Forensic Files (1996–…): Season 7, Episode 40 - The Sniper's Trail - full transcript

WOMAN: "A man has been killed in front of me!"

OPERATOR: "How was he being killed in front of you?"

For three terrifying weeks,

the eyes of the world were on Virginia and Maryland.

A serial sniper terrorized the community,

13 people were hit - 10 of them died.

This is how forensic science

and solid police work combined, to solve the case.

On October 2nd, 2002,

police in Montgomery County, Maryland were investigating

a number of shooting deaths.



55-year-old James Martin was felled by one bullet,

while putting groceries into his car.

39-year-old Sonny Buchanan was killed by a single gunshot,

while mowing a lawn.

A 54-year-old cab driver was gunned down

while filling his car with gas.

MOOSE: "Nothing like this has ever happened in Montgomery County."

"This is a very safe community,

our homicide rate just increased by 25 percent in one day."

All looked like the work of the same perpetrator.

Police knew each victim was shot from 100 to 200 yards away,

but they didn't know where the shooter was located.

The FBI used television and film animation software to build models of the crime scenes,

to determine where the shooter was positioned.



And since the shooter got away cleanly,

some believed that two people were involved -

a spotter, and a shooter.

DIETL: My theory was that there was a driver with them,

that that's how he was getting away - you kill one person,

you kill two people -

I think that would be a pretty good day, y'know, for a normal psychopathic murderer,

but now you go onto the third and the fourth, within two hours,

so at that point I felt as though there were two people.

The fourth victim was 34-year-old Sarah Ramos,

shot and killed while sitting on a bench, outside this post office.

A 25-year-old nanny was shot at another gas station.

WOMAN: "We need an ambulance at the corner of North and Connecticut,

a woman was vacuuming her car. Something blew up.

She's unconscious, she's got blood coming out of her nose and her mouth."

And 72-year-old Pascal Charlot was shot and killed

while crossing a Washington, D.C. street.

A witness reported seeing an older model four-door Chevrolet leaving the area of the shooting,

with its lights off.

MOOSE: "We feel like we probably have a skilled shooter,

and that does heighten our concern."

And these last three shootings provided police with their first forensic evidence.

Bullet fragments removed from the victims

were large enough for forensic analysis.

CURTIS: We do what was called a fracture parts match,

in an attempt to see if the-

It's basically like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle.

As the bullet goes through the barrel,

the lands and grooves inside mark each bullet.

The sniper was using .223 caliber bullets.

The marks on fragments from the last three victims

were all from the same weapon.

The bullets were hollow point bullets,

designed to do considerable damage.

CURTIS: And that's the idea behind a hollow point bullet,

is to increase the frontal area of the bullet by opening up.

DIETL: This goes out at about 3400 feet per second,

when it hits a body, it traumatizes the body

just from the impact alone.

Then it tumbles around in the body.

The next day,

a 43-year-old woman was shot in a shopping center parking lot.

This time, farther south - in Spotsylvania County, Virginia.

Fortunately, she survived.

Some witnesses said they saw a white van or truck

in the vicinity of the shootings.

But with few other leads,

investigators hoped the new science of geographical profiling

would help identify the killer.

A serial sniper

had already shot seven people in Virginia and Maryland,

and many in the community were starting to panic.

Investigators had little physical evidence,

so they turned to some newer techniques of crime solving.

ROSSMO: For years, the police sciences have used stuff from physics,

chemistry, biology, all the hard sciences.

Now we're starting to see development of tools for policing from the social and the soft sciences,

psychology, criminology, sociology.

Investigators asked Kim Rossmo to do a geographic profile of the killer.

Rossmo is a former Canadian police detective, who invented the computer software that's used.

ROSSMO: Serial and stranger crimes have a problem with information overload.

Too many suspects, too many tips.

It's not uncommon for these lists to be in the hundreds, or even thousands.

It's like the classic 'needle in the haystack' problem,

they may be there but where do you start?

Rossmo believes that criminals operate within a predictable distance from where they live.

So, he entered the locations of all the shootings into his computer program -

which contains information gathered from thousands of earlier case studies.

ROSSMO: Criminals are lazy - now, criminals are also concerned about

committing crimes too close to their home.

So there'll be a bit of a buffer zone around there,

but, there's a point where their desire to operate in their comfort zone

balances their desire for anonymity.

The computer maps where that balance occurs.

ROSSMO: And then the computer system generates for us,

after a number of calculations - up to a million,

what's called a 'jeopardy surface.'

A three-dimensional probability surface showing us the most likely location of offender residence.

The crime scenes are shown in yellow, or green.

The perpetrator's likely home is shown in red, or orange.

Police also asked the FBI for a behavioral profile of the sniper.

Both the strength and weakness of behavioral profiling

is that it's based primarily on the study of individuals who have committed past crimes,

and identifies what is common among them.

Based on past criminal history,

behavioral profilers say a spree killer is usually a white male,

in his late twenties to early thirties,

high school educated, and is most likely divorced.

ROSSMO: No profile can solve a crime.

You need physical evidence, a witness, or a confession to do that.

MOOSE: "Science is an asset, science helps,

but people talking to people, getting information from people is our best ally."

But police were certain of one thing:

The killer, or killers, were watching the media.

KOKONOS: It's common that they follow it, in the media,

they often may interject themselves into the investigation, in some way.

Again, that kind of feeds their ego.

So he may have been watching when Chief Moose assured the public

that area children were safe.

NEWS REPORTER: "Montgomery County officials say tomorrow will be a normal school day."

On October 7th, the sniper shot and wounded

an 8th grader, as he entered his school.

Anxious parents questioned whether their children were safe at all.

STUDENT: "I'm just happy that my dad came to get me."

STUDENT'S FATHER: "He's happy because I did come to get him. I came to pick him up."

MOOSE: "All of our victims have been innocent, have been defenseless.

But now, we're stepping over the line.

Because our children don't deserve this."

In a wooded area, 150 yards from the school,

police found a cover to a pen, a shell casing, and a tarot card - the kind used in fortune telling.

The shell casing was a .223 caliber, a very common round,

which can be fired from many different rifles.

The killer left the 'death' card,

inscribed with the words,

"Dear Policeman,

I am God."

Within days, there were three more shootings.

53-year-old Dean Meyers was killed at a gas station

near Manassas, Virginia.

Then, Kenneth Bridges,

at a gas station in Fredericksburg, Virginia -

as a policeman stood just 50 yards away.

Then, FBI analyst Linda Franklin was killed in the parking lot of a hardware store.

Witnesses continued to report seeing a white van or truck in the vicinity of the shootings.

GEORGE W. BUSH: "I've ordered the full resources of

the federal government to help local law enforcement officials in their efforts to capture this person."

One tool from the federal government was a high-tech military surveillance plane,

able to detect the burst of flame made by a rifle when fired.

But it didn't help.

The next shooting happened far from the surveillance area,

a man was shot and wounded outside a steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia -

90 miles from Washington.

KOKONOS: He's willing to change his M.O.,

while he listens to the media - that's one way we know

that he's careful in taking his notes, and doing his reconnaissance.

In the woods next to the restaurant,

the sniper left another message, with an ominous warning.

After the 12th shooting in a horrifying spree,

the sniper left another note.

It was a four page letter enclosed in a plastic bag, along with a shell casing.

The letter demanded 10 million dollars,

to be transferred into a credit card account belonging to an Arizona bus driver -

whose wallet had been stolen prior to the attacks.

DIETL: After 10, 12 shootings, he decides he wants money now.

I think the money aspect of it is an afterthought,

it's just like, y'know, I'm in charge of everybody,

I got life and death in my hand, well why not ask for 10 million dollars?

Why not ask for a billion dollars?

KOKONOS: What tends to get people in trouble

is their own narcissism -

you give somebody enough rope and they eventually hang themselves.

Riddled with poor grammar and misspellings,

the four page letter referred to 'us' - indicating more than one person was involved.

The note warned that if the demands were not met,

more shootings would follow.

CALLER: "Yes, he's been shot, he's been laying here.

Please hurry up. Please send some help, please, I'm on the bus."

The next morning,

35-year-old Conrad Johnson was killed as he was stepping out of his bus.

A note, similar to the previous one, was discovered

in a wooded area close to the site.

The snipers also made repeated attempts to make contact with

investigators through the 'sniper tip line'.

Most were messages beginning with

"Call me God."

But it was another piece of communication that gave the killers away.

The sniper called a Catholic priest in Ashland, Virginia,

asking for forgiveness for the sniper shootings,

and also mentioned a murder he committed

in Montgomery, Alabama.

Interestingly, police in Montgomery, Alabama had an unsolved murder.

A month earlier, two employees of a liquor store had ben shot -

one fatally, while locking up the store for the night.

Kellie Adams survived the shooting, but,

she didn't see the shooter.

ADAMS: "I could've died,

I just don't take things for granted anymore."

Witnesses saw one of the suspects drop a magazine while running from the scene.

Forensic experts in Alabama tested the magazine for latent fingerprints,

using a series of techniques including magnetic powder,

and the chemical ninhydrin.

They also tried superglue fuming.

In an airtight chamber,

a small amount of superglue is heated, which vaporizes,

then attaches to biological materials.

These techniques produced several usable fingerprints,

which federal authorities scanned into the computer system called AFIS.

DUKE: The AFIS system is actually an acronym for

Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

What it is, it's a computer that will actually scan a pattern type

of a latent print.

The computer makes millions of comparisons that would take a human being years,

and uses numerous government databases.

In the immigration database, investigators had a match.

The fingerprints on the magazine belonged to

17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo,

an immigrant from Jamaica.

Police later learned his nickname was 'Sniper' -

given to him by a man who used to date Malvo's mother,

41-year-old John Muhammad.

Malvo and Muhammad had once lived in this house in Takoma, Washington.

Neighbors said they often heard gunfire from the home's backyard.

Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammad were now the prime suspects.

But where were they?

And could they be found before they killed again?

A telephone call from the killer,

a fingerprint from a magazine cover,

and ballistic tests had led police to two suspects -

17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo, and 41-year-old John Muhammad.

A check of motor vehicle registrations revealed Muhammad owned

a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, with New Jersey licence plates.

Information that was released to the media.

MOOSE: "The public is requested to call

if they have any information regarding Muhammad's whereabouts,

or any other information that investigators could use to locate this individual."

Just a few hours later,

an alert truck driver noticed the car in a highway rest stop.

Police arrested Malvo and Muhammad without incident.

The two had been sleeping in the car.

In the trunk, police found

a semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle, with a small tripod, and a scope.

Also in the car was a laptop computer,

and a Global Positioning Satellite Receiver, or GPS.

Satellites in space can instantly locate a car with a GPS receiver,

and provide maps of the area, ensuring a quick getaway.

On the laptop computer were drafts of letters

with language similar to previous communications from the snipers.

Also in the computer were directions to locations of the attacks,

some marked by a skull and crossbones.

And investigators found a list entitled

"People to Die Later",

on it were the names of the Ashland, Virginia priest,

and someone at a local radio station.

The rifle from Muhammad's car was sent to ATF headquarters,

to principal examiner Walter Dandridge.

DANDRIDGE: "Investigators want this information yesterday."

And the lands and grooves of the rifle matched the bullet fragments taken from the victims.

BOUCHARD: "The results of forensic testing are that the weapon seized from the vehicle

occupied by Muhammad, has been forensically determined to be the murder weapon."

The only fingerprints on the rifle were those of Lee Boyd Malvo.

However, both suspects were found to be sources of DNA

lodged in the ridges of the rifle scope on the murder weapon.

Malvo's DNA was also found on the pen casing found near the school shooting.

Muhammad's DNA was discovered on the plastic bag containing the letter found in Ashland, Virginia.

The car was modified to conceal the sniper's actions.

To illustrate how,

Forensic Files obtained an identical car,

and had its trunk and rear seat modified in the same way as police found the sniper's car.

There was a 4 inch hole cut in the trunk,

and a portion of the backseat was missing.

As this demonstration shows, a shooter could easily get inside the trunk and fire through the hole.

This is the view looking through the scope of a rifle.

Combine that with the anonymity of shooting through a hole in a car trunk,

and a driver leaving the scene within seconds of the shooting,

and it's easy to see how they could get away so cleanly.

Even a policeman standing near the car might not have noticed anything suspicious.

Any muzzle flash would've been sheltered from aerial surveillance.

Geographic profiling had assumed the snipers lived near the first group of victims,

in a way, they did.

The mobile bunker they called 'home' allowed them to reach the balance

geographic profiling counted on, near to home, but also anonymous.

But there was still a question of why the killings occurred.

DIETL: There's gotta be a more-

People just go out and kill people.

Muhammad's ex-wife thinks she knows.

She thinks the killings were a setup,

so that when Muhammad killed her,

it would appear to be a random killing by the sniper.

Muhammad's wife lived in Maryland,

near the jeopardy area identified as the killer's comfort zone by the geographical profile.

DIETL: Forensic evidence is very important to prosecute the case,

never ever profiler, never clairvoyant, we don't play that.

What you play is hard detective work.

John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were both tried and convicted of two counts of capital murder.

Muhammad was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, and of a firearms violation.

Muhammad was sentenced to death.

Malvo was sentenced to life in prison.

CURTIS: The courts more and more like to see hard physical evidence,

and forensic evidence and ballistics in particular can provide that,

because there can really be no question if a particular bullet is matched to a particular gun,

that can put the smoking gun into somebody's hand.