Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster d Z Sniper, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Tenderfoot t V. The views and opinions
Speaker 1: expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast
Speaker 1: author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not
Speaker 1: represent those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. September five, two thousand two, Clinton, Maryland,
Speaker 1: about a month before the DC sniper attacks began, and
Speaker 1: two months before investigators found Paul the Rufa's laptop in
Speaker 1: the sniper's car, Larufa was ambushed. It's pretty amazing that
Speaker 1: you go from just an ordinary routine to all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're part of this crazy thing that happened.
Speaker 1: That's one of the largest man hunts in history. At
Speaker 1: the end of a long, busy day, he closed down
Speaker 1: his family restaurant with a couple of friends. He put
Speaker 1: the day's earnings in a bank bag and wished his
Speaker 1: friends good night. I locked up the restaurants at the alarm,
Speaker 1: We all to our cars. I got in the driver's side,
Speaker 1: shut the door, and before I could do anything, the
Speaker 1: window to my left exploded. SID Emergency nine one one
Speaker 1: center shooting. Now it doesn't know a lot. You're the
Speaker 1: one at that time, No, man, it was the owner.
Speaker 1: I think you guys shot robbed. I heard the guests.
Speaker 1: I thought, who was the robbery? And a shooting? Okay,
Speaker 1: that the dulance from the police officer on the way.
Speaker 1: Who did them? I have no idea. I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: it from the back the black jacket, black backpack, and
Speaker 1: the black pap What type of weapon would is? However?
Speaker 1: Was gun shot? I don't know if you've heard of football.
Speaker 1: Five shots came in the window. They all hit me.
Speaker 1: It went from a tremendous sound that deafened my left ear,
Speaker 1: then within seconds it became incredibly quiet. I didn't have
Speaker 1: time to blink, let alone see anything. All I saw
Speaker 1: was a flash of light and that was it. I
Speaker 1: was bleeding out of my chest and my upper back,
Speaker 1: lower neck because one of the shots hit me from
Speaker 1: that angle. So I leaned on the horn to just
Speaker 1: attract anybody who would be around, and leaned on it,
Speaker 1: leaned on it, and then I opened the door. I
Speaker 1: was able to get out of the car and stand up,
Speaker 1: and one of the guys that I left with was
Speaker 1: walking towards me. He was dialing his cell phone moment.
Speaker 1: I'm at Mark Delanez on Stewart Lane in curt Maryland.
Speaker 1: I need an ambulance right here. Uh. Guy came out
Speaker 1: for behind the store and uh and shop Paul Arupa
Speaker 1: and us leading. Uh. The person that you're talking to
Speaker 1: or they in a car. I know he was in
Speaker 1: the car and he's standing, but he's outside the car. Job.
Speaker 1: I don't haven't stand. Try to get him to sit
Speaker 1: down and not move around. Can you sit in the
Speaker 1: car to sit down and not move around? All right?
Speaker 1: But I don't want to sign here. The pressure of
Speaker 1: the blood inside me was collapsing my lungs. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that's what was happening. All I know is that
Speaker 1: I was suffocating. They said they were going to get
Speaker 1: a helicopter, but then the helicopter was too far away,
Speaker 1: so they were just sending regular E M t s.
Speaker 1: And they did. They got there, got me into the ambulance.
Speaker 1: I was really having trouble breathing, and I just had
Speaker 1: the feeling we weren't going that quickly. So I would
Speaker 1: say how much longer? How much longer? And they said,
Speaker 1: not not that much longer. If I lead, we got
Speaker 1: to the hospital and there was a team. They're ready,
Speaker 1: and they rolled me into the emergency room and just
Speaker 1: basically did exactly how you see it on TV. There
Speaker 1: were four or five six people around me just doing
Speaker 1: what they had to do to save my life. They
Speaker 1: got me into surgery and for six or seven hours
Speaker 1: picked out as many as the bullet fragments as they
Speaker 1: could and and sewed me up and and saved my life.
Speaker 1: So that's what happened the first night. And then I
Speaker 1: spent just about another week in the hospital. I was
Speaker 1: three days on a breathing machine in intensive care, uh,
Speaker 1: because I couldn't breathe. So after that they tested and
Speaker 1: took me off and it was still tough, but I could.
Speaker 1: I could breathe on my own. After about a week,
Speaker 1: I said I really wanted to go home, and they
Speaker 1: said okay, So I I left the hospital with a
Speaker 1: contraption from my left arm. The most lasting physical effect
Speaker 1: of one of the bullets was that it severed a
Speaker 1: nerve in my arm. I could close my hand, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to open it again. So they had
Speaker 1: therapists that designed and made a brace type thing from
Speaker 1: my hand. It had rubber bands on it and it
Speaker 1: would spring back and pull my fingers apart and open
Speaker 1: my hand. I actually had that on about a year
Speaker 1: before the nerve drew back and gave me function in
Speaker 1: my left hand, and to this day it's not but anyway,
Speaker 1: that was the lasting physical effect. Of course, I went
Speaker 1: through tremendous mental effect of it, starting with the first
Speaker 1: night I was in the hospital. I had flashbacks that
Speaker 1: were incredible. You literally relive it. If you've ever had
Speaker 1: a nightmare where you're scared or somebody's chasing you, it's
Speaker 1: that times ten, because you really relive it. You hear it,
Speaker 1: your ears, hear that sound, and you feel it, and
Speaker 1: it's just terrible. It's it's horrible. You can't turn it off,
Speaker 1: you can't make it stop. It just happens. Happen every night.
Speaker 1: I was shot September five. They didn't catch them till October,
Speaker 1: So for at least that time and probably a little more,
Speaker 1: I had that flashback all the time. So that was hard,
Speaker 1: and then it began to wane and lessen, mostly I
Speaker 1: think because they were caught. After they were caught, they
Speaker 1: found my computer and they put the whole thing together more. Mom,
Speaker 1: it's ex wife lived right down the road from the restaurant.
Speaker 1: There is a ruthless person on the loose. What unnerves
Speaker 1: this community the most is the randomness of the murders,
Speaker 1: ordinary people doing ordinary things. They killed the five people
Speaker 1: in one day and then went on the rampage for
Speaker 1: the next month. It is quite a mystery. The police
Speaker 1: say they have never had a crime quite like this.
Speaker 1: Be careful, these guys are using weapons that are going
Speaker 1: to go right straight through our bulletproof vest. From my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, this is Monster d C Sniper.
Speaker 1: Following Mohammed and Melvo's arrest on October, investigators wondered whether
Speaker 1: others were involved in planning the attacks, and they were
Speaker 1: also trying to solve one of the biggest mysteries in
Speaker 1: the case, what was the motivation? That question would become
Speaker 1: increasingly important as they prepare for the upcoming trials. Mohammed
Speaker 1: and Malvo had been brought to Montgomery County and interviewed.
Speaker 1: Mohammed initially talked, saying he was innocent, but then quickly
Speaker 1: asked for his lawyer. Malvo refused to speak at all,
Speaker 1: so investigators turned to evidence from the Blue Caprice forensics
Speaker 1: from the Bushmaster they found in the car matched bullets
Speaker 1: from the shootings. They found Larufa's laptop which led them
Speaker 1: to his shooting, and they began retracing Mohammed and Malvo's
Speaker 1: steps using other evidence they found in the car, like
Speaker 1: receipts and phone cards, and investigators unraveled a whole new
Speaker 1: string of crimes. They didn't have a car. They had
Speaker 1: come across country by buses and hitchhiking. What they did
Speaker 1: was they took the money that was in my bank bag.
Speaker 1: They got about thirty six hundred dollars in cash, which
Speaker 1: financed their whole operation. They went to Jersey and bought
Speaker 1: the car from Clinton, Maryland. Mohammed and Malvo traveled up
Speaker 1: to Trent and Jersey. D m V records showed that
Speaker 1: on September two thousand two, John Mohammed paid two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty dollars to purchase the blue Caprice from a dealership
Speaker 1: called shore Shot Auto Sales. Reportedly, when Mohammed looked at
Speaker 1: it in the lot, he asked the dealer to open
Speaker 1: the trunk and then climbed inside and there was a
Speaker 1: strange incident the next day, on September eleven, two thou two,
Speaker 1: the first anniversary of the terror attacks. While Mohammed registered
Speaker 1: the car in Camden, the DMV building received a bomb threat.
Speaker 1: Mohammed finished the registration just a few minutes before the
Speaker 1: building was evacuated. It's still unclear if Mohammed or Malvo
Speaker 1: were involved with the bomb thread or if it was
Speaker 1: just a strange coincidence. After buying and registering the car
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, Mohammed and Malvo head itself. Prepaid phone
Speaker 1: cards found in the caprice showed that by the next night,
Speaker 1: September twelve, they were in the DC area outside a
Speaker 1: Shopper's food warehouse in Alexandria, Virginia. They used one of
Speaker 1: these phone cards to place a call to Antigua. Then,
Speaker 1: two nights later, on September in Montgomery County, Maryland, a
Speaker 1: liquor store employee, Repender Oberoi, was locking up the store
Speaker 1: when he heard a loud crack. Oberoy was shot. I'm
Speaker 1: calling again to report that someone that apparently has gotten
Speaker 1: shot in the Hill and Dale shopping Center. By safe way.
Speaker 1: Three ambulances had passed right by. One is across the street.
Speaker 1: I've said it each time, and other people are calling
Speaker 1: to they're driving right by and this man has been
Speaker 1: laid on the sidewalk. Ultimately, ober Roy survived the attack.
Speaker 1: A witness nearby reported seeing an old car pull out
Speaker 1: of a parking space and drive away. The witness told
Speaker 1: police about it, but the officers were perplexed ober It
Speaker 1: hadn't been robbed and didn't seem to have any enemies.
Speaker 1: After arresting the snipers and retracing their movements, police now
Speaker 1: suspect that the snipers had shot Oberoi. Investigators tried to
Speaker 1: analyze bullet fragments from the crime, but the pieces weren't
Speaker 1: large enough to make any comparisons, and without firearm forensics,
Speaker 1: it was hard to prove. The very next night, on
Speaker 1: September fift another attack took place at a liquor store,
Speaker 1: this one in Prince George's County, just miles from Paul
Speaker 1: Larufa's restaurant and Mildred Mohammed's home. It was raining as
Speaker 1: Mohammed Rashied locked up the store, he heard a loud
Speaker 1: sound and saw two bullet holes appear in the glass
Speaker 1: store in front of him. He turned and saw a
Speaker 1: young man holding a pistol. The man fired a third shot,
Speaker 1: and he felt a bullet enter his abdomen. Rashid realized
Speaker 1: he was being robbed, so he made a split second
Speaker 1: decision to drop down and play dead. Sheet says the
Speaker 1: attacker rolled him over and rifled through his pockets. The
Speaker 1: attacker grabbed his wallet and then walked away. Rashid waited
Speaker 1: anxiously until he thought the man was gone. Then he
Speaker 1: called nine one from his cell phone. Oh ma'am, I'm
Speaker 1: buying for one piece that was there for somebody, so
Speaker 1: fine to me. Have you been shut Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my bunny stoma. One piece that was one body. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna help you. Okay, you do shut you? No?
Speaker 1: No liab okay, somebody there with you? Nobody okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: Now I want to just sit down. I want to
Speaker 1: take your shirt on and put it tightly into the
Speaker 1: stomach where you were shot. Okay, I want the morning
Speaker 1: with you. What's today day? I'm gonna stay in a line.
Speaker 1: We got somebody going to you right now. Did somebody
Speaker 1: rob you? Why are you? Who are you outside? Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna help you with your cell phone. Never hommed,
Speaker 1: I'm not the one going out. We've already got an
Speaker 1: ambulance going to you. I'm here with you. Okay, Oh
Speaker 1: letten me take deep breath and try to say as
Speaker 1: quiet as you can't. Okay, I'm right here with you.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go anywhere. Oh my Gogmed Mohammed
Speaker 1: the person to shot you, white or black? I'm glad
Speaker 1: that how old then something? And I need to put
Speaker 1: the look at We're already coming to you. How old
Speaker 1: is he? By? You're doing great? And what was he wearing? Mohammed? Like,
Speaker 1: you can do it, We'll come assurance. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: Buston's movie. Okay, great shirt and he had a gun?
Speaker 1: Why you haven't which way did he run? You were
Speaker 1: behind the door. Okay? If I know they're coming to
Speaker 1: you now, but it's staying. Did they get to Mohammed?
Speaker 1: Rashid was treated and survived. Surgeons recovered the bullet from
Speaker 1: his abdomen and gave it to police. Investigators tested the round.
Speaker 1: It came back as being from the same pistol used
Speaker 1: in the larofa shooting, the silver revolver that investigators would
Speaker 1: later find in Alabama following the liquor store shooting there
Speaker 1: on September eighth, three days after shooting Rashid. The snipers
Speaker 1: used a phone card to make a call from outside
Speaker 1: the Ponderosa Steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia, the very same restaurant
Speaker 1: where they would later shoot Jeffrey Hopper as he walked
Speaker 1: through the parking lot with his wife. Then another three
Speaker 1: days later, just after midnight on September twenty one, Malvo
Speaker 1: and Mohammed were likely five hundred miles southwest and the
Speaker 1: parking lot of a liquor store in Atlanta, Georgia. It
Speaker 1: was twelve sixteen a m an. Inside were two employees,
Speaker 1: Mimi Tadisi, a million walled Amerium, both Ethiopian immigrants. The
Speaker 1: store was closed, so they wondered why a car was
Speaker 1: idling in the parking lot. Reportedly, Wallda Mariam wanted to
Speaker 1: investigate to d C was worried and told him not
Speaker 1: to go outside, but he did anyway. Seconds after wald
Speaker 1: Merriam walked outside, to d C heard three gun shots.
Speaker 1: Wald de Merriam had been shot twice in the upper
Speaker 1: back and once in the back of the head. He
Speaker 1: died in the hospital. It's unclear if the bullets from
Speaker 1: this shooting were ever analyzed forensically, not even Twenty four
Speaker 1: hours later, Mohammed and Malvo were one hundred fifty miles
Speaker 1: southwest in Montgomery, Alabama, robbing the ABC Liquor store, where
Speaker 1: they shot and killed Claudine Parker and wounded Kelly Adams.
Speaker 1: Two days after the Alabama shootings, phone card records and
Speaker 1: receipts put the snipers in Mohammed's hometown, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There,
Speaker 1: at six forty pm, Hong M. Ballinger had just finished
Speaker 1: closing up the beauty shop where she worked. Ballinger had
Speaker 1: just reached her car when she was shot in the head.
Speaker 1: She died almost instantly. Another employee who was also leaving,
Speaker 1: saw a large, dark car pull out of a vacant
Speaker 1: lot and pick up a black man who had grabbed
Speaker 1: Ballinger's purse. Police found a bullet fragment embedded and Ballinger's
Speaker 1: side view mirror. It appeared to have come from a
Speaker 1: two to three rifle, but the case went cold after
Speaker 1: the sniper's arrest. Investigators reanalyze the bullet fragment from the
Speaker 1: shooting and they matched it to the snipers Bushmaster rifle.
Speaker 1: Ballinger was a victim of the snipers, likely the last
Speaker 1: one before the snipers returned to Maryland and began their
Speaker 1: DC attacks. They'd likely killed three and injured four more
Speaker 1: in a span of eighteen days, all before the spree
Speaker 1: in d C even started. But why did the snipers
Speaker 1: then switch from this pattern of parking lot robberies to
Speaker 1: see me only random killings in d C. Although investigators
Speaker 1: were learning more about the scope of the snipers attacks,
Speaker 1: their motive still remained a mystery. The only people who
Speaker 1: could really answer the question of why we're Lee Boyd
Speaker 1: Malvo and John Mohammed investigators needed one of them to
Speaker 1: crack under questioning. Immediately after the sniper's arrest, a battle
Speaker 1: began brewing in the DC area, with attorneys fighting over
Speaker 1: where the snipers should be tried. On October two, just
Speaker 1: the day after the snipers were arrested, Montgomery County Prosecutor
Speaker 1: Doug Gansler held the news conference before he even learned
Speaker 1: Malbo's age or last name. The Montgomery County Police Department
Speaker 1: will attain an arrest warrant for the arrest of John Muhammad,
Speaker 1: aged forty one, and Lee Salvo, aged nineteen, for six
Speaker 1: counts a first degree murder. The decision to charge these
Speaker 1: cases in Montgomery County, Maryland, was reached after in depth
Speaker 1: consultation with local, state, and federal law enforcement officials. Montgomery
Speaker 1: County was the community most affected and most impacted by
Speaker 1: the sniper shootings. The investigation began, ended, and was centered
Speaker 1: here in Montgomery County. The Feds were furious, sources say,
Speaker 1: as local prosecutor Doug Ganceler walked to the microphones late
Speaker 1: today to announce that Montgomery County is fighting the first
Speaker 1: charges in the sniper case. Federal prosecutors privately accused Canceler
Speaker 1: of breaking in agreements not to file charges until the
Speaker 1: Feds decide if they want to take over the case.
Speaker 1: In unusually harsh language. One federal official accused Canceler of
Speaker 1: quotes exploiting this tragedy for political purposes. So how did
Speaker 1: the sniper case cracked only yesterday up to now a
Speaker 1: model of cooperation between Chief Moose, the FBI, and a
Speaker 1: t F How did it unravel so fast with prosecutors
Speaker 1: engaged in and unseemly fights over who gets the first
Speaker 1: crack at convicting them. Two weeks later, on November seven, U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney General John Ashcroft announced where Malbo and Mohammed would
Speaker 1: first be tried for twenty three days in October. Our
Speaker 1: communities lived in fear. Innocent victims from Maryland, Virginia, the
Speaker 1: District of Columbia, Alabama, and Louisiana have paid the ultimate price.
Speaker 1: It is appropriate, it is imperative that the ultimate sanction
Speaker 1: be available. I have instructed the U. S. Marshals Service
Speaker 1: to transfer custody of John Alan Mohammed to Prince William County, Virginia.
Speaker 1: I have also instructed the marshals to transfer custody of
Speaker 1: a juvenile to Fairfax County, Virginia. Right after his arrest,
Speaker 1: Mohammed had talked briefly with detectives, then clammed up and
Speaker 1: asked for his lawyer. Now, with federal charges dropped and
Speaker 1: stay charges pending, two new investigators took their turn at
Speaker 1: trying to get Mohammed to talk. I want to take
Speaker 1: the handcuff, so to me. Okay, salad with tomatoes and
Speaker 1: what else, Sir John Loup. We're not here to jam
Speaker 1: you up anything like that, but certainly you know we
Speaker 1: want to talk to him too. Beans or potatoes, beans
Speaker 1: and russ and the partiular kind of potatoes. How you
Speaker 1: want to picture or anything like I was telling you much, Mohammed.
Speaker 1: I understand that you've talked to attorneys and that they've
Speaker 1: told you not to say anything. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of people who said that this was meaningless and since us,
Speaker 1: but it had me. I believe it had meaning to you,
Speaker 1: and this may be your only tunity to tell your story.
Speaker 1: Your lawyers are not going to put you on the stand,
Speaker 1: because when your lawyer gets done asking any questions, they're
Speaker 1: going to be subject across examination. They're not going to
Speaker 1: put you on the stand. You need to say what
Speaker 1: you can say, and ladies behalf now, John, aside from
Speaker 1: his requests for food, John Mohammed just sat stone faced
Speaker 1: in the interrogation room. Detectives knew that Mohammed and Lee
Speaker 1: boyd novel weren't biologically related, but that he had often
Speaker 1: introduced the lead to friends as his son, so the
Speaker 1: detectives tried to use John's relationship with Lee to get
Speaker 1: him to talk. I would assume that since y'all were
Speaker 1: taken into customy did you not talk to him? And
Speaker 1: I would imagine that's very difficult for you. He's a
Speaker 1: long he's afraid, but as a father myself. I know
Speaker 1: fame that must cause you also not being able to
Speaker 1: reach him in his time and trouble when he needs
Speaker 1: your love more than he needs anything else. So if
Speaker 1: you don't do anything else here for yourself, do this
Speaker 1: for your son. Tell us the truth, tell us what
Speaker 1: the meaning is behind this. Let's do some damage control
Speaker 1: here and in some way try and spare his life.
Speaker 1: Did Lee pull the trigger? Did le do any of
Speaker 1: the shootings? Now? I can tell you what Leaves gonna do,
Speaker 1: just based on what I know about kids and what
Speaker 1: I know about their love to their parents. To save
Speaker 1: his own life, that boy's not gonna say it was
Speaker 1: all my daddy, It wasn't me. You know that in
Speaker 1: your heart there's only one person that has any hope
Speaker 1: of saving his life, and that's going to be you,
Speaker 1: because if you don't say anything, he's not going to
Speaker 1: say anything at least and lose his life over this John.
Speaker 1: They're going to make an assumption that made pull of
Speaker 1: the trader. They'renvasing on the fact that that was a
Speaker 1: small area back there, and that in all likelihood you
Speaker 1: were driving. Being more mature, you would be able to
Speaker 1: drive with more calm than Kimp All we want to
Speaker 1: know is the truth. And I don't want to see
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old kid put it down namelessly. At seventeen,
Speaker 1: he is not a man. He's a kid, and he's
Speaker 1: afraid and he has alone, But the court's going to
Speaker 1: treat him like a man. There was one person, seemingly,
Speaker 1: and you know better than I do, because you know
Speaker 1: he intimate details. There was one person who really seemed
Speaker 1: to care about him. And here you are, and he's
Speaker 1: not strong without you, and you know what he might do.
Speaker 1: He might say I shot him out. He might say
Speaker 1: by daddy drove, and I shot because I was the
Speaker 1: smallest and I could sit back there. And what would
Speaker 1: happen if he says that is he most assuredly will
Speaker 1: be sentenced to death. But I can tell you something.
Speaker 1: You can take the kid who's shot people and the
Speaker 1: head or maybe he has watched people get shot for
Speaker 1: no reason. You can take the kid and teach you
Speaker 1: all of those tough, hard things, and he can do
Speaker 1: it just like you wore. He can kill men, he
Speaker 1: can cut the throats and not lose a wink of
Speaker 1: sleep about it. But when it comes time to die,
Speaker 1: when he's wounded on the battlefield. When the game is
Speaker 1: over and he's facing death, he demonstrates loud and clear
Speaker 1: that he's a boy play in a man's game. You
Speaker 1: know why, John, because that's when they cry, and that's
Speaker 1: when they call for the mamas for their daddy. When
Speaker 1: he's in a man's prison, it's you he's gonna want.
Speaker 1: When he lies on that wreck at night crying, it's
Speaker 1: you he's going to think about. He played a man's game,
Speaker 1: but he's a boy, and he's your boy that's gotten
Speaker 1: to touch you in your heart. He wouldn't win his
Speaker 1: mom or whoever his biological father was. He was with you.
Speaker 1: And you know something, John, This is harsh, but this
Speaker 1: is important. If you two are sentenced to death, I
Speaker 1: pray to God that they execute you before they execute him,
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna take something, John, And they could be executed,
Speaker 1: and you could receive a stake for whatever reason, and
Speaker 1: then you would sit and pray and for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life with him going on ahead of you.
Speaker 1: And you know what, that might not be his man.
Speaker 1: He's seventeen years old, him spending the rest of his
Speaker 1: natural life in prison. After you've made your peace with God,
Speaker 1: that could be the real hell for him. If you
Speaker 1: love him the way I think you love him, if
Speaker 1: you love him the way I love my children, it
Speaker 1: will tear your soul away from you. You will live
Speaker 1: hell on Earth. Save his life if you don't do
Speaker 1: anything else, do the right thing, fix this thing. If
Speaker 1: you were on a sinken ship and there was one
Speaker 1: life jacket, I have no doubt in my mind that
Speaker 1: you would give it to late. You're on a sinking ship.
Speaker 1: Now give that kid a life jacket. Give him an
Speaker 1: opportunity to save himself, because he's not going to do
Speaker 1: it unless you give him permission to do it. Because
Speaker 1: if it were me and now, I wouldn't do it
Speaker 1: unless he gave me permission and forced me to take
Speaker 1: that my jacket. You can force him to save hisself
Speaker 1: and then saving him save herself from the potential of
Speaker 1: hell on earth. Let's just John Mohammed refused to talk,
Speaker 1: but one county to the north, in Fairfax, investigators were
Speaker 1: having better luck with Malva. Malvo was brought to Fairfax
Speaker 1: County Homicide at that point, which I was working with
Speaker 1: on the Lenda Franklin case. My name is Brad Garrett
Speaker 1: i'mber retired FBI agent currently a crime and terrorism analyst.
Speaker 1: It certainly didn't have the flavor to me or many
Speaker 1: others that this was some terrorist of it. Nobody was
Speaker 1: taking credit. There didn't seem to be any significance to
Speaker 1: the people that got shot. It seemed like they were
Speaker 1: just in the raw place at the wrong time, mowing
Speaker 1: their yard, pumping gas. So it was hard to sort
Speaker 1: of imagine what the real motivation might be. You know,
Speaker 1: many shootings can be attributed to revenge, which may not
Speaker 1: actually be towards the people they are shooting. Some people
Speaker 1: call it displaced violence. So is that going on here?
Speaker 1: When Malvo was brought to Fairfax County Homicide, myself and
Speaker 1: a homicide detective by the name of June Boyle interviewed
Speaker 1: him roughly starting at four o'clock in the afternoon until
Speaker 1: about midnight. Courts are closing at four. It really set
Speaker 1: up nicely for them. My name is Tom Walsh, partner
Speaker 1: Petrovitch and Walsh. My name is Mark Petrovich, also a
Speaker 1: partner at Petrovitch and Walsh. Tom and I were two
Speaker 1: of the members of the team that represented Lee Malvo
Speaker 1: in the DC sniper case. At the time in Maryland,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't execute juveniles for the crimes they committed, but
Speaker 1: you could in Virginia. So they took him out of
Speaker 1: federal custody up in Maryland and transferred him over to
Speaker 1: Fairfax County. In the course of transferring him over, he
Speaker 1: did get an attorney appointed to him because he was
Speaker 1: a juvenile. Was actually outside the building banging on the
Speaker 1: doors trying to get in to meet with Lee before
Speaker 1: the police interrogated him, but he wasn't allowed in and
Speaker 1: the interrogation took place. They knew they were dealing with
Speaker 1: a young kid that was indoctrinated. They were going to
Speaker 1: be able to get him the spill of beans, and
Speaker 1: they were going to take advantage of it. This is
Speaker 1: FBI agent Brad Garrett again. June and I walk into
Speaker 1: basically an office, but everything has been removed except a
Speaker 1: desk and a couple of chairs. Malbo's smiling and it's
Speaker 1: almost like he doesn't have a care in the world,
Speaker 1: you know, which told me that he felt like he's
Speaker 1: in control, that he has all of the information and
Speaker 1: he has the power to share it with us or not.
Speaker 1: June said to his right, and I sat in front
Speaker 1: of him. I don't like talking to people from an
Speaker 1: angle because one of the keys and getting people to
Speaker 1: talk is being able to get them to look at
Speaker 1: you and communicate with you. Because despite the artificiality of
Speaker 1: interviewing somebody that's potentially committed multiple murders, you still have
Speaker 1: to develop a relationship with them. And so the first
Speaker 1: thing you typically always ask people is how do they feel?
Speaker 1: How much has they slept? Do they need anything, food, water,
Speaker 1: something to drink, et cetera. So we started talking a
Speaker 1: little bit about where he was raised and you know,
Speaker 1: how did he end up in Antigua? And he gradually
Speaker 1: gave us pieces of information, but not a lot. And
Speaker 1: so I'm sort of racking my brain is too, how
Speaker 1: can I really get him to talk about something that
Speaker 1: he may care about or have an interest in. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what got me to this point, but I
Speaker 1: started talking about movies. Two thousand two, there was a
Speaker 1: movie that have been out for a while called The Matrix,
Speaker 1: and I knew a lot of kids his age like
Speaker 1: that movie. So I said, have you watched the movie
Speaker 1: The Matrix? And up to this point he has not
Speaker 1: made eye contact. He sort of looked over me or
Speaker 1: around me, even though I was in front of him,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time he looked me in
Speaker 1: the eyes, and I thought to myself, well, at least
Speaker 1: I can maybe get him to connect with me at
Speaker 1: this point. We'll see how far this goes. So we
Speaker 1: started talking about the matrix and what the matrix meant.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know what it is? The matrix
Speaker 1: is everywhere, It is all around us. It is the
Speaker 1: world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind
Speaker 1: you from the truth. After that discussion, June and I
Speaker 1: decided that we would sort of go, do you know
Speaker 1: why you're here? We really like to talk to you
Speaker 1: about these shootings. And so what he basically did was
Speaker 1: he sort of just talked about pieces of information that
Speaker 1: occurred at these Saints. Here are Melbo's lawyers, Mark Petrovitch
Speaker 1: and Tom Walsh. They got him talking, he admitted to
Speaker 1: some things, and then they read him as Miranda rights
Speaker 1: with everything right. The Reggi rights, You're fine to talk
Speaker 1: to us without an you still want to talk to us,
Speaker 1: You don't mind talking to us. They can no longer
Speaker 1: do that. It's now unconstitutional to conduct an interrogation that way.
Speaker 1: But at the time, it wasn't. It's what they called
Speaker 1: it legally, the cat out of the bag. And that
Speaker 1: was kind of a point. What to do is to
Speaker 1: get you talking and then after you say statements, they
Speaker 1: read your rights and then they go back and confirm
Speaker 1: what you said before. To now say oh, well you've
Speaker 1: had your rights, and that he confirmed these things. You
Speaker 1: would get you earlier that the gentleman that the nassas,
Speaker 1: I'm spright and used it. It wasn't illegal, and if
Speaker 1: you could see me, I guess I would air quote
Speaker 1: that the way it was conducted wasn't illegal. But had
Speaker 1: Todd Pett had been able to get in, he would
Speaker 1: of advised Lee not to speak and they would not
Speaker 1: have gotten the interrogation. But there was none of that,
Speaker 1: and the statement came out it was It was damning.
Speaker 1: The audio from the interview can be difficult to understand,
Speaker 1: and throughout it Malbo laughed, made sound effects and responded
Speaker 1: to questions with short, abrupt answers. You were all playing
Speaker 1: a lot of year time, so you knew each start
Speaker 1: you were going to hit in the gund of gun
Speaker 1: that first day, slight in the morning, that was longbore
Speaker 1: Son down. You say people will value you go up
Speaker 1: in the bushes. He become a part of the bushes.
Speaker 1: He caught in grass and then become a part of grass.
Speaker 1: Fifty yard fense. Uh, I'm over in two seconds after
Speaker 1: you shoot, you run the cargover fence. How can you
Speaker 1: run with the gunman? Now? So easy to break down
Speaker 1: because you have shot and broke it down right after shooting,
Speaker 1: and you know we sees you and then we put
Speaker 1: it in the bag or pull in the bag. All right,
Speaker 1: can welcome you out of my hand? It's this deception. Yeah,
Speaker 1: snipers a doin their weapons. This is what keeps me alive.
Speaker 1: It's one man going out in facing army. Did you
Speaker 1: see the trooper? I told you I'm goin a shot
Speaker 1: the trooper. Why wouldn't because it wasn't a kisy And
Speaker 1: you're going to keep carrying until you got the money,
Speaker 1: until you listen to but at some point you know
Speaker 1: that we have to give you the ten million O. Yes,
Speaker 1: you could try to catch me until you mean that
Speaker 1: shooting all these people was gonna affect the calling me
Speaker 1: and let move at the same Chamelion. It's all planet.
Speaker 1: You have to fit something, You have to fit the environment,
Speaker 1: and you have to fictality live which is money and
Speaker 1: you flick that this is all he's asking for and
Speaker 1: get it, give it talk. But did you tie it's
Speaker 1: manner whether it was male, female or you know nature,
Speaker 1: nobody just to look get into that sidekick who was
Speaker 1: just going out there shooting deep. I can't feel bad
Speaker 1: about any certain one. You don't know if you have
Speaker 1: to do when you do the same thing. Huh yeah.
Speaker 1: If we didn't, they have caught you get still redoing it.
Speaker 1: We had your resources to keep going. You did when
Speaker 1: we need in cash money you plan for war before war?
Speaker 1: Was it your money or John Burney was all the
Speaker 1: money and working be seated? This unity does not hate.
Speaker 1: That's dancing is a failure. Everyone has to be online
Speaker 1: pop and there's something that you well that's something like business.
Speaker 1: I think do you think them nothing? It doesn't him Okay, shocking,
Speaker 1: it's just the last two minutes five two minutes he did.
Speaker 1: So we went through that. It got some pretty incriminating information.
Speaker 1: He did not give us all of the crimes that
Speaker 1: they committed, which you know clearly involved crimes and Louisiana
Speaker 1: and some other jurisdictions that we ultimately put together. But
Speaker 1: you know, we felt like that we at least had
Speaker 1: success because he got him to talk. Malvo didn't tell
Speaker 1: investigators about all of the shootings leading up to this
Speaker 1: bri in DC, but of the shootings they discussed, he
Speaker 1: said that he had been the gunmen for all of
Speaker 1: them and that Mohammed hadn't shot anyone. Here's Malvo's lawyer,
Speaker 1: Tom Walsh. Again. He still brainwash at that time, so
Speaker 1: he was taking blame for all the shootings. He was
Speaker 1: basically trying to take everything on as a juvenile and
Speaker 1: save his leader, Mohammed. He was clearly protective of Mohammed,
Speaker 1: was trying to implicate Mohammed in a very minimal fashion,
Speaker 1: so you could tell that there was some sort of
Speaker 1: close bond between the two of them. At the end
Speaker 1: of this interview, I said, what was the motivation? Why
Speaker 1: did you guys do this? And he looked at me
Speaker 1: and he says, well, it's all about the matrix. Two
Speaker 1: understand mother Max, And I said, well, what does that mean? Answering,
Speaker 1: I mean, that doesn't mean anything unless I know, what
Speaker 1: do you think the matrix the movie means that he
Speaker 1: just smiled part of Mohammed's indoctrination was to decessitize lee
Speaker 1: to violence two shootings, to the consequences of what happened
Speaker 1: The Matrix and things of that nature were part of
Speaker 1: the indoctrination and as a factors that needed to be explored.
Speaker 1: What did Malvo mean when he said that the explanation
Speaker 1: for the shootings could be found in the movie The Matrix?
Speaker 1: Investigators wondered if Mohammed had been radicalized and was committing
Speaker 1: an act of terror out of hatred for America. And
Speaker 1: then there was the demand for ten million dollars to
Speaker 1: be deposited on a bankard. Could it really all be
Speaker 1: about money? A day after Malvo's interview with police, the
Speaker 1: Washington Post published an interview with John Mohammed's ex wife, Mildred.
Speaker 1: She had her own theory about John's motivation for the crimes.
Speaker 1: Do you know why he came to the area. He
Speaker 1: went to a father's rights group, told them I kidnapped
Speaker 1: the children. They did a skip trace on me, found
Speaker 1: me in the DC area and told him. He went
Speaker 1: to his best friend Robert. He said, I found Mildred.
Speaker 1: She's in d C. I'm gonna go get her. His
Speaker 1: best friend asked them, are you going to hurt her?
Speaker 1: He didn't say anything. The theory was he was killing
Speaker 1: innocent people to cover up my murder so he could
Speaker 1: come in as the grieving father, get custody of the children,
Speaker 1: and drive away. They probably would have named him Father
Speaker 1: of the Year for coming to get the children and
Speaker 1: raising them himself. That best friend called the FBI and said,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about your case, but you may
Speaker 1: want to look at John Ali Mohammed. His ex wife
Speaker 1: is in the area and he may be there to
Speaker 1: hurt her. And I talked to Robert. I said, I
Speaker 1: am calling you to thank you for saving my life.
Speaker 1: Say Mildred, let me tell you something, girl, John came
Speaker 1: there to kill you. I had to make a decision
Speaker 1: to call and report him or watch your name scroll
Speaker 1: under the TV that you've been killed. Say Mildred. I
Speaker 1: would pay anything to have a beer with John right now.
Speaker 1: That's my boy. But I had to call him. He said, So,
Speaker 1: don't get this twisted. Don't believe that ten million dollar madness.
Speaker 1: He came there to kill you. Don't ever get it twisted.
Speaker 1: Mildred Mohammed thinks the random string of shootings was designed
Speaker 1: to disguise her murder. If John had just killed her,
Speaker 1: he would be the primary suspect, But if it looked
Speaker 1: like she was just another random sniper victim, maybe he
Speaker 1: would have gotten away with it. Mildred says that even
Speaker 1: though that plan sounds crazy, it's the sort of crazy
Speaker 1: plan that John would have come up with. After all,
Speaker 1: this was the same John who was ready to run
Speaker 1: away with Lindberg, his son from his earlier marriage, the
Speaker 1: same John who kidnapped his kids from Mildred and took
Speaker 1: them all the way to antique it. Washington Post reporter
Speaker 1: Josh White says, while it's hard to ever definitively know
Speaker 1: the motivation for a crime, Mildred's theory makes sense. Mildred
Speaker 1: has talked about how she believed she was the target,
Speaker 1: and I think that's plausible. All of those shootings create
Speaker 1: panic and get police occupied, and that it would have
Speaker 1: been very hard to connect her shooting to anything else,
Speaker 1: just like it was very hard to connect any of
Speaker 1: these other people together. It would have gotten him custody
Speaker 1: of the children, It would have gotten the problem he
Speaker 1: saw out of the way, but that didn't happen. Malvo
Speaker 1: has said that they parked outside where she was living.
Speaker 1: October eleven, my coworker picked me up for work. She said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a dark colored Caprisa and Pala outside
Speaker 1: your door, and I just get a bad feeling from
Speaker 1: that car. So girl, don't worry about let's just go
Speaker 1: to work. So we passed by the car. The driver
Speaker 1: looks at us, but the passenger has a newspaper and
Speaker 1: he puts it up to cover his face. And I said,
Speaker 1: did you see that? She said, yeah, I did. I said,
Speaker 1: give me your phone, let me call the police. So
Speaker 1: I called the police. They said, okay, we'll send someone
Speaker 1: out there. Later they told me John sent Lee to
Speaker 1: your door pretending to be a salesperson, and his instructions
Speaker 1: were when you opened the door to shoot you in
Speaker 1: the face, ms Mohammed. You opened the door, and for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, he walked away. We don't know the repercussions
Speaker 1: he suffered because he didn't kill you that day. Next
Speaker 1: time on Monster DC Sniper, you know, it's hard enough
Speaker 1: work in one murder to have these thirteen shootings just
Speaker 1: in our area, let alone what else went around the country.
Speaker 1: We knew it was going to be a monumental task.
Speaker 1: Part of Mohammed's indoctrination was to decessitize lee to violence
Speaker 1: to shootings. There's no amount of psychological coercion that would
Speaker 1: force somebody to, let's say, kill, if they didn't already
Speaker 1: had some kind of predisposition. I remember feeling just basically
Speaker 1: shock and disbelief that he could have done this. He
Speaker 1: just looks so innocent, how shocking. One of the most
Speaker 1: alarming moments was when Mohammed stood to represent himself. We
Speaker 1: had never heard from Mohammed at that point talk about
Speaker 1: weird events in your life. I was being questioned by
Speaker 1: the guy who tried to kill me. Monster DC Sniper
Speaker 1: is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by Tony Harris and
Speaker 1: produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick and
Speaker 1: Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: alongside producers Trevor Young, Ben Kiebrick, and Josh Thain. Payne
Speaker 1: Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV alongside producers Meredith Steadman and Christina Dana. Original
Speaker 1: music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. If you haven't
Speaker 1: already be sure to check out the first two seasons
Speaker 1: at Lanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer. If you
Speaker 1: have questions or comments, email us at monster at iHeartMedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can call us at one eight
Speaker 1: three three two eight five six six six seven. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.