhere.
Speaker 14: This morning, at approximately eight thirty five am, two male
Speaker 14: subjects were taken into custody by the members of the
Speaker 14: Richmond Area Task Force at param Road in Broad Street,
Speaker 14: which is basically right behind us. Those two individuals are
Speaker 14: being questioned at this time.
Speaker 2: Police began interrogating the two suspects. The first, Edgar Rivera Garcia,
Speaker 2: had been sitting in a white mini van and talking
Speaker 2: on a drive through payphone. He claimed he was a
Speaker 2: carpenter from Mexico. The other men, Jose Morales, had been
Speaker 2: walking through the gas station's parking lot when police showed up.
Speaker 2: Neither could provide valid identification. As police interrogated Garcia and Morales,
Speaker 2: agents from the Task Force were listening to the recorded
Speaker 2: call over and over. They painstakingly decipher the sniper's call
Speaker 2: word by word. It referred to the demand from the
Speaker 2: Ponderosa letter option one to put ten million dollars on
Speaker 2: an ATM card or option two the killings would continue.
Speaker 2: Here's what they transcribed.
Speaker 6: Dearest police, call me God. Do not release to the
Speaker 6: press five red stars. You have our terms. They are
Speaker 6: non negotiable. If you choose option one, you will hold
Speaker 6: a press conference stating to the media that you believe
Speaker 6: you have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose.
Speaker 6: Repeat every word exactly as you heard it. If you
Speaker 6: choose option two, be sure to remember we will not
Speaker 6: deviate ps. Your children are not safe.
Speaker 2: The call had to be from the killer. Nothing from
Speaker 2: the Ponderosa letter had leaked, but the caller knew about
Speaker 2: the red stars, the two options, and there to children.
Speaker 2: That was definitely one of the snipers.
Speaker 4: On the line.
Speaker 2: Later that day, Richmond Police held another press.
Speaker 9: Conference based on information we received this morning. Two men
Speaker 9: were detained and questioned by local and federal authorities. These
Speaker 9: men had been turned over to representatives of the Immigration
Speaker 9: and Naturalization Services for further action.
Speaker 2: Garcia and Morales weren't the snipers. The police had arrested
Speaker 2: the wrong guys. The task force had learned that there
Speaker 2: was a second payphone on the other side of the
Speaker 2: gas station, and the sniper's call had come in from
Speaker 2: that other phone. By the time police had showed up,
Speaker 2: the snipers were already gone. They had come so close
Speaker 2: to catching them, but the trap had failed. That afternoon,
Speaker 2: Chief Moves again communicated to the snipers through a press conference.
Speaker 11: I would like to start with another message. The person
Speaker 11: you called, could not hear everything that you said. The
Speaker 11: audio was unclear, and we want to get it right.
Speaker 11: Call us back so that we can clearly understand.
Speaker 2: The police were trying to re establish communication with the snipers,
Speaker 2: but they were also trying to buy time. That's because
Speaker 2: they've been following up on other leads from the letter.
Speaker 2: Here's David Reichenball right now.
Speaker 8: We've got a whole bunch of leads that we can
Speaker 8: work on, and they were running those leads down. Those
Speaker 8: were our red hot leads. They want ten million dollars
Speaker 8: on this ATM card, and the ATM card belonged to
Speaker 8: a lady, a bus driver.
Speaker 12: This is Jill Lynn Farroh, retired Greyhound bus driver. In
Speaker 12: October two thousand and two, my supervisor said, I must
Speaker 12: call this telephone number immediately. The FBI needs to speak
Speaker 12: to me. And I got completely shocked and surprised, but
Speaker 12: I called and FBI agent mac Rominger said, yes, I
Speaker 12: need to speak to you upon arrival and flagstaff tonight.
Speaker 12: And then I had the next three hours to wonder
Speaker 12: what in the world was going on with FBI agents.
Speaker 12: It was just, you know, very concerned.
Speaker 5: What did I do.
Speaker 12: Well? It could be anything. What did I do? The
Speaker 12: agents met me at the Greyhound bus Termalin Flagstaff at
Speaker 12: the bottom of the steps of my bus and they said,
Speaker 12: please follow us into the driver lounge and they said
Speaker 12: please sit down. I said, gentlemen, I've been sitting all day.
Speaker 12: To mind if I stand up? And what is this about?
Speaker 12: They asked, do you remember the day your credentials went me?
Speaker 12: And my mind instantly flashed back to that day, and
Speaker 12: I told them everything. It seemed like a typical day.
Speaker 12: I go no Gallus to Tucson, and then I loaded
Speaker 12: the local local bus to Phoenix, Arizona, and then I
Speaker 12: continue on from Phoenix to flag Staff. I then took
Speaker 12: my luggage off the bus and went into the Flagstaff
Speaker 12: bus driver lounge and I'm going through my items in
Speaker 12: my little suitcase and discovered my entire Union Pacific little
Speaker 12: black pouch was missing, my driver's license, credit cards, whatever
Speaker 12: that was missing. And I started calling everybody, shutting everything
Speaker 12: down regarding credit cards.
Speaker 2: She canceled all of her cards except for one, her
Speaker 2: Bank of America visa card.
Speaker 12: That was the only one I didn't call in about
Speaker 12: because I did not know I had it. A few
Speaker 12: weeks later, a call from Bank of America told me
Speaker 12: they had shut down and canceled that card due to
Speaker 12: fraudulent use. The card was used one time only for
Speaker 12: twelve dollars and one cent at a gas station in Tacomo, Washington.
Speaker 2: Investigators now knew the credit card mentioned in the letter
Speaker 2: had been stolen in Arizona and used in Washington State.
Speaker 2: Those were now places of interest. Agents were also following
Speaker 2: up on the five phone calls that the sniper had
Speaker 2: mentioned in the letter. The letter mentioned a call to
Speaker 2: a priest in Ashland. It turned out there was only
Speaker 2: one Catholic church in the city. Police went there and
Speaker 2: spoke to the pastor, William Sullivan. Sullivan said he had
Speaker 2: received a strange call from a man with an accident
Speaker 2: he couldn't place. The man on the phone claimed he
Speaker 2: knew who the sniper was and rambled to Sullivan about
Speaker 2: a liquor store robbery in Montgomery. The man went on
Speaker 2: and on, but Sullivan didn't take it seriously. He thought
Speaker 2: it was just someone with a big imagination who'd watched
Speaker 2: too much about the Snipers on TV. The task force
Speaker 2: tracked down two of the other calls that were mentioned
Speaker 2: in the letter. One had come into the Rockville Police Department,
Speaker 2: and another to the man the snipers had described as
Speaker 2: Officer Derek. As it turned out, Montgomery County Public Information
Speaker 2: Officer Derrick Beliles had received a strange call a few
Speaker 2: days earlier.
Speaker 15: During the sniper crisis, we received a tremendous amount of
Speaker 15: phone calls. All the phone calls from people who wanted
Speaker 15: to talk to Chief Moose were forwarded to the media office,
Speaker 15: where I answered the phone. My name is Derek Lliles,
Speaker 15: and back in two thousand and two, I was a
Speaker 15: public information officer for the Montgomery County Police when the
Speaker 15: FBI came to question me. I didn't know if I'd
Speaker 15: done something right or something wrong, but I went over
Speaker 15: to talk to him. On my way out of the building,
Speaker 15: I ran into Chief Moose, who said, thank you for
Speaker 15: what you've done. I really appreciate everything you're doing. And
Speaker 15: I didn't know if that was my goodbye speech or
Speaker 15: whether it was something else. I had no idea. All
Speaker 15: I know is that the FBI wanted to talk to
Speaker 15: me over at the task Force. When I got over
Speaker 15: to the Sniper task Force, I met with a number
Speaker 15: of people. The ATF wanted me to come out to
Speaker 15: their van that was parked outside. Once I got in there,
Speaker 15: they put headphones on me and said, just listen and
Speaker 15: tell us what you think. And I listened to the
Speaker 15: phone call that was recorded by the Rockfield City Police.
Speaker 2: Good boy, what are the people that are causing the
Speaker 2: killing of your ears?
Speaker 1: Terrified it?
Speaker 15: Sir?
Speaker 2: Call me God, do not released the press.
Speaker 5: He called you three.
Speaker 2: Times before trying.
Speaker 3: You've got no response.
Speaker 12: People have died, sir, an Montgomery County. Please hotline or not.
Speaker 12: That's the game of corner if you like the number.
Speaker 15: The dispatcher, though, was not the person to give that information,
Speaker 15: so she did the right thing and told him to
Speaker 15: call the Sniper Task Force, and that caller got angry
Speaker 15: and got frustrated and hung up. I listened to that
Speaker 15: phone call and they asked me did I recognize anything?
Speaker 15: And I said, that's exactly the same voice that I
Speaker 15: had heard on my phone call, the same tone, the
Speaker 15: same inflection, the same emphasis on certain words. The task
Speaker 15: force sat me down in a room surrounded by everybody,
Speaker 15: and they wanted to know what I had heard and
Speaker 15: who I thought the sniper might be. And I told
Speaker 15: him the information, and I also told them that it
Speaker 15: sounded like the voice of a young black male. That
Speaker 15: really startled him because all of the profilers had said
Speaker 15: he's probably an adult male with military history and all
Speaker 15: those types of things. So they were intrigued by why
Speaker 15: I thought it sounded like a young black male, and
Speaker 15: they just threw a lot of questions at me as
Speaker 15: I told my story over and over again.
Speaker 2: The phone call to Officer Derek Beliles wasn't recorded, but
Speaker 2: this is his recollection of the call.
Speaker 15: He said, shut up and listen. I've got some information
Speaker 15: about some of your snipers, but first I need you
Speaker 15: to verify some information. So he wanted me to look
Speaker 15: at an incident that had occurred in Montgomery, Alabama and
Speaker 15: tell him what I knew about it. As he spoke
Speaker 15: to me, he was very insistent and told me to
Speaker 15: get the information for him. I told him my name
Speaker 15: was Officer Derek because I didn't want to use my
Speaker 15: last name. I asked him to call me back in
Speaker 15: About an hour or so after I got the phone call,
Speaker 15: the detectives there told me that there had been a
Speaker 15: shooting in Montgomery, Alabama by a liquor store, where two
Speaker 15: women coming out of the store were shot and a
Speaker 15: black male was seen running from the scene of the accident.
Speaker 15: When he did call back about an hour and a
Speaker 15: half later, I told him what I had learned, and
Speaker 15: then said, what can you tell me about our snipers?
Speaker 15: How can you help me after I've helped you? And
Speaker 15: he said that it wasn't easy for him to talk
Speaker 15: right there because he had to find a telephone, that
Speaker 15: there was no cameras watching or anything like that. And
Speaker 15: that phone call came to an abrupt end when the
Speaker 15: operator came on saying to continue this call, please deposit
Speaker 15: more coins, and then the call abruptly stopped. At that point,
Speaker 15: the Sniper Task Force took this information and followed it up,
Speaker 15: and the pieces began to fall into place.
Speaker 2: Next time on Monster DC Sniper.
Speaker 5: The Alabama incident is interesting.
Speaker 6: Ten days before shots were fired in Maryland, two clerks
Speaker 6: shot outside the ABC Beverage store in Montgomery, Alabama.
Speaker 7: He was behind one of the pillars of the business,
Speaker 7: rummaging going through a purse. The first victims of the
Speaker 7: serial sniper may have been eight hundred miles south of
Speaker 7: the Washington belt Way.
Speaker 5: You know, we gotta push with everything we got because
Speaker 5: we don't know how long these resources are going to last.
Speaker 5: I mean, we had close to four hundred FBI agents
Speaker 5: atf and I know there's a limitation to that.
Speaker 7: All this is happening, if not in days, it's happening
Speaker 7: in hours, and now we had a very very clear
Speaker 7: suspect to pursue.
Speaker 1: By name, Monster d C Sniper is a fifteen episode
Speaker 1: podcast hosted by Tony Harris and produced by iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers
Speaker 1: on behalf of iHeartRadio, alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Keebrick,
Speaker 1: and Josh Thine. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive
Speaker 1: producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producers Meredith Stedman
Speaker 1: and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, be sure to check bick out
Speaker 1: the first two seasons, Atlanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1: If you have questions or comments, email us at Monster
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,