Police: Malvo is not believable

Post staff writer Tom Jackman covered the sniper shootings in 2002 and was the lead writer covering Lee Boyd Malvo's trial in 2003. Here is his reporting on Malvo's latest interview:

Convicted sniper Lee Boyd Malvo, in a telephone interview with actor William Shatner, now claims he and John Allen Muhammad shot 42 people during their rampage in 2002 — a claim that those who investigated the case say is ridiculous.

Malvo’s latest version of his actions, which began in February 2002 in Tacoma, Wash., and ended with 10 murders in the Washington region in October 2002, are scheduled to air Thursday night on A&E to kick off a new series, “Aftermath With William Shatner,” in which the former “Star Trek” star revisits high-profile cases.



Malvo. (AP File Photo)

“I think Malvo’s full of crap,” said Lt. Bruce Guth, the Fairfax County homicide detective who headed the task force that helped convict Malvo of capital murder in 2003 for his role in the 10 local slayings. “He’s changed his story at least five or six different times.”

Guth noted Thursday that in Malvo’s first interrogation, with Fairfax detectives after his arrest in October 2002, Malvo took credit for doing most of the D.C. area shootings. “Then, when his attorneys and psychiatrists got to him, Muhammad was doing the shootings,” Guth said.

Guth said producers of the show told him that Malvo had admitted for the first time to doing a shooting along Route 1 in Northern Virginia. Police in Fairfax and Alexandria both scoured their files for any unsolved shootings along the highway prior to Malvo’s arrest, and couldn’t find one, Guth said.

Malvo, now 25, also made differing claims, both to Shatner and forensic psychiatrist Neil Blumberg, that he and Muhammad had co-conspirators. But the co-conspirators either backed out, were shot and killed by Malvo, or shot and killed by Muhammad, according to the versions Malvo offered Shatner and Blumberg, according to a news release about the show from A&E.

Blumberg said Thursday that he had agreed with A&E not to discuss his interviews with Malvo until after the show aired.

Paul B. Ebert, the Prince William County commonwealth’s attorney who prosecuted Muhammad and worked with the sniper task force, said there was no evidence of any co-conspirators, and “it was as intense an investigation as I’ve ever seen,” with local and federal agencies working the case nationwide.

“I don’t think there’s much credence to his claim of 40-something murders,” Ebert said Thursday. “Any unsolved shooting was looked at. Maybe a couple slipped through the cracks, but not many.”

Malvo is serving life without parole at Red Onion State Prison. He was 17 at the time of the shootings and his arrest, and a jury in Chesapeake, Va., declined to impose the death penalty sought by Fairfax prosectors. Police ultimately connected Malvo and Muhammad to 22 shootings around the country, 15 of them fatal. Muhammad was executed in November for his role in the slayings.

At Malvo’s trial, Blumberg testified on behalf of the defense theory that Malvo was insane at the time of the shooting, diagnosing him with dissociative disorder. Blumberg also testified that even though Malvo had confessed to police that he had been the main shooter, he disavowed those claims in jail, and said he only claimed to be the shooter to protect Muhammad.

Instead, Malvo told Blumberg he only shot a woman in Tacoma, Wash., and Conrad Johnson in Montgomery County, two places where juveniles were not eligible for the death penalty, as they were in Virginia at the time.

Malvo more recently has admitted he and Muhammad shot Jerry Ray Taylor, 60, on a golf course in Tucson in March 2002, while the pair were making their way across the country, a sniper-style shooting investigators had long suspected was committed by Muhammad and Malvo. Their whereabouts for most of 2002 were fairly well documented by investigators, which would not seem to leave a lot of time for dozens of previously unattributed shootings.

In September 2002, the pair committed three non-fatal shootings in Maryland, then headed south where they allegedly committed homicides in Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. Malvo’s fingerprints on a magazine left at the scene in Alabama ultimately connected him and Muhammad to the shootings that followed.

For the first time, Malvo adds a new twist, according to A&E’s press release -- that three other people were involved.

Malvo “claims that the three extra snipers were going to use silenced rifles to create terror along the entire Eastern Seaboard,” A&E writes, “but they eventually backed out of the plan, which, according to Malvo’s forensic psychiatrist Dr. Blumberg, resulted in Muhammad commanding Malvo to kill two of them for not following through.”

The release adds, “Blumberg elaborates on what Malvo confesses, and according to him, there was a co-conspirator in New York who provided weapons, one in Florida who provided credit cards and false documents and a third in Arizona who provided explosives.”

Blumberg said the release accurately characterized his contribution to the show.

Guth said there was no evidence of co-conspirators.

Guth said that Malvo was “a convicted serial killer who ruined a lot of lives, and a lot of people have trouble believing anything he says. It seems everything he does is self-serving. I don’t believe a word he says.”

A&E, and Malvo’s original lead attorney Craig Cooley of Richmond, did not immediately return calls for comment.



-- Tom Jackman