The Washington Beltway killings in October 2002

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Hello list members,

 

Yesterday, a killer was executed in the USA for murders he committed in the month of October 2002. This was a time filled with suspense as an unknown sniper was known to be in the Washington DC area while picking out targets at random for execution. At the same time, this sniper played a cat-and-mouse game with the police, which some suggest was a subconcious wish to get caught. The shooting spree, which led to 10 being killed and 3 injured, began on September 5, 2002 and lasted until October 22 of that year. However, it didn´t really set off alarm bells until the morning of October 3 when several shootings took place in the span of a few hours.

The case attracted national and international attention, with the media going into frenzy in the week before the suspects were caught, on October 24. In part this was because of a police strategy to issue information to the public, which in the end led to the capture of the killers and possibly prevented more such crimes from being committed.

 

The Venus-Mars period was operating in the SAMVA USA chart when the two killers went on the rampage. The leader, John Allen Muhammad, exhibited symptoms of derangement while his associate Lee Boyd Malvo was only 17 years old. They took turns pulling the trigger and both harbored resentments which are typically associated with fanatical islamists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sun

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Rahu

Ketu

 

6.1.2002

21°Sg35'

26°Aq39'

16°Ge06'R

15°Ta08'R

3°Ge09'

3°Sg09'

 

5.2.2002

22°Cp06'

18°Pi28'

12°Ge43'R

14°Ta09'R

2°Ge03'D

2°Sg03'D

 

7.3.2002

22°Aq20'

9°Ar54'

11°Ge47'

14°Ta49'

29°Ta27'

29°Sc27'

 

6.4.2002

22°Pi07'

0°Ta48'

13°Ge41'

16°Ta58'

26°Ta24'

26°Sc24'

 

6.5.2002

21°Ar24'

21°Ta10'

17°Ge51'

20°Ta12'

24°Ta30'

24°Sc30'

 

5.6.2002

20°Ta16'

11°Ge02'

23°Ge29'

23°Ta58'

23°Ta58'

23°Sc58'

 

5.7.2002

18°Ge55'

0°Cn32'

29°Ge55'

27°Ta50'

23°Ta44'D

23°Sc44'D

 

4.8.2002

17°Cn33'

19°Cn47'

6°Cn36'

1°Ge17'

22°Ta31'D

22°Sc31'D

 

3.9.2002

16°Le26'

8°Le53'

13°Cn00'

3°Ge51'

19°Ta52'

19°Sc52'

 

3.10.2002

15°Vi42'

27°Le59'

18°Cn33'

5°Ge07'

16°Ta52'

16°Sc52'

 

2.11.2002

15°Li29'

17°Vi07'

22°Cn32'

4°Ge46'R

15°Ta05'

15°Sc05'

 

2.12.2002

15°Sc43'

6°Li21'

24°Cn11'

2°Ge58'R

14°Ta46'D

14°Sc46'D

 

1.1.2003

16°Sg14'

25°Li40'

22°Cn59'R

0°Ge32'R

14°Ta34'

14°Sc34'

 

31.1.2003

16°Cp46'

15°Sc00'

19°Cn31'R

28°Ta41'R

12°Ta49'

12°Sc49'

 

The transits show that difficult transits to the natal Sun in the months leading up to the rampage. Transit 8th lord Saturn in the 12th house was closely afflicting transit 10th lord Mars (the sub-period lord) when the first killing took place. At the time when the attacks accelerated in early October, there was a close aspect between transit Ketu in Scorpio and 5th house and transit 6th lord Jupiter in Cancer and the 1st house. This is interesting in that the man orchestrating the attacks was writing letters to the police with religious overtones and the shootings involved children as well as adults. At the peak of the killings, sub-period lord Mars was also afflicted in transit by natal 8th lord Saturn. Meanwhile, transit 2nd lord Sun in the 3rd house was afflicted by transit Rahu in the 11th house. The case involved a vehicle which the police had a hard time identifying and

apprehending. Transit 4th lord Venus was in retrograde motion and stationary over natal Ketu as the public frenzy over the killings reached a peak. The transit tension lasted some days after the killers were caught but then died down not long afterwards.

 

 

Thor

 

From Wikipedia: The Beltway sniper attacks

 

The Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in Washington , D.C. , Maryland , and Virginia . Ten people were killed and three others critically injured in various locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia . It was widely speculated that a single sniper was using the Capital Beltway for travel, possibly in a white van or truck. It was later learned that the rampage was perpetrated by one man, John Allen Muhammad, and one minor, Lee Boyd Malvo, driving a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan, and had apparently begun the month before with murders and robbery in Louisiana and Alabama , which had resulted in three deaths. In September 2003, Muhammad was sentenced to death, while a month later, Malvo was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Muhammad was executed by lethal

injection on November 10, 2009.

 

 

The trail of killings began on September 5, 2002, at 10:30 pm, when Paul LaRuffa, a 55-year-old pizzeria owner, was shot six times at close range while locking up his Italian restaurant in Clinton , Maryland . LaRuffa survived the shooting and his laptop computer was found in John Muhammad's car when he and Malvo were arrested.

 

The second killing took place on September 21, 2002, Claudine Parker, a liquor store clerk in Montgomery , Alabama , was shot and killed during a robbery. Her co-worker, Kellie Adams, was injured, but survived. Evidence found at the crime scene eventually tied this killing to the Beltway attacks and allowed authorities to identify Muhammad and Malvo as suspects, although this connection was not made until October 17.

 

Washington , D.C. area attacks

At 5:20pm on October 2, 2002, a shot was fired through a window of a Michaels Craft Store in Aspen Hill. As no one was injured, no serious alarms were raised. About an hour later, at 6:30pm, James Martin, a 55-year-old program analyst at NOAA, was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Shoppers Food Warehouse grocery store, located in Glenmont.

 

On the morning of October 3, four people were shot within a span of approximately 2 hours in Aspen Hill, and other nearby areas in Montgomery County . Another was killed that evening in the District of Columbia , just over the border from Silver Spring .

 

At 7:41am, James L. Buchanan, a 39-year-old landscaper known as "Sonny", was shot dead in Montgomery County near Rockville , Maryland . Buchanan was shot while mowing the grass at the Fitzgerald Auto Mall.

At 8:12am, 54-year-old part-time taxi driver Premkumar Walekar was killed in Aspen Hill in Montgomery County , while pumping gasoline into his taxi at a Mobil station at Aspen Hill Road and Connecticut Avenue .

Sarah Ramos, a 34-year-old babysitter and housekeeper, was killed at 8:37am at the Leisure World Shopping Center in Aspen Hill. She had gotten off a bus, and was seated on a bench, reading a book.[6]

At 9:58am, in what was to be the last killing of the morning, 25-year-old Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera was killed while vacuuming her Dodge Caravan at the Shell station at the intersection of Connecticut & Knowles Avenues in Kensington , Maryland .

The snipers then waited until 9:15pm before shooting Pascal Charlot, a 72-year-old retired carpenter, while he was walking on Georgia Avenue at Kalmia Road , in Washington , D.C. Charlot died less than an hour later.

In each shooting, the victims were killed by a single bullet fired from some distance. The pattern was not detected until after the shootings occurred on October 3.

 

Fear quickly spread throughout the community as news of the shootings spread. Many parents went to pick up their children at school early, not allowing them to take a school bus or walk home alone. Montgomery County Public Schools , District of Columbia Public Schools, and private schools went into a lockdown, with no recess or outdoor gym classes. Other school districts in the area also took precautionary measures, keeping students indoors.

 

At this point Malvo and Muhammad started covering a wider area and taking more time between shootings. On October 4, 43-year-old Caroline Seawell was wounded at 2:30pm in the parking lot of a Michaels Craft Store at Spotsylvania Mall in Spotsylvania County , Virginia , just outside the city of Fredericksburg , while she was loading purchases into her minivan.

 

On October 7, at 8:09am, Iran Brown, a 13-year-old boy, was shot — accounts vary between the lower body, stomach and chest — as he arrived at the Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland, in Prince George's County (Brown's name was concealed from the public but was later revealed). His aunt, a nurse who had just brought him to school, rushed him to a hospital emergency room. Despite serious injuries, including damage to several major organs, Brown survived from the attack and ultimately testified at Muhammad's trial. At this crime scene the authorities discovered a shell casing as well as a Tarot card (the Death card) inscribed with the phrase, "Call me God" on the front and on the back on three separate lines the words, "For you mr. Police.Code: 'Call me God'.Do not release to the press."

 

Two days later, on October 9 at 8:18pm, 53-year-old Dean Harold Meyers was shot dead while pumping gasoline at a Sunoco gas station on Sudley Road in Prince William County , Virginia , near the city of Manassas .

 

Again, two days later, on the morning of October 11 at 9:30am, 53-year-old Kenneth Bridges was shot dead while pumping fuel at an Exxon station off Interstate 95 in Spotsylvania County , Virginia , near Fredericksburg .

 

On October 14, at 9:15pm, 47-year-old Linda Franklin, an FBI intelligence analyst who was a resident of Arlington County , Virginia , was shot dead after she finished shopping at a Home Depot in Fairfax County , Virginia , just outside Falls Church at Seven Corners Shopping Center . The police received what seemed to be a very good lead after the October 14 shooting, but it was later determined that the witness was inside the Home Depot at the time and was lying. The witness was subsequently arrested for interfering with the investigation.

 

After a five day interval, 37-year-old Jeffrey Hopper was shot on October 19 at 8:00pm in a parking lot near the Ponderosa steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia, about 90 miles south of Washington, near Interstate 95. Authorities discovered a 4-page letter from the shooter in the woods.

 

On October 21, Richmond-area police arrested two men, one with a white van, outside a gas station. The men turned out to be illegal immigrants with no connection to the shooter and they were remanded in the custody of what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently deported them.

 

The next day, October 22, bus driver Conrad Johnson was shot dead at 5:56am while standing on the steps of his bus in Aspen Hill , Maryland . Chief Moose released part of the content of one of the shooter's communications, in which he declares, "Your children are not safe, anywhere, at any time".

 

While no shootings occurred on October 23, the day is significant for two events. First, ballistics experts confirmed Johnson as the tenth fatality in the Beltway shootings. Second, in a yard in Tacoma , Washington police searched with metal detectors for bullets, shell casings, or other evidence that might provide a link to the shooters. A tree stump believed to have been used for target practice was seized.

 

Arrest

The incident came to a close on October 24, when Muhammad and Malvo were found sleeping in their car, a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, at a rest stop off of Interstate 70 near Myersville , Maryland , and arrested on federal weapons charges. Police were tipped off by Ron Lantz, who noticed the parked car. Lantz used his truck to block the exit from the rest stop while he alerted police. A Bushmaster .223-caliber weapon and bipod were found in a bag in Muhammad's car. Ballistics tests later conclusively linked the seized rifle to 11 of the 14 shootings, including one in which no one was injured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks

 

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