The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (60 page)

MALVO, Lee Boyd, and MUHAMMAD, John Allen

with an M-16 rifle. Twice divorced and a father of four, Muhammad was embroiled in bitter custody disputes with both ex-wives, including allegations that he abducted his children from their “infidel” mothers. His second wife received a permanent restraining order against Muhammad in March 2000, which legally

barred him from owning firearms.

After serving at Fort Louis, near Tacoma, Muhammad had remained in Washington State upon his return to civilian life. There he met Malvo, born in Jamaica on February 18, 1985. Malvo and his mother entered the U.S. illegally, in January 2001, and settled in Bellingham, where Malvo attended high school. He soon met Muhammad and appeared to idolize the older man, who often introduced Malvo as his son or stepson. Malvo’s mother called police on December 19, 2001, in an effort to separate her son from Muhammad, but the effort backfired when officers discovered her alien status.

Immigration agents detained mother and son for a month, until Malvo’s mother posted $15,000 bond for their release. A deportation hearing was scheduled for November 20, 2002, but Malvo vanished in the meantime, fleeing across country with Muhammad. They lived at various addresses, including one in New Jersey where Muhammad shared title with co-owner Nathaniel Osbourne for the car in which Muhammad and Malvo were arrested. That vehicle, a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, had a hole cut in its trunk lid that allowed a rifleman to shoot unobserved while lying inside.

Muhammad was initially detained on charges of violating his ex-wife’s protection order (by owning a gun) and illegally transporting a weapon across state lines.

Malvo was held as a material witness to the murders while forensic experts sifted evidence from various Lee Boyd Malvo listens to court proceedings during the trial crime scenes. At one point, Malvo tried to escape of fellow sniper John Allen Muhammad. (AP Photo/Martin Smith-Rodden, Pool)

through a ceiling panel in a police interrogation room, but he was soon recaptured. On October 24, police noted “some very good similarities” between Malvo and a composite sketch of a suspect in the Alabama shooting. One day later, Maryland authorities charged Malvo and Muhammad with murder in six of the

sniper attacks. Alabama filed charges of murder and attempted murder in Montgomery. Maryland statutes barred capital punishment for Malvo, as a minor, but Muhammad was fair game for death row. On October 26, police in Tacoma announced that Muhammad was suspected of murdering Isa Nichols, a 21-year-old busi-Sniper John Allen Muhammad is led into a Prince William ness partner of Muhammad’s ex-wife, who was shot at County courtroom in Manassas, Virginia. (AP Photo/Mike a relative’s home on February 16, 2002. On October Morones, Pool)

27, police upgraded Malvo from willing bystander to
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MANSON Family

triggerman in several of the recent shootings. October His surname was derived from one of Kathleen’s many 28 saw Muhammad indicted for capital murder and five lovers, whom she briefly married, but it signified no other charges, for the Meyers shooting in Virginia. On blood relationship. In 1936, Kathleen filed a paternity November 1, ballistic tests linked Malvo and Muham-suit against one “Colonel Scott” of Ashland, Kentucky, mad to the wounding of a Silver Spring, Maryland, winning the grand monthly sum of five dollars for the liquor store clerk on September 14, 2002, and the mur-support of “Charles Milles Manson.” Scott instantly der of 45-year-old Hong Im Ballenger (shot outside a defaulted on the judgment, and he died in 1954 without Baton Rouge, Louisiana, beauty parlor on September acknowledging his son.

23, 2002). The pair’s itinerary also placed them in Tuc-In 1939, Kathleen and her brother were sentenced to son, Arizona, in March 2002, when 60-year-old Jerry five years in prison for robbing a West Virginia gas sta-Taylor was killed on a golf course two miles from the tion. Charles was packed off to live with a strictly reli-home of Muhammad’s sister.

gious aunt and her sadistic husband, who constantly By November 10, 2002, Malvo had confessed

berated the boy as a “sissy,” dressing him in girl’s cloth-responsibility for three of the sniper shootings, and ing for his first day of school in an effort to help Man-police identified him as the triggerman in most (if not son “act like a man.” Paroled in 1942, Maddox

all) of the slayings. Muhammad, they alleged, had reclaimed her son, but she was clearly unsuited to served as Malvo’s mentor, lookout, and getaway driver.

motherhood. An alcoholic tramp who brought home Aside from confessions, Malvo’s DNA was found on a lovers of both sexes, Kathleen frequently left Charles half-eaten grape at the scene of one shooting; his finger-with neighbors “for an hour,” then disappeared for prints were lifted from paper found at a second crime days or weeks on end, leaving relatives to track the boy scene. The Chevrolet’s small trunk also suggested that down. On one occasion she reportedly gave Charles to Muhammad could not have performed the shootings a barmaid as payment for a pitcher of beer.

from inside it. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft dis-By 1947, Kathleen was seeking a foster home for her missed federal charges against the defendants in Mary-son, but none was available. Charles wound up in the land, clearing the way for transfer to Virginia, where Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana, but execution of minors was not banned by law. At the same time, legal experts feared that naming Malvo as the sniper might defeat efforts to execute Muhammad.

Those fears had no basis. On November 17, 2003, jurors in Virginia Beach convicted Muhammad of capital murder in the Dean Meyers killing. The panel sentenced him to death on November 24. A second jury rejected Malvo’s claim that he had been “brainwashed”

by Muhammad, convicting the teenager of capital murder (in the death of Linda Franklin) on December 19, 2003. Some three months later, on March 10, the judge sentenced Malvo to a term of life imprisonment without parole. A second trial for Malvo, delayed pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on execution of minors, had not convened when this volume went to press. No charges have thus far been filed against the killers in Alabama, Louisiana, or Washington State.

Lee Malvo received a second life sentence on October 26, 2004, after entering a plea bargain to save his life. Capital punishment was waived in return for Malvo’s plea of “no contest” in the death of victim Kenneth Bridges, the attempted murder of Caroline Seawell, and two related firearms charges.

MANSON Family

Born “no name Maddox” in Cincinnati, Ohio, on

November 12, 1934, Charles Manson was the illegitimate son of Kathleen Maddox, a 16-year-old prostitute.

Charles Manson at a parole hearing (Wide World API)
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MANSON Family

fled after 10 months, rejoining his mother. She still did-bikers, pushers, pimps, and Satanists—stood ready to n’t want him, so Manson took to living on the streets, squeeze a grim profit from the Age of Aquarius.

making his way by theft. Arrested in Indiana, he In San Francisco, Manson displayed a surprising escaped from the local juvenile center after one day’s charisma, attracting young dropouts of both sexes, confinement. Recaptured and sent to Father Flannigan’s drawn from all strata of white society. Some, like Mary Boy’s Town, he lasted four days before his next escape, Brunner, were college graduates. Others, like Susan fleeing in a stolen car to visit relatives in Illinois. He Atkins and Robert Beausoleil, were involved with pulled more robberies en route and on arrival, leading satanic cults. Most were hopelessly confused about to another bust at age 13. Confined for three years in a their lives, adopting Manson as a combination mentor, reform school at Plainfield, Indiana, Manson recalls father figure, Christ incarnate, and the self-styled “God sadistic abuse by older boys and guards alike. If we may of Fuck.” They drifted up and down the state in fluctu-trust his memory, at least one guard incited other boys ating numbers, with the “family” topping 50 members to rape and torture Manson, while the officer stood by at its peak. From Mendocino and the Haight to Holly-and masturbated on the sidelines.

wood, Los Angeles, and Death Valley, Manson’s

In February 1951, Manson and two other inmates nomads followed their leader as the Summer of Love escaped from the Plainfield “school,” fleeing westward became a nightmare. Along the way, they rubbed shoul-in a series of stolen cars. Arrested in Beaver, Utah, Manders with the Church of Satan, the Process Church of son was sentenced to federal time for driving hot cars Final Judgment (worshiping Satan, Lucifer, and Jeho-across state lines. Starting off in a minimum-security vah simultaneously), the Circe Order of Dog Blood, establishment, Manson assaulted another inmate in and—some say—the homicidal “Four P Movement.”

January 1952, holding a razor blade to the boy’s throat Manson grew obsessed with death and the Beatles song and sodomizing him. Reclassified as “dangerous,”

“Helter Skelter,” which he interpreted as predicting Manson was transferred to a tougher lockup, logging race war in America. In Manson’s view, once “blackie”

eight major disciplinary infractions—including three had been driven to the point of violence, helpless whites homosexual assaults—by August 1952. He was moved would be annihilated, leaving Manson and his family to to the Chillicothe, Ohio, reformatory a month later and rule the roost.

suddenly turned over a new leaf, becoming a “model”

On October 13, 1968, two women were found

prisoner almost overnight. The cunning act was beaten and strangled to death near Ukiah, California.

rewarded with parole in May 1954.

One, Nancy Warren, was the pregnant wife of a high-Arrested a second time for driving hot cars inter-way patrol officer. The other victim, Clida Delaney, was state, in September 1955, Manson got off easy with Warren’s 64-year-old grandmother. The murders were five years’ probation. He celebrated by skipping a ritualistic in nature, with 36 leather thongs wrapped court date in Florida on pending charges of auto around each victim’s throat. Several members of the theft, and his probation was promptly revoked.

Manson “family”—including two later convicted of Picked up in Indianapolis on March 14, 1956, he was unrelated murders—were visiting Ukiah at the time.

sent to the federal prison at Terminal Island, Califor-Two months later, on December 30, 17-year-old

nia, winning parole on September 30, 1958. Seven Marina Habe was abducted outside her West Holly-months later, on May 1, 1959, he was jailed in Los wood home; her body was recovered on New Year’s Angeles on charges of forging and cashing stolen US

Day, with multiple stab wounds in the neck and chest.

Treasury checks. Once more, he escaped with proba-Investigators learned that Habe was friendly with vari-tion, swiftly revoked with his April 1960 arrest for ous “family” members, and police believe her ties to the pimping and transporting whores interstate. Entering Manson group led directly to her death.

the lockup at McNeil Island, Manson listed his reliOn May 27, 1969, 64-year-old Darwin Scott—the

gion as “Scientologist”; his IQ was tested at 121.

brother of Manson’s alleged father—was hacked to Paroled on March 21, 1967, over his own objections, death in his Ashland, Kentucky, apartment, pinned to Manson was drawn to San Francisco and the teeming the floor by a long butcher knife. Manson was out of Haight-Ashbury district.

touch with his California parole officer between May 22

It was the “Summer of Love,” when thousands of and June 18, 1969, and an unidentified “LSD preacher young people flocked to the banner of drugs and from California” set up shop with several young women