In a Room with Madness

It is First Thing in the morning and the smell of cut grass is in the air. Along Rockville Pike, the drone of James "Sonny" Buchanan's Lawn-Boy blends in with the sounds of passing cars. A former landscaper, Buchanan, 39, mows the lawn outside the Fitzgerald Auto Mall as a favor to one of his longtime customers, Dottie Fitzgerald. Every week or so, he makes the five-hour drive from his home in Virginia to suburban Maryland and sleeps in his van to get an early start. The sun already feels warm and strong.

Nearby, 54-year-old Premkumar Walekar decides to make an early day of it to take advantage of the weather. Walekar, a cab driver and a native of India, forgoes his usual routine. Instead of picking up his wife at Montgomery General Hospital, he heads to work.

In another part of Montgomery County, Sarah Ramos readies herself for a bus ride to a Connecticut Avenue stop, where her boss will pick her up and take her to her job.

And farther down the road, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera gets set to drive her Village Voyager to a Shell gas station to clean it.

After a year of often chilling news, they, like other residents of the county, are getting used to living with low-level anxiety. The attack on the Pentagon, anthrax in the mail, unseen terrorists with unmade dirty bombs and now the possibility of war with Iraq--the headlines cloud the mood of some locals, many of whom work in government. For those who hear it, the brief mention on local news radio station WTOP that morning about James D. Martin only adds to the jitters. The night before, Martin had been shot in the chest while crossing a parking lot at the Shoppers Food Warehouse in nearby Wheaton. There are few clues in the slaying. It seems more like a D.C. drive-by shooting than anything else. But on the morning of October 3, 2002, a bullet from the same gun that killed Martin is about to cut down another victim and tear a hole in everyone's sense of security.

October 3, 2002, 7:41 A.M.: Outside the auto dealership, Sonny Buchanan rides his mower down to a strip of grass near the curb. As he stops to take a sip of water, a sound like an explosion blasts through the air. A Fitzgerald employee hears the noise and instinctively drops to the ground. Something is wrong with Buchanan. He stumbles toward the dealership, grabs at a wound in his chest and struggles for air. He runs along a fence in the rear and through a gate--a distance of about 200 feet--before he collapses. Fitzgerald service director Al Briggs sees blood on Buchanan and rushes to him. He is bleeding profusely, and Briggs and his co-workers don't dare move him. Briggs puts his hand on Sonny's shoulder and says, "Help is on the way," even though he knows the man is already gone. Someone calls 911: "This guy with a lawn mower did something, man; it chopped him up, he's bleeding real bad; he's down and out." When medics arrive, they discover an entry wound in his back. Buchanan has been shot.

October 3, 8:12 A.M.: About five miles away from where Buchanan was working, Premkumar Walekar, the cabbie from Bombay, stops at a Mobil gas station. He buys some Juicy Fruit gum, a lottery ticket and $5 worth of gas. He is pumping gas into his cab when there is another explosion. To mechanic Alex Millhouse, it sounds like a car backfiring, one quite close. Walekar clutches his side. Blood streams through his fingers and onto the concrete. He leans against a nearby minivan, asks the driver to call an ambulance and then falls down. Corporal Paul Kukucka of the Montgomery County Police Department is first on the scene. Soon he is on the radio. Within minutes, the cops listening at headquarters and on car scanners realize what's happening--that a strange act of vandalism (a shot fired into a Michaels craft store the day before), the long-range killing at Shoppers Food Warehouse and the slaying of the cabbie are linked. And things are about to get worse.

October 3, 8:37 A.M.: While Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose and his commanders are rushing to help Officer Kukucka, Sarah Ramos steps off her bus and takes a seat on a bench outside a Crisp and Juicy chicken restaurant in a strip mall near Leisure World, a retirement community. She opens a book. Moments later she, too, is dead, killed by a single shot to the head, fired from a distance. When cops pull into the shopping center, they gather witnesses. One of them is a Spanish-speaking worker. A translator is summoned and arrives within a few minutes. Cops later say there are obstacles to obtaining specifics, but come away with a description of a vehicle that may have something to do with the shooting: a white Isuzu or Mitsubishi box truck with black lettering on the side and a damaged liftgate. The description of the white truck is transmitted over police radio, and Chief Moose and his staff are briefed at the Mobil station.

October 3, 9:58 A.M.: Lori Ann Lewis Rivera is vacuuming her minivan. And then, suddenly, she is on the ground, unconscious, with blood coming out of her nose and mouth. Police have another trauma to add to the list.

•

By midday the national media are focused on Montgomery County. Coverage of the killings played incessantly on TV. In less than two and a half hours four people had been gunned down at long range by a sniper. Police had no suspects and no idea if the rampage was over. The D.C. area was more panicked than after the assault on the Pentagon the previous year. Walekar's daughter learns of her father's death when she sees his cab on TV. Chief Moose's wife, away on a trip, is surprised to hear the news and immediately flies back home. Meanwhile, police set up at one shooting scene only to be called to another.

Corporal Rob Moroney, Maryland State Police: "We had almost nothing to go on. It was stressful and frustrating--particularly when you have the media calling us."

Local investigator #I (some members of law enforcement chose to speak anonymously out of fear of jeopardizing the upcoming trial): "I was confused. I thought at first that I was being directed to the wrong place. Then it dawned on me we had more than one shooting. To tell you the truth, 1 was a little scared. I wasn't prepared for anything like that."

From the start, Chief Moose struggles with the enormity of the situation and the impact the attacks have on the national psyche. He establishes a command post at the Korean Baptist Church on Aspen Hill Road and stays until midnight, alternately meeting with his officers and the press. He downplays the possibility that the shootings are terrorist attacks.

The handful of homicide investigators assigned to the case recommend bringing in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to check ballistics. Moose agrees. News of a white truck seen by a witness at Leisure World is released to the press. "Personally, I doubt it," a detective says. "You know how many white trucks there are in this area? Everybody has one. It's just a coincidence." Another says, "We got nothing. No witnesses, no motive and no idea what we're looking at. This guy is dangerous, very dangerous. He's not done, either." Emotions run high about the cruel and painful deaths suffered by the victims, particularly among witnesses. Detectives console colleagues like Kukucka, who held the dying cabbie in his arms. Brooklyn-born Rich Tyner, a shipping clerk at Fitzgerald Auto Mall, has a line worthy of the New York Post: "If I had been there 20 seconds earlier, I don't know whether I could have helped him, but I would have chased those sons of bitches to the ends of the earth."

Captain Nairn1 Demme, Montgomery County Police Department: "It was as scary as anything I'd ever seen. It's not every day that you see an average citizen gunned down in broad daylight for no apparent reason."

October 3, 9:20 P.M.: As more than 100 police officers canvas the county, the sniper kills again, this time across the border in Washington, D.C. Pascal Charlot, 72, was shot just below the neck while crossing a street.

Chief Charles Ramsey, D.C. Police Department: "We took statements from witnesses who saw a burgundy Camry and a burgundy Caprice. The Camry turned out to belong to a witness. We located that car. The driver got scared when he heard the shooting and got the hell out of there. We obviously didn't find the Caprice and the color was wrong, but we put that description out and then we put it out again a week later. We didn't ignore it."

•

In the absence of any of the three breaks needed to solve a case--physical evidence, witnesses or a confession--the homicide team from Montgomery County spends the night and all the next morning looking for links among the victims or their locations to turn up clues. They prepare plans to scour the county, working with the theory, repeated on TV, that the sniper is a resident.

October 4, 2:30 P.M.: As if to prove he is not a local, the sniper again strikes outside Montgomery County. Near Fredericksburg, Virginia, a woman is shot in the back while loading packages into her car at a Michaels craft store. This time, witnesses see a white van fleeing the scene.

Lieutenant Colonel Steven Wright, Hanover County, Virginia: "He was definitely watching the news and listening to everything we said. Whenever he was presented with an off-center challenge, he'd meet the challenge. That's part of what made it such a sensational case. He seemed to taunt everybody."

•

Virginia police now join the growing task force operating out of police headquarters in Montgomery County. Several hundred investigators, ATF and FBI included, are packed into the major case squad's offices on the first floor. It will only get more crowded--the ATF puts out a memo to its offices around the country, beseeching agents with cars to come and help. "You can see people getting frustrated by the sheer lack of space," a task-force member explains. They eye the fourth floor of an office building next door, a raw space of 5000 square feet. Like a trail of ants, police trek across a grassy median between the buildings' parking lots on Sunday the 6th, loaded down with computers and office equipment. Soon the room is transformed into something like a movie set of a rogue commando station. Aside from raw cement columns, the primary physical features are cables--mammoth cables bundled together that run along the ceilings and floors. The new Joint Operations Center is organized by division of labor, not by agency. Temporary signs such as INTEL, processing and command and control hang above workstations. There's even an announcement on the wall offering flu shots. Three people are now firmly in charge: Chief Moose; Mike Bouchard of the ATF's Baltimore office, an affable but quiet man; and Gary Bald, from the FBI's Baltimore office, a sharp man with an aloof exterior. Even though there have been no breakthroughs, the display of resources buoys the morale of the detectives. Chief Moose walks in and tells one of the guys who has been on the job for 18 exhausting hours to go home. An FBI agent tells everyone else, "I live here, too. Don't worry--we'll solve this together." It's an unexpected display of camaraderie.

Chief Ramsey: "After our shooting, I called Chief Moose. We talked about the similarities of the cases and I said, 'Why don't we just work them together?' It seemed the right thing to do. That's how the multijurisdictional task force started--D.C. was the first to come in, and the FBI gave us the blueprint on how to do it right."

Chief Moose: "We didn't know how to handle it. If we seemed confused, we were. We were nervous. We didn't want to disappoint."

Captain Demme: "They were three different but exceptionally bright men. They checked their egos at the door."

Mike Bouchard, ATF: "It went from an ad hoc thing with people working all hours, to a well-oiled machine. We were organized by the FBI, and that helped greatly. Chief Moose, Gary Bald and I agreed from the start that if we had differences of opinion we'd work them out and provide a unified front. I enjoyed the give-and-take. We created this all on the fly. We improvised."

Corporal Rob Moroney: "The Joint Operations Center was an intense place. There were wires everywhere. Everything--tips, leads, intelligence from the ATF--had to be entered into a database. We had an update center with a scrolling board--a projection that came through a computer and went on a screen. It had names, what was going on, what we did. It was a play-by-play."

Local investigator #2: "I was amazed. This FBI guy walks up to me and says, 'What can I do to help?' I've worked with those guys for years and all they ever do is take information. This guy was actually asking to help me. I knew that things had changed right then."

•

Over the weekend, cops contact Michaels' corporate offices in an effort to sniff out a disgruntled worker. The FBI reaches out to the Army, pursuing the marksman-gone-mad scenario. FBI profilers work on the sniper's personality, including the possibility he is working in tandem. Given that snipers generally have reclusive personalities (unlike other serial killers, they do not like to see their victims in pain), the ATF has brought in a geographic profiler to isolate likely neighborhoods the sniper lives in. Unsure whether the absence of attacks is ominous or heartening, Moose announces he will greatly increase police presence around schools throughout the area on Monday. Sadly, the sniper puts him to the test.

October 7, 8:08 A.M.: A child is shot outside a Bowie, Maryland middle school in Prince Georges County. The cops are devastated, and whatever hope was generated during the weekend is dashed. It (continued on page 84)D.C. Snipers(continued from page 74) happens even as a team is dispatched to a location to capture a suspect. "We had someone we wanted to question," one cop says. "But it turns out that while we were elsewhere the real sniper shows up and shoots a kid. My jaw dropped."

•

Witnesses in Bowie again claim to have seen die white whale--in van form. In die woods outside the middle school, Prince Georges County cops make a major discovery--matted grass where the sniper has lain in wait. Nearby, they find a shell casing for a .223 caliber bullet, a high-velocity round that fragments when it hits a target, causing large wounds. It is the same type of bullet used in all the killings. There is also a note--a Death Card from a tarot deck with the message, "Dear Policeman, I am God." At the Joint Operations Center, those in the know seem more anxious than ever. No one talks. An ATF agent comes out of a closed-door meeting next door at headquarters and says, grimly, "We've got to get this guy." It's apparent that the sniper is deriving satisfaction from thwarting the police; he has thrown their public statements-- finding solace in the fact that he is not shooting children--in their faces. When Chief Moose holds a press conference about the shooting, his eyes are bloodshot from fatigue. He is overcome by emotion. His voice quavers. A tear descends his cheek as he says, "Now we're stepping over the line. Shooting a kid. I guess it's getting to be really, really personal now." The dour, tough commander with the dry wit is long gone. This is the little-known chief who shares his emotions privately with a victim's family, putting a public face on our helplessness. By the time he is done, there is silence. Deputy Police Chief Bill O'Toole throws his arm around Moose's shoulders, and they walk slowly inside.

Corporal Rob Moroney: "You could see the seriousness on die chief's face. He was stressed out and not the same person I know. When he got upset when the kid got shot, he was just showing what everybody felt. I'd follow Chief Moose uphill against a machine-gun nest. It was despicable targeting a kid. That's when it turned. People saw the chief on TV obviously upset and that's when the story went from being a big local story to a worldwide story. Right then. That was the shot heard around the world."

For a while, Moose returns attention to the human cost of the attacks, but the story eventually spirals out of his control. In the first of many leaks that will plague investigators and the first illustration of the awkward, symbiotic relationship between press and police, local TV channel 9, WUSA, breaks the news of the tarot card's existence. There are 500 members of the press outside the JOC now, and 500 officers moving through the building--most of whom put the finger on Prince Georges County for the leak.

Mike Bouchard, ATF: "I only had to brief my bosses a couple of times. In fact, I got in a bit of trouble because I didn't tell them anything, either. I didn't want to have any leaks. But they understood."

Police believe the leak is potentially disastrous, since, according to Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, die sniper also warned cops not to reveal the card's existence. Moose explodes at the media horde on October 9. He is livid: "Do you want the police department to work the case or do you want Channel 9 to work the case? Let me know, and we will turn it over to the media and let you solve it." Reporters are shocked. Moose's blowup is calculated, designed to try to reestablish trust and a channel of communication with the sniper. The tarot card is a type of move that serial killers make when they desire recognition or when they feel upset about how they are being characterized by the police or die public. Moose appeals to the sniper's messiah complex by sprinkling phrases in his conferences such as "I hope to God that someday we'll know why all this occurred."

The incident also belies the story of cohesion among the local jurisdictions. The investigators are still working with three tip lines; Prince Georges County even writes out leads on paper and then turns them over to the FBI-run database. "Half of our team wants to blame the other half, and each one wants to point the finger at someone else," Moose admits. "It was irresponsible to report it. But we've gotten past that and we're going to go on with business. Pray this isn't a major stumbling block." Cops admit, however, to a desire to freeze certain members of the Prince Georges department out of a role in the manhunt, but Captain Dem-me says it never amounted to much. "We all needed to share information, so no matter what the feelings are, we would never freeze anyone out," she says. "The leak about the tarot card came from the highest sources within Prince Georges County," says one cop. "There's no doubt about it." Efforts are made to better consolidate operations and within days the FBI opens an 800 number that connects to tip-line operators at its D.C. headquarters. The local team of detectives is grateful for the help.

Michael Brooks, ATF : "I came to town from Toledo on Wednesday the 9th. There was a shortage of cars and the cops needed every car they could put on the road. Guys were working 17-hour, 18-hour days. You could see the tiredness in their eyes. Sometimes they would just go home, take a short nap and a shower, get a change of shirt, and come right back. In the beginning they only took agents who could drive into town, because we needed our own cars. I drove in the day the tarot card thing was on the news--you know, where he said, 'Dear Policeman, I am God'--and 1 was listening to that on the radio as I drove into town. Then I looked over at this white van that had pulled up next to me and it was this Guaranteed Overnight Delivery van. Big word GOD on the side. I said to myself, 'Well, here I go.'"

Local investigator #2 : "We gave the ATF guys royal treatment. They left their wives and kids home and came from everywhere to help. They acted unselfishly and we appreciated it. This was big for them. As much as Waco destroyed their credibility, this restored it. They did a damn good job. Everyone in law enforcement always makes fun of them, but they did well on this case."

October 9, 8:20 P.M.: A 53-year-old white male is gunned down at a gas station near Manassas, Virginia. There is a report of a white Dodge Caravan fleeing the scene. The tired faces in the JOC get longer. One guy spills coffee on another, prompting an argument that quickly dies. The weight of the investigation begins to show on the faces of the men running it. Gary Bald, a natural diplomat who is in charge of handling the State Department, White House, Justice Department and everyone else in D.C, develops what appears to be an eye infection. The whites of his eyes look bloodshot. Bouchard becomes a bit more quiet and is absorbed in the tedious details of ballistics. Chief Moose becomes more dour, occasionally lashing out at the media, but trying hard behind the scenes to boost the morale of the troops. During the long night ahead and the ensuing days, die task force and its leaders plan a dragnet if the sniper strikes again. They take heart that no white van will escape their attention.

October 11, 9:30 A.M.: A black man, also 53, is gunned down at a gas station in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Upping the ante, the sniper puts him in his sights as a state trooper monitors an (continued on page 146)D.C. Snipers(continued from page 84) accident 50 yards away. The three-state dragnet is employed, but he escapes, as he will every time. The mystery vehicle this time around is a white Chevrolet Astro van with a ladder rack on top. To the frustration of cops, all-news radio station WTOP broadcasts traffic reports that help drivers avoid roadblocks set to catch the sniper. At the behest of the task force, WTOP shies away from specifics during future dragnets.

At the JOC, investigators return from the rain soggy and depressed. Triton barriers and fencing go up around the building and media badges are issued-- 300 badges on the first day. Wolf Blitzer is the newest face to show up. He sits in his dark suit under a blue tent speaking with profilers and prognosticators who handicap the shooting as if it were a race.

Neil Rawles, a documentary filmmaker from the UK: "I was appalled by what I saw. The press in the States doesn't do the public a world of good. It was as if they liked being there. Almost like they didn't want it to end. They were covering real human tragedy and turning it into ratings and entertainment. It was sickening."

Inside, staffers operating the tip lines are handling 1000 calls per hour. The FBI employs a software system used for the Star Wars movies to create computer-simulated crime scenes. "We want to be careful about not creating tunnel vision by releasing a profile," Moose says. Then Bald comments on what would prove to be the biggest example of tunnel vision--the description of the white van: "It's as accurate as we can make it and we'll do whatever it takes. We'll do it."Meanwhile, the task force works on putting together a composite image of both a box truck and a van. Drivers of the many white vans in the area begin scribbling It's not Me or not Me! in the dust on their rear windows.

Corporal Rob Moroney: "The white van thing was irritating. Do you know how many there are on the road? But we had to go with it because so many people saw them. I mean, the car ended up easily getting through all the roadblocks because nobody was looking for it. You know no one was going to look twice at two black guys in a dark-colored Chevy Caprice. We all drought we were looking for white guys in a white van."

Local detective: "It begs the question, did we publish composite pictures because witnesses saw the white van, or did we see the white van because we published the pictures? We should've paid more attention to the description of the Caprice and given it as much credibility as die van, but we didn't. In hindsight, it was a mistake made in the emotion of the moment. But with all that we had set in place, we should've done better."

Lieutenant Colonel Steven Wright: "I never believed the white van and thought they'd be idiots to be in a white van. It has even been argued that they put that rumor out there themselves--they called in tips on themselves."

The lead investigators work through the weekend with an entire research department combing purchases of firearms, DMV records, incident reports, hunting licenses and parole records. They also work with the tip lines and develop leads. The investigative team meets at least three times a day formally, and many times informally, with Moose, the FBI, the ATF, the Secret Service, Defense Department personnel, Justice Department officials and other police agencies. The background information is passed on to detectives in the field in cars equipped with computers and scanners. "In other words," says Moroney, "we want to make sure that two different sets of detectives aren't given the same lead to track down. If your neighbor calls in and says that you were a guy who loved tarot cards and guns and another neighbor calls in the same tip, we don't want to waste our energy sending two teams to the same location." Two SWAT teams are on permanent standby; they also do some legwork. The tarot card is analyzed to its core, from possible fingerprints to clues in its ink. Nothing comes up. Since the sniper has struck only on weekdays, the men dread waking to another Monday.

Local investigator #2: "We'd come in every morning and check hot leads. This could be info from the tip line or from a combination of evidence and profiles--a crazy, loner white male. We checked out known felons."

Task force member: "I staked out one house for a while and don't know if I was more bored or scared. You don't want it to be the guy, but you do. We heard all kinds of stuff, so we sat on the house and kids came by and I'm thinking I don't want any kids getting killed. Things like that go through your mind. We got into--the house and it was just nothing. That's a big letdown. You sit all day and you hope and you're scared and then it's all a waste of time."

Barry Maddox, FBI: "Usually, the profilers have been right, so you had to listen to them. They're going to have to go back and rewrite the book."

Corporal Rob Moroney: "The profilers couldn't have been farther from reality. I didn't pay much attention to them. They were all wrong. All the pundits were dead wrong. I only looked for facts and for a while there weren't many."

Michael Brooks, ATF: "There was a lot of anxiety and we thought it would go on forever. Then, in the end, they caught themselves. We knew if we kept up the pressure they would make a mistake. The fear was, how many are going to the before they get caught? We were like everyone else who had a TV. We'd do our work, but somebody had always seen something on TV. It was weird working the case and then seeing what was going on on the television. I kept wondering if they knew more than us, or if they were working the same case."

Homicide investigator: "I would work hard all day and go home and I wouldn't tell my wife anything. She would ask me questions and I'd say nothing, then pretty soon she's telling me stuff. She just turned on the TV and there it was on CNN and Fox and everywhere else. The leaks were everywhere."

ATF agent: "The fucking White House and all that shit about helicopters really pissed us off. All the leaks in this case came from downtown--the White House and the federal government."

Barry Maddox, FBI: "The leaks were worrisome. We didn't know where they were coming from. Hey, we can go to jail if we leak information. It's a different environment elsewhere, but we take those leaks very seriously."

Steve Alexander (a businessman who works in an office building across from police headquarters): "As the crowds got larger the scene in the office complex was unbelievable. There were cell phone antennas and satellite dishes all over our parking lot. We began to get concerned that maybe the sniper would decide it would be a good idea to open fire right here. Then one day I was walking into the elevator and saw two cops in riot gear. They were police snipers, and I made some smart comment to them, like 'Hey, nice outfit.' They didn't even smile. It was all business. Every day after that, I'd see them go up on the roof."

October 14, 9:15 P.M.: FBI employee Linda Franklin is gunned down outside a Home Depot in Virginia as she and her husband are loading paint into their car. The petite blonde falls dead with a single shot to the back of the head. She is the 11th shooting victim.

Minutes later, a dragnet of extraordinary dimension drops around the area. Thousands of officers spring into action across northern Virginia and southern Maryland to man dozens of checkpoints. Armed with shotguns and assault rifles, they begin to shake down anyone driving a white Astro van or Ford Econoline van. The Capital Beltway (Interstate 495), the busiest highway in the area, is closed. Thousands of vehicles sit on the road, many for so long their occupants run into nearby woods or into drainage ditches to urinate. Helicopters with searchlights fly circular patterns overhead. "It looks like the apocalypse," says one motorist. Suddenly, a helicopter focuses its spotlight on a white van in the middle of a three-mile traffic jam. The voice of the chopper pilot and cops can be heard over the handheld radios carried by the ground troops, who are decked out in riot gear and are busily fanning out through the idle vehicles. "That's it! That's him! That's got to be him," he says. "I'm on him." The chopper keeps him illuminated as cops run down the interstate, jumping barricades with shotguns and rifles at the ready.

"Left. Left of your position."

"I can't see him."

"He's four cars away from you. Right lane."

The cops run up on the car, yank the guy out and throw him to the ground. The driver looks scared, the cops look scared ("I'm thinking I could die," says one young patrolman) and other drivers look petrified. "I didn't know whether to roll up my windows, duck or just get out of the car and run," one woman says. She is nearly in tears. Another female driver is crying and says, "I'm scared." She won't roll down her window and talk to anyone.

Local investigator #1: "The adrenaline was unbelievable. Ten minutes after the shooting, we have everything shut down everywhere. He managed to evade five dragnets. Five. And, of course, that's because he never was in a white van. He was in that Caprice and we stopped him, but we never put it together because we were looking for a white van."

October 14, 9:30 P.M.: Next to the Home Depot everything is sealed. Some of the witnesses and onlookers at the scene are huddled nearby. One of them is in tears. The bloody body remains face down on the pavement in the parking garage. Reporters, some of whom made it to the scene before the investigators, find and hear about a witness who has an alarming amount of detail to report. If information by Matthew Dowdy, the witness who came forward to talk to the press, and information overheard on police scanners is accurate, there is cause for hope. Dowdy says to anyone who will listen that he was in a unique position to see a cream-colored Chevrolet Astro van with a broken taillight. He also says he saw an individual with olive skin get out of the truck and point an AK-74 at the victim. It is more than anyone has seen before. It seems incredible, but possible because elements coincide with previous eyewitness accounts. Dowdy puts the sniper within 100 feet of his victim-- closer than anyone had ever thought. Some of the cops appear to smile. They talk of prosecuting the sniper in Virginia, where the possibility of getting a death sentence is much greater than in Maryland.

But there is tension among some investigators and press about coverage of Dowdy's witness statement. "How can they get mad at us?" one cable-TV reporter asks. "We just ran what was on the scanner."

"They can get mad because it wasn't information that was confirmed," says a network producer. "You never run with scanner traffic without confirming it."

The news shows don't seem to care as the Dowdy information is broadcast on every station covering the sniper case. Two of the Maryland local investigators are miffed at the coverage and blame Virginia for wanting a share of the media spotlight.

Later that evening, they sit on a picnic table in back of the JOC and hash out their concerns about Matthew, a.k.a. Slim, Dowdy. They had spoken to one investigator in Virginia, who also knew that Dowdy had a criminal record. "I told Virginia, 'Don't do it.' The Virginia inspector says that some of the info may be good: 'It can't be that far off. It matches previous reports.' So I say, 'It's too good. The detail about the taillight sounds made-up, and the guy you got it from is a crook.' No good." When questioned by reporters about the witness, Moose says, "We've been down this path before and we'd like a little more discretion at this time."

It's clear by the next day that Dowdy is lying. Top-level commanders are furious.

Local investigator #1: "Let's just say coffee cups and papers flew. There was a lot of rage. They wanted to know why the information got out and what we were going to do."

ATF agent: "What we were really angry and concerned about was how much this would throw us off. We thought we had made some progress, but then all of a sudden, there we're back to square one. Or worse. It was hard to take."

Local investigator #2: "There was a real cowboy attitude down in Virginia."

Task force member: "They wanted the glory. It was the antithesis of the way everyone else was working. They screwed up by listening to a moron who couldn't possibly have seen it. 'What the fuck are you doing? We wouldn't run with that,' I told him."

Lieutenant Amy Lubas, Fairfax County, Virginia Police Department: "We never took Dowdy at face value. He didn't cripple the case and didn't hamper it. In fact, we had witnesses, other witnesses who disproved what he said. But everything has to go through procedures and we have to do it accurately. That takes time. More time than the cameras like. We only released what we could confirm--that all of the statements the media heard had come from a potential witness."

By the time cops return to Home Depot, the crime scene is ruined. Back at the JOC, however, a pristine .223 caliber bullet is found on the sidewalk outside the front door of police headquarters. There is a moment of panic until a photographer remembers that John Walsh shot an episode of America's Most Wanted on that spot the night before and had shown a bullet to demonstrate what the killer probably had used.

Chip Berman, owner of the Outta the Way Cafe in Derwood, Maryland: "I went out for a round of golf and was on the back nine when I thought to myself that I wasn't so bright. I was a big target for any sniper. I look over my shoulder and see these golf carts racing across the fairway with SWAT team members in them, all dressed in black and all business. I look over my other shoulder and see a helicopter up in the air over a hill. I just froze. It turns out there were a couple of kids in the woods deer hunting."

Ed Clark, head of security for the Montgomery County school system: "We had calls coming in from all over the place and had to track down all of them. We conducted ground searches while the helicopters were in the air. They were flying all over the county and we had to check out every little thing."

Helicopter pilot: "Yeah, we caught a couple of kids necking and a couple of others hunting with a BB gun. We didn't catch much else. But I think vandalism around the schools went down during those three weeks."

Man pumping gas at Exxon station at Crabb Branch and Shady Grove: "I didn't do anything differently. But, man, I saw a lot of people who did. I kept an eye out, I'll say that. One day I'm pumping gas and I look over and one guy is crouching down low and three others are running in zigzag patterns toward the front door to pay."

Lieutenant John Damskey, Montgomery County Police Department and local football coach: "I urged everyone to stop practice and stop playing until we caught this guy. I told a meeting of the Capital Beltway League football commissioners, 'This guy is dangerous. This is a scary situation. Take it seriously.'"

Corporal Rob Moroney: "One of my fears is the guy would just stop and we'd go on and on working it and we'd get a false sense of security, and then six months to a year later he'd start up again."

Michael Brooks, ATF: "It created a new pickup line for women. 'Can you pump my gas for me?' I saw it work a couple of times, too. We kept wondering what we could do to catch the guy. Someone suggested using the media, but what were you going to do? Beg the guy to stop? The chief did that and did it better than anyone could expect. We knew that we would catch him, but we didn't know how many would die before we did."

Although days pass without an attack, Moose must deal with hundreds of reporters and photographers each day, talking about Dowdy and other nonde-velopments. He amuses most observers by erupting at newcomers who ask him inane questions. His temper is exacerbated by throngs of reporters from all over the world, many new to the scene, who would ask dozens of tired questions. He also shows incredible restraint, running the gantlet from the press podium to the front door of his office, 40 feet, confronted by sunglasses-wearing talking heads pointing cameras at him and needling him to answer. Why was there no more information? Why were we looking for a white van? Why hadn't the killers been caught? Moose swallows hard. His eyes dart back and forth. Then he stares at the offending reporter. His stare sometimes cows the questioner. At other times reporters try to battle through Moose's reticence. A French reporter even asks him if there's any truth to the rumor that the sniper is a distressed former member of the French Foreign Legion--which renders the frazzled chief speechless. Incredibly, for a man who once took anger management classes (Chief Moose does not suffer fools), he is accused of lacking emotion or passion. Never fully comfortable in his role as media hero, Moose bristles when pressed: "I am personally insulted if you accuse me of holding back information," he says. Or, "It's inappropriate to go into any great detail," he admonishes. "Use your imagination to put yourself in the investigators' positions."

Philadelphia TV reporter: "We had the impression they had more than they did. It would've been better if they just came out and told us they didn't have shit and then went back inside until they did."

At one point during the dry spell Geraldo Rivera shows up to add his weight to the cause. Arriving in a limo to shouts from the crowd, he's later seen at a Hooters restaurant with his brother Craig. They both apparently decided the best way to cover the story was to sign girls' bottoms, which they were seen doing with delight.

On October 18 Civilian Public Information Officer Lucille Baur threatens to expel NBC's David Bloom. Bar, making the rounds before the daily feeding, tells reporters to ask no more than one question so everyone can get a chance. Bloom politely thanks her, but says, "We'll ask questions the way we want. You can refuse to call on us. But we'll ask the questions." Bar gets upset and asks Bloom for his press credentials. There are also feuds among the reporters. Brian Wilson of Fox News is furious at ABC's John Miller for airing a story on the day of the Home Depot shooting, in which Miller reported that the police were questioning a potential suspect in Baltimore. Hours later, Linda Franklin was shot.

Brian Wilson, Fox News: "John Miller was irresponsible, pompous and contemptible. A case could be made that Linda Franklin would be alive today if John hadn't run with his story on ABC. We had all been told that the Baltimore suspect probably wasn't the guy. But Miller took this superior attitude that he was from the big city and Montgomery --County was a bunch of yokels. If I were Linda Franklin's family, I would have a bone to pick with John Miller."

Meanwhile, Gary Bald of the FBI hopes the pressure getting to everyone will eventually get to the sniper--or his acquaintances. Based on his gut, not evidence, he says, "Someone knows this guy and will turn him in." One of the investigators says, "We have a guy out there who is very cool. He shoots from a distance. He's methodical and he's torturing the police and the public. At least three of these killings have occurred when police were nearby. Very close. He figures out his escape route. He picks out his location and he sets up. The victim is merely any poor bastard who walks into his sights while he's set up. He shoots once and leaves. He doesn't care if he kills them. It's all about the thrill of the chase and the escape. He loves it. He leaves us a note. It's his game right now and he doesn't make mistakes--or at least he hasn't yet. But he will."

Unfortunately, the mammoth investigation, which is often a model of cooperation, is hand-fed a clue that it ends up overlooking. By the end of the investigation, the tip lines will have received 100,000 calls, and investigators will have pursued 16,000 leads. It seems the operation is just too big. When the sniper calls twice on October 18, ranting about a murder outside a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama, he is disregarded. Authorities now think that the pause in the shootings is attributable to the sniper's attempts to get through to them. The tip about the liquor store is probably made to prove their validity, but it will ultimately factor into the sniper's arrest.

Tip line operator #1: "I took calls about dreams. I took calls about impressions. I got one tip from a woman who said she was pretty sure her ex-husband did it because he was a son of a bitch."

Local investigator #1: "It's like wading through a sea of bullshit to find a diamond. One guy called the tip line to tell us he had consulted an astrologer."

Chief Ramsey: "If a tip sounded solid, we put it up front. If it was about a known felon, let's say, who liked to use guns and had a grudge, we'd listen to that more than a guy who had a dream. You get those calls all the time."

Local investigator #2: "Maybe we got bogged down under the sheer weight of it all. There was so little evidence, though."

Tip line operator #2: "Nut calls. I took more nut calls than you can imagine. And I got tired of all the white van calls. Do you know how many white vans with ladder racks there are in the area? I didn't have a clue until this case."

Captain Nancy Demme: "You have to remember that part of the problem was that everyone was calling up saying, 'I'm God--especially after the tarot card information came out. Who do you take seriously?"

At this point, the JOC has had three strong suspects--a man in Silver Spring, the ex-Marine in Baltimore (reported by John Miller) and two brothers. There is some optimism growing among investigators about the brothers.

ATF agent: "We thought the pair might be the guys. The shootings stopped for five days."

That Saturday, Chief Moose says, "A day without violence is a good day." He begins dropping hints that things look better. The inside money is on the brothers. Word is that lead investigators plan a celebration dinner. The story crumbles when someone gets shot at a Ponderosa Steak House off 1-95 in Virginia. The two brothers are relegated to the dust-heap of cleared suspects.

October 19, 7:59 P.M.: The victim, a 37-year-old man, is walking in a parking lot with his wife. She hears what sounds like a car backfiring. Her husband takes three steps forward and tumbles to the pavement. Police make it to the scene less than a minute later. The victim has been gut-shot. He will lose his pancreas, spleen and most of his stomach. Two cops retch as they see the contents of his dinner spill out of his organs. "They talk about what a good shot this guy is," Lieutenant John Damskey says with revulsion. "Our guys are better, much better. Ask anyone with military training. This guy isn't that good." A sweep of die woods near the Ponderosa brings a payoff: a three-page letter from the killer and a phone number.

Paramedic on-site: "I was disgusted. The shot was serious. The bad part was that it took out part of his stomach and the contents were all over him and I knew he was going to run a high risk of infection. He just had a full meal at the Ponderosa. I honestly couldn't tell what was his meal and what was him. It was all chewed up."

Three in the morning is a disturbing time to be on the fourth floor. Computers glow eerily; the cops are nervous and frustrated. Twenty-four hours ago the task force had been ready to arrest a guy. Now they were trying to make sense of what the sniper meant. A call comes in and the room is cleared. The task force speculates that the killer chose the remote location because he wanted a cleaner crime scene with less chance of a note's being overlooked.

The letter is spirited to the FBI's lab in Quantico for analysis, but investigators make a major mistake: With so much emphasis on C.S.I.-style fingerprint-dusting and microscopic inspection, investigators don't even read the note in time to call the killer at a pay phone at nine A.M. on Sunday. Because of die language in the letter they realize a team is behind the shootings. Moose, Mike Bouchard and Gary Bald slip over to Moose's office. They gather around an octagonal table to figure out how to deal with the madmen, who have included a disturbing postscript: "Your children are not safe anywhere at any time." Moose announces he wants to talk to the person who left a message for him at the Ponderosa Steak House: "Call us at die number you provided."

ATF agent: "Man, there were a lot of hotheads in the JOC that day. The head guys all walked back and threw things against the wall. One guy was screaming, 'We fucked it up. He's never going to stop killing.' Shit like that. We were real frustrated. We were putting in the hours."

Corporal Rob Moroney: "The moment of the greatest concern was the postscript in the letter. How do you tell your children? How do you tell small children that someone they don't know might want to kill them for no reason? I live just a mile and a half from the first shootings. I had to alter my life and worry about my family. I took that to work with me every day."

Local detective: "You cannot believe the pressure that it caused. We didn't know whether to talk to them or not say anything. We carefully considered everything we did publicly and even then I don't think it helped."

Meanwhile, FBI agents are taking advantage of information in the letter. The letter begins with a complaint: "We have tried to contact you to start negotiation, But the incompitence of your forces in (i) Mongomery Police 'Officer Derick' at 240-773-5000 Friday, (ii) Rockville Police Dept. 'female officer' at 301-309-3100, (iii) Task force 'FBI' 'female' at 1888-324-8800 (four times), (iv) Priest at Ashland, (v) CNN Washington DC at 202-898-7900. These people took of calls for a Hoax or Joke, so your failure to respond has cost you five lives." They also have a foolish scheme, asking cops to transfer funds to a defunct, stolen credit card ("What do they think this is, Mission Impossible?" a cop asks). The FBI pays a visit to a priest in nearby Ashland, who recounts what he thought was a crank call in which a man demanded he look into a robbery-murder in Montgomery, Alabama. That Sunday night, they reach detectives in Alabama who know exactly what they're talking about. By Monday afternoon, a package of evidence--including a fingerprint--is on its way to Maryland.

Monday morning, October 21, the snipers respond to Moose and call the police. The call is traced, and cops immediately stake out a Virginia phone booth, but they are too late. Dozens of cops in unmarked vehicles close in on a white van near the phone and apprehend two Hispanic men. WTOP radio reports the men taken into custody stagger and appear impaired, even at eight A.M. The men are not the snipers.

Local police officer #1: "I can tell you what happened. These two day laborers happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They'd been out partying all night and decided to call home to let everyone know they were OK. We saw the white minivan and, voom, swooped them up."

Local police officer #2: "It was Cheech and Chong meet the Keystone Kops. 'Honey, I'll be home soon. Um, maybe not!' We stormed the place like it was the beaches of Normandy."

Chief Moose issues a statement on Monday night: "We could not hear everything you said. The message was garbled. Please call us back so we can clearly understand." (While Moose is the man everyone assumes the snipers want to talk with, he never actually gets on the phone with them.) Behind the scenes, investigators find a match to the Alabama fingerprint and trace it to John . Lee Malvo, a juvenile who had trouble with immigration after an incident between his mother and a man named John Allen Muhammad.

October 22, 5:56 A.M.: The sniper shoots 35-year-old bus driver Conrad Johnson in Silver Spring, Maryland. For die fifth time he avoids a dragnet. Police are devastated. Another letter is found.

Derek Baliles, Montgomery County Police Department: "When the bus driver got shot, it was like a punch in the gut. It was the most stressful moment. You think you're making progress and he comes back into our backyard and kills someone in public service. It was a message that wasn't garbled."

Michael Brooks, ATF: "Many people were tired. Chief Moose and Mike Bouchard came and talked to us at the JOC. They said, 'We know you're frustrated. Look it up in the dictionary. This is big-time. This is important. Dig deep.' They got us all pumped up to do the work we had to do."

Mike Bouchard, ATF: "Moose and I talked to the troops about keeping their heads on straight. Sometimes it was tough to get the guys to go home at night. They'd stick around for 15 to 18 hours and we'd have to say, 'Your shift is over. Go home. Get some rest. Take a shower, for heaven's sake.' "

Steve Handelsman, NBC News: "The most dangerous moment was after the Ponderosa shooting. It increased when Moose started using the podium to communicate to the killers. That was dramatic. After the bus-driver shooting, everything happened in double time. Once the police figured out the killers were referring to Montgomery, Alabama and not Maryland, we finally had information. Otherwise they never would have been caught."

FBI agent: "All the psych stuff only really started to help out when we got the guy sending us notes. Our strategy then was to be polite and show him respect. Keep everything cool. It was a real sock in the gut when he killed that last guy. It made us redouble our efforts."

Later that day, Moose follows the sniper's written request and repeats a curious line from a folktale about a duck in a noose. By Wednesday morning Muhammad's name has led to his license, which has led to his blue Caprice. Incredibly, the computers spit out the astonishing fact that the police have come across the Caprice 10 times during the investigation.

Chief Moose announces they are looking for Muhammad and a companion. Inside the JOC, every television is tuned to the news, where on the West Coast a house is being searched and a stump of a tree dug up and probed for bullet fragments. Police don't initially release Malvo's name to the public because he is a juvenile. They also don't tell the public that he has been seen in a blue Chevy Caprice, nor do they give out the license plate number. WTOP radio and other reporters, using confidential sources, broadcast the make and model of the car as well as its New Jersey license plate number.

October 24, 12:54 A.M.: Muhammad and Malvo are spotted by a Kentucky truck driver, asleep in a rest stop outside of Frederick, Maryland. The trucker calls police, keeps his distance and watches. A state police car pulls up and checks it out. He, too, keeps his distance. Soon a SWAT team, supplemented by state troopers, heads to the rest stop. Two hours after the call, they are ready to make a move. They pop open the windshield, toss in some flash-bang grenades and then haul the two men from the car. "The younger one shit himself bad," says one of the cops. "But those grenades can do that to you." Later, after they got Malvo cleaned up, they took him to Baltimore, where he tried to escape through a ventilation duct in an office. "He saw too many movies. You can't get out that way," the cop explains.

Steve Eldridge, WTOP Radio: "The irony is, the chief kept giving us so much grief. So how did the two guys get captured? From the license plate number. A number that die chief wouldn't give us. We got it from other sources. We put it out there. They vilified the press. We did our job."

Lieutenant Colonel Steven Wright: "In 34 years on the job it was the most surprising case I ever worked. My biggest fear was they would decide to go out in a blaze of glory. As with most criminals, usually it's the conscience or mouth that does you in. I didn't think they'd go like sheep. I thought they'd go like badgers."

Steve Handelsman, NBC News: "Basically, the snipers weren't caught. They turned themselves in. They gave up. God knows how long it could've gone on if they wanted to continue. They tried to talk to a priest and that didn't work. They called the hotline and that didn't work. All along the chief encourages them to call in and the killers appear to be trying to do everything the chief asks them to do. But the people on the other end of the line either didn't know what they were doing or were overwhelmed. You can't expect the snipers to be as polished as Tom Brokaw. You have to listen to them. If they call in and say, 'I'm die guy,' you have to listen to that. The way things went, with everyone looking for a white guy in a white van, these two guys could have driven up to police headquarters, gotten out of their car and announced to everyone that they were die killers and no one would arrest them--except maybe Geraldo, who would have taken them to Hooters. It was a remarkable myth that we caught the snipers. If they had never called in, they wouldn't have been caught. These guys called in time after time and it was stupidly handled. I don't know why they did it and don't know if we'll ever know why they did it. I spoke to Chief Moose for 45 minutes about it, and he doesn't know why they did it, either."

Profiler: "Let's be honest. It was nothing we did. If it wasn't for their narcissism, we might never have caught them.

"He Just Had a Full Meal at the Ponderosa. I Honestly Couldn't Tell What was His Meal and What was Him."--Paramedic

Sniper Raw Data

Number of Sniper Homicides from 1976 to 2002: 514

Sniper Shootings are Twice As Likely as Homicides to Remain Unsolved

Police Averages About a 60 Percent Success Rate Solving Sniper Homicides

The National Average for Solving All Homicides is Around 75 Percent

Number of Years it Took for the Law to Identify and Arrest a Sniper in Ohio Who Killed Five Hunters and Fisherman from 1989 to 1992: Three

Until They Found the Gun, Police had a List of 30 Types of Rifles That Could Have been Used by the Beltway Snipers.

According to James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University Criminologist, The Average Age of Snipers s 26

Percentage of Snipers Under the Age of 40: 91

Percentage That are Men: 94

Teenagers Account for 32 Percent of All Sniper Attacks

Percentage of Snipers Who are Black: 43

Percentage of Serial Killers Who are Black: 22

Percentage of Snipers Who are White: 55

Percentage of Serial Killers Who Work in Teams: 28

"If We Seemed Confused, We Were. We Were Nervous. We Didn't Want to Disappoint."--Chief Moose