ROCKVILLE, Md. – John Allen Muhammad had grand plans to extort millions of dollars from authorities in the 2002 Washington-area sniper shootings so he could set up a camp to train children how to terrorize cities and “shut things down,” accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo testified Tuesday.
Asked whether he believed Muhammad’s plans, Malvo said yes.
“He’s a man of his word. If he tells you he is going to do something, it is done,” Malvo said. “If he says it, it is legit.”
Malvo, who had never before taken the witness stand against his fellow sniper, gave the most detailed account yet of the planning that went into the three-week shooting rampage that left 10 people dead at gas stations and in parking lots.
Malvo also said Muhammad devised a two-phase plan to shoot as many as six random people each day for 30 days in the Washington area and then target children and police officers with explosives. They planned to place explosives on school buses in Baltimore, kill a Baltimore police officer and then set off explosives packed with ball bearings at the officer’s funeral.
Malvo said that when he asked Muhammad why, he said, “For the sheer terror of it – the worst thing you can do to people is aim at their children.”
Midway through the rampage, Malvo said, Muhammad described the plans to take money they would extort from authorities to end the sniper shootings and establish a Canadian commune to train 140 homeless children in terrorist shootings and bombings to “continue the mission” in other cities.
After the shooting of Dean Myers on Oct. 9, 2002, in Manassas, Va., Muhammad was upset that the two were not meeting their self-imposed quota of six shootings a day, Malvo said.
Muhammad, 45, and Malvo, now 21, were arrested Oct. 24, 2002, at a rest stop in western Maryland.
They already have been convicted in Virginia for a sniper murder there. Muhammad received a death sentence, and Malvo was given a life term.
Asked by a prosecutor why he chose to testify against Muhammad, Malvo said: “I think he is a coward.” He then glared at Muhammad.
“You took me into your house and you made me a monster,” he said.
Malvo said he was so distraught after the conversation in July 2002 outlining plans for the shootings that he played Russian roulette, crying in a bathtub. He pulled the trigger several times before realizing the next trigger pull would be fatal.
He described how he spent the night in a Baltimore cemetery, training a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle on a fast food restaurant, waiting for pregnant women. He said he saw four but couldn’t bring himself to shoot.
Malvo said he shot three people during the rampage, but Muhammad was the triggerman in the others. Malvo said he was supposed to shoot five children at a Bowie middle school on Oct. 7, 2002, as they got off a bus, but that no buses arrived. Instead, he shot 13-year-old Iran Brown.
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