The Beltway Snipers: The Soldier — Ep. 2 | MK Confidential

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1:26Her name is Mildred Muhammad, and her marriage is over. She has flushed both of her wedding rings down the toilet. Her soon-to-be ex-husband moved out a few months back, but he still has a key, and he keeps visiting in the middle of the night. She is listening for the sound of the key turning in the front door lock, and then it does. The door opens. Mildred later describes the man in the doorway to Investigation Discovery. The man that I married became a complete stranger. He was full of rage. I was terrified. She sees him coming. The bathroom light is on for the kids. She sees his body cross the light, about to enter her bedroom doorway, and shuts her eyes.

2:16Then he is standing at the foot of her bed, watching her. She thinks of a thing he said to her once, that when a man hits a woman, it means he has lost all respect for her, and that after that, it would be easy to kill her. Her spirit tells her to be still, pretend to be asleep. Her heart is pumping against the sheets. She knows he is doing this on purpose. He plans everything, but she does not know what his plan is for her, so she tries to just breathe normally. Her spirit says, be still. She wants to squint and see his face, but she knows he will see the whites of her eyes. He comes around the bedside and leans over her, listening to her breathe.

3:00He walks around her for two or three more minutes. She keeps hearing her spirit say, be still. She does not flinch or move a muscle until he is gone. He finally crosses her room and tiptoes out of the house, closing the front door behind him. Her spirit guides her through, and she believes that is why she is still alive. She lies in the dark until morning, then picks up the phone. So the next day, I called the locksmith to get the locks changed. So Mildred changes the locks. A new lock can keep a man out of the house, but it cannot change who he is. Two years later, almost 3 ,000 miles from Tacoma, the man who stood over her bed in the dark begins killing strangers in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

3:51People with nothing in common but the ground they are standing on. Ten of them will be dead in three weeks, each one dropped by a single shot no one sees or hears in time. and Mildred Muhammad, who fled across the country and hides in a Maryland suburb outside of Washington, D.C., will become convinced that all of it, every random body, is chosen to bury the one murder that matters, hers. Before John Allen Muhammad was half of the D.C. sniper team, he was a soldier for 17 years, a husband and a father of five. Tonight, we go back to the beginning. I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK Confidential.

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5:28Born from over 10 years of longevity research, OneSkin is helping you unlock your healthiest skin now and as you age. For a limited time, try OneSkin with 15 % off using the code Megan at oneskin.co slash Megan. OneSkin.co slash Megan. That's 15 % off. oneskin.co with code MEGAN. After you purchase, support our show and tell them we sent you, and then enjoy this beautiful product. He is not born John Muhammad. He is born John Allen Williams in New Orleans on the last day of 1960. His father is a railroad porter, a job that keeps him on the road and mostly away from home. His mother, Mertes, gets sick with breast cancer and moves her five children home to Baton Rouge to be near family.

6:22John is only three years old when she passes away. He is raised by his aunts in a black enclave on the edge of the city that the people there called Scotland Town. Journalist John Ward covers the story of the DC snipers for the Washington Times. He believes this part of John's life is key to his transformation into a cold-blooded killer. Here's what he tells the history series Born to Kill. He was very affected by his mother dying when he was very young, and he was also picked on a lot as a kid by relatives. And I think he went through his entire life feeling like he was never recognized for his potential.

7:05At 17, John Williams enlists in the Louisiana Army National Guard. Jerry O 'Neill cuts his hair for 11 years, and remembers no great enthusiasm for the work. He speaks to Born to Kill as well. He didn't like being in the military. It was something that he had committed himself to doing. And at the time, I think it provided living for him and his family. It is August of 1978. What begins as a six-year hitch turns into a career of nearly two decades. He starts as a carpenter and a welder in a unit that repairs buildings. He goes from Fort Lewis, just south of Tacoma, to Germany, and from Germany to Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War with the 64th Engineer Company, inspecting and destroying Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of chemical weapons.

7:57Mildred's brother, Michael Jones, describes that side of him this way to Investigation Discovery. John was a combat engineer. He can be shot at their minds. That is a very stressful job, but he was an expert marksman with the M16 that was the rifle at that time. A 1982 note in his file praises his initiative and his results, but that same year he is court-martialed. The charges are a strange little bundle, disobeying an order, striking a sergeant, taking another man's tape measure, and briefly going AWOL. Two charges are dropped, he is fined$100 and receives a suspended jail sentence. He later steals an M-16 from the armory and hides it in a dormitory.

8:49No charges are filed for that. Out in the Saudi desert in early 1991, a higher-ranking sergeant named Kip Berenson chews John out one day for sleeping in another soldier's sleeping bag. Berenson will remember the look John gave him as the stare of death. Then, in the middle of the night in February, a thermite grenade lights up the inside of a tent where a dozen soldiers are asleep, throwing heat, fire, and sparks, which could easily light the ammo. There is a scramble in the dark, and everyone gets out. Berenson does not think this is an accident. An army captain says the pin to the grenade was found near John's bunk.

9:33The military police come, and John Williams is led away in handcuffs. And then, nothing. No record of any discipline in his file. He is apparently cleared. Or is he? Mildred remembers the grenade incident, or at least John's version of it, a bit differently. She later retells the story to the podcast Monster DC Sniper. A soldier challenged him in front of others and he felt humiliated. That soldier, that night, was in charge of the explosives. John went, snuck into that area, and stole a grenade. He threw the grenade in the tent and jumped into his sleeping bag. The grenade went off. He was accused of trying to get back at that soldier that challenged him in front of the other soldiers.

10:44they put him in a dungeon, they hogtied him, and left him there. And when he comes back, it's not the same person. In 1992, stationed in Germany, a very pregnant Mildred visits a hairdresser who will change her life. The hairdresser is astonished that Mildred does not know the name Louis Farrakhan and sends her home with two videotapes. By Mildred's account, John watches them with rapture, saying, that's right, that's right. By the time they finish both tapes, Mildred's worldview is shattered. She resolves to question everything she has been taught for the rest of her life. John resolves to find Farrakhan when they return to the States.

11:32Both are now very interested in Islam. In January of 1993, John gets into the face of another soldier, a man who happens to be named Lee, and says, brother to brother, back off or you will be the first slaughtered. There is no place that your family will be safe and the people that are supporting you will go down also. This I promise you. A report is written up and filed and that appears to have been the end of it. No arrest, no charge, nothing in his record. The next year in 1994, the army gives John Allen Williams an honorable discharge. The family moves back to Tacoma and joins a mosque. Mildred describes it as building her relationship with God.

12:18John joined, but not for the same reasons. John joined the mosque not to be a man of God. He joined because he felt that is what was needed to control me. In October 1995, John goes to the Million Man March and takes the pledge every man there takes, never to raise a hand with a knife or a gun against any member of his family or any human being. He comes home kinder and gentler to Mildred's relief. It doesn't last. Mildred joins the Nation of Islam in January 1996, and John returns to his old habits. Money goes missing from the mechanic business they run together. There are nights out with other women.

13:08When Mildred confronts him more than once, she remembers him saying, it's all mind over matter, Mildred. I don't mind because you don't matter. It is Friday, October 4th, 2002. In the suburbs north of Washington, D.C., a killer has already shot six people dead, all strangers, each dropped by a single rifle shot. Not one witness has been able to describe the man who killed them. And at 2.30 that afternoon, 75 miles south of the first killings, a 43-year-old mother of two named Caroline Sewell will be the next to fall. Sewell walks out of a Michaels Craft store at the Spotsylvania Mall in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

13:52She shops there all the time. She is loading packages into her minivan, moving back and forth between the cart and the van. Behind her, a couple named Alex and Doris Jones pull up their car and wait, blinker flashing because they want her parking space. Just as Caroline closes the rear hatch, Alex hears a loud pop and sees Caroline drop. I've been shot, she screams. Alex jumps out of his car and rushes over. he starts yelling for help. And then, standing over her in the open parking lot, something clicks in Alex's brain. If the rifleman could see Caroline, he can see Alex, too, and his wife. He runs back to his car and tells Doris to get down.

14:37Alex ducks low behind the wheel himself and drives toward the far side of a nearby furniture store, out of the line of fire. On his way out of that parking lot, a car pulls out ahead of him. It is a dark older car with New Jersey plates, and the back window is covered over with something so that he cannot see inside of it. Alex thinks the car looks out of place, and he says so out loud to Doris, who is crouching down in the back seat and never sees the vehicle. Someone in the lot calls 911. Yes, I am in front of Michaels, and somebody's out here who needs some help. OK, what's going on? I'm not sure.

15:17There was a loud crack, and she said she needs help. And she's lying down. Do you think she's injured, or...? Yeah, definitely injured. She hurt herself? I'm not sure. That way. There was a loud... No, it looks like she's been shot or something. She's been shot, yeah. She's been shot, OK. I'll have to come back and get my son out of the car. The bullet has gone in through the raised hatch of the van It has struck Caroline in the lower back and come out beneath her right breast. She is rushed to Mary Washington Hospital, then flown by helicopter to Fairfax. Against the odds, she will live. Until now, this killing spree has stayed close to Washington, in the Maryland suburbs and the district itself.

16:05Now it has jumped south into Virginia, and the shooting zone is a 75-mile corridor running more than halfway to Richmond. late that night the atf analyzes the ballistics from the first six shootings they identify the caliber 223 one of the most popular in the country and more importantly they conclude that the bullet fragments they have recovered were indeed fired from the same rifle the shootings are connected even if the victims themselves are not the ballistics lab confirms the bullet from Caroline's van matches the others. One rifle. The beltway killing spree is on the move. And what every trooper going out on the road is told to look for is a white van.

16:51After Sarah Ramos was killed, a lovely former law student who was shot in the head while sitting on a bench reading, a landscaper working nearby saw a white box truck speeding by, a dent in the back, two men inside. He never saw it fire a shot, but it is the only description anyone has, so it becomes the description. Maryland alone has more than 70 ,000 white vans. Police stop as many of them as they can find, which means that of every vehicle on the road that October, the safest one to be driving may be an old blue Chevy Caprice. 19 years earlier in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, John Williams is a handsome 22-year-old who is known for keeping his word and who knows exactly what to say to a woman.

17:42John meets Mildred Rizal in the fall of 1983. Right away, John tells her he has two sons, but that he is not married. At one point, he looks her straight in the eyes and says, I'm looking for someone to share my life. Mildred thinks, I finally found a man. It turns out John has two sons by two different women. He married the second one in 1981 and remains married to her when he meets Mildred. Her name is Carol. They live in a trailer outside town with their son, Lindbergh. Carol will one day describe her husband as a militaristic control nut. He will describe her as bulimic. Mildred finds out the truth roughly two months into dating John, and she confronts him.

18:28He begs her to wait for him. She agrees to remain friends, and he confides in her something humiliating. John cannot read. All he can write is his name, and nobody knows. He says he developed a photographic memory and would find an excuse to get friends to read things out loud to him. John is a sergeant in the Army National Guard, serving one weekend a month. To join the regular Army, he has to sit for a battery of written tests. Mildred sees reading as a massive obstacle in John's life, and she helps him. She explains how and why years later to A &E. I was happy. He was trying to get into the military, but he couldn't read.

19:16So I taught him how to read so that he was able to be accepted. And that's when he moved to Washington State and asked me to come with him. John sends Mildred a letter from Washington. I can't do this without you. Just come. Inside the envelope is an airline ticket. And so Mildred goes. Did you know many U.S. homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water? Even though contaminated water looks clear, it could put you at risk for devastating health concerns, including fatigue, hormone disruption, cognitive decline, even cancer. Surprisingly, standard fridge and pitcher filters do little to remove most contaminants, and bottled water contains microplastics.

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21:28John divorces Carol in 1987 and marries Mildred the next year. They have three children, a boy everyone calls Little John and two girls, Selena and Taliba. They settle in Tacoma in 1994. With$10 ,000 borrowed from their neighbors, they star a mobile car repair business called Express Car slash Truck Mechanic, Inc. Mildred is listed as the president. John is the chief mechanic. Their motto is, the future is here now. What John cannot fix on sight comes home with him. Soon the yard fills up with broken-down cars, bumpers, and engine parts. When they need an accountant, Mildred walks into a storefront in downtown Tacoma, advertising tax and bookkeeping services.

22:17The woman inside is Issa Nichols. She and Mildred are roughly the same age and hit it off, talking for two hours the first time they meet. Issa becomes their bookkeeper and their business advisor and eventually Mildred's closest friend. They have a second business in Tacoma, too. A man named Felix teaches martial arts. John runs the business end, and Mildred keeps the books. The family rents a small home with a one-car garage on South Ainsworth Street, two blocks from a city park with a spring-fed lake. For a while, a neighbor describes them as a model family. To people outside the family, John is charming.

22:58But inside the home, Mildred learns to be afraid. She later describes him toying with her mind. One particular morning, I was at work. He walked in and he said, I want a divorce. And I looked at him and it was like somebody just stabbed me. And I panicked. I went home and I was crying. Then John says, no, I was just playing. I just wanted to see your reaction. A dress vanishes, and he suggests she never had it. A jacket turns up shredded, and he wonders why she would accuse him. Then he blames their little boy. He volunteers to fix a broken deadbolt, the same lock he jammed on purpose. He changes the phone number to the house and does not tell her.

23:53He needles her until she is shouting, and then John goes quiet, asking her softly why she's so upset and what he could possibly have said. He would say, I'm your God. You do what I tell you to do. I'm the God in this house. Mildred points to one night in the summer of 1997 as a dark turning point in their marriage. John's son, from his first marriage, 13-year-old Lindbergh, has come from Louisiana to visit. As the summer ends, John decides he is not sending the boy back home. He says he believes Lindbergh is being abused, and he hires a lawyer and goes to court. A Tacoma judge orders John and Mildred to send the boy home.

24:36They buy him a plane ticket. The night before Lindbergh's flight home, Mildred finds John packing a duffel bag as long as a twin bed. I'm running away with Lindbergh, he says. Mildred tells him there's a court order and that he cannot do this. John pauses. Mildred is not convinced he'll do the right thing. She takes Lindbergh and her own three children with John into the second bedroom. She locks the door and sits on the floor with her back against the door until morning. By daylight, John has realized he's lost this fight. He joins Mildred in the car driving Lindbergh to the airport. No one speaks.

25:16They walk the boy all the way to the gate and watch his plane take off. The moment its wheels leave the runway, John turns sharply and walks away. In the car, he says one thing to Mildred, you didn't have my back. That, Mildred says, is when the relationship changed forever. The marriage fully breaks down by the spring of 2000. John has moved out, they've been separated for months, and he is tapping her phone lines, falsely accusing Mildred of having an affair. At one point, after he and Mildred have separated, John shows up to see their son, who is sick. Mildred will not let him in. She's scared of him.

25:55He shoves the door so hard that Mildred is thrown to the floor. She jumps up and takes a swing at him. Misses. She is shocked at her own actions. She sees the expression on his face and thinks, he is going to kill me. A few days later, John comes back to the house. He is nicely dressed in a shirt and tie. He says he wants to talk, and they step out to the garage. As he speaks, she sees the cold fury in his eyes. He told me, you have become my enemy, and as my enemy, I will kill you. John has always told Mildred that his word is his bond. She believes him. Mildred goes straight away to the police department and fills out the four-page form asking for a restraining order.

26:42crying so hard her tears drip onto the pages. On the day of the hearing, her legs shake as she walks into the building. She stands where she can watch every door, and in her mind she plans an escape route. But John does not show up. The judge reads the forms she filled out and says, You need to get away from this guy. Yes, sir, she says. I'm trying. With that, the judge grants Mildred a lifetime protection order. Even so, Mildred later agrees to let John see his children. On Monday, March 27, 2000, John calls and asks to take the children to an arcade. Mildred agrees on one condition. All three have to be home by 5.30 for their grandmother's birthday dinner.

27:31John agrees. 5.30 comes and the children are not home. John calls later in the evening. He says there's a new plan with the children. Then another after that. They do not come home that night. They will not come home for 17 months. I called the police and they said, sorry, there's nothing we can do. He has just as much right to the children as you do. And they left. Within a day with$521 emptied out of the children's own bank accounts, a man named Thomas Allen Lee, a.k.a. John Williams, is on a plane to the Caribbean with his three kids, also now with new names. They land in Antigua on the 28th of March with false Wyoming identification.

28:24Antigua is a small island in the Caribbean, and there John Williams goes into business selling forged papers to people trying to reach America. A passport, a birth certificate, a social security number, a visa. Antiguan authorities will later estimate he made more than$60 ,000 with the scheme. To the families who take him in, what is visible is a devoted father, a man who checks his children's schoolwork and takes them to the beach. But the people around him start noticing something strange. The children answer to different names on different days. Part of John's business is getting his customers onto flights into the United States.

29:05He buys their tickets himself, sometimes thousands of dollars worth at a time. An American Airlines ticket agent catches on to the scheme. On March 11, 2001, John tries to buy yet another ticket for a customer under a false name. The airline calls the police. Officers come to the airport and search John. They find a forged Washington State driver's license and a Florida birth certificate. John is arrested and jailed at police headquarters in the Antigua capital city of St. John's. Two days later, he escapes. According to government reports, there's a gross lack of security, and John's escape amounts to simply walking out of the police station.

29:47The arrest does not slow John's forgery business a beat. He recruits a teenage boy whom he met on Antigua to help keep the business running. John leaves the island often. He is escorting his customers into the United States, routing them through Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, posing as a family member. Every day, this teenage assistant walks 12 miles from St. John's to a safe house where John has moved the children. The boy gives them four hours of lessons and then takes them to the park. The boy's name is Leiboyd Malvo. John Allen Williams, meanwhile, has gone back to Tacoma, Washington.

30:27On April 23, 2001, he walks into a Pierce County District Court in Tacoma, Washington and petitions to officially change his name. Okay, Mr. Williams, you're choosing to have your name changed? Yes, ma 'am. What is your current legal name? My current legal name is John Allen. Okay. And what is the new name by which you wish to be known? John Allen Muhammad. And why do you desire to be known by this new name? For our religion purpose. Are you changing your name for any other reason? No, ma 'am. Are you changing your name to detraud or mislead any person or creditor? No, ma 'am. Are you involved in any legal proceeding other than this name change?