The Death Card [3]

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Monday, October seventh, two thousand and two. It's now day six of the Sniper investigation. After two whole days with no shootings, the area seemed calm, but that feeling didn't last long.

It happened very early in the morning, well before the buses or any classes began.

This is Karen Pumphrey, a former teacher at Tasker Middle School.

I was on a landing and I heard someone kick the front door with such ferocity. I thought somebody was out there playing early unsupervised. And I heard all this yelling, so I was not real happy about it, and I expected to see some kids out front, and I didn't. It was only one boy, iron and he was about twenty feet down near the drive. He was alone, nobody else, and he was yelling and he was holding his stomach. So I walked over and I asked him, what's the matter, and he said I've been shot.

But I knew he was in pain. It was clear, but I really didn't think it was shot. So I was like, we're gonna get you some help. I went in.

I said, Iron is hurt. He says he's been shot. So they called nine one one.

Oh hello, this is banking the cats in middle school, we had a child outside that says he's spot.

And the principal got up and when we came out, he wasn't out front anymore, only as backack was there, and this silver car was pulling away from the curb.

We didn't know what was wrong with him, and we didn't know who was in the car.

So one of the counselors came running up, jumped in his car and followed.

There is a ruthless person on the loose.

What unnerves 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 went 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 White.

From iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. This is Monster DC Sniper. Thirteen year old Iron Brown arrived at Tasker Middle School at about seven thirty am on October seventh. It seemed to be a completely normal Monday morning, except, of course, a sniper was on the loose in the DC area, and on this morning, Iron Brown became the sniper, his eighth victim. But before school officials could get help to him, Iron Brown disappeared. John Lloyd was the principal at Tasker

How were you the principals to school.

Did somebody's drive off with him here?

I don't know where.

I had no idea.

It turns out, you know, his aunt had dropped him off and then went to pull away. It must have occurred immediately because she hadn't gotten out of the parking lot yet.

And then it turns out she did hear the shot, so she came back. But we didn't know that. We didn't know who was taking him.

My first, Oh my god, I think I'm going to be able to drive wind Nasty to the hospital.

What's the matter with him? He just got shot.

He is gonna die.

Iron Brown's aunt, Tanya Brown, actually called nine one one as she rushed him to the hospital.

So are you okay?

Tanya was trapped in the morning rush hour traffic and Iron was bleeding out in her car.

I gotta go.

Let me go, mis Brown, this Brown, I need you.

But I'm almost there.

I'm getting ready to turn in right now.

He didn't see who shot if he doesn't know, I.

Didn't see anybody, and he didn't see anybody.

No, okay, go ahead and go in the yarm.

We're gonna send user out, Okay.

Okay, all right.

You know, we knew within ten minutes fifteen minutes that he was shot, that his injuries were extensive, and that he was going to be met of back to Children's And then at that point, you know, the buses were starting to show up, the onslaught of media and police presence was just crazy or helicopters in the air from every Newton's agency, the FBI was on safe and then of course, immediately, like within minutes, parents start calling I'm

I really understand that parents are concerned, but I think under the circumstances, the safest place for the children right now is inside of that building. We're adults, so we're not going to dismiss school. We're going to keep school in session, and we are going to secure students within buildings.

I'm almost positive they said do not come to the school. But I did make it to the school. So there's hundreds of other parents. It's very difficult to tell a parent I had to come to the school when your job could have been in danger. My name is Jerald Caverer. I live in Brandywine, Maryland. I woke up that more it. I spoke to my wife and my kids, and from my understanding, she was going to take him to school. My son was attending Taska Middle School, so of course

Imagine learning that someone had been shot at your child's school. As a parent, there's no bigger fear than finding out it was your child who was injured, but while adults were coming to pick up their children, Iron Brown was rushed into surgery.

The youngster came into the hospital and he had already bled a significant amount, was already getting transfusions, so he was not in good shape. My name is Martin Eichelberger. I am a pediatric surgeon at Children's National Medical Center. During the day, early morning, I happened to be called by our communications center said, look, you better look at the TV here because of the fact that there was

Doctor Eichelberger's colleague, Kurt Newman was in charge of communicating with the police.

And so doctor Newman came to me and said, this is what they want to try to get the bullet. Would it be easy to do? And I looked at the X ray and put my finger down where I thought the bullet was, and yes, I could palpit it with my finger. I was able to pull out this bullet. I gave it specifically to doctor Newman, who gave it to a specific person to make sure that that chain of evidence was keptain tact.

When we were contacted about what had happened, and of course we all sat and shocked.

We just couldn't believe, and we kept asking, are you sure? Are you sure? My name is doctor Wayne R. Curtis's cousin to the Brown family.

We're obviously very scared and anxious about what was going to happen with him having gotten shot like that at such a young age.

And that he would come out of it okay.

But it's time told he's doing okay, but at that time we were just all just concerned.

For his life.

We went to the hospital with my sons to visit with him.

At that point in time, there was a request to meet with the press.

National media wanted Iron Brown's parents to provide a statement, but Curtis has the parents were still processing their shock.

So as we came out the back of the hospital to approach the press corps, you can imagine if you're not in front of something like that before and you've got I mean god, it must have been fifty people with cameras and asking questions and it can be unnerving. As we were walking up the hallway, I don't think we got more than five steps onto the sidewalk after the building and just said, look, we can't do this.

You should do this, and I said, okay, I'll do it.

He continues to remain in critical but stable condition. He's a fighter. We remain optimistic, as our doctors have told us, this is a marathon, not a sprint, but we are confident that we will make it to the finish line.

Do you think about the magnitude of a child, any person getting shot, but you know when children get shot, It sort of magnifies it even more.

Had psychological issues from a current.

The family as much as possible, they try to normalize his life and their lives of a very, very unfortunate tragedy.

Iron Brown was alive and safe, but back at Tasker Middle School, authorities were still trying to make sense of the attack. What kind of person would shoot a thirteen year old? Soon police would get a major clue, a communication from the snipers. The shooting at Tasker Middle School sent the region into a frenzy. It was now clear that the sniper attacks were not over, and now the discussions about who was behind the attacks can once again. The question came up, is this foreign terrorism? Many in

I'm concerned about my kids safety because I think this shooter or shooters is trying to make a statement that I can shoot Americans anytime, any place, anywhere I want to, and they're doing it around the nation's capital to make a statement.

I was calling an agreement with your past caller mentioning some ties between the shootings and terrorism, and I just see this as being completely related to the timing of what's going on today in our country.

And the media had helped fuel that fear. All over cable news TV stations were speculating that this was quite possibly an act of terror.

He is orchestrating this whole event really to spread fear, to spread terror, because he wants to be in charge, and he is executing people just to show his power.

It became pretty clear to people that these random shootings across DC and around DC were linked.

This is journalists and historian Garret Graff. He says, it made sense that people thought foreign terrorists were responsible for the sniper attacks.

There was a very quick realization that this could be the next stage of a terror campaign. You had people begin to call in suspicious activity reports all over the city. This was, in some ways, maybe exactly the second wave that we had been led to fear was coming ever since the nine to eleven attacks. In some ways, the idea that these sniper killings would be somehow linked to Al Qaeda seemed a very logical theory at the time.

While the country was debating who was behind these attacks, investigators were working to find the sniper. Following the shooting of Iron Brown, police shut down the area surrounding Tasker Middle School. They began searching looking for any clues. Benjamin Tasker Middle School, where Iron Brown was shot, is around twenty miles east of Washington, d C. And about seventy five miles northeast of where the last shooting occurred in Spotsylvania, Virginia.

My name is Mike Pyle with the United States Marshall Service. Over see our canine operations program, and back in two thousand and two, my partner was Explosive Detection K nine Beacon and he was trained for explosives and weapons detection.

I'm curious as to the jurisdictional lines here. Right, a number of agencies are here. Tell me why the US Martial Service is called in so it's about resources.

We're not coming in here to obviously lead the investigation. This is PG County, so obviously PG County Police Department, this is their scene. But there's not a lot of dogs back then that were trained specifically to find guns and shellcasings. They had bomb dogs, but some of the bomb dogs are not trained to that level of evidence recovery. ATL trained dogs literally are sniffing explosives, probably multiple times a day because we have to feed them.

To train dogs like beacon and maintain their sensitivity to certain odors. The dogs are only fed when they detect the odors correctly.

It's classical conditioning. When the dogs come in order, beacon would start salivating because it's Pavlov's theory, you know, the bell rings he anticipates in the food coming in, so they automatically salivate. So those are the changes that we look for.

So if the dog says, hey, I.

Give you the indication that the contract is, you have kay me that the payment.

Is the food.

So Michael, take me back to the day.

How does that day start for you?

On October seventh, two thousand and two. By the time I got here, it was a pretty chaotic scene. They had the streets blocked off, a lot of law enforcement, a lot of onlookers, a lot of media. The one thing that really struck to me was actually where we're standing right now was Iron Brown's backpack. You could see definitely to see a little bit of a pool of blood that was still left there. Someone said that they saw somebody or heard a gunshot on the front of the school up on that hill, so.

That would be across the street from the cross.

The street, and of course that white box truck. They said that they saw white box truck.

That up in the hill.

To hear kind of did makes sense to us. You would have to literally bend a bullet if that was how the shot was taking. Well, if you were to do the shooting, where would you put yourself? The obvious place was probably right in the woods. So from the front of the building the right side, if you walk out of the school on the right side, there's a little bit of a wooded area and then it goes to a park. So I selected my search area and

Well, the officers went out, got some of.

The evidence technicians to come in, and they all start to actually literally search this area. And then I was told that the shewcasing was located. If you step back five ten feet, unless you really look, you're not going to see somebody hiding there. So if you kind of actually look, it's a perfect line of sight. So I fully believe that he may have laid that rifle right

A tarot card, one from a special deck of cards that some say can predict the future. And the shooters didn't just leave any card. They left the death card on It was a skeletal night, riding a white horse and holding a black flag. This image is said to show that no one escapes death, whether rich or poor, young or old. The card seemed to perfectly capture the sniper's mo o. No one is safe, everyone is vulnerable. But the more disturbing aspect was what was written on

Now they've got a God complex.

This is retired Maryland State Police Lieutenant David Reichenbach.

So at least we're starting to get a picture of what we're dealing with here that card.

At that time, I'd didn't even know about it, and I.

Was a commander in charge of the criminal intelligence part of it. That was kept very very close to the vest, and for good reason, we didn't want that to get out there, but unfortunately it did. You know, the following day, which was Tuesday, October eighth, WUSA Channel nine breaks the story about the tarot card, and for us, that was a punch in the gut.

More about that calling card. It was left at the scene of the most recent shooting. That's the school in Prince George's County. It was a card from a fortune telling deck that's known as the death card, with a note written on it, dear Policeman, I am God. It's the latest chilling development in this chilling case and massive investigation.

That wasn't supposed to be released, that didn't need to be released at that point, and there it is all over network news, which meant we had an internal leak that actually plagued this investigation throughout the entire twenty three days. Quite honestly, evidence was getting leaked that you want to hold close to the vest.

And there's a couple of reasons behind that.

You never release everything that you know about a homicide for the simple reason that whoever the bad guy is should be the only other person other than the police that really knows what happened.

By this point, police were receiving hundreds of calls every day on their tip line. Now that the Tarot card information was public, the number of calls only increased, and at times the phones were so busy that callers couldn't get through. It became too much for police to handle, and they had troubled figuring out which tips were good and which ones weren't.

With everything being put out there in the media. Now we've got what I always called our confessors calling confessing that they're the shooters.

I'm the ciphers.

Oh, he describer, I want to hear someone tied.

Up just a time with suff pas.

There's all sorts of psychological reasons why people do that, but it happens all the time, and the more media attention a case has, the more of these kind of folks that you have come out.

Of the woodwork for whatever reason.

And fortunately most of the time you can quickly dispel them and eliminate them very quickly because they don't have enough information. They can't even describe the crime scene, so you know they didn't do it. However, with all the information being out there and now the Tarot card, these people are calling with enough information that you just can't ignore them. So now these folks had to go on the suspect list, so was creating quite a few red herrings for.

US police weren't happy about the Tarot card getting leaked to the public, but the media felt it was necessary to publish that information. Dave Statner was a reporter for Channel nine. His station broke the story about the Tarot card.

The Tarot card was first internally at our station, reported by a reporter at Channel and I named Stacy Kohen. She found out about this Tarot card in this message from the apparent snipers to police, and it was soon confirmed by Mike Buchanan. He was one heck of a reporter and if Mike and Stacy are telling me they have this information, I know it's true. And we didn't

I have not received any message that the citizens of Montgomery County won't Channel nine or the Washington Post or any other media outlet to solve this case.

If they do, then't let me know.

We will go and do other police work and we would turn this case over to the media. But today the people in my community have asked the police department to work the case. So I beg of the media let us do our job, because I am convinced that we're broaching interference. If my team feels it's important to put things out there, that's sad. And if the media feels that it is their job to put things out there so today can be promoted, then that is also sad.

Chief Moose had singled out Channel nine and The Washington Post, the two media outlets who first broke the tarot card story. Washington Post reporter Josh White took issue with Chief Moose's comments.

That tarot card was a really important piece of both the investigation and the public's understanding of what was happening. While certainly they are always going to be things that law enforcement doesn't want out, and they're going to be things that they want to keep from the public in order to help them solve crimes, Frankly, our job is to find out what those things are and responsibly report what we believe will help further the public's understanding of

It's a tricky situation for police. It's imperative to maintain control over sensitive information. As a journalist, you have to inform the public about what's going on, but you also don't want to report anything that might interfere with the investigation, So reporters have to make a tough decision. At the end of the day, the media and law enforcement simply might not agree on what should be published. But in this case, White thinks it was important to release the

It immediately changed how people looked at this. It was no longer maybe al Qaeda or ISIS. It was certainly a version of terrorism. People were terrified, but it changed the nature of I think how everybody looked at it.

What about law enforcement? Did they still see this as possibly connected to foreign terrorism?

Well, I think everyone had to consider that potential. I think you had to say, is this the next shooter drop? Because now we've closed off the airlines, we've hardened the doors between the passengers and the pilot and co pilot. Are they going to come at us in a different way now? My name is Clint Van Sant. I'm a former FBI agent, criminal profiler, and hostage negotiator. I mean, this was terror. I don't think there's any doubt that these shooters were waging terror on the American public. The

There were a few other possibilities. When investigators met to discuss the Tarot card, someone mentioned the death cards left by soldiers in the movie Apocalypse.

Now with me four diamonds like that death card.

They telling, no, did it someone else remembered that God was the nickname of the chief sniper in the nineteen ninety movie Seals.

God Got Got here.

God, we have a single shooter selth East Power, Yeah, I see him?

Was the sniper a military man, or at least a fan of military movies. Others thought the tarot card indicated the work of a serial killer with an interest in the occult. Whether these were terrorists, serial killers, or something else, it made no difference. Paranoia was at an all time high. Children were being shot in broad daylight, and the airtime devoted to the case was NonStop on nearly every major TV network. The entire country was watching.

The fact that a child was shot was a pivotal moment. It showed a willingness on the part of the attackers to go after anybody.

This is Washington Post reporter Josh White.

And it was at that moment that people really changed their minds about how scared to be, about how cautious to be. The schools really started responding. Any adult who lived in this region had to wonder, how do I keep my kids safe even at school? And it was knowledge that they were willing to invade even are what are considered to be some of our safest spaces.

Even President George W. Bush weighed in about the shooting of Ingram Brown a few days later.

The President number one is wanted to make certain that all the resources of the federal government have been made available through the ATF, through the FBI, and through other agencies of the federal government as well to help the local law enforcement community. And that's been done. The President urges people to take all reasonable and prodent cautions that the law enforcement community in the case that should be taken.

First of all, I'm just sick to my stomach to think that there is a cold blooded killer at home taking innocent life. I weep for those who've lost their loved ones. The idea of moms taking their kids to school and sheltering them from a potent So sniper attack is not the American I know sniper attacks well. It is a form of terrorism, but in terms of the terrorism that we think of, we have no evidence one

You know, it's a sick mind for investigators. The manhunt was about to get personal. A tragic turn of events would flip the investigation on its head, and the sniper's scope was an FBI agent. Next time on Monster DC Sniper, I.

Was absolutely sure that we were going to get a shooting.

I got a call from a source saying, you need to get out to Manassas. There's been another one.

And the next thing I see are police officers running with their guns drawn to an apartment complex across the street where there's a white vehicle that looks sort of like a box truck.

People process a lot less information than we think. They get this sense that they're seeing everything when in fact they're seeing very little.

So we had a pretty good game plan, but the problem was we weren't being provided good intelligence and suspect information from the lookout that hurt us.

So now the real focus is what do I do when I'm pumping guests. I have to get gasoline from my car. There are gas stations that are starting to put up barricades or harps to block you.

It showed that if somebody wants to go after someone who they have no connection to randomly in a metropolitan area, there's millions of people, what's stopping them.

Monster DZ Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by Tony Harris and produced by iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of iHeartRadio, alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Keebrick, and Josh Thain. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producers Meredith Stedman and Christina Dana. Original