October 23, 5:30 a.m. The day started like every day of the past three weeks had. For me, it began with about three hours of sleep, a shower, and Pop Tarts and a granola bar for breakfast. Nothing different—except for a renewed hope that we were finally on the killers’ trail and it was only a matter of time until the assembled posse of nearly a thousand law enforcement officers found them and closed the noose around their necks. As I climbed into car 662 and headed south on I-270 back to the operations center, I was hoping to hear over the police radio that while I slept the snipers had been captured, or at least that all the pieces had come together and there was a specific lookout issued. But there was nothing new to report.
As I drove south, I listened to both the police radio and the car radio. The police radio sounded nothing but normal—troopers were active, making traffic stops. The difference was that there were a lot more cruisers on the road, and they were unusually active for so early in the morning, well before sunrise. Troopers were calling out every traffic stop, and other troopers were responding as backup. I felt anxious listening to the police radio. I couldn’t help fearing that some trooper, deputy, or county officer had stumbled upon the Caprice and paid the ultimate price for the effort. The vast majority of cops out there working the street didn’t have the same level of information and knowledge that I had, and that gnawed at me. What if one of my brothers or sisters got killed because they didn’t know that the focus of the investigation was turning toward tracking down a blue Caprice? Because of all the leaks, I understood that information about this Caprice was being kept close to the vest. And if this news got out prematurely, the press would be all over it, and we would lose any advantage the narrowing of the focus had gained us. But still I didn’t like it. Cops who needed to know this detail may not know it. They were still focusing on the damn white van.
I scanned through the stations on the car radio, but there was nothing new on any of the news channels. Instead, I was hearing the same repeated drivel from so-called experts as to who the killers were likely to be. They were also spewing out theories about what the police were probably doing to further this investigation, or should be doing. One damn thing I was sure of. If I ever needed an idea about what I should do next, all I had to do was turn on the radio or TV, and some expert would tell me what the hell I should be doing.
The media hadn’t picked up on the fact that we were narrowing our field and were beginning to look for specific individuals. It amazed me to realize that when the feds really wanted to keep something under their hat, they could. Since the first letter was leaked within a few hours, I was surprised that the identities of the persons of interest hadn’t been leaked to the press. There were all kinds of stories and speculation being floated in the media, but no mention of the facts. I wanted to believe that the press were finally on board and were willing to withhold information in the best interests of doing their part to help us get these guys. But more likely the leaker was getting nervous that he or she would be discovered. Or maybe the leaker had realized that the leaks could have contributed to some of the shootings and was now keeping quiet because of a belated case of morals. Whatever the reason, it was a positive.
As I made my way to the operations center, I called Lieutenant Chase of the Frederick City Police Department and brought him up to speed. I told him about the Caprice but let him know it still wasn’t verified. “We’re waiting to hear back from other investigative teams from across the country,” I said. “We’re starting to focus on the Caprice, but we still can’t discount the possibility of the white van or truck, since it kept coming up as being seen at just about all of the shootings. My gut tells me these bastards are in the Caprice and the van is nothing but bullshit, but I just can’t completely discount it yet.”
“Dave,” said Chase, ever the professional, “can I pass what you told me on to the chief? I’m also worried about one of our cops blindly running into these guys.”
“Do what you need to do to keep your cops safe,” I said. “This can’t get to the press until the timing is right, but I know these bastards are lying low in our community. I just know it.”
“I think these guys are up here too,” he said. “It makes too much sense for them not to be. Anyway, I’ll pass the word personally, and there will be nothing put out over the radio about any of this. But I’ll make sure our cops at least know about the damn Caprice.”
“This will be over soon, Tom,” I said. “I can feel it. And when it ends, it’ll end in a gunfight.”
The concern was thick in his response. “Stay safe, buddy. You’re probably right. This may not end well. We just have to make sure that in the end the cops win this fight.”
“We’ll win,” I said. “But at what cost?”
I hung up the phone and continued south toward the operations center, wondering what this day was going to bring.
When an investigation finally gets to the stage of identifying a person or persons of interest, when should the police go public with that information? This is a question that every cop who has ever worked a major crime has wrestled with. It’s not always the right decision to go public, and often more things can go wrong once information has been released. An innocent person can be ruined for life, for example, as in the case of the Olympic bombing in Atlanta. The suspect whose name and face were plastered all over the press turned out to be innocent, but the police couldn’t take back the damage that had been done. On the other hand, if the name and description of a suspect aren’t released quickly enough, we run the risk of more citizens becoming victims. The higher the profile of the case, the greater the conundrum. This sniper case was now all over the news, every day, worldwide.
By going public, there’s a real risk that we’ll give the bad guys helpful information. Sometimes it’s better to just let them stay comfortable and unaware. If we were to put out a BOLO and it went public—a given, since the media were listening to police radio traffic—the killers would likely dump their car and steal something else. They could just jump from vehicle to vehicle until they simply vanished. That’s what I would have done, and I was surprised that they hadn’t been doing this all along. We had been monitoring stolen car reports from the entire region since the shooting started, but it was evident through our analysis that they were still using the Caprice. Once we caught them, it would become clear why they didn’t want to abandon their ride. But this key to their crimes was also sloppy on their part, giving us a chance to track down the car with them in it.
For the past three weeks all our efforts had been toward identifying a suspect. But now that we had both suspects and a suspect vehicle, we shifted gears. The new goal was to find where the suspects were hiding, and our team agreed that the best place to start was with the two killers’ electronic footprint. The Caprice had to have gas. It had to be moving around, which meant there was a trail out there somewhere. If we could find where they had been, it might help us predict where they might go.
In 2002 there still weren’t a lot of traffic cameras around the metropolitan area, but there were a few. There were also plenty of other security cameras attached to government buildings and shopping malls. Security camera footage is only as good as the camera and the recording medium it uses. The old VHS tapes were of such poor quality that they were almost useless. By the time of the sniper case, the newer digital systems were showing up here and there, and they provided much cleaner images. The problem was (and continues to be to this day) a matter of money and attitude. Private companies hate to pay for security because it comes directly out of the bottom line and contributes nothing to profit. But there are insurance benefits to having security cameras, so even small businesses had cameras just like the big-box retail stores and corporate offices did. Mostly, though, they recorded on VHS. In order to save money, VHS tapes were used, then copied over multiple times. The more they were copied over, the worse the quality became, until all you could see were shadows. Since nobody ever looked at these tapes until they were needed, most managers had no idea that their cameras and video recording equipment were useless.
Now that we knew the suspects were in possession of at least one stolen credit card, we instructed the credit card company to activate the card and attach a flag. We would be notified immediately if they attempted to use it. We were looking at all parking tickets and tollbooth violations that had been issued throughout the region. The idea was to cast a large enough net covering a wide enough range of data and information. If these guys had popped up anywhere, or were going to pop up anywhere in the immediate future, we would know when and where as quickly as possible. I instructed our group to focus our intelligence searches to the north of the killers’ preferred hunting ground; that, I strongly believed, was where we were going to find them.
By the evening of October 23, all the verifiable information concerning Muhammad, Malvo, and the blue Caprice had been verified. We issued flyers with their pictures, along with the plate and tag number information. We found a picture of an old Caprice similar to what we knew they were driving, and that was also placed on the wanted flyer. It was decision time for us. We were done playing defense. It was time to go on the hunt.