You're Wrong About - D.C. Snipers Part 3

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

Mike tells Sarah about the indoctrination of Lee Boyd Malvo and the beginning of the sniper attacks. Digressions include Jonestown, Greek tragedy and something called “creepy crawling.” The episode begins with a lengthy meta-discussion of true-crime tropes and whether we are playing into them. The final section includes a detailed description of a suicide attempt. Continue reading →Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

Why do we need a special day that we have with everyone else who's in a relationship in the country? It's just annoying to get a restaurant reservation. Because the hetero patriarchy wants you to buy jewelry, you fucking idiot. Welcome to your wrong about where every horror story is also a tragedy. Okay. Is that too obvious? Do we know that by now? Those aren't all that different of concepts. Yes, they are. When people go see Nightmare on Elm Street, they don't bring tissues. You don't see horror movies. That's true. I don't. The implication is that you're going to go to just have your heart pound, not to come out thinking about early childhood development. Whereas we try to instill in our listeners a sense of shock

and sadness. Yeah, that's our personal brand. It's a show for sad people or people who don't feel they're sad enough already. I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for The Huffington Post. I'm Sarah Marshall, and I'm at work on a book on Satanic Panic. And we're on Patreon at patreon.com slash you're wrong about. And our listeners have been creating a number of incredible designs, including one based on Calvin and Hobbs. Where I am Hobbs. Yeah. And today we are embarking on part three of our deep dive into the DC Snipers. And I also, I feel a little bit weird about this episode because we're now entering like the true crimiest part of this story, which as a person who doesn't actually listen to a lot of true crime stuff,

we're getting into the part where we have to tell you facts rather than feelings. And I feel weird about it. I don't know. I think that like this is a moment for us to think about what true crime has a history of meaning as a genre and also what it can be. At the end of the day, like if you're trying to describe crimes that took place in a factual manner, then like, congratulations, it's true crime. You know, and I think that it doesn't have to hue to a certain aesthetic, but it's also interesting that we do have certain aesthetic expectations and genre expectations. But I mean, like, what do you think true crime typically means or would typically mean in the context of what we're making? Well, I mean, one thing that I think is really interesting is

a lot of the comments that we've gotten on the first two episodes is that they're really depressing. Yeah, they should be because they're a lot about abuse. They're about emotional abuse. They're about physical abuse. But I think it's very interesting in that true crime stories don't oftentimes get coded as depressing, even though they're often about murders. That is really interesting. Whereas, I think when we're confronted with the reality of these murders, which is that they often do come from abuse, they come from things like head trauma, they come from things like mental illness, and very sad upbringing stories. It's this reminder that like, the actual, the origins of true crime can be very sad, but true crime narratives

themselves don't aren't coded as sad. They're much more coded as suspenseful. I think they're coded as maybe sad, but not depressing, which is an interesting distinction, or like, you can be like, wow, this is tragic, like these poor people lost their lives, like this murder tour apart, this community, this is so tragic. But as someone who has consumed a lot of true crime media in her life, and who got here through true crime media consumption, based on what I've consumed, the way of true crime story typically works is that there's a killer on the loose, and he's striking these communities. And Betsy just had to walk two blocks, but she never made it. And her mother keeps her room just as it was. And it's so sad,

and you're reading it, you're like, this is so sad. And you identify with the victims, you identify with the family of the victims, you identify with the cops staying up late, and like, chomping down tums. And then they catch the guy, and you feel this catharsis. And there will be, you know, some kind of discussion of his character and how he got to be the way that he is. But it will be either like, either overly reductive or overly enamored of the idea of like, well, it's a mystery, and we'll never know. And we can't know why people are like this. So the end goodbye. And then here's, if it's a paperback, two ads for similar books. I think the goal of the true crime paperback, let's say, because that's what I was raised on is to be this very emotional and emotionally

engaging text, but also to have an exit, you know, to kind of exist as a capsule. And so you go in, and it's scary, and it's sad, and you contemplate all this bad stuff. And then at the end, like, order is restored, and it's fine and everything's fine. Right. Yeah. So are you saying that maybe we're not going to offer any closure and that's going to suck for people? I think that's a generalizable rule about the show. Yeah, that's true. I think if you're here for closure, you should turn it off and leave a negative review. Or I can just turn it off. You don't have to talk about my vocal fry, keeping you from emotional closure, although I'm sure it is. So that is my insufferable meta comment for this episode to

start off with. Okay. To then do the thing that I feel weird about. One of the things that stuck out to me about this because so much of this episode is going to be about John's weird ideology and the way that Lee kind of falls for his bullshit. Hooray. I just want to read you this really interesting passage from a book called Sniper. That's one of these sort of manhunt true crimey books that lists everything that was in their car when John and Lee were arrested. I love it when there's a list of the objects found in a car or someone's house or something. Yeah, that's always so interesting. In addition to the weapons and ammunition, these included violent video games such as Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Desert Siege,

and Halo Combat Evolved. Several books, including The Art of War, The Eaching, The Politics of Liberation, and A Taste of Power. There were numerous DVDs, including episodes of Roots, plus the films Stigmata, The Matrix, Entrapment, and We Were Soldiers. Wow, Entrapment, my favorite movie from when I was 12. Me too. In addition to several CDs with music by Bob Marley, Tupac, and Lauren Hill, as well as Streets and Trips 2002, there was also a laptop computer, a digital recorder, one half of a $50 bill, and a Princeton Review CD. So I think when we're looking at John's ideology and the weird boulevets of resentment and race war stuff, and men's rights stuff, and personal

empowerment, this is a pretty good encapsulation of it, right? That there's violent video games and self-help books. And Bob Marley, there's just a very weird mix of stuff in here. It also seems on the face of it like no more sinister than an itemized list of the things in my car right now. Totally. As we all know, I have a crate of satanic panic books with me wherever I go. There's also a really interesting scene where Lee and John are about to take a long Greyhound ride, and John gives Lee this gift of a couple CDs, and so he gives him three CDs. They are Tupac, Minister Farrakhan speaking at the Million Man March, and Tracy Chapman. Oh no, I almost passed car on it. Yes. Whenever I hear that song now, I'm going to think of them.

I know. Because don't you feel like there's like this half-baked rhetoric that's like kind of Farrakhan, kind of the art of war. There's kind of a philosophy, but the real hook was just come belonging to literally anything bigger than yourself. Just come be with this one person. You got a fast car. And feel feelings. And feel feelings, yeah. I can just imagine Tracy Chapman being contacted by the press after this, and just being like, leave me out of this, guys. I'm not going to go in on this. Oh my god. So anyway, this is the ideological pond that Lee is diving into. And do you want to catch us up on where we left Lee at the end of last episode? Oh boy. So Lee Boyd Malva grew up in Jamaica with a father who I think when he was six

was basically not around. Yeah. And Lee's mom was very inconsistent and also seemed to have moods that really turned on a dime for whatever reason. And so she would be nurturing one moment and then fly into rages and be abusive the next. And it was impossible to predict why or when. Yeah. And so he meets John when John has fled to Antigua with his children after he's snatched the children away from Mildred. And then Lee went to Florida after his mom moved there. And John wanted him to come live in Bellingham, Washington with him. And Lee got there and became John's Jedi. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, when we left Lee, he was on a bus to Bellingham from Florida. Right. So he's on his way to Jedi school when we last saw him. Yeah. And the interesting

thing about this period is that first of all, John has never been abusive to Lee right now. He's been a figure in his life that has told him a lot about personal empowerment, personal responsibility. They're doing push-ups. But he hasn't shown any contempt for Lee. He hasn't been emotionally manipulative with Lee. And another interesting thing about this is he arrives in Bellingham on October 20, 2001. He meets John in October of 2000. And the DC sniper attacks are in October of 2002. So this is almost exactly the halfway point of their relationship. And well, I mean, I still can't get over the fact that in this whole story, they only know each other for two years. Time is different when you're a teenager, right? Like, if you have two years with a teenager,

like those are major years in their development. Like if I were immersed in a relationship for two years now, I think it would be very unlikely to be able to have the same effect on me or to alter me as significantly as a two-year long relationship could if it started when I was 15 years old. Totally. Yeah. You're just such an emotional petri dish at that point. Yeah. Teens are so vulnerable to being hacked, you know. Yeah. Another really interesting thing about this period is that he doesn't know that there's any killing on the horizon. John has never hinted to him that they're going to kill people or that they're going to do any crime. Right. If you're grooming someone to be like the submissive member of a serial killing team with you, you don't

on day one, be like, no, get ready to murder some people. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same as with telemarketing. You ease people into what you're going to make them do. I mean, the extent to which he knows what's going to happen is he knows that they're going to find out where Mildred lives, they're going to find out where the children go to school, they're going to pick up the kids on the way to school, they're going to drive them to Canada, and then they're going to start a flight school for homeless, wayward, abused kids just like Lee. And of course, what we find out later is that this was never John's plan. This was something that he was telling to Lee to manipulate him into helping him carry out this plan, because John doesn't give a shit about

homeless kids in Canada, and he definitely doesn't give a shit about flight school. But he knows that one of the ways to get Lee to basically give up his own personality and sense of morality is to make him think that he's doing something for the greater good, that you can rescue kids just like you. And that's what I'm offering you. So that's kind of what Lee thinks that he's signing up for. Which once again, like if you're starting a cult, like a one that has more than one member, like this is a big selling point, great or good, you're part of something bigger than yourself. Yeah. I think we also underrate how people can be drawn into something terrible because it initially appeals to their best selves. Totally. So Lee arrives in Bellingham. He moves in with John at

this homeless shelter called the Lighthouse Mission, which is run by a guy named Al Archer, who has already reported John to the FBI because he thinks John is extremely sketchy. So this is right after 9-11. Al Archer hears John talking about his wife and how he might want to kill his wife and how he has all these like vengeful ideas. He at one point defends the 9-11 hijackers, basically saying like, well, America deserved it. And all of this is just ringing out wooga noises for this Al Archer guy. And so he is one of many people to report John to the FBI and nothing comes of it. Is the FBI being like inundated with tips post 9-11? Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. I mean, also later Al Archer hears Lee talking about he's going to be in flight school.

Right. A flight school is a really great like under the radar thing to be talking about at this time. In October of 2001. So this Al Archer guy is completely really skeptical of both of them. And also John immediately as soon as Lee gets to Bellingham starts introducing Lee as his son, which according to everyone is never all that convincing. Lee speaks with a Jamaican accent. And for people that know John, he's mentioned, oh, I have a son named Lindbergh. He lives in Louisiana. Lindbergh is in his early 20s at this point. So when Lee comes to Bellingham, he says, oh, hey, remember how I mentioned my son who lived in Louisiana? This is him. And then Lee opens his mouth and he speaks with a pretty thick Jamaican accent. And he's clearly not in his early

20s. Right. One of his friends refers to this as like just John being John, like John always has weird schemes and like weird people that he's showing up with. So he's like this like dark Kramer where they're like, oh, is he singing Jamaican kid? Is his son her son raising classic John, I guess. And so what's really interesting about this period is that almost as soon as he arrives in Bellingham, a routine forms. So Lee starts attending Bellingham High School. John spends the day either doing day labor, if he can find it, or just drinking at this bar called the waterfront, where if you get there early enough in the morning, Budweisers are $2. And because it's the Pacific Northwest, the same bar was also a hangout of Ted Bundy and the

hillside strangler. So of course, these the owners of this bar are interviewed a million times in the Bellingham and national media later being like, yep, we got another one. Apparently serial killers love shitty beer. Wow. I'm not saying there's something about the Northwest and like a David Lynch Black Lodge kind of a way, but like I'm also saying that when I did see Twin Peaks for the first time as a teenager, I was like, yeah, someone gets it. Yeah. And so every afternoon after Lee is done with school and John is done moping around all day, they go and hang out at the YMCA. So they work out or play basketball or whatever, but they sort of kill time there for a couple hours. And then oftentimes after that, they'll go sit in a cafe

and play chess or chat or whatever. And just again, kind of kill time because the shelter doesn't open until 9 p.m. And is Lee ever like, when are we going to start doing this flight school? I mean, I think they're talking a lot about their plan in the same way we talked about the Columbine killers just kind of bonding over this plan that they talk about. I mean, it's like the way people talk about going to Burning Man. Like even if you're kind of know on some level that you're not going to, it's like fantasizing about a shared world you want to make in the future is like a shared world right now for you to bond in. Yeah. And so on weekends, almost immediately, they start going down to Tacoma where, of course,

John has a lot of friends because he used to live there and hanging out with this friend of John's named Earl Dancy, who's this sort of dirt baggy gun nut guy that they have become friends with. And he starts taking them to shooting ranges every day over the weekends. What's really interesting is that they're spending all of this time in shooting ranges. They start going to shooting ranges in Bellingham too. It becomes a huge part of their life. And yet, John has never said, like, we're going to kill people. So when Lee is like, you're talking about like picking up the kids in like a mini van outside of their school. So like, why are we doing all this gun stuff? This is from the biography of Lee. Malvo remained curious as to why he had to learn

how to shoot. Malvo said, Muhammad explained, every young black man should learn to defend himself, shoot and practice lessons of how to succeed. Most importantly, he should know who he is, that he is a God, not God himself, but a God. And he must never forget the wailing of his forefathers and that bloodshed begets bloodshed. You know, you're probably not moving in a good direction if you're being taught how to be a sniper under the guise of self defense. And also, I mean, and also he's shooting at photos of himself, right? They'll put a photo of himself on a tree. Oh, that's weird. I don't like that. Yeah, it's like, why do I need to shoot at a picture of my face? Like, oh, self defense. That is like classic cult activity, I gotta say.

Oh, yeah. That's not going anywhere good. And I also think that, you know, one of this is very indicative of John's very weird ideology that, you know, why are we doing this shooting? Oh, it's self defense. And then he goes on this completely non sequitur rant about, you know, you should be a God and you should never forget the wailing of your forefathers and this sort of high in the sky philosophical stuff that like really has nothing to do with self defense and nothing to do with your day to day reality. But it's like bloodshed begets bloodshed. Sorry. What do you actually mean by that? But I don't I don't think that Lee like I don't think he has that capacity. And also, if you are if your life has been this love void, as we've discussed,

and then you find someone who like wants you and like really wants you because they have an affairious purpose for you, you know, if you start kind of seeing hints of that, like, I think it would be very hard to, you know, for all of the onus to be placed on you to be like, so what are we doing? What are we talking about? Like, what is this? Yeah. Yeah. If we like want to try and understand the situation by airlifting ourselves as we are now into it and thinking about what we would do, I think that's the wrong approach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing they start doing during this period is they start committing crimes. And this becomes an important sort of piece of the escalation later that at first they just start shoplifting,

John starts stealing power tools and various, you know, engine clamps and wrenches and stuff from Walmart. And I mean, I think this is the perfect encapsulation of his ideology. I'm going to read you something from this book called Sniper. Muhammad said that he was caught stealing lemon cookies at age seven. As a result, he said he was beaten at the store and then later beaten at home by both grandparents. Muhammad said that his grandfather beat him not because he stole, but because he was dumb enough to get caught. Muhammad recited his grandfather's instructions to use his head and think of the consequences. And if he still decided to steal, he should figure out the best way to do so and not get caught. This was a lesson Muhammad indicated he was

passing on to Malvo. And so to me, this reveals that John's entire ideology is really just about selfishness. It's, I want to steal. Like there's no actual morality at play in the act of stealing. The only rule that you have to actually keep in mind is make sure you get away with it. Yeah. You know, and I want to talk a little bit more about the ideology here because what's really interesting and what characterizes John's ideology is that he's got all this resentment at sort of the man, like the system. He hates cops. He hates the government. The government sends people to war and they die, etc. But then he also hates poor people. They're staying at the homeless shelter and he'll often tell Lee that like, you know, look at these insects, you know,

they're mentally ill. They've all been arrested. They're using drugs. You can't let yourself become like this. It's not a sort of like the powerful versus the powerless thing. It's kind of like everyone except for me and you is dumb and bad. Right. It's John's feelings. Yes. It's 100% John's feelings. Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if all sort of like ideal log types were like, these are my feelings. And they're not some kind of coherently laid out master plan for how humanity works. Because behold, my feelings, you know. I mean, there is something so interesting in that his entire ideology is built around this rhetoric of like facts and logic and he's constantly telling Lee, like you have to let go of your emotions. You have to let go of remorse. You have

to uncouple your head from your heart. Right. Yeah. I was just going to say, do you think like alt-right YouTubers are at all concerned that they sound exactly like that? It's so fascinating that how I think men especially can make their emotions invisible and can hide their extremely emotion based resentment, hurt based reasoning behind, I'm the logical one and everyone else around me is emotional. Yeah. And this thing of like, I am so wound up about this thing because of logic. Yeah. The amount of volatility that goes into like these loud, angry speeches about logic. Like it's just fascinating. Yeah. But I mean, to me, this kind of ideology is very totalitizing or totalizing that this is when John starts

limiting Lee to one meal a day every morning for breakfast. They wake up at 6 a.m. and they take a bunch of nutritional supplements and drinking tea and they don't eat anything until 6 p.m., 7 p.m. Oh, no. And during the day, they're eating crackers and honey and these weird nutritional goo, whatever, which they're probably shoplifting because that stuff's really expensive. There is something really interesting about how it's not just these are political beliefs that you have to hold. It's something that has to take over your whole life, right? That these ideas also have to dictate how you eat. They have to dictate, you know, you get up early and do a bunch of push-ups. They dictate what your hobbies are. They dictate how you dress. I mean, he casts all this

as essential, right? That like, if you believe all this stuff that you're reading in the Art of War, you have to also have this insane diet plan. The Art of War specifically says that you have to eat crackers all day long. Yeah. No. It's also very indicative to me too that it doesn't appear that John is following this lifestyle either. That's classic cult leader. Totally. You know, we're drinking tea and having these nutritional supplements in the morning. I send Lee off to school and then I go drink beer in a bar and eat pretzels in the bar. What is the sort of purity logic behind that? I don't know. Why was Kim Jones lying around drinking soda when he was making everyone, you know, work in the fields 12 hours a day at Jonestown? Yeah. Same reason, whatever it was.

This is something that always bugs me because it always comes up in the more true, creamy versions of this narrative that Lee and John get obsessed with the Matrix. Which is also a really great text to get your teenage disciple obsessed with. Oh, yeah. Because it's kind of making very explicit, I think, what John's pseudo philosophy is implying, which is what you think is the real world is not real and takes the red pill. You're saying exactly what the psychological evaluations of Lee that are submitted to the court say too, that it is the perfect movie because in that movie, remember how it's okay to kill civilians because every civilian is a projection. Right, because they're all just code.

Yes. And so when you kill people in the Matrix, you're actually freeing them. Yikes. I mean, I don't think that's in the Matrix text, but I think that John can present that to Lee very convincingly. Right. There's the Matrix and then there's John's Matrix fan fiction and out of that is birth to philosophy. Yeah. And so I think it's really facile to be like the Matrix, inspire the DC Snipers because of course it's 100% their interpretation of that movie, not the movie itself. Right. There's also a really interesting scene where John takes Lee to a soup kitchen, a Catholic soup kitchen where a lot of homeless people are lining up around the block. And so this is from Lee's biography. This is Lee's account of

what happened. Malva and Muhammad got up and joined the line and then Muhammad put on a demonstration. Malva recalled how Muhammad incited the crowd. What the fuck is taking him so long? Muhammad then turned to a man beside him. It was the same shit yesterday. Then Muhammad touched another shoulder. Every motherfucking day these crackers tell us to line up in the fucking sun in the street like dogs. Malva recalled that Muhammad went on like this until others in the line began to speak up. Because of Muhammad's antics, the line was slowing down and the pushing started. Malva recalled an old man admonishing Muhammad to shut up for fear that the priest would turn them away. Fuck the priest, Muhammad told him. Muhammad saw an old lady at the door and said to

her, who the fuck you looking at like that? I'm black, but I ain't no dog. Malva recalled that in about 15 minutes the people were storming through the door cursing, shouting, breaking chairs and demanding that the old white people speed up. And so they basically walk away from this chaos that they've created. Muhammad and Malva slipped away and then Muhammad imparted yet another lecture. He pointed out that what he had demonstrated was a riot on a very small level. He went on to explain that impoverished people everywhere are like a nice powder keg waiting for a spark. They are already angry and when the anger is brought to the surface they will fight for anything. Muhammad then indicated that Malva should be able to get people to the boiling point

and then direct their aggression. Which he has just demonstrated his own inability to do. Yes. This also feeds his ideology that poor people are like sheep. It's not that the anger of the poor and the downtrodden can be used to overthrow the system. It can be used to destroy the poor as well. Like what he wants is oblivion. He doesn't actually want to turn the anger of the poor into actual progress. He even tells Lee that the reason why black people are downtrodden in America is because there's so much disunity among them and because they can't organize and because they don't work hard enough. Even his racial resentment against white people, he constantly refers to America being in the middle of a race war. He doesn't actually take

sides in the race war. He basically says that white people are evil and black people are lazy. Do you think that John wants to kill? I mean, he does. There's a really interesting scene where he takes Lee to a housing project and he's watching these black kids play basketball and then, of course, there's a cop car with a cop in it parked 10 feet away. He's like, look at this cop. He's just waiting for these kids to do something. He's waiting for them to sell drugs. He's waiting for them to shop so that he can arrest them. The entire purpose of the police state is to lock up black people, which is like the kind of thing that you read in the nation. This is not a completely banana's viewpoint. No, I say the same thing quite frequently. But then he hands Lee a gun

and he's like, now you know who your enemy is. Now you know what you need to do. Again, it's like this thing where he's got these sort of true premises that mass incarceration disproportionately affects black people, but then his conclusion from those premises is we must take up arms and kill white people and black people and cops and drug dealers. I mean, it seems retconned, right? It feels like he has this need for destruction and he's like, and it's for these reasons. And it's like maybe, John, maybe you just want to kill people. But it's also really interesting to me that like, and much like Manson, I think, he's trying to inculcate this young vulnerable disciple with this murderous rhetoric. But he might have not actually killed anyone himself. Like, I know

that's a big gray area, but like it seems very possible that Lee actually pulled the trigger on every shooting. So like, what does it mean to want to kill people but not do it yourself? Like, what is that? Well, I do think that your description of a cult leader rather than a serial killer is really useful because I do think cult leaders are characterized by kind of laziness and not wanting to do any of the work themselves. And like maybe being more interested in like exercising their power over other people by getting them to do extreme stuff for them. Right. And I mean, you know, we still don't know, you know, John may have committed some of the murders, John may have committed all of the murders. It's so difficult to believe anything

in Lee's account. But we do know that this ideology, a lot of it was really about manipulating Lee. And that Lee is clearly that he's able to do with Lee what he wanted to do with Mildred, it seems to. But like here he has someone who's like totally dependent on him and totally under his thumb. And what's really interesting is at this period too, as Lee is sort of getting deeper into this ideology, they're setting up this routine, they're going to the shooting range, John becomes more abusive. Yeah, because it turns out in abusive relationships, like the abusive party tends not to be like, you know what, like I'm happy with the degree of control that I feel I'm exerting of you right now. I feel satisfied. Right. It has to get worse.

Right. And there's there's really interesting testimony by one of the baristas at this cafe that they hang out at all the time, where he sees them sitting there playing chess, talking for hours. He assumes that their father and son, and he's like really inspired by this relationship. He's like, wow, like I've never seen a father and son with such a great bond. And then, you know, you chat to the barista, whatever, he comes over to their table at one point and he's like, hey kiddo, do you ever beat your old man at chess? And what he notices is that Malvo doesn't answer. Malvo looks at John and gets permission. And then he answers. There's also an incident where they're playing basketball at the Y and John goes up for a layup. Lee tries to swat the basketball

out of his hand, but he misses and he hits John sort of on the ear, on the neck, whatever. Like the kind of thing that is annoying, but happens happens in sports. Yeah. And so on the next play, this is what Lee says in the biography that he eventually writes, I grab him on his next drive. He swings and elbows me in my ribs, grabs my wrist and twists it. I'm on my knees in pain, then he throws me about 10 feet. I'm in a pile on the floor holding my wrist. Oh my god. He looks at me with a hollow stare. I've never seen so much anger aimed at me before. I immediately ask what I did to make him so angry. He stared at me and then walked away. And so this is from Karmita's book when she's describing Lee's kind of psychological state. In Malvo's mind, he was

to blame for the abusive reaction because Muhammad could not have been wrong. Associated with the self-blame was the fear of being abandoned. He was totally dependent on Muhammad. He resolved that he would never disappoint Muhammad again. The basketball incident was the first time that Muhammad was physically abusive to Malvo. It was also the last, Malvo said. Whatever abuse that followed would be psychological. Muhammad only had to give Malvo the look and the boy would comply. And so I do think that the dependence is a huge part of this, that Lee is an undocumented immigrant and the only, really the only relationship within his life now because John has been so good at isolating him. He's not making friends at the shelter. He's not chatting with this barista.

I mean, he really has nobody else. Yeah. And also that, I mean, that he's completely dependent on him financially and functionally, right? Yeah. So into this brainwashing indoctrination period comes Lee's mother, Una. About two months after Lee runs away from his mom, his mom comes to Bellingham. She somehow figured out that they're staying at this place called the Lighthouse Mission. She basically just shows up there and starts asking around, like, have you seen my son? And this Al Archer guy, who is, of course, deeply suspicious of John and Lee, is like, thank God, like I finally get some answers. So he helps Una look around Bellingham. He tells her to go to the police and have the

police pick up Lee outside the YMCA. So they do, they pick up Lee at the YMCA. They bring him back to the Lighthouse Mission. He's reunited with his mom, but he's kind of like, he doesn't seem very warm. Like Al Archer says that it doesn't seem like a very warm reunion. He's kind of like, what are you doing here? Yeah. I would also imagine that if I'm trying to completely indoctrinate a teenager into my banana's worldview, then setting up something to further estrange him from his parent would also be part of that for me. Oh yeah. Yeah. And Lee basically goes with her to some motel room. But within a day, what happens is the cops in Bellingham report them to the INS. And what's really interesting is, you know, the INS comes to this motel room,

they arrest Una, and then they go to the YMCA to pick up Lee because they know that he hangs out there. And they show up in the locker room, John and Lee are in the locker room changing, and these INS agents get there. And so they ask Lee, you know, are you Lee Malbo? He says, yes. They say, you know, who's this guy? Like, are you with this adult? And Lee says, yes, I'm with John. And John immediately sells him out. John is just like, nope, I've never seen this kid before in my life. I have no idea who this kid is. Yeah, he just, we're just chatting in the locker room. So does heartening when your cult leader has no fucking loyalty to you? Right. It's like, John, good, tiny cult members are not a dime a dozen. Like, he's like, no. So basically,

John is just like, I'm just a random guy in the locker room. And they're like, okay, fair enough, mister. And they take Lee to immigrant detention. Oh my God. And so this is where he gets very importantly fingerprinted. Apparently, according to Lee, they put Lee and his mother in the same cell in this immigrant detention facility in Seattle, and they don't speak for two days. And his mom realizes that he's slipping away. So it seems that she's not abusive to him there. And so for two days, they don't speak, then he gets transferred to an INS facility that's in Spokane, although other accounts say that it's in a different part of Seattle. But then because Una has in the meantime, she's married a Haitian immigrant to the US, he has permanent residency,

and she's still waiting for her paperwork to come through granting her permanent residency. She gets a lawyer, the lawyer communicates with the INS, it takes about a month for all of this to go through. But eventually they're like, yeah, your paperwork's coming through, you're married to an American, you're free. And so this is one of the stupidest decisions that Una has made. I don't know if it's Lee that convinces her or if she decides this herself. But Una decides when they get released from this detention facility, Lee gets flown back to Seattle, they're finally together again. And Una decides, let's go back to Bellingham because you're enrolled in that school. Hmm. This attachment to school is like a weirdly consistent part of her decision making. It's

very interesting. I don't really know what to make of it. I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, frankly, I think it's a huge, like a huge component of the story is that Una is from a developing country. And that like for people trying to escape poverty around the world, like there's this myth that like poor people don't care about education or ethnic minorities don't care about education. Like one of the most universal human traits, 98% of humanity, if you poll them what is the one thing they want for their children, it is education. And especially people in developing countries because every poor person wants their kid to be less poor than they are. And education is the only reliable way to do that. And also everyone wants their child to do

better than they did, even if it's in a very nebulous way. Yeah. We can see that all the way and up in Felicity Huffman land. Yes. So it's understandable that she wants to take him back to really the only form of stability in his life. But of course, the minute they get back to Bellingham, Lee runs away. He steals $30 from her purse, and he uses it to buy a bus ticket to Tacoma because he knows John is there. Basically, there's a really interesting narrative here where I was thinking like you could make a movie about Una like searching for her son and trying to get her son away from John. Because at this point of the story, Una kind of becomes the hero. She also thinks that John is bad news. Right. She wants to get her son away from John. And we know now

that if she had succeeded, that would have been much better for the country. And maybe John never would have done the sniper shootings at all if he didn't have this perfect accomplice. And so for the second time, this is a story of women looking for their children frantically. And also like a very complicated woman looking for her child too, right? Like we know if Lee had gone back with Una, he would have been subjected to the same abuse. Right. Because once again, we're seeing that the choices for him are like between kinds of abuse and differently abusive situations. Yes. It's bad and worse. Those are his two choices. And so apparently Una spends months looking for him. There's an incident in March of 2002,

two months later, where she's on the bus. It's not clear if this is in Tacoma or Bellingham. But she's on the bus and she looks over and there's Lee and John sitting in the seats, sort of two rows back from her. And she yells to the bus driver, stop the bus, stop the bus, this is my son. And she goes up to Lee and she's like, where have you been? I haven't seen you. And Lee says, I'm sorry, I don't know you. I don't know this woman. Like please keep driving the bus. I've never seen this woman before in my life. Wow. And John helps him. John is like, yes, I'm this boy's father. This is not his mother. I've never seen her before in my life either. And everyone on the bus is like, wow, this lady sure is weird. And then John and Lee get off the

bus. And so the last time she sees him before court is this bus. She's looking out the window and this bus is driving away and just leaving them on the side of the road. So it's one of those sad moments that she created to a certain extent, right? I mean, it's sad to think about her receding into the distance in this bus, but it's also like, well, yeah, Lee did that. Yeah. I mean, I think this is one of the elements of tragedy, Greek tragedy. And my understanding of it is like, it is very obvious that everyone involved is doing their best. And that their best is decided by whatever fatal flaw they have. And we all have one. It's just a deeper and more realistic. And I think much more depressing story in the end. If you think about,

you know, this was not based on one puppeteer having a master plan and everyone falling into his thrall. I mean, we have really a puppeteer figure in the story, but it's like everything he's able to do is still based on where everyone else in the story is coming from. John is not orchestrating all of this. Like no one has that power. And this is, I mean, to me, this is one of the frustrating parts of the classic true crime trope that we sort of elevate the killer to the sort of mastermind figure who made everything happen rather than parachuting into a complicated world and finding ways to wittingly and unwittingly capitalize on the weaknesses and tragedies of others. Yeah. I mean, one of the interesting parallels with OJ, I feel like that's kind

of partly what you're getting at is that he's also very good at manipulating people and finding people who are vulnerable to his manipulation without necessarily realizing that's what he's doing. Right. Yeah. I don't think that like John is sitting around being like, yes, I really love these vulnerable and worldly people. You don't think about that yourself because it doesn't mesh well with a self aggrandizing philosophy. Yeah. And so another really interesting parallel. You said something really interesting in our Cato Kalen Part Two episode the other day that you said one of the reasons why OJ may have committed his crime is he didn't have any other structure in his life. Right. But like Cato is talking about just how bored he seems during the time

that he's living in the guest house at Rockingham. Yeah. And he has no other sense of purpose other than his resentment of Nicole. Right. And what I think is really interesting in this period after John takes Lee away from Una is they're entering a period like this too where Lee has now given up on school. John has realized accurately, I think, that stealing stuff is much more lucrative than working. So they don't have to really do very much during the day. And so they've already been spending almost all of their time together. And now it's really every waking moment there together with nothing else to do. Which we also really we discount how strong of an effect that can have on you just being continually in someone else's presence. Yeah. And so they're living in

Tacoma every once in a while they go back up to Bellingham but it's for a day or two. They can't stay at the lighthouse mission anymore. A lot of the people in the homeless services sort of sector around Tacoma and Bellingham know them now and Lee is paranoid about getting picked up by the INS again. So they're really trying to stay off the grid. So really they're hanging out with this guy Earl Dancy and they're just playing video games all day and going to the shooting range and every once in a while doing some sort of petty stealing frozen steaks from the grocery store type stuff. And so all they really have is this plan of theirs against Mildred and getting good shooting people and this sort of ideological indoctrination that's their only real hobby now.

So this is also the part and I've really been looking forward to telling you about this part because this is where we finally meet John's girlfriend. Oh boy. So one of the people that they are staying with in Tacoma is a woman named Mary Merez who John has been dating since 1995 since he started fixing her car when he was still together with Mildred. Oh this is one of the lonely women who needed her car fixed in the middle of the night. She's a really interesting figure in that she's a former nurse, she's divorced, she has a few kids, she's born and raised in Tacoma, she meets this nice guy and she testifies at his trial that he was great to her. She never saw any signs of resentfulness, bitterness, he was never abusive, he was never to her knowledge

manipulative. What she says at the trial is John was a very considerate person, the strongest, most generous person I have ever known and she sort of breaks down on the stand talking about this and there's something really interesting about that, that it seems that he was a pretty positive guy in her life and he was still capable at that point of holding it all together, of sort of hiding this deep well of resentment that was right beneath this nice guy exterior. And which seems, I mean this really speaks to our conversations about Paula Barbieri during this pre-trial stuff and pre-trial publicity, she was very useful to the defense team as someone who could get up and go on TV and say, no, like I'm not scared of him,

he's never been abusive to me. And if we're to believe her at all, she was telling the truth. I think there's something to be said for being the side piece of someone with major issues, because it's with O.J. and also with John, we can say, well, yeah, like he wasn't directing that at you and there were other people in his life and other relationships in his life that he seemed to be projecting that psychic baggage into and yet at the same time and maybe because those relationships had so much projected stuff and so many issues of his bound up in them, he was able to be, to freight other relationships with less baggage maybe. Yeah, and there's this really interesting passage in this Sniper book about her relationship with

him. She says, she heard about his battle with his wife and anguish over his missing children. He told her he had been devastated when his wife accused him of threatening her with violence. That was the lowest blow, he said. You know me, he told her, I would never, never raise my hand to a woman. His wife knew, he said, that the way to hurt him the most was to keep the children away from him. The children were his world. He lived for them and Mary knew that. From a drugstore in Tacoma, she had wired him money when he had them in Antigua, losing the children broke him. He seemed to care about everyone and rarely got angry. Sometimes he would stay with her for a while, a few days or a week, then he leave. She fell in love with him

and dreamed that someday they might have a life together. When they first get together, does she know that he's, I mean, she, how early does she find out that he's married? She knows immediately because they're kind of family friends. So he starts fixing her car, he starts being nice to her kids, he starts offering to fix her car for free. There's this really interesting scene in his trial where the lawyers are cross examining her about her relationship to him because she characterizes him as a friend. She says, oh, we were always friends. And then they start pushing her and like, well, when did you start sleeping together? And did you love him or not? And so she's like crying on the stand and kind of trying to deny that they were in a relationship together. And I

think part of that is like, she probably feels really bad that she was this naive, right? If you know somebody and somebody's really important in your life and they go off and do something this horrific, you sort of feel like a fool, right? It's like falling for like a three-card Monty scam on the street or something. You're kind of like, oh, I can't believe I did that. It's this shameful thing. Yeah, we like to believe that someone who we know intimately that we should be able to just know the worst things that they're capable of. But yeah, I don't think that's true. Yeah, there's also a really interesting thing where Mary is white. And so when Lee meets Mary for the first time, they get off the bus and Mary meets them at the bus station,

he's kind of like, sorry, you've spent thousands of hours telling me how we're in a race war and white people are the worst. And our whole sort of like holy war is against white people. You've been dating a white woman for seven years. Can you care to explain? Wait, I want to guess. I feel like if I were to kind of be like, no, I must keep having sex with this white devil to sharpen my revolutionary instincts and remind myself of how terrible white people are. It's just so terrible. They're breasts. Terrible. Got to check again. What did he say? That is one tick less chicken shit than John is. Because John basically, he's like, yeah, you're right. I'm going to break up with her. Oh, John. He's just like kind of hand waves it away.

Like, yeah, it's not real. Like it's not going to go. It's whatever. Yeah. Don't worry about it. But again, there's these little like red flags that like John is full of shit. But again, Lee's 16. He doesn't have the tools to be like, sorry, this guy doesn't actually believe anything that he's telling me. Right. And just the desire, I mean, the desire to believe that like John has his act together. Yeah. Why do people believe that their churches don't harbor abuse? Right. Why do we believe that our jobs at startups make sense and are going towards a viable product? Like there is so much plausible deniability that we allow to exist in our lives where like we know on some level that if we open that door that's supposed to go to the control room that it would

just be like a bunch of mops. Yeah. And that's why we don't open it. So another thing that happens at this time because they have no structure in their life other than this plan that they're talking about and this resentment that is getting fed every single day by having nothing else to do, the training that they're doing gets much more intense. So they're spending up to 12 hours a day at the shooting range. John starts doing this extremely weird shit where he will tie Lee shirtless to a tree and then leave him there for like six hours. Oh my God. And this is in, this is January, February, March. Yeah. Oh no. This is what Karmita says in her book. Lee was so into the training and gaining Muhammad's respect that he wanted to be chained to the tree for

hours. He wanted to prove how tough he was, how indestructible he was. And I mean, this is also the period where they start to establish this pattern where John will sort of debrief. Like he'll send Lee on these weird missions so they'll camp out in the woods and then he'll have Lee sneak up on other campers, like sort of crawl through the dirt silently. That's very like the Manson family. Like as they were working their way up to committing murders, they would just quietly break into people's homes and like move their furniture around and they called it creepy crawling. Nice. It's like very serious and dark, but it's like he couldn't have called it something less funny. I think it's part of this. He's, he's indoctrinating Lee with all this sort of

war on a mission, war secret agents. He's telling him all kinds of stories about what he did in the military. Like, oh, I had to survive on my own in the woods in the military, which like, no, he didn't. He was in Saudi Arabia. Right. Where were these woods? A really interesting thing at this time is that Earl Dancy later testifies that John is not a very good shot at doing the sniping. It's great that, you know, the legacy of the DC snipers is, you know, includes the fact that the older mastermind of the operation was like not very good at shooting. I mean, we have no idea how much to believe from Earl Dancy, but it's also more evidence that Lee may have been the one doing more of the sniper shootings

simply because he might have been a better shot. We don't know. Right. So in late January in 2002, this is now 10 months before the sniper shootings in DC is the first time John orders Lee to kill somebody. So in the end of January, they're hanging out in Bellingham. I don't really know why they're there that weekend. John spins him this whole yarn about how he's been casing this restaurant, and he knows that the manager of the restaurant comes out around 1 a.m. and she has a bag with her with all of the cash for that night. Lee doesn't say this in his book, but I think this is probably someone that John was dating. Because he dated literally everyone. Yes. And it's not clear that John has the discipline to sit outside of a restaurant. I mean, it would take weeks to figure

out how much money you wouldn't be able to determine that someone leaving at 1 a.m. is taking all the cash with them unless you knew them somehow. Right. It's just easier if you have some kind of inside knowledge of the situation. Yeah. And so this is my hunch. I have no direct evidence for this, but this is my hunch, is that it's somebody that he was dating. This is your like, you're choosing your one Nancy Grace moment if you have to wildly throw out an unsupported theory, and this is the one you're choosing. I got to fill the 24-hour news cycle, Sarah. Yeah, you do. You do. So basically, they pull up in a car outside of this parking lot outside the restaurant at around midnight, and he says to Lee, you have to kill this lady and take her money. And here's a passage from Lee's

biography. Sir, why are we doing this? I asked him. Why are we doing this? Muhammad repeated, his eyes pierced mine. You're being prepared for what I asked. He gave me that look and I realized that I screwed up. I looked at the ground. He hissed. Where is your zeal now? He laughed, but then he got serious again. Are you willing to do what it takes? Are you? Yes, sir. I responded. Then do it. And so extremely, extremely, extremely fortuitously, this woman comes out of the restaurant around 1 a.m. She unlocks her car. She throws this kind of binder with all the cash in it on the passenger seat. She gets into the car and then she sort of goes, ah, she's forgotten something and she goes back into the restaurant. And so Lee with the gun in his hand dashes up to

the car, opens the passenger side door, grabs the portfolio and runs away. Oh, nice thinking, Lee. And so they get around $1,000 from this. This is when they start realizing that these forms of robberies are much more lucrative. Right. Think of all the crackers you can buy with $1,000. Although not that many supplements, actually. Yeah. This also establishes their pattern of John doing this debrief with Lee afterwards, where he's like, okay, let's go over it. How did everybody do? This is part of his whole facts and logic thing, right? That we must perfect ourselves. We must become perfect machines. But what they really are is just an opportunity for him to criticize Lee for whatever minor imperfections there were in the crime that they

commit. It's like, dude, do your own crime. Yes. And then finally reveal that you're not very good at it. Yeah. This is like how my dad is about home repairs. And so John basically is like, well, the crime went fine. It ended up easier because we didn't have to kill her. But the whining beforehand is really embarrassing. Let's cut back on the whining next time. Oh my God. Of course, Lee is just like, yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. He's like a mean gymnastics coach. I know. And it's like these robberies are like floor routines or something. It's like, oh, look at that. You stepped out of it there. Oh, almost came off the mat. That's no good.

And so after that sort of test run, two weeks later is when they commit their first murder, February 16, 2002, two days before Lee's 17th birthday. Wow. So this murder, I mean, we talked about it briefly in the first episode, but they're basically setting out to assassinate Issa Nichols, who was their business manager who sided with Mildred in the divorce. And John has been nursing his resentment of Issa Nichols for about eight months now since he lost the children. And so he orders Lee to go up to her house, pull out a gun. And if it's her at the door to shoot her without saying anything.

And if it's not her to say, I have a message from John and then shoot her. Is this in broad daylight? When is this? This is at night. Oh, okay. So Issa, as we mentioned last time, Issa is at the store at the time. And her niece, Keenia Cook, is changing her baby's diaper upstairs. How old is Keenia? She's 21.

Okay. This is how Lee tells the story. I got out of the car. I tuned into his voice in my head, remembering all the lessons, the preparation. Malvo, be calm. The calm, cool, and collective survive. Free your mind to the task at hand. Don't think it, become it. This is all John garbage, right? Yeah, this is all like Nike commercials. I wrapped on the door. Good evening. Is Ms. Nichols in? I asked the young lady at the door. She seemed eager to talk, for she gave me a long answer, telling me of Mrs.

Nichols exact whereabouts. Well, I have a message for her, I say, reaching into my paper bag. I turned my body so she can't see my hand. Lee, a voice in me said, don't. But the other voice, just as loudly said, no, do it, do it. My eyes are watery. You can't face him unless you do this. The lady at the door inhaled, getting impatient. This is all happening in seconds. I put the gun to her face, and in an instant, I saw not her, but me, my old self I hate. That scared, hurt self. That night, Lee Boyd Malvo took his last breath and died. In an instant, she too was gone. Wow. And so from what we know of this crime, he shot her in the head, and her baby starts crying upstairs. Oh my gosh.

And he runs away, and nobody, you know, none of the neighbors, it all happened so fast. Nobody really sees anything. One of the really chilling things about this is one of the reasons this murder was never solved until after the DC Sniper case is she also had an abusive boyfriend, apparently. Oh my gosh. And so when this 21-year-old turns up dead, everyone just assumes, I think, very reasonably that it must have been her abusive boyfriend. And then was he investigated and prosecuted? He was investigated, but they never found him. I think he left the state. Oh boy. It's like a testament to just the way crime functions that it's

a race to see who's going to kill a young woman first. Is it going to be her abusive boyfriend or ex, or is it going to be the abusive ex of her aunt's boss? Also, it's very interesting to me that that detail only shows up in Mildred's book. I think Mildred, because Mildred centers abuse in the story, which I think she's completely right to do. Yes. Also, because she knows Issa, and she knows the story of this niece, Kenya, she's like, no, this is like, it's all wrapped up in abuse. We need to sort of put this front and center. And that John targeting Issa is an extension of his abusive Mildred and his disproportionate rage coming to focus on, because his ex-wife is out of the picture, someone has to get it.

And if it's not going to be her, it's going to be the woman who tried to support her when she disagreed with him about how to run their business. And if it's not going to be her, it's going to be whoever's in the house. It's terrible. And so Mildred talks about when she finds out about this, because of course, Issa calls her, they both think that it's the abusive ex. And so she doesn't see this as a warning sign that John's violence has escalated. She doesn't link it to John at all. And it's only after the FBI finally gets in touch with her. And this gets linked to the DC snipers that she realizes that it was John. At the time, it's like, this is what abuse does to people.

Yeah. I just really, I think what's going to stick in my head about all this is like, Lee shows up and pulls the trigger and shoots Kenya and kills her. And then the baby starts crying. And that's what Issa finds when she comes back. Oh my God, I know. Oh my God. Then Issa comes back to the body of her niece and this sound of crying upstairs, and she immediately runs upstairs to get the baby and then finally starts putting together what happened. I would just like to have like as part of some day a story where like, one of the women in this narrative like goes shopping and nothing terrible happens.

Bring back normal shopping. Yeah. And what's really interesting is this is also on some level an act of abuse of Lee too. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because then once you force someone to kill, they're not coming back from that. John gets so much power from that. And so this is this is a passage from Lee's biography as he walked away and began to run toward where he was to meet Muhammad. His thoughts were on the fact that he had just killed another human being. He was sweating. He soiled himself and silent tears rolled down his cheeks. As he reached a phone booth, Muhammad pulled up and he got in. I sat silently. He said,

trying to hide my shaking hands. I watched you. You did perfect. He smiled. I returned his smile. Oh my God. Oh, don't worry. Everything will be all right here. He handed me my wallet and a new ID. That is your new name. I read to myself, John Lee Muhammad. He looked at me with the deepest stare. Lee Boyd Malibu no longer exists. He started the engine and drove off. And Lee talks about, I mean, you know, the real victim here is Kenya, obviously. But it's interesting that Lee, there's like a period of two weeks where Lee is, he's vomiting constantly. Apparently when he gets back to Earl Dancie's house after committing this murder, he stays in the shower for hours, scrubbing himself over and over again.

And of course, they do a debrief where John is like, oh yeah, stop staying in the shower. Why do you feel bad? Like, you know, John of course chides him for this and doesn't accept it like, hey, maybe you did a really big thing. And so he feels very bad for what appears to be a very long time about this. Yeah, like you do when you kill someone. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't stop him from continuing to kill people and continuing to try to endear himself to John or prove himself to John or whatever is going on in his head at this point. It's not as simple as just, you know, he's a total sociopath at this point. Yes. And I mean, I find it interesting that there's this idea that I've never understood that like understanding the positions of the people who

commit the crimes and their humanity and how they got to this place is somehow taking something away from the tragedy of the people that they have harmed or they have. Yeah. Because I think that like, like, do we take Keenia's death more seriously or do we mourn her more effectively if we're like, yeah, and then he kills her and I bet he liked it and I bet that all the showering was just a fake show of grief and he found his vocation and he loved it and it was unambiguous and uncomplicated. How does that mean that we're respecting the loss of her life more deeply? You know, I guess I've got that. And so this is now the period, this drives me nuts, that the period between when they kill Keenia Cook and when they begin the sniper shootings is referred to by almost

every account that you find, especially the shorter accounts as this sort of yada, yada, yada kind of frame. They committed their first murder, they had the lobster bis. Yeah. And there's this kind of thing of, you know, they committed this one crime and then there's just this avalanche of crime and then this crimes recombinates in DC at the end of it. Like it's all kind of this run up to the DC sniper shootings. But when you actually look into this, their first killing was on February 16th and the sniper shootings don't begin until October. This is an eight month period. I mean, this is almost a third of the time that they know each other. This is the length of an entire viable pregnancy. Yes, this is a long period and they don't just like immediately leave Tacoma and sort of

work their way to DC. No, they go places and they come back to Tacoma. And so the first thing that happens is they go visit John's sister in Arizona and on the way they take a bus down to LA and then over to, I believe she lives outside of Tucson. And so on this kind of couple day layover in LA, this is when Lee says that he killed someone, but LA authorities have never been able to find a body, they haven't been able to identify any murders that took place during that period. So it's still not clear whether he killed somebody in LA or not. But in Arizona, on March 19th, there is a guy named Jerry Taylor who is shot with a high powered rifle from far away. I would imagine this is pretty rare and that like the police and whatever jurisdiction are not seeing

a ton of murders committed this way. Oh, it's extremely rare. I mean, there's a finite number of murders committed in the United States every year. I really cannot stress enough how rare it is for it not to be really obvious who did the shooting when somebody gets shot. Or how rare it is to be murdered by a stranger. Yes. So it's not common for people to be shot with high powered rifles from far away. Right. And so this is one of the ones where we're pretty sure this one happened. There are witnesses that report people sort of coming out from the woods near this golf course and dragging him into the woods. Although very strangely, they didn't steal his cash or his credit cards. Wait, they shot him and then they dragged him into the woods?

Yeah. Wow. That's really weird. It's also very weird that they didn't take his cash and credit cards because if they're in proximity to his body, like why wouldn't you? And also, three days later, they steal a purse from a Greyhound bus driver. Like they're obviously in the market for cash and credit cards. Hmm. And then the lead go on to confess to something kind of matching the circumstances. Okay. He, according to some random college kids who they end up staying with in Bellingham later, Lee says we shot a senator on a golf course once. And these random college kids are like, whatever, like people say stuff and they don't really think anything of it. But of course, later on the cops come to them and they tell the story.

So that's some sort of contemporaneous Lee admitting to this, which does indicate that they did do this. And the daughter of Jerry Taylor, whose name is Cheryl Shaw, because this is an unsolved murder for years. And she finds out about the DC sniper attacks. And it's like, this makes sense. Like it's the same caliber of rifle, apparently. And so she starts writing to Lee and saying like, look, I don't care if you get immunity or not, but I just want closure. I don't know who did this to my father. And not only does Lee admit to this, but he also gives her a call and they talk about it. So part of me feels like it's somewhat plausible because we know this about Lee, that he gives people what they want. It's somewhat plausible to me that he

might have confessed to a murder that he didn't do. But it's also, I mean, these guys are the DC snipers. It's also pretty plausible that they killed somebody with a high powered rifle from far away. And also John's sister does live in that part of Arizona. It's like a mile away from his sister's house. Right. The only thing that's out of pattern is that they didn't steal his credit cards and cash. Right. So I think it's probably more likely that they actually did this. Yeah. I mean, it's not as if he's confessing to something that has a completely different set of circumstances attached to it. And I can also see being in prison and being like, well, I want to do something good with my life and like bring Chloe here to the person, even if it's not true, like that's better

than nothing. Right. Yeah. So after they stay with John's sister for a couple of weeks, they commit the shooting probably, they then leave Arizona and go back to Bellingham. On the bus, on the way back to Bellingham, the driver puts her purse on her seat behind her. And when she arrives in Bellingham, it's gone. And so what we find out later is that John and Lee took the purse, they used one of her credit cards to buy $12.01 worth of gas. And then the bank canceled the car because of algorithms. And what's really interesting is this is the card later on that they will ask the US government to put $10 million on it as part of one of their ransom demands. That's like a Dr. Evil thing to do. I'm sorry. That's just like so silly. It's so, I mean,

also the government is like, this is a weird thing to do. Like you're not even asking it for like an overseas bank account or something that's not traceable. Right. Or like non-sequential bills. Come on. Yes, I know. Watch a movie. Watch a movie. So anyway, they get back to Bellingham, they end up staying with these random college kids. And then the timeline, I mean, this whole year of this quote unquote, Grimesbury, the timeline is all over the place. There's a murder of a guy named Billy Jean Dillon in Denton, Texas on May 27th of this year. And Lee has not confessed to this one. The only evidence basically is that it was a guy shot with a high-powered rifle and the crime was never solved. Wow. It's confirmed that at somewhere in June, July, August, they spent a

couple weeks in Louisiana just sort of catching up with people. And then by early August, they're back in Tacoma. And one of the reasons why I don't love this kind of Grimesbury framing is that this period in early August when they're back in Tacoma is really important because it's real like walls closing in time where Earl Dancy and John are having a falling out with each other at this point over apparently John may have slept with his wife. I mean, classic John to be fair. Like who didn't see that coming? Yeah, I mean, I guess all Earl is really admitting to that like John was hanging out at his house when he wasn't there. And he asked John not to, but John did it anyway. And the movie Blue Caprice, which is based on the DC Snipers and gets

literally everything wrong. It says explicitly that he was sleeping with the wife. I have no idea what they're basing that on. So it might have just been a fall. I mean, Earl Dancy might just be tired of the guy, right? And also John at this point is really losing his superpower. He can't hide the resentment anymore. So this is when he stays with this random cousin in Louisiana. He's like, Oh, we're on a secret mission to steal a bunch of explosives for the Pentagon. And then they sleep in the next day. And they're playing video games. And they're just like, they don't seem very charming. And she lies apparently. And she's like, Oh, yeah, sorry, I have another friend sleeping here. You guys can't sleep here again tonight.

He's losing his ability to charm people and his ability to cover up how off-putting he is. It's like the end of Terminator 2 where he's like glitching out. Well, like he's able to do well on these like short term relationships. And then the more people come to know him, the more they recognize hot air is hot air. Yeah. And so I think that's probably partly what's happening with Earl Dancy, regardless of the wife stuff. I think it's just like John's getting weirder. Apparently, the last interaction with John that he has is his rifle goes missing from his car in a Walmart parking lot. Earl's does? Yeah. And it's not like his rifle is sitting in the passenger seat visible. It's like

you would have to know where it is. And John is one of the only people that knows where it is. And so to me, this is very reckless behavior of someone who you've been close to to basically do something that ensures that that person's never going to want to speak to you again. Yes. So John is just flailing. And at this time, also, Mary breaks up with him. I mean, good for Mary. I mean, she does it in a very like early 2000s way where she ends up spending a year in Colorado. And then she moves back to Tacoma and she just doesn't tell John her new address or her new phone number. And this is before cell phones, right? So like, if you didn't know somebody's landline number or their address, that's basically it for the

relationship. They can't watch you watching your Instagram stories. Yes. And so this interview that she gives to the people who wrote the sniper book, it says later she would worry that she might have been a reason for what happened. What if she had still been his refuge, his place of peace? Oh, dear. So basically, they're running out of places to stay in Tacoma, right? Because Nancy is getting sick of them. Mary has basically ghosted on him at this point. Robert Holmes is getting more and more sick of them. This is John's army buddy. And also, I feel like John has kind of a hair trigger for how he's seen by other people and having this thing of like his sort of local allies kind of being like, oh, we're kind of sick of your whole

thing. Take it somewhere else. Like, I can imagine him becoming volatile more than usual about that. And he's also, I mean, now because the walls are closing in and he's losing option after option after option, it's sort of like, well, stagnating and putting it off, kicking the can down the road isn't really an option anymore. And so the first sign that we get that they are in D.C., it appears they took a bus direct from Tacoma to D.C., is on September 5th, this is a month before these sniper shootings begin, a guy named Paul Rufia is leaving his restaurant in Clinton, Maryland. Which is where Mildred lives. Yes. And this is how he tells it. He says, I owned a restaurant in Clinton. We closed at 10, and I left with two people around 1020.

I got in my car and shut the door. Seconds later, the driver's side window exploded. All I saw was the flash of light from a gun. Then it got quiet. I was bleeding out of my chest, and I said to my friend, dial 911. The shooter grabbed the briefcase and computer and ran down the road. That was the start of the sniper, but we didn't know. There was 3,500 bucks in my briefcase from receipt that ended up financing their operation. I've always said it didn't start in October. Some guy came up, shot me, and left me for dead. Lee later admitted it. And so this is the first shooting. This is their seed money. Yeah. And it's also important that it's in Clinton. So I think what probably happened is they went there to confirm that Mildred did indeed live there,

and then they left, and they went to Camden, New Jersey to buy a car so that they could come back. Why did they go to Camden, New Jersey to do that? Because they're couch-surfing at this point. They're staying in homeless shelters, and John knows somebody from Antigua who he helped smuggle into the United States who lives in Camden, New Jersey. So they basically go there because they can crash on this guy's couch for a couple of days, and he shows them around used car dealerships. Everybody's interviewed the used car dealer that sold in the Caprice, and he says they came in four different times, and they told a different story every time. They're like, oh, I want to use it for a taxi. You're like, oh, I'm going to go on a road trip with my son. And this guy's like,

whatever. It's a $250 car. It's crappy. It's old. It has 150,000 miles on it. Like, whatever. He doesn't really think that much about it. It's amazing to choose a car for your crime spree that could break down at any moment. I think it's also because Chevy's are really big, and they could modify the trunk in the way that they wanted to. I'm going to look up what a blue Caprice looks like. I have no mental image at all. It's like a cop car. It's a 1990 Caprice, if that helps. All right. 19. Oh, yeah. It is a cop car, huh? Oh, wow. That is a big car. Yeah. This is basically a Carnival cruise ship.

That's one of those cars where you see people driving in 80s movies, and you're like, wow, I'm so glad I didn't learn to drive back then. I mean, for a 1990 model, it's actually surprisingly boxy. It looks like it's an older model than it is. It looks pretty unwieldy. This is also weird falling apart T1000 glitching shit where they register the car, and apparently the guy in the registration office is a little salty or a little bit rude or whatever. Three minutes after they register the car in this office, an anonymous call from a pay phone calls in a bomb threat against the motor vehicle office. Mastermind criminals at work here. It's completely pointless, right? Because the car's already registered.

It's just spied. It's just tender little feelings. Yeah. And then they get the car. They head back down to DC. This is when they start scoping out Mildred much more deliberately. In the biography of Lee, it says, Malva recalled that Muhammad wanted to know who visited Mildred, where the kids went to school, where she worked. With Malva beside him, he drove around looking for safe spots, using a laptop computer to map sites from Pennsylvania to Raleigh, North Carolina, which became their hub. Basically, they're spending days stalking Mildred. What's interesting is Mildred's neighbors actually call the cops because they see this blue Caprice so much on

their street. They're like, this is weird that there's this random old car we've never seen before that's around all the time now. Do they know that she's vulnerable to stalking by her ex-husband? Are they aware? Okay. They're just like, oh, this person doesn't live here, and they're here a lot, and this is a residential neighborhood. There's a period where Mildred is actually going out of her house, and she sees this blue car in the driveway blocking the sidewalk. She's like, oh, that's weird. She looks inside, and there's a super young kid at the wheel, and then in the passenger seat is a guy reading a newspaper, and she can't really see his face. She doesn't call the cops. She doesn't do anything about it. She's just like, that's weird. It's clear from all

evidence that they were casing Mildred for quite a long time. It's interesting to be surveilling someone and stalking someone for that long, and almost that's as much of the point as killing them. I don't know. It seems like stalking and surveilling gives people a sense of power over the person that they're surveilling. Maybe that was part of it too. It's all very weird. Yeah. Yeah. And so on September 14th, this is four days after they registered the car. This is from the Sniper Book. On September 14th, across the Potomac River in the Hillendale section of Silver Spring, Maryland, Arnie Zelkovich and his employer Rupinder or Benny Oberoi were closing Zelkovich's Hillendale beer and wine store for the evening. It was around 10 o'clock on a Saturday

night. They were outside, and Zelkovich was showing Oberoi how to lock up. Suddenly, there was a boom. Oberoi thought it was a firecracker. Zelkovich thought it was a backfire. In a second, Oberoi was on the ground, pain filling the left side of his body, a tiny hole in his lower back. Zelkovich looked at the wound and said, you've been shot. In the parking lot of a nearby Safeway, an employee noticed an old, dark car that might have been a Chevy Caprice pull out of the parking space and drive away. He told the police about it, but the feeling was that it was probably just a customer. So this establishes a pattern of these random attacks happening, a witness saying, uh, I sure did see a blue Caprice, and the cop saying, eh, doesn't seem relevant.

And then is it a thing of like, are they hitting areas with different police jurisdictions? Yeah. I think at this point, they're shooting people with a 22. And like, people get shot with 22s. Like, 22s are pretty common. Right. Especially if it's outside of a liquor store at closing time. There's no reason to think like this could be a serial killer. Right. I mean, you automatically associate liquor stores with robberies. Yeah. Right. Like, what word goes after a liquor store? Yeah. Robbery. Yeah. And so one night later on September 15th, in Brandywine, Maryland, which is sort of the next suburb over from Clinton, Maryland, it's about three miles away from Mildred's house, a guy named Mohammed Rashid, who also works at

a liquor store is locking up for the night and he turns around and he sees this teenager walking toward him sort of terminator style. And Lee just lifts up the gun and shoots him in the stomach and steals his wallet and runs away. And I mean, one of the things I think I just want to highlight here is that if you look at the names of the people that are being shot, these are not white people. Like, one of the huge incongruities between John's bullshit ideology and the actual acts that he commits is that including the DC sniper attacks and these attacks, it's like a really diverse cross-section of Americans. This is not like getting revenge on white people. This is whoever's fucking convenient. So after that, they work their way south. There's two Ethiopian

immigrants in Atlanta who are both working. I was trying to reconcile all of these different accounts of this, because five different books have been written about this and I've got them all pasted into the same document. And these two Ethiopian immigrants are working at a store called Sammy's Package Store. And then in other accounts, it says they're working at a liquor store. And because I'm like, I don't drink, I know nothing about liquor words. I was telling my boyfriend like, this is bullshit. Like in these accounts, just because they're Ethiopian immigrants, they're working at a liquor store. How dare they? And then my boyfriend who's from Atlanta is like, a package store is a liquor store, Mike. No one is being shitty here.

And in Michigan, it's a party store. So I'm learning so much from doing this show. You are. You're learning about this great country and all the weird stuff that we name thing. Also in New England, it's a package store, which is very interesting. Oh, is it? Yeah. I mean, at least in Massachusetts. Massachusetts and Georgia don't share a lot of nomenclature, but it's interesting that that's one of them. Yeah, it's a beautiful country, Mike. And so there's one woman working at this liquor store whose name is Mimi Tadesi. And a friend of hers who doesn't work at the store, but is just coming by to help out, whose name is Million Woldemarium. And what they both notice is there's a car idling in the parking

lot. And they're like, huh, that's weird. And so Million says, I'm going to go outside and, you know, check on what it is. Like this shouldn't stop us from closing up. And Mimi's like, ah, this feels really weird to me. Like maybe you shouldn't go outside. And this is from the sniper book. But Million went back outside anyhow to stand guard. He had been gone a few seconds when Mimi heard gunshots. She looked out the door and saw him collapse in the rain. She saw nothing else. Million died 11 hours later at the Atlanta Medical Center. He had been shot twice in the upper back, just below the neck and once in the back of the head. His wallet was missing. It looked as though someone had sneaked up on him, just as with La Rufa and Rashid. And just as in their

shootings, the bullet pieces picked from his wounds were small and probably from a 22 pistol. This is a weird MO also, because if they want to make it look like there's a serial killer, like the thing to do would be to not take people's wallets and make it look like, you know, a theft motivated crime or a mugging gone wrong or something like that. But I don't think this is the real plan. They're mostly flailing around and just trying to get money to keep themselves going. This isn't really part of much of a master plan at this point. Okay, right. And also like if the plan is to get Lee to kill a bunch of people, so he gets used to it, I imagine that that's part of it too.

Yeah. And so the next day, or it's actually technically the same day because the previous shooting was after midnight, but the same day in Montgomery, Alabama, in another liquor store, there's a woman named Claudine Parker and a woman named Kelly Adams are working there. And they're both walking out to their cars after their shift and they hear two gunshots. Claudine was struck in the back by a bullet that severed her spinal cord, paralyzing her instantly and wreaking fatal internal injuries. Kelly too was rushed to Jackson Hospital, where she underwent surgery and recovered. Montgomery police officers who were close enough to hear the shots arrived in seconds and saw a man with a handgun standing over the woman

going through their purses. They chased him, but the gunman vanished. And so I found a really interesting interview with Kelly Adams, the woman who was shot and lived. This is just fascinating to me. I think we do this thing, especially with crimes like this, where we forget the people who are injured. We always talk about the body count. Kelly got shot in the face. And so I've seen photos of her and I looked into a bunch of interviews that she did. And you can see over the years she's gotten more and more surgeries to fix it, but she has a giant scar basically on her jaw bone. And this is this totally fascinating. It's kind of a long excerpt, but I think it's worth going into in detail. Adams told the Montgomery advertiser that she went through

30 surgeries in five years. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and hospitalized for psychological problems. Her marriage ended in divorce and her ex-husband got custody of her daughter. She said she still has night terrors about once a week about a gunman chasing her and she struggles with anxiety. I almost never got in public, Adams said. If I have to go to the grocery store, there is so much anxiety for me to get in and get out. I'm on medications and they keep me relaxed a little bit, but I'm still hyper-vigilant. Adams was invited to witness Muhammad's execution by lethal injection on November 10th, 2009. From the time I was shot, I wanted to be there. But I talked to friends who said it might not be best for my mental state,

she said. The same month she went to work on a traveling carnival to try to get away from what happened. I figured it would be full of people who had no direction and I had no direction, she told the advertiser. After 15 months, she found that wasn't the answer. She said she's with a man she loves and sees her daughter about once a month. Right now, it's as happy as I think I could be. I would be happier if my daughter could live with me, she said. Can we have an episode of this imaginary show about Kelly, like just with the carnies, like just trying to feel? But also, it's there's an uncountable number of victims of any violent crime because there's the person who gets shot, there's the friends and family of that person, there's the community of that person,

like it just radiates out in these uncountable directions. Right. Right. Yeah. And so the other really important thing about this shooting in Montgomery, Alabama is that cops find a gun collector magazine, like one of these, I don't know if it's guns and ammo, but it's one of these magazines like guns and ammo that apparently the killer had in his back pocket and fell out when he ran away. And they find a partial fingerprint on this magazine. Why do people insist on committing murders with things like loosely in their pockets the whole time? It's weird. It's not that I want people to be better at committing crimes, but it's just surprising. Yeah. So on September 23rd, this is a week later, there's a woman named Hong Im Ballinger, who's the manager of a beauty shop

in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And so as she's getting into her car at night outside of the shop, she gets shot from a high powered rifle from long range. And so she is shot and killed. One of her fellow employees spots a quote unquote large dark car driven by a black man pulled out of a vacant field around 75 yards away and then stopped a block to the east. There it picked up another black man who was holding Ballinger's purse. The car sped away. Police called out the bloodhounds, but they found nothing. Doctors removed pieces of the bullet from Ballinger's body. They appeared to be from a 223 rifle round. Is this what they're going to continue to use or will they use something else later on? This is the one. This is like the

rifle they use for all the DC sniper shootings. Okay. So this is like in Friday the 13th three when Jason puts on a hockey mask and he's like, yeah, this is a good look for me. That bag over my head was not conveying what I wanted it to. And then three days later, a gun named Wright Williams is shot at his grocery store in Baton Rouge. And their last shooting in Baton Rouge is the last time they rob anybody. So from here on out, it's just shooting for shooting's sake. They have enough money saved up basically. I mean, if you shot in the neighborhood of 10 people, like I can see getting to the point where like you have, you're acclimated to it to some extent. Yeah. I wonder if that was part of the plan too, or it became part of the plan. And if like Lee's

carrying out all or even a sum of these, it's like, let's make sure my subordinate like knows how to do what I'm going to tell him to do. Right. Right. Yeah. And so far, I mean, according to witnesses, it looks like it's Lee doing all of these. Okay. So in this final period, they hang out in Baton Rouge for a couple of days. There's other accounts of this that this actually takes place during their earlier trip to Louisiana. But at some point during their time in Louisiana, Lee learns about the plan. They're staying with a cousin of John. And John sort of takes him aside. And this is from an account written by a psychologist that spent hundreds of hours interviewing Lee in prison. The plan, as Malvo recalled it, was to commit 25 murders per week for four weeks.

That would constitute phase one. Oh, no. The second phase would begin with the murder of a police officer. Then at the funeral, while hundreds of law enforcement officials attended, there would be a mass killing using homemade bombs. This is like in Columbine when the initial plan was that they were going to blow up the entire school and then shoot all survivors as they ran out. It's like the only thing that can make what actually happened seem like a relief in comparison. So, I mean, John tells Lee all of this and he immediately decides to kill himself. And presumably he understands that his role in this is like, I'm going to be killing the 25 people a week. I'm going to be doing all of this. Yeah. Yeah. This is from a sort of quasi-suicide

note that he writes. It's technically a note to Latoria, who is one of the cousins that he's gotten along with and he feels close to. And so this letter is later published in the Washington Post. It says, Why am I here? There seems for me no purpose. Everyone who has met me hates my guts, rambling. They consider my gibberish fake. I tried to be a friend, a brother, a lover, a man, and yet I've always failed. I've tried to treat women the way they should be treated, like the queens they are. I play, joke, be stern, be appreciative, but receive the opposite in return. I only met one person who understands and appreciates me. I have a father who I know is going to have to kill me for a righteous society to prevail. Oh my God.

So on some level, he knows that he's being used and either he's going to end up confessing to these crimes or John is going to ask him to kill himself or John is going to kill him. He sees very clearly that this is not going to end well. Yeah. And so he locks himself in the bathroom with one of these half dozen guns that they're traveling with. And according to one account, he puts the gun to his head, but he can't pull the trigger. And according to another account, he does a Russian roulette thing where he puts one bullet in, spins the chamber and pulls the trigger, tries again, pulls the trigger, tries again, pulls the trigger. And after three times, he gives up. One of those, I mean, these are both stories, various stories he's told over the years.

But he's kind of, he's in full oblivion mode. Yeah. So as he's sitting in there, this is from his biography. Lee, are you in there? I heard a voice. Yeah, I mumbled. It's Ed, my newly found cousin. Are you all right? I scrambled for a suitable lie. I need to take a leak. That's why I left early. Okay, he responded. I heard his footsteps retreating. I looked. There was blood on my t-shirt. Where did it come from? I checked my face in the mirror. Shit, my nostril. And so from here on out is where we get to the sort of real DC sniper shootings. And Lee is just in total dissociative fugue. He's miserable, but he doesn't really know how to get any of this to stop. He doesn't know how to escape. He doesn't know who he is anymore

because he's been, he's killed. I think it's three or four people at this point have actually ended up dying and he shot 10 or 11. And also probably he's not able to keep track of local news to find out how many people have survived and how. Yeah. So he's sort of become this killing machine. And the plan that they're sort of embarking on is this completely absurd plan that even for what he's already done is a huge escalation. I mean, I'm curious about his mindset at this point, because it seems like if his gut says, I want this to stop, I don't want to do this anymore. Therefore, I have to kill myself. And that this didn't stop because he wasn't able to pull the trigger. Yeah. I mean, that suggests that he doesn't

feel capable of ending it by any other means, which there's a lot of reasons for that. If he goes to the police, then he's so implicated in it all that there's that as a deterrent. I've never been in this position. I don't know what it's like to be standing there looking in the mirror and being like, well, I've already shot 10 people. Yeah. Like, does it matter if I just keep going like it does? But like in that mindset, are you able to conceive of yourself as having volition of having agency over anything? Like if his first thought is like, I don't want to do this anymore. And the way to stop it is by killing myself. I mean, if that's your first thought, then like, are there any other ways out that you can conceive

of in that state? And I also, I mean, the first couple lines of that excerpt are important to me because you can hear him echoing what Una has told him his whole life. Everybody hates you. You try to be a man, you try to be a son, you fail at everything. The only person who wants you once he was lying is you're killing people for him. Yeah. There really is an echo here of the abuse that he's gotten from his mother, his whole life and feeling rejected by his father. Like he's always felt really worthless. And that's really the soil that has allowed John to take him to this place. And not having other family members who could intervene and not having other stability. Yeah. Yeah. It takes a village to raise a child. And it turns out it

can take only one very enthusiastic adult to help them down the path to serial murder. Yeah. So how do you think we did? Did we engage in true crime tropes? Oh, I mean, I don't know. Like everything is a trope at this point, right? I think that the aspects of true crime as a genre that are holding it back from doing what it's capable of is, you know, allowing itself to be messy and allowing itself to be complicated and allowing itself to leave questions unanswered and like just bum out the people who consume it. So I think we did a great job with that. I think everyone's pretty sad now. Well, I'm glad I have you here to tell me if I'm doing anything gross. Sure. I mean, I will. But I think that we're talking about something

that did take or destroy the lives of more people than we can count. And we should just feel weird about it. Yeah. You know, like we've thought about it and we've decided to turn the key and where we think that there's good stuff to be had and things to be learned from us undertaking this endeavor. But like we don't have to feel great about it. That's fine. I don't think we should feel great. Tagline. Yeah. The show that promises to make you feel a little like there's a little film on you. You're implicated. Congratulations. Yeah. I just think the most important thing is no matter what kinds of stories true crime media tells, they should always leave Tracy Chapman out. Yes, Tracy deserves to be a part of lesbian road trip stories.