On this day in 2003, ex-soldier John Muhammad is found guilty of one of a series of sniper shootings that terrorized the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area and dominated national headlines in October 2002. Police charged that Muhammad and his 17-year-old accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, killed 10 people and wounded three others during a three-week killing spree. After just over six hours of deliberation, a jury convicted Muhammad of the October 9, 2002, shooting of Dean Meyers while he pumped gas at a Sunoco station in Manassas, Virginia.
The first of the “Beltway sniper” attacks occurred on October 2, 2002, when five people died after being shot at long range over a 15-hour span in suburban Montgomery County, Maryland. Sniper-style shootings continued over the next three weeks—at gas stations and in parking lots within Washington, D.C.’s Beltway area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia. Local residents, frightened by the seemingly random nature of the shootings, which crossed racial, gender, and socioeconomic lines, crouched behind their cars while pumping gas and avoided outdoor activities. Schools held recess indoors and sports teams cancelled outdoor practices. The killers left a series of cryptic clues at crime scenes including tarot cards and notes and even called the police hotline, apparently trying to engage investigators in a dialogue.
The attacks came to an end when police arrested Muhammad and Malvo at a rest area off a Maryland highway. Their car, a dark blue Chevrolet Caprice, had been rigged with a hole in the trunk through which the shooter could fire a gun without being seen.
Muhammad, 41 at the time of the shootings, was a father of four who had been divorced twice. Although he had a clean criminal record, Mildred Mohammad, one of his former wives, had filed a restraining order against him. In 1985, Muhammad had converted to Islam, changing his name from John Allen Williams. He was reportedly a member of the Nation of Islam. In the aftermath of his arrest, police asserted that Muhammad had expressed some sympathy with the September 11 attacks and might have been acting out of anti-American sentiment. Later reports, which coincide with a letter he left on the scene of one of the murders, alleged that the murder spree was part of an attempt to extort $10 million from the government.
Muhammad served in the U.S. Army from November 1985 until he was honorably discharged as a sergeant in April 1994. He was a veteran of the first Gulf War. While in the army, he was trained as a marksman, qualifying as an “expert” with an M-16 rifle, the highest of the army’s three levels of marksmanship for an ordinary soldier. To qualify as an expert, Muhammad would have had to hit at least 36 of 40 targets at distances ranging from 50 to 300 meters. During his arrest, police found a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle—the civilian version of the M-16—in Muhammad’s car. All of the D.C. sniper victims had been hit by .223-caliber bullets.
In the six-week trial, the prosecution produced more than 130 witnesses and 400 pieces of evidence. Though their case was largely circumstantial—there was no eyewitness to prove that he had actually pulled the trigger—Muhammad was convicted on all four counts against him: the murder of Dean Meyers, murder with the intent to terrorize the government or public, conspiracy to commit murder, and the illegal use of a firearm.
John Muhammad was sentenced to death on March 9, 2004. After a separate trial, Lee Boyd Malvo, who was a minor at the time of the shootings, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Fucking POS, cruel & unusual punishment was called for here, something along the lines of what Comanches liked.
I bet he is still alive on Death row, what a joke. A bullet in his head would be a fitting end for this idiot.
Nope, he was executed. Took a long time though, probably millions spent.
I recall being sent to Maryland from DC area to support aerial efforts to spot this dirtbag and, at the time, was wearing body armor under my clothes at gas stations when out pumping premium that was under $2/gallon.
At the time, no one was really discussing the Muslim angle because they were diverting to the domestic violence issue associated with his family. He was an angry, disgruntled Muslim convert who was murdering people out of pure spite and that was almost 20 years ago. Now just look at the sh*t going on with “The Religion of Peace” … it hasn’t gotten any better.
…and as sniping goes, it wasn’t long range shooting that was done, it was more or less terrorist ambushing of unarmed people. Big fricking difference, and if you’re former military, you know what I’m saying.
That was law enforcement at its finest. A citizen’s tip led them to a spent round in a stump, in a backyard in Louisiana where they got the ballistics match. John Ashcroft had his choice of venues as to where to try them, he picked Prince William County, Virginia and the prosecution team of Paul Ebert and Jim Willet. Those two have never lost a murder trial. I had some run-ins with Jim Willet as a college kid. I have never known a more no-nonsense guy. But he was fair. I have great respect for him. And those guys got the job done.
It was really at best a mixed bag cop wise. Remember Montgomery Co. police chief Charles Moose? Despite credible and repeated reports of a blue Chevy car in the area of several of the shootings (and black suspects) chief moose insisted on looking for a white van. Finally,when the bolo was a blue Chevy the killers were found at the rest stop on the Frederick /Washington county line on I70 , almost immediately ,because of multiple citizen tips. Shortly after this incident Moose went away to Hawaii presumably to fuck-up another police department.
Next time you are out and about, count all the “white vans” you see.
Now think about all the cops in the DC metro area stopping white vans,and you can visualize the clusterfuck.
Bullshit. They have eye in the sky satelites that are recording everything and they simply rewind to find out who did what then build a narrative. In this case they could not “see” the shot nor shooter because he was firing out of the trunk of a car from a small hole. They figured it out when assuming the angle of the shot and then seeing a car start up by otself and drive off when nobody was recorded going to it to open the door and get in……finding a bullet in a tree doesnt find the shooter. Unless they have a gun registry (which they say they dont because thats unconstitutional and if no satelites in the sky then finding a god dman bullet or casung does nobody any good at all, so the fuck what you got a bullet but it doesnt provide a road map and telephone number or address to any shooter much less him! Gullible fuckers here i tell ya
A little knowledge of the situation would be helpful before you start spouting bullshit. Somebody who knew John Muhammad in Louisiana suspected he was the shooter, called the FBI, and told him he’d been shooting the bushmaster in his backyard. That’s how they got ballistics. At that point they put out a BOLO for his car.
This was a Clinton enacted bush completed boogey man with a gun narrative to halt gun ownership, right after the big fake of 9/11. This may have been the first of the killings to start the war on guns/freedom/Constitutional crisis….