Lee Boyd Malvo

Lee Boyd Malvo
File:18-inside-malvo.jpg
Status	currently imprisoned in Red Onion State Prison
Criminal charge	capital murder
Penalty	life imprisonment

Lee Boyd Malvo (alias John Lee Malvo or Malik Malvo) (born February 18, 1985), along with John Allen Muhammad, was arrested on October 24, 2002 in connection with the Beltway sniper attacks. A jury in Virginia convicted Malvo of capital murder on December 18, 2003, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole on March 10, 2004. He has since pled guilty to six additional murders in Maryland, receiving six life sentences there, and is facing additional charges in several states. He has also confessed to a murder in Arizona. He was held at Red Onion State Prison, located in Wise County, one of Virginia's two supermax prisons, prior to his temporary extradition to Maryland in May 2005 for trial. In November, 2006, Malvo was returned to Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, where he will presumably be held for the remainder of his life. In all, Malvo is believed to have been involved in 16 murders and 7 additional attempted murders (23 murder attempts in all), of which the Beltway sniper attacks constituted 10 murders and 15 attempts. Victims included people from California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia.

Childhood

Malvo was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to Una James, a seamstress, and Leslie Samuel Malvo, a mason. His parents were never married, and their relationship ended while Lee was an infant. His father rarely saw him after that, and his mother was often traveling to look for work. Lee was usually placed in the care of friends and relatives.

Lee attended York Castle High school under the name Lee Malvo in Jamaica before he and his mother emigrated to Antigua in 1998. His father said in 2002 that this was when he last saw his son.

Joining John Allen Muhammad

Una and Lee first met John Allen Muhammad in Antigua around 1999, where Una and Muhammad developed a strong friendship. Later, Una left Antigua for Fort Myers, Florida, using false documents. She left Lee with Muhammad, planning to have him follow her later. Lee did join his mother for a short time in 2001. In 2002, Lee traveled to Bellingham, Washington, where he lived in a homeless shelter with Muhammad and enrolled in high school with Muhammad falsely listed as his father. Classmates have said he was good in school, polite, well-dressed, and willing to state his opinions, but that he did not make any friends. While in the Tacoma, Washington area, according to his statements to investigators, Malvo shoplifted the Bushmaster XM-15 from Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, a dealer for Bushmaster Firearms, Inc., a manufacturer and distributor based in Windham, Maine. About the same time, Muhammad practiced his marksmanship on the Bull's Eye firing range adjacent to the gun shop. Under federal laws, neither was legally allowed to purchase or possess guns. During this period, Malvo converted to Islam.[1]

Interstate Rampage

Main article: Beltway sniper attacks

In the summer of 2002, Malvo and Muhammad were seen for a short time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Malvo's fingerprints were also found at the scene of a murder at a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama, where another employee was seriously wounded, but survived. From there, the rampage and attempt to extort $10 million from the U.S. Government shifted to the Washington, DC area and surrounding portions of Maryland and Virginia. Several weeks of terror in the region ended when he and Muhammad were arrested while sleeping in their car in a Maryland Rest Area along Interstate 70.

Criminal prosecutions

When federal charges against Malvo under which he was initially arrested were dropped, he was transferred to Virginia custody and sent to jail in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was charged by the Commonwealth of Virginia for two capital crimes: the murder of FBI analyst Linda Franklin "in the commission of an act of terrorism" (an addendum to Virginia law that was added after the September 11, 2001 attacks), and the murder of more than one person in a three-year period. He was also charged with the unlawful use of a firearm in the murder of Franklin. A Fairfax attorney, Michael Arif, was appointed to represent him.

Under a change of venue, the trial was moved over 150 miles away to the city of Virginia Beach in southeastern Virginia. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to all charges on the grounds that he was under the total control of John Allen Muhammad. One of Malvo's psychiatric witnesses testified that Muhammad, a member of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, a black separatist movement, had indoctrinated him into believing that the proceeds of the extortion attempt would be used to begin a new nation of only pure black young persons somewhere in Canada. Most observers believe that the main purpose of the insanity defense was not to gain an acquittal but to introduce otherwise inadmissible evidence about Malvo's childhood and upbringing in order to humanize Malvo and make it more difficult for the jury to impose the death penalty.

After nearly 14 hours of deliberation, a jury in Virginia Beach, Virginia, convicted him of both charges on December 18, 2003. On December 23, 2003, a jury recommended a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Franklin. On March 10, 2004, a judge formally sentenced him to life in prison without parole. The judge could not sentence him to any greater penalty than the jury had recommended.

During this trial, Malvo at times seemed uninterested in the legal proceedings, drawing pictures of the judge, lawyers and other people in the courtroom. The presiding judge, Jane Marum Roush of the Fairfax County Circuit Court, joked with courtroom artists about this incident, stating that their art might have to compete with the defendant's for newspaper and TV coverage.

On October 26, 2004, under a plea-agreement to avoid a possible death penalty, Malvo entered an Alford plea to the charges of murdering Kenneth Bridges and attempting to murder Caroline Seawell while Malvo was in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. He also pleaded guilty to two firearms charges and agreed not to appeal his conviction for the murder of Franklin. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for murder, plus eight years imprisonment for the weapons charges.

One Virginia prosecutor in Prince William County had stated he would wait to decide whether to try him on additional capital charges in his jurisdiction until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on whether juveniles may be subject to the penalty of execution. However, in light of the March 1, 2005 Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons, the prosecutors in Prince William County have decided not to pursue the charges against Malvo. However, prosecutors in Maryland, Louisiana and Alabama are still interested in putting both Malvo and Muhammad on trial.

On March 1, 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the Eighth Amendment prohibits execution for crimes committed when under the age of 18. As Malvo was 17 when he committed the crimes, cannot face the death penalty, but still may be extradited to Alabama, Louisiana, and other states for prosecution. At the outset of the Beltway sniper prosecutions, the primary reason for extraditing the two suspects from Maryland, where they were arrested, to Virginia, was, in fact, the differences in how the two states deal with the death penalty. While the death penalty is allowed in Maryland, it was only applied to persons who were adults at the time of their crimes, whereas Virginia had also allowed the death penalty for offenders who had been juveniles when their crimes were committed.

In May 2005, Virginia and Maryland reached an agreement to allow Maryland to begin prosecuting some of the pending charges there, and Malvo was extradited to Montgomery County, Maryland under heavy security.

On June 16, 2006, Malvo told authorities that he and John Allen Muhammad were guilty of four additional shootings. The four most recently linked victims were also shot in 2002: a man killed in Los Angeles during a robbery in February or March; a 76-year-old man who survived a shooting May 18 at a golf course in Clearwater, Florida; a man shot to death while doing yard work in Denton, Texas, May 27; and a 54-year-old man who survived being shot August 1 during a robbery outside a shopping mall near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

On October 10, 2006, Malvo pled guilty to the six murders he was charged with in Maryland. On November 8, 2006, he was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

On October 27, 2006, Malvo told police that he and Muhammad were responsible for the killing of a 60-year-old man on a golf course in Tucson, Arizona. He claimed that they shot Jerry Taylor while he was practicing chip shots on a local golf course. Tucson police had long sought to speak with Malvo about the March 19, 2002, death of Taylor, who died from a single long range gunshot.

Civil lawsuit

In 2003, Malvo and Muhammad were named in a major civil lawsuit by the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence on behalf of some two of their victims who were seriously wounded and the families of some of those murdered. Although Malvo and Muhammad were each believed to be indigent, co-defendants Bull's Eye Shooter Supply and Bushmaster Firearms contributed to a landmark $2.5 million out-of-court settlement in late 2004.

The Real Plan (Updated from the May 2006 Maryland Trial)

In John Allen Muhammad's May 2006 trial in Montgomery County, MD, Lee Boyd Malvo took the stand and confessed to a more detailed version of the pair's plans. Malvo, after extensive psychological counseling, admitted that he was lying at the earlier Virginia trial where he had admitted to being the triggerman for every shooting. Malvo claimed that he had said this in order to protect John Allen Muhammad from the potential death penalty, because it was more difficult to achieve the death penalty for a minor. Malvo said that he wanted to do what little he could for the families of the victims by letting the full story be told. In his two days of testimony, Malvo outlined many very detailed aspects of all the shootings.

Part of his testimony concerned John Allen Muhammad's complete multiphase plan. His plan consisted of three phases in the Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD metro areas. Phase one consisted of meticulously planning, mapping, and practicing their locations around the DC area. This way after each shooting they would be able to quickly leave the area on a predetermined path, and move on to the next location. John Allen Muhammad's goal in Phase One was to kill 6 people a day for 30 days. Malvo went on to describe how Phase One did not go as planned due to heavy traffic and the lack of a clear shot and/or getaway at different locations.

Phase Two was meant to be moved up to Baltimore, MD. Malvo described how this phase was close to being implemented, but never was carried out. Phase Two was intended to begin by killing a pregnant woman by shooting her in the stomach. The next step would have been to shoot and kill a Baltimore City police officer. Then, at the officer's funeral, they were to create several improvised explosive devices complete with shrapnel. These explosives were intended to kill a large number of police, since many police would attend another officer's funeral.

The last phase was to take place very shortly after, if not during, Phase Two. The third phase was to extort several million dollars from the United States government. This money would be used to finance a larger plan. The plan was to travel north in to Canada. Along the way they would stop in YMCAs and orphanages recruiting other impressionable young boys with no parents or guidance. John Allen Muhammad thought he could act as their father figure as he did with Lee Boyd Malvo. Once he recruited a large number of young boys and made his way up to Canada, he would begin their training. Malvo described how John Allen Muhammad intended to train all these boys with weapons and stealth, as he had been taught. Finally, after their training was complete, John Allen Muhammad would send them out across the United States to carry out mass shootings in many different cities, just as he had done in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD. These attacks would be coordinated, and were intended to send the country into chaos.

See also

• List of notable converts to Islam
• Islamist terrorism

External links

• Complete Court TV coverage of the Lee Boyd Malvo trial

Bibliography

• Profile: Lee Boyd Malvo, BBC News
• Malvo Found Guilty in Washington Sniper Case, Reuters (via Yahoo! News)
• Radford University study on Lee Boyd Malvo (link broken as of 03-30-2007)
• Article about Malvo's indoctrination