Friday, October 4, 2002. Before leaving for home the night before, I had been assigned to report to a local National Guard armory at 5 a.m. The armory is several miles from Montgomery County Police headquarters and fairly centrally located to all the shooting locations. Troopers, including criminal investigators, narcs, and my own Intelligence Division troopers were being reassigned from headquarters to the armory. They were to report by 5:30 a.m. I was to brief them and hand out assignments.
I had not gotten much rest in the few hours I’d had. The events of the day before had kept invading my sleep. I’ve always worn my emotions on my sleeve. Even though we were taught in the academy not to take our jobs personally, I can’t operate that way. Every crime I have ever investigated is personal. It has always felt good to slap the cuffs on the bad guys, if for no other reason than to make sure they understand that they didn’t get away with it. To me, it is my personal responsibility to look under the bed and kick that monster hiding there right in the teeth. Whoever it was that was killing citizens at random, that was now the monster under the bed. I wanted to do everything in my ability to drag that monster out. Lying in bed pretending to sleep wasn’t accomplishing that. I was angry, as was every cop in Maryland and D.C. that night.
The killing of Pascal Charlot opened another can of worms as far as the investigation was concerned. In addition to bringing in the D.C. Metropolitan Police by extending the shootings across the state line, it also officially brought the resources of the federal government and federal law enforcement agencies into the investigation. As I had sat watching the late news in total disbelief, once again the thought of some organized terrorist cell preyed on my mind. This was the only rational explanation I could come up with. Were there multiple sniper teams operating in the area? What were we up against? I believed that these were well-trained and organized killers hiding in plain sight. One thing was sure. This was not going to stop until we stopped them, and there were likely going to be more people dying at their hand. So far, all law enforcement had been able to do was show up at each scene with another body bag.
Before I had turned off the TV, Captain McAndrew had called to make sure I was aware of what had happened and to inform me that the D.C. Metropolitan Police were working the case and Montgomery County detectives were on their way to the District to compare notes and join the investigations. Our plan hashed out for the next day hadn’t changed. Since I was not a primary investigator, I wasn’t privy to all the investigative details. That was frustrating. But my mission was to provide support at this point, and to have our troopers working as a team to do our best to suppress the killings.
I was awake and dressed by 3:30 a.m. As I did every day, I checked my weapon before heading to work, only this day I double- and triple-checked it. A trooper never knows when his sidearm slides into the holster if it will be for the last time. It’s part of the job, and that day I couldn’t help but wonder. I wasn’t afraid, but we were up against an enemy that had proven their ability to kill from long distance without hesitation. This wasn’t like any other foe I had ever encountered.
I made a point to kiss my wife goodbye. She was awake, and stirred as I kissed her. We embraced, and it seemed like she held on a little longer than usual. I don’t know for sure what she was thinking, but she understands what we in law enforcement face. She understands how her trooper thinks, and knows his dedication and tenacity. I also looked in on my daughter. As I watched her sleep, it reaffirmed my reasons for being in law enforcement. I wondered what kind of world she would be growing up in: a safe and carefree one, or one in which terrorism had changed the fiber of the culture?
Even though my shift started at 5 a.m., I arrived at my assigned location by 4:15. Those troopers not in uniform had been instructed to go to the National Guard armory in Rockville to get their assignments; uniformed troopers had been directed to the Rockville Barrack to receive theirs. The uniforms were going to be doing pretty much the same thing they had done the day before, except there were now close to one hundred troopers working the area. At least one trooper had been assigned to each school in the county, to patrol the area. The other troopers were to continue aggressive patrol on the interstate and Route 355, which all evidence suggested might be the primary killing zone for the sniper.
Captain McAndrew was already at the armory when I arrived. He was going over the list of nonuniform troopers we had to work with. He looked like he’d had about as much sleep as I had. Over the next hour, criminal investigators, narcs, and other nonuniformed personnel arrived from all over the state. Some of them had driven more than three hours to get to the briefing. The tension in the big classroom was now thick, and the troopers wore it like skin. There was some apprehension about the fact that a lot of these troopers had never worked in Montgomery County before and weren’t familiar with the area. Still, they were troopers, and troopers follow orders. So they were all there ready to take on whatever assignment came their way.
McAndrew briefed us all on what had occurred the day and the evening before. We were told that there was nothing new to report as far as what or who we were looking for. The odd thing about that was that a BOLO for a blue Caprice had been broadcast over the Metropolitan Police radio the night before, yet law enforcement in Maryland never received that message. In Maryland, we were still focusing on a white box truck or van.
The best information we had was that our suspects were possibly two guys in a white box truck or van, and that they were armed with at least one rifle and had demonstrated a kill-at-will pattern. Our assignments for the day: move around the Route 355 corridor and conduct surveillance in and around shopping centers, parking lots, and gas stations. Those of us who drove unmarked rollers (easily identified as police cars being driven by police officers) were told to be visible at all times in order to help ease the growing public apprehension. The undercover guys in covert vehicles were to concentrate on trying to spot anybody suspicious, out of place, or who appeared to be casing a location.
That was the plan. It was just a stopgap measure, intended to get as many cops on the street as possible. As for the investigative plan, it was still being formed. The feds were coming into the investigation, and the entire operation was in need of serious organization. Meanwhile, the rest of us needed strong communication, and that was still a problem. The Montgomery County police had assigned the state police as many handheld radios as they could spare, but there still weren’t enough to go around. We divided the radios among us so that anything new being broadcast over the Montgomery County police radio could be relayed to us.
After being briefed and assigned areas, the troopers hit the road. I didn’t have any specific assignment. My job was to make sure I could respond to the barrack or Montgomery County Police Department headquarters if needed. I was on the road by 5:30. I stayed in the Rockville area, driving slowly and observing everything. I tried to get into the heads of the shitheads; I drove to all the locations of the killings, with the exception of the one in the District. I wanted to get a feel for the crime scenes and, more important, a feel for the surroundings. If the targets were not specific based on who they were or the color of their skin, and they had no connection to one another, then the killer or killers were looking for environments that were easy to stalk, and where a target would be vulnerable.
At each location, I was struck by the number of people out and about. From that, it would be easy to think that the killings hadn’t deterred people from their everyday habits; but I saw different. From my vantage point, I noticed that as people parked and exited their cars, they looked around much more than usual. They weren’t lingering in the parking lot or strolling along casually. People walked with purpose; they took no time to stand in a parking lot for idle chat. They went directly to the building where they were going or went directly to their cars and got in as soon as they could get the doors open. The killers were already inside their heads.
About the locations themselves, I noticed that in each case there was a parking lot either at the scene, beside it, or across the street. All the shootings were close to the street, so that the killers could make their shot quickly and get out of the area easily—well before the police would have a chance to respond. Judging by the places they chose, the killers weren’t looking to take on the police right now. Still, I was confident that a trooper or police officer who appeared on the scene would be in grave danger: if the circumstances were right, the killers would take the shot.
Each shopping center, parking lot, or convenience store I came to, I entered slowly, trying to spot areas where I would go if I were the stalker. I studied sight lines, angles, and visibility. Then I watched. How could a killer blend in? Where could he hide? How would he leave the area quickly and quietly after taking the shot? When I decided what I would do and where I would go if I lived in their sick little world, then those were the areas of parking lots that I concentrated on, looking for anything, or anyone carrying something that would have been about the right length as a rifle. Every white van or box truck that came into view I watched intently. It’s amazing how many were on the road. With each stop I made and each area I surveilled, I was hopeful—maybe I would get lucky. But I was also realistic enough to know it was a very slim chance.
By early afternoon, the ATF had bullets and fragments in four of the seven shootings. The ATF confirmed that they had come from the same .223-caliber assault rifle, likely a Bushmaster.
Then, at 2:30 that afternoon, Caroline Seawell came out of a Michaels craft store in the Spotsylvania Mall in Fredericksburg, Virginia, thirty-five miles south of Washington. As she loaded her bags into the back of her minivan, a high-speed bullet struck her in the back. She was badly wounded. A witness told police that he saw a white van fleeing the scene. Another witness reported seeing a dark, older-model Chevrolet slowly exiting the mall moments after the shooting.
Thanks to this new shooting, the case had now expanded to two states and the D.C. area. Virginia authorities and the Virginia State Police were now involved in the case. The search area had just grown exponentially. The snipers appeared to be heading south. Also, this was the second shooting incident at a Michaels craft store—the first one was the shot fired through the window of a Michaels store two nights before. Another commonality: two of the victims had been driving minivans. Was this some sick attack on the stereotypical soccer mom?