Virginia Counties Join Race to Prosecute Sniper Suspects

In a rush to avenge nearly a month of terror, three Virginia counties indicted John Allen Muhammad and his juvenile partner Lee Boyd Malvo on Monday for a string of murders and other capital punishment crimes.

Similar charges were filed last week in Maryland and Alabama, while federal prosecutors are considering bringing a sweeping federal indictment that would charge Muhammad with crimes in all three states and the District of Columbia.

The prospect of a death penalty trial against Muhammad and Malvo is dominating the competition among prosecutors to hold the first trial.

The Justice Department could decide this week, possibly as early as today, which jurisdiction should initially prosecute Muhammad and Malvo. They are in a Baltimore lockup under the custody of U.S. marshals.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft is closely monitoring the case and must approve any decision about where the two will be tried first. Officials in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and the Justice Department were all discussing Monday who would first obtain custody of the pair.

Among the charges filed Monday, Prince William County in Virginia charged Muhammad, 41, and Malvo, 17, with capital murder and terrorism, both offenses that carry the death penalty in Virginia. Malvo was believed to have been charged in sealed petitions to juvenile courts, but prosecutors said they would seek to have him tried as an adult.

Other charges were filed Monday in Spotsylvania and Hanover counties, the sites of two other shootings.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies along the cross-country route that brought Muhammad and Malvo from Washington state to Washington, D.C., began to reexamine their open murder and robbery cases for possible links to the suspects.

Washington state police said Monday that they are taking another look at their open cases from the last few months, as are many other jurisdictions.

And Wednesday evening, Tacoma Police Chief David Brame said Muhammad and Malvo are suspects in the killing of 21-year-old Keenya Cook. She was shot in the face Feb. 16 when she opened the door at her Tacoma home.

Brame said a local man contacted the FBI and told authorities he’d allowed Muhammad and Malvo to borrow his weapons, including a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, while the pair were staying with him earlier this year.

As a result, they now consider Muhammad and Malvo as suspects in the Cook homicide, Brame said.

Brame also said a .44-caliber Magnum, borrowed from the same man, was used in a shooting at Temple Beth El in Tacoma from May 1 to 4. No one was known to be at the synagogue at the time, he said.

The chief said no charges were planned against the man who lent the weapons.

Muhammad purchased the 1990 Chevrolet Caprice allegedly used for the killing spree Sept. 10 and is known to have visited at least half a dozen states between that time and his arrest last week.

The investigative fallout from the case has spilled over onto foreign shores as well.

Nearly 2,000 miles southeast of the U.S. capital, on the twin-island Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, Prime Minister Lester Bird called Monday for a rare independent investigation into how Muhammad got an official passport from that country during his stay there two years ago.

Bird also asked the nation’s attorney general to investigate whether Muhammad was illegally selling Antiguan passports that he allegedly obtained through falsified documents during his more than three months on the island.

Several eyewitnesses in Antigua have said in recent days that Muhammad also had access to falsified U.S. birth certificates and other American documents, and that he traveled frequently between Antigua and the United States.

Muhammad himself disclosed in court documents he filed in his second divorce case in Tacoma, Wash., late last year that he left for Antigua with three of his children on March 27, 2000. He stated in his affidavit that he stayed on the island until late June.

After Muhammad’s arrest in the sniper case, Ena Thomas, the government official in charge of Antigua’s passport division, confirmed that he had successfully applied for an Antiguan passport on June 6, 2000.

He doctored his New Orleans birth certificate in swearing that his mother was Antiguan, documents show. The passport was issued to him on July 4, 2000.

The Antiguan investigation also will include whether Muhammad used Antiguan documents to help smuggle Malvo into the United States, sources on the island said. Malvo, a Jamaican citizen who apparently was brought to Antigua by his mother in the late 1990s, was arrested by Border Patrol agents in Bellingham, Wash., as an undocumented migrant in December.

“It is bad enough that Antigua has been associated with the suspected sniper John Allen Williams,” said Bird, who has ruled over the nation’s politics for decades. “It is now very important that we ensure that our system for granting passports is as secure as possible.”

A spokesman for Antigua’s opposition United Progressive Party was more blunt.

Dean Jonas labeled the Muhammad passport connection “a fiasco,” part of a widespread illegal passport racket dating back several years in a nation that has been embroiled in numerous international smuggling and offshore banking scandals.

“Once again, Antigua and Barbuda’s international image is dragged further through the mud,” Jonas said.

Jamaican officials also were scrambling to do image damage-control Monday, after a second Jamaican citizen was arrested in the case.

Although columnists, social scientists and politicians in the Jamaican capital of Kingston were attributing Malvo’s alleged acts to America’s violent gun culture, Jamaican consular officials were attempting to contact their citizens now in U.S. custody in the case.

A Jamaican government official said Malvo’s mother, Una James, is believed to be in police custody in Washington state, where she reportedly was detained shortly before last week’s arrests and has been assisting the sniper investigation.

A second Jamaican, Nathaniel Osbourne, who was arrested as a material witness after records show he co-owned the 1990 Chevrolet Caprice that police said the two men used as a shooting blind, was still being held in Flint, Mich. Federal marshals are expected to transport him to Maryland this week, possibly today.

And Jamaican Embassy officials were seeking to interview Malvo in a consular visit at the Maryland detention center where he is being held along with Muhammad.