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December two thousand, the island of Antigua, fifteen year old Lee boy Malvo lay alone in bed in a dark shack. He shivered, sick with rheumatic fever. He needed medicine but didn't know how to get it. He was all alone in a foreign country, with no family and few friends. There was a knock at the door. A man came in. It was John Mohammed, the American, the man who had
smuggled Lee's mother into the United States. John had just come by to check on the boy, who he knew was living alone, but when he saw Lee's dire state, brought him to the doctor. Lee got an antibiotic shot and John stayed with him while he recovered.
Mohammed he stated me the entire time of nurse and back to health, and I told him my entire life story, my parents, my situations when I bounced around what I felt. I told him everything. I left nothing out Because I trusted this guy. He gave me his time. It's that simple. He was one of the only people who listened I lead on him. I trusted him. I did not trust my mom. I didn't trust anyone else, but I trusted him.
Before long, Lee asked John if he could live with him. John agreed, and Lee moved in with him and his children.
He was so desperate to have a father figure. My name is doctor Chonathan Harold Meck. I am a clinical nurse psychologist. Very quickly, Malvo starts calling Muhammed dad.
He said, everything that you've been taught from your religion, your morals, your education, you've basically been brainwashed. And he would explained to me a mixture of his worldview and the nation of Islam. He twisted a lot of things.
It certainly wasn't you know, standard religion. He would have him listen to tapes even when he was falling asleep.
Speaches and all sorts of stuff, thousands of hours, over and over.
Again, giving him subliminal suggestions that there is essentially a war going on between blacks and whites.
There is a ruthless person on the loose.
What I 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 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 full of proof best.
From My Heart Radio and Tenderfoot Teva.
This is Monster DC sniper.
Very quickly when I met Mom and I assimilated everything about him.
At the beginning of two thousand and one, after Lee had moved in with John in Antigua, friends and teachers remember seeing Lee change. His good grades began to slip. He started bringing a Koran to his Christian high school and arguing with other students about religion, and Lee also started talking a lot about guns.
I just became someone. It was something I'm used to doing. I can bouncing around from home to home, place to place, and I became what I call a change in him. Whoever I'm around, whoever the authority is, I changed the suit that person.
The attachment to a mother or a father is really core to developing a stable mentally health the adult.
Doctor Jonathan Mack is a neural psychologist and co author of the book The Making of Lee Boyd.
Malvo.
Max studied Lee's life extensively. He thinks Lee's readiness to trust John was due to an attachment disorder, a disorder in how kids connect with adults.
I felt that Malvo met the criteria for disinhibited social engagement disorder.
With disinhibited social engagement disorder, kids are so desperate for a caregiver that they are overly trusting of strangers. They will latch onto any authority figure they can, ignoring signs that the adult might not have their best interest at heart.
If you look at Malvo's history, his father in the first years of his life was in his life, out of his life. His mother was also in and out and had a habit of shipping him off, and just as soon as he was developing an attachment to the new people, he was moved somewhere else. So the fact that that Malvo had so many broken attachments from so many of the people that he lived with, he had this social disengagement disorder and was basically ready to attach on to anyone.
I went to him because I felt alone in this world. I assimilated everything about him, from his mannerisms, is religion. I lost my accent. I just became someone different once he gained my trust. That was the lost copse.
Throughout early two thousand and one, John continued to forge documents and helped smuggle people into the United States. On April fourteenth, John was detained at Miami International Airport. He'd flown there from Antigua alongside to Jamaican women. The women were caught presenting forged documents to customs agents, and the agents suspected John was helping the two women enter the
United States illegally. They couldn't prove it, so they had to release John, but they contacted Antiguan authorities and relayed their suspicions. Lee says that John called him in a panic. John told Lee to hide the kids and the cash that he kept in the house. Lee took the children to John's girlfriend's place, but when he went back to get the money, it had already been seized by Antiguan authorities. Lee says John lost at least one hundred sixty thousand
dollars because of the raid. John feared he would be arrested if he returned to Antigua, so he decided to lay low in the US. John instructed Lee, who was just sixteen years old himself, to watch over his kids. John also asked Bale to help out with the business by delivering fake birth certificates to clients. Lee dropped out
out of school to help. John then traveled back to Washington State, and on April twenty third, he legally changed his name from John Williams to John Muhammad, perhaps to try to avoid raising any red flags when he returned to Antigua.
Okay, mister Williams taching to have your name change.
Just what is your current legal name?
My current legal name is Allen, Okay, and what is the new name by which you wish to be known?
Allen Muhammad?
And why do you desire to be known.
By this new name?
For our religion partner?
Are you changing your name for any other reason? Are you changing your name to defraud or mislead any person or creditor? Are you involved in any legal proceeding other than this name change? And have you ever been convicted of a felony? Are you under supervision of any probation department that requires you to report a change of address MILCA ahead you grant.
Your name change there.
While in Washington State, John also visited Earl Donze.
I met John when I used to work for Horizon Airlines. I was actually interested in a printer that I saw at a store. This printer was an ALPS MD five thousand CERI. Printer had a big.
Reputation during the early nineties of making counterfeit money.
It views film as inking, so it was really expensive printers I wouldn't afford at the time. And this cowork of mine knew a friend as did it.
So I met John that way. John was really flashy. He had nice suits. He become different cars all the time, Jaguar Diamante.
He said, I can get the printer for you if you can help me out. He want to know if I can alter some documents because for a hobby I do graphics designs. Okay, so a fairy deal. So John got it for me.
I don't know how he got it. He asked me to stand a birth certificate with.
His name on it and asked me if I can raise the name that was on the birthday. So I used a simple program on computer to erased a name, and he asked me to type another name.
Man.
Okay, sure, so he wanted me to type I'm guessing could have been Lee.
You know.
This is where I realized that he was actually involved with smuggling people across the border.
He was charging thousand bucks ahead I think maybe more.
On May twentieth, two thousand and one, John traveled back to Antigua with his new name and altered documents in hand.
When John returned to the island, the government had already seized over one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, but John did not scold Lee.
This is criminologist and co author of Lee Boyd Malbo's autobiography Anthony Meoi.
When he got back, John pulled him tight, hugged him and said, great job, son. And it was that very moment that really select that defies their relationship. Lee said, from that moment on, I was willing to do anything for that man.
A week and a half later, on May thirty first, John returned to the United States with his three children and Lee Boyd Malville. They traveled through Puerto Rico to Fort Myers, Florida, where Lee's mother was living and working at a red lobster restaurant. Lee says that John was planning on setting up a counterfeiting operation with friends from the Caribbean. John wanted Lee to watch over the kids while he traveled to get the equipment they needed to
print fake currency. According to Lee's diary, John asked Lee's mother if the boy could continue staying with him, but she was having none of it. Una thought John was a bad influence on her son. Lee remembers his mother saying, he is my child. What I eat, he eats. If he cannot be satisfied with that, that greed will kill him. She then looked at Lee and said, you met this man no more than six months ago, and you've completely forgotten where you come from. Reluctantly, John left Lee with
Una and disappeared again with his kids. Back in Washington State, Mildred Muhammad was still searching for her children. It had been fifteen months since she had seen or spoken to them. Following her hospitalization, Mildred had moved into a women's shelter where her friend and former accountant, Eisen Nichols volunteered. Mildred took a pair ofegal course to learn about what legal options she had to get her children back. She divorced John in his absence and legally gained full custody of
the children. The problem was no one knew where they were, so she also filed a red of habas corpus, which.
Meant that anywhere they found my children, they needed to pick them up and bring them back to me. So I had all of my paperwork notarized. And my sister calls and says, Mama sick, can you come to Maryland. I have not found my children, but I can wait over there.
Mildred moved to the town of Clinton in Prince George's County, Maryland. Three more months passed without any sign of the children. It was now August two thousand and one, and the shelter where Mildred had been staying got a call. Her friend Issa Nichols was volunteering there when it happened.
We get a call and it is the Department of Social Health Services in Bellingham, Washington. They're calling following up an application for support, but John had completed with his three kids. Well, what John didn't know the three kids were already in the system.
John Muhammad had returned to Washington State with his children and tried to register them for welfare, but Ath already suspected him of committing welfare fraud, so they looked up the children's previously listed contact information and tried calling Mildred at the shelter.
I get a call from the executive director of the shelters in and she said, Millie, I think we found your children. You need to fax all of your paperwork to Detective McCarthy. So I did that, followed up with a phone call. I said, did you get my paperwork? He said yes, Smam, I did. But Ms Muhammed, do you know where we are? I say, you're in Bellingham, Washington. He said correct, but we're on the border of Canada. If he gets across the border with your children, there
will be nothing we can do. I said, I appreciate that information, but if you could just go get my children, I would appreciate that too. August thirty first, four thirty five pm. He called and he said, Miss Mohammed, we got your children. I screamed, and my brother in law came downstairs.
What's going on?
I said, hey found my children.
Can you please talk to him.
I'm running up and down the stairs, running outside and in and he said, nol, do you want to talk to him?
I stopped.
I hadn't heard their voices in eighteen wards. So the first person I talked to is Taliba and she says, hi, mommy. I said, hey, honey, how you doing? She said, I'm good.
You want to talk to my sister. Let's said, yes, say me talked to your sister.
She said, hi, mommy. I say, hey, honey.
She said guess what.
I said, what honey, I'm nine years old and you missed two birthdays. I said, oh, I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you.
I promise.
She said, okay, mommy, but John doesn't want to talk to you because he's angry. I said, okay, that's fine. So Detective McCarthy gets back on the phone and he said, it's Mohammad. We need for you to come back to Tacoma for any emergency custody hearing.
Mildred flies out the next day and she calls me up that next morning and she says, will you go with me to the courthouse? And I said sure. I didn't think anything about it. You know, eighteen months have gone by. I want to see the kids.
I so went with me to court and We're standing in the hallway and I said, oh, my god, there's John.
Mildred looks at John. John stares at Mildred. Mildred starts running and screaming. She's just scared. She hasn't seen John in eighteen months. The sheriff's apartment is in the courthouse, and they come out and they get her and they put us in a room somewhere until the court case.
So we walk in the courtroom and as soon as I get in the door, I see John on the back road to the right side, and I froze and I just remember feeling that I was so scared. But he was just sitting there, just oh, nonchalant. And I used to say, Mildred, just.
Breathe, breathe. What do you mean, just breathe.
Do you know how fast this man can move?
She said, Mildred, we just have to breathe.
So we're calming her down. She's holding my hand. Were sitting by her attorney. They're going over the paperwork, and the judge hiss the.
Gavel morning, please be seated.
This is enery the marriage of Mildred Denise Williams, John Allen Williams Council, Your honor, Heather Smith on behalf of the petitioner. This is Mildred Williams. She is present in the court. Let me swear both parties in before it begins. Sir, if you raise your right hand, ma'am you both saw me swear from the name testimony. You're about to provide the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Yes, yes, sir, sir, what is your name? Legal name is John Allen Muhammad
and ma'am what is your name mild Muhammas. But they said that we needed to use the ninth that we were married on their death wives under William Council. You have if I believe a return on a rid of habeas corpus. I do have at Commissioner Dickie issued it back in June of two thousand and this is the first contact with these children since that time. Yes, it
is your honor. The divorce decree and apparenting plans were entered in October of two thousand, after the writ that the final parenting plan gives who custody the children?
All three children? Yes, I can I say something just a moment, okay.
The concern I have right now is I don't know who's got these children where they're at and speaking with a deputy right this morning. All they would need was an order releasing the children from protective custody to the mother's custody. Cyah, would you like to say, Yohna, can you please tell me what's going on? There is a parenting plan was entered by the court on October six,
two thousand. Awarepons, there was an order of default taken against you because you did not respond to divorced summons. It was published against you. As part of that Mother obtained on her own without the help of an attorney, for ritt of habeas corpus, which allows her to have the physical possession of the children, so the children to have a mission the waradots whenever known by mother. That's why the court apparently issued the writ you never responded
to the published summons for divorce. Are you telling me the reason why I don't have my children won't be to keep my children because I don't have the proper paperwork ynt No, I'm saying that you've been divorced. The court has entered orders that mother had sole residential placement, care and custody of the children, and then you've got no visitation at present without for the court order. So I'm not able to see my children by virtue of
the private court order, not today's court order. So if you believe that the allegations are not valid, you should bring that to the court's attention, all right. If you do not have copies of the court orders, I suggest that sir, you ask for copies of those documents so you can look at them and reflect on what you'd like to do next.
Thank you, Thank you.
John finds all of that information out in the courtroom that day that he is divorced for Mildrid and she has sole custody of the children. He was so angry he flipped. It was that look that I will never forget. John leaves the courtroom. We come out and we're standing against the wall.
And all of a sudden, I fell a presence and I turn and it's John. I take off down the hallway, My shoes go everywhere.
Mildred takes off sprinting down the corner. I look up and John passes by me, heading towards Mildred. He was just so focused, he just had this dead stare. He was so angry, and I look back.
John puts his hand on the courtroom door, looks at me and says, gotcha.
He turned around and he walked back the other direction, and I was just up against the wall, hoping he wouldn't see me.
My attorney said, oh, hell no, we gotta get out of here.
I'm scared. I'm letting my daughter know. Lock the doors, don't answer if anybody comes to the door, because I figured he would probably come there looking.
So we take the stairs to go down to the police station and we explained to them what happened, and can we please go out of their back door. They say no, we need to go out the front door.
Just like everybody else, John was no joke.
I believed everything he said to me. He was gonna kill me. It was gonna be a headshot, and he was gonna bury me when nobody would be able to find me. I was terrified, and the terror came because nobody believed me. They thought I was being dramatic. They were actually gonna let me die. And then what were they going to say? Oh, she was a good old girl, you know, she loved the children. We did not see that coming, Yes you did. When I hear people say that,
oh I didn't see that, Yes you did. Victims always give signs, they always tell somebody. So we walk out of the court like a triangle where everybody's watching each other's back.
Get to the car.
I slouched down in the car so no one could see that I was in the car. We go over to the Department of Health and Human Resources because that's where my children were, and the first person I see is my son. He's tall, he's skinny, he's trying to wear afro, but it's in a dome, you know. And I walk up to him and he got his pants on his butt sagging.
Oh geez whiz.
And I should have said, honey, I'm so glad to see you, but I'm pulling up his pants, sayings, this's gonna be an issue, and he starts laughing. And then I hear my daughters, mommy, mommy, mommy, they're coming down, and I'm just so overwhelmed.
I'm crying might in my eyes.
I can't see you.
I can't see you.
And Selena said, Mommy says, honey, Daddy said he was looking for you, but he couldn't find you. I said, really, I was trying to find you, but he changed your names. So you were looking for us? Absolutely, Mommy. I just want to let you know that God answered my prayer because I was.
Praying and praying and praying for him.
To send you back to me, and you're finally here. I say, honey, no one will have for take you away from me again.
Okay, okay.
So we get in the car and we drive over to the airport. Security picked us up from the car, brought us to their security office. Once the pilot was ready to go, security took us to the plane. We landed BWI September fifth, two thousand and one.
Did you speak to John again?
Now?
Why would I?
No career?
Why would I?
Did he ever try to reach out to you.
He didn't know where I was. I wasn't hiding.
So the last thing you remember hearing from John was got you.
Yes.
One story is the John is just a psychotic killer. I guess that's plausible. But the other story is that he melted down under the pressure of not being ever able to either see his kids or even get into court to talk about seeing his kids.
This is J.
Mills, a divorce attorney who took on John's case at the.
Court hearing the kids were turned over to Mildred. The judge did that on a temporary basis, told John Muhammad that he should come back and set up a hearing to discuss the kids further. And so it was after that hearing where he lost the kids that he came to see me.
Mills didn't know much about John's background. He thought John was just going through a rough divorce. Mills actually felt sorry for John, so he took on the case pro bono.
He was a pretty normal, routine sort of person, fairly focused. He wasn't very happy about how things had turned out in court, but he understood would had gone on. The judge wasn't permanently depriving him of contact with the kids. The judge wanted him to set up a hearing to discuss what sort of a parenting plan would be appropriate, and that's very routine. I did set up a hearing which would require Mildred to show up in court and then talk about the kids, but we never had a
court hearing because we can never find Mildred. Mildred vanished with the kids. After I had set up a couple of the hearings without being able to serve Mildred with papers, I went to him and said, look, let's find Mildred. Because I can set up hearings all day, but what difference does it make if we can never locate Mildred? And so he set off to do that. I've given this story to other people, and sometimes the blowback is that I am trying to justify what John did, or
that I don't think he's a bad guy. I mean, clearly, the guy is a bad person with very, very severe problems, and I wouldn't try to justify that. But there's more to this story. These preliminary decisions get made, and people freak out about him because they're dealing with people's real personal lives and their intimate relationships with kids. People who go through the process get really disturbed by that. And I've been involved in a number of cases where the
end result is shootings. Tacoma was fairly famous for an incident where the chief of police shot is soon to be ex wife and killed her. That was the chief of police, right, so that guy must have had some degree of normal personality, but then he lost it and he melted down. And it's not uncommon for these things to result in a lot of violence. One way to hopefully avoid that. If it's possible is to have people air their grievances in court, win or lose, they've at
least been able to tell their story or Now. I'm not saying that that should require Mildred to come stand with John by her side, but John Muhammed's out there. There was some process that could have played out where everybody could have had their day in court, and he never did so. I again, I try to make clear that I think what he did was horrific, and.
I think it's it's just evil stuff.
But the kind of background story to it that should be aired is that I think there were ways that the system failed to diffuse that kind of problem, and instead it just sort of threw gasoline on a fire. If we do not address the systemic failures that occurred in this case, I worry that there are other people like that wandering the streets, and people are going to die if this problem isn't addressed in a better way.
Just a week after John lost, the Kid's tragedy struck.
Apparently a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center here and knew New York City had happened just a few moments ago.
I had been meeting with John in my office when the World Trade Center was burning to the ground. He had no interest in any of the politics. He wanted to see his kids.
John would later say that losing his kids was his own personal nine to eleven. It was surely a low point in his life. He'd lost his money in the rate of Antigua, he was living in a homeless shelter, and now he'd lost his children. John's friend Robert Holmes, the same friend who reported John to the FBI, says John was devastated. Holmes told Vanity Fair in two thousand and four, quote, I think that after his kids got
taken away, John had a nervous breakdown. I'm not a professor or a doctor, but John changed in a million subtle ways. He'd spend all day some days just crying. All he could think of was getting his kids back.
Back.
In Fort Myers, Florida, Lee Boyd Malva was also struggling. He was trying to adjust to yet another new living situation. Lee had enrolled as a junior at Cypress Lake High School. He was getting good grades in his classes, but he was struggling to navigate the American system. Lee wanted to go to college and one day become an airline pilot, but he didn't have the necessary documentation to sign up for the SATs, so he turned to John for help.
Una thought that John had been a bad influence on her son and had forbidden Lee from talking to him, But on weeknights, while Una worked at Red Lobster, John would secretly.
Call I was unable to distinguish between Mohammad's father I had wanted and Mohammad and nervous wrecks. That was his falling to pieces.
John told Lee he could get him into college, but John wanted something in return, and he needed Lee to join him in Washington. Fired leave money for a greyhound ticket. Lee says that sometime late in two thousand and one, after his mother fell asleep, he packed up his clothes, a tennis racket, and a portable CD player. He snuck out of the house at four thirty am and got on a bus headed northwest. Lee arrived in Bellingham, Washington a week later.
When I first arrived in Bellingham, he told me that he's searching for the children. He said, in order to get the children, we're going to have to do whatever it takes. I looked at him as my family, and they had my siblings, so I'm like, okay, we're going to do whatever it takes. I didn't understand, but that man at the.
Time I read.
In Bellingham, John introduced Lee to everyone as his son. Lee stayed with John at the homeless shelter and soon enrolled at Bellingham High School, but one school was out for the day. Lee says, John was of his education.
Day in day out. He controlled what I read, what I did, what I ad when I slept, in every single aspect from diets, studies, my activities, every single aspect and fastt of my life. And he didn't give me a time to rest. He understood exactly how to motivate me by giving approval or denying approval, and he verse it wasn't violent at all. It was I mean, it's like with a temp does to a woman. That's the best description I can offer.
Sometimes they'd leave the homeless shelter in Bellingham and stay with John's friends in Tacoma. One friend they would often visit was Earl Dante, the friend you heard from earlier who photoshopped a birth certificate for John.
John didn't dress up as much the more he wasn't flashing more. He had come around her with a white truck. One time he popped my door and had leave with him. Hey, Earl, this is my son Lee. Oh, how you don't want to call a processor? That'd be a nice to you.
After a while at Dante's, Lee says they would play video games and watch movies. They'd watch some movies over and over. One favorite was The Matrix. Another was Carlos Hathcock Marine Sniper. It was a sort of instructional video with advice for snipers.
Continue your training. You cannot do it too much. You cannot do it too much, So do it as much as you can. Put all your men and body into it.
Train Train, Train.
And John and Earl began giving Lee's shooting lessons as well.
He had a friend Earl. He just said, look, I need you to go to the range and just tell early. Teach me how to shoot. It's amazing how quickly I would pick on these things.
Let go shooting.
I couldn't go as often as he could because I had to work. He is a I'm gonna take your god to the range. So okay, I had a six hour forty five. I had a smith and Wesson forty four caliber. I had a AK forty seven, I had a Winchester TO seventy, and I had a Remington seven hundred Model three eight series and a Twin to calibist.
Back in Florida, Lee's mom, Una James, had been searching for Lee since he'd left. Una paged through her caller ID and found a strange number. It was for a homeless shelter in Washington State, and she had a feeling that Lee might be staying there with John. So for weeks she called the number but could never get through to either of them. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Una said that she kept calling and one day finally she heard John's voice on the other end. She demanded
that John Sendley back to her in Florida. She remembers John saying, I have a job to do and I can't rely on some cookeead to do it. Terrified of what that meant, Una got on a Greyhound bus and headed for Washington State. When Una arrived, she confronted John at the homeless shelter and some one called the cops. When the cops arrived, they reunited Lee and Una, but the cops suspected they were both undocumented immigrants, and reported
them to Border Patrol. They were arrested and finger printed. These were the finger prints and the rest report that would later supply authorities with the names Lee Boyd Malvow and John Mohammad. Following their arrest, Una and Lee were separated and detained. Then on January twenty third, both were released into an I and S safe house to await a deportation hearing. In an interview at Vanity Fair, Una said that Lee told her mom, we are being followed
and if I don't go, they'll kill you. Two days later, Lee climbed out of a bathroom window and ran off. Lee ran back to John.
Now.
Lee's grooming began in earnest. Lee says he and John would go shooting for hours a day.
He'd stand behind me and he would taught me through the process. He would explain to me all the things that I hated about myself and why this has to die.
Lee Boyd Malvoe says John told him to visualize his own face onto the targets, to imagine that with each shot he was destroying his own weakness.
Heat needs killed myself over and over and over and over. He told me, the old person has to die. Lee Malville has to die it because Lee Malvau cannot do this.
Lee says they would go to nearby woods and pretend they were hunting each other with sniper rifles to practice stealth and camouflage techniques. Lee says that on one of those outings, when it was snowing, John stripped off Lee's shirt and chained him to a tree. John left him there for hours and told him it was an exercise to mentally hardened him.
It's like a woman messing in a music relationship. Someone looking from the outside said, man, they're a multiple opportunities. Why couldn't she leave? Why she stayed for twenty years? It's not that simple. The body is just obsessed. Once someone has me emotionally, they have your mind.
Lee Boyd Malvo's training was almost over. Soon John would give him his first real mission. Not too far away in Tacoma, Ia, Nichols had been keeping in touch with Mildred Muhammad.
We were having different conversations, probably maybe once or twice a month as she begins to re establish her life after eighteen months without her children.
Isa was glad all the drama with John seemed to be over and that the kids were back with their mom.
My life was so intertwined with hers in terms of her children and keeping her alive and keeping her safe. Now I'm faced with where I left off in my life.
Asa had her own struggles at home. Her niece, Kenya Cook, had just gotten out of an abusive relationship.
Before they had fought, but they had a baby. Now now she's scared for the baby, and she's decided to leave. And I said, yes, I'll take her home. She can come with me. So now I have her, her three month old child, my teenage daughter who's now fourteen, and my husband, and it's working. I'm very proud of her. She's enrolling in school. She had gotten a job and got up to a supervisory position, and the baby's thriving,
and Kenya saving money. She was helping me around the house, and we would go shopping together and different things of
that nature. And one day, February sixteenth, two thousand and two, we had went grocery shopping and I was gonna make some chicken tacos that I do pretty good, and we forgot the taco shells, and so I was going back to the store I told Kenya to watch the food in the pot because I was boiling the chicken, and she said, okay, Auntie and I left, and then my fourteen year old, who was at a sleepover, decided she didn't want to stay, so she called me and asked me to come pick her up, and I did, and
then we went to the store. We were gone about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and I pull in and our driveway remote control wasn't working. So I sent my daughter into the house to open the garage door, and I'm waiting. Garage door doesn't open, and my daughter finally comes back to the car and she's standing there and it's starting to rain, and I said, hey, what are you doing. My daughter has the look of trauma on her face. I said, girl, what is it?
What's wrong? She sent Mommy, Kenya's lying on the floor and the house is all smoky. So I go to the house and just as she said, my niece was lying on the floor in the doorway, and the house was covered with smoke. The pot and its contents had disintegrated and melted. And so somehow, by the grace of God, I was able to get that stove turned off with all of that heat, my daughter standing in the doorway,
just staring. I called nine one one. I ran upstairs to check on the baby, because I'm thinking that they had to succumb to smoke in elation. And so I ran upstairs and the baby was on the edge of the bed. All around her was the diaper, the nighty wram bottle was still there, and I didn't know if the baby was alive or not. I didn't know if the baby was breathing, and so I touched the baby gently and she jumps up and she's screaming from where
she left. So I grabbed the baby diaper and took the baby downstairs, and handed the baby to my daughter and told her to go to the neighbors and went back to Kenya. And I got over Kenya's body and I saw a little bullet casey and a little hole in her face. I stayed there. I had already called nine one one, and I can hear the ambulance in
the background. They're on their way, and I'm talking to Kenya hanging there and I'm praying and I'm telling her help is coming, and the ambulance get there, and I'm sitting on the step and they come into the house and they get her body and they pull her from the fourier into the living room where they start working on her, trying to revive her. And they finally say she's gone. And I just stared and looked in just dismay. I couldn't process what they meant by saying she's gone.
And I saw where Kenya's head had laid. The bullet casing was still there, and I just saw blood. The back of her head had just been blown out. I just went into a cold state. I was just on auto pilot. I was just following commands.
According to Lee's autobiography, that very same night, John Muhammad gave Lee his first test.
One night, he says, Okay, this is what I need for you to do. There was a house on the hill. I want you to go there. I want you to go. I want you to talk to this parson.
Lee says, John drove him to a house, ranting about politics and wars and necessary sacrifices. John dropped Lee off and told him he'd be watching. Lee was wearing a dark hoodie and he was holding a brown paper bag. He tried to calm himself as he walked up to the house. He knocked on the door, and after a short delay, it opened. A young woman greeted him. He said, good evening, is missus Nicholls in. He remembered that she seemed lonely and eager to talk. She gave him a
long answer, explaining that Isa was at home. John had prepared Lee for this possibility. I have a message for her, Lee said. He reached into the brown paper bag and pulled out a forty five caliber pistol, one they borrowed from Earl Dance. John had told Lee to visualize his own face on top of hers, just like in the training. Here's what Lee wrote about that moment in his autobiography, read by a voice actor.
A voice deep inside me said, don't, don't, don't, I thought, Lee, you cannot face John unless you do this. I pointed the forty five caliber gun to her face, and in an instant I saw not her but me, my old self that I hated, that scared hurt self. That night, Lee boy Malvo died. I pulled the trigger. In an instant, she too was gone.
Next time on Monster DC Sniper, I.
Was sudden, there's these helicopters flying all over the Tacoma community. They are actually saying the DC Sniper is linked to Tacoma.
Again a note found, this time it's an angry note.
You did not respond to the message.
You departed from what we told you to say.
Your incompetence has cost you another life.
We need to find these guys, and we need to do it now.
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.
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. When do we release the information about the Caprice to the media.
Police were there to see if John Muhamma showed up. While we were down there, we got a call on I seventy in northern Maryland. They believe that the snipers are there and they're waiting.
To move in.
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. Paint Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Stedman and Christina Dana.
Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. This episode included segments of a phone interview with Lee Boyd Malvo conducted by journalist Josh White. This interview was from The Washington Post copyright twenty twelve The Washington Post, All rights reserved, used under license. This episode also included a passage from Lee Boyd Malvo's autobiography, The Diary of the d C Sniper,
re enacted by actor Alec Bay. This episode included a recorded interview of Earl Donza provided by the Tucson Police Department. Earl Donzi was contacted by our team for this podcast, but he did not respond for comment.