Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Police Checks on Vehicle Show Suspects' Movement

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 04:53:38 -0500

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/national/nationalspecial/30SUSP.html

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October 30, 2002

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Today's News Past Week Past 30 Days Past 90 Days Past Year Since 1996

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
Police Checks on Vehicle Show Suspects' Movement
By AL BAKER with CHRISTOPHER DREW

AIRFAX, Va., Oct. 29 — Police officers in Maryland, Virginia and Mississippi ran four checks on the license plate of the suspected snipers' Chevrolet Caprice in the 18 days before the first in the series of killings that shocked the Washington area, police records show.

The computer checks, made by officers who thought the battered car looked suspicious, show that the dark blue 1990 Caprice was in Fairfax County, Va., on Sept. 14, a week before the authorities suspect that one of the two men in the car killed a liquor store manager in Montgomery, Ala.

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Police officers in Gulfport, Miss., then spotted the Caprice, unoccupied, in a parking lot on Sept. 28 before the suspected snipers, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, apparently headed north again.

Back in Fairfax County, the police checked the plates of the car at 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 1.

The fourth license check was made at 1 p.m. on Oct. 2 in Montgomery County, Md., about five hours before the start of a 23-day shooting spree in which 10 people were killed and three wounded.

Two other checks of the car's New Jersey license plate occurred around Richmond, Va., on Oct. 20, the day after a man was wounded in a Ponderosa Steakhouse parking lot in nearby Ashland.

Col. W. Gerald Massengill, the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said one of the checks was made after a trooper spotted the car at 5 p.m. not far from a pay phone that the suspects are thought to have used the next morning to call investigators.

All told, the beat-up car came to the attention of the police at least 11 times before Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Malvo were arrested last Thursday, according to the records, which were compiled by an investigative task force based in Rockville, Md.

Most were simply routine checks of the car's New Jersey license number against a nationwide police database. But in at least three instances in the District of Columbia and Maryland, officers stopped the car and talked to its occupants before letting them go.

Federal, state and local officials all said there was nothing in the database to suggest that the car had been stolen or that Mr. Muhammad, one of its owners, was wanted for any crime. As a result, the officers had no reason to detain Mr. Muhammad or Mr. Malvo.

Investigators also said that officers were so focused on seeking white vans and trucks that it was easy to overlook the old Caprice.

An analysis of the license checks sheds light on the movements of Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Malvo. It also for the first time shows that their car, believed to be both a getaway vehicle and sometime perch for their one-bullet assaults, was in Virginia before meandering south, then heading back north.

It was not previously known that the car had been in Gulfport, Miss. Chief Wayne H. Payne of the Gulfport Police Department said that on Sept. 28, a police officer noticed the Caprice parked in a lot in the downtown business district. The officer ran the New Jersey license plate through his computer, but did not find anything out of the ordinary and never saw Mr. Muhammad or Mr. Malvo.

"We ran the tag and that was it," Chief Payne said.

The records also show how, after many of the shootings, the men did not flee but seemed to linger in the area.

For instance, after the first fatal shooting, at 6:04 p.m. on Oct. 2 at a supermarket in Wheaton, Md., the Caprice was stopped elsewhere in Montgomery County for a traffic violation at about 8 p.m.

On the next day, the car was stopped in the northern part of the District of Columbia for another traffic violation. The District of Columbia police later noted that a Caprice had moved slowly away from the scene of a killing there that day with its headlights off, but that attracted little attention amid the suspicions about a white van or truck.

The other direct contact came on Oct. 8, when a police officer in Baltimore found the men sleeping in the car in a parking lot and let them go after a brief discussion.

After shootings in Virginia, on Oct. 9, 11 and 14 and at a Ponderosa Steakhouse on Oct. 19, the car was checked twice near Richmond on Oct. 20.

Henry W. Stanley, the chief of the Henrico County Police Department, said the car had its tags run at 3 p.m. on that day.

"It was actually on a roadway," Chief Stanley said. "An officer saw the vehicle, and it just attracted his attention. There was no lookouts or anything on the vehicle at that point, as you know."

Chief Stanley could not say if one or two people were in the car at the time.

"The officer saw it, thought it was suspicious, and basically he ran the registration on it," the chief said, "but the car was ahead of him and the traffic light played a part in stopping the officer and, of course, then he lost sight of the vehicle."

Records show the license plate was checked one more time, on the evening of Oct. 21 in Montgomery County, before the men were caught last Thursday.

Tracking the movements of the two men remains critical to building prosecutions.

"Just to figure out a pattern, a timeline, whether they did reconnaissance; all of those are unanswered questions," one law-enforcement official in Virginia said.

THE HUNT FOR A SNIPER: THE SCENE; Richmond Is Jolted by a Sniper's Attack and Its Aftermath as Well  (October 22, 2002)
$

THE HUNT FOR A SNIPER: THE INVESTIGATION; Failed Leads Bring Pattern Of Frustration  (October 22, 2002)
$

THE HUNT FOR A SNIPER: A KILLER'S PERSPECTIVE; Son of Sam Killer Talks of Sniper  (October 22, 2002)
$

THE HUNT FOR A SNIPER: THE INVESTIGATORS; Using News Media as a Conduit Has Worked, Some Officers Say  (October 22, 2002)
$

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