Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster DC 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
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Speaker 2: Monday, October seventh, two thousand and two. It's now day
Speaker 2: six of the Sniper investigation. After two whole days with
Speaker 2: no shootings, the area seemed calm, but that feeling didn't
Speaker 2: last long.
Speaker 3: It happened very early in the morning, well before the
Speaker 3: buses or any classes began.
Speaker 2: This is Karen Pumphrey, a former teacher at Tasker Middle School.
Speaker 3: I was on a landing and I heard someone kick
Speaker 3: the front door with such ferocity. I thought somebody was
Speaker 3: out there playing early unsupervised. And I heard all this yelling,
Speaker 3: so I was not real happy about it, and I
Speaker 3: expected to see some kids out front, and I didn't.
Speaker 3: It was only one boy, iron and he was about
Speaker 3: twenty feet down near the drive. He was alone, nobody else,
Speaker 3: and he was yelling and he was holding his stomach.
Speaker 3: So I walked over and I asked him, what's the matter,
Speaker 3: and he said I've been shot.
Speaker 4: But I knew he was in pain. It was clear,
Speaker 4: but I really didn't think it was shot. So I
Speaker 4: was like, we're gonna get you some help. I went in.
Speaker 3: I said, Iron is hurt. He says he's been shot.
Speaker 3: So they called nine one one.
Speaker 5: Oh hello, this is banking the cats in middle school,
Speaker 5: we had a child outside that says he's spot.
Speaker 3: And the principal got up and when we came out,
Speaker 3: he wasn't out front anymore, only as backack was there,
Speaker 3: and this silver car was pulling away from the curb.
Speaker 4: We didn't know what was wrong with him, and we
Speaker 4: didn't know who was in the car.
Speaker 3: So one of the counselors came running up, jumped in
Speaker 3: his car and followed.
Speaker 6: There is a ruthless person on the loose.
Speaker 7: What unnerves this community the most is the randomness of
Speaker 7: 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 8: It is quite a mystery.
Speaker 2: The police say they have never had a crime quite
Speaker 2: like this.
Speaker 9: Be careful, these guys are using weapons that are going
Speaker 9: to go right straight through our bulletproof.
Speaker 10: Vest White.
Speaker 2: From iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. This is Monster DC Sniper.
Speaker 2: Thirteen year old Iron Brown arrived at Tasker Middle School
Speaker 2: at about seven thirty am on October seventh. It seemed
Speaker 2: to be a completely normal Monday morning, except, of course,
Speaker 2: a sniper was on the loose in the DC area,
Speaker 2: and on this morning, Iron Brown became the sniper, his
Speaker 2: eighth victim. But before school officials could get help to him,
Speaker 2: Iron Brown disappeared. John Lloyd was the principal at Tasker
Speaker 2: Middle School. He explained what was happening to a nine
Speaker 2: one one dispatcher.
Speaker 8: How were you the principals to school.
Speaker 5: Did somebody's drive off with him here?
Speaker 10: I don't know where.
Speaker 8: I had no idea.
Speaker 3: It turns out, you know, his aunt had dropped him
Speaker 3: off and then went to pull away. It must have
Speaker 3: occurred immediately because she hadn't gotten out of the parking
Speaker 3: lot yet.
Speaker 4: And then it turns out she did hear the shot,
Speaker 4: so she came back. But we didn't know that. We
Speaker 4: didn't know who was taking him.
Speaker 7: My first, Oh my god, I think I'm going to
Speaker 7: be able to drive wind Nasty to the hospital.
Speaker 5: What's the matter with him? He just got shot.
Speaker 8: He is gonna die.
Speaker 2: Iron Brown's aunt, Tanya Brown, actually called nine one one
Speaker 2: as she rushed him to the hospital.
Speaker 7: So are you okay?
Speaker 2: Tanya was trapped in the morning rush hour traffic and
Speaker 2: Iron was bleeding out in her car.
Speaker 11: I gotta go.
Speaker 12: Let me go, mis Brown, this Brown, I need you.
Speaker 4: But I'm almost there.
Speaker 12: I'm getting ready to turn in right now.
Speaker 1: He didn't see who shot if he doesn't know, I.
Speaker 8: Didn't see anybody, and he didn't see anybody.
Speaker 5: No, okay, go ahead and go in the yarm.
Speaker 13: We're gonna send user out, Okay.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right.
Speaker 3: You know, we knew within ten minutes fifteen minutes that
Speaker 3: he was shot, that his injuries were extensive, and that
Speaker 3: he was going to be met of back to Children's
Speaker 3: And then at that point, you know, the buses were
Speaker 3: starting to show up, the onslaught of media and police
Speaker 3: presence was just crazy or helicopters in the air from
Speaker 3: every Newton's agency, the FBI was on safe and then
Speaker 3: of course, immediately, like within minutes, parents start calling I'm
Speaker 3: coming to get my kids. We had at the time
Speaker 3: maybe thirteen hundred kids, and by the end of the
Speaker 3: day we had twenty three left.
Speaker 7: I really understand that parents are concerned, but I think
Speaker 7: under the circumstances, the safest place for the children right
Speaker 7: now is inside of that building. We're adults, so we're
Speaker 7: not going to dismiss school. We're going to keep school
Speaker 7: in session, and we are going to secure students within buildings.
Speaker 8: I'm almost positive they said do not come to the school.
Speaker 8: But I did make it to the school. So there's
Speaker 8: hundreds of other parents. It's very difficult to tell a
Speaker 8: parent I had to come to the school when your
Speaker 8: job could have been in danger. My name is Jerald Caverer.
Speaker 8: I live in Brandywine, Maryland. I woke up that more it.
Speaker 8: I spoke to my wife and my kids, and from
Speaker 8: my understanding, she was going to take him to school.
Speaker 8: My son was attending Taska Middle School, so of course
Speaker 8: she's doing normal kids. Goodbye, I have a good day, behave.
Speaker 8: As I was leaving, oh my side, a bunch of
Speaker 8: police cars and amulans and fire trucks over by the school,
Speaker 8: and I thought about stopping over there, but then I said,
Speaker 8: now let me get out of here. It's too much trafficking.
Speaker 8: So I get on abut fifty and I hear on
Speaker 8: the radio that's breaking news a boy had been shot
Speaker 8: at Benjamin Taska Middle School. So from that point I'm
Speaker 8: driving fast down Route fifty to the school and calling
Speaker 8: my wife to find out what's going on. Is she
Speaker 8: taking to school? And say, okay, she's not answering the phone.
Speaker 8: I went to the school. It was chaotic. There were
Speaker 8: children everywhere that the parents everywhere that were police, five personnel, ambulance, emtens,
Speaker 8: unbelievable singing, and I'm walking through the parking lot. There
Speaker 8: was a lot of kindents greeting their children in tears
Speaker 8: of joy that it wasn't their child that was shot.
Speaker 8: And I'm scanning the scanning. I finally located my son,
Speaker 8: who broke down in tears and it was a big
Speaker 8: release to know that he was okay. At the same time,
Speaker 8: it was sad. My son actually took a classes too
Speaker 8: with the young man who was shot. Very emotional day.
Speaker 8: I mean, just to know that mostarn could have been
Speaker 8: a target. It's a scary fellow.
Speaker 2: Imagine learning that someone had been shot at your child's school.
Speaker 2: As a parent, there's no bigger fear than finding out
Speaker 2: it was your child who was injured, but while adults
Speaker 2: were coming to pick up their children, Iron Brown was
Speaker 2: rushed into surgery.
Speaker 11: The youngster came into the hospital and he had already
Speaker 11: bled a significant amount, was already getting transfusions, so he
Speaker 11: was not in good shape. My name is Martin Eichelberger.
Speaker 11: I am a pediatric surgeon at Children's National Medical Center.
Speaker 11: During the day, early morning, I happened to be called
Speaker 11: by our communications center said, look, you better look at
Speaker 11: the TV here because of the fact that there was
Speaker 11: some youngster that has just been shot. That was enough
Speaker 11: to know that we were going to have to operate
Speaker 11: on this youngster within what's called the golden hour. Your
Speaker 11: chances of survival from any kind of injury is much
Speaker 11: greater if you can get curtical care within the first hour.
Speaker 11: So we started to get our team ready. What we
Speaker 11: did learn was that he had been taken to one
Speaker 11: of the urgent care centers that was close to this
Speaker 11: middle school. They did a terrific job over there of
Speaker 11: resuscitating this youngster by making sure he had an IV
Speaker 11: They put a tube in his chest because he had
Speaker 11: been shot in his left chest. Took probably a half
Speaker 11: hour from the time he was shot to the time
Speaker 11: he got to us. During the operation, there are a
Speaker 11: lot of different steps that were involved. He had a
Speaker 11: gunshot wound just underneath his zyphoid and it went through
Speaker 11: the rib and ended up if you can think of
Speaker 11: a trajectory up towards his scapula, the tip of his scapula,
Speaker 11: which is a little bit on the lower side. And
Speaker 11: he had an injury that basically hit several organs in
Speaker 11: the abdomen and also his diaphragm and his lung. And
Speaker 11: it took a while to make sure that all of
Speaker 11: these organs were properly dealt with as we were going along,
Speaker 11: and it was an hour and a half two hour operation.
Speaker 11: He got stabilized to he stopped bleeding. We were able
Speaker 11: to treat his lung without having to take any of
Speaker 11: the lung out. A couple of the organs similarly were
Speaker 11: partially had to be removed, but in general he tolerated
Speaker 11: very very well. He's lucky because the bullet, you know,
Speaker 11: if the angle had been just a little bit more
Speaker 11: towards the middle, it would have hit his heart. You know,
Speaker 11: there's nothing really we probably would have been able to do.
Speaker 11: So even though we have a great team not all
Speaker 11: patients survive, and so we were happy just to have
Speaker 11: him stable. And during that time there was an effort
Speaker 11: by the enforcement community to try to retrieve the bullet.
Speaker 2: Doctor Eichelberger's colleague, Kurt Newman was in charge of communicating
Speaker 2: with the police.
Speaker 11: And so doctor Newman came to me and said, this
Speaker 11: is what they want to try to get the bullet.
Speaker 11: Would it be easy to do? And I looked at
Speaker 11: the X ray and put my finger down where I
Speaker 11: thought the bullet was, and yes, I could palpit it
Speaker 11: with my finger. I was able to pull out this bullet.
Speaker 11: I gave it specifically to doctor Newman, who gave it
Speaker 11: to a specific person to make sure that that chain
Speaker 11: of evidence was keptain tact.
Speaker 14: When we were contacted about what had happened, and of
Speaker 14: course we all sat and shocked.
Speaker 15: We just couldn't believe, and we kept asking, are you sure?
Speaker 15: Are you sure? My name is doctor Wayne R. Curtis's
Speaker 15: cousin to the Brown family.
Speaker 14: We're obviously very scared and anxious about what was going
Speaker 14: to happen with him having gotten shot like that at
Speaker 14: such a young age.
Speaker 15: And that he would come out of it okay.
Speaker 14: But it's time told he's doing okay, but at that
Speaker 14: time we were just all just concerned.
Speaker 15: For his life.
Speaker 14: We went to the hospital with my sons to visit
Speaker 14: with him.
Speaker 15: At that point in time, there was a request to
Speaker 15: meet with the press.
Speaker 2: National media wanted Iron Brown's parents to provide a statement,
Speaker 2: but Curtis has the parents were still processing their shock.
Speaker 14: So as we came out the back of the hospital
Speaker 14: to approach the press corps, you can imagine if you're
Speaker 14: not in front of something like that before and you've
Speaker 14: got I mean god, it must have been fifty people
Speaker 14: with cameras and asking questions and it can be unnerving.
Speaker 14: As we were walking up the hallway, I don't think
Speaker 14: we got more than five steps onto the sidewalk after
Speaker 14: the building and just said, look, we can't do this.
Speaker 15: You should do this, and I said, okay, I'll do it.
Speaker 16: He continues to remain in critical but stable condition. He's
Speaker 16: a fighter. We remain optimistic, as our doctors have told us,
Speaker 16: this is a marathon, not a sprint, but we are
Speaker 16: confident that we will make it to the finish line.
Speaker 14: Do you think about the magnitude of a child, any
Speaker 14: person getting shot, but you know when children get shot,
Speaker 14: It sort of magnifies it even more.
Speaker 15: Had psychological issues from a current.
Speaker 17: The family as much as possible, they try to normalize
Speaker 17: his life and their lives of a very, very unfortunate tragedy.
Speaker 2: Iron Brown was alive and safe, but back at Tasker
Speaker 2: Middle School, authorities were still trying to make sense of
Speaker 2: the attack. What kind of person would shoot a thirteen
Speaker 2: year old? Soon police would get a major clue, a
Speaker 2: communication from the snipers. The shooting at Tasker Middle School
Speaker 2: sent the region into a frenzy. It was now clear
Speaker 2: that the sniper attacks were not over, and now the
Speaker 2: discussions about who was behind the attacks can once again.
Speaker 2: The question came up, is this foreign terrorism? Many in
Speaker 2: the DC area certainly thought so. On the day Iron
Speaker 2: Brown was shot, wamu's Kojo Nandi show field that live
Speaker 2: calls about the shooting.
Speaker 5: I'm concerned about my kids safety because I think this
Speaker 5: shooter or shooters is trying to make a statement that
Speaker 5: I can shoot Americans anytime, any place, anywhere I want to,
Speaker 5: and they're doing it around the nation's capital to make
Speaker 5: a statement.
Speaker 12: I was calling an agreement with your past caller mentioning
Speaker 12: some ties between the shootings and terrorism, and I just
Speaker 12: see this as being completely related to the timing of
Speaker 12: what's going on today in our country.
Speaker 2: And the media had helped fuel that fear. All over
Speaker 2: cable news TV stations were speculating that this was quite
Speaker 2: possibly an act of terror.
Speaker 6: He is orchestrating this whole event really to spread fear,
Speaker 6: to spread terror, because he wants to be in charge,
Speaker 6: and he is executing people just to show his power.
Speaker 18: It became pretty clear to people that these random shootings
Speaker 18: across DC and around DC were linked.
Speaker 2: This is journalists and historian Garret Graff. He says, it
Speaker 2: made sense that people thought foreign terrorists were responsible for
Speaker 2: the sniper attacks.
Speaker 18: There was a very quick realization that this could be
Speaker 18: the next stage of a terror campaign. You had people
Speaker 18: begin to call in suspicious activity reports all over the city.
Speaker 18: This was, in some ways, maybe exactly the second wave
Speaker 18: that we had been led to fear was coming ever
Speaker 18: since the nine to eleven attacks. In some ways, the
Speaker 18: idea that these sniper killings would be somehow linked to
Speaker 18: Al Qaeda seemed a very logical theory at the time.
Speaker 18: The idea that here you had a terrorist really aiming
Speaker 18: to undermine Americans just going about their daily lives, you know,
Speaker 18: making it impossible to do the things that hundreds of
Speaker 18: millions of Americans literally had to do every day, Go
Speaker 18: buy groceries, fill up your car with gas, a drive
Speaker 18: to work. The attacks on these commuters, these workers, these
Speaker 18: families around DC, in some ways seemed a very logical
Speaker 18: next stage of Al Qaeda targeting the homeland and really
Speaker 18: threatened to make ordinary daily life in America insecure.
Speaker 2: While the country was debating who was behind these attacks,
Speaker 2: investigators were working to find the sniper. Following the shooting
Speaker 2: of Iron Brown, police shut down the area surrounding Tasker
Speaker 2: Middle School. They began searching looking for any clues. Benjamin
Speaker 2: Tasker Middle School, where Iron Brown was shot, is around
Speaker 2: twenty miles east of Washington, d C. And about seventy
Speaker 2: five miles northeast of where the last shooting occurred in Spotsylvania, Virginia.
Speaker 2: Was there something special about this school that drew the
Speaker 2: snipers this far out? I went to see for myself,
Speaker 2: and as we pulled up, I noticed the school was
Speaker 2: right next to a highway Route fifty and it was
Speaker 2: surrounded by thick wooded areas. Maybe this was the ideal
Speaker 2: spot to hide with a quick getaway nearby. It was
Speaker 2: in these woods that authorities searched for evidence after the shooting.
Speaker 2: I asked one of the investigators to meet me here
Speaker 2: and walked me through what happened on the morning of
Speaker 2: October seventh.
Speaker 19: My name is Mike Pyle with the United States Marshall Service.
Speaker 19: Over see our canine operations program, and back in two
Speaker 19: thousand and two, my partner was Explosive Detection K nine
Speaker 19: Beacon and he was trained for explosives and weapons detection.
Speaker 13: I'm curious as to the jurisdictional lines here. Right, a
Speaker 13: number of agencies are here. Tell me why the US
Speaker 13: Martial Service is called in so it's about resources.
Speaker 19: We're not coming in here to obviously lead the investigation.
Speaker 19: This is PG County, so obviously PG County Police Department,
Speaker 19: this is their scene. But there's not a lot of
Speaker 19: dogs back then that were trained specifically to find guns
Speaker 19: and shellcasings. They had bomb dogs, but some of the
Speaker 19: bomb dogs are not trained to that level of evidence recovery.
Speaker 19: ATL trained dogs literally are sniffing explosives, probably multiple times
Speaker 19: a day because we have to feed them.
Speaker 2: To train dogs like beacon and maintain their sensitivity to
Speaker 2: certain odors. The dogs are only fed when they detect
Speaker 2: the odors correctly.
Speaker 19: It's classical conditioning. When the dogs come in order, beacon
Speaker 19: would start salivating because it's Pavlov's theory, you know, the
Speaker 19: bell rings he anticipates in the food coming in, so
Speaker 19: they automatically salivate. So those are the changes that we
Speaker 19: look for.
Speaker 20: So if the dog says, hey, I.
Speaker 19: Give you the indication that the contract is, you have
Speaker 19: kay me that the payment.
Speaker 20: Is the food.
Speaker 2: So Michael, take me back to the day.
Speaker 13: How does that day start for you?
Speaker 19: On October seventh, two thousand and two. By the time
Speaker 19: I got here, it was a pretty chaotic scene. They
Speaker 19: had the streets blocked off, a lot of law enforcement,
Speaker 19: a lot of onlookers, a lot of media. The one
Speaker 19: thing that really struck to me was actually where we're
Speaker 19: standing right now was Iron Brown's backpack. You could see
Speaker 19: definitely to see a little bit of a pool of
Speaker 19: blood that was still left there. Someone said that they
Speaker 19: saw somebody or heard a gunshot on the front of
Speaker 19: the school up on that hill, so.
Speaker 13: That would be across the street from the cross.
Speaker 19: The street, and of course that white box truck. They
Speaker 19: said that they saw white box truck.
Speaker 15: That up in the hill.
Speaker 19: To hear kind of did makes sense to us. You
Speaker 19: would have to literally bend a bullet if that was
Speaker 19: how the shot was taking. Well, if you were to
Speaker 19: do the shooting, where would you put yourself? The obvious
Speaker 19: place was probably right in the woods. So from the
Speaker 19: front of the building the right side, if you walk
Speaker 19: out of the school on the right side, there's a
Speaker 19: little bit of a wooded area and then it goes
Speaker 19: to a park. So I selected my search area and
Speaker 19: actually started to search. We started in searching. We get
Speaker 19: to about midway in maybe seven to ten feet out
Speaker 19: to the woodline, and there was a tree and there
Speaker 19: was a huge branch that was falling down. He stopped
Speaker 19: and he searched the branch that was underground. And honestly,
Speaker 19: I actually wasn't paying attention to at that point because
Speaker 19: I was actually watching my step. So I had turned
Speaker 19: my head to look at where I'm gonna put my foot.
Speaker 19: Next I heard the PG County officer said, hey, look
Speaker 19: at your dog. So I turned around. He started to
Speaker 19: racket racket, meaning he's in order, but he wants to
Speaker 19: get to where the most of the orders coming from
Speaker 19: left to right, left to right, left to right. Boom,
Speaker 19: he sniffs and he sits and a big drool comes out.
Speaker 19: So once that occurred, we stopped PG County officer, the
Speaker 19: PG County officer, the SWAT officer.
Speaker 20: Well, the officers went out, got some of.
Speaker 19: The evidence technicians to come in, and they all start
Speaker 19: to actually literally search this area. And then I was
Speaker 19: told that the shewcasing was located. If you step back
Speaker 19: five ten feet, unless you really look, you're not going
Speaker 19: to see somebody hiding there. So if you kind of
Speaker 19: actually look, it's a perfect line of sight. So I
Speaker 19: fully believe that he may have laid that rifle right
Speaker 19: on that piece of word, took the shot. The shellcasing
Speaker 19: comes out, and it's that area where they located the shellcasing,
Speaker 19: and with that they've worked their way backwards and that's
Speaker 19: where they find the terror card.
Speaker 2: A tarot card, one from a special deck of cards
Speaker 2: that some say can predict the future. And the shooters
Speaker 2: didn't just leave any card. They left the death card
Speaker 2: on It was a skeletal night, riding a white horse
Speaker 2: and holding a black flag. This image is said to
Speaker 2: show that no one escapes death, whether rich or poor,
Speaker 2: young or old. The card seemed to perfectly capture the
Speaker 2: sniper's mo o. No one is safe, everyone is vulnerable.
Speaker 2: But the more disturbing aspect was what was written on
Speaker 2: the card. For you, mister police, call me God. Do
Speaker 2: not release to the press.
Speaker 20: Now they've got a God complex.
Speaker 2: This is retired Maryland State Police Lieutenant David Reichenbach.
Speaker 9: So at least we're starting to get a picture of
Speaker 9: what we're dealing with here that card.
Speaker 20: At that time, I'd didn't even know about it, and I.
Speaker 9: Was a commander in charge of the criminal intelligence part
Speaker 9: of it. That was kept very very close to the vest,
Speaker 9: and for good reason, we didn't want that to get
Speaker 9: out there, but unfortunately it did. You know, the following day,
Speaker 9: which was Tuesday, October eighth, WUSA Channel nine breaks the
Speaker 9: story about the tarot card, and for us, that was
Speaker 9: a punch in the gut.
Speaker 21: More about that calling card. It was left at the
Speaker 21: scene of the most recent shooting. That's the school in
Speaker 21: Prince George's County. It was a card from a fortune
Speaker 21: telling deck that's known as the death card, with a
Speaker 21: note written on it, dear Policeman, I am God. It's
Speaker 21: the latest chilling development in this chilling case and massive investigation.
Speaker 9: That wasn't supposed to be released, that didn't need to
Speaker 9: be released at that point, and there it is all
Speaker 9: over network news, which meant we had an internal leak
Speaker 9: that actually plagued this investigation throughout the entire twenty three days.
Speaker 9: Quite honestly, evidence was getting leaked that you want to
Speaker 9: hold close to the vest.
Speaker 20: And there's a couple of reasons behind that.
Speaker 9: You never release everything that you know about a homicide
Speaker 9: for the simple reason that whoever the bad guy is
Speaker 9: should be the only other person other than the police
Speaker 9: that really knows what happened.
Speaker 2: By this point, police were receiving hundreds of calls every
Speaker 2: day on their tip line. Now that the Tarot card
Speaker 2: information was public, the number of calls only increased, and
Speaker 2: at times the phones were so busy that callers couldn't
Speaker 2: get through. It became too much for police to handle,
Speaker 2: and they had troubled figuring out which tips were good
Speaker 2: and which ones weren't.
Speaker 9: With everything being put out there in the media. Now
Speaker 9: we've got what I always called our confessors calling confessing
Speaker 9: that they're the shooters.
Speaker 7: I'm the ciphers.
Speaker 8: Oh, he describer, I want to hear someone tied.
Speaker 10: Up just a time with suff pas.
Speaker 9: There's all sorts of psychological reasons why people do that,
Speaker 9: but it happens all the time, and the more media
Speaker 9: attention a case has, the more of these kind of
Speaker 9: folks that you have come out.
Speaker 20: Of the woodwork for whatever reason.
Speaker 9: And fortunately most of the time you can quickly dispel
Speaker 9: them and eliminate them very quickly because they don't have
Speaker 9: enough information. They can't even describe the crime scene, so
Speaker 9: you know they didn't do it. However, with all the
Speaker 9: information being out there and now the Tarot card, these
Speaker 9: people are calling with enough information that you just can't
Speaker 9: ignore them. So now these folks had to go on
Speaker 9: the suspect list, so was creating quite a few red
Speaker 9: herrings for.
Speaker 2: US police weren't happy about the Tarot card getting leaked
Speaker 2: to the public, but the media felt it was necessary
Speaker 2: to publish that information. Dave Statner was a reporter for
Speaker 2: Channel nine. His station broke the story about the Tarot card.
Speaker 22: The Tarot card was first internally at our station, reported
Speaker 22: by a reporter at Channel and I named Stacy Kohen.
Speaker 22: She found out about this Tarot card in this message
Speaker 22: from the apparent snipers to police, and it was soon
Speaker 22: confirmed by Mike Buchanan. He was one heck of a
Speaker 22: reporter and if Mike and Stacy are telling me they
Speaker 22: have this information, I know it's true. And we didn't
Speaker 22: immediately go with the story. They worked with police. They
Speaker 22: let them know what we have and say give us
Speaker 22: a good reason why we shouldn't go with us, because
Speaker 22: reporters don't want to screw up an investigation. We want
Speaker 22: to get our information out there, but we don't want
Speaker 22: to make it harder to catch people who are involved
Speaker 22: in crimes. Our news director at the time was involved
Speaker 22: in it, and they all dealt with police, and not
Speaker 22: one person in Prince George's County Police or in Montgomery
Speaker 22: County Police said please don't air this information. And I
Speaker 22: believe they aired it a short time later when it
Speaker 22: aired and the Washington Post also did the same story.
Speaker 22: The set off the Chief of Police of Montgomery County,
Speaker 22: Charles Moose, who pretty much attacked both news organizations for
Speaker 22: reporting that story.
Speaker 23: I have not received any message that the citizens of
Speaker 23: Montgomery County won't Channel nine or the Washington Post or
Speaker 23: any other media outlet to solve this case.
Speaker 20: If they do, then't let me know.
Speaker 23: We will go and do other police work and we
Speaker 23: would turn this case over to the media. But today
Speaker 23: the people in my community have asked the police department
Speaker 23: to work the case. So I beg of the media
Speaker 23: let us do our job, because I am convinced that
Speaker 23: we're broaching interference. If my team feels it's important to
Speaker 23: put things out there, that's sad. And if the media
Speaker 23: feels that it is their job to put things out
Speaker 23: there so today can be promoted, then that is also sad.
Speaker 2: Chief Moose had singled out Channel nine and The Washington Post,
Speaker 2: the two media outlets who first broke the tarot card story.
Speaker 2: Washington Post reporter Josh White took issue with Chief Moose's comments.
Speaker 24: That tarot card was a really important piece of both
Speaker 24: the investigation and the public's understanding of what was happening.
Speaker 24: While certainly they are always going to be things that
Speaker 24: law enforcement doesn't want out, and they're going to be
Speaker 24: things that they want to keep from the public in
Speaker 24: order to help them solve crimes, Frankly, our job is
Speaker 24: to find out what those things are and responsibly report
Speaker 24: what we believe will help further the public's understanding of
Speaker 24: the situation. In the grand scheme of things, there are
Speaker 24: plenty of things in every investigation that I'm sure the
Speaker 24: police wish weren't out there, but by the same token,
Speaker 24: for us to report it, we have to know about it,
Speaker 24: and for us to know about it, that means someone
Speaker 24: deeply involve the investigation feels that it's information that should
Speaker 24: be out there, or we wouldn't know about it. There
Speaker 24: were aspects throughout the investigation that someone said this is
Speaker 24: going to cause harm. That's something we take seriously and
Speaker 24: certainly way as we make decisions. In that particular case
Speaker 24: with the Tarot card, trying to understand at all what
Speaker 24: this was about was of the most important aspect of
Speaker 24: what we could do as journalists.
Speaker 2: It's a tricky situation for police. It's imperative to maintain
Speaker 2: control over sensitive information. As a journalist, you have to
Speaker 2: inform the public about what's going on, but you also
Speaker 2: don't want to report anything that might interfere with the investigation,
Speaker 2: So reporters have to make a tough decision. At the
Speaker 2: end of the day, the media and law enforcement simply
Speaker 2: might not agree on what should be published. But in
Speaker 2: this case, White thinks it was important to release the
Speaker 2: tarot card info for another reason. To him, it indicated
Speaker 2: that the attack was not the work of foreign terrorists,
Speaker 2: and that was something the public needed to understand.
Speaker 24: It immediately changed how people looked at this. It was
Speaker 24: no longer maybe al Qaeda or ISIS. It was certainly
Speaker 24: a version of terrorism. People were terrified, but it changed
Speaker 24: the nature of I think how everybody looked at it.
Speaker 2: What about law enforcement? Did they still see this as
Speaker 2: possibly connected to foreign terrorism?
Speaker 10: Well, I think everyone had to consider that potential. I
Speaker 10: think you had to say, is this the next shooter drop?
Speaker 10: Because now we've closed off the airlines, we've hardened the
Speaker 10: doors between the passengers and the pilot and co pilot.
Speaker 10: Are they going to come at us in a different
Speaker 10: way now? My name is Clint Van Sant. I'm a
Speaker 10: former FBI agent, criminal profiler, and hostage negotiator. I mean,
Speaker 10: this was terror. I don't think there's any doubt that
Speaker 10: these shooters were waging terror on the American public. The
Speaker 10: question is what was the reason for that terror. You
Speaker 10: couldn't say, no, this is not some organized event. But
Speaker 10: I saw and heard of no evidence of any type
Speaker 10: of international connection, the terror card, the call me God,
Speaker 10: I am God. I couldn't see a radical Islamic fundamentalist
Speaker 10: who might be doing this for his own religious purposes
Speaker 10: calling himself God. I mean, that didn't make any sense.
Speaker 10: I mean you would have said, I am acting on
Speaker 10: God's part, I am the hand of God, I am
Speaker 10: the fist of God. Perhaps, but I am God. No, No,
Speaker 10: that just did not ring true. The verbiage that was
Speaker 10: used in there was nothing that would lend itself off
Speaker 10: to international terrorism, or nothing that would lend itself to
Speaker 10: someone trying to disguise themselves as a domestic terrorist when
Speaker 10: they were in fact international. Internationals normally would take credit.
Speaker 10: They want to take credit, They want to stand up
Speaker 10: and beat their chest and say look what we can do.
Speaker 10: That wasn't taking place. So in the absence of that,
Speaker 10: I think in my particular case, it seemed like more
Speaker 10: a domestic situation for a defined purpose.
Speaker 2: There were a few other possibilities. When investigators met to
Speaker 2: discuss the Tarot card, someone mentioned the death cards left
Speaker 2: by soldiers in the movie Apocalypse.
Speaker 15: Now with me four diamonds like that death card.
Speaker 2: They telling, no, did it someone else remembered that God
Speaker 2: was the nickname of the chief sniper in the nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety movie Seals.
Speaker 15: God Got Got here.
Speaker 3: God, we have a single shooter selth East Power, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I see him?
Speaker 2: Was the sniper a military man, or at least a
Speaker 2: fan of military movies. Others thought the tarot card indicated
Speaker 2: the work of a serial killer with an interest in
Speaker 2: the occult. Whether these were terrorists, serial killers, or something else,
Speaker 2: it made no difference. Paranoia was at an all time high.
Speaker 2: Children were being shot in broad daylight, and the airtime
Speaker 2: devoted to the case was NonStop on nearly every major
Speaker 2: TV network. The entire country was watching.
Speaker 24: The fact that a child was shot was a pivotal moment.
Speaker 24: It showed a willingness on the part of the attackers
Speaker 24: to go after anybody.
Speaker 2: This is Washington Post reporter Josh White.
Speaker 24: And it was at that moment that people really changed
Speaker 24: their minds about how scared to be, about how cautious
Speaker 24: to be. The schools really started responding. Any adult who
Speaker 24: lived in this region had to wonder, how do I
Speaker 24: keep my kids safe even at school? And it was
Speaker 24: knowledge that they were willing to invade even are what
Speaker 24: are considered to be some of our safest spaces.
Speaker 2: Even President George W. Bush weighed in about the shooting
Speaker 2: of Ingram Brown a few days later.
Speaker 25: The President number one is wanted to make certain that
Speaker 25: all the resources of the federal government have been made
Speaker 25: available through the ATF, through the FBI, and through other
Speaker 25: agencies of the federal government as well to help the
Speaker 25: local law enforcement community. And that's been done. The President
Speaker 25: urges people to take all reasonable and prodent cautions that
Speaker 25: the law enforcement community in the case that should be taken.
Speaker 6: First of all, I'm just sick to my stomach to
Speaker 6: think that there is a cold blooded killer at home
Speaker 6: taking innocent life. I weep for those who've lost their
Speaker 6: loved ones. The idea of moms taking their kids to
Speaker 6: school and sheltering them from a potent So sniper attack
Speaker 6: is not the American I know sniper attacks well. It
Speaker 6: is a form of terrorism, but in terms of the
Speaker 6: terrorism that we think of, we have no evidence one
Speaker 6: where or the other. Obviously, but anytime anybody is randomly shooting,
Speaker 6: randomly killing, randomly, taking life, it's a cold blood and murder.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a sick mind for investigators. The manhunt
Speaker 2: was about to get personal. A tragic turn of events
Speaker 2: would flip the investigation on its head, and the sniper's
Speaker 2: scope was an FBI agent. Next time on Monster DC Sniper, I.
Speaker 1: Was absolutely sure that we were going to get a shooting.
Speaker 24: I got a call from a source saying, you need
Speaker 24: to get out to Manassas. There's been another one.
Speaker 22: And the next thing I see are police officers running
Speaker 22: with their guns drawn to an apartment complex across the
Speaker 22: street where there's a white vehicle that looks sort of
Speaker 22: like a box truck.
Speaker 10: People process a lot less information than we think. They
Speaker 10: get this sense that they're seeing everything when in fact
Speaker 10: they're seeing very little.
Speaker 26: So we had a pretty good game plan, but the
Speaker 26: problem was we weren't being provided good intelligence and suspect
Speaker 26: information from the lookout that hurt us.
Speaker 22: So now the real focus is what do I do
Speaker 22: when I'm pumping guests. I have to get gasoline from
Speaker 22: my car. There are gas stations that are starting to
Speaker 22: put up barricades or harps to block you.
Speaker 24: It showed that if somebody wants to go after someone
Speaker 24: who they have no connection to randomly in a metropolitan area,
Speaker 24: there's millions of people, what's stopping them.
Speaker 1: Monster DZ Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by
Speaker 1: Tony Harris and produced by iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Keebrick, and Josh Thain. Payne
Speaker 1: Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV alongside producers Meredith Stedman and Christina Dana. Original
Speaker 1: music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: WAMU American University Radio for usage of clips originally broadcast
Speaker 1: on October seventh, two thousand and two, on The Kojo
Speaker 1: Namdi Show. If you haven't already, be sure to check
Speaker 1: out the first two seasons, Atlanta Monster and Monster the
Speaker 1: Zodiac Killer. If you have questions or comments, email us
Speaker 1: at Monster at iHeartMedia dot com, or you can call
Speaker 1: us at one eight three, three two eight five six
Speaker 1: six sixty seven. Thanks for listening.