Sniper

Lee Boyd Malvo is claiming that he and fellow Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad lined up co-conspirators to broaden the campaign of violence that paralyzed the Washington region eight years ago, but that the collaborators backed away, according to a television interview. Malvo also claimed responsibility for 42 shootings, many more than he and Muhammad had been linked to, according to a forensic psychiatrist who interviewed the man, now 25. The revelations were greeted skeptically by lawyers involved in the case that shook the region in 2002.

In his new thriller, "The Third Bullet," novelist Stephen Hunter sets his sights on an American tragedy that's also the most famous gun mystery of all time - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The questions surrounding the shooting as JFK rode in a motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, have never been fully put to rest. And the controversy is certain to intensify as the 50th anniversary of the assassination approaches this fall. As the novelist tells it, the decision to enlist his fictitious super-sniper, Bob Lee Swagger, to determine whether the gunman acted alone or as part of a conspiracy began as a joke.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The right hand trembles, so he has to drink his Pepsi with both hands. Controlling his vision has become maddening. And when he stands, his legs quiver as if he were going to fall to the floor.In another time, Carlos Norman Hathcock II was the ultimate terminator. As a sniper for the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam -- when the hands were rock steady, the eyes keen, the legs durable -- he was officially credited with killing 93 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. No sniper killed more people in the 216-year history of the Marines.

When the Washington-area snipers launched their shooting rampage a decade ago, Prince George's County restaurateur Paul LaRuffa suffered the same effects as everyone else: anxiety about leaving the house, fear of pumping gas, worry for loved ones — all adding up to a general jumpiness about when, where and whom the gunmen would strike next. But in LaRuffa's case — though he didn't know it at the time — there was a difference. He had been the snipers' first victim. A month before the shootings that terrorized the region, LaRuffa, then 55, had closed his restaurant in Clinton for the night, walked out with a couple of friends and got into his car. He was about to pull out when 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo approached, raised a Bushmaster XM-15 E2S rifle and fired five .223-caliber rounds through the driver's side window.

ROCKVILLE -- Jurors saw the dark blue Chevrolet Caprice yesterday in which John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested - a 1990 sedan that prosecutors say Muhammad turned into a sniper's lair in the fall of 2002. The brief field trip was preceded by a warning from the judge presiding over Muhammad's six-count murder trial in Montgomery County. He told the jurors not to speak while they were looking at the car, as no voice recordings are made outside the courtroom. For more than a week, jurors had been hearing about the vehicle - once a white police car in New Jersey but notorious since Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in it Oct. 24, 2002, at an Interstate 70 rest stop near Frederick and charged with being the snipers terrorizing the Washington region.

AFTER YESTERDAY'S arrests in the sniper case, everyone could exhale again, a little. The police believe they have their men. For three weeks, the people of Maryland, Washington and Virginia were living with a very particular kind of terror, and now the region has turned some sort of corner. But toward what? The sniper -- and let's continue to refer to him in the singular until it is much clearer what was actually happening -- has taught some pretty painful lessons. With one rifle, not only were 10 people killed, but the lives of millions were disrupted and changed.

WHEATON - The serpentine path beckons visitors to stroll up the slight incline, toward a pond where turtles sunbathe on the islands, an area so serene that the turtles' slide into the water and birds' chirps break the near-silence. But first, approaching the pond's edge, the path opens into an irregularly shaped terrace of gray stones. More than 150 people are expected here today, as Montgomery County unveils a Reflection Terrace, a memorial in Wheaton Regional Park's Brookside Gardens to the sniper victims and other victims of violence.

The killings by the sniper in the white van have thrown the athletic lives of children and families into a holy mess of official overreaction and bureaucratic indecision. The kids don't know from one day to the next whether they will be outside for recess, whether soccer practice will be canceled or whether the football game will be played at all. The moment athletic directors and administrators consider restoring some kind of normality to our children's lives, the killer kills again and schools far and wide lock down.

SAN DIEGO -- CNN cable news has become "the publicist for an enemy propaganda film" by broadcasting a tape showing an insurgent sniper apparently killing an American soldier, the chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee said yesterday. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, called for the Pentagon to oust immediately any CNN reporter embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. "I think Americans like to think we're all in this together," Hunter said. "The average American Marine or soldier has concluded after seeing that film that CNN is not on their side."

RA'ANANA, Israel - Following the news these days isn't very encouraging for those that thought al-Qaida was finished. Marines attacked in Kuwait, a tanker blasted in Yemen, a nightclub struck in Bali, bombs in the Philippines. Doesn't seem to be much doubt that terror is alive and kicking. Just read the papers, listen to the radio or watch television. For those who thought Osama bin Laden and cohorts were gone, a rude awakening is in place. So when someone is wreaking havoc and sniping away in the suburbs of America's capital, why is it that no one thinks of this as terror?

Maryland has dominated its in-state rival, winning 19 of 20 contests since 1940. The Terps and Loyola last met on May 23, 1998 when Maryland, a No. 5 seed at the time, upset the No. 1 seed Greyhounds, 19-8, in an NCAA tournament semifinal. The Terps (12-5) are seeking their third national championship, but their first since 1975. They've lost in six consecutive finals appearances, including last year when they dropped a 9-7 decision to Virginia. Loyola, top-seeded again, is looking for the program's first NCAA crown and is making its second finals appearance after losing to Syracuse, 21-9, in 1990.

News Roundup •••• Some extremely juicy details about the exciting “God of War: Ascension” have surfaced, with some nuts and bolts of how the new multiplayer mode will function. Add this to your list of “reasons I own a PS3.” [ USA Today ] ••••  Evidence is pointing to the first bit of long-awaited “Skyrim” DLC being a) not far off and b) having something to do with Snow Elves and crossbows. Let's be honest, the “Skyrim” DLC could be anything and we'd all buy it sight unseen.

"The Cellist of Sarajevo" is the pick for the 2012 One Maryland One Book program , organizers have announced. Steven Galloway's novel is built around an actual event: a cellist's street performance to memorialize bombing deaths in the war-torn city. Galloway uses the impressions of three fictional characters to describe the siege of the city in the wake of Yugoslavia's disintegration.  His war is experienced on a human scale -- as Galloway examines the feelings of residents who live with the fear of random death every day. They try to maintain a grasp on their pre-war lives as they scramble for water and other necessities that are fast disappearing.

Lee Boyd Malvo is claiming that he and fellow Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad lined up co-conspirators to broaden the campaign of violence that paralyzed the Washington region eight years ago, but that the collaborators backed away, according to a television interview. Malvo also claimed responsibility for 42 shootings, many more than he and Muhammad had been linked to, according to a forensic psychiatrist who interviewed the man, now 25. The revelations were greeted skeptically by lawyers involved in the case that shook the region in 2002.

When Donald Albert and Stephen Decato came to Baltimore from rural New Hampshire to sample the urban noise environment for the Army, they had two worries. How dangerous would it be to work on streets they'd seen portrayed in bloody HBO crime dramas? And what kind of suspicion might they arouse as they deployed their black attache cases and weird electronic equipment in a city that was reliving a nightmare during the trial of Washington-area sniper John Allen Mohammad?

Minutes before convicted Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad was executed Tuesday night in Virginia, he said goodbye to a Baltimore lawyer who had become a trusted confidant. "I love you, brother," Muhammad said, according to the attorney, J. Wyndal Gordon, and Gordon told the condemned man he loved him back. Then Gordon shook Muhammad's hand through the bars and clutched his elbow with his free hand. "I was looking at him in his eyes," he said. "There was just no fear there, like he had resigned to it."

NOTHING fascinates and frightens us more than sudden death in all its randomness and inexplicability. We cope with its hovering presence in our lives largely by trying to ignore it. But our fear, however repressed, lurks just below the surface. Our denial is generally equal to the task of coping with death in its accidental and "natural" forms. When death is delivered by our fellow humans, however, we require not just justice but explanation. A sniper with a .223-caliber high-powered rifle is killing people near Washington.

Left unanswered in the excitement over yesterday's arrests of an Army veteran and a teen-ager, was this question: Who, if anyone, might claim the $500,000 reward offered by authorities investigating the three-week sniper rampage. John Allen Muhammad, 41, was being held on a federal weapons charge; Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, was being held as a material witness. Neither has been charged in the sniper shootings. If they are indicted in the shootings, would the reward go to the Tacoma, Wash., tipster whose phone call led the sniper task force to investigate Muhammad?

The last thoughts of Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad are contained in a letter that his relatives had said would be read publicly Wednesday but which was kept under wraps instead. Muhammad, 48, remained silent in the execution chamber in Jarratt, Va., on Tuesday night when asked if he wanted to share any final words. Instead, he had given his family a document that he wanted to be made public, and relatives had planned to read it at a news conference Wednesday. But an attorney for the Muhammad family said that neither the letter nor details about its contents would be disclosed, at least for now. "We have a letter," the attorney, Charlene Patterson, told reporters at a Richmond hotel.