Ex-wife 'sniper's prime target'
The ex-wife of Washington sniper John Muhammad has said she called police to report a car similar to the one used in the killing spree near her home - supporting a defence argument that she was the ultimate target.
Lawyers for teenage sniper suspect Lee Malvo say last year’s killing spree was part of a plan by Muhammad to kill his ex-wife – an argument the prosecutor called ”nonsense”.
Mildred Muhammad testified at Malvo’s capital murder trial in Chesapeake, Virginia, that she saw the car on October 11, 2002 – one week after the Washington DC-area sniper shootings began – near her home in the Washington suburbs as she left for work. The passenger concealed his face behind a newspaper.
“The driver just sat and stared,” she said, though she apparently did not recognise him.
She called the police emergency number and told the dispatcher that a dark car - either a Chevrolet Impala or a Caprice – with New Jersey tags was outside her house and seemed suspicious. It was not immediately clear what action, if any, was taken by law enforcement.
Mildred Muhammad’s description would match the car authorities say her ex-husband modified to serve as a ”killing platform”.
Malvo’s lawyers are presenting an insanity defence, claiming the 42-year-old Muhammad brainwashed their teenage client and moulded him into a killer. They say Muhammad planned to kill his ex-wife and make it look as if she were the random victim of a sniper so he could regain custody of his children.
Muhammad was refusing to testify in Malvo’s trial, invoking his Fifth Amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination, Malvo defence lawyer Craig Cooley said.
Muhammad’s trial ended last week with a jury recommending the death sentence, but he still faces prosecution in other states. The pair are charged or suspected in the killing of 10 people and the wounding of six in the Washington-area sniper spree, along with shootings in Washington state, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana.
Malvo’s lawyers had hoped to put Muhammad on the stand this week, and asked yesterday that he still appear so jurors could see him.
Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush said she saw no need for Muhammad to make a silent appearance, though she urged the prosecution and defence to try to find a solution.
Malvo, in statements to police, said the killings were part of a scheme to extort €9.3m from the US government.
Muhammad’s prosecutors were prevented from making the argument about Mildred Muhammad because the judge ruled there was a lack of evidence to support it.
Malvo’s lawyers also played an audiotape of the event they say triggered the sniper rampage: the September 2001 custody hearing in which Muhammad lost his children.
Muhammad speaks very little during the hearing in Tacoma, Washington, in which a judge grants immediate custody of the three children to Mildred Muhammad. Authorities had taken the children from him and placed them in protective custody five days earlier.
