The DC Sniper Case Final Report

The Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Eleven people were killed and three others critically injured in various locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia.

It was widely speculated that a single sniper was using the Capital Beltway for travel, possibly in a white van or truck. It was later learned that the rampage was perpetrated by one man, John Allen Muhammad and one minor Lee Boyd Malvo, driving a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan, and had apparently begun the month before with murders and robbery in Louisiana and Alabama, which had resulted in three deaths.

Snipers

Authorities initially attributed the attacks to a lone sniper, dubbed by journalists the "Beltway Sniper," the "D.C. Sniper," the "Washington Sniper," the "Serial Sniper" or the "Tarot Card Killer."

After their capture, there was much confusion about the names of the two males. The older of the pair, born John Allen Williams (age 41 at the time of capture), had joined the Black nationalist organization the Nation of Islam some years earlier, and in October 2001 had changed his name to John Allen Muhammad. The younger male was born Lee Boyd Malvo, but also calls himself John Lee Malvo and had posed as Muhammad's son (17 years old at the time of his arrest).

The two males practiced shooting at a tree stump in the backyard of the 3300 block of South Proctor Street in Tacoma, Washington State, according to investigators, and studied the film Savior, produced by Oliver Stone.

Preliminary shootings

On September 5, 2002, at 10:30 pm, Paul LaRuffa, a 55-year-old pizzeria owner, was shot six times at close range while locking up his Italian restaurant in Clinton, Maryland. LaRuffa survived the shooting and his laptop computer was found in John Muhammad's car when he and Malvo were arrested.

On September 21, 2002, an unidentified liquor store clerk in Montgomery, Alabama, was shot and killed during a robbery. Her co-worker, Kellie Adams, was injured, but survived. Evidence found at the crime scene eventually tied this killing to the Beltway attacks and allowed authorities to identify Muhammad and Malvo as suspects, although this connection was not made until October 17.

Beltway Sniper attacks

Montgomery County, Maryland

The main shootings associated with the Beltway Sniper incident began on October 2, 2002, with one victim killed that evening in Glenmont, Maryland. Four more victims were killed the next morning, and a sixth killed in the evening on October 3, 2002. All shootings happened within a few miles of each other. The killing spree increased the murder rate in this normally-safe area by 25% within a span of 20 hours.

At 5:20pm, a shot was fired through a window of a Michaels Craft Store in Aspen Hill. As no one was injured, no serious alarms were raised. About an hour later, at 6:30pm, James Martin, a 55-year-old program analyst at NOAA, was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Shoppers Food Warehouse grocery store, located in Glenmont.

On the morning of October 3, four people were shot within a span of approximately 2 hours in Aspen Hill, and other nearby areas in Montgomery County. Another was killed that evening in the District of Columbia, just over the border from Silver Spring.

• At 7:41am, James L. Buchanan, a 39-year-old landscaper known as "Sonny", was shot dead in Montgomery County near Rockville, Maryland. Buchanan was shot while mowing the grass at the Fitzgerald Auto Mall.
• At 8:12am, 54-year-old part-time taxi driver Premkumar Walekar was killed in Aspen Hill in Montgomery County, while pumping gasoline into his taxi at a Mobil station at Aspen Hill Road and Connecticut Avenue.
• Sarah Ramos, a 34-year-old babysitter and housekeeper, was killed at 8:37am at the Leisure World Shopping Center in Aspen Hill. She had gotten off a bus, and was seated on a bench, reading a book.
• At 9:58am, in what was to be the last killing of the morning, 25-year-old Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera was killed while vacuuming her Dodge Caravan at the Shell station at the intersection of Connecticut & Knowles Avenues in Kensington, Maryland.
• The snipers then waited until 9:15pm before shooting Pascal Charlot, a 72-year-old retired carpenter, while he was walking on Georgia Avenue at Kalmia Road, in Washington, D.C. Charlot died less than an hour later.

In each shooting, the victims were killed by a single bullet fired from some distance. The pattern was not detected until after the shootings occurred on October 3.

Fear quickly spread throughout the community as news of the shootings spread. Many parents went to pick up their children at school early, not allowing them to take a school bus or walk home alone. Montgomery County Public Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools, and private schools went into a lockdown, with no recess or outdoor gym classes. Other school districts in the area also took precautionary measures, keeping students indoors.