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| Unearthed: The secret behind America's most terrifying killing spree. Seventeen innocents were seemingly slaughtered at random... but a major documentary series uncovers the real motive of the shootings that shocked the world 20 years ago | |
| 2022-01-24 | |
For more than three weeks in October 2002, warped Gulf war veteran John Muhammad and his teenage accomplice Lee Malvo cowed the American capital and its suburbs as they indiscriminately shot 13 residents with their Bushmaster rifle from the boot of their car. The big-budget six-part series, more than four years in the making and including interviews with up to 300 people, reveals for the first time that the two men were gay lovers. The motivation for the killings was the older man's obsession with getting revenge on his ex-wife for his defeat in a custody battle. It is now nearly 20 years since the Washington snipers held America hostage. Muhammad, a black American, was executed by lethal injection on November 10, 2009, at Greensville Correctional Centre in Virginia. However, Malvo, now 36, is still serving multiple life sentences at the supermax prison Red Onion State, and he agreed to be interviewed at length for the series. Both men came from dysfunctional families: Muhammad was raised by an aunt in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He had been found clinging to the body of his mother after she died of cancer when he was three, while Malvo was abandoned by his Jamaican parents Leslie and Una on the Caribbean island of Antigua, where he scratched a living selling bootleg CDs. After joining the U.S. army, Muhammad rose to the rank of sergeant, but he also got involved in black nationalist organisation the Nation Of Islam and changed his surname from Williams to Muhammad. However, serving in the Gulf War changed him, according to his second wife, Mildred, the mother of his three children. 'I believe something happened in Desert Storm,' she tells the film-makers. In 1999, after 14 years of marriage, the couple separated, driven apart by his aggressive behaviour and incessant womanising. The following year, Muhammad kidnapped his three children, and fled to Antigua. It was only after he returned to the U.S. to live in Bellingham, a town in Washington state near the U.S. border with Canada, that the police caught up with him. A subsequent court hearing on September 4, 2001 — in which Muhammad discovered Mildred had divorced him in his absence — granted his ex-wife full custody of their children and proved the catalyst for his murder spree. Mildred attended court with their former accountant, Isa Nichols, who had become a close friend, and it was Isa's niece who became the snipers' first victim. By now, Muhammad had recruited his partner in crime, Lee Malvo, then 15, whom he had met by chance in Antigua. On Muhammad's advice, Malvo read military and history books, and listened to speeches by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Muslim minister Malcolm X. The older man — who had earned his Expert Rifleman's Badge in the army — began training his protege to become a sniper, taking him to a shooting range, and working out with him at the YMCA to get him into peak physical shape. Malvo's mother, Una, had not given up on him, however, and she arrived in Washington two months later in search of her son. The teenager was apprehended by Border Patrol at the YMCA and, before returning him to his mother's custody, immigration officers took his fingerprints and entered them into their database. It was these prints which would ultimately lead to his downfall. But Mrs Malvo failed to hold on to her son for long. He was soon reunited with Muhammad and at 7pm, on February 16, 2002, they claimed their first victim. According to Malvo, the idea was to commit so many random killings that when Muhammad got round to targeting his ex-wife, no one would link him to her murder.
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| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #9 What do soldiers with the Expert Rifleman's Badge do? Possibly what caused his problems as a Black racist was seeing the “brown” (don’t tell them — as far as they’re concerned they’re as white as we are) Iraqi army so quickly and utterly destroyed by the “white” US Army and friends. Rather than normal PTSD experiences, I mean. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2022-01-24 21:48 |
| #8 apparently he developed a love for younger boys? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2022-01-24 20:18 |
| #7 Exactly what did Muhammed "do" in Desert Storm that turned him into a serial killer? |
| Posted by: Sgt.D.T. 2022-01-24 18:00 |
| #6 "Bush's Fault." Clown world is silly. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2022-01-24 11:17 |
| #5 From "incessant womanizing" to "playing on three strings." |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-01-24 07:15 |
| #4 Years of Nation of Islam involvement but it was Desert Storm that changed him? |
| Posted by: Airandee 2022-01-24 06:34 |
| #3 The ghey mafia will not be pleased. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-01-24 04:57 |
| #2 Jihad? |
| Posted by: Woodrow 2022-01-24 04:03 |
| #1 reveals for the first time that the two men were gay lovers Oh, this was well-known. It was just suppressed. After all, it would look bad to have a black man doing the Lord's work killing white people to be revealed as a homosexual pedophile. |
| Posted by: Sheter the Lesser9291 2022-01-24 03:51 |