Malvo Mood ‘Odd,’ Psychologist Says

Last summer, a clinical psychologist entered the Fairfax County jail to conduct tests on Lee Boyd Malvo, expecting to find the sniper suspect in an anxious and somber mood. Instead, he said, what he saw was “quite odd.”

“Mr. Malvo was unusually cheerful,” David Schretlen testified Thursday in Malvo’s murder trial. “It was almost a goofy affect, if you will, which seemed quite out of step with the seriousness of the situation.”

Schretlen, who teaches at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, told jurors that intelligence tests showed that Malvo had an IQ of 98 -- about the middle of the average range of 90 to 118 -- and that none of the tests indicated he was psychotic. He found Malvo cooperative and polite and said, “It’s rare for me, frankly, to have a patient say, ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir.’ ”

He described Malvo as being “hyper vigilant” and “socially alienated and detached from other people.” Schretlen concluded that the 18-year-old suspect had produced an abnormal neuropsychological examination, partly because tests showed he was slow at processing information. The abnormality could be caused, he said, by neurological maturation, a dissociative disorder or depression.

Prosecutor Robert F. Horan Jr., who is dismissive of what he has called “the mental health crowd,” shot back, “You were surprised that someone sitting in jail charged with 10, 12 murders could be depressed?”

“No,” Schretlen replied. “What surprised me was that he didn’t seem depressed or anxious.”

Malvo appeared to be intensely interested in assessments of his mental health. Usually, he passes the day in court doodling on a scratch pad, seldom looking at witnesses and never at jurors. But Thursday, he hunched forward, elbows on knees, frowning, looking directly at whomever was speaking.

Schretlen is the first in a parade of mental health experts that court-appointed defense attorneys plan to call in the final phase of their strategy to convince jurors that Malvo is not guilty by reason of insanity in the sniper attacks that killed 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area in October 2002. Defense attorney Craig S. Cooley plans to rest his case early next week.

Cooley’s defense is based on the contention that Malvo’s co-conspirator, John Allen Muhammad, 42, brainwashed and indoctrinated Malvo, turning him into a “child soldier” who could not distinguish right from wrong. Cooley does not deny that Malvo participated in the attacks. Muhammad was convicted of capital murder last month in a separate trial in which the jury recommended the death sentence.

Another defense witness, Carmeta Albarus, a Jamaican-born forensic social worker in Virginia, testified that she spent 70 hours interviewing Malvo over six months this year. Her testimony provided some of the first clues into what Malvo’s motive might have been for being Muhammad’s self-confessed triggerman in the sniper attacks.

She said Malvo, also born and raised in Jamaica, was consumed by thoughts of racism, oppression and injustice. “We’ve got problems in Jamaica,” she said, “but racism isn’t one of them. We’re 90% black. I had to remind Lee the prime minister of Jamaica is black.”

Albarus testified that she told Malvo it was “ludicrous” for him to think the attacks were the first stage in a plan to change the world through what he termed “70 boys and 80 girls, a super-generation trained and sent into the different parts of the world to bring about a just system.” She said he told her, “We have to start with the children.”

Prosecutor Horan said the $10 million that the snipers demanded from the government to stop the attacks was to be used to purchase land and equipment to fulfill Malvo’s vision.