The Blue Caprice [10]

the former accountant for John and MILDRAA Mohammed. She came home from grocery shopping one day to find that her niece, Keenya Cook, had been shot dead in her kitchen. I just went into a cold state. I was just on auto pilot. My body had just shut down. They started roping off the house and I saw where King's head had laid. The bullet case it was still there, and I just saw blood the back of her head that just been blown out. Now my house is a crime scene.

We go through burying Kenya and our family is grieving. It's a cold case, and we don't hear anything, and we're trying to go on with our lives. I'm no longer in the house at this point. For several months. But when I do move back into my home. But we're trying to get back into some sense of normality, if there's such a thing. With my husband and I, we were just going through the motions and one day I was at Bible study. This is like the end of October. My page is going off. It was my husband.

I go and I returned. The colony says, what are you doing. I said, I'm at Bible studies Thursday. He said, have you looked at the TV? I said, I just said I was at Bible study. He said, no, no, no, no, no, you need to go home. Meet me at the house. And I'm like, what what's going on? Need to just meet me at the house. I get to the house and I turned on the TV and we had been hearing about these shootings on the East Coast. We're hearing just shots of people pumping gas. A child was shot

at school. We're hearing about a woman getting shot in the head coming out of home depot. I think she was an FBI analyst. So where everybody's like, whoa, this ain't it time to be traveling to the East Coast. I actually had clients who canceled flight plans because this

what's going on. We're listening to all this news and stuff on the West coast, and then I was sudden the backyard of a duplex here in Tacoma, carefully marked off in a grid up pops a tree trump at a former client's house for almost nine hours, a deliberate search by hand investigators sifting through dirt, then sawing down a tree stump and hurting it off evidence believed to have been used for target practice, possibly containing bullet fragments.

There's these helicopters flying all over the Tacoma community. There's FBI agency, a t F Why is the investigation coming to Washington? The DC sniper? They are actually saying it's linked to Tacoma. At that point, in my soul, in my heart, in my mind, I knew I was connected. I'm on the couch and fetal position. The next thing, you know, my husband comes home and he said, that's what I was trying to tell you. It's John. It's John.

There is a ruthless person on the loose. What un nerves this community the most is the randomness of the murders, ordinary people doing ordinary things. They killed the five people in one day, and then when on the rampage for the next month. It is quite a mystery. The police say they have never had a crime quite like this. Be careful, these guys are using weapons that are going to go right straight through our bulletproof vest. From my Heart radio and Tenderfoot TV, this is Monster DC Sniper.

October two two it had been nearly three weeks since the DC sniper attacks began. The investigation had become the largest man hunt in the nation's history, which meant that expenses for every police agency involved were skyrocketing. Law enforcement had limited resources and limited time to catch the killers, so they had to act fast. Three days had passed since Jeffrey Hopper became the snipers twelve victim at a

Ponderosa Steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia. Since that time, investigators had connected the d Sea shootings to a liquor store robbery in Montgomery, Alabama. There, police found a fingerprint on an armor like gun catalog. Federal authorities ran that fingerprint through the database of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or i n S, and they got a match. The fingerprint belonged to Lee Boyd Malvo. As soon as we found out that his name was referenced in an I n S file.

We had them pull the file so we could see what was in it, and the other name that came up in that file was actually John Mohammed. This is Linda Hooper. She was a supervisory special agent for the FBI during the sniper investigation. Hooper immediately started to learn everything she could about Malvo and Mohammed, and in doing research on John Mohammed, we found out that he had

been in the army. He certainly knew weapons. The more we dug into his background and who he was, there was more and more information on his interest in weapons, his shooting practice, shooting, target shooting, his involvement with this young boy, seventeen year old Malbow. They weren't related, but Malvo lived with him. He had a very rough, to say the least, early childhood and not a good situation with his mother, and he was kind of taken in

by John Mohammed. Much of this information came from a man in Tacoma, Washington named Robert Holmes. He had called the Sniper Task Force with a tip and he had said that he had had a friend that had left the area that was a very militant person, very upset person. This is Michael Myrick, a former lieutenant for the Montgomery, Alabama Police. Myrick says the tipster, Robert Holmes, was a former friend of Mohammed's and he had served in the

Mill of Terry alongside Mohammed. He described as just being very unhappy with life. The guy was very dangerous, and he said it just bothers me that all this is happening. His ex wife lives in the DC area, and he said, uh. He left with an a R fifteen Bushmaster rifle. He says, nothing for nothing, But I'm just gonna let y'all know. Don't want to sit on this information. And he had

a son named Lee. The friend thought this was his son, at least step son, and he said son was a very very good shot, and they talked about snipers and they played sniper games. I and Nichols actually knew Robert Holmes, the man in Tacoma who called in the tip about John Mohammed, Well, John stayed with him. He was a good friend John. They both were in Fort Louis together in the military, both of them former Army vets. Holmes said that a few months before the shooting started in

d C. Mohammed stopped by his house. He wanted to test out a homemade silence or for a rifle, and in order to see if it worked, he had target practice in his backyard in one of the trees. And so that's why they were here getting the tree trump and how the investigation came here. The tip from Robert Holmes effectively connected Washington State to the DC sniper attacks. So the Sniper task Force went to Tacoma. They took the tree stump that Mohammed and Malbo had supposedly used

as target practice for evidence. Following the bullet trail, FBI agents are now focused on this woodpilot in Olympia pieces of potential evidence. The wood cut down months ago from the backyard of this Tacoma duplex. It's where John Alan Mohammed once lived, and it's said to have used the tree for target practice. Authorities mapped a grid in the backyard and carefully scammed for bullet fragments and shellcases, then removed the stump from that tree sent to the woodpile.

NBC News has learned evidence recovered here, including the tree stump, has been analyzed that the a t F lab in Maryland, and already the evidence has been described just having quote potential value. Again, all this is happening not in days, it's happening in hours. Now we had a very very clear suspect to pursue my name. Police had quickly learned a lot about the pair, but they weren't ready yet to name them the snipers. Still, it fell to investigators

like they were finally zeroing in on their targets. Meanwhile, I said, Nichols was getting some answers about the murder of her niece Keenya Cook. Next thing I know, I get a knock at the door. It's the FBI agent. Well, he confirms that Lee and John were in Tacoma during the time my niece was murdered. And that's all I needed to hear. That said to me that they killed my niece. She took a bullet mit for me. Nobody knew she was leaving with me. She opens the door

and he lodges off his weapon. I didn't realize how he the caame this diabolical evil person. But Mohammed and Malvo weren't done yet. While the task force was making the connection to Washington State, Mohammed and Malvo were in Montgomery County, Maryland, and they were planning their next attack. October two. Aspen Hill, Maryland. In Montgomery County, it's early in the morning, so early that it's still dark out. In a dense wooded area, someone is walking up a hill.

They're carrying a duffel bag with a sniper rifle inside. Once they reached the edge of the wood area, they stopped at the opening. They see an empty playground with rusty slides, still swings and old park benches, and on the other side of the playground sits an idle bus. Inside the bus driver is waiting to start his morning route. The person in the woods crouches. They pull a paper note out of the duffel bag and attach it to a nearby tree branch. Then they go back to the

duffel bag and pull out the sniper rifle. They get low to the ground and lay flat on their stomach. They set up the rifle on the cold, leafy floor and set their aim towards the driver of the bus. So now we get to the morning of October, which is day number in the morning, this has retired Maryland State at least Lieutenant David Reichenball. He says that a Jamaican American bus driver named Conrad Johnson was training a

new female driver. Johnson was standing up just inside the entrance of the bus, on the other side of the meter where riders pay. He was talking to the trainee and getting ready to start his day. As he was prepping his bus, he was shot and killed. The shot came from a wooded area. This bus stop shooting would be the thirteenth attacks since October two. I visited the spot and was joined by Nick to Carlo, a retired Montgomery County detective sergeant who responded to the shooting that morning.

I learned from officers on the scene what happened, who the victim is, and where he's been transported. And we

have one witness. I have one of my investigators take a statement from that witness that would have been the woman, the trainee who was on the bus with Conrad Onto One of the keys at this point in time in the task force was the as you know, the involvement of federal agencies, one of those agencies being the a t F. Once we had a t F come on the scene, they used their laser technology to give us a trajectory show us exactly where the shot came from.

That led us to the edge of the woods. Here I orchestrated and conducted a line search of probably about twenty to thirty officers agents along this wood line, and so we went I'm gonna say thirty yards into the woods, where we found a note stuck on a tree limb, and we also found a discarded duffel bag, which would have been useful in carrying a long gun. To Carlo

remembers that this shooting felt like coming full circle. The bus stop was only a mile down the road from the very first shooting where James Martin was killed at the Shopper's food warehouse. De Carlo had also been on that scene three weeks prior. He says, police had learned a lot of lessons between then and now. A homicide involving a rifle in the outdoors very unusual, But when you use a high powered weapon like that, your crime

scene has to expand. If you know that's what you're dealing with, the scope of your crime scene grows immensely now that we knew what we were dealing with. Fast forward to Mr Johnson and this scene. We knew we were dealing with a large area that had to be closed off in a number of different directions, and a lot further than you typically would do at a homicide. By the time they had finished searching the scene, they had found a duffel bag, a single glove, and another

note attached to a treat in the woods. Here's David reichenba again again a notice found. This time it's an angry note for you, Mr Police, call me God, do not release to the press. You did not respond to the message. You departed from what we told you to say, and you departed from the time. Your incompetence has cost you another life. You haven't toiled nine am to deliver the money and until eight a m. To deliver this

response to let us know that you have our demands. Quote, we have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose. The same red sticky stars on top of the note claiming that you know we we screwed him over and we weren't talking to them, and the body counts from then on was on us, not on them. The notes had new deadlines for a phone call and for money, but by the time police had secured and read the note,

they'd missed the deadline. The note also told police to send a false message to the public that police had caught the snipers like a duck in a noose. That's where the media comes back in, because now we send Chief Moose back out giving them some phrases that they put on the note so that they know we were serious. One of the phrases that the chief used, and I'm sure the media was maybe a little astonished by it, was you asked us to say, quote, we have called

the sniper like a duck in a noose. End quote. We understand that hearing us say this is important to you. However, we want you to know how difficult it has been to understand what you want because you have chosen to use only notes, indirect messages, and calls to other jurisdictions. The solution remains to call us and get a private toll free number established just for you. If you are reluctant to contact us, be assured that we main ready to talk directly with you. Our word is out bind

let's talk directly. We're waiting for you to contact us, sort of giving them Okay, now we give we know you're in charge. We're gonna do whatever it is you want us to do, but we need you to call us, so reach out to us. We'll make it work. Basically, what the chief was trying to do was bide some more time for us to track these guys down because the chief knew that, you know, all the leadership knew

that we were starting to focus. We now knew their names, so we were trying to communicate through the media back to the snipers to have them reach out to us. That was a role that the news media willingly but cautiously took on. Here's Channel nine reporter Dave Stanner, A lot of information was being transmitted through the news media. We didn't know if the snipers were paying attention to us in the news, but it was clear that we were getting information out there that could be going to

the snipers specifically. We knew we had a responsibility to be as accurate as we can be, as we always are. But Statter says local journalists don't want to just regurgitate what police were telling them. He says, sometimes police have an agenda and they put out false information as a means to an end, and so the media has to be careful if they were to broadcast false information it

would blow back on them and not law enforcement. When you are the news media and you're a reporter, you don't want to become the news and that's for sure. Still Channel nine and other local stations aired nearly every press conference by Montgomery County Police. In another press conference that day on October, Chief Moose revealed the contents of the previous letter found up the ponder Rosa steakhouse shooting

in Ashlyn, Virginia. There continues to be a great deal of speculation as to a reference a threat in the usage previously received. As stated earlier, everyone knows that all of our citizens are and have been at risk. We recognize the concerns of the community, and therefore are going to provide the exact language in the message that pertains to the threat. Your children are not safe anywhere at

any time. My impression of why Charles Moose went out with that information was one he likely knew it was going to leak out to the press, and in fact it already had started leaking out to the press, including me. Also, they knew if there's a specific threat to children, and they didn't let the public know there's a specific threat to children, that this could be a problem for them

down the road. Chief Moose also indirectly referenced the demand from the ponderous a letter that money be deposited into a credit card the snipers were supposedly carrying. The sniper's request for ten million dollars had not been made public, but Statter says it had leaked to the media. It seemed bizarre to us as reporters. Suddenly there's a request for a large amount of money, ten million dollars, and

we can't make sense of it. We know that to get that money, you're going to have to somehow show yourself clearly you don't want to be caught from what you're doing. Now, all of it's not making a lot of sense to us. What's the motive behind this? Was it really money? But police we didn't know at the time. We're actually getting a little bit closer and what this was about. The media didn't know it yet, but police had made significant progress on tracking down the snipers, now

believed to be John Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malbo. Here's former FBI agent Linda Hooper. Again, it certainly looked like they were two viable suspects in this case. But we had no information that they were in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, DC area at all. What they did is they were looking for that name, John Mohammed. Had that name ever been queried by any law enforcement in our area? And

it's called an offline search. And based on that offline search, they got information that in Silver Spring, Maryland, day queried John Mohammed October two, early in the morning, U. S. Marshall Billy Serrucas asked the FBI to find out if John Mohammed where Lee Boyd Malvo had any interactions with law enforcement in the DC area. So the FBI went to n c i C, the National Crime and Information Center in c i C has one of the most

extensive crime related databases in the country. Police use this database to get information on a driver when they run a tag, that information comes back, who the owner of the car is, information on that person in criminal history, that sort of thing. We didn't have any of that.

This is former FBI agent Linda Hooper. She says that because they didn't have a tag number to run, and they couldn't access Mohammed's vehicle history, but they could do an offline search or reverse in c I S to see if John Mohammed's name had come up in any local police reports, and they're able to get information that

you couldn't get through running it through your dispatcher. As a result of the offline search, the FBI discovered that John Mohammed had been pulled over in Silver Spring, Maryland, as well as in multiple other nearby locations in the last month. Here's retired Montgomery County pol He's commander Drew Tracy, and one of the most important traffic stops was in Baltimore, Maryland, where John Mohammed was stopped by a patrol officer and

he ran him and I find very correctly. John Mohammed was saying, oh, he's out visiting relatives and he was tired. He was sleeping at the gas station. From that traffic stop, we got information. Police learned that John Mohammed had been pulled over on October eight in Baltimore, Maryland. Shortly after the officers stopped John Mohammed, he cued his dispatch microphone. Over the radio, he announced the make and model of the car, as well as the license plate number. But

the recording of that dispatch call was hidden. An hour's worth of tape Deputy Marshall's listened to more than five hours of police radio call tapes before they heard the transmission. They were searching for an officer reading off the license and description of the car. Well, the information that came back was this was driving this blue Chevrolet Caprices with new Jersey tags, and they provided the tag number for it. The snipers were driving a blue Chevrolet Caprice with new

Jersey tags. Chevy Caprices are long, boxy cars with big trunks, and they were used by many law enforcement agencies in the ninety nineties as police cars. David Reichenball says that even though the Caprice was stopped multiple times during the sniper investigation, police had no reason to suspect that it was involved in the shootings. There were no warrants, no reason to stop the vehicle, and after all, we're all

looking for white vans and white trucks. We had stopped every white van in three states at least three times. They're not in a white van. Police had spotted them either before or after the shootings and just didn't make the connection because we were so focused on the white

vans and the white trucks. But by October law enforcement had the snipers names, their car, and their license plate number, and although they couldn't directly connect Mohammed to the crimes, they were able to secure a warrant for his arrest. That day was really spent putting everything that we had together. By about nine thirty ten o'clock at night, we had it. We knew who we were looking for, we knew what they were in. We just didn't know where to find them.

So the next move was to inform everyone involved in the investigation. Here's former FBI agent Linda Hooper. Again. They put a bolo out beyond the lookout to tell all law enforcements, and not just in Maryland and Virginia, but to tell all law enforcements. If you see this blue Chevy Caprice with these new jersey tags, you need to

pull it over and identify it. There's a John Mohammed driving it, and then there's an arrest forrant warm so that it goes out so everybody knows, and then like at every briefing at every police department, particularly in the area, okay, this is what we're looking for. Tonight. As I recall, we had over twenty three police agencies involved the nets, local, state, county, federal We had at the height over a thousand police

officers working this case. It was around the clock because we knew these people were going to continue to kill people until they were stopped. The cooperation among the agencies were unprecedented. I had FBI officials working for me as a state trooper, I had county folks working for me. I had my troopers taking orders from FBI. It didn't matter. It was a joint effort in every true sense of the word. Then the egos start to click in a

little bit and there became a bonut contention. When do we release the information about the caprice to the media. There's a lot of reasons pro and con pro. Obviously, hey, we've got the eyes of the public out there helping us find this blue caprice. That's obvious. Public has a right to know now this is what we're looking for. Help us find them. The downside of it was, Hey, the snipers don't know that we've got them yet. They

don't know that we have them pinpointed. So if we keep it secret, we've got a chance to maybe gain that element of surprise. That was a tough decision to make, right and Ball says he wanted to release the information before anyone else got hurt. In his mind, the sooner the info went out, the sooner they would find and catch the killers. But not everyone agreed, including the federal authorities.

At a task force meeting that night, righting Ball says, all the different agencies were arguing about what to do. So he stepped out of the meeting to call Dave Mitchell, Superintendent of the Maryland's State Police. Briefed him on what we had and he very quickly made the decision for me. We don't care about anybody else. We're releasing it. We're releasing it to the media. We need to find these guys, and we need to do it now. And I said, Colonel, I'm going to be in trouble when I go in

here and tell these guys that they're all Feds. He said, well, you tell them it's from the order of the governor that trumps them. We're doing it. Get from flyers, and in his words, get the hell out of there. I said, yes, sir. The license plate info went out to the media and news outlets. We're getting ready to make it public. Here's

Channel Night reporter Dave Stanner. They're making the connection, and one of our reporters, the same reporter who came up with the Carrol card, Stacy Cohen, is the first to find this information out for us at Channel nine. She's got sources telling her that they're getting close, that they have names, and that they have a vehicle that they're

looking for. So we knew that they had very specific information that would soon come out, and it did come out that they were looking for two people and they were looking for a vehicle, this blue Chevrolet Caprice. I was actually in a restaurant at that point eating dinner when this started to break, and I'm talking to Stacy on the phone and seeing Fox News on the TV. Brian wilson't start to break the information. I called our assignment desk. I said, you know, there's a lot of

specific information out here. I think this is going to break tonight. Just my gut. I'll work overnight and see if it turns up anything in the Washington area. Meanwhile, Statter says they had other leads to follow up on. One of the places we went to around midnight was Clinton, Maryland. We had learned that these shooters had a connection, or at least one shooter, John Maha mommed to his ex wife who lived in Clinton, Maryland, a woman I believe

her name was Mildred Well. When we were investigating John Mohammed, we discovered that he was divorced and his wife, Mildred Mohammed, was living in the area, and that she had a restraining order against him. They had three children. Mildred's restraining order against John meant that he couldn't carry firearms. So once police received the tip from Robert Holmes that Mohammed was carrying a rifle, police could arrest him and they

could detain Melvo as a material witness. When I found out that she was living nearby where these shootings had taken place, I thought that we needed to go over and interview her and offer to move her and her children out of their house. October FBI and E. T. F knock on my door and they say, is Mildre Mohammed here? Na? She not here? I was scared. I didn't know what they want. Say, Na, she not here? I said, what, we really need to talk to her

because we need to ask her some questions. I said, Okay, that's me. So when was the last time you've seen John Alan Mohammed, and my palms began sweating. I said, why are you asking me questions about John? They said, well, we just want to know when's the last time you've seen him. I said September two thousand one at any emergency custody hearing in Tacoma, Washington. And he says, we're gonna name your ex husband as the sniper. I said,

what John. My head hit the table. They said yes, but but do you think he would do something like this? I raised my head and looked in the warner of the room and said, well yeah. They said, well, why would you think that? I said, because we were watching a movie and I don't remember the name of it. But he said, I could take a small city terrorize it. They would think it would be a group of people and it would only be me. I asked him, while

he do something like that? And he changed the subject so well, Ms Mohammed, would you like to go into protective custody? I said, you gotta ask me that. Well, yes, ma'am, because some people don't want to go. I said, okay, have you caught him yet, no, ma'am. Do you know where he is? No, ma'am, And you still have to ask me. She accepted our offer. We moved her and her children to a hotel. We get out of the house into the car, drive away in the media, A

convoy is coming up. They perched themselves around the house. My neighbor said that you would have thought it was daylight. They took us to a hotel where I still don't know where it is. We run at their hotel room and an undercover capacity, so her name was an associated with it at all. And we just kept her there and told us was over. And I turned on the TV. And that was the first time they showed John's picture on TV. And I went up to the TV and put my hand on it and say, what happened to you?

My son crying on one bed, my daughters crying on the other. I pulled them together. They cried themselves to sleep. I got a pillow, went in the bathroom, turned on the water in the bathtub, sat on the floor and screamed in the pillow because I didn't know what to do and I didn't know who to call back. At Mildry Mohammed's house in Clinton, Maryland, reporter Dave Statter was part of the media convoy that had showed up that night.

We pulled way back when we saw police were already in the area, and police were there to see if John Mohammed showed up. Different news outlets broadcasted the blue Caprice info at various points throughout the night, and now that the license plate had gone public, police hoped that someone would spot the car and call it a tip.

While we were down there in the Clinton area, we got a call from a photographer who worked at a TV station in Baltimore, Maryland, who was heading home and said, police have I seventy shut down in Frederick County, Maryland, and he believes it's connected to the sniper shootings. Frederick County is just northwest of Montgomery County and Washington, d C. It's where Maryland State Police Lieutenant David Reichenba lived and he was heading home that night. I guess it was

probably eleven thirty. I switched over to UH Frederick Barrick channel and I called the bar because I'm required, and I said car six six to Frederick, be advised, I'm in the area. The duty sergeant, Sergeant Hunter Mark comes on and says copy that six six two. Can you go to secure channel one and I knew something was up. I switched over to Channel one and I got on the radio and start says, be advised, we've got the broadcast out there. We just heard it on the local

AM radio station five minutes ago. And I just got a phone call. The nice blue caprix that you're looking for sitting at the rest area dropped seventy web bound South Mountain. They're in Frederick. The snipers are in the rest area Myers and next time on Monster d C Sniper. They had surprised for twenty one days. Now we had surprise. I wasn't anticipating this ending well. Once they realized they were cornered, I knew we were in for a shootout. I just knew it. I'm in the woodline, I'm listening.

I'm praying that there's no shots fired. My heart's running a mile a minute, and I hear the breaking of windows. I remember feeling this immense relief and then just disbelief when the information came out that it was an older guy and a young guy. Like a young guy, A young guy did this? Why this kid just looked at me with that dead shark guy look the pal I'd kill you and everybody here if I had the chance. No,

I don't way. When the snipers starting at randomly shooting people, nobody's said, oh, you know, this could be related to what happened to Paul. Nobody. Nobody had reason to think that until they found my computer. Monster DC Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by Tony Harris and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio,

alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Kiebrick, and Josh Thine. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producers Meredith Steadman and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. If you haven't already, be sure to check out the first two seasons at

Lanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer. If you have questions or comments, email us at Monster at i heeart Media dot com, or you can call us at one eight three three to eight five six six six seven. Thanks for listening. H