February 6, 2020 • 45 mins
Police finally have names in the D.C. Sniper case. So who is John Allen Muhammad? [This episode contains stories of domestic abuse. If you or someone you know may be experiencing domestic abuse, you can call the domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit the website thehotline.org.]
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Monster DZ Sniper, a production of iHeartRadio and
Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating
in the podcast, and do not represent those of iHeartMedia,
Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. This episode contains stories of
domestic abuse. If you or someone you know maybe experiencing
(00:23):
domestic abuse, you can call the Domestic Violence Hotline at
one eight hundred seven nine nine seven two three three,
or visit the website the hotline dot org. Listener discretion
is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
When you meet someone for the first time, you always
put your best foot forward. You don't want that person
to know all of your flaws, and you don't want
them to think badly about you because you're really interested
in that person, and you hide it as long as
you can. I am Mildred Muhammad. I'm an award winning
(01:03):
global keynote speaker, and my former husband was John Ala Mohammad,
whom you all know to be the DC Sniper. Everybody
loved John because he was jovial. He was that guy,
that guy of if you needed something, go to John.
(01:23):
But he was not one to show his emotions, so
in not showing his emotions, it was difficult for people
to read him, to understand exactly what was going on
with him. I believe he was always that type of
person that blew up. He was just very good at
concealing it. I believe going to Saudie only intensify that
(01:50):
to a whole different level. He received artists to go
to Desert Storm for the war, but he comes back
three months later because he received an injury. But then
other stories begin to come forward. He was accused of
(02:12):
trying to kill other soldiers. John was a sergeant over
a unit. A soldier challenged him in front of others,
and he felt humiliated. That soldier that night was in
charge of the explosives. John went snuck into that area
(02:37):
and stole a grenade. He threw the grenade in the
tent and jumped into his sleeping bag. The grenade went off.
He was accused of trying to get back at that
(02:59):
soldier that challenged him in front of the other soldiers.
They put him in a dungeon. They hogtied him and
left him there. And when he comes back, it's not
the same person.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
There is a ruthless person on the loose.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
What unerves this community the most 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.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
It is quite a mystery.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
The police say they have never had a crime quite
like this.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Be careful, these guys are using weapons that are going
to go right straight through our bulletproof vests.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
From iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. This is monster DC Sniper.
On the morning of October twenty second, two thousand and two,
Leise found the names of their first real suspects in
the DC Sniper case. Authorities connected the snipers to a Montgomery,
(04:07):
Alabama liquor store shooting. At that crime scene, police found
a fingerprint. The FBI then matched the fingerprint to a
seventeen year old Jamaican boy named Lee Boyd Malvo. He'd
been arrested in Washington State in two thousand and one
on suspicions of illegal immigration. The arrest report also listed
(04:28):
another name, John Allen Muhammed. That name set off alarm
bells for police. Someone in Washington State had called in
a tip about a John Mohammed, saying he might be
involved in the DC sniper attacks. So now Lee Boyd
Malvo and John Mohammad were prime suspects. Police quickly learned
(04:52):
all they could about the pair, and here's what they discovered.
John Mohammad was born John Williams on New Year's Eve
nineteen sixty and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In
the fall of nineteen eighty three, when Williams was twenty two,
he met a young woman named Mildred Green. Mildred was
(05:13):
twenty three, a next cheerleader and devout Baptist who lived
with her mom.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I was walking to the store and my friend Valina
picked me up and she said, where are you going? Said,
I'm going to the store for my mom. And so
we pulled up at the corner store. She went in
and she came out with these two guys. When upumas
John and he put his head through the driver's side
(05:41):
window and said, what is your name? I said? Mildred said,
I'm John. Would you like to go out tonight? I said,
I need to check my schedule. I didn't have a schedule.
I'm available at about seven. We said, okay, I'll be
about to pick you up. We went over to Southern University.
There was a couple area over by the river, Mississippi River,
(06:03):
and we were just talking and he says, so, are
you say any about us? Said nope. He said why not? Said,
I'm waiting for the right man to show up. He said,
well he just did. Said okay, So he dropped me
off at home, and then the next day he called
and so we just started talking and hanging out. He
was a welder, an excellent welder.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
What were the qualities of the man that you found attractive?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Well, he had a beautiful smile, he was jovial, funny.
He said what he meant, and he meant what he said,
and that's something that most men don't do.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Mildred had grown up without a father and had never
had a serious boyfriend. Most of her ideas about relationships
came from TV and movies. John was romantic and said
all the right things.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
About six months in, my friend Elena came over and
she said, so, how are you and John? I said,
are we good? She said, so?
Speaker 4 (07:00):
You know?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
He married right? What?
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It turns out that John was already married to a
woman named Carol and they had a son named Lindburgh.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It was devastating for me to find out that he
was married. But I knew I had to stay away
from him. I said, okay, I'm got to break that off.
So finally I did. But then he came back and said,
I have some terrible news to tell you. I say,
what's that? He said, I can't read, and he couldn't.
(07:32):
All he could do was write his name. So he
had adapted as an adult to not being able to read.
His whole family didn't know he couldn't read. Nobody knew
he couldn't read.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Mildred felt that John, who in many ways was closed off,
was finally opening up to her. She cared deeply about
John and wanted to help him.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
He said, well, I want to go back in the military.
So I taught him how to read enough to pass
the test to be reinstated in active duty. And after
he passed the test, I say we're done.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
John enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. There,
John qualified as an expert with an M sixteen, the
army's standard infantry rifle. That rating is the Army's highest
of three levels of marksmanship for a typical soldier.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So he left went to Fort Lewis, and he wrote
me a letter and said, hey, I can't do this
without you. I'll do whatever it takes for you to.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Be with me.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Just come, and he sent an airline ticket and I left.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
You love this man.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I did, absolutely, with all of my heart. I did,
and I wanted to build a life with him. And
about three months later he got a divorce and then
we got married. It was a sunny day, was and
Grace Chapel ahead on a white dress. He was in
(09:04):
dress blues ceremonial uniform for military.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Two years later, in January nineteen ninety, John and Mildred
had their first child, John Junior. A little less than
a year after that, John was deployed to Saudi Arabia
for Operation Desert Storm. He worked as a combat engineer
and metal worker, and it was here that Williams was
said to have thrown a grenade into the tent of
(09:34):
a fellow soldier.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
So they came and brought in investigators. The commander had
us to come to his office.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
John had his own side of the story. According to
that account, John had previously approached an officer with complaints
of racism from white soldiers. John says those soldiers felt
the need to retaliate, so they created a phony grin
a story to blame on him, and then his punishment.
He was hogtied and humiliated.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And the commander said to John, we investigated your allegations. However,
when the investigators came to ask you questions, you didn't
answer them. I didn't know that, he said, so, Sarga Williams,
why didn't you answer those questions? And John looked at
(10:30):
him and said, permission to be released. Commander said, permission granted,
and we got up and we left.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
After the commander released him from the meeting, John stopped
talking about the incident. The military didn't keep any records
of the event, so all they had to go on
were conflicting stories. No official charges were ever made in
the case. At first, Mildred believed John's side of the story.
She trusted her husband, but years later, after she saw
(11:05):
what John was capable of, she came to believe that
the other story was true, that John had in fact
tried to get back at a fellow soldier using a
thermite grenade. The issue fizzled out, and John continued to
serve in the military, but he was growing disillusioned.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
With it.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
After Desert Storm, Mildred says John was a changed man.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
He was no longer jovial. He didn't want to have
those long conversations anymore. He was just cutting dry. How
you doing fine, We'll job to nothing. All soldiers had
come back from a war zone, they always go to
a hospital first to just do a whole physical, just
before they released them back to their base. All I
(11:50):
learned was that he was diagnosed with PTSD.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
At that point in time, post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD,
was not a commonly understood. PTSD can occur after a
traumatic experience. It can cause flashbacks of the trauma and
create a heightened sense of fear, and it can make
people feel depressed or detached. Many who experience PTSD also
(12:15):
become irritable, aggressive, or distrustful of others, which can lead
to social isolation.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
The only person he opened up to was our son,
so when he came home, he just went immediately to
play with him. Most of his interactions was with our son.
But then his behavior became to be obsessive. So I
would buy dishes, silverware. He'd break all the dishes except
for three three plates, three saucers, three bowls. Well, I
(12:46):
finally asked them, so why do you keep breaking all
this stuff? Because this does not make sense. He said, well,
we don't need anybody else over here. It's just the
three of us. I said, but what if we have
a party or a company. We're not having a party.
We're not having company.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Mildred says John's erratic moods took a huge mental toll
on her. She was already raising a child and working
full time, and she was trying to cope with John's
strange behavior, but it was becoming harder and harder. Still.
He had never turned his anger towards her directly until
one afternoon when they went to a nearby park.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
And this park you could rent a boat. I said,
you know, I want to get a boat so little
John can ride in the boat and see what that's like.
He turned to me with the coldest look in his eyes,
was just empty, and he said, we're not going to
do that. Scared me and I just shut down. It
(13:49):
was painful the way he looked at me and talked
to me. He never done that before ever. So we
went home and I went straight to the bathroom and
locked the door, and I stayed in there all day.
I didn't get anything to eat, I didn't get anything
to drink. I was so hurt. I was just devastated.
(14:11):
I was hurt. I could hear little John at the
door crying, Mommy, please come out, Mommy, please come out.
I drew a bath, I sat in the tub, and
so when I finally did come out, he was sleeping
on the floor right by the door, and he woke
up and looked at me. He said, Mommy, you're okay,
saying Mommy's fine. Now, said Mommy scared me. I say,
(14:34):
don't ever be scared of me. I just needed some
time to myself.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
How did John respond? How did you respond to John?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
He waited until that morning and came and apologized to
me and said he didn't know what came over him,
and he was really sorry. I said, don't you ever
ever talk to me like that again.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
The relationship normalized for a while. It was now early
in nineteen ninety three, and the family was back in Tacoma, Washington.
They'd had a daughter, Selena, and Mildred was pregnant with
their second daughter, Taliba. On the surface, things look calm,
but John was growing more disillusioned with the military, and
(15:32):
he'd gotten into trouble again.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
John was brought up on charges for threatening to kill
his first sergeant. He told the first sergeant, I'll kill you,
your wife, and everybody in their line. He had an attorney,
military attorney. We went in to talk to her about
the case, and as they're talking, she looks at me
(15:57):
and she says, you don't know anything that's going on,
do you? I say no, am I done? And so
she asked him, why haven't you told your wife what's
going on with this case? He said, because she's a
part of the establishment and she doesn't have my back.
What has she done to make you feel that way?
And he said nothing, I just don't want her to know.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
According to Mildred.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
What turned the case was the defense attorney was asking
the first sergeant what happened and he couldn't recall, and
so the verdict came back not guilty. John was happy.
He said he knew that he was not going to
be found guilty, and he apologized for not telling me
(16:39):
about the whole case, but he said, because you were
pregnant with Taliba, and I didn't want those emotions to
affect our child.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Eventually, in nineteen ninety four, John was honorably discharged from
the military. During this period, John and Mildred had also
been introduced to the name of Islam. The Nation is
an African American religious and political group based on the
Muslim faith. It was started in the nineteen thirties and
then was popularized by Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Mildred
(17:13):
converted first in nineteen ninety six and John followed in
nineteen ninety seven. The Nation of Islam has been heavily
criticized for promoting anti white and anti Semitic ideology, but
Mildred says the Nation does not teach people to hate
those of other races or beliefs. Rather, it helped her
understand her role as a black woman in society, and
(17:35):
it gave her greater insight into the Bible and the Koran.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Everyone has their own spiritual path, and that was the
one that I chose because I needed clarity on who
God is, where is my position, who I am, and
where I needed to be and the type of mother
that I wanted to be to my children. So with
him join us a year later, then that was just
(18:01):
what he decided to do. And then he would go
to the brother's meetings and do what they do.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
After John left the military, he needed work. They decided
to use John's background fixing vehicles in the military to
start a unique auto mechanic business. Instead of operating from
a shop, John would go directly to the customer's car.
He would either work on it there or take it
back to his home garage. The business started off well,
(18:31):
but John and Mildred needed help with the bookkeeping.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I was working one day and a woman walks through
my door. Her name was Mildred Muhammad.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
She was the.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Spouse of John Muhammad. They just converted from Williams to muhammad.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Is and Nichols ran a business development at accounting company.
Mildred saw an ad for it and sought her out specifically.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
I would say probably an hour and a half. In
two our meeting for the first time, she wanted to
do business with me. They had started a business of
repairing cars. The second meeting was to do more of
an intake with them, and so her husband was present
at our second meeting.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
This is when Isa met John for the first time.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And he walked in the door. He was very tall,
quite handsome, and had a very hard handshake, very direct
look you straight in the eye. Short haircut, you can
tell he had been in the military. Very polite, called
me sister, which is a term of endearment in the
black community. He was very glad to meet me. He
(19:40):
was very glad to be doing business with another sister.
Mildred Muhammad was the administrator. She was the one who
would be dispatching and taking the calls for services, and
John would go out and do the work. Mildred and
I usually were the ones talking. We became friends more so,
and John and I we had some commonalities. Her husband
(20:04):
was stationed at Fort Lewis. My husband was stationed at
Fort Lewis. She related to her husband. She was very respectful.
She was very humble with him. He referred to her
as his wife, his loving wife. Very promising in the beginning.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
But soon Isa began to notice things about John and
Mildred's relationship, strange things. And the summer of nineteen ninety seven,
John's son from his previous marriage, Lindbergh, came to visit
Tacoma from Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
He didn't want to return home. He said there was
abuse in different things and he was afraid to go
back home. Mildred talked to me about it in terms
of what should she do, and I said, you're going
to have to send him back to his mother.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Mildred says John was adamant that they keep Lindbergh. John
was worried that Lindbergh really was being abused in Louisiana,
so he got a lawyer and went to court, hoping
to gain custody of Lindberg.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And I said to him, what you're doing is wrong.
Carol was calling and he wouldn't talk to her. I said,
you need to talk to her. This is not your
decision to make on your own, and you need to
get some background as to what is really happening with Lindberg.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
But when John went to court, the judge in Washington
said that he didn't have jurisdiction, and so John had
to send Lindbergh back home.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So that night I came back from a mosque meeting
and John had this huge scuffle bag as long as
a twin bed packing. John, Selena, and Taliba were just
sitting on a bed and Limbert too, And I said,
so what's going on here? He said, well, I'm running
(21:57):
with Lynn. No you're not. Why would you need to
run with Lynn because he's being abused and I need
to protect him. I say, but the judge said, he
needs to go home tomorrow, and you're gonna run with
him and leave me and the children destitute. Is that
(22:22):
what you're telling me? Well, I just need to protect
my son, and say, no, you need to take Lynn back,
and he's leaving tomorrow. So I took Lynn and the children.
We went in the second bedroom and I locked the door,
and I packed Lin's bag and I sat on the
(22:44):
floor with my back to the door so that he
could not get in. And when daylight came, we all
got dressed and we got in the car and John
was sitting on the sofa and when we passed by,
I said, are you coming to the airport to see
(23:05):
your son off? And he said yeah. So I drove
the children in the back, laughing and talking with Lynn,
and the whole time he's just looking straight ahead. So
we checked him in. We walked him to the gate,
and we watched the plane take off, and John did
(23:25):
a right face, just like he was in the military,
just the right face, and walked off. And when we
got back in the car and he said, you didn't
have my back. I said, I was not about to
watch you take limbird away from her for no reason.
(23:50):
And that is when the relationship changed.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
The incident with Lindbergh was just the beginning. Soon other
people began to notice odd things about John and Mildred's relationship.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
They didn't fight a lot, but they did fight. Sure,
there was a couple of times that it would be
right there and you would just kind of hear the
attitude in the voices.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
This is Felix Strojer in Tacoma. He and John had
opened a martial arts business together. Felix was the martial
artist and John was the businessman. Mildred helped out with
the bookkeeping, so Felix regularly saw the couple interact.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
You know, I think that they kept a lot of
this stuff hit. I knew that they had problems, but
not to the extent that it went it went too far.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Despite the tension with Mildred, Felix says that John loved
his kids more than anything.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
I remember one of them he would always have in
his arms. Any little kid sometime will start to play
in class or something. But the thing is all John
would have to do is just look their eyes just
had to meet a little John knew to just get
it together. I never seen him spank him or anything,
(25:23):
but when I did see the eye contact, I knew
that it had been some work to make that happen.
You know, little kids, they have to learn to look
for that look. But I think he had a good
relationship with him. He loved him.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
But Felix says that John also had a darker side.
On one occasion, Felix noticed that John had taken a
liking to a young female student, and then she stopped
coming to class, presumably to avoid John. Even still, Felix
says that John would go over to her house.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
This might have been something that I should have paid
attention to, because if I remember right, it was almost
like in a stalking way. I believe that she said
that he would show up when he wanted to. That
was a problem. I misread his character. He had some issues.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Those issues would become consistent and soon escalate even further.
Here's Icea Nichols again.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
After the third year of being their client, it became
apparent to me that there were some tensions going on
with John and Mildrid. Through the business. There were calls
from clients that John was missing appointments. Milder didn't know
(27:00):
his whereabouts, why he was missing appointments. He would be gone.
She had a list where he was supposed to go
for the day, and then she started getting phone calls
him not being there, then waiting for him to rive.
All of this information I got from Mildred telling me
about calls she received. One of those calls was from
(27:25):
a woman who wanted to speak to the owner. The
woman told Mildred that she wanted to report inappropriate sexual
advances made to her from John for repair of the car.
So now there's an ineducation that there's infidelity. This woman
(27:47):
is calling saying that John is making sexual advances toward
her in lieu of payment. She reaches out to me
because she trusts me business consultant. This is a business issue,
and she was like, well what do I do? This
is serious, And I said, well, you have to talk
(28:07):
to your husband. You have to make him aware of
this client calling with this information. For Mildred, this is
her husband, father of her children. She's devastated. She didn't
know how to handle it. She emotionally reached out to
me because she was hurt and because she also as
(28:29):
a businesswoman had to respond to this woman.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Mildred wasn't comfortable talking to the young woman who made
these claims, so Mildred asked her friend Stanley to go
investigate for her.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So he went and talk to the young lady and
she said that John had been over there all the time,
spent Christmas, in Thanksgiving, and even the little boy, who
was I think three or four knew him. He came
back to me, he says, so, Mildred, this is what
I found out. So what we're going to do? I said, well,
what we're going to do is we want to confront
John because I still got a on his business.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
So Mildred finally approached John and he said.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Oh, she's lying, She's this, she's that. But I didn't
believe him. I asked him for a divorce. I said,
you acting free, you may as well be free.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
They agreed to separate, but John didn't want a divorce,
and although they hadn't settled on rules for seeing the kids,
John moved out.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Of the house, but he still had a key to
the house, so he would come in in the middle
of the night. I could hear the key going in
the door. He would walk back to the bedroom. So
I opened my eye to a slither. Watch him walk
into the room from one side of the bed to
the other, lean over to listen to me breathe stand
(29:52):
up and leave out of the room. He did that
three times. The third time, Taliba woke up and said Daddy,
and he picks her up and says, here's Taliba, and
then he leaves. So that's when I decided to get
(30:13):
the locks changed.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
Even though they were separated, Mildred and John tried to
make the mechanic business work, but soon it began to
fall apart. Here's Ion Nichols again.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
I got a call from Mildred. She wanted to inform
me that they were no longer be able to afford
to utilize my services anymore. I felt really sad. She says,
we're not making the money. She says, I don't know
where John is half the time. She's told me that
(30:49):
he sometimes will leave for two three days. I don't
have any more control, and so she didn't know how
the business would survive without John.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Mildred says the mechanic business was no longer important to John.
All he cared about was getting back into the house
and back into the family, and he was determined. On
one faithful night, Mildred learned how dangerous her husband truly was.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
He came over and said, we need to talk. My
brother was there, so I felt I was safe. We
go into garage, so he says, you are not going
to raise my children by yourself. John said you have
become my enemy, and as my enemy, I will kill you.
(32:04):
I said, well, I've been sleeping with the enemy all
this time. What else you're gonna do? He charges at me.
I ran around him into the house where my brother
was and he leaves and I tell my brother. I said,
John's going to kill me. It's going to kill me.
He said, girl, John not going to kill you. I
(32:25):
never went till my brother again for help because he
didn't believe me. John's mottel was one shot, one killed
to the head, never leave an enemy behind. He was
a man of his word. He was going to kill me,
and it was going to be a headshot, and he
(32:48):
was going to bury me where no one would be
able to find me. And I could not get anybody
to believe me. Nobody.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Mildred was thoroughly terrified of John. She went to the
courthouse the next morning to get a restraining order against him.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Judge say, you really need to get away from this guy.
I say, your honor, I am really trying to do that.
He saw the escalation in how dangerous John was for me,
and he gave me a lifetime restraining order, but still
had to have visitation with the children. So we had
(33:37):
to set up for someone to pick up the children
and take them to John and bring them back, and
so we found somebody to do that. The first weekend
went fine. Second weekend was my mom's birthday, March to
twenty seven, I.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Said Nichols dropped in that evening to see Mildred and
to tell her mother Happy birthday.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I expect to see the children. I expected to see Mom.
I expected to see John. When I got there, the
children weren't there. John wasn't there. Mildred's mother was in
the back room, and her brother was there, who was
a truck driver and he was in town. So I
(34:19):
got in and I took my shoes off, and I said, Hey,
how's it going. She's like, well, it's my mom's birthday
and we're waiting on John to bring the children back.
They should have been back by now. And I said okay,
So you know, I kick off my shoes and I
sit on the couch and I wait with her. When
her brother left, she sits down and she tells me
(34:40):
at that time that they were separated. She told me
that John would come and get the children on the weekend,
and she told me that she was filing for a divorce.
She told me she had problems because John was trying
(35:00):
to get back with her, meaning to stop her filing
of the divorce. She shared with me times that he
was angry and forced his way into the house. Time
had went by. It's six o'clock. I've been there a
(35:21):
couple of hours, and it's at that point I feel
the tension.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Mildred was getting worried. The children were supposed to be
home hours ago and she hadn't heard from John.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
We didn't have cell phones back then like we do now.
We had pagers. So I'm blown up his pager seven
point thirty. He calls. My son is on the line.
I said to asks your dad, what time are you
coming home? Say mom? Dad said we'll be there in
an hour. I said, where are you anyway? He said, well,
we're at kmart, which was literally fifteen minutes away. When
(35:57):
eight thirty comes, no children blowing up his pageer Again,
at eleven thirty five pm, he calls and he says,
we're en route from Seattle, will be there shortly.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
She hung up that phone and she looked at me
and she said something is wrong. Something is wrong, and
she began to pace back and forth. I know now
that something really is wrong because of what she just
shared with me. I stayed at their house till ten o'clock,
almost eleven o'clock, Mildred's making phone calls asking people have
(36:39):
they seen John and the children. I go home. I
call her one more time before I got ready to
go to bed. I lived there, and she says no,
She says, my children are gone. I said, what do
you mean? She said, my children are gone. He took them.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
The children never came home that night. The next morning,
Mildred started calling around looking for them.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
So I'm thinking maybe he took the children to school.
Because it's a Monday. Went to the school. I talked
to secretary. She said, no, Mammy, your children have not
checked in. She looked at me because every time they
saw me I was smiling. I wasn't smiling. I said,
this was Mohammy, what's the matter. And it was the
first time I cried. I say, John took the children,
(37:26):
and she said, let's go in the bathroom, wash your face,
go home, call the police.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Mildred did go home, and her mom was waiting for her,
hoping for some good news.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
And when she saw me come around the corner without
my children, she let out a scream. I had never
heard my mother's scream before, and I ran to her
before she hit the ground because she was she was
going there, and she said, he took out babies.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
He took us babies.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
I said, I know mine, So what are we gonna do?
I said, I don't know, but I'm gonna do something.
So I called the police.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
They took a report. She gave them pictures of her children.
John had taken the children and vanished.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
The police told Mildred that since John had shared custody
of the children, the incident couldn't be filed as a kidnapping.
John had just as much right to the kids as
she did, and that meant there would be no criminal investigation.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
She's learning all of this, and she aspirally emotionally every
day because she doesn't know where her babies are. Then
John began to call her, and he began in this crazy,
diabolical take me back or you won't never see the children.
That's when it began. She would plead John, please just
(38:58):
bring the children back, and he would constantly hold those
children and threatened that she would never see the children
again if she didn't take him back. Over time, we
find out that this was strategic. John had taken money
out of the accounts, emptied them out, emptied the children's savings.
(39:20):
Accounts out that he had actually planned this, and here
he has the money, he has the children, and she
has nothing.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Mildred says she got so depressed that she lost all
desire to eat.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I was eating half a slice of bread and crushed ice.
That was it, just enough to sustain me. I was
signing for a package from my mom on Mother's Day and.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
I passed out. Shortly thereafter, ISA got a phone call.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
And it's from Mildred's mon and Mildred's mom says that
Mildred's in the hospital and if I could go and
check on Mildred for her. I go, and Mildred's in
the emergency room. I walk into the room and I
see Mildred and I grab her hand and she opens
(40:21):
her eyes. She looks at me, and she starts apologizing
to me. She starts crying, saying she's sorry. I tried
to take care of myself. I tried because those are
the things that I would talk to her about. It's like,
where are you're gonna be when the children are found?
Are you going to be in the psych ward? She
(40:43):
just was surviving. The phone rings. Mildred answers the phone
and it's John. Mildred is hooked up the ivs and
monitors and it's John on the phone. She's screaming, and
let me see the children. John, please don't take the children.
He's saying, take me back. If I don't get to
(41:06):
come back home, you don't get to see the children.
And she's screaming and she's begging, and all of a sudden,
she flips out. The ivs are coming out of her arms,
the monitors are going crazy, beeping and stuff, and the
staff comes into the room. I'm backed up against the
corner while they work on her and calm her down.
(41:28):
They end up giving her a sedative and she finally
is sedated enough where she's not kicking and screaming. And
they have to put those things back in her arm
because she had pulled them out. She was so scared.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Mildred was in her lowest place. She hadn't seen or
heard from her children in nearly two months, and she
was about to learn that her life was in serious danger.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
My mother called the hospital shortly thereafter and told them
that John just called her and said he was on
his way to the hospital to kill me. A social
worker came and said, you can't go back home because
we have to put you in hiding so that John
(42:20):
will not find and kill you. So they waited till
it got dark, brought me to close, took me out
of the back door of the hospital. They told me
I needed to slouch down in the car so no
one could see that I was in the car. But
I watched the rooftops and I was watching the open
(42:43):
windows because I knew it was going to be a headshot,
just as sure as I'm sitting here talking to you,
I knew it was going to be a headshot.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Mildred made it safely to a shelter. She stayed there
for a few months before relocating to Maryland to stay
with some family. It appeared as though John was nowhere
to be found, So where was he and where were
the children? It seemed like nobody knew, But thousands of
miles away someone did know. The Jamaican boy whose fingerprints
(43:18):
had been found during the Sniper investigation, Lee boyd Malvo.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
He gave me his time.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
He was consistent, even though the consistency was maive.
Speaker 5 (43:30):
He was consistent.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
Next time on Monster DC Sniper.
Speaker 7 (43:43):
This is a very rare time where you're able to
understand how an individual develops from the day he's born
to the day he was arrested for one of the
most sensational crimes of modern time.
Speaker 6 (44:00):
All over the world, who are fatherless, who are not
in school, who have no role model, who feel like
they have no purpose, it's so easy for a gang
leader or even an organization like Isis to recruit and
to give them a sense of purpose.
Speaker 7 (44:17):
He didn't have his parents, he didn't have any structure,
and all he had was instability.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
I mean, I have no one.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
If I off of a bridge that they know and
get them.
Speaker 7 (44:28):
So it probably had a traumatic impact on him knowing
that this was going to be how my life is.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
Find a way because if I don't find a way.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
I'm let.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Monster DC Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by
Tony Harris and produced by iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt
Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of
iHeart Radio, alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Keebrick, and Josh Thain.
Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf
(45:08):
of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Stedman and Christina Dana.
Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. The audio
you heard of Lee Boyd Malvow in this episode comes
from a twenty twelve interview by journalist Josh White. That
audio was provided courtesy of The Washington Post. If you
haven't already, be sure to check out the first two seasons,
(45:30):
Atlanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer. If you have
questions or comments, email us at Monster at iHeartMedia dot com,
or you can call us at one eight three, three,
two eight five six six sixty seven. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Monster DZ Sniper, a production of iHeartRadio and
Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating
in the podcast, and do not represent those of iHeartMedia,
Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. This episode contains stories of
domestic abuse. If you or someone you know maybe experiencing
(00:23):
domestic abuse, you can call the Domestic Violence Hotline at
one eight hundred seven nine nine seven two three three,
or visit the website the hotline dot org. Listener discretion
is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
When you meet someone for the first time, you always
put your best foot forward. You don't want that person
to know all of your flaws, and you don't want
them to think badly about you because you're really interested
in that person, and you hide it as long as
you can. I am Mildred Muhammad. I'm an award winning
(01:03):
global keynote speaker, and my former husband was John Ala Mohammad,
whom you all know to be the DC Sniper. Everybody
loved John because he was jovial. He was that guy,
that guy of if you needed something, go to John.
(01:23):
But he was not one to show his emotions, so
in not showing his emotions, it was difficult for people
to read him, to understand exactly what was going on
with him. I believe he was always that type of
person that blew up. He was just very good at
concealing it. I believe going to Saudie only intensify that
(01:50):
to a whole different level. He received artists to go
to Desert Storm for the war, but he comes back
three months later because he received an injury. But then
other stories begin to come forward. He was accused of
(02:12):
trying to kill other soldiers. John was a sergeant over
a unit. A soldier challenged him in front of others,
and he felt humiliated. That soldier that night was in
charge of the explosives. John went snuck into that area
(02:37):
and stole a grenade. He threw the grenade in the
tent and jumped into his sleeping bag. The grenade went off.
He was accused of trying to get back at that
(02:59):
soldier that challenged him in front of the other soldiers.
They put him in a dungeon. They hogtied him and
left him there. And when he comes back, it's not
the same person.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
There is a ruthless person on the loose.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
What unerves this community the most 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.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
It is quite a mystery.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
The police say they have never had a crime quite
like this.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Be careful, these guys are using weapons that are going
to go right straight through our bulletproof vests.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
From iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. This is monster DC Sniper.
On the morning of October twenty second, two thousand and two,
Leise found the names of their first real suspects in
the DC Sniper case. Authorities connected the snipers to a Montgomery,
(04:07):
Alabama liquor store shooting. At that crime scene, police found
a fingerprint. The FBI then matched the fingerprint to a
seventeen year old Jamaican boy named Lee Boyd Malvo. He'd
been arrested in Washington State in two thousand and one
on suspicions of illegal immigration. The arrest report also listed
(04:28):
another name, John Allen Muhammed. That name set off alarm
bells for police. Someone in Washington State had called in
a tip about a John Mohammed, saying he might be
involved in the DC sniper attacks. So now Lee Boyd
Malvo and John Mohammad were prime suspects. Police quickly learned
(04:52):
all they could about the pair, and here's what they discovered.
John Mohammad was born John Williams on New Year's Eve
nineteen sixty and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In
the fall of nineteen eighty three, when Williams was twenty two,
he met a young woman named Mildred Green. Mildred was
(05:13):
twenty three, a next cheerleader and devout Baptist who lived
with her mom.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I was walking to the store and my friend Valina
picked me up and she said, where are you going? Said,
I'm going to the store for my mom. And so
we pulled up at the corner store. She went in
and she came out with these two guys. When upumas
John and he put his head through the driver's side
(05:41):
window and said, what is your name? I said? Mildred said,
I'm John. Would you like to go out tonight? I said,
I need to check my schedule. I didn't have a schedule.
I'm available at about seven. We said, okay, I'll be
about to pick you up. We went over to Southern University.
There was a couple area over by the river, Mississippi River,
(06:03):
and we were just talking and he says, so, are
you say any about us? Said nope. He said why not? Said,
I'm waiting for the right man to show up. He said,
well he just did. Said okay, So he dropped me
off at home, and then the next day he called
and so we just started talking and hanging out. He
was a welder, an excellent welder.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
What were the qualities of the man that you found attractive?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Well, he had a beautiful smile, he was jovial, funny.
He said what he meant, and he meant what he said,
and that's something that most men don't do.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Mildred had grown up without a father and had never
had a serious boyfriend. Most of her ideas about relationships
came from TV and movies. John was romantic and said
all the right things.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
About six months in, my friend Elena came over and
she said, so, how are you and John? I said,
are we good? She said, so?
Speaker 4 (07:00):
You know?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
He married right? What?
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It turns out that John was already married to a
woman named Carol and they had a son named Lindburgh.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It was devastating for me to find out that he
was married. But I knew I had to stay away
from him. I said, okay, I'm got to break that off.
So finally I did. But then he came back and said,
I have some terrible news to tell you. I say,
what's that? He said, I can't read, and he couldn't.
(07:32):
All he could do was write his name. So he
had adapted as an adult to not being able to read.
His whole family didn't know he couldn't read. Nobody knew
he couldn't read.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Mildred felt that John, who in many ways was closed off,
was finally opening up to her. She cared deeply about
John and wanted to help him.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
He said, well, I want to go back in the military.
So I taught him how to read enough to pass
the test to be reinstated in active duty. And after
he passed the test, I say we're done.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
John enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. There,
John qualified as an expert with an M sixteen, the
army's standard infantry rifle. That rating is the Army's highest
of three levels of marksmanship for a typical soldier.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So he left went to Fort Lewis, and he wrote
me a letter and said, hey, I can't do this
without you. I'll do whatever it takes for you to.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Be with me.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Just come, and he sent an airline ticket and I left.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
You love this man.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I did, absolutely, with all of my heart. I did,
and I wanted to build a life with him. And
about three months later he got a divorce and then
we got married. It was a sunny day, was and
Grace Chapel ahead on a white dress. He was in
(09:04):
dress blues ceremonial uniform for military.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Two years later, in January nineteen ninety, John and Mildred
had their first child, John Junior. A little less than
a year after that, John was deployed to Saudi Arabia
for Operation Desert Storm. He worked as a combat engineer
and metal worker, and it was here that Williams was
said to have thrown a grenade into the tent of
(09:34):
a fellow soldier.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
So they came and brought in investigators. The commander had
us to come to his office.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
John had his own side of the story. According to
that account, John had previously approached an officer with complaints
of racism from white soldiers. John says those soldiers felt
the need to retaliate, so they created a phony grin
a story to blame on him, and then his punishment.
He was hogtied and humiliated.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And the commander said to John, we investigated your allegations. However,
when the investigators came to ask you questions, you didn't
answer them. I didn't know that, he said, so, Sarga Williams,
why didn't you answer those questions? And John looked at
(10:30):
him and said, permission to be released. Commander said, permission granted,
and we got up and we left.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
After the commander released him from the meeting, John stopped
talking about the incident. The military didn't keep any records
of the event, so all they had to go on
were conflicting stories. No official charges were ever made in
the case. At first, Mildred believed John's side of the story.
She trusted her husband, but years later, after she saw
(11:05):
what John was capable of, she came to believe that
the other story was true, that John had in fact
tried to get back at a fellow soldier using a
thermite grenade. The issue fizzled out, and John continued to
serve in the military, but he was growing disillusioned.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
With it.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
After Desert Storm, Mildred says John was a changed man.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
He was no longer jovial. He didn't want to have
those long conversations anymore. He was just cutting dry. How
you doing fine, We'll job to nothing. All soldiers had
come back from a war zone, they always go to
a hospital first to just do a whole physical, just
before they released them back to their base. All I
(11:50):
learned was that he was diagnosed with PTSD.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
At that point in time, post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD,
was not a commonly understood. PTSD can occur after a
traumatic experience. It can cause flashbacks of the trauma and
create a heightened sense of fear, and it can make
people feel depressed or detached. Many who experience PTSD also
(12:15):
become irritable, aggressive, or distrustful of others, which can lead
to social isolation.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
The only person he opened up to was our son,
so when he came home, he just went immediately to
play with him. Most of his interactions was with our son.
But then his behavior became to be obsessive. So I
would buy dishes, silverware. He'd break all the dishes except
for three three plates, three saucers, three bowls. Well, I
(12:46):
finally asked them, so why do you keep breaking all
this stuff? Because this does not make sense. He said, well,
we don't need anybody else over here. It's just the
three of us. I said, but what if we have
a party or a company. We're not having a party.
We're not having company.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Mildred says John's erratic moods took a huge mental toll
on her. She was already raising a child and working
full time, and she was trying to cope with John's
strange behavior, but it was becoming harder and harder. Still.
He had never turned his anger towards her directly until
one afternoon when they went to a nearby park.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
And this park you could rent a boat. I said,
you know, I want to get a boat so little
John can ride in the boat and see what that's like.
He turned to me with the coldest look in his eyes,
was just empty, and he said, we're not going to
do that. Scared me and I just shut down. It
(13:49):
was painful the way he looked at me and talked
to me. He never done that before ever. So we
went home and I went straight to the bathroom and
locked the door, and I stayed in there all day.
I didn't get anything to eat, I didn't get anything
to drink. I was so hurt. I was just devastated.
(14:11):
I was hurt. I could hear little John at the
door crying, Mommy, please come out, Mommy, please come out.
I drew a bath, I sat in the tub, and
so when I finally did come out, he was sleeping
on the floor right by the door, and he woke
up and looked at me. He said, Mommy, you're okay,
saying Mommy's fine. Now, said Mommy scared me. I say,
(14:34):
don't ever be scared of me. I just needed some
time to myself.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
How did John respond? How did you respond to John?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
He waited until that morning and came and apologized to
me and said he didn't know what came over him,
and he was really sorry. I said, don't you ever
ever talk to me like that again.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
The relationship normalized for a while. It was now early
in nineteen ninety three, and the family was back in Tacoma, Washington.
They'd had a daughter, Selena, and Mildred was pregnant with
their second daughter, Taliba. On the surface, things look calm,
but John was growing more disillusioned with the military, and
(15:32):
he'd gotten into trouble again.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
John was brought up on charges for threatening to kill
his first sergeant. He told the first sergeant, I'll kill you,
your wife, and everybody in their line. He had an attorney,
military attorney. We went in to talk to her about
the case, and as they're talking, she looks at me
(15:57):
and she says, you don't know anything that's going on,
do you? I say no, am I done? And so
she asked him, why haven't you told your wife what's
going on with this case? He said, because she's a
part of the establishment and she doesn't have my back.
What has she done to make you feel that way?
And he said nothing, I just don't want her to know.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
According to Mildred.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
What turned the case was the defense attorney was asking
the first sergeant what happened and he couldn't recall, and
so the verdict came back not guilty. John was happy.
He said he knew that he was not going to
be found guilty, and he apologized for not telling me
(16:39):
about the whole case, but he said, because you were
pregnant with Taliba, and I didn't want those emotions to
affect our child.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Eventually, in nineteen ninety four, John was honorably discharged from
the military. During this period, John and Mildred had also
been introduced to the name of Islam. The Nation is
an African American religious and political group based on the
Muslim faith. It was started in the nineteen thirties and
then was popularized by Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Mildred
(17:13):
converted first in nineteen ninety six and John followed in
nineteen ninety seven. The Nation of Islam has been heavily
criticized for promoting anti white and anti Semitic ideology, but
Mildred says the Nation does not teach people to hate
those of other races or beliefs. Rather, it helped her
understand her role as a black woman in society, and
(17:35):
it gave her greater insight into the Bible and the Koran.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Everyone has their own spiritual path, and that was the
one that I chose because I needed clarity on who
God is, where is my position, who I am, and
where I needed to be and the type of mother
that I wanted to be to my children. So with
him join us a year later, then that was just
(18:01):
what he decided to do. And then he would go
to the brother's meetings and do what they do.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
After John left the military, he needed work. They decided
to use John's background fixing vehicles in the military to
start a unique auto mechanic business. Instead of operating from
a shop, John would go directly to the customer's car.
He would either work on it there or take it
back to his home garage. The business started off well,
(18:31):
but John and Mildred needed help with the bookkeeping.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I was working one day and a woman walks through
my door. Her name was Mildred Muhammad.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
She was the.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Spouse of John Muhammad. They just converted from Williams to muhammad.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Is and Nichols ran a business development at accounting company.
Mildred saw an ad for it and sought her out specifically.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
I would say probably an hour and a half. In
two our meeting for the first time, she wanted to
do business with me. They had started a business of
repairing cars. The second meeting was to do more of
an intake with them, and so her husband was present
at our second meeting.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
This is when Isa met John for the first time.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And he walked in the door. He was very tall,
quite handsome, and had a very hard handshake, very direct
look you straight in the eye. Short haircut, you can
tell he had been in the military. Very polite, called
me sister, which is a term of endearment in the
black community. He was very glad to meet me. He
(19:40):
was very glad to be doing business with another sister.
Mildred Muhammad was the administrator. She was the one who
would be dispatching and taking the calls for services, and
John would go out and do the work. Mildred and
I usually were the ones talking. We became friends more so,
and John and I we had some commonalities. Her husband
(20:04):
was stationed at Fort Lewis. My husband was stationed at
Fort Lewis. She related to her husband. She was very respectful.
She was very humble with him. He referred to her
as his wife, his loving wife. Very promising in the beginning.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
But soon Isa began to notice things about John and
Mildred's relationship, strange things. And the summer of nineteen ninety seven,
John's son from his previous marriage, Lindbergh, came to visit
Tacoma from Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
He didn't want to return home. He said there was
abuse in different things and he was afraid to go
back home. Mildred talked to me about it in terms
of what should she do, and I said, you're going
to have to send him back to his mother.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Mildred says John was adamant that they keep Lindbergh. John
was worried that Lindbergh really was being abused in Louisiana,
so he got a lawyer and went to court, hoping
to gain custody of Lindberg.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And I said to him, what you're doing is wrong.
Carol was calling and he wouldn't talk to her. I said,
you need to talk to her. This is not your
decision to make on your own, and you need to
get some background as to what is really happening with Lindberg.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
But when John went to court, the judge in Washington
said that he didn't have jurisdiction, and so John had
to send Lindbergh back home.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So that night I came back from a mosque meeting
and John had this huge scuffle bag as long as
a twin bed packing. John, Selena, and Taliba were just
sitting on a bed and Limbert too, And I said,
so what's going on here? He said, well, I'm running
(21:57):
with Lynn. No you're not. Why would you need to
run with Lynn because he's being abused and I need
to protect him. I say, but the judge said, he
needs to go home tomorrow, and you're gonna run with
him and leave me and the children destitute. Is that
(22:22):
what you're telling me? Well, I just need to protect
my son, and say, no, you need to take Lynn back,
and he's leaving tomorrow. So I took Lynn and the children.
We went in the second bedroom and I locked the door,
and I packed Lin's bag and I sat on the
(22:44):
floor with my back to the door so that he
could not get in. And when daylight came, we all
got dressed and we got in the car and John
was sitting on the sofa and when we passed by,
I said, are you coming to the airport to see
(23:05):
your son off? And he said yeah. So I drove
the children in the back, laughing and talking with Lynn,
and the whole time he's just looking straight ahead. So
we checked him in. We walked him to the gate,
and we watched the plane take off, and John did
(23:25):
a right face, just like he was in the military,
just the right face, and walked off. And when we
got back in the car and he said, you didn't
have my back. I said, I was not about to
watch you take limbird away from her for no reason.
(23:50):
And that is when the relationship changed.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
The incident with Lindbergh was just the beginning. Soon other
people began to notice odd things about John and Mildred's relationship.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
They didn't fight a lot, but they did fight. Sure,
there was a couple of times that it would be
right there and you would just kind of hear the
attitude in the voices.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
This is Felix Strojer in Tacoma. He and John had
opened a martial arts business together. Felix was the martial
artist and John was the businessman. Mildred helped out with
the bookkeeping, so Felix regularly saw the couple interact.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
You know, I think that they kept a lot of
this stuff hit. I knew that they had problems, but
not to the extent that it went it went too far.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Despite the tension with Mildred, Felix says that John loved
his kids more than anything.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
I remember one of them he would always have in
his arms. Any little kid sometime will start to play
in class or something. But the thing is all John
would have to do is just look their eyes just
had to meet a little John knew to just get
it together. I never seen him spank him or anything,
(25:23):
but when I did see the eye contact, I knew
that it had been some work to make that happen.
You know, little kids, they have to learn to look
for that look. But I think he had a good
relationship with him. He loved him.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
But Felix says that John also had a darker side.
On one occasion, Felix noticed that John had taken a
liking to a young female student, and then she stopped
coming to class, presumably to avoid John. Even still, Felix
says that John would go over to her house.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
This might have been something that I should have paid
attention to, because if I remember right, it was almost
like in a stalking way. I believe that she said
that he would show up when he wanted to. That
was a problem. I misread his character. He had some issues.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Those issues would become consistent and soon escalate even further.
Here's Icea Nichols again.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
After the third year of being their client, it became
apparent to me that there were some tensions going on
with John and Mildrid. Through the business. There were calls
from clients that John was missing appointments. Milder didn't know
(27:00):
his whereabouts, why he was missing appointments. He would be gone.
She had a list where he was supposed to go
for the day, and then she started getting phone calls
him not being there, then waiting for him to rive.
All of this information I got from Mildred telling me
about calls she received. One of those calls was from
(27:25):
a woman who wanted to speak to the owner. The
woman told Mildred that she wanted to report inappropriate sexual
advances made to her from John for repair of the car.
So now there's an ineducation that there's infidelity. This woman
(27:47):
is calling saying that John is making sexual advances toward
her in lieu of payment. She reaches out to me
because she trusts me business consultant. This is a business issue,
and she was like, well what do I do? This
is serious, And I said, well, you have to talk
(28:07):
to your husband. You have to make him aware of
this client calling with this information. For Mildred, this is
her husband, father of her children. She's devastated. She didn't
know how to handle it. She emotionally reached out to
me because she was hurt and because she also as
(28:29):
a businesswoman had to respond to this woman.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Mildred wasn't comfortable talking to the young woman who made
these claims, so Mildred asked her friend Stanley to go
investigate for her.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So he went and talk to the young lady and
she said that John had been over there all the time,
spent Christmas, in Thanksgiving, and even the little boy, who
was I think three or four knew him. He came
back to me, he says, so, Mildred, this is what
I found out. So what we're going to do? I said, well,
what we're going to do is we want to confront
John because I still got a on his business.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
So Mildred finally approached John and he said.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Oh, she's lying, She's this, she's that. But I didn't
believe him. I asked him for a divorce. I said,
you acting free, you may as well be free.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
They agreed to separate, but John didn't want a divorce,
and although they hadn't settled on rules for seeing the kids,
John moved out.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Of the house, but he still had a key to
the house, so he would come in in the middle
of the night. I could hear the key going in
the door. He would walk back to the bedroom. So
I opened my eye to a slither. Watch him walk
into the room from one side of the bed to
the other, lean over to listen to me breathe stand
(29:52):
up and leave out of the room. He did that
three times. The third time, Taliba woke up and said Daddy,
and he picks her up and says, here's Taliba, and
then he leaves. So that's when I decided to get
(30:13):
the locks changed.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
Even though they were separated, Mildred and John tried to
make the mechanic business work, but soon it began to
fall apart. Here's Ion Nichols again.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
I got a call from Mildred. She wanted to inform
me that they were no longer be able to afford
to utilize my services anymore. I felt really sad. She says,
we're not making the money. She says, I don't know
where John is half the time. She's told me that
(30:49):
he sometimes will leave for two three days. I don't
have any more control, and so she didn't know how
the business would survive without John.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Mildred says the mechanic business was no longer important to John.
All he cared about was getting back into the house
and back into the family, and he was determined. On
one faithful night, Mildred learned how dangerous her husband truly was.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
He came over and said, we need to talk. My
brother was there, so I felt I was safe. We
go into garage, so he says, you are not going
to raise my children by yourself. John said you have
become my enemy, and as my enemy, I will kill you.
(32:04):
I said, well, I've been sleeping with the enemy all
this time. What else you're gonna do? He charges at me.
I ran around him into the house where my brother
was and he leaves and I tell my brother. I said,
John's going to kill me. It's going to kill me.
He said, girl, John not going to kill you. I
(32:25):
never went till my brother again for help because he
didn't believe me. John's mottel was one shot, one killed
to the head, never leave an enemy behind. He was
a man of his word. He was going to kill me,
and it was going to be a headshot, and he
(32:48):
was going to bury me where no one would be
able to find me. And I could not get anybody
to believe me. Nobody.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Mildred was thoroughly terrified of John. She went to the
courthouse the next morning to get a restraining order against him.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Judge say, you really need to get away from this guy.
I say, your honor, I am really trying to do that.
He saw the escalation in how dangerous John was for me,
and he gave me a lifetime restraining order, but still
had to have visitation with the children. So we had
(33:37):
to set up for someone to pick up the children
and take them to John and bring them back, and
so we found somebody to do that. The first weekend
went fine. Second weekend was my mom's birthday, March to
twenty seven, I.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Said Nichols dropped in that evening to see Mildred and
to tell her mother Happy birthday.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I expect to see the children. I expected to see Mom.
I expected to see John. When I got there, the
children weren't there. John wasn't there. Mildred's mother was in
the back room, and her brother was there, who was
a truck driver and he was in town. So I
(34:19):
got in and I took my shoes off, and I said, Hey,
how's it going. She's like, well, it's my mom's birthday
and we're waiting on John to bring the children back.
They should have been back by now. And I said okay,
So you know, I kick off my shoes and I
sit on the couch and I wait with her. When
her brother left, she sits down and she tells me
(34:40):
at that time that they were separated. She told me
that John would come and get the children on the weekend,
and she told me that she was filing for a divorce.
She told me she had problems because John was trying
(35:00):
to get back with her, meaning to stop her filing
of the divorce. She shared with me times that he
was angry and forced his way into the house. Time
had went by. It's six o'clock. I've been there a
(35:21):
couple of hours, and it's at that point I feel
the tension.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Mildred was getting worried. The children were supposed to be
home hours ago and she hadn't heard from John.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
We didn't have cell phones back then like we do now.
We had pagers. So I'm blown up his pager seven
point thirty. He calls. My son is on the line.
I said to asks your dad, what time are you
coming home? Say mom? Dad said we'll be there in
an hour. I said, where are you anyway? He said, well,
we're at kmart, which was literally fifteen minutes away. When
(35:57):
eight thirty comes, no children blowing up his pageer Again,
at eleven thirty five pm, he calls and he says,
we're en route from Seattle, will be there shortly.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
She hung up that phone and she looked at me
and she said something is wrong. Something is wrong, and
she began to pace back and forth. I know now
that something really is wrong because of what she just
shared with me. I stayed at their house till ten o'clock,
almost eleven o'clock, Mildred's making phone calls asking people have
(36:39):
they seen John and the children. I go home. I
call her one more time before I got ready to
go to bed. I lived there, and she says no,
She says, my children are gone. I said, what do
you mean? She said, my children are gone. He took them.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
The children never came home that night. The next morning,
Mildred started calling around looking for them.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
So I'm thinking maybe he took the children to school.
Because it's a Monday. Went to the school. I talked
to secretary. She said, no, Mammy, your children have not
checked in. She looked at me because every time they
saw me I was smiling. I wasn't smiling. I said,
this was Mohammy, what's the matter. And it was the
first time I cried. I say, John took the children,
(37:26):
and she said, let's go in the bathroom, wash your face,
go home, call the police.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Mildred did go home, and her mom was waiting for her,
hoping for some good news.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
And when she saw me come around the corner without
my children, she let out a scream. I had never
heard my mother's scream before, and I ran to her
before she hit the ground because she was she was
going there, and she said, he took out babies.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
He took us babies.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
I said, I know mine, So what are we gonna do?
I said, I don't know, but I'm gonna do something.
So I called the police.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
They took a report. She gave them pictures of her children.
John had taken the children and vanished.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
The police told Mildred that since John had shared custody
of the children, the incident couldn't be filed as a kidnapping.
John had just as much right to the kids as
she did, and that meant there would be no criminal investigation.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
She's learning all of this, and she aspirally emotionally every
day because she doesn't know where her babies are. Then
John began to call her, and he began in this crazy,
diabolical take me back or you won't never see the children.
That's when it began. She would plead John, please just
(38:58):
bring the children back, and he would constantly hold those
children and threatened that she would never see the children
again if she didn't take him back. Over time, we
find out that this was strategic. John had taken money
out of the accounts, emptied them out, emptied the children's savings.
(39:20):
Accounts out that he had actually planned this, and here
he has the money, he has the children, and she
has nothing.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Mildred says she got so depressed that she lost all
desire to eat.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I was eating half a slice of bread and crushed ice.
That was it, just enough to sustain me. I was
signing for a package from my mom on Mother's Day and.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
I passed out. Shortly thereafter, ISA got a phone call.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
And it's from Mildred's mon and Mildred's mom says that
Mildred's in the hospital and if I could go and
check on Mildred for her. I go, and Mildred's in
the emergency room. I walk into the room and I
see Mildred and I grab her hand and she opens
(40:21):
her eyes. She looks at me, and she starts apologizing
to me. She starts crying, saying she's sorry. I tried
to take care of myself. I tried because those are
the things that I would talk to her about. It's like,
where are you're gonna be when the children are found?
Are you going to be in the psych ward? She
(40:43):
just was surviving. The phone rings. Mildred answers the phone
and it's John. Mildred is hooked up the ivs and
monitors and it's John on the phone. She's screaming, and
let me see the children. John, please don't take the children.
He's saying, take me back. If I don't get to
(41:06):
come back home, you don't get to see the children.
And she's screaming and she's begging, and all of a sudden,
she flips out. The ivs are coming out of her arms,
the monitors are going crazy, beeping and stuff, and the
staff comes into the room. I'm backed up against the
corner while they work on her and calm her down.
(41:28):
They end up giving her a sedative and she finally
is sedated enough where she's not kicking and screaming. And
they have to put those things back in her arm
because she had pulled them out. She was so scared.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Mildred was in her lowest place. She hadn't seen or
heard from her children in nearly two months, and she
was about to learn that her life was in serious danger.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
My mother called the hospital shortly thereafter and told them
that John just called her and said he was on
his way to the hospital to kill me. A social
worker came and said, you can't go back home because
we have to put you in hiding so that John
(42:20):
will not find and kill you. So they waited till
it got dark, brought me to close, took me out
of the back door of the hospital. They told me
I needed to slouch down in the car so no
one could see that I was in the car. But
I watched the rooftops and I was watching the open
(42:43):
windows because I knew it was going to be a headshot,
just as sure as I'm sitting here talking to you,
I knew it was going to be a headshot.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Mildred made it safely to a shelter. She stayed there
for a few months before relocating to Maryland to stay
with some family. It appeared as though John was nowhere
to be found, So where was he and where were
the children? It seemed like nobody knew, But thousands of
miles away someone did know. The Jamaican boy whose fingerprints
(43:18):
had been found during the Sniper investigation, Lee boyd Malvo.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
He gave me his time.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
He was consistent, even though the consistency was maive.
Speaker 5 (43:30):
He was consistent.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
Next time on Monster DC Sniper.
Speaker 7 (43:43):
This is a very rare time where you're able to
understand how an individual develops from the day he's born
to the day he was arrested for one of the
most sensational crimes of modern time.
Speaker 6 (44:00):
All over the world, who are fatherless, who are not
in school, who have no role model, who feel like
they have no purpose, it's so easy for a gang
leader or even an organization like Isis to recruit and
to give them a sense of purpose.
Speaker 7 (44:17):
He didn't have his parents, he didn't have any structure,
and all he had was instability.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
I mean, I have no one.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
If I off of a bridge that they know and
get them.
Speaker 7 (44:28):
So it probably had a traumatic impact on him knowing
that this was going to be how my life is.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
Find a way because if I don't find a way.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
I'm let.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Monster DC Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by
Tony Harris and produced by iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt
Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of
iHeart Radio, alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Keebrick, and Josh Thain.
Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf
(45:08):
of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Stedman and Christina Dana.
Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. The audio
you heard of Lee Boyd Malvow in this episode comes
from a twenty twelve interview by journalist Josh White. That
audio was provided courtesy of The Washington Post. If you
haven't already, be sure to check out the first two seasons,
(45:30):
Atlanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer. If you have
questions or comments, email us at Monster at iHeartMedia dot com,
or you can call us at one eight three, three,
two eight five six six sixty seven. Thanks for listening.
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