Eric Lichtblau And Don Van Natta Jr., The New York Times
The first real break -- the one that sent investigators scurrying from an Alabama liquor store to a backyard in Tacoma, Wash., and finally back to a blue Chevrolet Caprice at a Maryland highway rest stop -- came on Oct. 17 in an angry telephone call from a man claiming to be the sniper.
Law enforcement officials say the man on the phone furiously insisted to a startled employee of the Montgomery County, Md., police, “I am God!”
Then, according to notes that officials made of the three-minute call, the man shouted: “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with? Just check out the murder-robbery in Montgomery if you don’t believe me!”
The next night, last Friday, the man made at least two phone calls to priests -- one in Ashland, Va., and the other in Bellingham, Wash. -- in an effort to enlist a messenger to establish his credibility with the police, the officials say. They say the caller told the priest in Ashland that investigators should check the murder in Montgomery, this time specifying that he meant Montgomery, Ala.
The priest called investigators and repeated what he was told.
The authorities were baffled. After nine murders in two weeks, they certainly took the sniper seriously, an FBI official said. But “why was he telling us this?” the official said. “Did he want to get caught?”
Law enforcement officials contacted the police in Montgomery and, sure enough, learned that there had been a murder and robbery at a liquor store four weeks earlier.
“That,” the FBI official said Thursday, “was the real linchpin.”
The lead got better: Investigators were able to trace a latent unidentified fingerprint found on a gun magazine at the liquor store to a Jamaican-born teenager, John Lee Malvo. The boy had gotten into some scrapes with the law and with immigration officials while living last year in Bellingham, and the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service had his fingerprints on file.
More tantalizing still, investigators found in court and investigative files earlier this week that the boy had been known to hang out with a washed-up former soldier named John Allen Muhammad, also known as John Williams. Muhammad had a restraining order against him after reportedly threatening his ex-wife, and officials indicated Thursday that there might also have been forensic evidence taken from one of the letters left at a shooting scene in the Washington area that pointed to him.
Investigators were intrigued by the pair, and an inquiry that had moved at a frustratingly slow pace began to move into high gear early this week, officials said. While there had been six or seven other people under surveillance in connection with the investigation, “these guys now moved up to the top tier,” a senior law enforcement official recounted.
By Tuesday, officials had also traced Muhammad to a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice registered in his name in New Jersey.
Police investigators in Maryland had been on the lookout for an early-model Caprice spotted near the scene of a shooting on Oct. 3, at the very outset of the sniper spree. But even many law enforcement officials had overlooked that sighting amid widespread reports from the police and the public to be on the lookout for a white van or a white box truck seen near several shootings.
By Wednesday, federal officials had obtained a search warrant for a house where Muhammad had lived in Tacoma. Neighbors told investigators that they remembered having occasionally heard what sounded like shots from high-powered guns in the area late at night.
Combing over the back yard with metal detectors for much of the day on Wednesday, FBI agents searched for bullets and shell casings in the lawn and sawed off a large tree trunk that they suspect Muhammad used for target practice. Television crews beaming the images live across the country looked on, as did shocked neighbors.
Still, law enforcement officials in Washington state appeared uncertain as of late Wednesday afternoon that they had the right suspect, and Justice Department officials say they were told that no imminent breaks were expected.
What happened next is unclear. What is known, however, is that federal law enforcement officials in Washington state decided late in the day Wednesday to obtain a warrant for Muhammad’s arrest, alleging that he had violated the terms of a domestic restraining order by possessing a firearm while living in Washington state.
In their complaint, filed in a federal court in Seattle, the authorities laid out Muhammad’s long-standing interest in guns. He was said to have discussed ways of attaching a silencer to a rifle, and asked a friend with whom he had served in the Army, “Can you imagine the damage you could do if you could shoot with a silencer?” the complaint said.
As midnight approached on Wednesday, the Montgomery County police chief, Charles A. Moose, was once again on national television, this time to announce that the police were very interested in speaking with Muhammad as part of their investigation.
Muhammad’s photograph was quickly televised around the country, along with the number on his New Jersey license plate. In less than two hours, the police had another breakthrough: Ron Lantz, a driver at a rest stop off Interstate 70 near Frederick, Md., northwest of Washington, had spotted the Caprice and matched the plate number.
Tactical alert teams cleared the area and surrounded the car, waiting to move in. After three weeks of deadly violence, “we were expecting a shootout,” an FBI official said.
Instead, the police found the two men in the car asleep. The rifle that the police believe was used in the shootings lay in the back seat behind them.
Neither Muhammad nor Malvo has been charged in the killings, but law enforcement officials said they were confident that they had the right men. A law enforcement official said prosecutors were expected to meet in Washington today on Friday to discuss their options for bringing charges, most likely in a Virginia state court, where the murders would carry the death penalty.
After mounting criticism over the pace and organization of the investigation in the last week, law enforcement officials said they took some satisfaction in knowing that old-fashioned “shoe leather” police work appeared to have cracked the case.
But the real satisfaction “comes in knowing that we’re not going to lose any more people,” an FBI official said. “People have been working like crazy to resolve this, and that’s been the driving force for us.”
Law enforcement officials are nonetheless likely to receive intense scrutiny from congressional officials over their handling of the case, and one question likely to come up is whether it took officials too long to identify Muhammad after getting their first indication a week ago about the Alabama murder-robbery.
Congressional officials said other questions might center on whether the FBI should have moved to take over formal control of the investigation and treat it as an official terrorism investigation.
Although no evidence has emerged to suggest that Muhammad is linked to any known terrorist group, neighbors told the FBI that he had made comments expressing support for the aims of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers, law enforcement officials said. Investigators are trying to determine whether he was driven by religious or ideological motives.
Investigators are still trying to piece together all the steps the snipers followed. Cindy Crane, the religious education coordinator at St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church in Ashland, said investigators interviewed the pastor, Msgr. William B. Sullivan, on Sunday.
Law enforcement officials have said the connection to the Alabama murder led to fingerprint evidence that helped solve the sniper shootings. Crane said she did not know what Sullivan told the investigators, and he could not be reached for comment.
But, she said, she is not surprised that one of the suspects “reached out to the church.” She added that she believed that the suspect “needed help. He wanted help. He wanted a way out.”