Police Won't Confirm Missing Man Has Shooting Connections (Have YOU seen this man?)

RALEIGN, N.C. -- State police in North Carolina said that they're looking for a former resident -- but won't confirm or deny a connection to a string of killings in Maryland and Washington, D.C.

A Raleigh newspaper, The News and Observer, reports that a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has issued a bulletin for Robert Gene Baker III, (pictured, right).

Baker is a former Raleigh resident, but it's unclear when he last lived there. Federal agents said that they believe he's heading south from Washington and may have associates in Virginia and North Carolina.

However, Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said that there is no information that Baker is in North Carolina.

The paper said that the bulletin describes Baker as a drug user affiliated with various militia and white supremacist groups.

The ATF reports says Baker's family members reported him missing on Monday. Moose said Baker's wife was the last to see him. The ATF report doesn't say where his family lives.

At a Saturday morning press conference, Moose stressed that Baker is not a suspect.

"He is not a suspect. He is a missing person," Moose said. "If he is located, the instructions are to please check on his welfare, his well-being."

Moose said if authorities locate Baker they have no reason to arrest him but will determine if Baker is willing to talk to police.

He is white, 5-feet-9 and 195 pounds, with brown eyes, brown hair and tattoos on both arms and back.

He was said to be traveling south in a white 2000 GMC van with dark lettering. The vehicle has a Maryland registration.

The ATF said that Baker is armed with a handgun and high-powered rifle and should be considered armed and extremely dangerous.

Investigators said that the bullets used in three of the five fatal shootings in Montgomery County, Md., and one in Washington, D.C., were all fired from the same weapon.

An agent from the ATF said that tests of the shell fragments yielded the match. Investigators are still analyzing fragments from two other fatal shootings in Montgomery County that police believe are linked to the others.

Investigators say the same weapon was used to shoot a cab driver at an Aspen Hill Mobil station, a woman at a Kensington Shell station, another woman in front of a post office in Silver Spring, and a 72-year-old man walking on Georgia Avenue, just inside the District line.

Police are still awaiting test results from a non-fatal shooting Friday in Spotsylvania County, Va.

Moose said the ATF transported the vehicle that was near the woman when she was shot to be examined.

"We are convinced there are possible evidentiary items in that vehicle," Moose said.

Previous Stories:

October 5, 2002: Police Connect D.C., Montgomery Shootings
October 4, 2002: Police: D.C., Montgomery Shootings Linked
October 3, 2002: Manhunt Continues; Police Identify Shooting Spree Victims
October 3, 2002: Reward Offered For Arrest of Killing Spree Suspect; Five Dead
October 3, 2002: Local Leaders Respond to Shooting Spree
October 3, 2002: Police Investigate Two Shootings In Montgomery Co.

Baker has been cleared.

Note how the working law-enforcement hypothesis has now gone from "two perps" to a "lone white nut" perp. While nothing can be ruled out, as yet I've heard of no evidence to support this hypothesis.

And it seems very unlikely that the person was operating alone. The obvious planning behind this highly non-random "random" attack on the civilian population (very consistent target selection - all close-to-sure-one-shot-kills except for the lucky Virginia lady; outside stationary targets who were civilian adults, tactical planning, etc.) suggests a level of organization, whether Al Qaida or something else. It does not suggest a drug-crazed lone lunatic, who would probably also attack children and authority figures in uniform. Al Qaida typically does not go public claiming credit for attacks, so the absence of a claim does not rule them out.

So an organized terrorist hypothesis should be considered. If you look at who benefits, that looms even larger. Even if Al Qaida had nothing to do with this, they had to have reaped a lot of success from it already. Now they know something we can't really respond to. And they know how to make the public afraid in a way they weren't before.

If one accepts the organized terrorist hypothesis for the sake of argument, one possible scenario now is that the whole thing will go quiet for a while (though with this much success, it will likely happen again, maybe somewhere else). After all, when the operational objective has been achieved, one folds up the tents and leaves. If that happens, there's little chance this shooter team will ever be caught by municipal law enforcement. They may even be out of the country by now.

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