During my narcotics investigation days, I used a program called Case Explorer to conduct link analysis. It helped us track street dealers and link them back to their supply source. Narcotics officers and troopers would enter everything they had—drug tips, information about everybody they arrested, known associates of the people arrested, and places they frequented. The program would link this information together, helping law enforcement get a clearer picture faster.
At the moment, however, the Case Explorer program was undergoing further development to make it more comprehensive—to be able to receive drug data from local, city, county, state, and federal agencies. The people working on it were at the Baltimore/Washington High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), and we weren’t sure if Case Explorer was available or, if it was, if it would even help.
Captain McAndrew called Lieutenant Colonel Tom Carr, HIDTA director and a former Maryland state trooper, and Carr agreed to dedicate his staff to helping us with this sniper case. The bad news was that the new, improved Case Explorer program wasn’t ready to be rolled out. But right away—that very weekend—Carr sent us three young programmers, along with the program as it then existed. He said his programmers thought they could modify Case Explorer to suit our needs.
Within five minutes of arrival, these guys got to work. On top of modifying Case Explorer to do what we needed it to do, they were rewriting code for Rapid Start so the programs could talk to each other and share information. As the data sets were brought into our intelligence section in various formats, these programmers worked nonstop to convert that data to a format that would work with Case Explorer. It was a monumental task, and these young tech guys tackled it head-on. Over the next three weeks I would see them scratch their heads, cuss, and slam their laptops shut numerous times. But they never quit. And they never said that anything we requested of them could not be done.
While the programmers worked, our investigation went into overdrive. Over that first weekend, our intelligence group began round-the-clock operation. I was assigned the day shift, and Detective Sergeant Cornwell was assigned the night shift. It was supposed to be twelve-hour shifts, but in order to make sure we stayed on the same page, it was more like eighteen-hour shifts. That same weekend, the press conferences increased in frequency. Chief Moose was now out in front of the press twice a day. The case was now receiving twenty-four-hour coverage on all the cable news channels. Every news conference was being broadcast live as breaking news on all the network and local TV channels. Any number of experts were being paraded in front of TV cameras to offer their opinions on who the snipers were and what their motivation was behind the killings. These included former homicide detectives from Los Angeles and New York; former FBI agents; and former retired military colonels and generals, all offering their expert opinion. The consensus among the talking heads was that this was obviously some sort of terrorist plot aimed at hindering the United States government. Well, holy shit, I thought. What the hell am I doing here if these guys have it all figured out from New York or wherever the hell they were broadcasting from?
The comments were irritating when they weren’t totally laughable. One of the common threads from these experts was that it was important never to discuss police tactics via public media, because the perpetrators might be listening. Then right after spewing their disclaimer, they would discuss in detail what the police were doing and the investigative techniques that were probably being employed or that should be employed—in their expert opinion.
The other clear message being regurgitated among the media was that the FBI needed to step in and take complete control of the investigation. The “local agencies” weren’t capable of handling the case, the press said. Yet the FBI had made it perfectly clear that the primary responsibility for the investigation rested with the Montgomery County Police Department, and that the FBI was there, as a committed partner, at the request of Montgomery County. Since the case had crossed state lines, the FBI would have been within their authority to take over the investigation, but they had chosen not to do so, which we greatly appreciated. I think they didn’t want to jeopardize the close relationship that these local, city, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies had with one another—a closeness that had come about during the attack on the Pentagon the year before. All these agencies and our intelligence officers met frequently and talked on a weekly basis. There was already a great deal of trust among us.
The federal government has a lot of rules and protocols that have to be followed in order to free up funding for a massive investigation like this. One of those protocols was to name the investigation and task force, which is how we became the SNIPMUR task force—short for “sniper murders.” Unfortunately, the word SNIPMUR makes the person saying it sound like he has a terrible lisp. The name did result in considerable dark cop humor, but none of us really cared what they called us, as long as we got our funding. We needed the joint operations center built and fully operational.
During that same first weekend of the case, the FBI had brought in their profilers to assist us. Their best guess, based on what little bit of information we had at the time, was that we were probably looking for two or three white guys with military background or training. The FBI was also assisting with preparing for the frequent press conferences in an effort to manage the information being released and to help solicit public cooperation. During one of the press conferences that first weekend, the Maryland governor, Parris Glendening, was paraded out in front of the press at police headquarters. He was supposed to reassure the nervous public that the full resources of the state were being utilized in this investigation. But then he went off script and challenged the snipers by calling them cowards and telling them that we will protect our children.
Our intelligence group watched the news conference on one of the TVs in the classroom. We all sat there in silence as the governor called the killers cowards. I remember uttering, “Oh, shit,” and I think that captured the collective response of the dozen or so of us in the room. We were stunned. Governor Glendening had unwittingly just put a bull’s-eye on the forehead of every child in Maryland.
At 10 p.m. on Sunday, I called it a day. I was exhausted and wanted to go home and get a few hours sleep before coming back Monday morning and doing it all over again. Heading home, I thought about all we had accomplished over the weekend. We still didn’t have any tangible leads, but at least now we were organized. The old adage “Plan the work, work the plan” is extremely important, especially in an investigation like this. Our plan was being implemented even as I drove toward home. Detective Sergeant Cornwell was working the night shift. His goal was to use that overnight time to get Case Explorer loaded on all our computer equipment, as well as to have his team assist the HIDTA programmers in modifying the software so it would be ready to receive our data.
That was all well and good, but as I drove I couldn’t help worrying that the governor’s words would come back to bite us. I’m no psychologist, but if I were the snipers and I had heard what the governor said, I would take it as a direct challenge. Let’s hope they haven’t heard, I thought. Though since the radio and TV media were rebroadcasting the governor’s words nearly around the clock, there was little chance of that.
We were already in protection mode—I knew that. We had every school in Montgomery County covered, and all the schools in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia had been alerted. Now all we could do was hope that our efforts would be good enough.
The police radio was relatively quiet, and traffic was noticeably light on Interstate 270 as I headed north to Frederick County. Many of the vehicles on the road were marked Maryland State Police cruisers. I stopped several times, to back up one trooper after another, as each pulled over yet another white box truck or van.