The Trials [13]

In the fall of 2003, Virginia attorneys prepared for the trials of John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. Prosecutors intended to sentence them both to the ultimate punishment.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Monster d C Sniper, a production of I
Heart Radio 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 I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees.
This episode includes testimony and argument from court trial transcripts

(00:22):
read by voice actors. Portions of these transcripts are excerpted
for the purposes of this podcast. Listener discretion is advised.
Good evening. One of the most terrifying crimes in recent
years left ten people dead the nation's capital and two
neighboring states, and a frenzy of fear for three weeks.
The Sniper case a year ago today, the first of

(00:43):
two suspects in the case went on trial, and the
opening day was surreal. I remember feeling very nervous prior
to both trials. Prior to the trial, we're told we
weren't allowed to speak to other witnesses. But then afterwards,
I remember being in the room with family members who
had lost people. That was so sad, so horrific. I

(01:08):
remember speaking to I believe Laurie, with us husband. I
was just still angry, you know, I just you know,
I don't know. I just want to do something, you know,
and and be over with and make them pay for
what they did, to go and testify it was not
the problem. The real problem was just to go and

(01:30):
see them right in front of you. That was the
hard part. It was hard to be there in the
same room with them. It's was hard to see them
over there. It was hard to see their faces. They
don't have no remorse at all, both of them, not
at all, like it was normal for them. And that's

(01:50):
where you know, get me, you know, for people like that.
You know, I always say, these those those kind of people,
they don't deserve to be here. This is so horrific
to realize that these people is so impacted by the
actions of these two cruel people, and their lives will
never ever be the same. You know, I'm lucky merely

(02:12):
go along. You know, in my life, I do thank
God that it wasn't me. But you know, it's difficult
to remember that on an everyday basis because humans are
not like that. We just get on with our lives.
But these people, they think about it every day that
they lost a family member because of this totally senseless,

(02:32):
horrific act. There is a ruthless person on the loose.
What I nerves this community the most is the randomness
of the murders. Ordinary people doing ordinary things. All that
the victims appear to have had in common. Each was
shot to death by a single bullet. Be careful, these
guys are using weapons that are going to go right

(02:53):
straight through our bullet proof ess. The massive man odd continues,
but police admit they don't know who are, what they're
dealing with, or what their motive might be. From my
Heart Radio and tender Foot TIV, this is monster d
C sniper. The trials of John Mohammed and Lee Boyd

(03:17):
Malvo were scheduled to begin in October of two thousand three.
After they were caught, it was decided that the two
would be tried in Virginia. At the time, Virginia permitted
the death penalty for sixteen and seventeen year olds. Prosecutors
were hoping to convict both Malbo and Mohammed and sentenced
them to the ultimate punishment. Prince William County would prosecute

(03:41):
Mohammed for the murder of Dean Harold Myers, led by
Attorney Paul Ebert and Fairfax County would prosecute Malvo for
the murder of Linda Franklin, led by attorney Robert Horran,
but attorneys from Malvo and Mohammed made an early trial
motion to move the cases from those counties. Everybody who
lived in this area, in the Washington, d C. Area,

(04:03):
was essentially a victim. This is Mark Petrovitch, one of
the lawyers from Malvo's defense team. We all were afraid
to be shot at any given time. We all pumped
our gas and moved around as we pumped our gas.
We all dealt with the fear, the anger, the frustration,
just the outrage of the situation. And so anyone who

(04:25):
dealt with that would hold a grudge against anyone who's
accused of being involved in it. So we wanted jurors
who hadn't been in the middle and essentially this big
ground zero. We wanted jurors from outside that area to objectively,
in an unbiased way, determine what should happened with the case.
Petrovitch says. Transferring jurisdiction in capital cases is very uncommon,

(04:48):
but in this case, it was clear that Mohammed and
Malvo would not get an impartial jury anywhere near the
d C area. And so the motion was approved and
the trials were moved to Virginia b in Chesapeake Bay
in southeast Virginia. But Prince William County and Fairfax County
we're still in charge of putting together the prosecution and

(05:10):
Fairfax Police Lieutenant Bruce Gooth was in charge of assembling
the prosecution task force. We now have Malvo and Prince
William has Mohammed. Our jurisdictions are right next to each other.
I called a meeting with the A T F D
FBI Secret Service to discuss prosecution task force. We would

(05:31):
put all the evidence together in one packet, if you will,
for both trials. So if Mr Eber needed for Mohammed,
he could grab it. If Mr Harran needed it for Malvo,
he could grab it. You know, it's hard enough work
in one murder, and to have these thirteen shootings just
in our area, let alone what else went around the country.

(05:52):
You know, we knew it was going to be a
monumental task. Gooth says. They found an empty office building.
Within a week, they had filled the entire space with
dozens of desks, interview rooms, and computers. For over fifty
Task Force members. They quickly pulled a massive team together
and started preparations in Fairfax. Anything in a blue binder

(06:16):
is a murder file. So the blue file thing popped
up in my head that for each major thing we need,
we're going to make a blue file. For instance, the
Bushmaster to two three rifle, we had a book that
had everything you could want about the rifle. There was
a blue book made on the Caprice, where they got

(06:36):
the caprice, the history of the caprice, the interview of
the guy who sold them the caprice up in New Jersey.
And that guy was a great witness because Mohammed climbed
into the trunk of the car and he thought that
was weird. So I really liked this car. You mind
if I climb in the trunk and it goes yeah,
you know, you can climb in wherever you want the
car six bucks, I don't care. So we ended up

(06:57):
in this fire room with about eighty blue books. We
had a file cabinet probably on thirty yards long. Over
the course of a year, prosecutors collected information and prepared
their case. Then, come the fall of two thousand three,
the task Force moved to southeast Virginia, where the trials

(07:17):
were about to begin. We basically rented out a whole
half side of this hotel had a big task force room.
They wired for computers and phone lines and now we
have to fly everybody in from all over the country
into Virginia Beach instead of the dollies. It was a
monumental task. We had two trials with hundred and fifty

(07:40):
witnesses in each trial. After m court, we'd meet in
Mr Harand's suite or Mr. Ebert Suite and we talked
about who they want the next two or three days.
And then we'd call these witnesses and get them lined
up with airplane reservations and tell them where to come,
and then we have rooms at Stout for them, and

(08:01):
then we had to get back to the airport to
send them back home. And I was just it worked
out really well, amazingly. We didn't lose anybody, and everybody
showed up. John Mohammed's trial was scheduled to begin first.
He was being tried on four counts, two of which
were for capital murder. Prosecutors were hoping Virginia Long would
provide a path to the death sentence for John Mohammed.

(08:24):
Here's Virginia. Prosecutor Paul Ebert in Virginia, is our call,
like sixteen different categories that they can mount to capital punishment,
killing them, a minor robbery, rape, a number of thing
which it has to be an underlying predicate before you
can get to death penalty or even charged the death
penalty with any success. Strangely enough, Virginia, for kilmore than

(08:47):
one person in three years, that's a capital case. We
had the opportunity to bring in every one of those
murders to prove that. Aspect of the trial. Mohammed was
being tried for one count of capital murder in the
shooting of Dean Harold Myers on October nine, two two.
The second capital murder charge came from a new anti

(09:08):
terrorism law implemented in Virginia after the events of nine eleven.
Under that statute, a jury would not have to conclude
that Mohammed had actually pulled the trigger to be found guilty,
only that he had intentionally terrorized a large population of
American people. This case would be the first use of
the law in a criminal trial. Because it was so new,

(09:31):
it was possible for the statute to be challenged and
potentially overturned. But it found guilty on either count of
capital murder, Mohammed would be eligible for the death penalty.
The third and fourth counts were for conspiracy to commit
murder and illegal use of a firearm, respectively. On October

(09:52):
two thousand three, Mohammed's trial began in Virginia Beach. So
the Mohammed trial starts, and they pick a jury and
it turns into a zoo. The first trial for the
sniper attacks that left the Washington d C. Area traumatized
a year ago began with a stunning development. Sniper defendant
John Mohammed suddenly asked to represent himself, but judge said

(10:13):
he thought Mohammed was making a mistake, but granted the
request anyway, ordering the defense lawyers to stay on as advisors.
One of the really most alarming moments was when Mohammed
stood to represent himself. This is Washington Post journalist Josh White.
He had two of the best lawyers possible. Johnathan Shapiro

(10:34):
and Peter Greenspun are two of the most experienced trial
attorneys in Virginia. They're the people you want representing you
in a capital case. They have an immense amount of
experience and had been making the right constitutional arguments and
had been preparing for it for a very long time,
and he rested the case away from them. We had

(10:55):
never heard from Mohammed at that point, and he stood
up in court and presenting a case. Here's an excerpt
from John Mohammed's opening statement, read by a voice actor.
Good evening. I would like to thank the judge for
giving me the opportunity to speak. I like reading and

(11:16):
learning about words. One of the things I was fascinated
by coming into this strange world. It's three truths, the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I always
thought it was just the truth. Apparently I was wrong.
So I did some checking to find out what is

(11:40):
it about these three truths? Same thing, but yet they
are different in an interesting way. It gave you a
little bit of insight into how he was thinking. What
he essentially presented was logical. He made the argument that
no one had seen him do anything, which was true.

(12:02):
No one had seen him do anything. No one saw
him with the gun except when he was arrested with
it in his car. His argument was he told him
an allegory about how his daughter had reached into a
cookie jar, or so he thought. I remember an incident
when I was in the Caribbean. My favorite daughter, believe,

(12:25):
but she loves chocolate cookies. As I was leaving one day,
she said, Daddy, can I have some chocolate cookies? And
I said, sure, I'll come back. We'll go to the
store and we'll get some chocolate cookies, but don't go
in the cookie jar and get no chocolate cookies until

(12:46):
I come back. She said, I won't, Daddy, I won't.
So I leave. I come back an hour later. I
see my baby daughter out in the yard like the
cookies in her head. I am upset now because from
what I seen, she disobeyed. I got the evidence in

(13:10):
her hands. I got her eating cookies. I even got
her sister saying she saw her going in the cookie job.
So I'm very upset now because my baby daughter lied
to and he blamed her for taking the cookies. But
he had not seen it, and it turned out that
he was wrong to have blamed her, that she didn't

(13:32):
take the cookies. She was actually putting cookies in the
job and I didn't know. I thought to leave, but
had disobeyed me. But she really, she really hadn't disobeyed me.
She actually got cookies from the store and not out
of the cookie job. I asked her not to take

(13:52):
cookies out of the cookie job, and she didn't. But
I was basing that on what I saw. I was
basing that or what I guessed at what happened. But
I didn't know that what happened. And his explanation to
the jury was, how can you hold me responsible for
something that no one saw me? Do you know? I think,

(14:17):
like in any criminal case, when a defendant starts representing themselves,
it's something that their lawyers really don't want to see.
And he stepped into a number of problems for himself.
Bruce Scooth says Mohammed's decision to represent himself was more
of a stunt than anything, and that stunt cost him

(14:38):
any amount of pity he might have gotten from the jury.
This is him. He's cocky, and he's making a complete
joke out of the judicial system. The court room has
family members in her of these victims, and he's basically
making fun of them. It is how cold this guy was.
He's trying to cross examine people. Oh, it was just

(14:59):
a complete zoo and a judge kept saying, you know,
use your lawyers, and the lawyers are mad and they
wanted a mistrial. After making his opening statement, Mohammed began
to question witnesses. So talk about crazy circumstances and weird
events in your life. I was being questioned by the

(15:19):
guy who tried to kill me. He wasn't the guy
that pulled the trigger, but he was the brains behind it.
This is Paul Larufa, the victims shot on September five,
two thousand two, in Clinton, Maryland. Larufa was sitting in
his car that night, about to leave his restaurant when
five shots rang out from the driver's side, shattering the
window and badly injuring his left arm and torso. It

(15:44):
had been just over a year since that traumatic event.
Larufa was dealing with PTSD and was still wearing a
brace on his arm. Since he was one of the
initial victims in the d C sniper case, he was
one of the first witnesses to testify. My fear was
is that, like you see on TV, the lawyer comes
right up to the witness box and gets pretty close

(16:06):
to you. And I said, that's gonna make me feel
really weird. And they said, now you'll be okay because
the judge made a ruling that he can't do that.
He can't get close to you. He was fifteen feet away,
and that made me feel better. It was still hard testifying.
I had told the story many many times, and it

(16:27):
was different telling it in the courtroom. When they called me,
I was waiting outside and they call you in and
you walk in. Talk about all eyes being on you.
A couple of hundred people are there, and it is
quieter than a church. You could hear a pin drop,
and you make the walk from the back door to
the front of the courtroom and they swear you in

(16:50):
and they asked me questions. You know, I broke down
a little bit when they asked me about being shot.
It was a lot more emotional for me than I thought.
And that was from the prosecution side asking me all
those questions. They're on my side now. Mohammed, acting in
his own defense, he said something initially that was crazy,

(17:12):
and the judge told him he couldn't say stuff like that.
He said, I know what it's like to have my
life on the line, or something like that, and what
he was implying was that me being shot and him
facing the death penalty was somehow the same. We were
both facing death. I didn't say anything. I probably could

(17:36):
have said, what are you talking about? You're crazy? And
then he asked me something simple. He asked me if
I saw the person's face who shot me. I said no,
I didn't. I didn't see his face. And that was it.
To this day, it's just crazily ironic that. I don't
know how many people have that experience of being questioned

(17:58):
in court by the person who tried to kill you.
The same day that Larufa testified, prosecutors also called forensic
experts to the stand. The firearms examiner named Walter Dandridge.
He was the one guy that examined all the bullet
fragments and the gun. He's the one that made all
the matches taller cases. He was so good. The whole

(18:21):
world was watching, and so there was a lot of pressure.
Dandridge presented his findings from the investigation. Forensics had linked
all of the bullets from the DC shootings to the
same gun. Those bullets also matched the ammunition used by
the Bushmaster found in the Blue Caprice. Work in the
evidence and then testifying it was much more stressful because

(18:46):
of the visibility. I was cross examined by Mohammad when
he was acting as his own defense attorney, and he
didn't think I knew what I was talking about as
far as the handling of the fire arm, and he
was kind of lecturing me on how this firearm work.
Mohammed only represented himself for one full day. Eventually Mohammed

(19:09):
relented and gave the case back to his attorneys. He
claimed he had a toothache and could no longer represent himself.
But we did get some really amazing moments of hearing
him speak and question witnesses. And you know, one of
his most effective questions was did you see me do anything?
And the answer was no. The basis of his argument

(19:30):
would ultimately be his official legal defense that there was
no direct evidence linking Mohammed to the crimes without a
confession or witness who saw him at a crime scene.
All the prosecution had was circumstantial evidence. The problem, I
think ultimately was it was a very strong circumstantial case

(19:52):
against him. All of the evidence was in his car,
was on the gun, but still no one has ever
proven who he killed or didn't kill. The argument prosecutors
made was it didn't matter who fired the gun. It
didn't matter whose finger was on that trigger. They used

(20:13):
some novel legal arguments to show that it was essentially
one system that killed the vehicle, was the weapon just
as much as the gun was, and that it was
a team that carried out these crimes. Records show that
the blue Caprice had been seen or identified at a
number of the crime scenes. Although neither Malvo nor Mohammad

(20:35):
were spotted at those scenes, both of them were found
in the car and that implicated them in the murders.
Here's Virginia Prosecutor Paul Ebert. Again, snipers are not solitary.
They have two or three mallion teams typically, and I
wanted you to know that right off the bat. The
most important part the sniper team is a spotter. They

(20:57):
look to make sure no cars were coming. A lot
of things into spotder, to do aid and a bed.
The actual shooter, an actual shooter, really had an as
your job allow export shot. Question is when do you
do it and how do you do it? To demonstrate
how the pair operated, prosecutors made a full size model

(21:17):
of the back half of the Caprice. They showed how
the car had been altered and likely utilized to make
shooting easier. Here's Bruce Gooth. We reenacted getting in the
back of that caprice with the back seat in it.
We used swat guys the same size, and we had
them crawl into the back trunk and how would you
position yourself and you know, pop the trunk open and

(21:39):
put the barrel out through the hole they cut in
the car and blah blah blah. Mohammed's trial in Virginia
lasted just over a month. On November two, three closing
arguments were made by both sides. Attorney Peter Greenspun gave
the defenses closing argument. Here's an excerpt read by a
voice actor. You may convict John Alan Mohammed uncircumstantial evidence alone,

(22:04):
which is what prosecutors have sought to do here effectively.
When the Commonwealth relies upon circumstantial evidence, the circumstances must
be consistent with guilt and inconsistent with innocence. It is
not sufficient that the circumstances proved create a suspicion of guilt,
however strong, or even a probability of guilt. The evidence

(22:27):
as a whole must exclude every reasonable theory of innocence.
So that's where you get into what I call the
gut feelings. I know it, but can't explain it. This
instruction tells you that that is not sufficient to find
anyone guilty in a trespass case, but most importantly in
a capital murder prosecution, you're going to have to find

(22:50):
your own sense of comfort as far as what that is.
Then Attorney Richard Conway gave the prosecutions closing argument. Here's
an excerpt of that, read by a voice actor. He's
charged with the two offenses of capital murder. He's charged
with conspiracy to commit murder, and he's charged with using
a firearm during the commission of a murder. Yes, in

(23:13):
order to convict Mr Mohammed of capital murder of killing
more than one person in three years, you have to
find he was a principal in the first degree. But
for the capital murder during an act of terrorism, you
don't have to find that. We have the same first
two elements. That Mr Dean Myers was killed, no question

(23:33):
that the killing was willful, deliberate, and premeditated. No question
that the killing occurred during the commission of or attempted
commission of an act of terrorism, and that either he
was the principle in the first degree or someone else
was a principle in the first degree acting at his
direction or order. So either way, and I suggest to

(23:55):
you that these two, him and Malvo are both principle
in the first degree. Over the course of two days,
the jury deliberated for six and a half hours. Judge
LeRoi Mollett Jr. Told jurors that they did not have
to find that Mohammed actually fired the gun in any

(24:15):
of the killings. He instructed them that Mohammed merely had
to be a joint participant to be found guilty. On

(24:38):
novem the verdict came back. John Mohammed was found guilty
on all counts in the DC sniper shootings. He was
also found guilty of carrying out the attacks to terrorize
the population. Here's Virginia Police Lieutenant Bruce Gooth. I mean,
it was pretty clear that there's no way that jury

(24:59):
was not going to convict him. The evidence was so
overwhelming and it was pretty clear that you know, he
was directing the orchestra with him in Malbow. Prosecutors were
confident that John Mohammed would be found guilty, but their
primary goal was to get the death penalty. His actual
sentencing would be decided in the next phase of the trial.

(25:22):
For this phase, prosecutors had to call new witnesses who
demonstrated that Mohammed was in fact deserving of a death sentence.
One of the people to testify was Isa Nichols, John
and Mildred Mohammed's former accountant. I entered the courtroom. I
hadn't seen John since the day of his custody case

(25:44):
in Tacoma. So I entered the courtroom and he's there
to orange jumped suit. I was asked to identify him
in the courtroom, and I pointed to him, and I
wanted him to look at me, but he wouldn't look
at me. He just sat there in the stair. I'm
answering the prosecutors questions about who he was. He wasn't

(26:08):
the same man that I knew at all. He was disassociated.
He was still maintaining his innocence in this whole entire case. Finally,
on November three, after another five hours of the liberation,
the jury reached a verdict. As he has throughout the trial,

(26:31):
John Mohammed displayed no emotion when the verdict was read.
Death on two counts. Death penalty reserved for the worst
of the worst, and we thanking Mr Mohammed fell in
that category, and the jury agreed. Some jurors said today
they were moved by home video that showed a loving
Mohammed with his children. One juror said he originally voted

(26:53):
for life, but decided just last night that Mohammed was
too dangerous. The lack of remorse, the possibility, no probability
that down the road there will be more casualties from
this span. The big moment for me was when they
actually sentenced Mohammed. This is Bruce Guth again. I became

(27:17):
very close with Linda Franklin's daughter and her family. She
lived in Virginia Beach ironically, and we'd pick her up
every day and take her to court. One of the
detectives and myself or somebody would pick her up and
her husband at the time, and she had a young baby.
She came to court every single day for both trials.

(27:39):
We were all sitting in court the day when the
jury came back with what the penalty was. The jury
comes back and they give the sentence of death from
Mohammed multiple times, and there was somewhat of an outbreak
in the courtroom. You know, the families were not excited
because some of them didn't even believe in the death penalty,
but they understood the law. There was like an initial

(28:01):
out person. It got definitely quiet. The hair in the
back of my head stood up. The court only allowed
a still photographer in the courtroom. They didn't allow TV
cameras or any other photography. So there was one photographer
way back in the corner the whole time of the trial.
And you hear click click click click click all throughout
the trial. So everybody gets up to leave, and Linda

(28:24):
Franklin's daughter comes over to me. The courtrooms pretty much
three quarters four fifts cleared out, and she puts her
arms around me, and she's weeping, and she just goes
on about her mother and what we did for her
and the Task Force and keeping her in touch and
you know, getting justice for her mother, and she couldn't

(28:46):
thank us enough. And I lost it. I break out crying,
you know, I buried my head in my hands, and
I hear the photographer click click click click click click click. Well,
the next morning, wake up. My picture is on the
front page of every newspaper in the country, crying like
a baby in the middle of this courthouse. I took

(29:06):
a lot of ribbing for that. You know, it's just
that whole moment with her and how it affected her,
and you know, being exhausted, and it just finally hit me.
The judge would later accept the jury's recommendation and officially

(29:28):
condemned John Mohammed to death. He would go to Sussex
one State prison while he awaited a date for his execution.
My only concern was for my children. This is Mildry Mohammed,
ex wife of John Mohammed. When he went to trial,
my son said, well, Mom, I don't want him to
go to the court. I told them that whatever the

(29:51):
jury comes back with, that's what we're going to accept.
So when they decided that it would be the death penalty,
I asked to be released from work so I could
tell them. And so as they came in the door,
I told my daughters and they say, well, are they
going to do it tomorrow? I said, no, They're not
doing it tomorrow. There's a process. I'm pretty sure he

(30:12):
has some appeals and then after he has exhausted all
of his appeals, then they will determine a date and
at that time he will be executed. As before, Mohammed
refused to talk to anyone about what happened those many
weeks during the sniper spree. Meanwhile, prosecutors had to shift

(30:33):
gears to focus on Lee Boyd Malvo's trial. Malvo was
facing two counts of capital murder, one for the killing
of Linda Franklin on October four, two thousand two, another
under the same terrorism statute used to charge John Mohammed.
Malvo pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. His trial

(30:56):
began on November tenth, two thousand three, in Chesapeake, Virginia.
The defenses opening statement was made by Attorney Craig Cooley.
Here's an excerpt read by a voice actor. May it
please the court, gentleman and commonwealth, good morning to you.

(31:16):
They have a saying in Jamaica that describes the form
of child rearing that was used by Lee's mother and
many of his caretakers. It's called save the Eye. Save
the eye means you, as a parent, take your child
to a teacher, to a caretaker, anyone who keeps them,
and you say to them, use whatever is necessary to

(31:39):
make my child obey you. You can beat him. You
can beat him with whatever you want to, but do
two things. Don't kill him and don't put out his eye.
Save the eye. That's what that phrase means. Save the
eye is a concept that breeds, in fact, it mandates obedient.

(32:00):
And every adult that you will hear from that newly
malvo from a young child to his young adolescence is
going to boil down to if you ask them, tell
me one word, in one word, tell me about that child,
they're going to say obedient. And if you say, okay,

(32:25):
you can use two words, they're going to say very obedient.
And you are going to see from the evidence in
this case how that seemingly favorable quality in a child
made him incredibly vulnerable and susceptible to a man who
was prepared to manipulate him and took him in and

(32:46):
used him and trained him and indoctrinated him for his
own deluded purposes. The defense attorney's dressed him like a schoolboy,
for lack of a better description, when we go to
Catholic school, you had to wear, you know, little Khaki's
long sleeve white shirt with a little vest on. So
he'd come in dressed up like a young boy. We're

(33:09):
not going to address him with a big old rifle
across his chest, and we're not going to address him with,
you know, maybe a pot leaf on the back of
his shirt. You say, you dress them appropriately, and obviously
you're gonna dress him look at their age. This is
attorney Tom Walsh. He worked alongside attorney Mark Petrovitch on
Malbo's defense team. Here's Petrovitch again. To put him in

(33:30):
a suit I think would be artificial, that wasn't a
part of his background. That's not where it came from. Sure,
we certainly didn't want to air on the side of
making him look more mature. Of course, that would be
foolish on our part, so we made sure that the
clothes were more age appropriate for his age group, in
his age range. I think that's that's a fair way
to put it. But Bruce Scooth says that during the

(33:53):
trial Malvo didn't act at all like a polite young man.
That little piece of ship started getting on everybody's nerve.
The thing that really put me over the top how
he acted in court when the jury would come in.
He'd sit straight up like he was, you know, very polite,
and he'd write notes, and he, you know, wouldn't make
any faces. The minute to jury would walk out, he

(34:15):
would turn around and look at the families and smile
at the families, you know, just rubbing it in their face,
and you just wanted to go up and just grab
them by the collar. He was just beyond mean and cruel.
And then the jury walked back and he'd sit there
like a young school child. Again, that did not happen.
Those deputies wouldn't let him turn around. He sat beside

(34:37):
us all day during court and then he was out.
He was not disrespectful. I don't ever remember seeing him
laugh at a victim. A matter of fact, there's a
rule on witnesses, and the victims would come in and
testify and generally leave. They didn't want to stay in
the courtroom, so they would have to leave the courtroom,
so they wouldn't have a chance that breaks to turn
around and laugh at anybody. The deputes wouldn't let that happen.

(34:57):
Guth also says that Malvo would sit there and draw
for most of the hearings. Usually he drew the people
who went up on the witness stand. We'd come into
court for some motion, the judge would come out and
sit down, a deputy or two deputies would be in
between her and him. He would be able to draw
exactly what he saw. You know, the judge even looked

(35:19):
like the judge. The deputies was far down detail of
their shaff patches, and he put like crosshairs on the
judge's forehead or on the deputy's forehead. And he was
so good. I mean, the guy could have gone professionally
and been an artist. He was unbelievable. We encouraged him
to draw, and the drawings that he drew in court
were amazing. He's very talented and I still have some

(35:42):
of those drawings. There were some drawings that were out
during the beginning of the course where he's drawing cross
hairs of a scope on a sniper rifle, things of
that nature. We found out about the drawings and did
a search. Warran got all his drawings and we had
a whole book, one of the Blue Book of pictures
he drew. Used him against him, not that the prosecution
needed the drawings to prove his guilt. After Malvo admitted

(36:06):
on tape during an early interrogation to most of the shootings,
his guilty sentencing was all but guaranteed. When we go
back and look at it, the whole goal really was
just to avoid a death sentence. We knew there would
be a tremendous amount of information against Lee. They had
solidified a case that he at the very least participated

(36:28):
in all the shootings. His involvement may have been debated somewhat,
but there was a mountain of evidence against him. So
we knew we were going to be facing the death penalty,
and given that there were so many victims in such
a horrific path that they had gone through, we knew
it was gonna be a huge, uphill battle. So from
day one it was our goal just to avoid a

(36:49):
death penalty. Walsh and Petrovitch knew that prosecutors had the
tape of Malvo admitting to the murders and that they
would use it as direct evidence to convict Malvo, So
to avoid the worst possible sentence, they decided to make
the case that Malvo was under Mohammed's control the entire time,
and that when he admitted to the murders on tape,

(37:11):
it was because he had been brainwashed by Mohammed to
take the fall. This is why Malvo pleaded not guilty
by reason of insanity. Part of Mohammed's indoctrination was to
desensitize Lee to the violence, to shootings, to the consequences
of what happened. Mohammed was having him with earphones in

(37:33):
in Bellingham, Washington, watching video games, in violent video games,
so that was part of it. That was part of
the indoctrination on shooting things without any feelings. That was
during the time when he started to shoot guns and stuff.
Petrovitch says that in court, the defense played a video
tape that Mohammed often made Malvo watch. It was an

(37:54):
instructional video with advice for snipers, Carlos Hathcock Marine sniper.
It was an interview of him, and he would talk
about how he would line his kills up and how
he would shoot somebody from long distances yet could see
that the he got the bullet right through the eye,
and after each kind of anecdotal segment of his interview,

(38:15):
he would kind of chuckle and say and it was
kind of a cadence throughout the interview. Just so it
happened right way Zero comes home with a hamburger, and
he stepped right across the spot where was he going
and he been old, brush his teeth, get a drink,

(38:37):
whatever you're doing. And if he handerstood up, I went
over the head. But as luck would happen, East did up.
He caught that chuck lad. And then we drew the
parallel between that interview and Lee's interview when they first
brought him into the Massy building, when they first brought
him into Virginia, and when you listen to the interrogation,

(39:00):
that's how Lee answered the questions. He would say something
and he would give it that chuckle, the exact same
cadence and the exact same chuckle. And that illustrated the
point that this is how Mohammed controlled him and indoctrinated
him and essentially programmed him what to do and how
to do it. So their whole defense was a Malo
was a kid. He didn't know what he was doing.

(39:21):
He grew up in Jamaica, he didn't have a father,
His father did nothing with them, spent little time, and
they just paraded witness after witness after witness. The defence
team also wanted to prove that before John Mohammed came
into Malboe's life, he was an intelligent, well mannered child.
When you want to tell a story in court, it's
best to tell that story through anecdotal witnesses that can

(39:44):
provide details of what they actually observed and what the
people were actually doing at certain times. Why was it
important to get the witnesses from the Caribbean, from Washington State,
from Louis at it because they showed to the court
directly to the jury directly what they observed with League
growing up in the Caribbean, and then the interactions between
Mohammed and Lee after Lee met him, and what was

(40:06):
going on with regard to the indoctrination. And they also
really highlighted how he was a good student and was
just really eager to learn. He wanted to pursue education,
and he never got the chance to settle down in
any one place. This was a good narrative that we
wanted to present to the journey to show why he
got into the predicament he got into. This wasn't Lee,

(40:28):
this was John Mohammed. But the prosecution also had witness
testimony that they could use to their advantage. Like Mohammed,
Malvo had to face witnesses, family members, and the victims themselves.
Here's Bruce Gooth, the witnesses were even better than I anticipated.

(40:51):
There was a doctor who was at the Exxon where
a taxi driver was filling up gas and he gets
shot while he's umping gas, and this pediatrician is in
the car next to him, and she sees this blood
spatter and him slide down and she runs over and
helps him. That pediatrician was Dr Caroline Namro. She says

(41:12):
it was jarring to come face to face with Malville
for the first time. I remember feeling just basically shock
and disbelief that he could have done this. Where the
witness stand was placed was very close, maybe a few
feet away from the defense table. And I remember he
was wearing a cream sweater, like almost like an Irish

(41:34):
nit and you know, he was a good looking boy,
and he was drawing on a pad the whole time
that the prosecutor was asking me questions. I remember looking
over and he was just drawing, and I remember the
he just looks so innocent. How shocking, how shocking that
a person who could commit such evil acts could look

(41:56):
like that, like this innocent young teenager. I've never been
face to face with the murderer before. You sort of
expect in your mind somebody's gonna look evil. But then
when you actually faced with this young, innocent, good looking
guy like he did this, he could do this, This
was inside him to commit such horrific acts of violence.

(42:17):
It totally blows your mind. I was totally shocked. Namro
recount at the morning of October three in grave detail
for the jury. She told them how she was pumping
gas when she heard a loud bang and prim Kumara
Wallacker collapsed on the side of her car, his blood everywhere.
She runs over and helps him, you know, does doctor

(42:40):
stuff to try to save him. And he keeps saying
to her, I'm gonna die or I'm going to die,
And she said, I had to lie to him. She goes,
I told him he was going to live, but I
knew he was going to die. She had the whole
courtroom crying. You know, that was one of those moments,
you know, it put the whole thing in Respective how

(43:00):
they ruined families, the jury had to determine whether Malvo
truly had been under the control of John Mohammed when

(43:23):
he committed his crimes, but the question of whether Malvo
was quote brainwashed is to this day a point of contention.
I believe that Lee Malvo. When I looked at him,
I knew he was a victim. He was a child
who had been brainwashed because I knew John and what
he was capable of. This is Isa Nichols, again, the

(43:45):
former accountant for John and Meldry Mohammed. She attended Malvo's
trial as an audience member, and I think back as
I stared at him, he had to be fifteen when
he met John in Antigua. He was very young and
considered John his father because he was calling him dad.
He didn't have his father in his life. So whatever

(44:07):
they did in Antigua, John became that role. John had
trained him and turned him into a killer. Isa believes
the defense's argument that Malvo was brainwashed by John Mohammed,
but Virginia Police Lieutenant Bruce Gooth is not so convinced.
I don't think he was brainwashed. You know, I'm not

(44:28):
a doctor, but you know been doing this a long time.
Clearly Mohammed was influencing him, and Mohammed got him into this.
It became almost a video game to Malvo, and he
liked it. He liked killing. You know, I'm convinced if
he got out tomorrow he would do it again. His

(44:48):
i Q was out of this world. So you know
this notion that he didn't know what he was doing
when he ceased. Linda Franklin's head getting blown off, or
lady sitting on the bus stop read a book and
the bullet goes through the book into her head. But
many experts believed that Malvo was not in control of
his actions, including psychologist Jonathan Mack, who co wrote a

(45:11):
book about Malvo. He was a juvenile at the time
that this occurred. He was completely innocent at the time
when Mohammed found him, and over the course of a
year and a half two years, because Malvo was so
susceptible to brainwashing, yes, he became essentially the puppet of

(45:32):
this fortysomething year old bad actor, Mohammed. Max says that
Malvo was especially vulnerable because he had experienced a lot
of violence growing up in Jamaica, and because he had
little to no parental guidance or home stability. As a result,
Malvo developed with mac colls reactive attachment disorder, where he

(45:55):
coped by blindly attaching himself to whoever will care for him.
I don't think it can be stated strongly enough that
you take an individual with reactive attachment disorder chronic depression,
with one broken attachment after another, who is trying to
do well, who is a model student new school for
the most part, and abandon him in a shock and

(46:18):
expect that he's not going to be vulnerable to a
bad actor if the bad actor happens to be smart
enough to show the kid what the kid needs and
it's desperately looking for you. Combine that with the fact
that the adult brain is not fully mature, as we

(46:38):
have learned in the past twenty years, until the age
of five, and that in particular executive frontal function, which
involves reflection on our behavior and making choices that disinhibit
impulse or impulsive decisions in favor of doing the right thing,
that part of the brain is not fully pruned and

(46:59):
developed until mid twenties. Mohammed got started when Malvo was
ten years junior to that, at the age of fifteen.
Max says that Mohammed used movies and video games as
part of his indoctrination of Malvo. One of those movies
was The Matrix, The Reality and the Matrix. There was

(47:20):
no absolute right and wrong, right and wrong became relative
to the Master's view. During one scene, the master in
this case Morpheus, instructs the student Neo about the parameters
of reality within the matrix. Morpheus says, quote, the matrix

(47:41):
is a system, Neo, that system is our enemy. But
when you're inside, you look around. What do you see? Businessman, teachers, lawyers, carpenters,
the very minds of the people we are trying to save.
But until we do, these people are still a part

(48:02):
of that system, and that makes them our enemy. He
had to rewrite Malvo's conscience and begin to inculcate a
structure in Malbo's mind where right and wrong were never absolute,
but according to what the Master said, it was, And

(48:22):
Mohammed put himself in the place of the Master, which
was fairly easy to do with Malvo because he was
so desperate to have a father figure. Mac is of
the opinion that Mohammed was enough of an influence on
Malvo that he did, in fact brainwash him into doing
his bidding, But not everyone is convinced that brainwashing, as

(48:44):
we think of it, is even a real thing. I
think the word is just so loaded. The word is
just so electric and so powerful that to say brainwashing
basically dismisses everything. My name is Jenny Riker. I teach
in the psychology apartment at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana.
I've published on brainwashing and Satanism, specifically how they relate

(49:08):
to the legal system. Psychological techniques, no matter how well
they're applied, cannot overcome free will. There's no amount of
psychological coercion that would force somebody to, let's say, kill,
if they didn't already have some kind of predisposition. According

(49:29):
to Record, it's highly unlikely that Mohammed's influence alone would
completely change Mohammed's decision making ability. Somewhere, Malvo's own willpower
had to come into play when he made certain choices.
It's a combination of both, basically, as a combination of
a person's predisposition and exposure to these techniques and circumstance

(49:52):
that leads to this outcome. But brainwashing basically dismisses everything. Okay,
they were brainwashed, that's fine. No, it's just not that simple.
Human beings are in incredibly complex. Still, Records suggests that
Malvo's defense is a logical one, backed up by some science.
In the academic study of quote unquote brainwashing. Many of

(50:12):
the targets of brainwashing were typically American use. They were
typically pretty isolated from family and friends. You take somebody
who doesn't have very strong social ties, who don't have
clear paths ahead of them, You monopolize their time, you
reward desired behaviors, then you can get some compliance. Much

(50:35):
of Malvo's story backed up his susceptibility to something like brainwashing.
That makes the question of whether Malbo had sufficient agency
even muddier. But all that really mattered was whether the
court believed he was in control of his actions and
if he could be rehabilitated. We asked record how the
brainwashing defense might hold up for Malbo's insanity plea. Many

(50:58):
times sentences are just ide it based on whether or
not that person is considered kind of a danger to
the community in the future, Like what's the likelihood that
they'll commit this heinous crime again, And brainwashing is a
pretty easy scapegoat. Well, if we deprogrammed them or we
reverse this socialization, then there's no chance they'll ever commit
that kind of crime again. I think somebody might try
to use something like brainwashed behavior to support something like

(51:22):
an insanity please, but insanity please are so incredibly rare.
Courts very rarely accept them even when defendants try to
use them, And when they are accepted, they're very, very
rarely successful. Most standards for admissibility of scientific evidence really
don't allow for brainwashing to be entered as scientific evidence.

(51:43):
It really just it doesn't meet the hurdles. Essentially. Malvo's
trial lasted roughly five weeks. On December three, both sides
made their closing arguments. Attorney Michael arav gave the defenses statement.
Here's an excerpt writ by a voice actor. Was Lee captive?

(52:05):
What else can you call it? He could not escape
from John Mohammed. The day he met John Mohammed, he
lost Lee Malvo Without sounding overly melodramatic, the last victim
of John Mohammed sits at the defense table today. That
is the last victim. Malvo is the last victim of

(52:28):
John Mohammed. All we ask is that you do one
of two things today. You can either find Lee not
guilty by reason of insanity, and you have to reach
down to your conscience to do that. It is a
very difficult decision. I believe we've proved our case to you.
If you cannot reach that conclusion. I ask you to

(52:50):
find him guilty of murder in the first degree. Lee
was not the shooter. He was not the operative behind
the letters, not the idea man. He was a follower.
He was a pawn molded like a piece of clay
to John Mohammed. Attorney Robert Horan gave the prosecution's closing argument.

(53:11):
Here's an excerpt read by a voice actor members of
the jury. There's no such thing as a good murder.
They don't make them. They're all bad. And we submit
to you that this one is as bad as any.
The notion of killing innocent people, working people, ordinary citizens,
killing them at random on the public streets. It's about

(53:34):
as reprehensible as you can get it. And we make
no excuses for John Mohammed. He's as bad as he is.
But for all intents and purposes, their peas in a pod.
The only difference is Malvo's younger. But their willingness to kill,
and their willingness to do it for money, that's common
to both of them. The most reprehensible of killing should

(53:56):
be called what it is. It is a capital killing
under the terrorism statue. It is a capital killing under
the statute for killing two people within three years. We
ask you, members of the jury, in all earnestness, to
give him justice, give him a conviction for the two
capital murders that he committed. Thank you. After closing arguments,

(54:23):
the jury deliberated for two days. Then on December thousand three,
the verdict came back. Lee Boyd Malvo was found guilty
on both counts of capital murder. Based on Virginia law
at the time, he was eligible for the death penalty.

(54:44):
Now his trial would move into the sentencing phase, where
his fate would be decided. Each side had to present
an argument for why Malvo should or should not be
sentenced to death. Attorney Robert Iran again gave the prosecution's argument.
Here's an excerpt read by a voice actor. What was

(55:06):
particularly sinister about this defendant is there is not an
ounce of remorse. You have heard him sobbing and crying
on different occasions. He is crying for himself. Is not
prying for all those people he killed. He did not
cry for Kenya Cook, He did not cry for Linda Franklin,
He did not cry for Conrad Johnson. He sobs for himself.

(55:31):
Remorse they have to invent it in order for you
to find it. We submit to you it is not
in this record. No remorse, Members of the jury, we
submit to you. He is a major player. Is not
only a major player, he is the sniper. Remember he
says on that tape talking about Mohammed, we are a team, team, team,

(55:54):
that is what he said. And they were an unholy team,
a team that was as vicious, as brutal, as uncaring
as you could find. Talk about John Mohammed all you want.
Maybe it was his plan, maybe it was his idea.
But the evidence stamps this defendant as the shooting. The
evidence stamps this defendant as the killer. Members of the jury,

(56:18):
we ask you for the penalty of death because the
evidence calls for it. The evidence tells you you are
dealing with the defendant who has proven by his actions
that he has a depraved mind, and so we ask
you for the ultimate punishment. Attorney Craig Cooley gave the
defense his argument. Here's an excerpt read by a voice actor.

(56:43):
Every life is precious, certainly the lives of innocent people
who are lost by the delusions of John Mohammed. And
also so precious is the life of Lee Malvo. But
what lesson does the Commonwealth seek for us to send
to our children when it urges us to kill this child,

(57:05):
to teach them that killing is wrong. Our children should know,
and Lee should know, that when you commit terrible acts,
there is terrible punishment to follow. There are consequences. But
you and I need to remember that the two greatest
qualities we as human beings possess our compassion and love,

(57:31):
and it's by our exercise of those that we all
ultimately will be judged. Lee's life is about to be
put in the hands of others. We're about to entrust
the life of this child to you, and in a
very real sense, you are the last of the very
long line of caretakers to exercise your compassion. I leave

(57:56):
you with a phrase. It's a phrase that both invites
you to meet punishment, but also to temper it, to
draw the line short of the ultimate punish the child,
save the eye. The Virginia jury was faced with one

(58:18):
of the most difficult decisions imaginable. Should they sentence Malva,
who was a minor during the time of his crimes,
to death. There were so many questions to consider. Was
Malvo so influenced by Mohammed that he lacked free will
when he committed murder. Was his confessional authentic or did

(58:42):
he confess under the direction of Mohammed? And if he
was supposedly brainwashed, did that mean he could be rehabilitated
and thus safe to walk the streets again. And regardless
of Malva, should anyone who commits a i'm as a
teenager be sentenced to death, however heinous the crime? And

(59:05):
what about the victims and their families? What was the
right sentence to see that justice was served for them?
Where these moral and ethical boundaries are drawn is completely
in the eye of the beholder. But nonetheless, on December three,

(59:27):
just two days before Christmas, the jury reached its decision.
Next time on Monster d C Sniper. I remember standing
in court when that verdict came in, stand right beside him,
and that was it. There was just a surge of emotion.

(59:48):
People screamed out, Mom, you know, we really want to
talk today. So I called the warden. The warden said,
your children are under eighteen. He said, so that means, see,
you have to come with him. I went to the execution,
you know, with the pain and all the angler there.
Huh that was going to release me, all right, just

(01:00:11):
a rifle of the scope, so you had him in
your size. He didn't die immediately, and I had to go.
I didn't get it. They shot people from Washington to
Arizona to allegedly Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina. What we
know is the d C Snipers is really the United

(01:00:32):
States Snipers. Monster DC Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast
hosted by Tony Harris and produced by iHeart Radio and
Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers
on behalf of I Heeart Radio, alongside producers Trevor Young,

(01:00:53):
Ben Kiebrick, and Josh Thayne. Paine Lindsay and Donald Albright
are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producers
Meredith Steadman and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup
and Vanity Set. In this episode, John Allen Mohammed was
portrayed by actor Jason Williams. Additional voice acting was provided

(01:01:14):
by Alex Williams, Noel Brown, Jonathan Strickland, Josh Clark, and
Ben Boland. If you haven't already, be sure to check
out the first two seasons at Lanta Monster and Monster
the Zodiac Killer. If you have questions or comments, email
us at monster at ihart media dot com, or you
can call us at one eight three three to eight

(01:01:36):
five six six six seven. Thanks for listening.