The Takedown [11]

were looking for, we knew what they were in. We knew these people were going to continue to kill people until they were stopped. We just didn't know where to find them. I guess it was probably eleven thirty that night. I'm going home to Frederick, and as I approached Frederick County, I switched over to Frederick Barrick channel and I called the bar because I'm required 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 I just got a phone call. Five minutes after that radio station there in Frederick broadcast that that's who we were looking for. A citizen spotted them parked in that rest Arian Myers and and I told Sergeant hunter Mark, send everybody you got, and he said, well, counting you, sir, that's three, because they're all in Montgomery County. Well saddle up, boys, our

old adage, one riot, one trooper, let's go. There is a ruthless person on the loose. What unnerves this community the boast 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 gonna go right through

our bulletproof vest. From my Heart radio and Tenderfoot TV, this is monster d C sniper. 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. It was the night of October Maryland State Police Lieutenant David reich and Ball was on his way home when he learned that the sniper's car had been spotted just minutes after a radio station broadcast the details about the

Blue Caprice. A witness saw it parked in a rest area forty five miles away up in the mountains of northwest Maryland. I drove out to the scene with Rake and Bass so he could explain to me exactly what happened that night. When Sergeant hunter Mark told me that the sniper or car had been spotted in the rest area, I said, are you sure? And he said, it's confirmed

as best as we can confirm it. The caller who I'm on the line with said they had heard it on the radio that the police were looking for this vehicle. And Sergeant hunter Mark says, what are your orders, sir? And I said, my orders are notify the Joint Operations Center of the sighting, let them know that I am in a route, and will establish a perimeter. I had that police car flat out at a hundred and fifteen miles as fast as that poor thing would go. So

day we're ten miles out from Frederick. Yep, what's happening in your head? What's going through my head is how are we going to deal with this? The training kicks in. I asked Sergeant hunter Mark, who do I have going? He tells me, you've worked with these guys in narcotics. We're all narcs together, so I knew they had the same swat team basic training that I had. My goal is twofold number one, get up here. Let's secure this scene.

The other thing going through my mind is if we can get there and in position before they leave that rest area, no matter what, they're not getting out. They're not going to get past us. If we have to use lethal force to stop them, if we have to crash a police car into that caprice, We're going to do what we need to do. They're not getting out of that rest area. I mean, I'm flying, I've got the center of the car right on the dotted line. I'm straddling both lanes as fast as I can go.

The next thing is going through my mind is if I were these bad guys, what would I do? And my thought process was one would be sleeping in the car, the other one would be in the woods with that rifle. What professionally we would call on overwatch? We had handguns and a shotgun. We were outgunned. I had contemplated, Hey, just the three of us, that's go bomb Russiam. But if we did that and the scenario that I was

thinking about came true, then we were dead. He's going to be able to kill all of us before we even figure out where the shots coming from. So that was last resort. The next thought process was, let's see if we can somehow get any other civilians out of that rest area and seal that rest area in. I'm worried about the potential for a hostage barricade situation. I'm

worried about a high speed pursuit. I'm worried about them carjacking and eighteen wheeler and now we've got them basically driving a tank which they're gonna run over any police car we've got. I mean, you've killed people, you've wounded for more, you're the most wanted to people probably in the world. Why not go out and blaze a glory at the bottom of this hill right before we get off the exit. You're exactly one mile from the rest area. The rest area is right on top of that mountain.

M Are you in touch with your other guys on the radio at this point? At this point, the other hearing me, TFC Draskovic, Paschal and the canine guy, we're just announcing that they were arriving, and I also had ordered silent running through, no lights, no sirens, nothing, and right at the beginning of this rest area, just pull over on the right shoulder here. That's where we met. It was myself, TFC Draskovic, TFC Paschal, and Rich Poffenburger,

the canine trooper out of Hagerstown. I was patched in with our witness and I asked them, do you see anything? Nope, everything's quiet. Do you see us no? Do you hear us no? Whitney Donohue, the witness who had first reported the caprice, agreed to stay on his cell phone at the rest stop. Dispatchers patched Donna Hughes telephone through to Rank and Ball so the two could talk. Rank and Ball figured that if his witness hadn't seen the police

cars pulled up, then neither had the snipers. So at that point I tell TFC Draskovic and Paschal blocked this entry. So they pulled their car sort of in a V right about where the rest areas sign is. My canine guy, I said, I want you to go in the middle between the entrance and the exit. Get the dog out, keep him quiet. Anybody that comes out of this rest area on foot, assume they are the sniper, and turned the dog loose. Keep in mind they had us out gunned.

We had handguns on a shotgun. They had that Bushmaster and I told him I'm going to the exit and I will set up my command post there. And then eventually I got another trooper out of Hagerstown and him and I blocked the exit. So that's how we stood for the first twenty minutes. The next incoming troopers, we had them blocked the interstates, both directions. I wanted everybody off the mountain. From what we could tell, we might have had a dozen trucks parked in the truck lock.

As luck would have it, we had a couple of truck drivers start to come out to leave. We stopped them, searched their rigs, and I asked them if they wanted to be good Americans, and it was just like, well, yeah, troop, what do you need? I said, well, we got the snipers in the rest area, and it was holy shit, you're kidding me, right, I said, no, his ambastards are

in there. I just took a piss and I said, can you throw your truck across this exit so that that car cannot get out of here, Yes, sir, be maur honor. Now I'm on the phone with my witnesses, and I'm on the phone with the Joint Operations Center because, as you can imagine, they were losing their collective minds. After weeks of working over time and dozens of dead end leads, police were tantalizing Lee close to an arrest. Attentions were rising. We start getting orders from the Joint

Operations Center. Have you done this? Have you done that? I understand their concerns. These are special agents in charge. Their jobs are on the line. They don't know me, they don't know my training. They want to take charge. That's why they're special agents in charge in the FBI. I understand that the problem is they were in Montgomery County. I'm here, I know this rest area. I know my troopers.

They don't. So it got a little bit intense. Then the next thing that happens is Trooper Smith and I are on that end, and of course our attention is towards the interior of the rest area, and all of a sudden, I hear Dwayne Smith, y'all gone gunne and I turned out of the corner of my eye. I see a man coming with a rifle. He's got his

hat on backwards, he's wearing shorts. And as I happened to look, as I start to train my weapon on him, I see d e a about this big and I realized, oh my god, we're gonna have a friendly fire situation here. And that's when I ordered, if you're not in uniform, get off the mountain. Then the pushback started. My agents can be up there. They've been told to be up there, and I said, you do not understand, sir. It is dark.

We're going to get one of them killed. And when that happens, if the snipers are in that car, we're in a firefight, because we're gonna wake him up. Right now. I've got the advantage of surprise. I want to keep it. And at one point the U. S. Marshall came on and basically put me in charge. The U. S. Marshall's office trumps everybody, so we eased that situation. As police shut down the highways and a swarm of officers assembled for the takedown, law enforcement worried that the media might

blow their cover. The other immediate concern was is all right, it's on the radio media is listening to police communications. They know there's an army of federal, state, and local law enforcement heading to Myersville. Apparently there is a lot of what they described as police activity, a lot of officers responding to where this car was fought at. We are on the access roads at exit forty two on

Interstate seventy. They have the entire highway north of this exit blocked off with the sheriff's deputies and Maryland State troopers. And then it dawns on me, what happens if Channel one two ABC flies over with their helicopter. Ah, that's gonna blow what element of surprise. I had made a phone call to a friend of mine US Secret Service, and I asked him affairs a way we could have

airspace secured above us. He called me back in less than thirty seconds by where Presidential Authority Secret Service, Frederick County's airspace is secured. We did have one of our affiliate helicopters here, but apparently the police were not happy to see that new helicopter in the area, and they have ordered it to fly away from the immediate scene to not compromise their investigation. Then it was just a matter of time awaiting as Rank and Ball guarded the

rest stops exit. Montgomery County Police is Captain Drew Tracy met with the team of SWAN officers that they named the Tango Team at the bottom of the wooded hill behind the rest stop. The Tango Swan Team worked out a plan to capture the snipers they had surprised for twenty one days. Now, we had surprise and we had kind of a burning desire inside of us to put this to an end. We had to At the rest stop,

there was about seventy parking spaces, there was bathrooms. The vehicle was back then and because of a tempted windows, we could not see inside the blue caprice. We weren't even sure they were in there. We figured they may not be in there, but we still need an assault plan. And I remember being in a woodline. I'm saying, Okay, what's our plan if they go mobile? And then I looked at these guys who I know, who I respect. They're highly trained, and I said to myself, Drew, shut up.

They got it, and I just backed off. Police scanned it behind the rest stop with night vision and infrared sensors. They wanted to make sure that Malvo and Mohammed weren't hiding somewhere in the trees. There was an aircraft that flew over the rest area. Was some sort of a helicopter, and to this day, I do not know what kind of aircraft that was. But it made no sound, not one sound. It was not civilian, it was not law enforcement. The only thing I can tell you is I felt

it more than heard it. And I looked up and the leaves were rustling, and I thought, there's no wind. What the hell is that? And then this shadow went sideways, real slowly over my head towards the interior of the rest area. And then it dawned on me that is a military aircraft. And I know who was in it. And you know, to this day, God buss him. He will not tell me what kind of aircraft he was,

He says, I'm what you're talking about, Dave. The woods looked clear, so the Tango swat team assembled at the base of the hill. It was now three thirty am, hours after the sniper's car had been spotted. The Tango swat team made its final preparations before they climbed up through the woods to assault the sniper's car from the rear. The decision on the takedown was to go with six individuals, one from Maryland State Police, one from Montgomery County, and

four FBI HASSES rescue team. We had a game plan. We had two designated shooters, we had breachers to breach the windows, and we had hands on people. And we practiced real quick in a woodline, and then a decision was made. You know, everybody stood in line, thumbs up, thumbs up, grab shoulder, grab shoulder, go, no comments, no nothing. After four hours of anxious waiting, suddenly everything went into

high gear rank and ball was given the heads. Just before the Tangos one team entered the rest area, I got the message Tango team. Thirty seconds out. Dwayne and I came down to get between the bad guys and our civilians. The Tango team is fully warmed. They've got ballistic vests, helmets, night vision. They had at least two MP five. They comed out of the woods, slightly stooped, weapons up, fully intent on their target. As they get close to the car, the night vision goggles come up.

They split into two groups, three down the driver's side, three down the passenger side, and even though they're three guys in the line. They're moving. It's one. I'm in the woodline and 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. The Tango team took out the passenger rear window, driver's front window with spring loaded baton, and out of the vehicle they came. I hear police, police,

get on the ground. You know. I'm listening. I'm listening. And then I hear the word clear, and I started walking from the woodline and I see two things right away. I see like a glistening of like light. And when I looked down, the glistening was Malvo Marvel was on the ground, face down, handcuffed. And what happened is when they breached the tempered windows, the glass got in his hair and it hit the light and he didn't say one word. And I looked down. I looked right at him,

and he was sweating. He was sweating pretty good for that cold night. And then I hear jabbering. It was John Mohammed. He was just jabbering away. It didn't have a lot of meaning to me. It was just kind of big talk. And he was on the ground he was searched. I was right there when they opened his wallet and there was several pieces of false identification in different names. Remember looking at it, going, oh boy, Mohammed did not impress me one little bit. You could see

the fear in his face. Now, Lee Malvo, the young one, different story. I've arrestled a lot of people, but this is one of those people that you just know looking at him, this guy isn't done killing if he gets the chance. He's cuffed. He's sitting cross legged with Trooper Draskovic standing right behind and probably the largest state tripper in Maryland. Anybody else in their right mind should have been in complete fear. Not this kid. This kid just

looked at me with that dead shark eyed look. Pal, I'd kill you and everybody here if I had the chance. They were put in cars and of the helicopter escort down the road they went. From that point, we did a quick clear of the caprice to make sure there was no explosives or anything else to be in Bob, and then we pulled back. Investigators took over, and that's

when they went to get to Warren's. I stayed on the scene, secured the scene, search warrant was obtained, all the lab guys got up there, and there's still that little bit of doubt in the back of your mind until they pulled that damn sniper rifle out of the back seat of that car. Hidden in a secret compartment behind one of the car's back seats. Police found a rifle,

a bipod, and discope. And I'll never forget as long as I live the noise of when the lab guy cocked that round out of that rifle and seeing it's spinning around in a circle in the air, and the tinkle that it made when it hit the parking lot. No formal charges yet in the sniper case, but from authorities, no doubts that they've got their math inside the car, the two suspects were sound asleep, and authorities, who feared a violent confrontation, instead made a textbook peaceful arrest. We

feel very positive about being here. We have the weapon, it is off the streets so long as she's been so frustrated, And as police officers, when the news finally broke that the two snipers were in custody and all the officers involved were safe, it was a tremendous relief. It wasn't a celebration. There was no high five and going around or anything like that. It was just it's over. I was happy that it was over, but it was even happier watching my mom and my elderly neighbor go

to the store for the first time. Okay, she was so scared to go anywhere. That was my biggest relief, was actually seeing my mom be able to live life again. They had that satisfaction to know that that our evidence from Alabama was used to stop somebody from doing what they were doing. It felt just awesome to bring justice to the victims so they know what happened. It's not comforting to them, it's just a sense of closure. I feel good because people who were not in danger anymore.

But you know, I was dealing with my pain, you know, and my daughter was still miss her mom. I was just so mad. I was at work and someone came and told me your brother's killers have been caught. And it just took a while for it all to sink in. I immediately started getting phone calls from people wanting to do interviews and things. I was just amazed that it wasn't terrorists. My gut that this was international terrorism was wrong, but we're still trying to figure out, Hey, you've got

two guys. You've got an older guy, and you got this young KIDTI seventeen years old. What's this about. 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? Journalistically, this moment of being arrested, that's the moment when we really kick into gear because suddenly there's two suspects and a story to tell about how we got to that point and who these people

are and why this happened. To this day, the why this happened is somewhat elusive people who do this work. You can be really happy about the case, but you know, unfortunately there's going to be more coming. You turn around and yeah, you know, you dust yourself off and you get ready to go back to work. And that's Bernard forsythe he led the homicide investigation in Montgomery County when the attacks first started. For the public, the arrests led

to a tremendous sense of relief. Kids could play outside again and no one had to worry as they pumped gas. But for Hamis investigators like forsythe the DC sniper case didn't end with the arrests. While the immediate threats seemed to be over, there were still questions to be answered, what was the motive and who was actually taking the shots, Mohammed or Malvo. But more importantly, detectives and journalists would soon discover that the snipers had committed many more crimes

than anyone realized. We ended up going all around the country trying to track leads down and finding out that these subjects actually did more. What had Mohammed and Malvo been doing in the months between the shooting of Kenya Cook in February and the spree that started in d C in October. Detectives needed to interview Mohammed and Malvo and scour through evidence in the Blue Caprice to retrace the snipers steps between Washington State and the nation's capital.

After the arrest, agents took John Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo to Montgomery County to interview them. They were handcuffed and locked alone in separate rooms while officers prepared to question them. Suddenly, a crash rang out from Malvo's room. The agent assigned to guard him, unlocked the door and rushed inside. Malvo had slipped one hand out of his handcuffs, stacked a chair onto a desk, and was climbing into the space above the ceiling tiles. The agent pool melbow

to the floor. Other officers heard the commotion and ran in. Malvo was moved to a new, more secure room, where the furniture was bolted to the floor. There, Terry Ryan, a Montgomery County detective, began a strange interview with Malvo. Malvo refused to say a word, pantomiming that his lips were field, but he responded to questions through gestures. Ryan wanted to know if something unexpected happened at the final shooting of Conrad Johnson that caused Malvo to leave the

Duffel bag and glub behind because love. Ryan wrote in his report that Malvo nodded and his eyes welled up with tears. He grabbed his collar and began to rock back and forth in his chair. Meanwhile, Mohammed's questioning wasn't going much better. Mohammed told officers he was innocent. He said that he had found the Bushmaster rifle in a dumpster. The day before. The suspects weren't cooperating, but police had

plenty of evidence to examine. First, they needed to confirm that the Bushmaster rifle from the Caprice was the one used in the shootings, so they brought the rifle to Walter Dandred, the firearms examiner at the a t F. We test fire it in the water tank so that we could recover the bullet in more or less a pristine condition. On one end of that water tank, there's a a shooting port. We stick the barrel in there

and we do take two shots. For comparative purposes, We'll take those two projectiles that we just test fired, put them on a comparison microscope, and put the evidence projectile fragment on the microscope, and then look at those together. If all of that is corresponding, then we will call that an identification. Ballistics tests on the gun found inside the sniper's car match the bullets and shell casings used by the sniper. The rifle from the Capris was a match.

It was the weapon that had been used to kill ten and injure three in the DC area. It was the one used in Alabama as well, and those were only the shootings that the police knew about. As investigators searched the Caprice, they found more and more evidence, evidence that connect the Snipers to crimes all across the nation. Police also learned how the snipers got away with shootings in broad daylight. They had modified the car so they

could fire a shot from inside without being seen. Today, the snipers blue Chevy Caprice is kept by the National Law Enforcement Museum. It's in a warehouse that is normally inaccessible to the public. David Reichenbau met me there to explain how the Snipers turned the car into a mobile sniper outpost. The museum's collections manager, Laurence Sidney showed us to the car. Still a little messy, but there it is. Whoa This is not a wastra, not the Sniper's Caprice.

Is a formidable car with navy blue matt paint. It has dull hubcaps and dark tinted windows. It felt strange to stand next to it, this car that the Snipers had used to commit so many cold blooded acts of evil. Now the car sits in a museum warehouse under sterile neon lights. It's been gutted, its seats torn apart by the FBI when they searched for evidence, so they tore everything out of it, so it's not exactly how it was when they lived with it. That they certainly made

some strange modifications. Investigators found the car had been modified into a killing machine, with the snipers shooting through a hole in the trunk of the car. And we can take a look at the trunk. So there it is, there's the famous cut out just above the license plate. The snipers had cut a jagged notch into the trunk and opening just large enough to fit the end of the rifle barrel sticks out here, tripod was here. They had a brown glove that did shove through that hole.

With this trunk down and a brown glove shoved in there, nobody noticed it. But the hole that the snipers carved into the trunk was just the beginning To use the weapon scope. The snipers would have needed to keep the trunk lid slightly ajar, just enough for the site to clear so they could get site picture down range. Anybody else, your your trunk opens, it'll eventually creep up like that because it's on spring. You don't want to do that and be seen, So you hooked the bungee cord, the

one of little loops in here near the lock. That way he could control it. So when he was done shooting, you just pulled the trunk back down drove off. The snipers also created the secret entrance into the trunk through the backseat of the car, So the back seat pops down and you just crawl in here to the back. See that a little You see how they sort of goes down. That's where the rifle was when we poured it out of the car, so you wouldn't be able

to see the rifle. See the back seat. Rik and Boss says that when they made the arrest, the car was littered with evidence. They found two walkie talkies, maps with locations of the shootings circled, and a note with the task Force tip line numbere. It looked like a car that somebody had been living in for a month.

It clearly smelled like body odor and trash. Just picture the back seat, the driver's seat, floor filled full of fast food containers and some of their personal belongings, close stevds, some bags, and there were dated receipts and prepaid phone cards that investigators could use to retrace the sniper steps. The most important piece of evidence, though, was a laptop

computer that proved a treasure trove of information. Investigators learned that the laptop had originally belonged to a man from Clinton, Maryland, a man named Paul Larufa. When the snipers started randomly shooting people, nobody said, oh, you know, this could be related to what happened to Paul. Nobody had reason to think that until they found my computer. My name is Paul Larufa. My wife and I decided to do a

crazy thing like open a restaurant. So we did that in so in two thousand and two, were in our sixteenth year, and uh in September of that year is when when it happened. What they say is the start of everything. That they killed the five people in one day really wasn't a start. That's when the whole panics started for the next month, but it at least started on the East coast when they me There have been some recent developments in Lee Boy Malbo Supreme Court case

that our team is actively investigating. As a result, Episode twelve will be released in two weeks. Next week, we will release a bonus episode. It's a behind the scenes look at the Monster series, and an update on Lee Boy Malvo's case still to come this season on Monster d C Sniper, they did have a three phase plan. The first phase was to shoot five Caucasions per day. Phase two they were going to shoot a pregnant woman.

Washington was the first. There was Arizona. We don't know anything about the Atlanta shooting, the on anything about the next night shooting in Baton. Rouge Lee Malvo. When I looked at him, I knew he was a victim. He was a child who had been brainwashed. Do you have him listen to tapes when he was falling asleep giving him subliminal suggestions that there was essentially a war going on between blacks and whites. At the end of the Sooner View, I said, what was the motivation? Why did

you guys do this? And he looked at me and he says, and I said, well, what does that mean? The matrix and things of that nature were part of the indoctrination. Well, that's someone like this loose. I think anything you can't tell them here in Virginia something. It doesn't save him. Okay, two minutes? Who did I do believe he was brainwashed? For lack of a better term. I get the feeling he agrees he has to pay a price, but I don't know if he thinks he's

already paid it or not. I don't know the answer to that, but I'd like to ask him. You know, it's hard enough work in one murder and to have these third team shootings just in our area, let alone, what else went around the country. You know, we knew it was going to be a monumental task. One of the really most alarming moments was when Mohammed stood to represent himself. We had never heard from Mohammed at that point, and he stood up in court and started presenting a case.

Part of Mohammed's indoctrination was to decessitize lee to the violence, to shootings. There's no amount of psychological coercion that would force somebody to, let's say, kill, if they didn't already have some kind of predisposition. Might he get out someday. I'm convinced he will, but I don't know when that time is. I remember feeling just basically shock and disblief that he could have done this. He just looked so innocent. How shocking, How shocking that a person who could commit

such evil acts, could look like that. Yeah. 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 Than 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, Atlanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer. If you have questions or comments, email us at Monster at I heart media dot com, or you can call us at one eight three three to eight five six six six seven. Thanks for listening.