Beltway Sniper Archives Digest
This is a summary of each post only. The numbers in parenthesis after each entry are the number of comments and number of trackbacks.
For the full archive (large file), click
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July 03, 2003
TalkLeft links to "Sniper suspect's lawyers try to postpone publication of police chief's book": In a request filed in federal court, attorney Thomas Mann said Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose has ''strategically planned the launch of his book just prior to Muhammad's trial in an attempt to obtain as...
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June 18, 2003
From the WaPo: Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose has resigned in order to free himself from the ethical concerns surrounding his plans to write a personal account of last fall's sniper manhunt... Moose, who became a national hero [huh? --lw] as the sturdy face of the sniper task...
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January 07, 2003
From the NYT: "Lee Malvo, the 17-year-old held in the sniper shootings near Washington, may have been handed over to the older defendant in the case, John Muhammad, by his mother as collateral to guarantee that she would pay for forged immigration documents, according to an Antiguan government report released...
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November 30, 2002
Orin Kerr has a link to an NYT article that apparently says that the sniper could have been caught earlier with more and better mega databases. He thinks "that it took the police lots of uses of databases, information sharing, and citizen-informant work to catch the sniper." I'm going to...
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October 31, 2002
This article says ballistics linked the rifle used in the spree to the Alabama killing ... since witnesses in that slaying said Muhammad and John Lee Malvo only had a handgun, the rifle revelation suggests a third person could have been involved. And, this article has a Wendy's employee who...
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October 28, 2002
This horribly written article makes everything sounds so... convenient. But, it does have two really neat drawings: "The Car" and "The Gun." That just makes everything so clear. Thanks Newsweek. Anyway, it contains more than a few scary quotes, including: Top officials... were angry that reporters had let slip that...
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October 27, 2002
The card to which they wanted money transferred was stolen from a Greyhound bus driver, and she didn't realize it had been stolen. As you can see by looking at the PDF files available at WaPo, the PIN number from the sniper's note is 9595. Just a minor nag. Was...
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According to this article, One official said that the suspects failed to arouse police suspicion because they did not fit the beliefs that already were forming in the case. "Everyone thought we were looking for an angry white guy in a white van," said a senior government official. "Instead, it...
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October 25, 2002
It turns out that the root cause of John Muhammed's alledged spree killings might not be due to religion, sociopathic hatred, or crime after all. In fact, the root cause has been discovered. As this story makes clear, he was just "a former member of the U.S. Army," no other...
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According to this article: Meanwhile, agents traced Muhammad to a car registered to an address in Camden, N.J., which housed a Caribbean take-out restaurant on the ground floor and apartments above... Some said they had never seen [Muhammed]. Others said they saw him each day at the restaurant, called the...
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ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, MD - OCTOBER 25 (AP) - Police today announced the arrest of a suspect in the Beltway Sniper case. He is described as a blond, blue-eyed, white supremacist with known ties to a veritable grab bag of militia, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and ultra-Christian groups. The suspect, Christopher McChristian,...
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October 24, 2002
I think an easy way to characterize alledged sniper Mr. Muhammed is as a sociopathic, megalomaniacal control freak Muslim convert with a hatred for America on his (perhaps first and) last mission. Have I covered all bases? He spoke highly of the 9/11 terrorists, he converted to Islam several years...
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October 22, 2002
This blogger admirably admonishes the cops for taking advantage of all those "good citizen" voluntary searches on I95 and elsewhere related to the MD shooter. Unfortunately, he spoils it by preceding it with his own creepy-n-silly "solution" to the MD shooter case. Hey, how do we know all those Salem...
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October 21, 2002
I read on freerepublic.com the speculation that the shooter might have been using a motorbike. That makes sense if he has to run from the police: a motorbike can go between cars and I guess many can go faster than cop cars. Plus, they can fit in the backs of...
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First, doesn't stopping the guys in the white van at the phone booth in the manner described here kinda tip the cop's hand? Shouldn't they have carefully followed them and done the arrest away from the phone booth so the real shooter would continue to try to get in touch...
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October 20, 2002
The latest shooting happened at a steak house in Ashland, VA. Looking at an aerial photo, I guess the steakhouse is on the southwest intersection near the red pushpin. That photo is also 8 years old, so the area might have changed since then. It looks like the easiest way...
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October 19, 2002
Unqualified Offerings hypothesizes that Matthew Dowdy, who is accused of giving false witness in the MD shooting case, might be the shooter or his accomplice. In a word, no. While I might be wrong, he seems to me to be a bit of a bumbler. How else would you describe...
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October 18, 2002
Looking at the list of the shooter's victims here, I notice a couple of interesting things. They've probably been noticed by the cops already, but anyway: - except for the 13-year-old boy, no male under 39 was shot. In other words, no males between 14 and 38 have been shot....
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October 16, 2002
I haven't heard anyone analyzing the MD shooter's first shot, the one that went through the window at the Michael's store. I have a few ideas here. According to this article, the shot was "a few feet above eye level." Why was this shot a "miss," and all the (known)...
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October 15, 2002
Do we really need to deploy military spy drones to find a sniper who's killed a relatively small number of people? The deaths are certainly tragic, but I don't think it's either necessary or wise to use the military in this case. Good detective work, plus taking proactive steps like...
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October 14, 2002
Assuming that the tarot card left at one of the sniper's sites said "Dear Mr. Policeman, I am God," it might be somewhat interesting to note that an anagram of the initials of that phrase is "mad pig."...
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October 13, 2002
Let's assume: - the white truck exists and is more or less as described - the white truck belongs to the sniper - the sniper doesn't want to get caught, at least now - the correct truck has not yet been turned in by someone to the police tip line...
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Interesting article from a WaPo movie critic (?) about the sniper from a shooter's perspective. He refers to the first shot as a miss. That's the one that went through the Michael's craft store window. Apparently, all of his other shots hit someone; that's the only one that "missed." It...
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October 08, 2002
This article thinks so, and lists all the school closures as evidence of the effect this has had. However, I remember the hysteria that greeted past cases like this (Hillside Strangler, Manson Family, etc. etc.) I don't think the reaction to this case is that much different. It is certainly...
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October 07, 2002
This WaPo article has that as its subtitle. "Their names and faces reflected the diversity that has become Montgomery County... etc. etc..." Yes, but none of the victims were Asian. Or, at least East Asian. And, none were Native American, Pacific Islander, or Inuit, Eskimo, Aleutian, or Other. Someone call...
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October 05, 2002
There was a discussion on USENET about the MD sniper. Someone thought it might be terrorists. I posted the following remarks. "Who's terrorized? It looks like the killers have moved south, and there might not be any more shootings, at least for a while. Political terrorists, even if their specific...
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