Posted on 10/26/2002 5:51:09 AM PDT by twntaipan
|
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usshot262979152oct26,0,7319464.story
By Knut Royce and Tom Brune
WASHINGTON BUREAU. Earl Lane contributed to this story from Montgomery, Ala. Knut Royce is a special correspondent.
October 26, 2002
Washington - The car used by the two suspects in the Washington-area sniper attacks was stopped "at least five times" at roadblocks thrown up immediately by police after many of the shootings, according to a senior federal law enforcement official.
But because the officers were unaware that the car, a 1990 blue Chevrolet Caprice, was the vehicle used in the shootings and focused instead on white box trucks or vans identified by early witnesses, they did not conduct thorough searches, he said.
The senior official said John Allen Muhammad's car had been "stopped and checked by various roadblocks after the shootings."
He said investigators had told him the vehicle had been pulled over "at least five times" when scores of police, responding within minutes of the shootings, blocked off roads surrounding the shooting sites.
He said he did not have the details of when and where the vehicle had been pulled over, or whether the vehicle had been checked more than one time after a specific sniping attack. But he said all the stops were "in the areas" of the shootings and occurred "when they put up the roadblocks."
He said the car never was searched during the dragnets, though the name of the driver, either Muhammad, 41, or his alleged accomplice, John Lee Malvo, was recorded, as was the vehicle's identification. Jamaican officials, where Malvo, 17, was born, said Friday that records show the teen's name is Lee Boyd Malvo.
The missed opportunities came despite an account from a witness to police on Oct. 3, the second day of the three-week shooting spree, that he had seen a Caprice leaving the scene of the only shooting inside Washington, D.C. The other snipings were outside of the capital. But the witness had described the color of the Chevrolet as brown or burgundy.
Newsday was told Friday that yet another missed opportunity came on Oct. 3.
Two hours before the D.C. shooting, which killed a 72-year-old man, a D.C. police officer had stopped the Caprice the alleged snipers used, said Sgt. Joe Gentile, spokesman for the D.C. police.
But the officer let the car go after he ran its New Jersey license plate number through the national crime database and nothing significant popped up, Gentile said. Gentile declined to provide further details.
The senior federal official said the crystallizing moment in the investigation occurred last Sunday, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and FBI agents paid a visit to a priest in Richmond, Va., just south of where the 12th victim had been shot and seriously wounded the previous day. U.S. Marshals said they also participated in the interview.
It is unclear how the investigators knew that the priest had received a call, reportedly from the two suspects, the day before the shooting in nearby Ashland, Va.
Muhammad and Malvo had complained to the priest that the police were not taking the pair seriously in their attempts to communicate or negotiate, the official said.
He said the priest told the agents that the pair had acknowledged involvement in a shooting in Montgomery, Ala., a month earlier that left one woman dead and another wounded.
He said the priest, in narrating the duo's conversation, had keyed on words or phrases similar to the content of a letter they had left near the Ashland shooting site.
"The priest is telling them things and they [the investigators] are going, 'Wait a minute, that's the guy's [the letter writer's] words, this is the guy,'" the official said. He said it also became clear to the investigators for the first time that the suspects were black and not white or Middle Eastern, as they had suspected.
Because of the telling details, the official described the moment as pivotal. "That's when they knew they had it," he said.
Meanwhile, prosecutors for the federal government, Maryland and Virginia were unable to reach an agreement on which jurisdiction would take the lead in prosecuting the two suspects.
Douglas Gansler, State's Attorney for Montgomery County, Md., announced that Muhammad and Malvo were being charged in Maryland with six counts of first-degree murder for the six homicides committed by the snipers there and that it would seek the death penalty for Muhammad. They were the first of many charges to be brought in the sniper case.
Earlier in the day, Montgomery, Ala., police Chief John Wilson said his department had issued murder warrants against Muhammad and Malvo, charging them in the deaths of Claudine Parker, a liquor store employee who was shot to death Sept. 21 in that city. Wilson said his department had evidence placing both Muhammad and Malvo at the scene of the crime.
Gansler said meetings by prosecutors during the day had failed to resolve whether Virginia, Maryland or the federal government would go first in what is bound to be a showcase trial. Both states will prosecute, he said. The question is, who will go first.
Unlike Maryland, Virginia allows the execution of juveniles, and is expected to seek the death penalty for Malvo as well as Muhammad.
But Gansler acknowledged that it is the federal government that holds the trump cards: Malvo and Muhammad are currently in federal custody. He said federal prosecutors have not yet decided whether to prosecute under federal law.
Murder is not a federal crime, but could be one part of a prosecution for extortion or perhaps other crimes that would bring the federal death penalty into play.
Underlying the competition to control the first prosecution is U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's belief in the death penalty, as well as Virginia's much more zealous use of the ultimate punishment than Maryland.
Alabama is also a heavy user of the death penalty.
"We do intend to seek the death penalty through our district attorney's office here," Wilson told a news briefing in Alabama. He said that police officer Dwight Johnson, who had chased a man away from the scene of the shooting of Parker and co-worker Kellie Adams, who is recovering from her injuries, made a positive identification of Muhammad from an array of photos that included the sniper suspect.
But Montgomery's district attorney, Ellen Brooks, said it was premature to say whether she will ask for the death penalty. "It's very early on still in this investigation, despite the fact that warrants have been signed," Brooks said. "There is much more to be done." But if the evidence supports the death penalty, she said, "we will seek it."
Earl Lane contributed to this story from Montgomery, Ala. Knut Royce is a special correspondent.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Who stopped the REAL WITNESSES' INFORMATION FROM COMING OUT?
It is interesting to note that it was reported that neither one of the two had ANY ID on them when they were arrested.
This leads to the question, how did they (LE), ascertain their names and record them during these roadblock stops? 5X?
Are you assuming that you can identify a persons ethnicity by merely listening to their voice?
And so glad the priest had good recall.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.