optimism, his integrity, his clarity, and his love for his family. he was the real deal. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com 911 -- [ siren ] >> it was an unprecedented wave of terror that struck in and around our nation's capital. >> you had 9/11. this is one year later. >> over 23 days, ten people are targeted for death. >> there was always just a single shot. [ gunshot ] >> montgomery county. >> shot in the back lot. he's bleeding real bad. >> the victims are diverse. >> women, men, young, old, black, white. >> the motive is unknown. >> we're not sure if we had a terrorist operation. >> the panic is escalating. >> they were striking at the

heart of the suburbs. >> the guy is dead. there's a white van -- >> i'm going to my fourth funeral in four days. >> people were dying in front of us. >> we can't be everywhere all the time. [ be gunshots ] >> this without a doubt of the most intense three weeks of my career. >> it was one of the biggest manhunts in american history. the hunt for the d.c. snipers. the hunt for the d.c. snipers. ♪ -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com it's known as the beltway. the growing metropolis that surround our nation's capital.

encompassing portions of maryland and virginia, the beltway is a sprawl of medium and small-size towns. the kind of places where indiscriminate violence is rare. for area residents, october 2nd, 2002, began quietly enough. nationally the big news of a hurricane in the gulf of mexico. >> category 4 hurricane. >> the build-up to the invasion of iraq. >> a very different war was about to erupt. [ sirens ] >> i got a call from my deputy. >> a 55-year-old mans was killed out the store. >> we had a gentleman shot the in the parking lot at the shoppers food warehouse. i asked him what kind was it? do we have a smoker, an argument between two people? did we have an answer right away? >> barney forsythe of the head

of major crimes for montgomery county. >> he said, no, not really. we heard a loud bang. [ sirens ] >> it was directly across the street from a police station. in fact, the first police officers to arrive on the scene were those who heard the shot inside the police station and walked across the street. >> the victim is a 55-year-old government analyst named james dean martin. police have almost nothing to go on. >> security cameras are starting to become more popular. we were hoping that it was going to tell us something. unfortunately after we did, the only thing we saw of the poor man basically getting shot and crumpling to the ground. >> we talked about the unusual nature of that particular

murder. >> the thing that bothered us was there was no obvious reason for the shooting. >> in montgomery county, somebody being killed with a rifle is something very unusual. >> a single shot crashed through a craft store window. no one of hit. >> oddly less than an hour earlier, there had been a random shot fired just a few miles away. [ sirens ] >> reporter: there were no injuries and no clues. >> we rennweren't sure what we at that point. >> tonight, the mystery remain -- >> that evening, the two shootings were still a local story. the next morning, everything changed. >> montgomery county? >> yes, we need police and ambulance. >> okay, what's the problem? >> somebody's been shot down in a back lot. he's down on the ground. he's bleeding real bad. >> we had a call for a subject who had been out mowing a lawn. >> the victim is 39-year-old

sonny buchanan. a landscaper. >> immediately we were sure it was going to be related to the previous evening's shooting. >> the two crime scene are just over four miles apart. >> we were reasonably sure that they were parked within several hundred yard of the location. they managed to sight the victim and take the shot. >> 30 minutes later, the carnage continues. [ sirens ] >> what happened here at the gas station? >> i had to fill the car up with gas. there a gentleman filling his car. it was a taxi. and he looked at the me, and i looked at him. and then i looked down for a split seconds to pick up -- split second to pick up my credit card. then i heard a very loud bang. >> the shot came from up here. >> then i looked up, and the taxi driver was walking toward my car. he said to me, call an

ambulance, and he collapsed. we saw a lot of blood. >> tax i driver was 55 years old. the witness was an emergency room doctor. >> i realized that he was having the last breath. >> when police arrive, the doctors performing cpr on a -- doctor was performing cpr on a dead man. >> started to feel worried when i saw everybody with a bullet-proof vest on and i didn't have one. >> we all thought that there was a possibility that we could be targeted at that i remember the chief told me to get my vest on. >> we are doing everything in our power to control our emotions as we we'll do this situation. the challenge is to be factual, to be accurate, to not get tunnel vision, to not go off on a tangent. not put misinformation out

there. >> reporter: montgomery county police chief charles moose becomes the public face of the investigation. behind the scenes, captain barney forsythe takes the lead. >> he was the right guy in the right place at the right time. >> as we were down here, there was also a call coming out, a person possibly committing suicide about a mile north of here. >> this is no suicide. it's murder. and it's less than two miles away. dead at the scene is a 34-year-old babysitter and housekeeper, sarah ramos. passersby thought she had shot herself. >> sarah ramos was sitting on a bench at a shopping center bleeding. [ sirens ] >> another busy location. another perplexing crime scene. three fade shootings in less than an hour in a four-mile

radius. >> we sensed they were related, but knowing and proving that they're related are two different things. the rear of this parking lot the provides a very good area. take a shot, one shot. one loud shot. one fatal shot. and then move away without causing a great deal of distraction. [ siren ] >> a witness reports seeing a white box truck fleeing the scene. it's the first material clue for investigators. >> the investigation really, really took on speed right here. >> an hour and 20 minutes later, 5.5 miles away, lori ann lewis rivera has stopped at the a self-service gas station vacuum stand to clean out her minivan. >> everyday people doing everyday thing usually are not the victims. >> rivera, mother of a young daughter is, just 25 years old.

>> just the enormity of the huge send of waste. this child lost her mother. >> another murder again. again, a single shot. two people in a box-type truck with a damaged tailgate. >> so far they haven't found anybody. that's the situation as we know it right now out here. [ siren ] >> it's quiet for the next 12 hours. then just a few blocks from the montgomery county line, one more shot shatters the night. [ gunshot ] >> 72-year-old pascal charlotte, a retired carpenter, dies at the scene. >> gun, we average about 20 honorable -- montgomery county, we average about 20 homicide a year and we've had five in the space of a 16-hour period. >> we look at the victims in the first day. they were from all different aspects -- male, female, indian,

white, hispanic, black. so basically that's telling me they're looking at random targets. they're not predetermined targets. americana, right? do they hate suburban america? we couldn't figure out why they were doing it. they were striking right at the heart of the suburbs. you had 9/11. this is one year later. at first, we're not sure if we had a terrorist operation. >> there was no send at all who was behind this, who the next victim might be and when it would stop, if it would stop. >> we didn't know what the next 16 hours was going to bring. >> the snipers began leaving notes. >> like getting punched in the face. to help you find a price that fits your budget. uh-oh. the name your price tool.

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an entire community of suburban maryland is living in fare and a massive manhunt is

under way. >> in a single day, the d.c. sniper murder spree became the top story across the nation. >> i don't know what the thought process is, what the plan is, but yes, people need to continue with life. >> it was really terrifying to be in an area where there's a crazy person with a gun. >> suburban maryland is living in fear. >> fear was just, i mean -- not perception of fear. this is reality fear. >> a massive manhunt is under way with still no clues as to who killed five people. >> the reality was they were mobile, they were willing to go anywhere at any time. >> but who were they? after six murders in 27 hours, police had one common thread. >> it was a single shot and it was a very loud single shot. >> victim number seven, a

43-year-old mother of two is shot outside a second michael's craft store, more than 50 miles south of where the previous attacks were clustered. >> police say that the bullet passed through her body. >> she is the first victim to survive. >> is there any connection between the shooting that occurred in virginia and the ones that have occurred here in montgomery county? >> at this point, the fragments from the shooting are in the lab and the comparison test is being conducted right now. >> by the second day, we had a good idea of the type of caliber. we were also able to tell that all of the shots were fired from the same weapon. >> maryland investigators are narrowing their search for these weapon by narrowing the caliber of the weapon. >> within 24 hours, we knew we were dealing with an assault weapon. >> have you seen anyone may have weapons similar to this? >> the chief is on the hot line. >> we had to look at the

elevation of how the round hit the body, and we noticed that we did not have a high entry elevation, meaning being shot from a high angle. which led us to believe they could be shooting from a bench location or we even thought earlier, they could be shooting from a platform, maybe like a van or a truck. >> the ballistics reports provoked a chilling conclusion for investigators. they weren't dealing with just any killer. this was the work of a highly motivated sniper. >> i'm a trained sniper myself. i went through sniper school. each one of these individuals was shot with one rifle round, which scared me. >> the oh, shit moment is when you realize that this is not a normal investigation. we knew that we had a public safety crisis. >> the sniper investigation fuelled even a greater emergency. the white van or truck fleeing one of the early murder scenes began to drive the

investigation. >> we do have information now on the box truck. it does have lettering. police say two lines of block lettering on the side and on the back. >> the media was basically all over this story. >> the vehicle has six wheels with four wheels in the rear. >> they may have spotted two people in a white box truck with a damaged tailgate. >> they started putting out white box truck. white box truck. white box truck. >> the witness talked about two people in it. >> and the group thing took over. >> graphics will be available. we think it will help people, prompt their memories. >> white vans were everywhere. that a white van similar to the other white van. then, all of the sudden, there were millions of white vans. >> police are still looking for a white box truck. >> it got a life of its own that it shouldn't have gotten. >> two men inside. >> unfortunately, it was the only game in town at that point. >> lost in the hysteria of a white box truck alert was an alert put out by d.c. police after the last shooting of the previous day, october 3rd.

>> the homicide detectives investigating the shooting on georgia avenue just inside the d.c. line had a description of a chevy caprice leaving the scene. it was not a big story. it was kind of buried in the news coverage. >> the white truck theory simply dominated the discussion, along with media experts who came forward with profiles of the sniper. >> this has all of the markings of an all-american crime spree. >> this is somebody who is actually trying to taunt the nation. >> the message is getting out there that no one is safe. >> everyone thought it was white guys because that seemed to be the predominant serial killer motive. >> you know what? you want a profile? here is a guy who's going to turn out, i believe, to be a white middle-aged male. >> i would be looking for an individual who has a high degree of irritability at work. >> we're still waiting on the psychological profile piece from the fbi.

we don't expect that it will be exact that it will cause us to have tunnel vision. >> stand still, please! still, please! >> to calm the public and satisfy the media and keep the facts straight, chief moose, backed by members of the sniper task force, holds daily press conferences, one a day, every day. >> i have to take some questions. >> early on, we determined that the snipers were listening to things that we were saying. several of us feared they were actually in the background watching the press conferences. >> the question about the schools and their status tomorrow, school is going to open. that decision clearly has been made. >> there is no reason to believe that the shooter is targeting school children. >> the public had been afraid that their kids weren't safe. so we said okay, we'll send police. every school in montgomery county had an officer at it.

>> a 13-year-old boy shot and wounded as he arrives at his suburban maryland school. >> the eighth victim is a student at benjamin tasker middle school. he's critically wounded but survives. >> right over there, right over my right shoulder is where the boy was shot. >> the idea that a shooter would target an innocent child on his way to school was alarming in a way that the previous shootings hadn't been. >> what they're now saying is that there is a connection between the shooting here and the other ones that have really caused quite the jitters throughout the washington area. >> the school shooting occurs 70 odd miles from the previous shooting in fredericksburg, virginia. the sniper zone seems to be growing. once again, witnesses report seeing a white van leaving the scene. it was a consistent detail that would nearly untrack the entire

investigation. >> i think they were looking for, you know, a white man in a box truck. i don't think anyone was sort of expecting that they were blacks, i think. ♪ >> well, if you're two black guys in kind of a beat-up car doing this, no one would ever notice you. >> only much later would anyone realize that the witnesses and the media experts were wrong on both of the crucial points. there was no box truck and the snipers were not white. six dead, two wounded, millions terrorized. almost a week has passed since the d.c. snipers first struck and now the school attack has elevated the stakes dramatically. [ man ] i remember when i wouldn't give a little cut a second thought.

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six dead, two wounded, millions terrorized. almost a week has passed since the d.c. snipers first struck and now the school attack has elevated the stakes dramatically. >> everyone working in the details knew someone who was in the schools, whether it was neighbors, whether it was relatives or their own children and it was kind of like, where are we safe? >> even though witnesses had reported seeing a white van at the school, authorities quickly determined that the shot actually came from the adjacent woods. police find two pieces of evidence, a single spent shell

casing and a disturbing communique. >> our people recovered a tarot card. it was the death card. >> michael bouchard believes the tarot card confirms that the snipers had been listening to the previous press conference. >> one of my words were why would someone on earth do this. and it says it's the police, call me god, do not release to the press. >> word of the tarot card was closely guarded by the sniper task force but not closely enough. it leaks on friday night. >> when the news media got ahold of the tarot card and the information on it, law enforcement was extremely upset. >> you really want to get that piece of information and put it out while we're still doing this investigation.

>> there was some discussion amongst all of us in the newsroom of do we report this or not. >> i don't think there's anyone that hasn't experienced the hindrance of leaks in the past. we have not been thrown off track. >> they claimed they shot other people because we didn't do what they asked us to. >> dean myers shot at this manassa, virginia gas station. >> he is the ninth victim, shot and killed while pumping gas near manassas, virginia. he was 53 years old. in a parking lot across from the crime scene, a police officer interviews potential witnesses. one of them is a man driving the same 12-year-old chevy caprice that had been spotted near the sixth murder scene. when the police wave him on, they have no idea that they've just interviewed the sniper mastermind. john allen muhammad and lee boyd

malvo were an unlikely pair joined by unlikely circumstances. muhammad, age 41, was definitely the alpha. his devoted follower and more than willing accomplice, malvo, was just 17. >> one of the things that struck me was his devotion and commitment to john allen muhammad, who he referred to as dad. >> muhammad, a father of three, was an ex-army engineer who received the normal training in marksmanship. he saw action in the first gulf war but returned home a changed man. >> desert storm, the first iraq war, flipped a switch in john muhammad. to this day, his ex-wife isn't sure what happened. >> it was like his spirit had been broken. he was just like a broken man. >> that's the man who befriended lee malvo in 2000.

he met the teen while on a trip to antigua where malvo's mother had all but abandoned him. muhammad brought malvo to tacoma, washington, as his informal adopted son. >> his personality was a loving child. it is very important that one recognize that lee did not attach to a killer. he actually attached to a loving and caring father. >> at the time, muhammad was in a bitter and complicated custody battle for his own biological children whom he had stolen away from his estranged wife. when a tacoma court gave her full and permanent custody, muhammad vowed revenge. >> the children were given to his wife and he would no longer have any connection with his children.

and he was outraged. >> he said, you will not raise my children on your own. you have become my enemy and as my enemy, i will kill you. >> did you believe him? >> totally. >> the outrage became anger and hatred fuelling an inner war against a racist society which muhammad, in turn, fed to lee malvo. >> he was being conditioned to be a soldier. you're talking about a child soldier. he was actually having lee go to sleep with taped extracts from "the art of war" from books talking about war and revolution, et cetera, and that was how he started the whole brain washing process. >> the pair's murderous journey actually started in tacoma, nearly 3,000 miles from d.c. at muhammad's direction, malvo

shot and killed the niece of a woman who had testified against mohammed at the custody hearing. >> lee was trained not to feel. whenever he would feel and muhammad saw that there was a flinch of feelings, he would tell him to slap his chest and say "heart be still." after a while, he didn't have to tell him, "heart be still," because he had if i could use the word monsterized him. >> no one ever linked muhammad and malvo to the girl's murder. now eight months later, they're driving around the nation's capital in an old chevy caprice shooting innocent citizens while everyone is looking for a white man in a white truck.

>> law enforcement knew that the shooters had a distinct advantage. i think to them it was quite frustrating. they all knew more people were going to die. >> we've just received word of another shooting. >> you know you just have to keep plowing through. >> in the parking lot. >> you cannot throw your hands up and walk away and say this is too hard. >> you know, as fast as they were shooting people, there would probably be another one before we caught them. well, a mt be a problem, your credit is in pretty good shape. >>pretty good? i know i have a 798 fico score, thanks to the tools and help on experian.com. kaboom... well, i just have a few other questions. >>chuck, the only other question you need to ask is, "what else can you do for me?" i'll just take a water... get your credit swagger on. become a member of experian credit tracker and find out your fico score powered by experian. fico scores are used in 90% of credit decisions.

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as the d.c. sniper death toll mounted, the public fear grew accordingly. the attacks had completely altered everyone's daily routine. >> millions of vehicles on these roads every day. that's great video there. look at this. look at that. a white van with a ladder on top. >> certainly the public was on edge. parking your car and running into the grocery store, ducking down next to your car while you're putting gas in it. >> i'm not exaggerating. people were zigzagging through parking lots. >> who would have ever thought you would do that? >> we didn't go to the parks, we didn't let the kids play outside the front of the house. >> you have an area around here where several million people are

basically held hostage by who knows what. >> from this point forward, we sit and wait. >> meanwhile, the media continue to speculate about the snipers and the snipers apparently continue to monitor the press conferences and the media. >> it just got more huge and more huge and more huge. it was just monstrous. >> i was being interviewed and the newscaster asked that a lot of information is that the sniper is a trained expert. based on what i said, "it doesn't take an expert to fire these shots." the next victim was shot in the head. >> officials here confirming that a man was shot at an exxon station along route 1 here in spotsylvania. we died shortly after that. >> kenneth bridges was a businessman from philadelphia, the tenth victim. the eighth to die. he was shot while pumping gas. >> a lot of these shootings,

especially the one in virginia, would occur right off of the interstate. one of the ideas was if we get a shooting, we're going to get on the interstate and do roadblocks, just stop everybody as they come through. it was pretty drastic action, i guess a little bit like looking for a needle in a hay stack. but we needed to pull out all of the stops. >> among those stopped at one of roadblocks, a dark blue chevy caprice carrying none other than john muhammad and lee boyd malvo. once more, the sniper car is given a pass. >> their vehicle which was queried several times by law enforcement over several days and several states was legally registered. there were no warrants out for these individuals at that point in time. >> i don't know how anyone could have stopped that vehicle and known that it was the sniper's vehicle. >> much later, when the authorities finally get a look

at the chevy caprice, they are stunned by what they find. the vehicle had been utilized in most of the shootings. outside, it looks perfectly ordinary. inside, it's anything but. >> the seat back would lift up and that's where the gun was stored. >> it was a customized killing machine. and by lifting up the back seat the shooter could crawl into the backseat. they had cut an opening in the trunk above the license plate. >> this is the view when they pull the trigger. >> they could stick the barrel out of the trunk, fire the shot and nobody could see where the shot came from. >> at about 9:15 this evening, a female was shot in the upper body in the parking garage of the home depot at seven corners. she was pronounced dead on the scene.

>> the victim is 47-year-old linda franklin, shot while she and her husband loaded packages into their car. franklin is an fbi analyst. it's the first shooting in fairfax county, virginia, and takes place 50 miles from the previous shooting in spotsylvania county. a witness claims to have seen the shooter flee the scene in a white van. >> it's been determined through further investigation that the information is not credible. >> but the damage is done. the sniper hotline already inundated is again flooded with sightings of white vans. >> i believe we got over 115,000 tips, 16,000 of those were viable leads that needed to be followed up on. >> almost lost among all of the phone calls are several from the snipers to the police. >> don't say anything, just listen. >> they were calling the task force, they were calling

rockville city police, and they also called montgomery county police. >> in one, the caller says we've called three times trying to set up negotiations. we've gotten no response. people have died. the lady didn't have to die. >> i think they wanted to get a message across to us. >> the 12th victim and third to survive is a 37-year-old musician from florida. he is shot outside a steak house in ashland, virginia. once again, a white van is seen leaving the area. >> they used that to their advantage. they were looking to find a white box truck style vehicle in proximity to their shootings, because that would add to their anonymity. >> the snipers later confirmed that rather than flee, they often stayed at the crime scenes.

>> they were very deliberate about that. going up and talking to law enforcement officials, taunting them in the sense that here i am, i'm the guy you're looking for. >> behind the steak house in the woods, police find a spent .223 shell and another note from the snipers. a four-page handwritten ransom letter. in the letter, the snipers wrote "if stopping the killing is more important than catching us, then you will accept our demand. you will place $10 million in a bank account." >> i never thought money was the motive. i think that was their arrogance to see how far they could push the government to see what they could get us to do. >> but there is a chilling postscript on the note that gets everyone's attention. >> imagine being in a position where you are responsible for the safety of your community and then somebody says your children aren't safe and they've already got proof that that's true because they've shot one. >> there's no play book. there's no parenting guide to tell your kids everything is going to be okay.

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as the sniper crisis enters its third week, nerves in the d.c. area are frayed. frustrations mount for police and the media. >> could a lack of information, public information possibly imperil the public? >> i appreciate the question, but i am personally insulted if you think i withhold something from you or anyone else that would keep you safe. >> after a three-day lull, the

snipers strike again. conrad c.j. johnson, a 35-year-old montgomery county bus driver, is shot at his first stop. johnson is the 13th victim in three weeks, the tenth to die. >> mr. johnson had pulled up to this location right directly across from us, at which point he was shot and killed almost instantly. it was a single shot. we know that the shot came back from the wood line no more than 30 to 50 yards away. >> as you can see, the forward most bus up there is the one where the -- >> johnson's death brings the entire case home to montgomery county. >> i can remember just thinking, they're back. >> police find another note in the woods. >> we knew that if we could engage them, we would be that much closer to them either screwing up or making another mistake that would help us catch

them. >> they did exactly what we asked them to do. they started writing us letters, they started calling. >> one of the phone calls basically told us we needed to look at a robbery that had occurred in montgomery, alabama. >> the call, it later turned out, was from lee boyd malvo. was he just bragging or hoping to get caught? no one knows, but it was a critical break. >> he didn't identify himself as the sniper. he says, you just got to look at that. >> i called montgomery, alabama. i said, did you have a shooting at a liquor store. they said, yeah, one individual was killed, one was seriously wounded. >> the only evidence was a set of fingerprints. >> they ran it against the national database, including immigration records, and found malvo's print. >> then around the same time, we got a phone call from a man who lived in washington who said we needed to take a look at these two guys and he named the two guys muhammad and malvo.

he said the kid's nickname out here is sniper. >> and, all of the sudden, it all started falling into place. >> the tipster says the two practiced shooting at a tree stump in his backyard. atf and fbi immediately send field agents to retrieve the stump. >> we asked our people to do it low-key, keep it very quiet, don't tell anybody. about an hour later, someone came in to chief moose's office and said, look at the tv. >> agents from the fbi have just finished up their search. >> the helicopters and the news people were out there watching our people in this back yard in tacoma, washington. >> a federal arrest warrant has been issued for john allen muhammad, also known as john allen wales. >> the end came around 1:00 a.m. at a rest stop outside of

fredericksburg frederick, maryland. a sharp-eyed motorist who heard the police call earlier spotted the blue 1990 chevrolet caprice with two men sleeping inside. >> there was a six-person assault element. they pulled both individuals out john allen muhammad and lee boyd malvo in less than three seconds. i looked down and i saw lee boyd malvo and you could see the sweat coming down his face and this is a cold october night and you could see he was just scared. and then john muhammad was on the other side and he was more defiant. >> police lined up in a cold rain to say that after three weeks, they believe they caught the snipers and found the gun. >> sir, we feel very positive about being here. we have the weapon. it is off the street. >> apprehended, 41-year-old john allen muhammad, a gulf war war vern, and 17-year-old john lee malvo. >> muhammad's ex-wife was

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announcer: visit aarp.org/caregiving for information on how to provide [airplane sounds] even better care for the person who once took care of you. two individuals were taken into custody. >> we can only hope this is the end of it. we don't know that yet. >> local, state, and federal prosecutors are meeting to discuss charges and some

jurisdictional issues. >> for the residents of washington, d.c. and the beltway, three weeks of living on edge in constant fear is over. >> everyone was so glad it was over and this mayhem had stopped. but there was also a lot of like confusion about who these two guys were. they weren't what people were expecting. >> the confusion is compounded by disbelief as other disturbing revelations emerge about john muhammad and lee malvo. the two snipers are eventually connected to dozens of shootings and robberies in at least five different states. >> they killed people in washington, worked their way i think through texas, down into louisiana and alabama. i think they were in georgia. so it's not just the homicides here. >> john muhammad is clearly the

mastermind, but people are stunned to find out his accomplice, lee boyd malvo, is just a 17-year-old boy. >> it was a huge sense of horror that such a young person could have been involved in such horrendous crimes. that was very shocking. >> i guess shake your head a little bit and you think, what could bring a young person to do something like this. >> it's complex for malvo. he was a teen when he met muhammad and he was in dire straits. he was suicidal, he was very unhappy with his family situation. he did not have a father figure in his life and was desperately seeking one. muhammad filled all of those needs for malvo. >> lee was told that the shootings were designed to create a society, a society of 70 boys and 70 girls that mr. muhammad was going to be lord over and lee would be one of his soldiers. and he really believed that. >> he was so enamored with john

muhammad that he would have done anything. and what muhammad was asking him to do was kill other and over again. >> lee boyd malvo. >> yes, sir. >> two years after the shooting, lee boyd malvo was convicted on two counts of capital murder. he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. three years later, he wrote from his cell, i'm still grappling with shame, guilt, remorse, and my own healing, if that will ever be possible. as for john allen muhammad, he too was convicted of capital murder. the sentence? death by lethal injection.

his own motive for the killing spree remains a mystery. >> all we know about muhammad's approach to these shootings is largely what other people have theorized because muhammad never really explained why it happened. there are theories that he was randomly shooting people in that area so that perhaps he could kill his ex-wife and then swoop in as the grieving ex-husband and take the children away and disappear. >> if he wanted to kill her he could kill her randomly. i don't think that had anything to do with it. >> i was fearful for my life but i never thought that he could go to this length never ever. it still boggles my mind. >> yet it made some sense to you? >> because we were watching a movie. i don't remember the name of it. he said, i could take a small city, terrorize it, they would think it would be a group of people but it would only be me. >> at 9:06 p.m. on november 10th, 2009, john allen muhammad

was executed. his final meal included chicken with red sauce and strawberry cake. >> mr. muhammad was asked if he wished to make a last statement. he did not acknowledge us or make any statement whatsoever. he seemed very unemotional. >> i'm still on death row fighting. >> prior to his execution however, muhammad did speak. this short video was made after his conviction and aired on cnn in 2007. it included what seemed to be an oddly upbeat farewell. >> thank you for your patience and kindness and the sacrifice that you always made. peace and may god be with you all. thank you.

>> we will never forget, we'll never know their pain and we only wish we could have stopped this to reduce the number of this to reduce the number of victims. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com isis claims responsibility for attacks that killed more than 100 people in yemen's capital. disturbing new information about the men behind the blast and the sick trick they used to carry it out. also, a march against terrorism in tunisia after the deadly attack which left at least 20 dead there. we'll hear from a man who saw the massacre as it unfolded. plus, a brazen attack using bug spray and a machete on federal officers at a u.s. airport. welcome to our viewers in the u.s. and around the world, i'm natalie allen. this is "cnn newsroom."