Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster DC Sniper, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in
Speaker 1: this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or
Speaker 1: individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those
Speaker 1: of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised. It is February six, two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: and my niece is gone. This is Ice and Nichols,
Speaker 1: the former accountant for John and MILDRAA Mohammed. She came
Speaker 1: home from grocery shopping one day to find that her niece,
Speaker 1: Keenya Cook, had been shot dead in her kitchen. I
Speaker 1: just went into a cold state. I was just on
Speaker 1: auto pilot. My body had just shut down. They started
Speaker 1: roping off the house and I saw where King's head
Speaker 1: had laid. The bullet case it was still there, and
Speaker 1: I just saw blood the back of her head that
Speaker 1: just been blown out. Now my house is a crime scene.
Speaker 1: We go through burying Kenya and our family is grieving.
Speaker 1: It's a cold case, and we don't hear anything, and
Speaker 1: we're trying to go on with our lives. I'm no
Speaker 1: longer in the house at this point. For several months.
Speaker 1: But when I do move back into my home. But
Speaker 1: we're trying to get back into some sense of normality,
Speaker 1: if there's such a thing. With my husband and I,
Speaker 1: we were just going through the motions and one day
Speaker 1: I was at Bible study. This is like the end
Speaker 1: of October. My page is going off. It was my husband.
Speaker 1: I go and I returned. The colony says, what are
Speaker 1: you doing. I said, I'm at Bible studies Thursday. He said,
Speaker 1: have you looked at the TV? I said, I just
Speaker 1: said I was at Bible study. He said, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you need to go home. Meet me at the house.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what what's going on? Need to just
Speaker 1: meet me at the house. I get to the house
Speaker 1: and I turned on the TV and we had been
Speaker 1: hearing about these shootings on the East Coast. We're hearing
Speaker 1: just shots of people pumping gas. A child was shot
Speaker 1: at school. We're hearing about a woman getting shot in
Speaker 1: the head coming out of home depot. I think she
Speaker 1: was an FBI analyst. So where everybody's like, whoa, this
Speaker 1: ain't it time to be traveling to the East Coast.
Speaker 1: I actually had clients who canceled flight plans because this
Speaker 1: what's going on. We're listening to all this news and
Speaker 1: stuff on the West coast, and then I was sudden
Speaker 1: the backyard of a duplex here in Tacoma, carefully marked
Speaker 1: off in a grid up pops a tree trump at
Speaker 1: a former client's house for almost nine hours, a deliberate
Speaker 1: search by hand investigators sifting through dirt, then sawing down
Speaker 1: a tree stump and hurting it off evidence believed to
Speaker 1: have been used for target practice, possibly containing bullet fragments.
Speaker 1: There's these helicopters flying all over the Tacoma community. There's
Speaker 1: FBI agency, a t F Why is the investigation coming
Speaker 1: to Washington? The DC sniper? They are actually saying it's
Speaker 1: linked to Tacoma. At that point, in my soul, in
Speaker 1: my heart, in my mind, I knew I was connected.
Speaker 1: I'm on the couch and fetal position. The next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, my husband comes home and he said, that's
Speaker 1: what I was trying to tell you. It's John. It's John.
Speaker 1: There is a ruthless person on the loose. What un
Speaker 1: nerves 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 when 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 DC Sniper.
Speaker 1: October two two it had been nearly three weeks since
Speaker 1: the DC sniper attacks began. The investigation had become the
Speaker 1: largest man hunt in the nation's history, which meant that
Speaker 1: expenses for every police agency involved were skyrocketing. Law enforcement
Speaker 1: had limited resources and limited time to catch the killers,
Speaker 1: so they had to act fast. Three days had passed
Speaker 1: since Jeffrey Hopper became the snipers twelve victim at a
Speaker 1: Ponderosa Steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia. Since that time, investigators had
Speaker 1: connected the d Sea shootings to a liquor store robbery
Speaker 1: in Montgomery, Alabama. There, police found a fingerprint on an
Speaker 1: armor like gun catalog. Federal authorities ran that fingerprint through
Speaker 1: the database of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or i
Speaker 1: n S, and they got a match. The fingerprint belonged
Speaker 1: to Lee Boyd Malvo. As soon as we found out
Speaker 1: that his name was referenced in an I n S file.
Speaker 1: We had them pull the file so we could see
Speaker 1: what was in it, and the other name that came
Speaker 1: up in that file was actually John Mohammed. This is
Speaker 1: Linda Hooper. She was a supervisory special agent for the
Speaker 1: FBI during the sniper investigation. Hooper immediately started to learn
Speaker 1: everything she could about Malvo and Mohammed, and in doing
Speaker 1: research on John Mohammed, we found out that he had
Speaker 1: been in the army. He certainly knew weapons. The more
Speaker 1: we dug into his background and who he was, there
Speaker 1: was more and more information on his interest in weapons,
Speaker 1: his shooting practice, shooting, target shooting, his involvement with this
Speaker 1: young boy, seventeen year old Malbow. They weren't related, but
Speaker 1: Malvo lived with him. He had a very rough, to
Speaker 1: say the least, early childhood and not a good situation
Speaker 1: with his mother, and he was kind of taken in
Speaker 1: by John Mohammed. Much of this information came from a
Speaker 1: man in Tacoma, Washington named Robert Holmes. He had called
Speaker 1: the Sniper Task Force with a tip and he had
Speaker 1: said that he had had a friend that had left
Speaker 1: the area that was a very militant person, very upset person.
Speaker 1: This is Michael Myrick, a former lieutenant for the Montgomery,
Speaker 1: Alabama Police. Myrick says the tipster, Robert Holmes, was a
Speaker 1: former friend of Mohammed's and he had served in the
Speaker 1: Mill of Terry alongside Mohammed. He described as just being
Speaker 1: very unhappy with life. The guy was very dangerous, and
Speaker 1: he said it just bothers me that all this is happening.
Speaker 1: His ex wife lives in the DC area, and he said, uh.
Speaker 1: He left with an a R fifteen Bushmaster rifle. He says,
Speaker 1: nothing for nothing, But I'm just gonna let y'all know.
Speaker 1: Don't want to sit on this information. And he had
Speaker 1: a son named Lee. The friend thought this was his son,
Speaker 1: at least step son, and he said son was a
Speaker 1: very very good shot, and they talked about snipers and
Speaker 1: they played sniper games. I and Nichols actually knew Robert Holmes,
Speaker 1: the man in Tacoma who called in the tip about
Speaker 1: John Mohammed, Well, John stayed with him. He was a
Speaker 1: good friend John. They both were in Fort Louis together
Speaker 1: in the military, both of them former Army vets. Holmes
Speaker 1: said that a few months before the shooting started in
Speaker 1: d C. Mohammed stopped by his house. He wanted to
Speaker 1: test out a homemade silence or for a rifle, and
Speaker 1: in order to see if it worked, he had target
Speaker 1: practice in his backyard in one of the trees. And
Speaker 1: so that's why they were here getting the tree trump
Speaker 1: and how the investigation came here. The tip from Robert
Speaker 1: Holmes effectively connected Washington State to the DC sniper attacks.
Speaker 1: So the Sniper task Force went to Tacoma. They took
Speaker 1: the tree stump that Mohammed and Malbo had supposedly used
Speaker 1: as target practice for evidence. Following the bullet trail, FBI
Speaker 1: agents are now focused on this woodpilot in Olympia pieces
Speaker 1: of potential evidence. The wood cut down months ago from
Speaker 1: the backyard of this Tacoma duplex. It's where John Alan
Speaker 1: Mohammed once lived, and it's said to have used the
Speaker 1: tree for target practice. Authorities mapped a grid in the
Speaker 1: backyard and carefully scammed for bullet fragments and shellcases, then
Speaker 1: removed the stump from that tree sent to the woodpile.
Speaker 1: NBC News has learned evidence recovered here, including the tree stump,
Speaker 1: has been analyzed that the a t F lab in Maryland,
Speaker 1: and already the evidence has been described just having quote
Speaker 1: potential value. Again, all this is happening not in days,
Speaker 1: it's happening in hours. Now we had a very very
Speaker 1: clear suspect to pursue my name. Police had quickly learned
Speaker 1: a lot about the pair, but they weren't ready yet
Speaker 1: to name them the snipers. Still, it fell to investigators
Speaker 1: like they were finally zeroing in on their targets. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I said, Nichols was getting some answers about the murder
Speaker 1: of her niece Keenya Cook. Next thing I know, I
Speaker 1: get a knock at the door. It's the FBI agent. Well,
Speaker 1: he confirms that Lee and John were in Tacoma during
Speaker 1: the time my niece was murdered. And that's all I
Speaker 1: needed to hear. That said to me that they killed
Speaker 1: my niece. She took a bullet mit for me. Nobody
Speaker 1: knew she was leaving with me. She opens the door
Speaker 1: and he lodges off his weapon. I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: he the caame this diabolical evil person. But Mohammed and
Speaker 1: Malvo weren't done yet. While the task force was making
Speaker 1: the connection to Washington State, Mohammed and Malvo were in
Speaker 1: Montgomery County, Maryland, and they were planning their next attack.
Speaker 1: October two. Aspen Hill, Maryland. In Montgomery County, it's early
Speaker 1: in the morning, so early that it's still dark out.
Speaker 1: In a dense wooded area, someone is walking up a hill.
Speaker 1: They're carrying a duffel bag with a sniper rifle inside.
Speaker 1: Once they reached the edge of the wood area, they
Speaker 1: stopped at the opening. They see an empty playground with
Speaker 1: rusty slides, still swings and old park benches, and on
Speaker 1: the other side of the playground sits an idle bus.
Speaker 1: Inside the bus driver is waiting to start his morning route.
Speaker 1: The person in the woods crouches. They pull a paper
Speaker 1: note out of the duffel bag and attach it to
Speaker 1: a nearby tree branch. Then they go back to the
Speaker 1: duffel bag and pull out the sniper rifle. They get
Speaker 1: low to the ground and lay flat on their stomach.
Speaker 1: They set up the rifle on the cold, leafy floor
Speaker 1: and set their aim towards the driver of the bus.
Speaker 1: So now we get to the morning of October, which
Speaker 1: is day number in the morning, this has retired Maryland
Speaker 1: State at least Lieutenant David Reichenball. He says that a
Speaker 1: Jamaican American bus driver named Conrad Johnson was training a
Speaker 1: new female driver. Johnson was standing up just inside the
Speaker 1: entrance of the bus, on the other side of the
Speaker 1: meter where riders pay. He was talking to the trainee
Speaker 1: and getting ready to start his day. As he was
Speaker 1: prepping his bus, he was shot and killed. The shot
Speaker 1: came from a wooded area. This bus stop shooting would
Speaker 1: be the thirteenth attacks since October two. I visited the
Speaker 1: spot and was joined by Nick to Carlo, a retired
Speaker 1: Montgomery County detective sergeant who responded to the shooting that morning.
Speaker 1: I learned from officers on the scene what happened, who
Speaker 1: the victim is, and where he's been transported. And we
Speaker 1: have one witness. I have one of my investigators take
Speaker 1: a statement from that witness that would have been the woman,
Speaker 1: the trainee who was on the bus with Conrad Onto
Speaker 1: One of the keys at this point in time in
Speaker 1: the task force was the as you know, the involvement
Speaker 1: of federal agencies, one of those agencies being the a
Speaker 1: t F. Once we had a t F come on
Speaker 1: the scene, they used their laser technology to give us
Speaker 1: a trajectory show us exactly where the shot came from.
Speaker 1: That led us to the edge of the woods. Here
Speaker 1: I orchestrated and conducted a line search of probably about
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty officers agents along this wood line, and
Speaker 1: so we went I'm gonna say thirty yards into the woods,
Speaker 1: where we found a note stuck on a tree limb,
Speaker 1: and we also found a discarded duffel bag, which would
Speaker 1: have been useful in carrying a long gun. To Carlo
Speaker 1: remembers that this shooting felt like coming full circle. The
Speaker 1: bus stop was only a mile down the road from
Speaker 1: the very first shooting where James Martin was killed at
Speaker 1: the Shopper's food warehouse. De Carlo had also been on
Speaker 1: that scene three weeks prior. He says, police had learned
Speaker 1: a lot of lessons between then and now. A homicide
Speaker 1: involving a rifle in the outdoors very unusual, But when
Speaker 1: you use a high powered weapon like that, your crime
Speaker 1: scene has to expand. If you know that's what you're
Speaker 1: dealing with, the scope of your crime scene grows immensely
Speaker 1: now that we knew what we were dealing with. Fast
Speaker 1: forward to Mr Johnson and this scene. We knew we
Speaker 1: were dealing with a large area that had to be
Speaker 1: closed off in a number of different directions, and a
Speaker 1: lot further than you typically would do at a homicide.
Speaker 1: By the time they had finished searching the scene, they
Speaker 1: had found a duffel bag, a single glove, and another
Speaker 1: note attached to a treat in the woods. Here's David
Speaker 1: reichenba again again a notice found. This time it's an
Speaker 1: angry note for you, Mr Police, call me God, do
Speaker 1: not release to the press. You did not respond to
Speaker 1: the message. You departed from what we told you to say,
Speaker 1: and you departed from the time. Your incompetence has cost
Speaker 1: you another life. You haven't toiled nine am to deliver
Speaker 1: the money and until eight a m. To deliver this
Speaker 1: response to let us know that you have our demands. Quote,
Speaker 1: we have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose.
Speaker 1: The same red sticky stars on top of the note
Speaker 1: claiming that you know we we screwed him over and
Speaker 1: we weren't talking to them, and the body counts from
Speaker 1: then on was on us, not on them. The notes
Speaker 1: had new deadlines for a phone call and for money,
Speaker 1: but by the time police had secured and read the note,
Speaker 1: they'd missed the deadline. The note also told police to
Speaker 1: send a false message to the public that police had
Speaker 1: caught the snipers like a duck in a noose. That's
Speaker 1: where the media comes back in, because now we send
Speaker 1: Chief Moose back out giving them some phrases that they
Speaker 1: put on the note so that they know we were serious.
Speaker 1: One of the phrases that the chief used, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure the media was maybe a little astonished by it,
Speaker 1: was you asked us to say, quote, we have called
Speaker 1: the sniper like a duck in a noose. End quote.
Speaker 1: We understand that hearing us say this is important to you. However,
Speaker 1: we want you to know how difficult it has been
Speaker 1: to understand what you want because you have chosen to
Speaker 1: use only notes, indirect messages, and calls to other jurisdictions.
Speaker 1: The solution remains to call us and get a private
Speaker 1: toll free number established just for you. If you are
Speaker 1: reluctant to contact us, be assured that we main ready
Speaker 1: to talk directly with you. Our word is out bind
Speaker 1: let's talk directly. We're waiting for you to contact us,
Speaker 1: sort of giving them Okay, now we give we know
Speaker 1: you're in charge. We're gonna do whatever it is you
Speaker 1: want us to do, but we need you to call us,
Speaker 1: so reach out to us. We'll make it work. Basically,
Speaker 1: what the chief was trying to do was bide some
Speaker 1: more time for us to track these guys down because
Speaker 1: the chief knew that, you know, all the leadership knew
Speaker 1: that we were starting to focus. We now knew their names,
Speaker 1: so we were trying to communicate through the media back
Speaker 1: to the snipers to have them reach out to us.
Speaker 1: That was a role that the news media willingly but
Speaker 1: cautiously took on. Here's Channel nine reporter Dave Stanner, A
Speaker 1: lot of information was being transmitted through the news media.
Speaker 1: We didn't know if the snipers were paying attention to
Speaker 1: us in the news, but it was clear that we
Speaker 1: were getting information out there that could be going to
Speaker 1: the snipers specifically. We knew we had a responsibility to
Speaker 1: be as accurate as we can be, as we always are.
Speaker 1: But Statter says local journalists don't want to just regurgitate
Speaker 1: what police were telling them. He says, sometimes police have
Speaker 1: an agenda and they put out false information as a
Speaker 1: means to an end, and so the media has to
Speaker 1: be careful if they were to broadcast false information it
Speaker 1: would blow back on them and not law enforcement. When
Speaker 1: you are the news media and you're a reporter, you
Speaker 1: don't want to become the news and that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Still Channel nine and other local stations aired nearly every
Speaker 1: press conference by Montgomery County Police. In another press conference
Speaker 1: that day on October, Chief Moose revealed the contents of
Speaker 1: the previous letter found up the ponder Rosa steakhouse shooting
Speaker 1: in Ashlyn, Virginia. There continues to be a great deal
Speaker 1: of speculation as to a reference a threat in the
Speaker 1: usage previously received. As stated earlier, everyone knows that all
Speaker 1: of our citizens are and have been at risk. We
Speaker 1: recognize the concerns of the community, and therefore are going
Speaker 1: to provide the exact language in the message that pertains
Speaker 1: to the threat. Your children are not safe anywhere at
Speaker 1: any time. My impression of why Charles Moose went out
Speaker 1: with that information was one he likely knew it was
Speaker 1: going to leak out to the press, and in fact
Speaker 1: it already had started leaking out to the press, including me. Also,
Speaker 1: they knew if there's a specific threat to children, and
Speaker 1: they didn't let the public know there's a specific threat
Speaker 1: to children, that this could be a problem for them
Speaker 1: down the road. Chief Moose also indirectly referenced the demand
Speaker 1: from the ponderous a letter that money be deposited into
Speaker 1: a credit card the snipers were supposedly carrying. The sniper's
Speaker 1: request for ten million dollars had not been made public,
Speaker 1: but Statter says it had leaked to the media. It
Speaker 1: seemed bizarre to us as reporters. Suddenly there's a request
Speaker 1: for a large amount of money, ten million dollars, and
Speaker 1: we can't make sense of it. We know that to
Speaker 1: get that money, you're going to have to somehow show
Speaker 1: yourself clearly you don't want to be caught from what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Now, all of it's not making a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to us. What's the motive behind this? Was
Speaker 1: it really money? But police we didn't know at the time.
Speaker 1: We're actually getting a little bit closer and what this
Speaker 1: was about. The media didn't know it yet, but police
Speaker 1: had made significant progress on tracking down the snipers, now
Speaker 1: believed to be John Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malbo. Here's
Speaker 1: former FBI agent Linda Hooper. Again, it certainly looked like
Speaker 1: they were two viable suspects in this case. But we
Speaker 1: had no information that they were in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington,
Speaker 1: DC area at all. What they did is they were
Speaker 1: looking for that name, John Mohammed. Had that name ever
Speaker 1: been queried by any law enforcement in our area? And
Speaker 1: it's called an offline search. And based on that offline search,
Speaker 1: they got information that in Silver Spring, Maryland, day queried
Speaker 1: John Mohammed October two, early in the morning, U. S.
Speaker 1: Marshall Billy Serrucas asked the FBI to find out if
Speaker 1: John Mohammed where Lee Boyd Malvo had any interactions with
Speaker 1: law enforcement in the DC area. So the FBI went
Speaker 1: to n c i C, the National Crime and Information
Speaker 1: Center in c i C has one of the most
Speaker 1: extensive crime related databases in the country. Police use this
Speaker 1: database to get information on a driver when they run
Speaker 1: a tag, that information comes back, who the owner of
Speaker 1: the car is, information on that person in criminal history,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. We didn't have any of that.
Speaker 1: This is former FBI agent Linda Hooper. She says that
Speaker 1: because they didn't have a tag number to run, and
Speaker 1: they couldn't access Mohammed's vehicle history, but they could do
Speaker 1: an offline search or reverse in c I S to
Speaker 1: see if John Mohammed's name had come up in any
Speaker 1: local police reports, and they're able to get information that
Speaker 1: you couldn't get through running it through your dispatcher. As
Speaker 1: a result of the offline search, the FBI discovered that
Speaker 1: John Mohammed had been pulled over in Silver Spring, Maryland,
Speaker 1: as well as in multiple other nearby locations in the
Speaker 1: last month. Here's retired Montgomery County pol He's commander Drew Tracy,
Speaker 1: and one of the most important traffic stops was in Baltimore, Maryland,
Speaker 1: where John Mohammed was stopped by a patrol officer and
Speaker 1: he ran him and I find very correctly. John Mohammed
Speaker 1: was saying, oh, he's out visiting relatives and he was tired.
Speaker 1: He was sleeping at the gas station. From that traffic stop,
Speaker 1: we got information. Police learned that John Mohammed had been
Speaker 1: pulled over on October eight in Baltimore, Maryland. Shortly after
Speaker 1: the officers stopped John Mohammed, he cued his dispatch microphone.
Speaker 1: Over the radio, he announced the make and model of
Speaker 1: the car, as well as the license plate number. But
Speaker 1: the recording of that dispatch call was hidden. An hour's
Speaker 1: worth of tape Deputy Marshall's listened to more than five
Speaker 1: hours of police radio call tapes before they heard the transmission.
Speaker 1: They were searching for an officer reading off the license
Speaker 1: and description of the car. Well, the information that came
Speaker 1: back was this was driving this blue Chevrolet Caprices with
Speaker 1: new Jersey tags, and they provided the tag number for it.
Speaker 1: The snipers were driving a blue Chevrolet Caprice with new
Speaker 1: Jersey tags. Chevy Caprices are long, boxy cars with big trunks,
Speaker 1: and they were used by many law enforcement agencies in
Speaker 1: the ninety nineties as police cars. David Reichenball says that
Speaker 1: even though the Caprice was stopped multiple times during the
Speaker 1: sniper investigation, police had no reason to suspect that it
Speaker 1: was involved in the shootings. There were no warrants, no
Speaker 1: reason to stop the vehicle, and after all, we're all
Speaker 1: looking for white vans and white trucks. We had stopped
Speaker 1: every white van in three states at least three times.
Speaker 1: They're not in a white van. Police had spotted them
Speaker 1: either before or after the shootings and just didn't make
Speaker 1: the connection because we were so focused on the white
Speaker 1: vans and the white trucks. But by October law enforcement
Speaker 1: had the snipers names, their car, and their license plate number,
Speaker 1: and although they couldn't directly connect Mohammed to the crimes,
Speaker 1: they were able to secure a warrant for his arrest.
Speaker 1: That day was really spent putting everything that we had together.
Speaker 1: By about nine thirty ten o'clock at night, we had it.
Speaker 1: We knew who we were looking for, we knew what
Speaker 1: they were in. We just didn't know where to find them.
Speaker 1: So the next move was to inform everyone involved in
Speaker 1: the investigation. Here's former FBI agent Linda Hooper. Again. They
Speaker 1: put a bolo out beyond the lookout to tell all
Speaker 1: law enforcements, and not just in Maryland and Virginia, but
Speaker 1: to tell all law enforcements. If you see this blue
Speaker 1: Chevy Caprice with these new jersey tags, you need to
Speaker 1: pull it over and identify it. There's a John Mohammed
Speaker 1: driving it, and then there's an arrest forrant warm so
Speaker 1: that it goes out so everybody knows, and then like
Speaker 1: at every briefing at every police department, particularly in the area, okay,
Speaker 1: this is what we're looking for. Tonight. As I recall,
Speaker 1: we had over twenty three police agencies involved the nets, local, state, county,
Speaker 1: federal We had at the height over a thousand police
Speaker 1: officers working this case. It was around the clock because
Speaker 1: we knew these people were going to continue to kill
Speaker 1: people until they were stopped. The cooperation among the agencies
Speaker 1: were unprecedented. I had FBI officials working for me as
Speaker 1: a state trooper, I had county folks working for me.
Speaker 1: I had my troopers taking orders from FBI. It didn't matter.
Speaker 1: It was a joint effort in every true sense of
Speaker 1: the word. Then the egos start to click in a
Speaker 1: little bit and there became a bonut contention. When do
Speaker 1: we release the information about the caprice to the media.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons pro and con pro. Obviously, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got the eyes of the public out there helping
Speaker 1: us find this blue caprice. That's obvious. Public has a
Speaker 1: right to know now this is what we're looking for.
Speaker 1: Help us find them. The downside of it was, Hey,
Speaker 1: the snipers don't know that we've got them yet. They
Speaker 1: don't know that we have them pinpointed. So if we
Speaker 1: keep it secret, we've got a chance to maybe gain
Speaker 1: that element of surprise. That was a tough decision to make,
Speaker 1: right and Ball says he wanted to release the information
Speaker 1: before anyone else got hurt. In his mind, the sooner
Speaker 1: the info went out, the sooner they would find and
Speaker 1: catch the killers. But not everyone agreed, including the federal authorities.
Speaker 1: At a task force meeting that night, righting Ball says,
Speaker 1: all the different agencies were arguing about what to do.
Speaker 1: So he stepped out of the meeting to call Dave Mitchell,
Speaker 1: Superintendent of the Maryland's State Police. Briefed him on what
Speaker 1: we had and he very quickly made the decision for me.
Speaker 1: We don't care about anybody else. We're releasing it. We're
Speaker 1: releasing it to the media. We need to find these guys,
Speaker 1: and we need to do it now. And I said, Colonel,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be in trouble when I go in
Speaker 1: here and tell these guys that they're all Feds. He said, well,
Speaker 1: you tell them it's from the order of the governor
Speaker 1: that trumps them. We're doing it. Get from flyers, and
Speaker 1: in his words, get the hell out of there. I said, yes, sir.
Speaker 1: The license plate info went out to the media and
Speaker 1: news outlets. We're getting ready to make it public. Here's
Speaker 1: Channel Night reporter Dave Stanner. They're making the connection, and
Speaker 1: one of our reporters, the same reporter who came up
Speaker 1: with the Carrol card, Stacy Cohen, is the first to
Speaker 1: find this information out for us at Channel nine. She's
Speaker 1: got sources telling her that they're getting close, that they
Speaker 1: have names, and that they have a vehicle that they're
Speaker 1: looking for. So we knew that they had very specific
Speaker 1: information that would soon come out, and it did come
Speaker 1: out that they were looking for two people and they
Speaker 1: were looking for a vehicle, this blue Chevrolet Caprice. I
Speaker 1: was actually in a restaurant at that point eating dinner
Speaker 1: when this started to break, and I'm talking to Stacy
Speaker 1: on the phone and seeing Fox News on the TV.
Speaker 1: Brian wilson't start to break the information. I called our
Speaker 1: assignment desk. I said, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: specific information out here. I think this is going to
Speaker 1: break tonight. Just my gut. I'll work overnight and see
Speaker 1: if it turns up anything in the Washington area. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Statter says they had other leads to follow up on.
Speaker 1: One of the places we went to around midnight was Clinton, Maryland.
Speaker 1: We had learned that these shooters had a connection, or
Speaker 1: at least one shooter, John Maha mommed to his ex
Speaker 1: wife who lived in Clinton, Maryland, a woman I believe
Speaker 1: her name was Mildred Well. When we were investigating John Mohammed,
Speaker 1: we discovered that he was divorced and his wife, Mildred Mohammed,
Speaker 1: was living in the area, and that she had a
Speaker 1: restraining order against him. They had three children. Mildred's restraining
Speaker 1: order against John meant that he couldn't carry firearms. So
Speaker 1: once police received the tip from Robert Holmes that Mohammed
Speaker 1: was carrying a rifle, police could arrest him and they
Speaker 1: could detain Melvo as a material witness. When I found
Speaker 1: out that she was living nearby where these shootings had
Speaker 1: taken place, I thought that we needed to go over
Speaker 1: and interview her and offer to move her and her
Speaker 1: children out of their house. October FBI and E. T.
Speaker 1: F knock on my door and they say, is Mildre
Speaker 1: Mohammed here? Na? She not here? I was scared. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what they want. Say, Na, she not here?
Speaker 1: I said, what, we really need to talk to her
Speaker 1: because we need to ask her some questions. I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's me. So when was the last time you've seen
Speaker 1: John Alan Mohammed, and my palms began sweating. I said,
Speaker 1: why are you asking me questions about John? They said, well,
Speaker 1: we just want to know when's the last time you've
Speaker 1: seen him. I said September two thousand one at any
Speaker 1: emergency custody hearing in Tacoma, Washington. And he says, we're
Speaker 1: gonna name your ex husband as the sniper. I said,
Speaker 1: what John. My head hit the table. They said yes,
Speaker 1: but but do you think he would do something like this?
Speaker 1: I raised my head and looked in the warner of
Speaker 1: the room and said, well yeah. They said, well, why
Speaker 1: would you think that? I said, because we were watching
Speaker 1: a movie and I don't remember the name of it.
Speaker 1: But he said, I could take a small city terrorize it.
Speaker 1: They would think it would be a group of people
Speaker 1: and it would only be me. I asked him, while
Speaker 1: he do something like that? And he changed the subject
Speaker 1: so well, Ms Mohammed, would you like to go into
Speaker 1: protective custody? I said, you gotta ask me that. Well, yes, ma'am,
Speaker 1: because some people don't want to go. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: have you caught him yet, no, ma'am. Do you know
Speaker 1: where he is? No, ma'am, And you still have to
Speaker 1: ask me. She accepted our offer. We moved her and
Speaker 1: her children to a hotel. We get out of the
Speaker 1: house into the car, drive away in the media, A
Speaker 1: convoy is coming up. They perched themselves around the house.
Speaker 1: My neighbor said that you would have thought it was daylight.
Speaker 1: They took us to a hotel where I still don't
Speaker 1: know where it is. We run at their hotel room
Speaker 1: and an undercover capacity, so her name was an associated
Speaker 1: with it at all. And we just kept her there
Speaker 1: and told us was over. And I turned on the TV.
Speaker 1: And that was the first time they showed John's picture
Speaker 1: on TV. And I went up to the TV and
Speaker 1: put my hand on it and say, what happened to you?
Speaker 1: My son crying on one bed, my daughters crying on
Speaker 1: the other. I pulled them together. They cried themselves to sleep.
Speaker 1: I got a pillow, went in the bathroom, turned on
Speaker 1: the water in the bathtub, sat on the floor and
Speaker 1: screamed in the pillow because I didn't know what to
Speaker 1: do and I didn't know who to call back. At
Speaker 1: Mildry Mohammed's house in Clinton, Maryland, reporter Dave Statter was
Speaker 1: part of the media convoy that had showed up that night.
Speaker 1: We pulled way back when we saw police were already
Speaker 1: in the area, and police were there to see if
Speaker 1: John Mohammed showed up. Different news outlets broadcasted the blue
Speaker 1: Caprice info at various points throughout the night, and now
Speaker 1: that the license plate had gone public, police hoped that
Speaker 1: someone would spot the car and call it a tip.
Speaker 1: While we were down there in the Clinton area, we
Speaker 1: got a call from a photographer who worked at a
Speaker 1: TV station in Baltimore, Maryland, who was heading home and said,
Speaker 1: police have I seventy shut down in Frederick County, Maryland,
Speaker 1: and he believes it's connected to the sniper shootings. Frederick
Speaker 1: County is just northwest of Montgomery County and Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: It's where Maryland State Police Lieutenant David Reichenba lived and
Speaker 1: he was heading home that night. I guess it was
Speaker 1: probably eleven thirty. I switched over to UH Frederick Barrick
Speaker 1: channel and I called the bar because I'm required, and
Speaker 1: I said car six six to Frederick, be advised, I'm
Speaker 1: in the area. The duty sergeant, Sergeant Hunter Mark comes
Speaker 1: on and says copy that six six two. Can you
Speaker 1: go to secure channel one and I knew something was up.
Speaker 1: I switched over to Channel one and I got on
Speaker 1: the radio and start says, be advised, we've got the
Speaker 1: broadcast out there. We just heard it on the local
Speaker 1: AM radio station five minutes ago. And I just got
Speaker 1: a phone call. The nice blue caprix that you're looking
Speaker 1: for sitting at the rest area dropped seventy web bound
Speaker 1: South Mountain. They're in Frederick. The snipers are in the
Speaker 1: rest area Myers and next time on Monster d C Sniper.
Speaker 1: They had surprised for twenty one days. Now we had surprise.
Speaker 1: I wasn't anticipating this ending well. Once they realized they
Speaker 1: were cornered, I knew we were in for a shootout.
Speaker 1: I just knew it. I'm in the woodline, I'm listening.
Speaker 1: I'm praying that there's no shots fired. My heart's running
Speaker 1: a mile a minute, and I hear the breaking of windows.
Speaker 1: I remember feeling this immense relief and then just disbelief
Speaker 1: when the information came out that it was an older
Speaker 1: guy and a young guy. Like a young guy, A
Speaker 1: young guy did this? Why this kid just looked at
Speaker 1: me with that dead shark guy look the pal I'd
Speaker 1: kill you and everybody here if I had the chance. No,
Speaker 1: I don't way. When the snipers starting at randomly shooting people,
Speaker 1: nobody's said, oh, you know, this could be related to
Speaker 1: what happened to Paul. Nobody. Nobody had reason to think
Speaker 1: that until they found my computer. Monster DC Sniper is
Speaker 1: a fifteen episode podcast hosted by Tony Harris and produced
Speaker 1: by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick and Alex
Speaker 1: Williams are executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Kiebrick, and Josh Thine. 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 already,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out the first two seasons at
Speaker 1: Lanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer. If you have
Speaker 1: questions or comments, email us at Monster at i heeart
Speaker 1: Media dot com, or you can call us at one
Speaker 1: eight three three to eight five six six six seven.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. H