The teenager accused of participating in the sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington region has told investigators that he pulled the trigger in several of the shootings, three law-enforcement sources said Saturday.
During an interrogation that lasted about seven hours, John Lee Malvo provided details about several of the slayings that authorities have linked to him and to John Allen Muhammad, including killings in Fairfax and Prince William Counties in Virginia and in Washington, the sources said.
One law-enforcement source said Malvo said he fired the shot that killed Linda Franklin at a Home Depot store in Fairfax County, for which he has been charged with capital murder.
In interviews conducted after he was transferred to Fairfax County on Thursday, Malvo, 17, allegedly told investigators that the shootings were well-planned and involved scouting missions. Sources said Malvo described himself and his partner as behaving like soldiers: One would be a lookout and communicate with the other via two-way radio.
If conditions, such as traffic, were not right, they would not shoot, Malvo told investigators. They deliberately hopped from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to create confusion, and they watched the news coverage of their crimes, the sources said.
Malvo was talkative, smiling, even bragging in response to indirect questions from investigators, sources said, but he was adamant in refusing to talk about Muhammad or to even mention his name, using “we” a lot. Muhammad, 41, deflected police efforts to interrogate him in Prince William County, maintaining his silence for hours and even refusing to give his name to a booking clerk.
The law-enforcement sources spoke on condition that they not be identified. They would not provide further details of the Malvo interrogation and would not identify the other shootings that Malvo allegedly described.
End to interviews sought
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Michael Arif, who has been appointed to head Malvo’s defense team, has said he will work to suppress any statements Malvo made during his interrogation by federal and local investigators.
“If in fact those are the statements Mr. Malvo made, there will be a motion to suppress those statements,” Arif said. He said he met with Malvo for more than two hours Saturday, but declined to comment further.
Malvo’s appointed guardian, Todd Petit, said he went to police headquarters at 6 p.m. Thursday and asked that questioning be stopped. Petit, speaking in an interview Friday, said a police commander agreed to pass on his request and then ordered him to leave the building.
Peter Greenspun, appointed to represent Muhammad, said Saturday that he also is concerned about Malvo’s questioning.
“All of this was so orchestrated so that they would get them to Virginia late in the afternoon when they couldn’t get to court,” Greenspun said.
Because Muhammad and Malvo were transferred from federal custody to local custody in Virginia, and the federal charges against them were dropped, local police had a chance to question them legally. If either invoked his right to an attorney, police would have been required to stop.
Muhammad and Malvo have been charged or named as suspects in 21 shootings across the country in which 14 people were killed and seven wounded.
Muhammad and Malvo are charged with capital murder in Prince William County for the Oct. 9 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers of Gaithersburg, who was shot at a gas station north of Manassas, Va. They also are charged with capital murder in the slaying of Franklin.
The two have been linked to the Oct. 3 killing of Pascal Charlot, 72, in Washington. District of Columbia detectives have prepared an affidavit to secure an arrest warrant for the two, including information from Malvo’s interrogation.
The spree allegedly touched the West Coast, the deep South and the Washington region, including shootings in Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Washington state, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia.
Details fill voids in case
Though prosecutors were confident that they could proceed with their death penalty case against the two using circumstantial evidence, the interviews with Malvo clearly began to fill in voids.
Investigators in several states are looking into shootings that they believe could be related to the sniper suspects, and information from a laptop computer found in Muhammad’s car when he was arrested has led investigators to look for possible crimes in North Carolina and West Virginia, a source said.