Just a few seconds after Ballard declared the scene secure, three or four state police cars came screaming into the rest area, screeching brakes and sliding tires in front of the Caprice, blocking my view of the two killers as I approached. Trooper Draskovic stepped out of one of the cars, and Corporal Poffenberger and his K-9 partner got out of the other.
The joint operations center was asking me to confirm the identities. Time to switch from incident commander to crime scene commander. I didn’t want excited and overzealous troopers, agents, deputies, and cops screwing this thing up by being too aggressive. Apparently Major Ballard had also thought about this as well. As I came closer, Ballard was ordering everybody away from the car, and he had formed a perimeter. We couldn’t take any risk with the integrity of whatever evidence was in that car. One little mistake could cause an issue at a suppression hearing, which could result in some or all of the evidence getting thrown out of court; in that case these two suspects could walk.
A large roll of yellow police tape appeared out of the trunk of one of the cop cars. “I want at least thirty yards cleared around that car with nobody inside of the perimeter,” I ordered.
More law enforcement officers, including Captain McAndrew, my major—Tom Bowers—and Captain Bernie Forsyth, the lead investigator from Montgomery County Police Department, were pulling into the lot.
I walked up to the two suspects and, for the first time, looked into their faces. I immediately recognized both of them from photos: John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. I grabbed the cell phone and reported to the command staff back at the JOC: “We have positive identification on both suspects, identified as John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. The suspects are secured.”
I hung up. I’d had enough of talking to those guys for one night. Plus, I had to shift gears from hunter and incident commander to criminal investigator charged with making sure this was handled in a professional way. It wasn’t just excited cops I had to worry about; I also had to watch the brass who, because of their rank or position, felt the need to just walk up to the car and touch something.
I began taking stock of the surroundings as more and more cops came flooding into the rest area. As I looked again into the face of Muhammad less than ten feet away from me, I saw a man in fear. The fear was in his eyes. He was defeated and looked like he was expecting to die at any moment. One of the TANGO team guys was standing over him, with another less than a step away.
I walked over to where Malvo sat. Drak towered over the kid, and a state police German shepherd stood snarling just inches from his face. I was staring into the face of a killer. Malvo glared back at me. There was no fear in his face. He wasn’t intimidated at all, by any of us. I had little doubt that, given the chance, he would have tried to kill every one of us. But guess what? I wasn’t intimidated by this little puke. “Trooper Draskovik,” I said, “if this shithead so much as farts, snap his fucking neck.”
“Yes, sir, no problem at all,” Drak said. He had a grin on his face from ear to ear.
Quickly, decisions were made to get these two the hell out of there to a more secure location. The suspects were to be taken back to Montgomery County and directly to Seven Locks, the county jail in Rockville, not far from the JOC and Montgomery County Police headquarters. A police car would lead the procession, occupied by a trooper and two TANGO team members. That would be followed by another cruiser with one of the suspects in the middle of the back seat, with a TANGO team member on either side of him. One of the Montgomery County homicide investigators would ride shotgun. Following that car would be one of our K-9 cars, which would be followed by another cruiser with the other suspect stuffed in the back just like the first one. That car would be followed by another K-9 unit, followed by another trail car containing the driver and two more of the TANGO team members. The bastards would be what we used to call “cuffed and stuffed.”
They would be driven down the interstate highway with lights and sirens, not slowing or stopping for anyone, and not permitting any other vehicle to interfere with the motorcade. There would be a state police helicopter “Trooper 3” providing air support for the motorcade.
We expected that word had gotten out. There was no way the media wasn’t aware that the snipers had been captured, so we prepped for the potential of news helicopters waiting just outside the no-fly zone, and for news trucks, reporters, and photojournalists hoping to snap a picture of the suspects. We expected them to be stationed all along the interstate and trying to get close.
Muhammad was the first to be moved. He had to be helped to his feet and was obviously very weak-kneed. He was led to the back door of the waiting car. When Malvo was told to stand, he just glared. “I won’t tell you again, asshole,” said Drak, reaching down with one hand and grabbing him by the back of his shirt and neck and picking him up off the curb. He was then shoved into the back of Drak’s car like a sack of potatoes, but never said one word. Within a minute the cars were arranged in proper order, and off they went. My cruiser had been moved, and the truckers were permitted to leave. The rest area had been cleared.
Major Bowers, Captain McAndrew, and Captain Forsyth huddled to decide what would happen next. Forsyth put his arm around my shoulder and, with a big smile on his face, said, “Thank God it was you up here and not one of the agents from out of town, or this would have likely turned into a real cluster.”
“No problem, Captain,” I said. “Just another day at the office.” That was the first smile I had seen on Forsyth’s face in three weeks—since before the killing spree began.
Now that the suspects had been removed and there were no longer any exigent circumstances, the team decided it was time for a search-and-seizure warrant. And it would be by the book—we would wait until it was prepared and signed by a judge prior to any search of the car. None of us wanted to be the one who made the mistake that allowed these guys to walk. As the saying goes, “Don’t be the guy. Don’t be the guy to screw up in fifteen seconds all the collective work of a thousand cops. Don’t be the guy who caused an entire case to go down the toilet and let killers walk.”
We didn’t know where the sniper rifle was, if it was in the car or, possibly, hidden somewhere in the woods. We felt good that we had the right car and the right suspects, but we really needed that rifle. McAndrew and I stayed behind and made sure the crime scene was secured. Forsyth and Bowers headed toward Montgomery County to make sure the prisoners were being properly tucked into the county jail, that a plan to interview them was worked out, and that everything was done correctly.
The sun had begun to come up. On the horizon was the promise of a crisp, clear, beautiful fall day in Western Maryland. This would be the first day in more than three weeks that the public could finally relax and feel safe. They were waking up to the news streaming out of this little rest area. The nightmare was over.
The roadblocks had been lifted, and I could hear traffic moving both westward and eastward along I-70. This early in the morning, a growing stream of traffic would be heading east toward Washington and Baltimore. Any delays caused by the drama would surely be forgiven by a relieved public. No more hiding behind fender wells just to put gasoline in their cars. No more running to and from store entrances. No more shades drawn or fear of going outside.
The rest area was now full of federal agents, a few troopers who had been stationed to maintain the police line, and Montgomery County detectives and brass arriving from all the agencies. Not knowing what was going to be needed, I put in a request to have the recruit class going through basic state police training in Pikesville bused over. We would need a grid search conducted of the entire rest area, including the woods, in the event the suspects had left something behind. The class arrived in an hour.
The early morning chill made me shiver, and I decided to walk back to the end of the exit ramp and move my car closer. Both ends of the rest area were still blocked off, now by state highway trucks with arrow boards instead of police cruisers. The state police command bus had been moved into the rest area, providing a warm place to rest and get a cup of coffee. I started in that direction, then decided to visit the men’s room first.
Outside the restroom, a man was standing there leaning on some big trash cans on wheels. In the rush of the arrest, I had forgotten about the two witnesses. We had been able to locate the killers, secure the area, and make the arrest without ever having to fire a shot, and none of it would have happened without those two people. This one was the rest area custodian.
“How you doing?” I said. “You okay?”
He was the one whose call brought all of us here. He was also a mentally challenged person.
He looked up and asked, “Lieutenant, did I do a good thing?”
“You have no idea what a great thing you did. As far as I’m concerned, you are a real Maryland hero. You spotted the snipers, then found the other guy and had him make the call.”
His expression turned serious, and he was upset. “I don’t know anything about being a hero, but I’m worried about my job. I didn’t get around to emptying all of the trash cans like I’m supposed to do.”
I put my arm around him. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. It was our fault for keeping everyone out of the area, so there probably isn’t going to be much trash in the cans. Besides, I’ll make sure I clear it with your boss.”
He looked at me and thought about it for a second, then nodded and pushed his big rolling cans out toward the truck lot to check on the trash out that way. I have no idea if he realized how important a role he had played in stopping two cold-blooded killers. If he did, he wasn’t overly impressed with himself; he was just someone doing what he thought was the right thing to do.
I finally made it out to where I had left car 662. From there I could look out across the interstate to the eastbound rest area—there must have been at least twenty satellite news trucks set up in the parking lot on that side. I don’t know what they expected to see from that location, because this rest area wasn’t even in their sight line, much less the parked Caprice. But at least they weren’t over here trying to get in the way. Still, they had their jobs to do. As much as it pained me to think about it, the media had played a role in helping us communicate with the snipers. They were invested in this outcome too.