D.C. Sniper-angrebene: Motiver og baggrund

I have chosen the D. C sniper attack because it's a very disturbing and in the meantime a very interesting subject and it's something I really like to read about and it fits very well with my main subject.

The D.C. sniper attacks, was a series of coordinated shootings that took place in 2002 in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. The shooting was committed by John Allen Muhammad and he was 42 years at that time and Lee Boyd Malvo was 17 years old.

Their crime spree began in February 2002 with murders and robberies in the states of Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and Washington, which resulted in seven deaths and seven injuries. In the ten-month shooting spree, the result was 10 dead’s and three other victims were critically injured. So the total is 17 deaths and 10 injuries over the whole killing spree.

In September 2003, Muhammad was sentenced to death. One month later, Malvo was sentenced to six life sentences without the possibility of parole. On November 10, 2009, Muhammad was executed by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center.

Motive

Investigators and the prosecution thought that Muhammad intended to kill his second ex-wife Mildred, who had estranged him from his children. According to the theory, the last shooting spree were intended to cover up the motive for the first crime. Because Muhammad believed that the police would not focus on an estranged ex-husband as a suspect if she looked like a random victim of a serial killer. His wife did not get killed he missed. Mildred his wife thought that it was her ex-husband Muhammad and said it to the police. Luckily it was him.