With 10 dead in thre the hunt was o catch a deadly sniper
AT 3.19am on October 24, 2002, FBI agents closed in on a dark blue 1990 Chevy Caprice.
Inside the vehicle lay what a petrified North America was calling ‘the Beltway Snipers’ – thought to be responsible for the deaths of 10 entirely innocent people.
They had been randomly gunned down and three more critically injured while going about their everyday lives – mowing the lawn, pumping petrol, shopping or reading.
Among the victims was FBI intelligence analyst Linda Franklin, who was felled by a single bullet while leaving a home improvement store in Virginia with her husband.
The massive investigation into the sniper attacks was led by the Montgomery County Maryland Police Department, with the FBI and many other law enforcement agencies playing a supporting role.
That morning, the three-week hunt for the snipers had quickly come to an end, when a team of Maryland State Police, SWAT officers, and agents from the FBI Hostage Rescue Team arrested the sleeping John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo without a struggle.
Muhammad, then 41, was a Gulf War veteran born John Allen Williams, who changed his name in 1987 after joining the Nation of Islam.
His sidekick, Malvo, was just 17 when the FBI slapped cuffs on him…
A FEW hours earlier, at 11.45pm, their car – bearing the New Jersey licence plate NDA-21Z, which had been widely publicised on the news that day – had been spotted at a rest stop car park.
Within the hour, cops swarmed the scene, setting up a perimeter to check out any movements and make sure there would be no escape.
What evidence experts from the FBI and other police forces found there was both revealing and shocking.
The car had a hole cut in the boot near the number plate so that shots could be fired from within the vehicle.
It was, in effect, a rolling sniper’s nest.
Also found in the car were the Bushmaster .223-calibre rifle that had been used in each attack, a rifle’s scope for taking aim and a tripod to steady the shots. The backseat had had the sheet metal removed between the passenger compartment and the boot, enabling the shooter to get into the boot from inside the car.
The Chevy Caprice owner’s manual was also found with written impressions of one of their ransom demand notes.
The digital voice recorder used by both Malvo and Muhammad to make multi-million dollar extortion demands was also recovered from the car.
And agents found a laptop, stolen from one of the victims, containing maps of the shooting sites and getaway routes from some of the crime scenes, along with maps and walkie-talkies.
Malvo and Muhammad were convicted at trial or pled guilty in multiple court cases in Maryland and Virginia.
Both were sentenced to life without parole while Muhammad also received the death penalty.
Bullet
It had all started as just another autumn evening in America’s capital – until a sniper’s bullet struck down a 55-year-old man in a car park in Wheaton, Maryland.
By 10am the next morning, on October 3, 2002, four more people within a few miles of each other had been similarly murdered.
The attacks were soon linked, and a massive multi-agency investigation was launched, led by the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland.
Within days, the FBI had 400 agents around the country working on the case.
A toll-free number was set up to collect tips from the public, with teams of new agents in training helping to work the hotline – although to no avail.
However, the big break in the case came, ironically, from the snipers themselves.
On October 17, 2002, a caller claiming to be the sniper phoned in to say that he was responsible for the murder of two women – although only one was killed – during
SEEN LEAVING IN MUSTANG: Brennan Thomas
TWO teenagers have been arrested after a man’s dismembered body was found in a wooded area.
The body of 20-year-old Dylan Dakota Whetzel was found hacked to pieces and strewn over a “wide area” in a woodland of Spotsylvania County, Virginia.
Brennan Thomas, 19, and Dominic McCall, 18, have been arrested on multiple charges – including defilement of a dead body, concealing a body and three related conspiracy charges.
It’s believed they both knew the victim and sources described them as “former friends”.
Blood
Maj. Troy Skebo said Spotsylvania Sheriff’s office received a 911 call saying a body was in the area where a Ford Mustang had been seen earlier.
According to Skebo, witnesses claimed to have seen Thomas and McCall leaving in the Mustang before deputies responded and found Whetzel’s body parts.
Skebo said detectives found the Mustang and possible evidence related to the death – believed to be blood and gore belonging to Whetzel – was found in the boot of the vehicle.
Detectives have ruled Whetzel’s death to be a homicide.
But neither Thomas or McCall has so far been charged with murder.