Episode Transcript
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0:00
Welcome to Monster DC Sniper,
0:02
a production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot
0:05
TV. The views and opinions expressed
0:07
in this podcast are solely those of the podcast
0:10
author or individuals participating
0:12
in the podcast, and do not represent those
0:14
of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or
0:16
their employees. Listener discretion
0:19
is advised. It
0:22
is February
0:24
six, two thousand and two,
0:27
and my niece is gone. This
0:29
is Ice and Nichols, the former accountant
0:32
for John and MILDRAA Mohammed. She
0:34
came home from grocery shopping one day
0:36
to find that her niece, Keenya
0:38
Cook, had been shot dead
0:40
in her kitchen. I just went
0:43
into a cold state.
0:45
I was just on auto pilot. My body
0:47
had just shut down. They
0:50
started roping off the house and I
0:52
saw where King's head had laid. The
0:54
bullet case it was still there, and I just saw
0:57
blood the back of her
0:59
head that just been blown out. Now
1:02
my house is a crime scene. We
1:05
go through burying Kenya
1:07
and our family is grieving. It's
1:10
a cold case, and we don't hear anything,
1:13
and we're trying to go on with our lives.
1:16
I'm no longer in the house at this point.
1:18
For several months. But
1:21
when I do move back into my home. But
1:23
we're trying to get back into
1:26
some sense of normality,
1:28
if there's such a thing. With my
1:30
husband and I, we were just going
1:33
through the motions and
1:37
one day I was at Bible study. This
1:40
is like the end of October. My
1:43
page is going off. It
1:46
was my husband. I go and
1:48
I returned. The colony says, what are you doing.
1:50
I said, I'm at Bible studies Thursday.
1:53
He said, have you looked at the TV?
1:55
I said, I just said I was at Bible study.
1:57
He said, no, no, no, no, no, you
2:00
need to go home. Meet me at
2:02
the house. And I'm like, what
2:04
what's going on? Need to just meet me at the house. I get
2:06
to the house and I turned on the TV
2:09
and we had been hearing about
2:12
these shootings on the East Coast.
2:15
We're hearing just shots of people
2:17
pumping gas. A child
2:20
was shot at school. We're
2:22
hearing about a woman getting shot in the head coming
2:24
out of home depot. I think she was an FBI
2:27
analyst. So where everybody's
2:29
like, whoa, this ain't it time to be traveling
2:31
to the East Coast. I actually
2:34
had clients who canceled flight plans
2:36
because this what's going on. We're
2:38
listening to all this news and stuff on the
2:40
West coast, and then I was sudden the
2:42
backyard of a duplex here in Tacoma,
2:45
carefully marked off in a grid
2:47
up pops a tree trump
2:50
at a former client's house for
2:52
almost nine hours, a deliberate
2:54
search by hand investigators sifting
2:57
through dirt, then sawing down a tree
2:59
stump and hurting it off evidence
3:01
believed to have been used for target practice,
3:04
possibly containing bullet fragments. There's
3:06
these helicopters flying
3:09
all over the Tacoma community.
3:12
There's FBI agency,
3:15
a t F Why
3:17
is the investigation coming to Washington?
3:20
The DC sniper? They are
3:22
actually saying it's linked
3:24
to Tacoma. At
3:26
that point, in my soul, in
3:29
my heart, in my mind, I
3:33
knew I was connected. I'm
3:35
on the couch and fetal position. The
3:38
next thing, you know, my husband comes home and
3:41
he said, that's what I was trying to tell you. It's John.
3:44
It's John. There
3:47
is a ruthless person on the loose.
3:49
What un nerves this community the most
3:51
is the randomness of the murders, ordinary
3:54
people doing ordinary things. They
3:57
killed the five people in one day, and
3:59
then when on the rampage for the next
4:01
month. It is quite a mystery. The
4:03
police say they have never had a crime quite
4:06
like this. Be careful, these guys
4:08
are using weapons that are going to go right straight
4:10
through our bulletproof vest.
4:15
From my Heart radio and Tenderfoot TV,
4:18
this is Monster DC Sniper.
4:25
October two two
4:28
it had been nearly three weeks since the DC
4:30
sniper attacks began. The
4:32
investigation had become the largest man
4:34
hunt in the nation's history, which
4:36
meant that expenses for every police
4:38
agency involved were skyrocketing.
4:41
Law enforcement had limited resources and
4:43
limited time to catch the killers, so
4:46
they had to act fast. Three
4:49
days had passed since Jeffrey Hopper became
4:52
the snipers twelve victim at a Ponderosa
4:54
Steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia. Since
4:57
that time, investigators had connected
4:59
the d Sea shootings to a liquor store robbery
5:02
in Montgomery, Alabama. There,
5:05
police found a fingerprint on an armor
5:07
like gun catalog. Federal
5:09
authorities ran that fingerprint through the database
5:12
of the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
5:14
or i n S, and they got
5:17
a match. The fingerprint
5:19
belonged to Lee Boyd Malvo. As
5:22
soon as we found out that his name was
5:24
referenced in an I n S file. We
5:26
had them pull the file so we could see what
5:28
was in it, and the other name that
5:30
came up in that file was actually
5:33
John Mohammed. This
5:36
is Linda Hooper. She was a supervisory
5:38
special agent for the FBI during the
5:40
sniper investigation. Hooper
5:42
immediately started to learn everything
5:44
she could about Malvo and Mohammed, and
5:48
in doing research on John
5:50
Mohammed, we found out that he had
5:52
been in the army. He certainly
5:54
knew weapons. The more
5:56
we dug into his background
5:58
and who he was, there was more and
6:01
more information on his
6:03
interest in weapons, his shooting
6:06
practice, shooting, target shooting, his
6:09
involvement with this young
6:11
boy, seventeen year old Malbow.
6:14
They weren't related, but Malvo
6:17
lived with him. He had a
6:19
very rough, to say the
6:21
least, early childhood and
6:23
not a good situation with his mother,
6:26
and he was kind of taken
6:28
in by John Mohammed. Much
6:31
of this information came from a man in Tacoma,
6:33
Washington named Robert Holmes. He
6:36
had called the Sniper Task Force with a tip
6:40
and he had said that he had had a friend that had left
6:42
the area that was a very
6:45
militant person, very upset
6:47
person. This is Michael
6:49
Myrick, a former lieutenant for the Montgomery,
6:51
Alabama Police. Myrick
6:54
says the tipster, Robert Holmes, was
6:56
a former friend of Mohammed's and
6:59
he had served in the Mill of Terry alongside
7:01
Mohammed. He described as just being
7:03
very unhappy with life. The guy
7:05
was very dangerous, and he said it
7:07
just bothers me that all this is happening. His
7:10
ex wife lives in the DC area,
7:13
and he said, uh. He left with an a R
7:15
fifteen Bushmaster rifle. He says, nothing
7:17
for nothing, But I'm just gonna let y'all know. Don't want
7:19
to sit on this information. And
7:22
he had a son named Lee. The
7:24
friend thought this was his son, at least step son, and
7:27
he said son was a very very good shot,
7:29
and they talked about snipers and they played
7:31
sniper games. I and
7:33
Nichols actually knew Robert Holmes,
7:35
the man in Tacoma who called in the tip about
7:37
John Mohammed, Well, John stayed
7:40
with him. He was a good friend John. They both were
7:42
in Fort Louis together in the military,
7:45
both of them former Army vets.
7:48
Holmes said that a few months before the shooting
7:50
started in d C. Mohammed stopped
7:53
by his house. He wanted to
7:55
test out a homemade silence or for a rifle,
7:58
and in order to see if it worked,
8:01
he had target practice in his backyard
8:03
in one of the trees. And
8:05
so that's why they were here getting the tree
8:08
trump and how the investigation
8:10
came here. The tip from Robert
8:13
Holmes effectively connected Washington
8:15
State to the DC sniper attacks. So
8:18
the Sniper task Force went to Tacoma.
8:21
They took the tree stump that Mohammed and Malbo
8:23
had supposedly used as target practice
8:25
for evidence. Following the bullet
8:27
trail, FBI agents are now focused
8:29
on this woodpilot in Olympia pieces of
8:31
potential evidence. The wood cut down
8:34
months ago from the backyard of this Tacoma
8:36
duplex. It's where John Alan Mohammed
8:38
once lived, and it's said to have used the tree
8:40
for target practice. Authorities
8:43
mapped a grid in the backyard and carefully
8:45
scammed for bullet fragments and shellcases,
8:47
then removed the stump from that tree sent
8:50
to the woodpile. NBC News
8:52
has learned evidence recovered here, including
8:54
the tree stump, has been analyzed that the
8:56
a t F lab in Maryland, and already
8:58
the evidence has been described just having quote
9:00
potential value. Again,
9:03
all this is happening not in days, it's
9:05
happening in hours. Now we had
9:07
a very very clear suspect to pursue
9:09
my name. Police
9:11
had quickly learned a lot about the pair, but
9:14
they weren't ready yet to name them the snipers.
9:17
Still, it fell to investigators
9:20
like they were finally zeroing in on their
9:22
targets. Meanwhile, I
9:25
said, Nichols was getting some answers about
9:27
the murder of her niece Keenya Cook.
9:31
Next thing I know, I get a knock at the door. It's the FBI
9:33
agent. Well, he confirms that
9:36
Lee and John were
9:38
in Tacoma during the time my niece
9:40
was murdered. And that's all I needed
9:42
to hear. That said to me
9:45
that they killed my niece. She
9:48
took a bullet mit for me. Nobody knew she was
9:50
leaving with me. She opens
9:52
the door and he lodges off his
9:55
weapon. I didn't realize
9:58
how he the caame
10:01
this diabolical evil
10:04
person. But Mohammed
10:07
and Malvo weren't done yet. While
10:09
the task force was making the connection to Washington
10:12
State, Mohammed and Malvo were
10:14
in Montgomery County, Maryland, and
10:17
they were planning their next attack. October
10:39
two. Aspen
10:41
Hill, Maryland. In Montgomery County,
10:44
it's early in the morning, so early
10:46
that it's still dark out. In
10:49
a dense wooded area, someone
10:51
is walking up a hill. They're
10:53
carrying a duffel bag with a sniper
10:56
rifle inside. Once
10:58
they reached the edge of the wood area, they
11:01
stopped at the opening.
11:04
They see an empty playground with rusty
11:06
slides, still swings and
11:09
old park benches, and
11:11
on the other side of the playground sits an
11:13
idle bus. Inside
11:16
the bus driver is waiting to start his morning
11:18
route. The person
11:21
in the woods crouches. They
11:23
pull a paper note out of the duffel bag
11:25
and attach it to a nearby tree branch. Then
11:30
they go back to the duffel bag and
11:32
pull out the sniper rifle. They
11:34
get low to the ground and lay flat
11:37
on their stomach. They set
11:39
up the rifle on the cold, leafy floor
11:43
and set their aim towards the driver
11:45
of the bus. So
11:50
now we get to the morning of October,
11:53
which is day number in
11:57
the morning, this has retired
11:59
Maryland State at least Lieutenant David Reichenball.
12:02
He says that a Jamaican American bus driver
12:04
named Conrad Johnson was training a
12:06
new female driver. Johnson
12:09
was standing up just inside the entrance
12:11
of the bus, on the other side
12:13
of the meter where riders pay. He
12:15
was talking to the trainee and getting
12:17
ready to start his day. As he was
12:19
prepping his bus, he was shot
12:22
and killed. The
12:25
shot came from a wooded
12:27
area. This bus
12:29
stop shooting would be the thirteenth
12:32
attacks since October two. I
12:34
visited the spot and was joined by Nick
12:36
to Carlo, a retired Montgomery
12:38
County detective sergeant who responded
12:41
to the shooting that morning. I
12:43
learned from officers on the scene what
12:46
happened, who the victim is, and
12:48
where he's been transported. And we
12:50
have one witness. I have one of my investigators
12:53
take a statement from that witness that would
12:55
have been the woman, the trainee
12:57
who was on the bus with Conrad Onto
13:00
One of the keys at this point in time
13:03
in the task force was the
13:05
as you know, the involvement of federal agencies,
13:08
one of those agencies being the a t F. Once
13:11
we had a t F come on the scene, they
13:13
used their laser technology
13:16
to give us a trajectory show
13:18
us exactly where the shot came from.
13:21
That led us to the edge of the woods. Here I
13:24
orchestrated and conducted a line search
13:26
of probably about twenty to thirty
13:29
officers agents along this wood
13:31
line, and so
13:33
we went I'm gonna say
13:36
thirty yards into the woods,
13:39
where we found a note stuck
13:42
on a tree limb, and we also found a discarded
13:44
duffel bag, which would
13:46
have been useful in carrying
13:49
a long gun. To Carlo
13:51
remembers that this shooting felt like coming
13:54
full circle. The bus
13:56
stop was only a mile down the road from
13:58
the very first shooting where James
14:00
Martin was killed at the Shopper's food warehouse.
14:04
De Carlo had also been on that scene
14:06
three weeks prior. He says,
14:08
police had learned a lot of lessons between
14:10
then and now. A homicide
14:12
involving a rifle in the outdoors
14:15
very unusual, But when
14:17
you use a high powered weapon like that, your
14:20
crime scene has to expand. If you
14:22
know that's what you're dealing with, the scope of
14:24
your crime scene grows immensely
14:27
now that we knew what we were dealing with. Fast
14:30
forward to Mr Johnson
14:32
and this scene. We knew we were
14:34
dealing with a large area that had to
14:36
be closed off in a number
14:38
of different directions, and a lot
14:41
further than you typically would do at a homicide.
14:47
By the time they had finished searching the scene,
14:50
they had found a duffel bag, a single
14:52
glove, and another note attached
14:55
to a treat in the woods. Here's
14:57
David reichenba again again
15:00
a notice found. This time it's an angry
15:02
note for you, Mr Police,
15:05
call me God, do not release
15:07
to the press. You did not
15:10
respond to the message. You departed
15:12
from what we told you to say, and
15:14
you departed from the time. Your
15:16
incompetence has cost you another life.
15:19
You haven't toiled nine am to deliver the
15:21
money and until eight a m. To
15:23
deliver this response to let us know
15:25
that you have our demands. Quote,
15:28
we have caught the sniper like a duck
15:31
in a noose. The same
15:33
red sticky stars on top of the note
15:36
claiming that you know we we screwed
15:38
him over and we weren't
15:40
talking to them, and the
15:42
body counts from then on was on us,
15:45
not on them. The notes
15:47
had new deadlines for a phone call
15:49
and for money, but by the time police
15:51
had secured and read the note, they'd
15:54
missed the deadline. The note also
15:56
told police to send a false message
15:58
to the public that police had caught
16:01
the snipers like a duck in a
16:03
noose. That's where the
16:05
media comes back in, because now we send
16:08
Chief Moose back out giving
16:10
them some phrases that they put
16:12
on the note so that they know we were serious.
16:15
One of the phrases that the chief used, and
16:17
I'm sure the media was maybe
16:20
a little astonished by it, was you
16:23
asked us to say, quote, we
16:25
have called the sniper like a
16:27
duck in a noose. End quote. We
16:30
understand that hearing us say this is
16:32
important to you. However, we
16:35
want you to know how difficult it has been
16:37
to understand what you want because
16:40
you have chosen to use only notes, indirect
16:43
messages, and calls to other
16:45
jurisdictions. The solution remains
16:48
to call us and get a private toll
16:50
free number established just for you.
16:53
If you are reluctant to contact us, be
16:55
assured that we main ready to talk directly
16:58
with you. Our word is
17:01
out bind let's talk directly.
17:04
We're waiting for you to contact us, sort
17:08
of giving them Okay, now we
17:10
give we know you're in charge. We're
17:12
gonna do whatever it is you want
17:14
us to do, but we need you to call
17:17
us, so reach out to us.
17:19
We'll make it work. Basically,
17:22
what the chief was trying to do was
17:24
bide some more time for
17:27
us to track these guys down
17:29
because the chief knew that, you know, all
17:31
the leadership knew that we were starting to focus. We
17:33
now knew their names, so we were
17:35
trying to communicate through the
17:37
media back to the snipers to have them reach
17:40
out to us. That was a role
17:42
that the news media willingly but cautiously
17:44
took on. Here's Channel nine
17:47
reporter Dave Stanner, A lot
17:49
of information was being transmitted through
17:51
the news media. We didn't know if
17:53
the snipers were paying attention to us
17:56
in the news, but it was clear that
17:58
we were getting information out there that could
18:00
be going to the snipers specifically. We
18:03
knew we had a responsibility to be as accurate
18:05
as we can be, as we always are. But
18:07
Statter says local journalists don't want
18:09
to just regurgitate what police were
18:12
telling them. He says, sometimes police
18:14
have an agenda and they put out false
18:16
information as a means to an end, and
18:19
so the media has to be careful if
18:21
they were to broadcast false information
18:24
it would blow back on them and
18:26
not law enforcement. When you are the
18:28
news media and you're a reporter, you
18:30
don't want to become the news and that's for sure.
18:34
Still Channel nine and other
18:36
local stations aired nearly every
18:39
press conference by Montgomery County
18:41
Police. In another press
18:43
conference that day on October, Chief
18:46
Moose revealed the contents of the previous
18:49
letter found up the ponder Rosa steakhouse
18:51
shooting in Ashlyn, Virginia. There
18:54
continues to be a great deal of speculation
18:56
as to a reference a threat
18:59
in the usage previously received.
19:02
As stated earlier, everyone knows that
19:04
all of our citizens are and have been
19:07
at risk. We recognize
19:09
the concerns of the community, and therefore
19:13
are going to provide the exact language in
19:15
the message that pertains to the
19:17
threat. Your children
19:20
are not safe anywhere at
19:22
any time. My
19:24
impression of why Charles Moose went out with that
19:26
information was one he likely
19:29
knew it was going to leak out to the press, and in fact
19:31
it already had started leaking out to the
19:33
press, including me. Also,
19:35
they knew if there's a specific threat to children,
19:38
and they didn't let the public know there's a specific
19:40
threat to children, that this could
19:42
be a problem for them down the road. Chief
19:45
Moose also indirectly referenced
19:47
the demand from the ponderous a letter that
19:49
money be deposited into a credit card
19:51
the snipers were supposedly carrying. The
19:54
sniper's request for ten million dollars
19:56
had not been made public, but Statter
19:59
says it had leaked to the media. It
20:01
seemed bizarre to us as reporters.
20:04
Suddenly there's a request for a
20:06
large amount of money, ten million dollars,
20:09
and we can't make sense of it.
20:12
We know that to get that money, you're going
20:14
to have to somehow show yourself clearly
20:17
you don't want to be caught from what you're doing. Now,
20:20
all of it's not making a lot of sense to us.
20:23
What's the motive behind this? Was
20:25
it really money? But police
20:27
we didn't know at the time. We're actually
20:29
getting a little bit closer and what this
20:31
was about. The
20:34
media didn't know it yet, but police
20:36
had made significant progress on tracking
20:38
down the snipers, now believed
20:40
to be John Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malbo.
20:43
Here's former FBI agent Linda Hooper.
20:45
Again, it certainly looked like
20:48
they were two viable suspects
20:51
in this case. But we
20:53
had no information that they
20:55
were in Maryland, Virginia, or
20:57
Washington, DC area at all. What
21:00
they did is they were
21:02
looking for that name, John Mohammed.
21:05
Had that name ever been
21:07
queried by any law enforcement
21:10
in our area? And
21:12
it's called an offline search. And
21:14
based on that offline search, they
21:17
got information that in Silver
21:19
Spring, Maryland, day queried
21:22
John Mohammed October
21:41
two, early in
21:43
the morning, U. S. Marshall Billy
21:45
Serrucas asked the FBI to
21:47
find out if John Mohammed where Lee
21:49
Boyd Malvo had any interactions
21:52
with law enforcement in the DC area.
21:55
So the FBI went to n c i C, the
21:57
National Crime and Information Center in
22:00
c i C has one of the most extensive
22:02
crime related databases in the country.
22:05
Police use this database to get information
22:07
on a driver when they run a tag, that
22:10
information comes back, who the owner
22:12
of the car is, information
22:14
on that person in criminal history, that sort
22:16
of thing. We didn't have any of that. This
22:19
is former FBI agent Linda Hooper.
22:22
She says that because they didn't have a tag
22:24
number to run, and they couldn't access
22:26
Mohammed's vehicle history, but
22:28
they could do an offline search or
22:31
reverse in c I S to see
22:33
if John Mohammed's name had come up in
22:35
any local police reports, and
22:37
they're able to get information
22:41
that you couldn't get through
22:43
running it through your dispatcher. As
22:46
a result of the offline search, the
22:48
FBI discovered that John Mohammed
22:50
had been pulled over in Silver Spring, Maryland,
22:53
as well as in multiple other nearby
22:55
locations in the last month. Here's
22:58
retired Montgomery County pol He's commander Drew
23:00
Tracy, and one of the most
23:02
important traffic stops was in Baltimore,
23:04
Maryland, where John Mohammed
23:07
was stopped by a patrol officer and
23:10
he ran him and I find very correctly.
23:12
John Mohammed was saying, oh, he's out visiting
23:15
relatives and he was tired. He was sleeping
23:17
at the gas station. From that traffic
23:20
stop, we got information. Police
23:23
learned that John Mohammed had been pulled
23:25
over on October eight in Baltimore,
23:28
Maryland. Shortly after the
23:30
officers stopped John Mohammed, he
23:32
cued his dispatch microphone. Over
23:35
the radio, he announced the make and
23:37
model of the car, as well as
23:39
the license plate number. But
23:41
the recording of that dispatch call was
23:44
hidden. An hour's worth of tape Deputy
23:47
Marshall's listened to more than five hours of
23:49
police radio call tapes before they heard
23:51
the transmission. They were searching for an
23:53
officer reading off the license and description
23:56
of the car. Well,
23:58
the information that came back was this was
24:00
driving this blue Chevrolet Caprices
24:02
with new Jersey tags, and
24:05
they provided the tag number for it. The
24:10
snipers were driving a blue Chevrolet
24:13
Caprice with new Jersey
24:15
tags. Chevy Caprices
24:17
are long, boxy cars with big
24:19
trunks, and they were used by many
24:22
law enforcement agencies in the ninety nineties
24:24
as police cars. David
24:26
Reichenball says that even though the Caprice
24:29
was stopped multiple times during the sniper
24:31
investigation, police had no
24:33
reason to suspect that it was
24:35
involved in the shootings. There
24:37
were no warrants, no reason to stop the
24:39
vehicle, and after all, we're
24:42
all looking for white vans and white trucks.
24:44
We had stopped every white van in
24:46
three states at least three times. They're
24:49
not in a white van. Police
24:51
had spotted them either before or after
24:53
the shootings and just didn't
24:56
make the connection because we were so focused
24:59
on the white vans and the white trucks.
25:01
But by October law
25:04
enforcement had the snipers names, their
25:06
car, and their license plate number,
25:09
and although they couldn't directly connect Mohammed
25:11
to the crimes, they were able to secure
25:14
a warrant for his arrest. That
25:16
day was really spent putting everything
25:18
that we had together. By about
25:20
nine thirty ten o'clock at night, we
25:22
had it. We knew who we were looking
25:24
for, we knew what they were in. We
25:27
just didn't know where to find
25:29
them. So the next move was to
25:31
inform everyone involved in the investigation.
25:35
Here's former FBI agent Linda Hooper.
25:37
Again. They put a bolo
25:39
out beyond the lookout to
25:41
tell all law enforcements, and
25:43
not just in Maryland and Virginia,
25:46
but to tell all law enforcements. If
25:48
you see this blue Chevy Caprice with
25:50
these new jersey tags, you need
25:53
to pull it over and identify
25:55
it. There's a John Mohammed driving it,
25:57
and then there's an arrest forrant warm
26:01
so that it goes out so
26:03
everybody knows, and then like
26:05
at every briefing at every police department,
26:08
particularly in the area, okay,
26:10
this is what we're looking for. Tonight. As
26:13
I recall, we had over twenty three police agencies
26:16
involved the nets, local, state, county,
26:19
federal We had at
26:21
the height over a thousand
26:24
police officers working this
26:26
case. It was around the
26:28
clock because we knew
26:31
these people were going to continue to kill
26:33
people until they were
26:35
stopped. The cooperation
26:38
among the agencies were unprecedented.
26:42
I had FBI officials
26:44
working for me as a state trooper,
26:46
I had county folks working for me. I
26:49
had my troopers taking orders from FBI.
26:52
It didn't matter. It was a
26:54
joint effort in every
26:56
true sense of the word. Then
27:00
the egos start to click in a little bit
27:02
and there became a bonut contention. When
27:05
do we release the information about
27:07
the caprice to the media.
27:10
There's a lot of reasons pro and
27:12
con pro. Obviously,
27:15
hey, we've got the eyes of the public out
27:17
there helping us find this blue caprice.
27:20
That's obvious. Public has a right
27:22
to know now this is what we're looking for.
27:24
Help us find them. The downside
27:27
of it was, Hey, the snipers
27:29
don't know that we've got them yet. They
27:31
don't know that we have them pinpointed. So
27:34
if we keep it secret, we've got a chance to
27:36
maybe gain that element of surprise. That
27:39
was a tough decision to make, right
27:41
and Ball says he wanted to release the information
27:44
before anyone else got hurt. In
27:46
his mind, the sooner the info went
27:48
out, the sooner they would find and catch
27:50
the killers. But not everyone
27:52
agreed, including the federal authorities.
27:56
At a task force meeting that night, righting
27:58
Ball says, all the different agencies
28:00
were arguing about what to do. So
28:03
he stepped out of the meeting to call Dave Mitchell,
28:06
Superintendent of the Maryland's State Police. Briefed
28:09
him on what we had and he very quickly
28:11
made the decision for me. We
28:13
don't care about anybody else. We're releasing
28:15
it. We're releasing it to the
28:18
media. We need to find
28:21
these guys, and we need to do it now.
28:23
And I said, Colonel, I'm going to be in trouble
28:26
when I go in here and tell these guys
28:28
that they're all Feds. He said,
28:30
well, you tell them it's from the order
28:32
of the governor that trumps them.
28:34
We're doing it. Get from flyers,
28:37
and in his words, get the hell out of there. I
28:40
said, yes, sir. The
28:45
license plate info went out to the media
28:48
and news outlets. We're getting ready to make it
28:50
public. Here's Channel Night reporter
28:53
Dave Stanner. They're making
28:55
the connection, and one of our
28:57
reporters, the same reporter who came
28:59
up with the Carrol card, Stacy Cohen, is
29:01
the first to find this information out for us
29:04
at Channel nine. She's got
29:06
sources telling her that they're getting
29:08
close, that they have names, and that
29:10
they have a vehicle that they're looking for. So
29:13
we knew that they had very specific information
29:15
that would soon come out, and it did come out that
29:17
they were looking for two people and they
29:19
were looking for a vehicle, this blue
29:21
Chevrolet Caprice. I
29:24
was actually in a restaurant at that point
29:26
eating dinner when this started to break, and I'm
29:28
talking to Stacy on the phone and seeing
29:30
Fox News on the TV. Brian wilson't
29:33
start to break the information. I called
29:35
our assignment desk. I said, you know, there's
29:37
a lot of specific information out here. I think
29:39
this is going to break tonight. Just my gut.
29:41
I'll work overnight and see if
29:43
it turns up anything in the Washington area. Meanwhile,
29:47
Statter says they had other leads to follow
29:49
up on. One of the places we
29:51
went to around midnight was Clinton,
29:54
Maryland. We had learned that
29:56
these shooters had a connection, or at least
29:58
one shooter, John Maha mommed to
30:01
his ex wife who lived in Clinton, Maryland, a
30:03
woman I believe her name was Mildred Well.
30:05
When we were investigating John Mohammed,
30:08
we discovered that he was divorced
30:11
and his wife, Mildred Mohammed,
30:14
was living in the area, and
30:16
that she had a restraining order against
30:18
him. They had three children. Mildred's
30:20
restraining order against John meant
30:23
that he couldn't carry firearms. So
30:25
once police received the tip from Robert
30:27
Holmes that Mohammed was carrying
30:29
a rifle, police could arrest
30:32
him and they could detain Melvo
30:34
as a material witness. When
30:36
I found out that she was living nearby
30:39
where these shootings had taken place,
30:42
I thought that we needed to go over and
30:44
interview her and offer
30:47
to move her and her children out
30:49
of their house. October
30:54
FBI and E. T.
30:57
F knock on my door and
30:59
they say, is Mildre Mohammed here?
31:02
Na? She not here? I
31:06
was scared. I didn't know what they want. Say,
31:08
Na, she not here? I said, what,
31:10
we really need to talk to her because we
31:13
need to ask her some questions. I
31:16
said, Okay, that's me. So
31:19
when was the last time you've
31:22
seen John Alan Mohammed,
31:25
and my palms began sweating. I
31:27
said, why are you asking me questions about
31:30
John? They said, well, we
31:33
just want to know when's the last time you've seen him.
31:36
I said September two
31:38
thousand one at any emergency
31:40
custody hearing in Tacoma, Washington.
31:44
And he says, we're gonna name
31:46
your ex husband as the
31:48
sniper. I said, what
31:51
John. My head hit the table.
31:54
They said yes, but but do you think
31:56
he would do something like this? I raised my head
31:59
and looked in the warner of the room and said,
32:01
well yeah.
32:05
They said, well, why would you think that?
32:08
I said, because we were watching a movie and
32:11
I don't remember the name of it. But he said,
32:14
I could take a small city terrorize
32:17
it. They would think it would be a
32:19
group of people and it would only be
32:21
me. I asked him,
32:23
while he do something like that? And he changed
32:25
the subject so
32:28
well, Ms Mohammed, would
32:30
you like to go into protective custody?
32:32
I said, you gotta ask me that. Well,
32:35
yes, ma'am, because some people don't want to go. I said,
32:37
okay, have you caught him yet, no,
32:40
ma'am. Do you know where he is? No,
32:43
ma'am, And you still have
32:45
to ask me. She accepted
32:48
our offer. We moved her
32:50
and her children to a hotel. We
32:53
get out of the house into
32:56
the car, drive
32:58
away in the media,
33:01
A convoy is
33:04
coming up. They
33:06
perched themselves around the house.
33:09
My neighbor said that you would have thought it
33:11
was daylight. They
33:13
took us to a hotel where I still don't
33:16
know where it is. We run
33:18
at their hotel room and an undercover capacity,
33:20
so her name was an associated with it
33:22
at all. And we just kept
33:24
her there and told us was over. And
33:29
I turned on the TV. And that was the first time
33:31
they showed John's picture on TV.
33:35
And I went up to the TV and put my hand
33:37
on it and say, what happened to you? My
33:41
son crying on one bed, my daughters
33:43
crying on the other. I
33:45
pulled them together. They cried themselves
33:48
to sleep. I got a pillow,
33:51
went in the bathroom, turned
33:53
on the water in the bathtub, sat
33:56
on the floor and screamed
33:58
in the pillow because
34:00
I didn't know what to do and
34:03
I didn't know who to call back.
34:08
At Mildry Mohammed's house in Clinton, Maryland,
34:11
reporter Dave Statter was part of the media
34:13
convoy that had showed up that night. We
34:16
pulled way back when we saw police were already
34:18
in the area, and police
34:20
were there to see if John Mohammed showed
34:22
up. Different news outlets broadcasted
34:25
the blue Caprice info at various
34:27
points throughout the night, and now
34:29
that the license plate had gone public, police
34:32
hoped that someone would spot the car and
34:35
call it a tip. While we were
34:37
down there in the Clinton area,
34:39
we got a call from a
34:41
photographer who worked at a TV station
34:43
in Baltimore, Maryland, who was heading home and
34:46
said, police have I seventy
34:48
shut down in Frederick
34:50
County, Maryland, and he believes
34:53
it's connected to the sniper shootings. Frederick
34:56
County is just northwest of Montgomery
34:58
County and Washington, d C. It's
35:00
where Maryland State Police Lieutenant David
35:02
Reichenba lived and he
35:04
was heading home that night. I guess
35:06
it was probably eleven thirty. I
35:08
switched over to UH Frederick Barrick
35:11
channel and I called the bar because I'm required,
35:14
and I said car six six to Frederick, be
35:16
advised, I'm in the area. The
35:18
duty sergeant, Sergeant Hunter Mark comes
35:20
on and says copy that six six two.
35:23
Can you go to secure channel one and
35:25
I knew something was up. I
35:28
switched over to Channel one and I
35:30
got on the radio and start
35:32
says, be advised, we've
35:35
got the broadcast out there. We just
35:37
heard it on the local AM radio station
35:39
five minutes ago. And I just
35:42
got a phone call. The nice
35:45
blue caprix that you're looking
35:47
for sitting at the rest area
35:50
dropped seventy web bound South
35:53
Mountain. They're in Frederick.
35:56
The snipers are in the rest area Myers
35:59
and next
36:03
time on Monster d C Sniper.
36:06
They had surprised for twenty
36:09
one days. Now we
36:11
had surprise. I
36:14
wasn't anticipating this ending well. Once
36:17
they realized they were cornered, I
36:19
knew we were in for a shootout. I just
36:22
knew it. I'm in the woodline, I'm listening.
36:24
I'm praying that there's no shots fired. My
36:27
heart's running a mile a minute, and I hear
36:29
the breaking of windows. I
36:32
remember feeling this immense relief and
36:34
then just disbelief when the
36:36
information came out that it was an older guy and
36:38
a young guy. Like a young guy, A
36:41
young guy did this? Why
36:43
this kid just looked at me with that
36:46
dead shark guy look the pal I'd
36:48
kill you and everybody here if I had the chance.
36:54
No, I don't way. When
36:56
the snipers starting at randomly shooting
36:58
people, nobody's said, oh, you know, this
37:00
could be related to what happened to Paul. Nobody.
37:03
Nobody had reason to think that until
37:06
they found my computer. Monster
37:13
DC Sniper is a fifteen episode
37:15
podcast hosted by Tony Harris
37:18
and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot
37:20
TV. Matt Frederick and Alex
37:22
Williams are executive producers on behalf
37:24
of I Heart Radio, alongside producers
37:27
Trevor Young, ben Kiebrick, and Josh
37:29
Thine. Payne Lindsay and Donald
37:31
Albright are executive producers on behalf
37:33
of Tenderfoot TV alongside
37:36
producers Meredith Steadman and Christina
37:38
Dana. Original music
37:40
is by Makeup and Vanity Set. If
37:43
you haven't already, be sure to check out the
37:45
first two seasons at Lanta Monster and
37:47
Monster the Zodiac Killer. If
37:49
you have questions or comments, email us
37:52
at Monster at i heeart Media dot
37:54
com, or you can call us at
37:56
one eight three three to eight
37:58
five six six six seven. Thanks
38:02
for listening. H
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