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Questions won't end when sniper is executed

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The Associated Press

Published: November 9, 2009

McLEAN, Va. - It galled her to do it, but Texan Sarah Dillon was desperate for answers, so she wrote letters to convicted snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo: If you murdered my son, Billy Gene Dillon, please confess, she wrote.

She got no reply.

Sarah Dillon is not the only person with unanswered questions about the killing spree initiated by Muhammad and Malvo seven years ago, which culminated with 13 shootings and 10 deaths over a three-week span that terrorized the Washington region.

As Virginia prepares to execute Muhammad on Tuesday, authorities are unable to answer perhaps the most basic question about the killings: How many people did he and Malvo shoot and kill?

The killing spree in the Washington area in October 2002 is well-documented. Beginning on Oct. 2, Muhammad and Malvo shot 13 people at random with a high-powered rifle, firing from the trunk of a modified, beat-up Chevrolet Caprice. Ten were killed before authorities tracked them to a Maryland rest stop.

But the sniper shootings started before Muhammad and Malvo reached the Beltway, with a number of victims killed or wounded as the duo drove across the country.

Investigators have clearly linked them to some of these prelude shootings, though they have never stood trial for them. Others fall into a gray area - police have suspicions, perhaps, but no proof.

The question became even murkier in 2006, when Malvo reportedly confessed to four additional shootings, including two killings, that had not been linked to him.

But Malvo would only talk to police in jurisdictions that promised not to prosecute him, a deal some agencies weren't willing to make.

So the Clearwater golf course shooting of Albert Michalczyk on May 18, 2002, officially remains unsolved, but Michalczyk took Malvo's reported confession in 2006 as confirmation of something he long suspected.

"My wife immediately thought it was these guys," he said at the time. "We put two and two together, but we never came up with four. Now, we are coming up with four."

The prosecutor who put Muhammad on death row, Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert, said it may be impossible to know how many people were killed.

"I don't know that you can trust anything Malvo says," Ebert said, referring to Malvo's reported confessions. Malvo's statements have not always been consistent - he at first took responsibility for pulling the trigger on all the shootings, but later testified that Muhammad, more often than not, was the shooter.

"There may well be more we don't know about, but who knows?" Ebert said.

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