February 13, 2020 • 36 mins
After Police found a fingerprint at an Alabama crime scene, they got the name Lee Boyd Malvo. So who is this 17 year old from Jamaica?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Monster d C 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. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Three weeks into the d C Sniper investigation, police connected
a fingerprint from an Alabama crime scene to two names,
John Alan Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo. Last episode, we
explored mohammed story. After his wife asked for a divorce,
he disappeared with his three children. This episode, Who was
(00:43):
Lee Boyd Malvo, the seventeen year old from Jamaica and
how was he connected to Mohammed? At the time, investigators
were stumped, but years later we finally started to get
the answers. Many of those answers came from the work
of criminologist and criminal profiler Anthony Meoli. Meoly spent nine
(01:03):
years corresponding with Lee and listening to his side of
the story. Me Only recorded a series of phone calls
with Lee titled Interview with the d C Sniper, which
you will hear clips from throughout this episode. Lee also
wrote an autobiography, which Meoly helped edit and publish.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Dire the d C Snipers sa verbatim transcript from Lee
Boyd Malvo word for word. 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 our
(01:44):
modern time. The takeaway from it is not the grisly
nature of what happened at the end, but what led
him to that. Lee Boyd Malvel was born February eighteen,
nineteen eighty five, in Kingston, Jamaica. He was born to
(02:04):
Leslie Malvo and Una James, his mother. He took the
name Malvo from his father, but they were never formally married,
at least according to Lee. At the time Lee was born,
his mom was twenty one and his father was thirty seven,
so there was a sixteen year age gap in Kingston.
That wasn't tremendously unusual, but that separation of age did
(02:29):
lead to many differences between how their relationship developed.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Lee remembers his father, Leslie, as kind and permissive. Lee
says he spent his early years on a tricycle, and
Leslie would pull him through the neighborhood by a rope
tied to the tricycles handlebars. Lee's mother, Una, on the
other hand, was the disciplinarian.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Una was very strict in many ways. She would be calm,
cool and collected one moment, and then violent the next.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Lee told me only that when his mother got angry,
she would sometimes beat him to the point of drawing blood.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
At the same time, she did care for him, and
she did provide for the family, but she was gone
most of the time, so it would not be unusual
for Lee to be fending for himself at a very
young age. One day, while she was out at work,
he was left alone, and he was awfully young. He
was five six years old. She had some jade figurines
(03:34):
that she kept around the house. They were small, trivial
objects to some, but to her they meant something. He
was playing with an airplane and running around the house
and bumped into one of these jade figurines and it broke.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
I a break one of these things, and I'm I'm crying.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Before she comes from he was expecting a beating. He
knew she was going to hit him and hit him hard.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
After hour, she sheltered me and charged Dowary.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
She came home in a rage and was about to
well off on Lee and his father stepped in.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
And eat grabbed me up. He said, this is the person.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
This is the thing that can be replate each or not.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You know, this is a thing pointing to the object,
and this is your son, and you need to be
able to separate those two right now. Whether that message
rang true with Una remains unclear.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
My father was like to go.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Get He was my protect because he would always know
what to do or what to say in those moments.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
It really stuck with him that this is what a
father does. A father protects his child. And he had
some fond memories of his father until eventually his father
left him, and that's when things started to go sour.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
There is a ruthless person on the loose.
Speaker 6 (05:05):
What unnerves this community the most is the randomness of
the murders, ordinary people doing ordinary things.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
They killed the five people in one day and then
went on the rampage for the next month.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It is quite a mystery.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
The police say they have never had a crime quite
like this.
Speaker 7 (05:22):
Be careful, these guys are using weapons that are going
to go right straight through our bulletproof vests.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
The white bag.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
From iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. This is Monster DC Sniper
criminologist Anthony Meoli has made a career of interviewing some
of America's most heinous criminals.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
I literally have spoken or written to over three hundred
serial killers. What I find most interesting about them is
that they are people. I don't harp on the horrific
nature of their crimes, but rather try to learn who
they were and how the crimes came about.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Me only says people often completely write off killers it's
just evil people or monsters. But he thinks that's a mistake.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
As soon as we find out who did it, we
can't get enough of how evil or how monstrous this
person is without understanding what it was that brought the
person to that particular moment in time. Unfortunately, they are
not monsters, they are not some mystical beasts. Unfortunately, these
(06:32):
are human beings with human DNA, and we have to
be willing to accept that and understand that. Just as
there are some fantastic human beings who do some incredible
things and change people's lives, there are other human beings
who go down a wrong path and take people's lives.
It's not to condone what they did. Make no mistake there,
(06:54):
it's not to condone at all what they did.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
As a criminologist, me only thinks that if we want
to prevent these sorts of crimes from happening in the future,
we need to understand the people that commit them and
examine their lives. That's why he's corresponded with so many
serial killers. Meoldi was particularly interested to speak with Lee
Boyd Malvoe. He first wrotally in two thousand and three,
(07:19):
but starting a correspondence proved challenging.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Letters that I sent would be mailed back and saying
the inmate is not here. So it took a while,
and it wasn't until May of two thousand and five
where I received his first letter. What was interesting was
it was a two page letter, handwritten in black ink. Normally,
it takes a long time for many of these individuals
(07:42):
to trust others.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
But Meoldi says Lee's first letter to him was different.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
It was very personal. I think that's what struck me.
He even left the letter by saying, wherever you want
to go from here, I'm willing to go with you.
So that's sort of where it all began. We were
corresponding one to two letters a week. We did that
(08:08):
for about four years, and then I had the ability
to speak to him on the phone. My first phone
call with him was in twenty ten. It struck me
immediately how intelligent he actually was. His formal education stopped
far before college, but he was far more well read
(08:29):
than most of those who I knew who held master's degrees.
Maybe the single most well read individual out of over
three hundred inmates that I've written.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
To during these years of communicating back and forth. Meoli
says Lee asked him to help edit and publish his autobiography.
Meoli agreed.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
What came across with Lee Boyd Malvo's intellect, his ability
to jump from topic to topic. He knew anything and
everything about anything related to the weather, It could be
related to inmate rights, it could be related to racial tensions.
And that was one dynamic that we talked a lot about.
(09:10):
As a Caucasian male, obviously we came from two different worlds.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Zara Burden is a journalist and host of the Jamaican
news program eighteen Degrees North. She was also interested in
understanding Lee Boyd Malbose.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Roots oh Well.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
First interview back in twenty thirteen was an interview with
Lee Boyd Malville.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He agreed to.
Speaker 6 (09:32):
Do the interview, he said, because it was allowing him
to speak to his Jamaican people. You know, it's a
strange kind of thing. Jimmy cons are four jamay cns.
We coss each other on this rock, but we back
the best of us and we disagreees together the worst
of us. It was important for us to understand host
(09:54):
somebody raised on our soil could leave here and go
to the United States, where most Jamaicans go to become prosperous,
and he instead of going that route, he instead chose
to kill Americans. And we don't have any hate for Americans.
We love Americans in Jamaica. So why would you be
(10:16):
motivated to carry out such an atrocity on your fellow man?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
That was the big question.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
He explained. Violence was something that occurred constantly.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
This is criminologist Anthony Meoli again.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
So there would often be one or two parents on
a whole block watching fifteen twenty kids.
Speaker 6 (10:39):
Yes, an aunt might be present, but is that aunt
going to give as much attention as a mom would,
is that uncle going to have enough energy to take
care and discipline that child in the right way? Sometimes yes,
sometimes known.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Often the only way, sadly, to keep them in line
was to know that if they did something in bed while,
a beating was coming. And so it wasn't uncommon for
Lee to see violence or to experience violence.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
In his autobiography, Lie says one time, when he was
around five, his father brought home a paycheck that was
short on cash. His mother suspected he was cheating on
her and accused him of giving the money to another woman.
This led to an argument, which escalated into a violent fight.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
Here's Lee, I'm never driving a qualification.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
My dad basically felt that my mother's departured Pteropie.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Lee says that two days later he was sitting on
a bed watching his dad clean a mirror on the
bedroom dresser when his mother snuck up from.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Behind my mom to chop the pand off of the ship.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
His mom had picked up a machete and was about
to attack his father from behind when Lee yells out
to his father charged.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
A vote, and that's when he fell the reflection in
the mirror.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
He turned it she missed his rich but she basically
filled off the entire film.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Una strikes Leslie's thumb and nearly severs his thumb with
the machete.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
He was hard on his hand because I mean this
my mother is my father's those.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Lee was very emotional from that moment because he was
too young to know what it meant to have an infidelity.
He had no idea what that was, but he knew
that his mother and his father had severe arguments to
the points where his mother would be willing to almost
kill his father. So he saw violence at a very
(12:44):
early age and continued to do so for many years.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
They always in fight that it does this the uncle
my mom called it, she re least.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
About the time.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Eventually, Una had had enough of Leslie's infidel with various
women on the island, and she told Leslie to decide
whether to be with her or to move on to
the other women.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
He used to work with Kyan Island as a contract
to make a whole deal and stuff like that, and
one occasion when he left worked up my mom she
did again, so she decided she moved out the house
and his Disappearod didn't tell anyone.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
He didn't know where to find them.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Lisa has Buna packed up all their things and emptied
out the bank accounts. She left with Lee to start
a new life and didn't tell Leslie where they'd gone.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
And this left Lee pretty much without a father from
about the age of nine.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
He did find them after a couple of months. I
think to a certain extent, he took it out on me.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Didn't want to do after that or have anything to
do with me.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
He just pretty much abandoned me.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Here's journalist Zara Burden again.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
His father was absent for or a large part, and
emotionally that created a void. There's a lot of hurt
for youngsters in Jamaica. A lot of it is based
on absent parents that allow predators to come and pray,
whether it's sexually, emotionally or recruiting in gangs, youths in
(14:23):
this country, in Jamaica, youths all over the world 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. And so it is so important that
parents in Jamaica and the world ovo ensure that the
(14:47):
time is there, that the investment is there in their children,
and that when they see them around that company, that
they steer them in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
After leaving Leslie, Una struggled to make ends meet. She
moved with Lee to Endeavor, a rural town north of Kingston,
where they lived in a small home.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
It was pretty much a shock. It was just enough
to get by. They suffered to often have proper plumbing.
Una did not have the money to fix things.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Despite being strapped for cash, Una was able to get
alane and open a small grocery store.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It was a sundry shop, so to say.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
UNA's store went well until a power outage ruined all
of the refrigerated goods. She didn't have enough money saved
to restock the inventory, so she was forced to close
the store and unable to find work and Endeavor, she
and Lee moved back to Kingston. For Lee, this was
the first of many moves.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
In Jamaica, it's not uncommon for people to be somewhat transient.
In the let's say late eighties early nineties, work was
very hard to come by, especially for a woman who
was not building homes or something or doing labor, so
it was not uncommon for Una to look for work
at various places and move around so that she could
(16:28):
support the two of.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Them, And according to Lee, his mother would do whatever
it took to get what she needed.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
When she purchased a home, she knew that one of
the men who was selling the land was prone to
drinking alcohol, and she waited until he was inebriated and
he signed over another acre for a relatively paltry sum
to Una so that she could have more land. She
(16:57):
was a smart woman in knowing what she needed to
do in order to get things done.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
And that often meant moving for work. Me Only says
Lee bounced around fifteen to twenty times in his adolescence.
Sometimes she took Lee with her, other times she left
him with family and friends.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
In many cases, Lee would refer to the family as cousins.
They may not have been cousins legally, but just friends
who his mom would leave him with and then she
would be gone for several months. So yes, he would
be completely abandoned, if you will, by today's standards, while
his mom looked for more steady work, and this was
(17:40):
at the unfortunate negative impact to Lee's life.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
There's a huge problem in this country where barrel kids
are concerned, they're called barrel kids. Baryl just means that
your parents, to show love and affection, will send a
barrel filled with good is, with school products, with whatever
is necessary to allow you to have things.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Journalist Zara Burton says that many times parents seek better
opportunities abroad, but they can't take their families with him.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
Jamaica is a tough spot to earn a dollar, I'm
telling you, And so you get an opportunity to go
to the States to earn a doll you're going to
take it. For a lot of Jamaicans, Kman Turks and
Caicos Bahamas. Those are the hot spots where we go
to for better economic opportunity. But guess what, sometimes your
(18:41):
status there ain't fully started, and so you're there kind
of illegally overstay your visa and you're working, and all
you can to show you love is to get on Skype,
get on the phone.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And cene barrel.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
But invariably some of them are not being supervised in
their homes and so there definitely is a deficit in
their emotional development, their ability to be disciplined the way
that it manifests in this country is our crime level,
which remains extremely high compared to maybe other populations that
(19:18):
are similar in size.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Jamaica's homicide rate consistently ranks as one of the highest
in the world.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
The most brutal individuals sometimes on the street creating havoc
are the teens because they've been recruited the wrong people
are there to pick up the slack where parenting has failed.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Over the next few years, Lee bounced between relatives apartments.
According to me only Lee jumped around anywhere from fifteen
to twenty times during that period.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
His biggest struggle in life was between the ages of
five and nine. Those were the times where he had
moved from various places and he had seen a lot
of violence, experienced a lot of violence, so it made
it very difficult for him to understand what life really
looked like as he approached his early teen years.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
I remember I was sitting down writing my journal and
I said, I.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
Mean, I have no one.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Even if I walk off a bridge, they no one
get the flu is cold life of power. And I
decided that I would never cry, and I would never
complain about anything. I'm going to find a way he
could be I don't find a way a law.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
He did not have the stability that most children need
during the formative years of his life. At the most,
he had nothing. He didn't have his parents, he didn't
have any structure, and all he had was instability. So
it probably had a traumatic impact on him, knowing that
(21:04):
this was going to be how my life is. It's
going to be a tumultuous, violent life that I'm going
to live, and he started to develop a lot of
anger inside himself.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Around this time, Lee went searching for his father in
Kingston the way Lee remembers it. He eventually found Leslie
walking down the street. Lee told him that Una had
left him behind to go work on another island, hoping
that his father would take him in.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
Well, I went to see it.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
He was looking at Faith like I'm happy to see,
but why are you here? I mean I could kill
that five minutes earlier. He did not terrify eat if
I was safe, I mean none of that. He couldn't
find me, he had all these accuses. He gave me
some buff fear and arm put me on my way.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
I gave it to a ball and Lee took that
as I think that's it. With my father. That's about
the only acknowledgment I'm going to get.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
When later asked about the incident, Lee's father said he
didn't take him in because he didn't want to re
engage with Una. Leslie Malvo wouldn't see his son again
until he was an adult. Despite all these challenges, Lee
worked hard at school. He was intelligent and made good grades,
(22:29):
and although she was gone for long stretches of time,
Lee's mother watched closely over his performance in school.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
He can be terrified to go home because as soon
as I go over here by name to door.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I honestly think that Lee, if there was a word
for it, I think Lee was more of an academic
really than he gave himself credit for it. He knew
that his mom expected one hundred percent. Anything under one
hundred percent he was going to get punished. He would
often sit outside the home waiting to go inside and be.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Petrified the going I didn't didn't want to go home,
but if An nacked to go home, so I went home.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
She was waiting for me.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
She had a if every thick never built.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
He explained that for every incorrect answer he got, he
would receive three blows from a belt. If he got
ten incorrect answers for the day, he would get hit
thirty times. He knew that because he knew if he
had a bad day or a bad grade on his paper,
what was going to happen when those doors opened?
Speaker 4 (23:35):
I mean everywhere, faith back, he everwhere. I kept looking
at her in the eye.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Pages would not cry.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
He just kept going and going. There was a look
on her face that was.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
A look of hate.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
When Lee was about twelve, his mom left Kingston again
for work on another island, so he went to live
with a teacher who he called Aunt Simon.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Had a much more humanistic approach. She would sit down
and tell Lee exactly what she expected of him. Lee
was sort of shocked. She treated him almost like a
young adult. She always would encourage Lee, explain to Lee
the things that he did well and the things that
(24:20):
he needed to work on. She didn't raise her voice
at him, which was something that he hadn't really experienced before.
That separated her from Una. In Lee's mind, he didn't
have to worry about that beating formula of three times
a day. There was no more verbal and physical abuse
going on. Aunt Simone had intimate knowledge of the beatings
(24:44):
that Lee had taken because Lee had told her, and
I think in her own way, even though she wasn't
his mother, she knew that Una was not good for
him at that time in his life, so she did
everything to protect him from going back to her by
trying to sort of say, I got this, I can
(25:05):
take care of Lee. This was a time where he
finally had a little bit of love in his life.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Me Only says that Lee was often very affected by
small things, words, gestures, with the tone of a person's voice.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
He even spoke about the most simple phrase that an
simone would say. She would say good morning, Lee, and
that would mean the world to him because he didn't
get that from his mom. He did not get that
from Leslie. He got that from a woman who he
really barely knew at that time, and yet she was
(25:43):
willing to take him in as her son. His life
looked much more like a regular child. He was now
experiencing the ability to play with board games. She would
read Bible lessons to him, she would show him how
to do homework. She even showed him what he could
(26:04):
be if he did further education.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
But it wouldn't last. Eventually, Una showed up at Simone's
house and demanded that Lee come back and live with her.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
When it came to a head to where he had
to choose between Aunt Simone and his mother, he really
didn't have a choice because he was still a minor.
Una had the final say because she was, you know,
his mother, and unfortunately he had to leave. There's nothing
Aunt Simone could do about it. She couldn't protect him anymore,
(26:41):
you know. Reluctantly she had to give him up.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Una came to realize how much happier Lee had felt
without her. She resented him for wanting to stay with
Simone instead of coming back to live with her.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
So once he was reunited with Una, he would face
daily beating, sometimes twice a day, just simply for no
reason at all. So now it had escalated with the
violence at home. It went from being a good morning
with Aunt Simone to an unknown, hellish day with his
(27:16):
own mother.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Eventually, Lee reached his breaking point.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
I decided open a film work help and I a
makeshift will walk down to the Mangua tree and it
does to an myself.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
The suicide attempt with Lee occurred, according to him, around
age thirteen. He had been on a farm with Una
and a caretaker who lived on this farm. He went
up in a tree and sat there for quite some time,
debating what is his life going to be like? If
(27:52):
my life is going to be like this for the
rest of my life, I don't want to live it.
So he finally decided that he is going to take
his life. When he made the knot placed it around
his neck, he yelled his mom's name as loud as
he could. He wanted to make sure that she saw him.
(28:12):
He wanted her to worry about him. He wanted to
see what look was on her face when she knew
that her son was about to take his life. And
that's a very telling moment because you would think that
a mom would have finally realized, wow, you know, look
(28:32):
what I've done to my son. But Una does not
have that inward looking moment, and her demeanor doesn't change
a whole lot. You know, she did say are you okay?
Do you want to talk? But I think the damage
was so far done. And the story, as he describes it,
(28:54):
was he let go of the tree and just as
the rope begins to tighten, the caretaker on the property
grabs him and make sure that it doesn't snap his neck.
They undo the rope and untie him. But he still
harbored that feeling that he was willing to take his life,
(29:14):
which is very significant. He had internalized the anger. He
didn't take it out on his mom. He didn't stab
or shoot his mother, He didn't stab or shoot anyone else.
He took it all out on himself. And from what
we know with child psychology, if a child is willing
(29:35):
to take their life at thirteen, they've suffered dramatic trauma
in order to come to that place, because that's a
very early age to grasp the idea that if I
jump off this branch and this rope tightens, I'm dead.
(29:55):
And yet his mother was not really willing to change
her ways.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
The worst state that was two days later he beat
me too, He would piece ama, He pointed to the truth,
until he's going to.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Your fuck himself.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
But he said, for whatever reason, he had even lost
the courage to attempt suicide again. He just couldn't do
it anymore.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Lee had no one, He had lost on Simon, and
both of his parents had given up on him. But
he was about to meet the man who would take
on the role of his new father. When Lee was fifteen,
(30:55):
he and Una moved to the island of Antigua. Lee
says that Antigua brought more of the same verbal and
physical abuse. Meanwhile, his mother had started a new business there,
but not long after moving to Antigua, Una took another
job on a different island. She left Lee alone there
(31:15):
for almost a year. He had to steal and sell
bootleg CDs to get by.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
My mother actually prepared me for this by leaving me
alone for many times.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I had time to practice.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
I mean, I learned how to help. I take an
empty famous.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
The throne, go out to the beach and make some
jerk chicken fill it. I'd pull it, cans and bottle.
I pretty much bee whatever I had to.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
In Antigua, Lee had to walk several miles to school
each day. He passed by the Zaza Electronics store. On
one occasion he stopped in inside. A tall man was
watching his young son play a flight simulator video game
on one of the store's computers. They both had America
in accents and were joking around and laughing. Lee was
(32:04):
not used to seeing this kind of affection between a
father and son.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
I wanted that relationship I wanted to be a father
like him. He was confident.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
I mean, there were not a lot of fathers there
with yourself. A score of things about him that were
different than I admired.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
And I just founded what from a difference. I actually
never spoke to him.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
That man was John Muhammad. It was here in Antigua
that John had run away from Tacoma, Washington, with his
three children in tow. John had originally heard of the
island from an acquaintance in Tacoma. That man had a
cousin who worked in Antiqua as a travel agent. John
thought he could start a new life there with his kids,
(32:45):
and so they moved there in March of two thousand.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
John was sort of the pied piper of many children
on the island. He was known for doing good things
for kids. He had money that others did not on
the island was something that Lee sort of looked up to.
But what we learned is that John's money was not
necessarily legal. What he was doing was illegally importing goods, services,
(33:13):
and even people into the United States.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
John had created a business of smuggling Caribbean islanders into America.
He would help them forge passports and ensure travel to
the Florida coast, and in the year two thousand, one
of John's new clients was Una, Lee's mother.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
A lot of people don't understand that John actually got
Una into the United States. There was a presumed relationship
as far as whether or not it was a sexual
one that I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
He made it for like three He made it in
September and the three weeks later in October she was
in the US.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Una left Lee behind and got a job at a
restaurant in Fort Myers, Florida. She promised to bring him
to America when she had more money, but eventually Una
stopped sending rent for Lee to live on, so he
was forced to move into a run down shack behind
the house where they'd been staying. Things only got worse
(34:20):
for Lee. In November of two thousand, he fell ill
with rheumatic fever. Lying alone, sick in the dark, Lee
felt abused, abandoned, and completely resigned. And then, in the hot,
unforgiving darkness, a light burst through the door of the
(34:42):
shack opened, A tall man stepped inside. Then the man
came closer. He leaned down and grabbed Lee's hand. It
was the American man who smuggled his mother into the
United States, the same man he'd seen that day the
electronics shop playing with the son John Mohammed had come
(35:06):
for him next time on Monster DC Sniper, this.
Speaker 6 (35:15):
Mohammed, if he gets across the border with your children,
there will be nothing we can do.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
So are you telling me the reason why I don't
have my children and won't way to keep my children
because I don't have the proper paperwork.
Speaker 7 (35:27):
Again, if we do not address the systemic failures that
occurred in this case, it's entirely likely that there are
all kinds of John Mohammad's out there wandering the streets.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
See that needs killed myself over and over.
Speaker 5 (35:43):
He told me, the old person has to die.
Speaker 7 (35:47):
Lee Marville has to die because Lee Marvell.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
Cannot do this.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
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 iHeartRadio,
alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Keebrick, and Josh Thain. Payne
Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf of
(36:16):
Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Stedman and Christina Dana. Original
music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. The audio of
Lee Boyd Malvo you heard in the Next Time segment
comes from a twenty twelve interview by journalist Josh White
and was provided courtesy of The Washington Post. If you
haven't already, be sure to check out the first two
(36:37):
seasons at Lanta 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 d C 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. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Three weeks into the d C Sniper investigation, police connected
a fingerprint from an Alabama crime scene to two names,
John Alan Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo. Last episode, we
explored mohammed story. After his wife asked for a divorce,
he disappeared with his three children. This episode, Who was
(00:43):
Lee Boyd Malvo, the seventeen year old from Jamaica and
how was he connected to Mohammed? At the time, investigators
were stumped, but years later we finally started to get
the answers. Many of those answers came from the work
of criminologist and criminal profiler Anthony Meoli. Meoly spent nine
(01:03):
years corresponding with Lee and listening to his side of
the story. Me Only recorded a series of phone calls
with Lee titled Interview with the d C Sniper, which
you will hear clips from throughout this episode. Lee also
wrote an autobiography, which Meoly helped edit and publish.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Dire the d C Snipers sa verbatim transcript from Lee
Boyd Malvo word for word. 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 our
(01:44):
modern time. The takeaway from it is not the grisly
nature of what happened at the end, but what led
him to that. Lee Boyd Malvel was born February eighteen,
nineteen eighty five, in Kingston, Jamaica. He was born to
(02:04):
Leslie Malvo and Una James, his mother. He took the
name Malvo from his father, but they were never formally married,
at least according to Lee. At the time Lee was born,
his mom was twenty one and his father was thirty seven,
so there was a sixteen year age gap in Kingston.
That wasn't tremendously unusual, but that separation of age did
(02:29):
lead to many differences between how their relationship developed.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Lee remembers his father, Leslie, as kind and permissive. Lee
says he spent his early years on a tricycle, and
Leslie would pull him through the neighborhood by a rope
tied to the tricycles handlebars. Lee's mother, Una, on the
other hand, was the disciplinarian.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Una was very strict in many ways. She would be calm,
cool and collected one moment, and then violent the next.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Lee told me only that when his mother got angry,
she would sometimes beat him to the point of drawing blood.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
At the same time, she did care for him, and
she did provide for the family, but she was gone
most of the time, so it would not be unusual
for Lee to be fending for himself at a very
young age. One day, while she was out at work,
he was left alone, and he was awfully young. He
was five six years old. She had some jade figurines
(03:34):
that she kept around the house. They were small, trivial
objects to some, but to her they meant something. He
was playing with an airplane and running around the house
and bumped into one of these jade figurines and it broke.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
I a break one of these things, and I'm I'm crying.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Before she comes from he was expecting a beating. He
knew she was going to hit him and hit him hard.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
After hour, she sheltered me and charged Dowary.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
She came home in a rage and was about to
well off on Lee and his father stepped in.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
And eat grabbed me up. He said, this is the person.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
This is the thing that can be replate each or not.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You know, this is a thing pointing to the object,
and this is your son, and you need to be
able to separate those two right now. Whether that message
rang true with Una remains unclear.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
My father was like to go.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Get He was my protect because he would always know
what to do or what to say in those moments.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
It really stuck with him that this is what a
father does. A father protects his child. And he had
some fond memories of his father until eventually his father
left him, and that's when things started to go sour.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
There is a ruthless person on the loose.
Speaker 6 (05:05):
What unnerves this community the most is the randomness of
the murders, ordinary people doing ordinary things.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
They killed the five people in one day and then
went on the rampage for the next month.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It is quite a mystery.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
The police say they have never had a crime quite
like this.
Speaker 7 (05:22):
Be careful, these guys are using weapons that are going
to go right straight through our bulletproof vests.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
The white bag.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
From iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. This is Monster DC Sniper
criminologist Anthony Meoli has made a career of interviewing some
of America's most heinous criminals.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
I literally have spoken or written to over three hundred
serial killers. What I find most interesting about them is
that they are people. I don't harp on the horrific
nature of their crimes, but rather try to learn who
they were and how the crimes came about.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Me only says people often completely write off killers it's
just evil people or monsters. But he thinks that's a mistake.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
As soon as we find out who did it, we
can't get enough of how evil or how monstrous this
person is without understanding what it was that brought the
person to that particular moment in time. Unfortunately, they are
not monsters, they are not some mystical beasts. Unfortunately, these
(06:32):
are human beings with human DNA, and we have to
be willing to accept that and understand that. Just as
there are some fantastic human beings who do some incredible
things and change people's lives, there are other human beings
who go down a wrong path and take people's lives.
It's not to condone what they did. Make no mistake there,
(06:54):
it's not to condone at all what they did.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
As a criminologist, me only thinks that if we want
to prevent these sorts of crimes from happening in the future,
we need to understand the people that commit them and
examine their lives. That's why he's corresponded with so many
serial killers. Meoldi was particularly interested to speak with Lee
Boyd Malvoe. He first wrotally in two thousand and three,
(07:19):
but starting a correspondence proved challenging.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Letters that I sent would be mailed back and saying
the inmate is not here. So it took a while,
and it wasn't until May of two thousand and five
where I received his first letter. What was interesting was
it was a two page letter, handwritten in black ink. Normally,
it takes a long time for many of these individuals
(07:42):
to trust others.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
But Meoldi says Lee's first letter to him was different.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
It was very personal. I think that's what struck me.
He even left the letter by saying, wherever you want
to go from here, I'm willing to go with you.
So that's sort of where it all began. We were
corresponding one to two letters a week. We did that
(08:08):
for about four years, and then I had the ability
to speak to him on the phone. My first phone
call with him was in twenty ten. It struck me
immediately how intelligent he actually was. His formal education stopped
far before college, but he was far more well read
(08:29):
than most of those who I knew who held master's degrees.
Maybe the single most well read individual out of over
three hundred inmates that I've written.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
To during these years of communicating back and forth. Meoli
says Lee asked him to help edit and publish his autobiography.
Meoli agreed.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
What came across with Lee Boyd Malvo's intellect, his ability
to jump from topic to topic. He knew anything and
everything about anything related to the weather, It could be
related to inmate rights, it could be related to racial tensions.
And that was one dynamic that we talked a lot about.
(09:10):
As a Caucasian male, obviously we came from two different worlds.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Zara Burden is a journalist and host of the Jamaican
news program eighteen Degrees North. She was also interested in
understanding Lee Boyd Malbose.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Roots oh Well.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
First interview back in twenty thirteen was an interview with
Lee Boyd Malville.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He agreed to.
Speaker 6 (09:32):
Do the interview, he said, because it was allowing him
to speak to his Jamaican people. You know, it's a
strange kind of thing. Jimmy cons are four jamay cns.
We coss each other on this rock, but we back
the best of us and we disagreees together the worst
of us. It was important for us to understand host
(09:54):
somebody raised on our soil could leave here and go
to the United States, where most Jamaicans go to become prosperous,
and he instead of going that route, he instead chose
to kill Americans. And we don't have any hate for Americans.
We love Americans in Jamaica. So why would you be
(10:16):
motivated to carry out such an atrocity on your fellow man?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
That was the big question.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
He explained. Violence was something that occurred constantly.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
This is criminologist Anthony Meoli again.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
So there would often be one or two parents on
a whole block watching fifteen twenty kids.
Speaker 6 (10:39):
Yes, an aunt might be present, but is that aunt
going to give as much attention as a mom would,
is that uncle going to have enough energy to take
care and discipline that child in the right way? Sometimes yes,
sometimes known.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Often the only way, sadly, to keep them in line
was to know that if they did something in bed while,
a beating was coming. And so it wasn't uncommon for
Lee to see violence or to experience violence.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
In his autobiography, Lie says one time, when he was
around five, his father brought home a paycheck that was
short on cash. His mother suspected he was cheating on
her and accused him of giving the money to another woman.
This led to an argument, which escalated into a violent fight.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
Here's Lee, I'm never driving a qualification.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
My dad basically felt that my mother's departured Pteropie.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Lee says that two days later he was sitting on
a bed watching his dad clean a mirror on the
bedroom dresser when his mother snuck up from.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Behind my mom to chop the pand off of the ship.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
His mom had picked up a machete and was about
to attack his father from behind when Lee yells out
to his father charged.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
A vote, and that's when he fell the reflection in
the mirror.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
He turned it she missed his rich but she basically
filled off the entire film.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Una strikes Leslie's thumb and nearly severs his thumb with
the machete.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
He was hard on his hand because I mean this
my mother is my father's those.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Lee was very emotional from that moment because he was
too young to know what it meant to have an infidelity.
He had no idea what that was, but he knew
that his mother and his father had severe arguments to
the points where his mother would be willing to almost
kill his father. So he saw violence at a very
(12:44):
early age and continued to do so for many years.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
They always in fight that it does this the uncle
my mom called it, she re least.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
About the time.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Eventually, Una had had enough of Leslie's infidel with various
women on the island, and she told Leslie to decide
whether to be with her or to move on to
the other women.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
He used to work with Kyan Island as a contract
to make a whole deal and stuff like that, and
one occasion when he left worked up my mom she
did again, so she decided she moved out the house
and his Disappearod didn't tell anyone.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
He didn't know where to find them.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Lisa has Buna packed up all their things and emptied
out the bank accounts. She left with Lee to start
a new life and didn't tell Leslie where they'd gone.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
And this left Lee pretty much without a father from
about the age of nine.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
He did find them after a couple of months. I
think to a certain extent, he took it out on me.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Didn't want to do after that or have anything to
do with me.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
He just pretty much abandoned me.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Here's journalist Zara Burden again.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
His father was absent for or a large part, and
emotionally that created a void. There's a lot of hurt
for youngsters in Jamaica. A lot of it is based
on absent parents that allow predators to come and pray,
whether it's sexually, emotionally or recruiting in gangs, youths in
(14:23):
this country, in Jamaica, youths all over the world 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. And so it is so important that
parents in Jamaica and the world ovo ensure that the
(14:47):
time is there, that the investment is there in their children,
and that when they see them around that company, that
they steer them in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
After leaving Leslie, Una struggled to make ends meet. She
moved with Lee to Endeavor, a rural town north of Kingston,
where they lived in a small home.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
It was pretty much a shock. It was just enough
to get by. They suffered to often have proper plumbing.
Una did not have the money to fix things.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Despite being strapped for cash, Una was able to get
alane and open a small grocery store.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It was a sundry shop, so to say.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
UNA's store went well until a power outage ruined all
of the refrigerated goods. She didn't have enough money saved
to restock the inventory, so she was forced to close
the store and unable to find work and Endeavor, she
and Lee moved back to Kingston. For Lee, this was
the first of many moves.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
In Jamaica, it's not uncommon for people to be somewhat transient.
In the let's say late eighties early nineties, work was
very hard to come by, especially for a woman who
was not building homes or something or doing labor, so
it was not uncommon for Una to look for work
at various places and move around so that she could
(16:28):
support the two of.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Them, And according to Lee, his mother would do whatever
it took to get what she needed.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
When she purchased a home, she knew that one of
the men who was selling the land was prone to
drinking alcohol, and she waited until he was inebriated and
he signed over another acre for a relatively paltry sum
to Una so that she could have more land. She
(16:57):
was a smart woman in knowing what she needed to
do in order to get things done.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
And that often meant moving for work. Me Only says
Lee bounced around fifteen to twenty times in his adolescence.
Sometimes she took Lee with her, other times she left
him with family and friends.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
In many cases, Lee would refer to the family as cousins.
They may not have been cousins legally, but just friends
who his mom would leave him with and then she
would be gone for several months. So yes, he would
be completely abandoned, if you will, by today's standards, while
his mom looked for more steady work, and this was
(17:40):
at the unfortunate negative impact to Lee's life.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
There's a huge problem in this country where barrel kids
are concerned, they're called barrel kids. Baryl just means that
your parents, to show love and affection, will send a
barrel filled with good is, with school products, with whatever
is necessary to allow you to have things.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Journalist Zara Burton says that many times parents seek better
opportunities abroad, but they can't take their families with him.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
Jamaica is a tough spot to earn a dollar, I'm
telling you, And so you get an opportunity to go
to the States to earn a doll you're going to
take it. For a lot of Jamaicans, Kman Turks and
Caicos Bahamas. Those are the hot spots where we go
to for better economic opportunity. But guess what, sometimes your
(18:41):
status there ain't fully started, and so you're there kind
of illegally overstay your visa and you're working, and all
you can to show you love is to get on Skype,
get on the phone.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And cene barrel.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
But invariably some of them are not being supervised in
their homes and so there definitely is a deficit in
their emotional development, their ability to be disciplined the way
that it manifests in this country is our crime level,
which remains extremely high compared to maybe other populations that
(19:18):
are similar in size.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Jamaica's homicide rate consistently ranks as one of the highest
in the world.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
The most brutal individuals sometimes on the street creating havoc
are the teens because they've been recruited the wrong people
are there to pick up the slack where parenting has failed.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Over the next few years, Lee bounced between relatives apartments.
According to me only Lee jumped around anywhere from fifteen
to twenty times during that period.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
His biggest struggle in life was between the ages of
five and nine. Those were the times where he had
moved from various places and he had seen a lot
of violence, experienced a lot of violence, so it made
it very difficult for him to understand what life really
looked like as he approached his early teen years.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
I remember I was sitting down writing my journal and
I said, I.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
Mean, I have no one.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Even if I walk off a bridge, they no one
get the flu is cold life of power. And I
decided that I would never cry, and I would never
complain about anything. I'm going to find a way he
could be I don't find a way a law.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
He did not have the stability that most children need
during the formative years of his life. At the most,
he had nothing. He didn't have his parents, he didn't
have any structure, and all he had was instability. So
it probably had a traumatic impact on him, knowing that
(21:04):
this was going to be how my life is. It's
going to be a tumultuous, violent life that I'm going
to live, and he started to develop a lot of
anger inside himself.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Around this time, Lee went searching for his father in
Kingston the way Lee remembers it. He eventually found Leslie
walking down the street. Lee told him that Una had
left him behind to go work on another island, hoping
that his father would take him in.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
Well, I went to see it.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
He was looking at Faith like I'm happy to see,
but why are you here? I mean I could kill
that five minutes earlier. He did not terrify eat if
I was safe, I mean none of that. He couldn't
find me, he had all these accuses. He gave me
some buff fear and arm put me on my way.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
I gave it to a ball and Lee took that
as I think that's it. With my father. That's about
the only acknowledgment I'm going to get.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
When later asked about the incident, Lee's father said he
didn't take him in because he didn't want to re
engage with Una. Leslie Malvo wouldn't see his son again
until he was an adult. Despite all these challenges, Lee
worked hard at school. He was intelligent and made good grades,
(22:29):
and although she was gone for long stretches of time,
Lee's mother watched closely over his performance in school.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
He can be terrified to go home because as soon
as I go over here by name to door.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I honestly think that Lee, if there was a word
for it, I think Lee was more of an academic
really than he gave himself credit for it. He knew
that his mom expected one hundred percent. Anything under one
hundred percent he was going to get punished. He would
often sit outside the home waiting to go inside and be.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Petrified the going I didn't didn't want to go home,
but if An nacked to go home, so I went home.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
She was waiting for me.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
She had a if every thick never built.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
He explained that for every incorrect answer he got, he
would receive three blows from a belt. If he got
ten incorrect answers for the day, he would get hit
thirty times. He knew that because he knew if he
had a bad day or a bad grade on his paper,
what was going to happen when those doors opened?
Speaker 4 (23:35):
I mean everywhere, faith back, he everwhere. I kept looking
at her in the eye.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Pages would not cry.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
He just kept going and going. There was a look
on her face that was.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
A look of hate.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
When Lee was about twelve, his mom left Kingston again
for work on another island, so he went to live
with a teacher who he called Aunt Simon.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Had a much more humanistic approach. She would sit down
and tell Lee exactly what she expected of him. Lee
was sort of shocked. She treated him almost like a
young adult. She always would encourage Lee, explain to Lee
the things that he did well and the things that
(24:20):
he needed to work on. She didn't raise her voice
at him, which was something that he hadn't really experienced before.
That separated her from Una. In Lee's mind, he didn't
have to worry about that beating formula of three times
a day. There was no more verbal and physical abuse
going on. Aunt Simone had intimate knowledge of the beatings
(24:44):
that Lee had taken because Lee had told her, and
I think in her own way, even though she wasn't
his mother, she knew that Una was not good for
him at that time in his life, so she did
everything to protect him from going back to her by
trying to sort of say, I got this, I can
(25:05):
take care of Lee. This was a time where he
finally had a little bit of love in his life.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Me Only says that Lee was often very affected by
small things, words, gestures, with the tone of a person's voice.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
He even spoke about the most simple phrase that an
simone would say. She would say good morning, Lee, and
that would mean the world to him because he didn't
get that from his mom. He did not get that
from Leslie. He got that from a woman who he
really barely knew at that time, and yet she was
(25:43):
willing to take him in as her son. His life
looked much more like a regular child. He was now
experiencing the ability to play with board games. She would
read Bible lessons to him, she would show him how
to do homework. She even showed him what he could
(26:04):
be if he did further education.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
But it wouldn't last. Eventually, Una showed up at Simone's
house and demanded that Lee come back and live with her.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
When it came to a head to where he had
to choose between Aunt Simone and his mother, he really
didn't have a choice because he was still a minor.
Una had the final say because she was, you know,
his mother, and unfortunately he had to leave. There's nothing
Aunt Simone could do about it. She couldn't protect him anymore,
(26:41):
you know. Reluctantly she had to give him up.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Una came to realize how much happier Lee had felt
without her. She resented him for wanting to stay with
Simone instead of coming back to live with her.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
So once he was reunited with Una, he would face
daily beating, sometimes twice a day, just simply for no
reason at all. So now it had escalated with the
violence at home. It went from being a good morning
with Aunt Simone to an unknown, hellish day with his
(27:16):
own mother.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Eventually, Lee reached his breaking point.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
I decided open a film work help and I a
makeshift will walk down to the Mangua tree and it
does to an myself.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
The suicide attempt with Lee occurred, according to him, around
age thirteen. He had been on a farm with Una
and a caretaker who lived on this farm. He went
up in a tree and sat there for quite some time,
debating what is his life going to be like? If
(27:52):
my life is going to be like this for the
rest of my life, I don't want to live it.
So he finally decided that he is going to take
his life. When he made the knot placed it around
his neck, he yelled his mom's name as loud as
he could. He wanted to make sure that she saw him.
(28:12):
He wanted her to worry about him. He wanted to
see what look was on her face when she knew
that her son was about to take his life. And
that's a very telling moment because you would think that
a mom would have finally realized, wow, you know, look
(28:32):
what I've done to my son. But Una does not
have that inward looking moment, and her demeanor doesn't change
a whole lot. You know, she did say are you okay?
Do you want to talk? But I think the damage
was so far done. And the story, as he describes it,
(28:54):
was he let go of the tree and just as
the rope begins to tighten, the caretaker on the property
grabs him and make sure that it doesn't snap his neck.
They undo the rope and untie him. But he still
harbored that feeling that he was willing to take his life,
(29:14):
which is very significant. He had internalized the anger. He
didn't take it out on his mom. He didn't stab
or shoot his mother, He didn't stab or shoot anyone else.
He took it all out on himself. And from what
we know with child psychology, if a child is willing
(29:35):
to take their life at thirteen, they've suffered dramatic trauma
in order to come to that place, because that's a
very early age to grasp the idea that if I
jump off this branch and this rope tightens, I'm dead.
(29:55):
And yet his mother was not really willing to change
her ways.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
The worst state that was two days later he beat
me too, He would piece ama, He pointed to the truth,
until he's going to.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Your fuck himself.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
But he said, for whatever reason, he had even lost
the courage to attempt suicide again. He just couldn't do
it anymore.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Lee had no one, He had lost on Simon, and
both of his parents had given up on him. But
he was about to meet the man who would take
on the role of his new father. When Lee was fifteen,
(30:55):
he and Una moved to the island of Antigua. Lee
says that Antigua brought more of the same verbal and
physical abuse. Meanwhile, his mother had started a new business there,
but not long after moving to Antigua, Una took another
job on a different island. She left Lee alone there
(31:15):
for almost a year. He had to steal and sell
bootleg CDs to get by.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
My mother actually prepared me for this by leaving me
alone for many times.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I had time to practice.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
I mean, I learned how to help. I take an
empty famous.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
The throne, go out to the beach and make some
jerk chicken fill it. I'd pull it, cans and bottle.
I pretty much bee whatever I had to.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
In Antigua, Lee had to walk several miles to school
each day. He passed by the Zaza Electronics store. On
one occasion he stopped in inside. A tall man was
watching his young son play a flight simulator video game
on one of the store's computers. They both had America
in accents and were joking around and laughing. Lee was
(32:04):
not used to seeing this kind of affection between a
father and son.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
I wanted that relationship I wanted to be a father
like him. He was confident.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
I mean, there were not a lot of fathers there
with yourself. A score of things about him that were
different than I admired.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
And I just founded what from a difference. I actually
never spoke to him.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
That man was John Muhammad. It was here in Antigua
that John had run away from Tacoma, Washington, with his
three children in tow. John had originally heard of the
island from an acquaintance in Tacoma. That man had a
cousin who worked in Antiqua as a travel agent. John
thought he could start a new life there with his kids,
(32:45):
and so they moved there in March of two thousand.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
John was sort of the pied piper of many children
on the island. He was known for doing good things
for kids. He had money that others did not on
the island was something that Lee sort of looked up to.
But what we learned is that John's money was not
necessarily legal. What he was doing was illegally importing goods, services,
(33:13):
and even people into the United States.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
John had created a business of smuggling Caribbean islanders into America.
He would help them forge passports and ensure travel to
the Florida coast, and in the year two thousand, one
of John's new clients was Una, Lee's mother.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
A lot of people don't understand that John actually got
Una into the United States. There was a presumed relationship
as far as whether or not it was a sexual
one that I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
He made it for like three He made it in
September and the three weeks later in October she was
in the US.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Una left Lee behind and got a job at a
restaurant in Fort Myers, Florida. She promised to bring him
to America when she had more money, but eventually Una
stopped sending rent for Lee to live on, so he
was forced to move into a run down shack behind
the house where they'd been staying. Things only got worse
(34:20):
for Lee. In November of two thousand, he fell ill
with rheumatic fever. Lying alone, sick in the dark, Lee
felt abused, abandoned, and completely resigned. And then, in the hot,
unforgiving darkness, a light burst through the door of the
(34:42):
shack opened, A tall man stepped inside. Then the man
came closer. He leaned down and grabbed Lee's hand. It
was the American man who smuggled his mother into the
United States, the same man he'd seen that day the
electronics shop playing with the son John Mohammed had come
(35:06):
for him next time on Monster DC Sniper, this.
Speaker 6 (35:15):
Mohammed, if he gets across the border with your children,
there will be nothing we can do.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
So are you telling me the reason why I don't
have my children and won't way to keep my children
because I don't have the proper paperwork.
Speaker 7 (35:27):
Again, if we do not address the systemic failures that
occurred in this case, it's entirely likely that there are
all kinds of John Mohammad's out there wandering the streets.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
See that needs killed myself over and over.
Speaker 5 (35:43):
He told me, the old person has to die.
Speaker 7 (35:47):
Lee Marville has to die because Lee Marvell.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
Cannot do this.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
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 iHeartRadio,
alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Keebrick, and Josh Thain. Payne
Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf of
(36:16):
Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Stedman and Christina Dana. Original
music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. The audio of
Lee Boyd Malvo you heard in the Next Time segment
comes from a twenty twelve interview by journalist Josh White
and was provided courtesy of The Washington Post. If you
haven't already, be sure to check out the first two
(36:37):
seasons at Lanta 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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