D.C. Sniper

On October 2, 2002, at approximately 5:20 p.m., the window of a Michaels craft store in Aspen Hill, Maryland, was shattered by a single bullet. This bullet continued through the store, barely missing the cashier on duty and embedding into a rear wall of the store. Less than 1 hour after this incident, a 55-year-old man was shot and killed while walking across a parking lot in Wheaton, Maryland. Although these shootings were initially perceived to be separate and random, law enforcement authorities later recognized these two acts of violence as the first among 13 linked shootings that took place over the next 23 days in what was ultimately known as the D.C. Sniper case. This shooting spree was one of the largest multijurisdictional criminal cases in the history of the United States, spanning Montgomery County, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and as far south as Ashland, Virginia. More than 30 different law enforcement agencies on the local, state, and federal levels worked together to track, identify, and capture the parties responsible for the attacks across the D.C. region. In 2003, two African [Page 180]American males, John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, were convicted of murder and weapons charges in connection with the shootings. This entry reviews the sequence of shootings, the criminal investigation, and the outcome in the case.

By the end of the day on October 3, five more victims had been shot and killed in the D.C. metro area, and law enforcement agencies across the region had created a task force to combat the parties responsible for the seven shootings that had occurred. Witnesses of one shooting on the second day reported seeing a white box truck close to the crime scene. Witnesses at another shooting on the same day reported seeing a dark Chevrolet Caprice in the vicinity at the time of the crime. On the third day, the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) reported that ballistics tests indicated that bullets from several of the first seven shootings were fired from the same weapon—most likely some type of hunting rifle. On the morning of the sixth day, a 13-year-old was shot and injured in front of his middle school in Bowie, Prince Georges County, Maryland. The shooters left a tarot card with a note to law enforcement written on it. No demands were contained in this note; however, witnesses reported seeing a white van parked outside the school around the time of this shooting. By the 10th day of the investigation, there had been 11 shootings.

Other than the conflicting reports of a white van, a white box truck, and a dark Chevrolet Caprice near the scenes of earlier incidents, police had no leads on the identity of the parties responsible for this string of shootings. Law enforcement profilers assisting in the investigation predicted that the snipers were most likely Caucasian males with a rural background. On October 9 and October 11 two males were killed while pumping gas in Virginia. In another incident in Virginia, a female loading her vehicle outside of a Home Depot was killed on October 14.

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