US Authorities Believe They Have Cracked Sniper Case

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, October 26, 2002

US Authorities Believe They Have Cracked Sniper Case

The United States authorities believed they have cracked sniper case when they gave more details about the two men arrested at a police briefing in Montgomery county, Maryland on Thursday evening.

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The authorities investigating the sniper attacks arrested a man and a 17-year-old youth who were sleeping at a highway rest stop near Frederick Thursday morning, and officials said Thursday night that ballistics testing had linked a rifle found in their car to several of the shootings.

Police officials identified the man as John Allen Muhammad, 41, who they said had also used the name John Allen Williams. His companion was identified as John Lee Malvo, a Jamaican native whom officials said Mr. Muhammad portrayed as a stepson.

"We now consider them suspects in the string of shootings in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia," Chief Charles A. Moose of the Montgomery County police said at a news conference in Rockville tonight.

Chief Moose, whose department is leading the investigation, said that prosecutors and officials from all the affected jurisdictions would meet on Friday to discuss the filing of charges.

Both Maryland and Virginia have the death penalty, although only three people have been executed in Maryland since 1976, compared with 86 in Virginia, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. Virginia allows the execution of defendants who were as young as 16 when they committed their crimes, while the minimum age in Maryland is 18.

Law enforcement officials emphasized that they had not charged Mr. Muhammad or Mr. Malvo in the string of shootings that have terrorized the Washington area since Oct. 2. Rather, Mr. Muhammad is being held on unrelated federal firearms violations and Mr. Malvo is being held as a "material witness."

The arrest warrant and the complaint against Mr. Muhammad were filed in federal court in Washington State on Wednesday and unsealed Thursday. In court papers filed Thursday, prosecutors said that Mr. Muhammad brandished a .223 rifle, telescopic sight and silencer and told a former Army buddy of the damage the weapon could cause.

"Can you imagine the damage you could do if you could shoot with a silencer," the court papers quoted Mr. Muhammad as telling the former Army buddy, Robert Edwards Holmes. Mr. Holmes was interviewed by the F.B.I. this week.

The Associated Press reported that the court papers included the government's arrest warrant application for Mr. Muhammad and listed three aliases: John Williams, Wayne Weeks and Wayne Weekley.

The papers asserted that Mr. Muhammad violated a court protective order obtained by one of his ex-wives when he purchased or obtained a weapon identified as a semiautomatic .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle.

The suspects' car, a 1990 blue-burgundy Chevrolet Caprice with a New Jersey license plate, was taken away in a closed trailer from the rest stop in Myersville, Md., and examined after the police executed a search warrant. New Jersey motor vehicle records indicate that the car was registered to Mr. Muhammad and a co-owner, Nathanel O. Osbourne, at an address in Camden, N.J.

That address is a two-story row house. The first floor, which appeared to be unoccupied today, once housed a bar known as the All Nations Lounge; there is an apartment on the second floor.

Records show that Mr. Muhammad went into the state motor vehicle office in Camden on Sept. 11 to get the title and registration for the Caprice. A supervisor there said that it was a used vehicle, but local records did not show the previous owner.

Law enforcement officials said the semiautomatic rifle recovered from the car, a Bushmaster XM-15, fires the .223 ammunition used in the attacks and that ballistics testing conducted today had positively linked it to the sniper attacks. Officers also found a compartment in the rear of the suspects' car that would allow the rifle to be concealed.

The Bushmaster XM-15 is a semiautomatic, civilian version of the military's M-16 assault rifle made by Bushmaster Firearms, a private company in Maine. The chairman and principal owner of Bushmaster, Richard Dyke, said in an interview that he told investigators today that the serial number they provided indicated that the weapon was sold in June to a distributor in Washington State. He declined to identify the distributor, and said Bushmaster's records did not reflect what happened to the rifle after the distributor received it.

Mr. Dyke said the weapon, which he said sells for $700, was sold to the distributor without any accessories like an optical scope or a tripod - devices that would aid a sniper and that some reports say were found with the rifle in the car this morning.

Mr. Dyke said the XM-15 typically uses a 10-round magazine of .223 bullets. He said the weapon is not favored by military snipers, who prefer rifles with longer barrels to increase accuracy and effective range. But he did say that the XM-15 was popular among target shooters and that he considered it highly accurate without a scope up to about 50 yards. Adding a scope and a tripod, he agreed, would doubtless expand its effective range in the hands of a skilled marksman.

Records indicate that Mr. Muhammad had served in the Army, rising to the rank of sergeant as a mechanic, not a trained sniper, although he achieved the top marksmanship rating in his annual range testing with the M-16, the standard military rifle copied for civilians in such weapons as the Bushmaster.

Maj. Greg Shipley, a spokesman for the Maryland State Police, said members of the sniper task force arrested the men without incident at 3:19 a.m. today just off Interstate 70 in Frederick County, Md., about 60 miles northwest of Washington. He said officers converged on the scene after a motorist told a rest stop attendant that he had seen a vehicle matching the description of one that the authorities had said might be linked to the sniper shootings.

When they were taken into custody, officials said, Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Malvo were asleep in the Chevrolet Caprice parked at a rural, secluded rest stop in this small town in the Catoctin Mountains. They were taken to a detention center in Rockville, Md., where officials said they were being questioned by law enforcement agents from a task force investigating the rash of shootings since - six in Maryland, six in Virginia and one in Washington.

The Caprice was taken to a Montgomery County facility, where investigators said they were checking the vehicle for trace evidence, including gun powder residue.

The developments came just hours after Chief Moose released a photo of Mr. Muhammad and described him as "armed and dangerous." At the time, he said Mr. Muhammad was believed to be accompanied by a juvenile.

Officials said the events leading up to Mr. Muhammad's arrest were extraordinary, beginning with a telephone call to task force members on Sunday night from a person claiming to be the sniper and boasting of a crime that proceeded the string of shootings in the Washington area.

Law enforcement officials said the caller essentially said, if you don't take me seriously, just look at what I did in Alabama on Sept. 21.

Investigators were puzzled but they contacted the authorities in Montgomery, Ala., and learned that there was a murder-robbery at a liquor store on the date that the caller had mentioned. The Alabama authorities also said that there was a latent fingerprint from that scene, which was later linked to Mr. Malvo, who had lived in the Tacoma area, in Washington State.

At the same time, the authorities received a separate, anonymous tip that led them to link Mr. Muhammad to Mr. Malvo as his apparent stepfather. The authorities contacted people in Tacoma who live near an address they had for Mr. Muhammad. Some recalled hearing occasional gunshots late in the evenings earlier this year.

Another tip enabled investigators to identify the blue 1990 Chevy Caprice with New Jersey plates that Mr. Muhammad was believed to be driving.

With all that information in hand, Chief Moose issued an alert early today for Mr. Muhammad, and within three hours a motorist who had pulled into a rest stop spotted the Caprice.

Initially, the police said Mr. Muhammad was wanted on a violation of federal firearms laws, and that it should not be assumed that he was involved in any of the shootings attributed to the sniper. Rather, the police said, he was wanted because he might have "information material to" the manhunt.

That point was emphasized by Chief Moose as he announced that Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Malvo were wanted. The chief made the point even clearer by then broadcasting another of his direct messages to the sniper, once more apologizing for earlier miscommunications and asking him to try to reach the police again.

Reading a carefully drafted message to the sniper, Chief Moose said: "You have indicated you want us to say and do certain things. You want us to say, `We have caught the sniper like a duck in the noose.' We understand that hearing us say it is important to you."

The chief did not answer questions, but it seemed clear that he was trying to pacify the sniper as much as contact him. He told the gunman that it was difficult to establish communications because, Chief Moose said, the sniper had only used notes left at killing scenes and other messages in his comments to the police.

"Let's talk directly," Chief Moose continued, not explaining cryptic passages to his listeners. "We have an answer for you about your option. We are waiting for you to contact us."

Source: agencies

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