Lee Boyd Malvo | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 18, 1985 |
| Other names | John Lee Malvo, Malik Malvo, The Beltway Sniper, The D.C. Sniper |
| Criminal status | Incarcerated |
| Conviction(s) | Capital murder (10 counts) |
| Criminal penalty | 10 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole; commuted to life-with-parole |
| Details | |
| Victims | 10 killed, 3 injured (D.C. metropolitan area); 14 victims elsewhere |
Span of crimes | February 16 –October 23, 2002 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Washington, D.C. |
Date apprehended | October 24, 2002 |
Lee Boyd Malvo (born February 18, 1985), also known as John Lee Malvo, is a Jamaican convicted mass murderer who, along with John Allen Muhammad, committed a series of murders dubbed the D.C. sniper attacks over a three-week period in October 2002. Malvo was aged 17 during the span of the shootings. He is serving multiple life sentences at Keen Mountain Correctional Center in Virginia, a maximum security (level 4) prison. [1] [2]
The D.C. sniper attacks were the last in a series of shootings across the United States connected to Muhammad and Malvo which began on the West Coast. Muhammad had befriended the juvenile Malvo and enlisted him in the attacks. According to Craig Cooley, one of Malvo's defense attorneys, Malvo believed Muhammad when he told him that the $10 million ransom sought from the U.S. government to stop the sniper killings would be used to establish a Utopian society for 140 homeless Black children on a Canadian compound. [3] In 2012, Malvo claimed that Muhammad had sexually abused him. [4]
Lee Boyd Malvo was born on February 18, 1985, to Leslie Malvo, a mason, and Una James, a seamstress. The couple, who never married, lived in Kingston, Jamaica. [5] Una left Leslie in 1990, when Lee Malvo was five years old. Una and Lee moved to the hill town of Endeavour, Jamaica, to be with her sister Marie Lawrence for almost a year. [6]
They moved back to Kingston, and later to St. Martin. When Malvo was nine years old he was sent to live with his aunt Marie, where he stayed for almost a year. On passing his sixth grade exams, Lee was sent to York Castle High School. [6]
Jamaican pastor Lorenzo King baptized Malvo into the Seventh-day Adventist Church at 14 years of age in 1999. [7] Malvo later moved to Antigua in 1999 to be with his mother. He registered at Antigua and Barbuda Seventh-day Adventist School, where he got good grades and also won a school award in the 100 meter run. [8]
Malvo and his mother, Una Sceon James, first met John Allen Muhammad in Antigua and Barbuda around 1999, where she and Muhammad developed a strong friendship. Later, Una left Antigua for Fort Myers, Florida, using false documents. She left her son with Muhammad, reportedly planning to have him follow her later. Malvo was converted to Islam by Muhammad in March 2001. Muhammad also isolated Malvo from his mother. [5] [9]
Malvo arrived illegally in Miami in 2001, and in December of that year, he and his mother were apprehended by the Border Patrol in Bellingham, Washington. [10] In January 2002, Malvo was released on a $1,500 bond. [10] Malvo subsequently lived in a homeless shelter with Muhammad in Bellingham. Malvo enrolled in Bellingham High School with Muhammad falsely listed as his father. He did not make any friends, according to his classmates. [11]
While in the Tacoma, Washington, area, according to his statements to investigators, Malvo shoplifted a Bushmaster XM-15 from Bull's Eye Shooter Supply and practiced his marksmanship on the Bull's Eye firing range adjacent to the gun shop. Under federal laws, neither Muhammad nor Malvo were legally allowed to purchase or possess guns, with both classified as prohibited persons under the Gun Control Act of 1968. [12]
Malvo was initially arrested under federal charges, but they were dropped. He was transferred to Virginian custody and sent to jail in Fairfax County. 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" (the phrase being added to Virginian law after the September 11 attacks) and the murder of more than one person in a three-year period. [13]
He was also charged with the unlawful use of a firearm in the murder of Franklin. Initially, a Fairfax attorney, Michael Arif, was appointed to represent him, along with Thomas B. Walsh and Mark J. Petrovich. Later, prominent Richmond attorney Craig Cooley was appointed to the team and assumed a leadership role. [13] While in jail, Malvo made a recorded confession to Detective Samuel Walker in which he stated that he "intended to kill them all". [14]
Due to extensive pre-trial publicity around the entire Washington metropolitan area, a change of venue was granted. The trial was moved more than 150 miles to Chesapeake, Virginia. Malvo pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to all charges on the grounds that he was under Muhammad's complete control. One of Malvo's psychiatric witnesses testified that Muhammad, a member of Nation of Islam, had indoctrinated Malvo into believing that the proceeds of an extortion attempt would be used to begin a new nation of only pure black young persons somewhere in Canada. [3]
During the trial, Cooley said that violent video games had contributed significantly to Malvo's state of mind and his willingness to commit murder. Cooley said, "He's trained and desensitized with video games, computer games, to train him to shoot human forms over and over."[ citation needed ] Sociologists Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson, however, argue in their book Grand Theft Childhood [15] that other factors were much more significant. "In court, Lee Malvo admitted that he trained by shooting a real gun at paper plates that represented human heads. Also, Malvo had a long history of antisocial and criminal behavior, including torturing small animals, one of the best predictors of future violent criminal behavior." [15]
On December 18, 2003, after nearly 14 hours of deliberation, a jury convicted Malvo of both charges. On December 23, the jury recommended a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. On March 10, 2004, Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, the life sentence was overturned in 2016 when Virginia abolished life without parole for juveniles.[ citation needed ]
On October 26, 2004, under a plea bargain 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.[ citation needed ]
One Virginia prosecutor in Prince William County had stated he would wait to decide whether to try Malvo on additional capital charges in his jurisdiction until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on whether juveniles may be subject to execution. In light of the March 1, 2005, Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons that the Eighth Amendment prohibits execution for crimes committed when under age 18, the prosecutors in Prince William County decided not to pursue the charges against Malvo. As Malvo was 17 when he committed the crimes, he 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 the differences in how the two states deal with the death penalty. While the death penalty was allowed in Maryland, it applied only 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. A death sentence was more likely to result in execution in Virginia than in Maryland, which abolished its death penalty in 2013. [16]
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 Muhammad were guilty of four additional shootings in 2002: A man killed in Los Angeles, California, during a robbery in February or March; a 76-year-old man who survived a shooting on May 18 at a golf course in Clearwater, Florida; a man shot to death while doing yard work in Denton, Texas, May 27; and 54 year-old John Gaeta, [17] who survived being shot on August 1 during a robbery outside a shopping mall near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. [18]
On October 10, 2006, Malvo pleaded guilty to the six murders he was charged with in Maryland. On October 26, he told police that he and Muhammad had killed Jerry Taylor, 60, as Taylor practiced chip shots at a Tucson, Arizona, golf course in March 2002. Tucson detectives interviewed Malvo about Taylor, who died from a single gunshot fired at long range but did not disclose their findings. [19]
On November 8, Malvo was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole. [20]
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 two of their victims who were seriously wounded and the families of some of those murdered. Co-defendants Bull's Eye Shooter Supply and Bushmaster Firearms contributed to a landmark $2.5 million out-of-court settlement in late 2004. [21]
In Muhammad's May 2006 trial in Montgomery County, Maryland, Malvo took the stand and confessed to a more detailed version of the pair's plans. Malvo, after extensive counseling, admitted that he had been lying in the statement he made after his arrest when he admitted to being the triggerman for every shooting. Malvo claimed that he had said this to protect Muhammad from the death penalty because it would have been more difficult (and since declared unconstitutional) to impose the death penalty for murders committed by a minor. Malvo stated, "I'm not proud of myself. I'm just trying to make amends", expressing his regret in the shootings. [22] In his two days of testimony, Malvo outlined detailed aspects of all the shootings.
Part of his testimony concerned Muhammad's complete plan, which consisted of three phases in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore metro areas. Phase One consisted of meticulously planning, mapping and practicing their locations around the D.C. area so that after each shooting they could quickly leave the area on a predetermined path and move to the next location. Muhammad's goal in Phase One was to kill six white 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. [23] [24] [22] [25]
Phase Two was meant to take place in Baltimore. Malvo described how this phase was close to being implemented but was never carried out. Phase Two was intended to begin by killing a pregnant woman by shooting her in the abdomen. The next step would have been to shoot and kill a Baltimore police officer. At the officer's funeral, they would plant several improvised explosive devices. These explosives were intended to kill a large number of police since many police would attend another officer's funeral. More bombs were then to be detonated as ambulances arrived at the scene. [26]
The last phase was to take place immediately after Phase Two: to extort several million dollars from the U.S. government. This money would be used to finance a larger plan to travel north into Canada and recruit other effectively orphaned boys to use weapons and stealth and send them out to commit shootings across the country. [22] [23] [24] [25]
Until mid 2024, Malvo was incarcerated at the Red Onion State Prison as Virginia Department of Corrections inmate 1180834. [27] Malvo was relocated from the supermax Red Onion State Prison to the slightly lower security Keen Mountain Correctional Center around June 2024.
The D.C. sniper attacks were a series of coordinated shootings that occurred during three weeks in October 2002 throughout the Washington metropolitan area, consisting of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, and preliminary shootings, that consisted of murders and robberies in several states, and lasted for six months starting in February 2002. Seven people were killed, and seven others were injured in the preliminary shootings, and ten people were killed and three others were critically wounded in the October shootings. In total, the snipers killed 17 people and wounded 10 others in a 10-month span.
John Allen Muhammad was an American serial killer who, along with his partner and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, carried out the D.C. sniper attacks of October 2002, killing seventeen people. Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in connection with the attacks on October 24, 2002, following tips from alert citizens.
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which the convicted criminal is to remain in prison for the rest of their natural life. Crimes that result in life imprisonment are considered extremely serious and usually violent. Examples of these crimes are murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, illegal drug trade, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated property damage, arson, hate crime, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, theft, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide.
D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear is a 2003 TV movie created by USA Network based on the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002.
Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18. The 5–4 decision overruled Stanford v. Kentucky, in which the court had upheld execution of offenders at or above age 16, and overturned statutes in 25 states.
Capital punishment was abolished in Virginia on March 24, 2021, when Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill into law. The law took effect on July 1, 2021. Virginia is the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, and the first southern state in United States history to do so.
Oregon v. Guzek, 546 U.S. 517 (2006), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not grant criminal defendants facing the death penalty the right to introduce new evidence of their innocence during sentencing that was not introduced during trial. Accordingly, states could constitutionally exclude such evidence from the sentencing phase of a capital trial.
Johnny Paul Penry is a Texas prisoner serving three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment without parole for rape and murder. He was on death row between 1980 and 2008, and his case generated discussion about the appropriateness of the death penalty for offenders who are thought to be intellectually disabled.
William Charles Morva was an American-Hungarian man convicted of the 2006 shooting deaths of Sheriff's Deputy Corporal Eric Sutphin, 40, and hospital security guard Derrick McFarland, 32, in the town of Blacksburg, Virginia. He was sentenced to death for the crime and was executed on July 6, 2017. Morva was the last inmate to be executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia before capital punishment in the state was abolished on March 24, 2021.
Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23, were from Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. They were kidnapped on the evening of January 6, 2007, when Christian's vehicle was carjacked. The couple were taken to a rental house. Both of them were raped, tortured, and murdered. Four males and one female were arrested, charged, and convicted in the case. In 2007, a grand jury indicted Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Devall Davidson, George Geovonni Thomas, and Vanessa Lynn Coleman on counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder. Also in 2007, Eric DeWayne Boyd was indicted by a federal grand jury of being an accessory to a carjacking, resulting in serious bodily injury to another person and misprision of a felony. In 2018, Boyd was indicted on state-level charges of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.
Samuel Sheinbein was an American-Israeli convicted murderer. On 16 September 1997, Sheinbein, a 17-year-old senior at John F. Kennedy High School in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Aaron Benjamin Needle, a former classmate, killed Alfredo "Freddy" Enrique Tello, Jr. They subsequently dismembered and burned the corpse in Aspen Hill, Maryland. Sheinbein fled to Israel, where his father who had Israeli citizenship was born. At the time, Israeli law prohibited extradition of Israeli citizens.
In the United States, life imprisonment is the most severe punishment provided by law in states with no valid capital punishment statute, and second-most in those with a valid statute. According to a 2013 study, one of every 2,000 prison inhabitants of the U.S. were imprisoned for life as of 2012.
Red Onion State Prison (ROSP) is a supermax state prison located in unincorporated Wise County, Virginia, near Pound. Operated by the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC), it houses about 800 inmates. The prison opened in August 1998.
Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. The ruling applied even to those persons who had committed murder as a juvenile, extending beyond Graham v. Florida (2010), which had ruled juvenile life without parole sentences unconstitutional for crimes excluding murder.
On May 5 and 6, 2016, a shooting spree occurred across several locations in Maryland. Eulalio Tordil, a Homeland Security officer, traveled across the Washington metropolitan area, where he shot and killed three people and wounded three others in the span of 24 hours between May 5 and 6, 2016. The shooting was reminiscent of the 2002 Washington, D.C., sniper attacks.
Daniel Lewis Lee was an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and convicted felon. In 1999, Lee was convicted as an accomplice to Chevie Kehoe in the 1996 murders of William Frederick Mueller, Nancy Ann Mueller, and their young daughter Sarah Elizabeth Powell, during a robbery at their Arkansas home. While Kehoe was found guilty of the triple murder in a separate trial and was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole, Lee was sentenced to death. Lee had previously served prison time for assisting his cousin in the 1990 murder of Joey Wavra.
Keen Mountain Correctional Center is a level 4, maximum security correctional facility in Oakwood, Virginia. It opened in 1990 and houses up to 1200 adult male offenders.
Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the imposition of life sentences for juveniles. The Supreme Court had previously ruled in Miller v. Alabama in 2012 that mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders was considered cruel and unusual punishment outside of extreme cases of permanent incorrigibility, and made this decision retroactive in Montgomery v. Louisiana in 2016. In Jones, a juvenile offender who was 15 at the time of his offense, challenged his life sentence following Montgomery but was denied by the state. In a 6–3 decision with all six conservative justices upholding the life sentence without parole for Jones, the Court ruled that the states have discretionary ability to hold juvenile offenders to life sentences without parole without having to make a separate assessment of their incorrigibility.
On March 31, 2015, Marie Belcastro, aged 94, was murdered in her Niles, Ohio home by Jacob Larosa, her 15-year-old neighbor. Larosa, who had numerous prior cases in juvenile court, had been released from a juvenile detention facility hours before. He broke into Belcastro’s residence, and, using a MAG flashlight, beat her to death. Larosa also attempted to rape Belcastro. In 2018, Larosa pleaded no contest to charges of aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, attempted rape, and aggravated murder. Later that year, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2021, a new Ohio law, Senate Bill 256, retroactively reduced his sentence, making him eligible for parole after 25 years. The change to Larosa’s sentence has led to controversy and calls for changes to Senate Bill 256. As of 2022, Larosa’s parole hearing is scheduled for 2040.
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