Original subtitles

Just after 7:00 this morning,

a man killed as he mowed a lawn,

a cab driver gunned down at a gas station,

a woman shot as she sat on a bench,

another woman vacuuming out the back of her car.

Between the third and fifth shooting,

it became very apparent

that something very sinister was going on.

One of the most massive manhunts

in the nation's history.

They put us out patrolling at first.

Everyone that was available went.

All around the nation's capital,

police on a hair-trigger alerts

in a desperate search for suspects.

None of the victims had anything in common.

They were just going out,

doing what they do on an average day.

The serial sniper has struck again.

The victim is a child.

That's just a whole 'nother level

of sick, demented terrorist criminal.

I'm very nervous.

We're scared coming to work.

I'm scareder than I've ever been in my life.

The whole region was just gripped by fear,

and it was up to us in law enforcement to stop it.

In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

Get down! Get down!

We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

Mark it.

- Freeze! - FBI.

- FBI! - Action!

But they don't know the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking agent to agent.

This is "FBI True."

Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked gangs, crimes against children,

as well as human and drug trafficking.

Kottis was the supervisor

of the FBI's Threat Response Squad,

overseeing the Bureau's response

to terrorism threats in New York City.

So the Beltway Snipers,

what was your job when this was unfolding?

Where were you? What was happening?

I was working cold case homicides

in the Washington DC/Virginia area.

And when the first shooting happened...

A 55-year-old man shot in a supermarket parking lot.

James Martin shot Wednesday night.

It was in Maryland.

No one thought that it was going to evolve

into the major case that it evolved in.

Melissa Thomas joined the FBI in 1991,

working with the Gang Task Force in San Diego.

She later joined the Counterterrorism Squad

in Washington DC

and the Behavioral Analysis Department at Quantico.

She eventually transferred to International Operations

in Rome where she retired in 2014.

The DC/Maryland/Virginia area, we have a lot--

unfortunately a lot of violent crime.

That was the Baltimore division.

Washington field office was not involved.

And then another shooting happened.

Just after 7:00 this morning,

a man killed as he mowed a lawn.

James "Sonny" Buchanan killed

behind the Fitzgerald Auto Mall.

And then another shooting happened.

A cab driver gunned down at a gas station.

Later, a woman shot as she sat on a bench

outside a post office.

It came from right up there.

And another woman vacuuming out

the back of her car in a gas station.

All were killed by a single shot.

So far, no one has been connected

to the killing spree.

It became very apparent

that something very sinister was going on.

Our homicide rate just increased by 25% in one day.

When did the FBI and investigators realize

that these shootings may be connected?

Very early on. ATF took the lead

on the ballistics analysis,

and they quickly identified that it was

coming from the same weapon.

We strongly feel that all of these are connected.

The weaponry seems to be very similar.

That does heighten our concern.

It's a year after 9/11,

so our investigative brains start clicking.

Is this another terrorist out there shooting Americans?

Now you don't know if it's an act of terrorism

or if it's just some nut out there

running around shooting people.

Well, I had to get gas today at a gas station,

and I'm scareder than I've ever been in my life.

None of the victims had anything in common

other than the fact that they were just going out,

doing what they do on an average day.

Baltimore was taking the lead for the FBI,

working in conjunction with Montgomery County.

But we had our finger kind of in the pie,

because we wanna know, do you all need any help?

We have called in other resources.

We have members of the Secret Service,

FBI, Maryland State Police.

I was sitting in the office,

and got a call from Montgomery County SWAT.

They said, we don't know what we have yet,

but we may need you to come down.

For us at that time, this was brand-new.

We had never faced anything like this.

Keith Runk joined the Maryland State Police in 1986,

serving as a SWAT commander

and assistant commander of the Special Operations Division.

Today, he's the lead instructor

for civilian response to active shooter incidents.

On the second day, we got the call that they needed help,

so we went down to Montgomery County,

where the tactical operations were working out of.

And, Whit, did you have the same thing?

You got the call? It was a couple days

after Keith and his guys got involved.

Whit Darnell spent 30 years in law enforcement,

beginning his career at a state agency in Tennessee

before joining the FBI,

where he served on the Hostage Rescue Team.

Chief Moose had asked

for help from the federal government.

Because of the magnitude of the investigation,

I am writing to the attorney general

to initiate a formal request for assistance.

I give him a lot of credit

because he didn't just say, I need help.

He did an official request for FBI assets,

which means that, under the serial killer act,

the FBI was able to get involved.

They put us out just kind of patrolling at first.

Everyone that was available went.

The serial sniper

terrorizing suburban Washington,

defying one of the most massive manhunts

in the nation's history.

We broke the team down into two shifts.

We had day a shift

and an afternoon/evening night shift.

The whole region was just gripped by fear,

and it was up to us in law enforcement to stop it.

As morning approaches, there is a growing sense of dread.

About 7:04, the sniper is still at large.

Fears that the killing spree is not over

are underscored by two more shootings.

72-year-old Pascal Charlot

was killed crossing the street.

A woman was shot and wounded

at a suburban shopping mall

about 60 miles southwest of Montgomery County.

If a shooting happened,

the patrol would try to go in and triangulate

and cordon that area off and set up roadblocks,

especially at a major interstate,

on-ramps or off-ramps

that they could have easily used to get away.

And that big law enforcement machine

that was involved is running leads.

And they're getting thousands of tips a day

that they've gotta sort through.

Call our tip line at 1-888...

324-9800.

The tip line was stood up overnight.

We had approximately 50 lines in a room,

eight-hour shifts.

That tip line was covered 24/7.

They would triage the tips that would come in,

and then I would review those tips after

and decide, okay, this looks like interesting information.

We'll send it up to the command post.

Every morning, I would get in 5:30, 6:00,

and I would start reviewing tips.

And by then, we had the white van lead coming in.

Gotten several reports

of a white van being seen in the area.

We have a lookout for a cream-colored Astro van.

Can't tell you how many thousands of tips

we had called in about white box trucks and white vans.

We had no license plate, really no make and model

other than that.

All day, police have been stopping

and searching every white truck in sight.

You had to look into every single one of them.

And every one was suspect

because that's what we had to go off of.

That created a monster like you cannot even believe.

95 North, 95 South,

in the middle of Washington, DC,

shut down for hours.

It was a nightmare.

The dragnet was very, very quick.

I actually got caught up in it trying to get here.

What we didn't know at the time

was there's probably 500,000 white panel vans

driving around that area at any given time.

Thank you.

It got to the point where the drivers were like,

hey, I was just stopped five minutes ago.

I think this is the fifth or sixth time,

maybe the seventh time I've been stopped.

And it wasn't like a typical traffic stop

where you walk up and you're like,

hey, I need to see your license and registration.

- Yeah. - Stopped you for speeding.

We approached with guns out.

We definitely felt that if we engaged these guys,

it was gonna end in a shoot-out.

So Melissa, when do we start getting

some breaks in the investigation?

Anything found that was specific

that you could use with your team?

The school shooting in Bowie, Maryland,

a 13-year-old boy was shot.

The serial sniper has struck again.

This time, for the first time, the victim is a child,

a child who tonight is fighting for his life.

That's just a whole 'nother level

of sick, demented terrorist.

No one shoots an innocent child coming out of school.

It makes you angry.

It pisses you off.

We don't have more to go on.

There was a note left at the crime scene

at the elementary school,

a tarot card.

The tarot card is the one that depicts death.

People started trying to decipher the tarot card.

What does it mean? It's a death card.

People started talking to psychics,

talking to mediums.

It is a frightening symbol.

What's the message?

And there was a message written on there.

"Call me God."

Gave me a little picture, we're dealing

with this psychotic individual way outside the norm

of human thinking and ethics and morals.

The sniper is still at large.

And the case has now entered its second week,

and this evening, the sniper or snipers has struck again.

Myers was just making a quick trip

to a Virginia gas station

when he was shot in the head.

They were canceling outdoor events.

- Yeah. - They were telling people

not to go out, be alert.

It changed the way people operated.

I'm very nervous, you know.

- We're scared to come to work. - Everyone is frightened.

This happened again, and like the other shootings,

the killer got away.

No afternoon kindergarten Montgomery County,

outdoor school activities suspended.

For the first time in 56 years,

there will be no bands, no floats,

no kids dressed in their Halloween costumes.

People pumping gas crouching down beside their cars.

They would, you know, put a little bit in,

and they would get out of there.

Gas stations putting big blue tarps up

to hide people, give them a little bit of concealment

while they were pumping gas, things like that.

Not having a pattern.

Not knowing who, what, why--

the why of why this was happening.

We were all in fear of our life

living in that area at the time.

And then when we found out Linda Franklin had been shot,

that ramped it up another notch.

Linda Franklin was a wife, a mother,

and an FBI employee.

Her life ended inside a Home Depot

parking garage last night.

Not only did we have this chaos going on

outside of our offices,

but now here was our own family member.

I did not feel protected.

It was just fear.

No one has seen the face of the killer

or even has a firm description of the getaway vehicle.

When does the next big break come?

After the shooting in Hanover County

in Ashland at the Ponderosa.

A man and his wife were walking from the restaurant

to their car when she heard

what sounded like a car backfiring.

Her husband took about three steps

and then began to collapse in the parking lot.

Thankfully, the victim survived.

The crime scene search revealed not only a shell casing,

but there was also a note tacked to a tree.

It was found in a little Halloween bag,

and it had stars on it.

It was a very bizarre note, if you will.

Childlike, to me.

There were demands for money

and information that they were going to call

these phones at a certain time.

But we had already missed that deadline.

To the person who left us a message

at the Ponderosa last night,

we do want to talk to you.

Call us at the number you provided.

It also referred to children.

What did it say about children?

It is in the form of a postscript.

"Your children are not safe anywhere at any time."

Wow.

And it was like,

oh, my God, now what?

And they referred to a priest that was called

in Ashland in Virginia.

And that priest told us that,

yeah, he had received this really weird phone call

talking about a shooting in Montgomery.

And from the information that the priest provided,

the caller to the priest was not talking

about Montgomery County, Maryland.

He was talking about Montgomery, Alabama.

Somebody picked up the phone and called Montgomery, Alabama,

and said, do you have any unsolved shootings

that we could look at?

The response back from Montgomery, Alabama,

was, oh, yeah, we do.

On September the 21st,

one Alabama State Liquor Board employee was killed

and another wounded by a single gunman

in the parking lot outside their store.

And they had a magazine,

and I mean a magazine like a periodical.

But it had a fingerprint on it.

The fingerprint from the magazine was identified

to Lee Boyd Malvo.

Malvo was 17 years old,

a Jamaican citizen.

Okay. What's his background?

And things started to get put together.

There was a tip that had come in

to our Seattle division from someone who said,

listen, I am a friend of John Muhammad.

And I know that he's traveling around the country

with a younger man, who his nickname is Sniper.

And he said John Muhammad's ex-wife lived

in the DC area with their children.

And he told us that John Muhammad

used to target practice in a backyard with a rifle.

And then we quickly find out that Malvo's mother

had met John Muhammad in the Caribbean.

And so it was like, oh, okay,

this probably is Lee Boyd Malvo,

and he probably is traveling with John Muhammad.

Background information on John Muhammad

was that he was former Army,

had been stationed in Washington.

Quickly ran down information about his ex-wife,

where they lived.

Your head would spin

how fast this information was coming in.

Do we have a vehicle associated with them?

They weren't driving a white box truck.

We quickly found out that John Muhammad was registered

to an older model Chevy Caprice

that had New Jersey license plates.

So we have the vehicle, and we have the license plates.

A federal arrest warrant has been issued

for John Allen Muhammad, a Black male, 42 years of age.

He may be in the company of a juvenile.

They are also looking for a vehicle

which these two are believed to be driving,

a 1990 Chevy Caprice, New Jersey license plates,

NDA-21Z.

Within hours, we had someone whose commute took him

along I-70 in northwestern Maryland.

He decided to pull over to take a break.

And because he heard that BOLO,

he was like, oh, my God,

there's this car right here.

The information was not even 12 hours old.

I mean, it was happening so fast.

And they said to stop what you're doing

and head up to the rest stop.

Helicopter was waiting. We lifted off,

and we started our planning what we're gonna do.

They had shut 70 down in both directions.

So there was no traffic moving.

Staging area was two or three miles

from the rest stop.

Once we got there, we got the verbal briefing

from Keith and the other leadership.

So the idea was to smash the windows out of the car,

speed, surprise, violence of action.

Overwhelm them with force and surprise

and hopefully win the day.

We'd park on the side of the interstate,

and we had to basically climb up a grassy hill

into the wood line to approach the car from the rear.

And the car was backed in.

It was approximately 20 yards of open space

between the wood line and the back of the car.

We really felt that we were going into a shoot-out.

That's what we were gearing up for.

We came out single file. We split.

We sprinted from the wood line to the back of the car

fully expecting the shots to start at any moment.

The car had very dark tinted windows,

so we really couldn't see inside.

I went to the passenger side of the car.

My job was to breach out the rear window, which I did.

As soon as I did, my partner and I looked in,

and Muhammad was in the back seat setting up,

and his eyes were about this big.

And we gave him commands,

put your hands up, which he did.

And he's sitting there like a deer in the headlights.

So I reached in, grabbed him by the wrist,

and just as hard as I could pulled him through the window.

Simultaneously, this is going on

with Malvo in the front seat.

It's like being sucked out by a huge vacuum.

So once you had them cuffed,

did they try to talk to each other?

Did they look at each other?

We kept them separated

on opposite sides of the vehicle.

Muhammad was very quiet, never said a word.

Malvo, was he chatty or no?

They didn't say a word.

The one thing that stands out to me

is that they just had that blank, unemotional stare.

Their eyes said it all.

They knew the gig was up.

During that whole three weeks,

even at the point of takedown,

I don't think we realized

that they were shooting from the back of that trunk.

I remember my blood just going cold because,

had they been on watch and been in that position,

they would have had the jump on us,

and we would have had no idea.

Good evening. It's over. They got 'em.

A joint tactical SWAT team of federal, state,

and local police captured 41-year-old John Muhammad

and 17-year-old John Lee Malvo,

suspects in the sniper shooting.

Now our work has started,

because now we've got to figure out

how to convict them so that they never see

the light of day anymore.

Well, we wanted to find out the story.

You know, how did these two meet?

Malvo lived with Muhammad and his children in the Caribbean.

Muhammad had taken his children there--

illegally because he was going

through a divorce with the wife.

That leads us to the why of all this

that we have been looking for.

John Muhammad had to give his children back to his wife.

She took them to live in Maryland.

He was not seeing his children.

That is our motive, unbelievably enough,

that he was just furious

that he couldn't see his kids,

and eventually wanted to kill his ex-wife

and get his children back.

Muhammad started his shooting spree

to try to blend her in

as just one of the unfortunate victims.

If he killed various people,

it wouldn't get right back, you know, that maybe

it was the ex-husband that killed the wife.

You know, he's not a natural-thinking human.

Good evening. With a possible death penalty

looming if he is convicted, the first defendant on trial

in the DC area serial sniper case

pulled a last-minute surprise today.

Part that amazed all of us was,

he wanted to represent himself.

This is a capital murder case,

you're facing the death penalty,

you're not a lawyer, and you say,

I'm gonna represent myself because I know better

than anybody else, because that was who he is--he was.

A psychologist might say this is a death wish for him.

Muhammad will also be able to face down his accusers,

including survivors, and that is a chilling prospect

for those who were terrorized around this time last year.

For me personally, I've never been cross-examined

by a subject of one of my case.

And he--he did. He cross-examined me

after I testified for the prosecution,

and he asked me just basic question.

And whether it was an HRT guy,

whether it was a survivor,

or whether it was a family member,

he didn't get any satisfaction from them.

They answered his questions,

and they didn't break down and cry in front of him,

and I think that's probably something he was looking for.

I was very proud just to have been a part of it.

I also felt lucky,

because there were other guys out there like us...

- Yeah. - And everybody wanted

to be the ones to do the arrest

or do the takedown, and we just happened to be

in the right place at the right time.

When he was given the death penalty,

of course, you know,

we're supposed to keep it together, right?

But there was a investigator who turned around

and looked at me and was just in tears,

because that's how we felt.

Like, okay, you know, we did it.

We did justice for, you know, this set of victims.

I don't know if there was a dry eye in the courtroom,

because it was like, okay, all of this work,

all of this emotion, not only from the investigators

but the family members

who courageously testified every day

or sat in that courtroom and listened and watched.

It felt good.