Sniper suspect linked to Alabama murder

5.30pm

One of the two men arrested following a series of sniper attacks that terrorised the Washington DC area for three weeks was a suspect in another murder.

The 17-year-old was being sought in connection with an attempted holdup in Alabama last month during which two women were shot, one of them fatally.

Police arrested both suspects, 17-year-old John Lee Malvo and 41-year-old John Allan Muhammad, after they were found sleeping in a car at a highway rest stop in rural Maryland, near Washington DC, yesterday.

Police say a semi-automatic rifle found in the car is the weapon used in the sniper shootings.

"The weapon seized from the vehicle occupied by Muhammad has been forensically determined to be the murder weapon involved in the shootings," Michael Bouchard of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said at a news conference today.

The Associated Press quoted anonymous police sources as saying they had found a scope and tripod in the car. The sources also said a shooter would have been able to lie in the car's boot and fire through an opening without being seen - something that would explain the absence of spent shell casings at most of the murder scenes.

A phone call last week to a public information officer in Montgomery County, Maryland, where most of the shootings occured, helped police track the suspects.

The caller, believed to be the sniper, referred to a murder-homicide in "Montgomery".

The next day a phone call to a priest also mentioned a crime in Montgomery, but this time the caller specified that it was Montgomery, Alabama - not Montgomery County, Maryland.

Malvo was a suspect in the Alabama murder, and investigators traced him to Tacoma, Washington, on the US West Coast, where he was reported to have been living with Muhammad.

Police raided a property in Tacoma yesterday, carting away a tree stump which may have been used for target practice.

They also issued a news release asking for reports of a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, the car that was later spotted by a truck driver at the Maryland highway rest stop.

Police Chief John Wilson of Montgomery, Alabama, said there were "very good similarities" between a police sketch of Malvo and the suspect in the killing in his city, but added that the bullet used in Alabama was not the same .223 ammunition as was used in the sniper spree.

At least one fingerprint collected at the scene of the robbery and homicide outside the liquor store in Alabama, was linked to Malvo.

"It appears that these people that have been taken into custody are not acting with any group or with any organised group of people. It appears that they have acted on their own," said Bellingham police chief Randy Carroll. Bellingham is about 130km north of Tacoma.

In an interview with local television, a former friend who met the two men while working out at a YMCA said they had talked about the decline of America and plans to kill police.

"They showed me the blueprint of silencer and silencer itself. Then that made me really concerned that they are up to something no good, they are serous what they are saying," said Harjeet Singh in Bellingham.

Felix Strozier, who told local media he opened a karate school in Tacoma, Washington, with Muhammad that closed after Muhammad failed to pay back money he owed, described him as a proud, clean-living man who grew bitter for some reason.

"There's something that happened in John's life that has created this, because this is totally out of character for him," Strozier told KING television.

An FBI report last June called Washington state a prime target for terrorist attacks, citing understaffed police forces and the presence of Islamic extremists.

Seattle native and converted Muslim James Ujaama was indicted in August on charges he tried to set up a camp in rural Oregon to train recruits for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for the September 11 attacks on America.

Earlier this month in Portland, Oregon, six residents, including converted Muslims and a former US Army Reservist, were indicted on charges of attempting to travel to Afghanistan to join al Qaeda.

Officials said Muhammad and Malvo were chief suspects in the case but so far Muhammad, a Gulf War veteran and expert marksman with four children, was only charged with gun possession and violating a restraining order filed by one of his two ex-wives.

The charges filed against Malvo, an alleged illegal immigrant from Jamaica, were not disclosed.

Malvo lived with Muhammad in a Bellingham, Washington homeless shelter until last December.

At Bellingham's Lighthouse Mission, a Christian shelter where Muhammad stayed between August 2001 and January 2002, he was remembered as a respectful man who claimed to travel often, but never had money.

"I always thought, this guy has no visible means of support, but he's flying to Jamaica, he's flying to DC, to Louisiana. That's one of the nagging suspicions I had in the back of my head," said Rory Reublin, a Lighthouse staff member.

Reublin said Muhammad never demonstrated any hatred except when discussing talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who Muhammad said would be "the downfall of mankind."

In a March 2000 court filing, Muhammad's ex-wife Mildred Williams said she was afraid he would kill her and that he had threatened to "destroy my life" because she kept his children from him.

Malvo and his mother were in the country illegally, having been smuggled into Florida from Haiti after leaving their home in Jamaica, Immigration and Naturalisation Service officials said. After posting US$1500 ($3124) bond, the two were scheduled for an immigration hearing next month, according to the INS.

Although formal charges in connection with the shootings were not filed against either suspect, both appeared in federal court in Baltimore late in the day.

The 17-year-old's hearing was closed because he is a juvenile, but Muhammad appeared in court in a typical dark green prison uniform and answered clearly when asked by US Magistrate Beth Gesner if he knew why he was there.

"I know where I'm at," the former Army marksman said. "I know why I'm here."

Muhammad faced a federal gun violation charge -- possession of a firearm in violation of a restraining order -- and will remain in jail until at least next Tuesday when an additional hearing was set.

The Maryland state's attorney for Montgomery County, where six of the victims were killed, and the US attorney for Maryland were set to meet on Friday to discuss the filing of criminal charges against the two.

The arrests came at the end of a frustrating period during which a 1000-member task force investigated clues and some false leads.

Muhammad, a convert to Islam who changed his name from John Allen Williams last year, was described by a fellow soldier as "clean-cut" and "very competitive."

"He was just an altogether 100 per cent soldier," Randy Lyons, who served with Muhammad at Fort Lewis in Washington state, said in a television interview in the Seattle area.

Muhammad qualified as an expert rifle marksman and was in the active Army from November 6, 1985, until his release from the service at Fort Lewis on April 26, 1995, a senior Defence Department official said. He also served for at least eight years in the Army National Guard in Louisiana and Oregon.

The defence official said Muhammad earned several badges and ribbons, including an "expert marksmanship" badge with the Army's standard M-16 assault rifle, which meant that he could hit 36 of 40 targets at ranges up to 300m.

Police Chief Randy Carroll of Bellingham, Washington state, said Muhammad and Malvo were "known to be together" in Bellingham, sometimes staying at a homeless shelter, and Malvo had said he was staying there to complete high school, but his earlier school transcripts could not be found.

"It appears that these people who have been taken into custody are not acting with any group. ... It appears that they have acted on their own," Carroll told a news conference.

"The information that I have was that (Malvo) was quiet and that he spent a lot of time in the library studying," he said.

Muhammad was posing as Malvo's father, but their exact relationship was not clear, the Bellingham police chief said.

- AGENCIES

Further reading:
The Washington sniper

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