For three weeks in October 2002, a sniper shot people at random around Washington, D.C. Ten people were killed and three were badly hurt in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, according to the FBI. The victims were pumping gas, mowing grass, sitting on a bench, loading groceries, walking to school or standing on the step of a bus. On October 24, police found the two men responsible asleep in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice at a rest area on Interstate 70 in western Maryland. The car had been altered so a gunman could lie in the trunk and fire through a hole above the license plate. The FBI later called it "a rolling sniper's nest."
The older man was John Allen Muhammad, 41, a former Army sergeant. The younger was Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, a Jamaican-born teenager who had been living with him since at least late 2001. A Virginia jury convicted Muhammad in November 2003 of capital murder for the death of Dean Harold Meyers, and he was sentenced to death. A Maryland jury convicted him in May 2006 of six more murders. He was executed by lethal injection in Virginia on November 10, 2009. He never admitted the shootings. Other killings in Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Washington State and Arizona were linked to the pair by investigators, but none was ever tried against him.
He was born John Allen Williams on December 31, 1960. The Seattle Times, profiling him the day after his arrest, gave his birthplace as New Orleans; CBS News said Baton Rouge, where he grew up. His father left the family early and his mother died, and he was raised by relatives: an aunt, according to The Seattle Times, and a grandmother and an aunt, according to CBS News. He had an older brother.
The Seattle Times reported that he struggled in school with learning disabilities, did well in track and tennis, and graduated in 1978. CBS News described him as a track and football star at Scotlandville High School in Baton Rouge. He married in the early 1980s and had a son.
After high school he joined the Louisiana Army National Guard, where he went through basic training and engineer training and learned to fire a military rifle. His Guard years were not clean. He was court-martialed twice, and in 1983 he was convicted of striking a sergeant, fined 100 dollars and given a suspended seven-day sentence in the stockade, The Seattle Times reported. CBS News put his Guard service at 1978 to 1985.
In November 1985, the day after he separated from his first wife, he enlisted in the regular Army. He was assigned as a combat engineer to the 15th Engineer Battalion at Fort Lewis, Washington, and was also qualified as a metalworker and water-truck driver. He served in Germany, at Fort Ord in California and again at Fort Lewis. He earned the Army's expert rating with the M-16 rifle, the highest of its marksmanship grades, but CBS News reported that he had no sniper training. He served as a combat engineer in the 1991 Gulf War and received the Kuwait Liberation Medal.
He was discharged from Fort Lewis on April 26, 1994, and spent about a year in the Oregon National Guard, from which he received an honorable discharge. His highest rank was sergeant.
While at Fort Lewis he married a second time. He and his second wife had a son and two daughters, lived for a time in Germany and settled in Tacoma, where he ran a car repair business. In the mid-1990s he was active in a Nation of Islam temple in Seattle's Central Area, and he told a friend he had helped provide security at the Million Man March in Washington in 1995. He later took the surname Muhammad. In 1995 he co-founded a karate team in Tacoma with a partner; it folded in 1998 after a falling-out.
The marriage broke down. His wife filed for divorce on December 29, 1999. In a court filing in 2000 she wrote that she was afraid of him, and a court later found domestic violence and issued a protection order that barred him from having guns, The Seattle Times reported. CBS News quoted her petition: "He has threatened to kill me. I may never see my children again."
On March 27, 2000, Muhammad took the three children and left. Their mother did not see or hear from them for 18 months. He said she had agreed to a trip to Antigua. He later returned with them to Washington State and settled in Bellingham, near the Canadian border, where he enrolled his daughters in school under false names and birth dates. In August 2001 he was identified when he applied for state aid, police took the children, and their mother regained them on September 4, 2001. She went into hiding with them. He lost every custody motion he filed after that.
Lee Boyd Malvo was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on February 18, 1985, according to CNN's reference file on him. He joined his mother in Antigua, where she had met Muhammad. She later left for Florida, and Malvo eventually went with Muhammad to Bellingham.
By late 2001 the two were living in Bellingham as father and son, at the Lighthouse Mission, a homeless shelter. Malvo enrolled at Bellingham High School in December 2001 without transcripts and told the school he lived at a shelter. Police later told reporters that Muhammad had presented himself as the boy's father or another relative, and that their relationship was like that of a drill sergeant and a recruit. Early reports in 2002 called him John Lee Malvo.
Muhammad's fortunes had fallen. CBS News reported that his car repair business had once supported a middle-class life, but that after his second marriage ended he became homeless. In February 2002 he was investigated in Tacoma for shoplifting about 27 dollars' worth of meat and frozen food, and warrants were issued when he did not appear in court. When he visited Louisiana with Malvo in July 2002, introducing the boy as his son, relatives were alarmed by how much control he had over him. "He just wasn't that same fresh, clean and ready-for-business," a cousin told CBS News.
A friend in Washington State, Robert Holmes, told federal agents that Muhammad had fired a .223-caliber rifle at his home and talked about making a silencer, The Seattle Times reported.
The rifle later found in the Caprice was a Bushmaster .223. It came from Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, a gun shop in Tacoma. A federal audit found that the shop could not account for 238 weapons; its owners blamed shoplifters. Authorities believed Malvo stole the rifle, and in a police interview he called it a "donation," The Seattle Times reported in 2004. The shop's owner lost his license to sell guns.
Under the protection order, Muhammad could not legally possess a gun. The FBI later relied on that fact to bring federal weapons charges against him.
Investigators and prosecutors later tied the two men to a string of shootings across the country in 2002, before the Washington series began. Muhammad was never tried for any of them. The links rest on court records, police statements and Malvo's own accounts, which changed over time.
On February 16, 2002, Keenya Cook, 21, was shot and killed in East Tacoma. In 2003, prosecutors at Malvo's Virginia trial said Malvo had confessed that he walked up to her house and shot her, at Muhammad's direction, about ten weeks after he ran away from his mother. A defense psychologist testified that the killing was Malvo's first test of whether he would do what Muhammad asked. Washington State declined to bring charges in 2004, according to CNN, and Malvo was never charged in her death.
On March 19, 2002, Jerry Taylor, 60, was shot once from long range while practicing chip shots at the Fred Enke Golf Course in Tucson, Arizona. His daughter, Cheryll Witz, remembered him as always happy, always smiling. In October 2006, after receiving immunity, Malvo told Tucson detectives that he had shot Taylor under Muhammad's supervision. Police said many details matched the evidence, but some did not: Malvo claimed Muhammad had been paid 25,000 dollars to kill Taylor and had a photograph of him, and police found no evidence of a paid killing, while Taylor's family said no such photograph existed. Pima County prosecutors declined to charge Muhammad, partly because of those inconsistencies. "I know he killed my father," Witz told the Arizona Daily Star.
In September the shootings moved east. On September 5, 2002, Paul LaRuffa was shot several times as he sat in his car after closing his restaurant in Clinton, Maryland. He survived. His laptop computer was taken, and it was later found in the Caprice. Ten days later, on September 15, a man locking up a liquor store in Clinton was shot and survived; a witness saw the Caprice outside the store before closing time.
Shortly after midnight on September 21, Million Woldemariam, 41, an Ethiopian immigrant, was shot and killed outside a liquor store on Martin Luther King Drive in southwest Atlanta. Atlanta police said in November 2002 that ballistics tests matched the gun used to kill him to a handgun dropped at a killing in Montgomery, Alabama, later that day. Georgia never filed charges.
That night in Montgomery, Claudine Parker, a liquor store employee, was shot and killed as she walked out of the store after closing, and a co-worker was seriously wounded. The handgun was recovered near the scene. Montgomery police said in October 2002 that capital murder warrants were being signed for both Muhammad and Malvo; Alabama never tried either of them.
On September 23, Hong Im Ballenger, 45, the manager of a beauty supply shop on Florida Boulevard in Baton Rouge, was shot and killed as she walked to her car after closing. A witness saw Malvo run to the Caprice, according to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Louisiana State Police linked the bullet to the rifle used in the Washington shootings. Both men were indicted for her murder and robbery. In October 2009 a special assistant attorney general in Louisiana said Muhammad's execution would make the case moot, and it was never tried.
On September 9, 2002, Muhammad bought a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice from a man in Trenton, New Jersey. Before buying it, he climbed into the trunk and lay down, the Supreme Court of Virginia recorded. News reports at the time gave the price as 250 dollars. When he bought it, the car had no hole in the trunk and no passage from the back seat, the trunk was not painted, and the windows were not tinted.
By the time of the arrest, all of that had changed. The windows were heavily tinted. The rear seat was hinged so a person could crawl from the passenger compartment into the trunk. The trunk had been spray-painted blue, and a hole had been cut in the trunk lid above the license plate, covered by a rubber seal and blocked with a brown glove. The car was registered to Muhammad with New Jersey plates.
The Washington series began in Montgomery County, Maryland, on the evening of October 2, 2002. A shot was fired through the window of a Michaels craft store in Aspen Hill; no one was hit. That evening James D. Martin, 55, was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Shoppers Food Warehouse in Wheaton. He worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He was the father of an 11-year-old boy and a leader of his Boy Scout troop, a Civil War enthusiast and amateur genealogist who judged science fairs and had arranged to donate computers to an elementary school, WTOP and the Associated Press reported ten years later. At Muhammad's Maryland sentencing, his sister said he had believed in respect and courtesy for all people.
The next day, five more people were shot dead.
At 7:41 a.m. on October 3, James L. "Sonny" Buchanan, 39, was killed while mowing grass on Rockville Pike near the Fitzgerald Auto Mall. He was an independent landscaper who kept a dealership's grounds, an amateur poet who volunteered with children through local Boys and Girls Clubs.
At 8:12 a.m. Premkumar Walekar, 54, a part-time cab driver, was killed while pumping gas into his taxi in Aspen Hill. Born in Bombay, he had come to the United States for college at 18, sent money to his father in India and helped bring his brothers and sisters to America. His brother said of his arranged marriage, "After the marriage, there was love."
At 8:37 a.m. Sarah Ramos, 34, was killed as she sat on a bench at the Leisure World shopping center in Silver Spring, reading after getting off a bus. She was a babysitter and housekeeper from El Salvador, the mother of a 7-year-old son, and active in several church groups.
At 9:58 a.m. Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, 25, was killed while vacuuming her van at a Shell station in Kensington. Originally from Mountain Home, Idaho, she had wanted to be a nanny since junior high school and had trained at a nanny school in Oregon. She was a mother. Her father said she was "special to everybody she met."
That evening, about 7 p.m., a District of Columbia police officer stopped Muhammad's Caprice for running two stop signs. The officer confirmed his license was valid and let him go with a warning. About two hours later and roughly 30 blocks away, Pascal Charlot, 72, a retired carpenter from Haiti who was known for fixing things around his neighbors' homes, was shot on Georgia Avenue at Kalmia Street NW. The Caprice was seen at the scene. He died less than an hour after reaching the hospital. His was the only killing in the District and the first at night. The Supreme Court of Virginia described him as crossing the intersection; WTOP said he was waiting for a bus.
On October 4, Caroline Seawell, 43, was shot as she put shopping bags into her minivan outside a Michaels store at the Spotsylvania Mall near Fredericksburg, Virginia. She survived. A witness saw the Caprice in the lot.
On the morning of October 7, a 13-year-old seventh grader was shot in the chest outside Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland. His aunt, a nurse, had just dropped him off because he had been temporarily barred from the school bus. She drove him straight to a nearby clinic, and doctors later credited that decision with saving his life. He spent weeks in the hospital. Hours earlier, police had announced at a news conference that officers were being posted at schools. (The Supreme Court of Virginia's opinion dates his shooting to October 6; the FBI, CNN and the Associated Press give October 7.)
In the woods near the school, investigators found a hunting-style blind with a pen and a shell casing, and a tarot card. On its face was written "Call me God." On the back was a message addressed to the police, asking that it not be released to the press. Muhammad's DNA was later found on the pen.
On the evening of October 9, Dean Harold Meyers, 53, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was shot and killed while pumping gas at a Sunoco station near Manassas, Virginia. He was a Vietnam veteran and a project manager at the Manassas office of a civil engineering firm. Colleagues remembered him as quiet and considerate, a man who helped people carry heavy packages and fed stray cats. About an hour earlier, Muhammad and Malvo had been seen near the station, and right after the shooting police interviewed Muhammad in a parking lot across the street. His fingerprints were on a map found there. This was the killing for which Virginia later tried him.
On the morning of October 11, Kenneth Bridges, 53, was shot and killed at an Exxon station off Interstate 95 in Spotsylvania County, near Fredericksburg. He was a Philadelphia businessman, a father of six who loved playing basketball with his children, and a co-founder of an organization that promoted Black self-sufficiency. Two witnesses saw the Caprice at or near the station.
On the night of October 14, Linda Franklin, 47, of Arlington, was shot and killed while loading purchases into her car in the parking lot of a Home Depot near Falls Church, Virginia. She was an analyst at the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center. She had recently been through treatment for breast cancer, and she and her husband were planning to move to a larger house. Her husband was beside her when she was shot, and he later testified about it at Muhammad's trial. An off-duty police officer saw Malvo driving the Caprice near the store.
The task force, led by the Montgomery County Police Department under Chief Charles Moose, had asked for the FBI's help under a federal law on serial killings. Within days the FBI had about 400 agents on the case, ran a public tip line, and set up a joint operations center with county investigators, the FBI's own history of the case says.
The snipers began trying to talk to the police. On October 15 a caller told a dispatcher in Rockville that he and another were the people causing the killings, and mentioned the tarot card; he hung up when the dispatcher tried to transfer the call. On October 18 a caller told a Montgomery County officer that he knew who was doing the shootings and asked the officer to check the details of a liquor store shooting in Montgomery, Alabama. The same day, a priest in Ashland, Virginia, Father William Sullivan, received a call in which a voice said "the lady didn't have to die," referred to the Home Depot shooting and the Alabama robbery, and ended by saying he was God and the press should not be told. (The FBI's account dates the call describing the Alabama robbery to October 17.)
On the evening of October 19, a 37-year-old man was shot as he walked to his car after dinner at a Ponderosa steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia. He survived after five operations. Surveillance video placed Muhammad at a nearby Big Lots store, and both men's DNA was later found on a candy wrapper at the scene. In a plastic sandwich bag tacked to a tree, police found a note. It demanded ten million dollars, gave instructions for a bank account and a phone call to the Ponderosa, blamed the police for five deaths because they had not responded, and ended with a postscript warning that "your children are not safe anywhere at anytime." The note was not found until after its deadline had passed.
Calls to the FBI tip line on October 20 and 21 pointed the agents to the message at the Ponderosa. One recorded message offered the police a choice: hold a press conference announcing that they had caught the sniper "like a duck in a noose," or face the alternative. It ended with the same warning about children. Text from the extortion demands was later found in a file named "Allah8.rtf" on the laptop in the Caprice.
At 5:55 a.m. on October 22, Conrad Johnson, 35, a Montgomery County Ride On bus driver from Oxon Hill, was shot as he stood on the top step at the entrance of his bus in Aspen Hill. He died at a hospital. He was married with two sons, a football fan and a weightlifter. A friend remembered him as a joker who liked having a clean car. Police found another plastic bag with a note at the scene. Muhammad's DNA was later found on a hair in a duffel bag left in the nearby woods. Johnson was the last person killed.
The snipers' own boast led to them. The caller who described the Montgomery, Alabama, liquor store shooting had said he killed two women there; in fact one had died. Investigators confirmed that a similar crime had happened and obtained fingerprint and ballistic evidence from it. On October 21 an FBI agent from Mobile flew the evidence to Washington, and the FBI Laboratory processed it. The next morning, a fingerprint on a gun magazine left at the Alabama scene matched Lee Boyd Malvo, whose prints were on file from an earlier arrest in Washington State, the FBI says. The Montgomery mayor confirmed the fingerprint match to reporters.
Malvo's arrest record named John Allen Muhammad as his companion, and an FBI agent in Tacoma recognized the name from an earlier tip. Federal agents searched a house in Tacoma where the two had lived and removed a tree stump from the yard to look for bullets; a neighbor told reporters he had heard a high-powered rifle there every other day. Because Muhammad was barred from having guns, federal prosecutors could charge him with a weapons offense, and the FBI and the ATF obtained a material witness warrant for Malvo. On October 22, records showed that Muhammad had registered a blue Chevrolet Caprice with New Jersey plate NDA-21Z. The description was released to the public.
Late on October 23 the Caprice was spotted at a rest area off Interstate 70 near Myersville, in Frederick County, Maryland, about 50 miles northwest of Washington. Ron Lantz, 61, a truck driver from Ludlow, Kentucky, told CBS News and Scripps Howard that he recognized the car from descriptions on the radio, called 911, and was asked to block the exit; he and another trucker pulled their rigs across the lane.
D. Wayne Smith, a Maryland state trooper, was the first officer there. He parked his cruiser to block the ramp to the interstate and watched the car with his shotgun until more units arrived about five minutes later. Officers sealed both sides of the interstate and the rest area's entrance and exit and waited for a federal tactical team, which was flown in by state police helicopter. Maryland State Police, Montgomery County SWAT officers and agents of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team approached on foot, broke the car's windows and used stun grenades. Muhammad and Malvo were asleep and were taken without a struggle. CBS News gave the time of arrest as 3:19 a.m. on October 24.
The loaded Bushmaster rifle was behind the rear seat. With it were a rifle scope, a tripod, a GPS receiver, walkie-talkies, maps, a digital voice recorder used for the extortion demands, and Paul LaRuffa's stolen laptop, the FBI and the Supreme Court of Virginia recorded. Mapping software loaded onto the laptop on September 29 marked six shooting sites, which news reports described as marked with skull-and-crossbones icons. A receipt from a Baton Rouge grocery store was dated September 27. The owner's manual for the car bore impressions of a demand note, the FBI Laboratory found.
Ballistics tests linked the Bushmaster to bullets or fragments from the killings of Meyers, Parker, Ballenger, Walekar, Ramos, Lewis-Rivera, Bridges, Franklin, Charlot and Johnson, and to the wounding of Seawell, the Bowie schoolboy and the man shot in Ashland, the Supreme Court of Virginia found. DNA from both men was on the rifle; the only fingerprints on it were Malvo's.
The two men were first held in Baltimore on federal charges. Within days, prosecutors in several places wanted them. On October 25 Malvo was charged in Montgomery County with six counts of first-degree murder, and Alabama charged him with capital murder. Montgomery, Alabama, police said they would seek the death penalty against both men. Louisiana charged Malvo on October 31.
On October 28, 2002, a Prince William County grand jury indicted Muhammad for the capital murder of Dean Meyers, for conspiracy to commit capital murder, and for using a firearm in the commission of a felony. The capital charges relied on two Virginia laws: a terrorism statute passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and a law making it a capital crime to kill more than one person within three years. Under the terrorism law, PBS NewsHour noted, prosecutors would not have to prove which man fired the fatal shot.
On November 7, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the first prosecutions would take place in Virginia: Muhammad in Prince William County, under its Commonwealth's Attorney, Paul Ebert, and Malvo in Fairfax County. Ashcroft said the first trials should be held where there was "the best law, the best facts, and the best range of available penalties," and that it was imperative that "the ultimate sanction" be available. Maryland at the time had a moratorium on executions, and its law did not allow the death penalty for anyone under 18. Federal charges were deferred, and the two men were moved from Baltimore to the jail in Alexandria, Virginia.
Muhammad waived his right to a speedy trial on November 13, 2002. On his own motion, and without objection from the prosecution, the trial was moved from Prince William County to Virginia Beach. The guilt phase ran from October 20 to November 17, 2003, before Circuit Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr.
On the first day Muhammad dismissed his court-appointed lawyers and represented himself. In a disjointed opening statement he told the jury the evidence would show he had "nothing at all" to do with the shootings, NPR reported. He represented himself for two days and then asked his standby lawyers to take the case back. The judge did not allow a hybrid arrangement in which standby counsel acted as co-counsel, and moved them farther from him, a change Muhammad had proposed and agreed to.
Muhammad was on trial only for the killing of Dean Meyers, but to win a conviction on the multiple-killing charge, prosecutors had to prove other murders as well, and they put the whole series before the jury. The boy shot at Bowie, by then 14 and in ninth grade, testified for less than two minutes; the defense did not cross-examine him. He said the shooting had brought him closer to God. Caroline Seawell described the moment she was shot. Linda Franklin's husband described the shooting at the Home Depot. The District of Columbia officer told the jury about the traffic stop two hours before Pascal Charlot was killed.
There was no direct evidence that Muhammad fired the rifle, and the prosecution argued that it did not matter. Ballistics tied the rifle to nearly all the shootings, testimony placed his DNA on the weapon, and the laptop maps marked the scenes. The prosecution's theory was that the two men worked as a sniper team and that Muhammad, with his military background in shooting, had trained Malvo. The Commonwealth argued that Muhammad was determined to terrorize the part of the country where his former wife was living.
On November 17, 2003, after six and a half hours of deliberation, the jury found Muhammad guilty on all four counts: capital murder in the commission of an act of terrorism, capital murder of more than one person within three years, conspiracy, and use of a firearm. He was the first person tried under Virginia's terrorism law.
In the penalty phase, the defense showed a home movie of Muhammad playing with his children and called witnesses who described him as a loving father. The prosecutor, James Willett, told the jury that the caring father "no longer exists." The defense could not present mental health evidence from its experts, because Muhammad had refused to be examined by the prosecution's psychiatrist despite repeated warnings of the consequence. His former wife had said his behavior changed after the Gulf War, and the defense had suggested Gulf War syndrome.
After five hours of deliberation over two days, the jury recommended death on both capital counts on November 24, 2003, finding both future dangerousness and vileness, and fixed 13 years on the other two counts. On March 9, 2004, about 50 relatives of victims were in court in Manassas when Judge Millette imposed the death sentences. He could have reduced them to life without parole. He called the evidence "overwhelming" and the crimes "so vile that they were almost beyond comprehension." Muhammad, who said he would appeal, told the court, "Just like I said at the beginning, I had nothing to do with this." Sonia Wills, Conrad Johnson's mother, said justice had been served.
Malvo's capital trial for the killing of Linda Franklin was moved from Fairfax County to Chesapeake. His defense argued insanity, saying Muhammad had indoctrinated him. Prosecutors told that jury Malvo had confessed to killing Keenya Cook in Tacoma. On December 18, 2003, he was convicted of terrorism, capital murder and a firearms charge, and on March 10, 2004, he was sentenced to life without parole. On October 26, 2004, under a plea agreement in Spotsylvania County, he received another life term for killing Kenneth Bridges and wounding Caroline Seawell. Prince William County announced in March 2005 that it would not try him, after the U.S. Supreme Court barred the death penalty for anyone under 18 at the time of the crime, and charges in Hanover County were dropped that May, according to CNN's case file.
The Supreme Court of Virginia heard Muhammad's appeal together with its mandatory review of the death sentences, and affirmed on April 22, 2005, in an opinion by Justice Donald W. Lemons. JURIST reported that three justices dissented in part. The court rejected the argument that only the man who pulled the trigger could be sentenced to death. Where two people jointly carried out a killing as a team, it held, each could be an immediate perpetrator, and it concluded that Muhammad "was an immediate perpetrator and as such was a principal in the first degree." It also held that the evidence was enough under the terrorism statute on the separate theory that he ordered or directed Malvo.
The court rejected his other claims: that the terrorism statute was unconstitutionally vague, that prosecutors had taken inconsistent positions by portraying Malvo as independent in his own trial, that standby counsel had been wrongly restricted, and that his expert mitigation witnesses had been wrongly excluded after he refused the state's examination. It held that letters written by Malvo, which the defense said showed Malvo acted on his own, were not exculpatory and would not have changed the outcome. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case in 2006.
On July 31, 2006, Muhammad filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court of Virginia. He argued that prosecutors had withheld evidence, including an FBI analysis and police files from several of the shootings, that he had been allowed to represent himself without proper warnings or an inquiry into his competence, and that his lawyers had failed to present evidence of mental illness. The court dismissed the petition on June 12, 2007. It found that most of the evidence was not favorable to him and that none of it was material, and it noted that his own refusal to cooperate with the state's expert was what had kept expert mental health testimony out of the sentencing.
In May 2005 Virginia Governor Mark Warner agreed to send both men to Maryland, where six of the ten Washington-area killings had taken place. The Montgomery County state's attorney, Douglas F. Gansler, told The Baltimore Sun his office was obligated to try the cases and described them as insurance after the Virginia convictions. Muhammad was moved from Virginia's death row to Maryland in August 2005. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
Jury selection began in Rockville on May 1, 2006, from a pool of 300. Within days prosecutors were showing the jury photographs of the six scenes. Muhammad again represented himself, with J. Wyndal Gordon and Jai Bonner as standby attorneys. He called the case a frame-up and said he had been in the Washington area to find his former wife and children. The prosecutors were Katherine Winfree and Vivek Chopra.
Malvo, then 21, was the prosecution's main witness. He had agreed to plead guilty to the six Montgomery County murders, and it was the first time he testified against Muhammad. Over two days, May 23 and 24, he described a plan in two phases: shootings around Washington, to be followed by bombings aimed at children, with ten million dollars in extortion money to pay for a compound in Canada where homeless children would be trained in weapons and explosives. He said Muhammad had told him the worst thing you can do to people is aim at their children. He said Muhammad had taken him into his home and made him into a killer, and he called him a coward. According to the Associated Press and JURIST, Malvo testified that Muhammad fired the shots in five of the six Montgomery County killings; The Washington Times reported him as saying Muhammad pulled the trigger in 10 of the 13 Washington-area shootings. Malvo also said Muhammad called white people devils.
Muhammad cross-examined him himself. He questioned Malvo about his mental health and his insanity defense in Virginia, and about his earlier claims, made shortly after the arrest, that he had fired every shot. Asked by the prosecutor how Muhammad had treated him compared with his own children, Malvo answered that Muhammad "did not use any of his children to murder other people." Asked why he testified, he said he wanted to face Muhammad and the victims.
On May 30, 2006, after just over four hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Muhammad of six counts of first-degree murder: James Martin, Sonny Buchanan, Premkumar Walekar, Sarah Ramos, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera and Conrad Johnson.
At the sentencing on June 1, relatives spoke. Nelson Rivera, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera's husband, said Muhammad had killed him and their daughter along with her. Sonia Wills told the court that a piece of her had gone with her son, and told Muhammad that she refused to say his name. Ola Martin called him a coward. Muhammad said nothing and sat with his arms crossed. Montgomery County Circuit Judge James L. Ryan told him he had "randomly murdered innocent and defenseless people" and sentenced him to six consecutive terms of life without parole. Family members applauded as he was led out. He was returned to Virginia's death row.
Muhammad appealed, arguing that he had not been competent to stand trial and should not have been allowed to represent himself. In November 2007 the Court of Special Appeals affirmed all six convictions in an opinion by retired Judge Charles Moylan Jr., sitting by special assignment. The court found that the trial judge's questioning had shown Muhammad's solid understanding of what representing himself involved, that his decision was "no spur-of-the-moment impulse," and that the case against him was so overwhelming that no claimed error could have changed the verdicts. The opinion compared the fear in the Washington area to London during the Jack the Ripper killings of 1888, and ended: "Jack the Ripper has never yet been brought to justice. The Beltway snipers have been."
In May 2008 Muhammad wrote to Virginia prosecutors asking for help in ending his appeals so that, in his words, they could murder an innocent Black man. He said the appeals filed on his behalf were unauthorized. His lawyer, James Connell, then told a federal judge that Muhammad wanted the appeal to go on and did not wish to be executed, and the state accepted that. His lawyers' federal petition raised evidence of brain damage associated with schizophrenia and argued that he could not make legal decisions for himself. A separate handwritten letter dated May 8, 2008, released by his lawyers in November 2009, protested his innocence and claimed that exculpatory evidence had been withheld.
Judge Liam O'Grady of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied the petition. On August 7, 2009, the Fourth Circuit affirmed, in an opinion by Judge Roger Gregory joined by Judges Motz and Duncan. It found that none of the withheld material, including an FBI profile suggesting a lone shooter, statements from the Alabama, Louisiana and District of Columbia shootings, and Malvo's letters, was both favorable and material, because the remaining evidence was overwhelming and any number of other killings could support the multiple-murder conviction. "While not admirable, the Commonwealth's actions did not violate the Constitution," the court wrote. It assumed his lawyers should have objected to his self-representation but found no prejudice, since he had represented himself for only two days with standby counsel closely involved.
On September 16, 2009, Prince William County Circuit Judge Mary Grace O'Brien set the execution for November 10. The attorney general's office had asked for November 9; the judge chose a Tuesday so that courts would be open the day before for any last appeals, Muhammad's lawyer, Jonathan Sheldon, said. Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and the electric chair, so under Virginia law the method defaulted to lethal injection.
His lawyers asked Governor Tim Kaine to commute the sentence to life, arguing that Muhammad was severely mentally ill and suffered from Gulf War syndrome. In a court filing they also said he had been severely beaten as a child by family members.
On November 9, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay and declined to hear the case. Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, wrote separately that the case "highlights once again the perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process has been fully concluded," and said the Court should stay executions set before its review of a first federal habeas petition was complete.
On November 10, Governor Kaine, a Roman Catholic who opposed the death penalty but had promised to enforce the law, refused clemency. "I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury," his statement said. "Accordingly, I decline to intervene."
Muhammad was held in a cell near the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, south of Richmond. Members of his family visited him that afternoon. He asked that his last meal not be made public. One of his lawyers, J. Wyndal Gordon, said he remained calm and maintained his innocence to the end.
At 8:58 p.m. he was brought into the chamber and strapped to the table, a television reporter who witnessed the execution said. The curtains opened at 9:06. He appeared calm and tapped his left foot, with a needle in each arm. He refused to make a final statement. After the first drug he blinked repeatedly and took several deep breaths; by 9:08 he was still. He was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m. He was 48. Twenty-seven witnesses attended, with the victims' relatives seated separately behind glass. "I never heard him utter a word or say anything at all," a corrections spokesman, Larry Traylor, said. He was the 104th person executed in Virginia since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
"He died very peacefully, much more than most of his victims," said Paul Ebert, the Prince William County prosecutor, who watched. Bob Meyers, Dean Meyers's brother, called the experience sobering and surreal; he had hoped Muhammad would take responsibility and show remorse, he said, and "we didn't get any of that tonight." Nelson Rivera said he felt he could breathe better. Cheryll Witz said she now had her closure, her justice and her peace. Sonia Hollingsworth-Wills, Conrad Johnson's mother, chose not to watch and waited in a car outside the prison. She said she would never get complete closure but could at least put it behind her. Paul LaRuffa stayed home with his family. "I don't need to watch him die," he said.
His lawyers said they respected the decisions of the Supreme Court and the governor, but accused Virginia of rushing him to his death before his appeals were finished.
In January 2003, families of several of those killed and two survivors sued Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, the rifle's maker, Bushmaster Firearms, and Muhammad and Malvo in Pierce County, Washington, with the help of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. They argued that the shop's carelessness had let the rifle and many other guns go missing, and that Bushmaster had supplied an irresponsible dealer. In September 2004 the case settled for 2.5 million dollars: 2 million from Bull's Eye, paid by insurance, and the rest from Bushmaster, which admitted no wrongdoing. A judge approved it on December 3, 2004. The Brady Center said it was the first time a gun maker had paid to settle claims of negligent distribution. Sonia Wills said the money would never bring her son back.
The boy shot at Bowie spoke publicly about the shooting twenty years later. He told NBC4 Washington in 2022 that he was thankful to be alive and saw life as more precious than before, that he lives with anxiety, and that he was writing his life story. He said the snipers had wanted the media's attention and had attacked the most vulnerable.
Malvo's sentences have been in the courts ever since, under U.S. Supreme Court rulings on life without parole for people who were minors at the time of their crimes. He pleaded guilty to the six Montgomery County murders on October 10, 2006, and on November 8, 2006, was sentenced to six consecutive terms of life without parole. In 2010 he claimed in a television interview to have killed more than 40 other people; police could not confirm it, CNN reported.
In May 2017 a federal judge vacated two of his Virginia life sentences, and in June 2018 the Fourth Circuit held that his four Virginia life sentences must be vacated. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Virginia's appeal but dismissed the case on February 26, 2020, two days after Virginia made people serving life for crimes committed as juveniles eligible for parole after 20 years. The Virginia Parole Board denied him parole on August 30, 2022. In August 2022 the Supreme Court of Maryland ordered that he be resentenced there. Virginia refused to send him to Maryland until he finishes his Virginia sentences, and he declined to appear by video. In September 2024 the Montgomery County Circuit Court refused to vacate his sentences, the Appellate Court of Maryland upheld that ruling on May 1, 2026, and on August 25, 2026, the Supreme Court of Maryland declined to hear his appeal. As of that report he was serving his Virginia life sentences.
Proven by final judgment: the capital murder of Dean Harold Meyers (Virginia jury, 2003, on both the terrorism and the multiple-killing theories), conspiracy and the firearms charge; and the first-degree murders of James Martin, Sonny Buchanan, Premkumar Walekar, Sarah Ramos, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera and Conrad Johnson (Maryland jury, 2006). The Virginia courts also accepted evidence of the other shootings in proving the multiple-killing charge, and held that the Commonwealth did not have to name which other killing it relied on.
Never tried against him: the killings of Pascal Charlot in the District of Columbia and of Kenneth Bridges and Linda Franklin in Virginia (Malvo was convicted of the last two); Claudine Parker in Alabama (capital murder warrants, never tried); and Hong Im Ballenger in Louisiana (indicted, never tried). Linked by investigators and never charged against him: Million Woldemariam in Atlanta, Keenya Cook in Tacoma and Jerry Taylor in Tucson. For Cook and Taylor the link rests mainly on Malvo's confessions, which prosecutors in Arizona found partly inconsistent with the evidence.
Who fired the shots has never been settled. After his arrest Malvo claimed he had fired every shot. Later he said Muhammad was the shooter in most of them. The Virginia courts held that the answer did not matter for Muhammad's guilt, because the two men acted as a team.
The motive is also disputed. Malvo described an extortion plan to fund a training camp in Canada. Virginia prosecutors argued that Muhammad meant to terrorize the region where his former wife lived, and she said she believed the shootings were a cover for a plan to kill her and regain custody of the children. Muhammad himself never testified or explained, and maintained to the end that he was innocent.
Malvo's 2010 claim of more than 40 further killings has never been confirmed. His claim that Muhammad was paid to kill Jerry Taylor was not supported by any evidence police found.
The totals published for the 2002 shootings vary with what is counted. The FBI and most reports give ten killed and three wounded in the Washington area in October. The Supreme Court of Virginia counted sixteen shootings from September 5 to October 22, with ten killed and six wounded, a list that includes Alabama and Louisiana but not the first two Montgomery County killings.
December 31, 1960: John Allen Williams is born in Louisiana.
1978: graduates from high school in Baton Rouge and joins the Louisiana Army National Guard.
1983: convicted at a court-martial of striking a sergeant.
November 1985: enlists in the regular Army; posted to Fort Lewis, Washington.
1991: Gulf War service as a combat engineer.
April 26, 1994: discharged from the Army at Fort Lewis; serves about a year in the Oregon National Guard.
1995: co-founds a karate team in Tacoma.
December 29, 1999: his wife files for divorce; a protection order later bars him from having guns.
March 27, 2000: takes his three children; they are recovered in Bellingham in August 2001.
Late 2001: living with Lee Boyd Malvo at a homeless shelter in Bellingham.
February 16, 2002: Keenya Cook is killed in Tacoma.
March 19, 2002: Jerry Taylor is killed in Tucson.
September 5 and 15, 2002: two men are shot and survive in Clinton, Maryland.
September 9, 2002: Muhammad buys the Caprice in Trenton, New Jersey.
September 21, 2002: Million Woldemariam is killed in Atlanta; Claudine Parker is killed and a co-worker wounded in Montgomery, Alabama.
September 23, 2002: Hong Im Ballenger is killed in Baton Rouge.
October 2, 2002: James D. Martin is killed in Wheaton, Maryland.
October 3, 2002: James L. Buchanan, Premkumar Walekar, Sarah Ramos, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera and Pascal Charlot are killed.
October 4, 2002: Caroline Seawell is wounded near Fredericksburg.
October 7, 2002: a 13-year-old boy is wounded at his school in Bowie; the tarot card is found.
October 9, 2002: Dean Harold Meyers is killed near Manassas.
October 11, 2002: Kenneth Bridges is killed in Spotsylvania County.
October 14, 2002: Linda Franklin is killed near Falls Church.
October 19, 2002: a man is wounded in Ashland; the ten-million-dollar demand is found.
October 22, 2002: Conrad Johnson is killed in Aspen Hill; records show the Caprice registered to Muhammad, and its description is released.
October 24, 2002: Muhammad and Malvo are arrested at the Myersville rest area.
October 28, 2002: Muhammad is indicted in Prince William County.
November 7, 2002: Attorney General Ashcroft sends the first prosecutions to Virginia.
October 20, 2003: Virginia trial opens in Virginia Beach; Muhammad represents himself for two days.
November 17, 2003: convicted of two counts of capital murder, conspiracy and a firearms count.
November 24, 2003: jury recommends death.
December 18, 2003: Malvo is convicted in Chesapeake.
March 9, 2004: Judge Millette imposes the death sentences.
September 2004: the families' lawsuit settles for 2.5 million dollars.
April 22, 2005: the Supreme Court of Virginia affirms.
August 2005: Muhammad is moved to Maryland.
May 30, 2006: Montgomery County jury convicts him of six murders.
June 1, 2006: sentenced to six consecutive life terms without parole.
June 12, 2007: Supreme Court of Virginia dismisses his habeas petition.
November 2007: Maryland Court of Special Appeals affirms.
May 2008: letters about ending his appeals; his lawyers say he wants to continue.
August 7, 2009: Fourth Circuit affirms the denial of federal habeas relief.
September 16, 2009: execution set for November 10.
November 9, 2009: U.S. Supreme Court denies review and a stay.
November 10, 2009: Governor Kaine denies clemency; Muhammad is executed at Greensville Correctional Center, pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m.
February 26, 2020: U.S. Supreme Court dismisses Virginia's appeal in Malvo's case.
August 2022: Maryland orders Malvo resentenced; Virginia denies him parole.
August 25, 2026: Supreme Court of Maryland declines Malvo's appeal over the stalled resentencing.