They were striking at the heart of the suburbs. The guy is dead, and theres a white man just went by. Tomorrow im going to my fourth funeral in four days. People were dying. They were dying right in front of us. We cant be everywhere all the time. This, without a doubt, was 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, next. Its known as the beltway, the growing metropolis that surrounds our Nations Capital. Encompassing portions of maryland and virginia, the beltway is a sprawl of medium and smallsized towns, the kind of places where indiscriminate violence is rare. For area residents, october 2nd, 2002, began quietly enough. Nationally, the big news was a hurricane in the gulf of mexico. Category 4 hurricane and the buildup to the invasion of iraq. We know the awful nature of war. But a very different war was about to erupt. I got a call from my deputy, lieutenant phil long. A 55yearold man was killed outside the store. We had a gentleman who was shot in the parking lot at the shoppers food warehouse. I asked him what kind was it, did we have a smoke or did we have an argument between two people . Did we have an answer to it right away . Barney forsythe was the head of major crimes for Montgomery County. He said, no, not really. We had a loud bang. It was directly across the street from a Police Station. In fact, the First Police Officers to arrive on the scene were those that heard the shot inside the Police Station and walked across the street. The victim is a 55yearold Government Analyst named james d. Martin. Police have almost nothing to go on. Security cameras were starting to become more popular. We were, of course, hoping, you know, that it was going to tell us something. Unfortunately, after we reviewed it, the only thing we saw was 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 that 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 was hit. Oddly, less than an hour earlier, there had been a random shot fired just a few miles away. There were no injuries and no clues. We werent really sure what we had at that point. Tonight, the mystery remains. That evening, the two shootings were still just a local story. The next morning, everything changed. Montgomery county. Yes, maam. I need police and ambulance. Okay. Whats the problem . Somebody has been shot down on our back lot. Hes down on the ground. Hes bleeding real bad. We had a call for a subject who had been out mowing a lawn. The victim is 39yearold sonny buchanan, a landscaper. Immediately we were pretty sure it was going to be related to the previous evenings shooting. The two crime scenes are just over four miles apart. Were reasonably sure that they were parked within several hundred yards of this location. They managed to sight the victim and take the shot. 30 minutes later, the carnage continues. What happened here at the gas station . I had to fill the car up with gas. There was a gentleman filling his car. It was a taxi. And he looked at me, and i looked at him. And then i looked down for a split second just to pick up my credit card, and then i heard a very loud bang. The shot came from up here. And then i looked up and the taxi driver was walking towards my car. He said to me, call an ambulance. And he collapsed. I saw a lot of blood. The taxi driver is 54yearold prim kumar walekar. The witness is caroline namrow, an emergency room doctor. I realized that he was having something called agonal breathing, which is the last breaths. When police arrived, dr. Namrow was performing cpr on a dead man. I started to feel a little worried when i saw everybody with a bulletproof vest on and i didnt have one. We all thought there was a possibility we could be targeted at that point. I remember chief moose specifically told me to get my vest on. Let me now introduce our chief of police. Charles moose. Charles . Thank you, sir. We are doing everything in our power to control our emotions as we deal with 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. Montgomery county police chief Charles Moose becomes the public face of the investigation. But 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. But this is no suicide. Its murder, and its less than two miles away. Dead at the scene is a 34yearold babysitter and housekeeper, sarah ramos. Passersby thought she had shot herself. 34yearold sarah ramos was sitting on a bench at a shopping center, reading. Its another busy location, another perplexing crime scene. Three fatal shootings in less than an hour in a fourmile radius. We sensed they were related, but knowing and proving that theyre related are certainly two different things. The rear of this parking lot 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. A witness reports seeing a White Box Truck fleeing the scene. Its the first Material Clue for investigators. The investigation really, really took on speed right here. An hour and 20 minutes later, 5 1 2 miles away, lori ann lewisrivera has stopped at a selfservice gas station vacuum stand to clean out her minivan. Everyday people doing everyday things usually are not the victims. Rivera, mother of a young daughter, is just 25 years old. Just the enormity of this huge sense of waste. This child lost her mother. Another murder, again a single shot. Two people in a boxtype truck with a damaged tailgate. So far they havent found anybody, and thats the situation as we know it right now out here. Its quiet for the next 12 hours. Then just a few blocks from the Montgomery County line, one more shot shatters the night. 72yearold pascal charlot, a retired carpenter, dies at the scene. In Montgomery County, we average about 20 homicides a year, and weve had five of them in the space of a 16hour period. You look at the victims on the first day. They were from all different aspects, male, female, indian, white, hispanic, black. So basically thats telling me theyre looking at random targets. Theyre not predetermined targets. This is americana, right . Do they hate suburban america . We couldnt figure out why they were doing it, but they were striking kind of at the heart of the suburbs. You had 9 11. This is one year later. At first were not sure if we had a terrorist operation. There was no sense at all who was behind this, who the next victim might be, and when it would stop, if it would stop. We didnt know what the next 16 hours was going to bring. The snipers began leaving notes. It was sort of like getting punched in the face. doorbell ringing slow piano music Music Changes To Rapid Funk [announcer] ensushiastic. Intensely excited over how it looks before discovering how it tastes. On time, lowest price, or well make it right. chickachicka grubhub. vo this year, tmobile for business is here to help you hit the ground running. When you switch to tmobile and bring your own device, well pay off your phone up to 800. You can keep your phone. Keep your number. And get your employees connected on the largest and fastest 5g network. 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I dont 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 theres 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 just one common thread. It was a single shot, and it was a very loud single shot. Victim number seven, a 43yearold mother of two, is shot outside a second Michaels 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 all the shots were fired from the same weapon. Maryland investigators narrowing their search for these weapons by starting with the killers bullets. Right away, just about within 24 hours, we knew we were dealing with an assault rifle. If you see people who have weapons similar to this, call chief moose and his department on the hotline. 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. This led us to believe they could be shooting from a bench location, or we even thought early they could be shooting from a platform, maybe like a van or a truck. The ballistics reports provoked a chilling conclusion for investigators. They werent dealing with just any killer. This was the work of a highly motivated sniper. Im 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 an ordinary investigation. We knew we had a Public Safety crisis. The sniper realization fueled even greater urgency. The witness report of a white van or truck fleeing one of the early murder scenes began to drive the investigation. We do have new information out 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. They say the vehicle has six wheels, four wheels in the rear. They may have spotted two people in a boxtype truck with a damaged tailgate. And they started putting out White Box Trucks, White Box Truck, White Box Truck. The witness talked about two people in it. Group think took over. Graphics will be available. We think it will help people, prompt their memories. White vans were everywhere. An offwhite van similar to the other white van. All of a sudden there were millions of white vans and everybody was saying, did you see . I saw a white van. Police are saying theyre still looking for a White Box Truck. It got a life of its own that it shouldnt have gotten. Two men inside. Unfortunately, it was the only game in town at that point. Lost in the hysteria of the White Box Truck lead 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. Exmilitary. Along with Media Experts, who came forward with profiles of the sniper. This has all the markings of an allamerican crime spree. This is somebody who actually is trying to taunt the nation. The message is getting out there that no one is safe. Everyone thought it was white guys, white guys being involved, just because that seemed to be the predominant Serial Killer motif. You know what, you want a profile . Heres a guy whos going to turn out, i believe, to be a white middleaged male. Id be looking for an individual who has a high degree of anxiety at work. Theres a Typology Of Mass Murder called the pseudo commando. Were still waiting on the psychological Profile Piece from the fbi. We dont expect that it will be exact, that it will cause us to have tunnel vision. Stand still, please. Still, please to calm the public, 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. 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 these 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 schoolchildren. The public had been afraid that their kids werent safe. So we said, okay, well send police. Every school in Montgomery County had an officer at it. A 13yearold boy shot and wounded as he arrives at his suburban maryland school. The eighth victim is a student at Benjamin Tasker middle school. Hes 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 hadnt been. What theyre 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 70odd 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 dont think anybody was sort of expecting that, you know, they were blacks at the end. Well, if youre two black guys in kind of a beatup 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. Okay everyone, our mission is to provide complete balanced nutrition for strength and energy. Woo hoo ensure, complete balanced nutrition with 27 vitamins and minerals. And ensure complete with 30 grams of protein. Jeffs been to the bottom of the ocean. The tops of mountains. And wherever this guy runs off to. A life well lived should continue at home. With home instead care, older adults can stay home, safe, and happy. Home instead. To us, its personal. 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. Everybody working this detail knew someone who was in the schools, whether it was neighbors, whether it was relatives, whether it was 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 confirmed that the snipers had listened to the Previous Press conference. One of my words was, i dont know why on gods earth somebody would do Something Like this. And sure enough, it said, 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 october 9th. When the news media got a hold 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 were still doing this investigation. There was some discussion amongst all of us in the newsroom, do we report this or not . I dont think theres anybody that hasnt experienced the hindrance of leaks in the past. We have not been thrown off track. They claim they shot other people because we didnt do what they asked us to do. Dean meyers, shot at this manassas, virginia, gas station. Dean harold meyers, a civil engineer, is the ninth victim, shot in the chest and killed while pumping gas near manassas, virginia. He was 53 years old. In a parking lot across from the crime scene, a