How the Beltway Sniper came to face death in Virginia

It happened seven years ago. The leaves were falling, just like now. As a nation, we were staggering through the first anniversary of 9/11. Then someone began hunting humans around the country's capital and beyond.

For six surreal weeks, the victims fell - selected because they'd wandered into the gun sight, picked off like trophies from the herd.

One by one, at least 20 people were shot. Five were in Virginia. Thirteen people died - dropped by a high-powered rifle as they mowed a lawn, headed to a store, stopped at a gas station.

It took the biggest manhunt in U.S. history to catch John Allen Muhammad, a 41-year-old soldier-turned-auto-mechanic with a grudge against his ex-wife and society. It took 12 jurors from Virginia Beach to convict him and condemn him to death.

After six years of appeals and more than $1 million worth of taxpayer money spent on his defense, the curtain closes Tuesday at 9 p.m., when the state of Virginia intends to execute the Beltway Sniper.

The damage inflicted by Muhammad and his teenage protege, Lee Boyd Malvo, will live on. Those they wounded still hurt. Those they murdered left at least 21 children behind.

Malvo, at 24, is locked up in Virginia's Red Onion super-max, serving one of his eight life sentences, each with no possibility of parole.

For millions of others, the snipers' legacy is one of vulnerability. As the toll mounted - five dead in a single day - people gasped at the news and wondered where and when the killers would strike next.

Ken Stolle, a former police officer and state senator from Virginia Beach, was on a trip to the Midwest during part of the sniper spree.

"I was in an airport in Kansas," Stolle said, "and the TV came on with another shooting. The people there were reacting with just as much horror as we were here. They stopped everything they were doing to find out what happened with the sniper. They realized it could happen anywhere."

And to anyone. The bull's-eye landed on men, women, whites, blacks, the young and the old.

"It was just so random," recalled Bobby Bouche, a cook at Famous Uncle Al's on Granby Street in Norfolk. "I felt ashamed as a person, you know? That someone could do that."

Mundane tasks like fueling up the car were suddenly tinged with danger. Customers peered into the shadows and did the "sniper dance," bobbing and weaving at the pump to make themselves tougher targets.

As Paul Ebert, a longtime prosecutor, said during Muhammad's Virginia Beach trial: "I don't know if there's ever been another case quite like this, with such widespread, personal fear."

In Hampton Roads, residents fretted for family and friends around the Beltway and mapped the trail of victims. It seemed inevitable that the snipers would make their way here.

When a shot was fired at a Michaels craft store north of Washington, shoppers avoided the chain's Hampton Roads stores for days. When a teenager was shot outside his Maryland school, local officials were spooked enough to have second thoughts about outdoor activities here.

Football season was in full swing, and Mike Spencer, principal of Norfolk's Maury High at the time, says athletic leagues questioned the wisdom of drawing so many people out into the open, under the bright lights. There was talk of postponing games or moving them outside the cities.

"It was scary stuff," Spencer said.

A laptop found in Muhammad's car indicated the snipers had scouted the area.

Three spots were marked on the computer's map - one in Norfolk near Tidewater Park Elementary, one in Hampton just south of where Interstate 64 meets Interstate 664, and another in Newport News near the busy Patrick Henry shopping area.

Each spot had a caption describing its potential for targets and avenues of escape - a key factor in Muhammad's plotting. This was one time the region's bridge-bottled traffic and cul-de-sac setting apparently served it well.

"Possible hit, less ways out, disadvantage," read one Hampton Roads caption.

A shooting outside a steakhouse in Ashland came the closest to home - within 100 miles. Five days and one murder later, a SWAT team surprised a sleeping Muhammad and Malvo at a rest stop in Frederick, Md.

In no time, prosecutors were jockeying for first dibs. Seven states and the District of Columbia all had casualties. Maryland, with 10 shot, had the most.

But U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft wanted the snipers to face the ultimate punishment, and Maryland has a reputation for being reluctant to dispense the death penalty.

Not so Virginia; only Texas executes more people. On top of that, the commonwealth had recently expanded its list of capital crimes. In the shadow of 9/11, killings intended to generate terror were given an exception to the so-called "triggerman rule."

Accomplices could now face the death penalty, a plus for prosecutors trying to untangle which sniper squeezed the trigger and when. No one had ever been charged under the new law. Muhammad and Malvo would be the first.

The strongest cases were selected: Dean Harold Meyers, killed at a Manassas gas station in Prince William County; and Linda Franklin, killed outside a Falls Church Home Depot in Fairfax County.

Northern Virginia, however, was no place to find an impartial jury. Its residents had been stalked for too long. Court officials turned to Hampton Roads, attracted by its large jury pool, plentiful hotels and modern courthouses - big enough to hold the flocks of lawyers, witnesses, relatives and media.

Chesapeake was chosen for Malvo's trial, Virginia Beach for Muhammad's. Almost one year exactly after the rampage, all eyes turned to a red brick courthouse in Princess Anne for a first real look at the man who had held the nation hostage.

Media came from across the globe, and the courthouse scrambled to accommodate them. A special room was set up for the overflow, with closed-circuit viewing and wireless Internet. Extra cable was run to supply an armada of satellite news trucks.

The Virginia Beach Sheriff's Office was in charge of security, a tab that came in at around $800,000, most of which has since been reimbursed by grants.

Chief Deputy Dennis Free won't divulge all the measures taken, but he will say that more security cameras and X-ray machines were installed. A temporary wall was built to tighten access to the courtroom. Manpower was increased.

Muhammad was kept in a cell close to the courthouse and escorted back and forth through an underground tunnel. With at least one escape attempt behind him, he was watched around the clock by a newly installed camera. As backup, a guard was posted outside his cell.

Deputies made sure Muhammad received a special court-ordered diet in accordance with his Muslim beliefs and kept him isolated from other inmates for his safety and theirs.

"I can't think of a more despicable act than what he did," Free said, "but we made sure he got a fair trial, and that was our job."

A jury was assembled in four days - seven women and five men, ranging in age from 20 to 62. Eleven were white, one black. Jerry Haggerty, a retired Navy man, was selected foreman.

"That was the only jury I've ever sat on," Haggerty said. "There were such totally diverse backgrounds. My newphew woke up at 7 am crying. You know, like me on a work day. I don't think you could have had a wider perspective."

For six weeks, the strangers sat side by side and took it all in. They waded through days of tedious testimony, punctuated by grisly evidence. They shed tears with the unrelenting procession of wounded and grieving.

Bit by bit, the tale unfolded - the story of a deeply troubled man obsessed with military discipline, a chameleon both charming and menacing, who took in an abandoned teenager and masterminded a cross-country killing spree.

Muhammad appeared eerily emotionless during most of the trial, except for a brief span when he fired his attorneys and insisted on representing himself. After two days of rambling speeches and bumbled cross-examinations, he gave up the helm and resumed his icy silence. He didn't flinch at the guilty verdict or at the jury's recommendation that he die for his crimes.

"Had he shown a little bit of remorse," Haggerty said, "it might have made a difference. I don't know."

Friends have asked Haggerty about the trial. Some questioned why the jury needed 5-1/2 hours to reach a death penalty consensus.

"They say, 'What took you guys so long?' " Haggerty said.

"But the weight of that decision... it's not easy to write on a piece of paper whether somebody lives or dies, no matter what they've done. We struggled with it."

Hard as it was, it was tough to walk away. After the trial, the jury got together several times, meeting at a member's house just to see one another.

"It was a bonding experience," Haggerty said. "It was just so emotional, nobody wanted to let go."

In the six years since, Muhammad has become a regular in other courtrooms. He received six life sentences at a trial in Maryland - insurance in case the Virginia verdict was overturned in the gantlet of appeals that go hand-in-hand with capital punishment.

A string of attorneys has worked on his defense, charging the state $1.2 million so far, a bill that will mushroom when Muhammad's current attorneys submit their invoice.

A last-ditch appeal has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court and a plea for clemency delivered to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. The governor has said he sees no legal reason to intervene.

In the meantime, the clock ticks down at Greensville, a prison north of Emporia. Now 48, Muhammad faces the hour and date of his own death, locked in a cell that's just steps away from the execution chamber.

The foreman of the jury that sent Muhammad there believes justice will be served on Tuesday.

If anyone deserves the death penalty, Haggerty says, it's the Beltway Sniper.

"I don't have any regrets," he said. "I have never second-guessed our decision."

Joanne Kimberlin, (757) 446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com

To learn more about the people who have been executed in Virginia since 1982, click here.