John Muhammad planned to shoot 180 white people in one month

The other night on one of the cable stations that specialize in crime programs I saw an hour long documentary film about Mildred Muhammad, the ex-wife of John Allen Muhammad, born John Allen Williams, the Beltway sniper. The film is all from Mildred’s point of view, with an emphasis on “domestic violence,” and does not provide a satisfying factual account of John Muhammad life and actions and of the police response to the Beltway killings. For example, no mention is made of the fact that Muhammad and his accomplice avoided arrest and killed more people for several days because Police Chief Moose was positive that the killer was white. Nevertheless, the film, focused on Mildred’s personal story, makes compelling viewing. Their marriage began as a loving marriage, she says, and they had three children whom he loved. Then, over the course of the 1990s, starting when he returned from the Gulf War, his mind and character descended into pure evil, and he made clear his intention to kill her. Unlike so many contemporary females, white, black, and brown, Mildred was not an Eloi, and she survived.

Thus at one point, after she had separated from him and got a court order to keep him away from her, and he only had visitation rights with their children, he took the children and disappeared with them for 18 months. She was out of her mind about her children during this period. Then one day he called her up and said she could come see the children. Mildred says to the interviewer: “I had two choices. I could say yes, and see my children, and end up dead, or I could hang up the phone, and live.” She hung up the phone. And eventually she got her children back.

I hadn’t thought about John Muhammad in years (here are VFR entries about him), basically since the time he was arrested and the media instantly lost interest in him, because, to their shock and disappointment, he was black, and not just black, but a black named Muhammad. (According to Wikipedia, he changed his name to Muhammad in October 2001, i.e., one month after the 9/11 attack, which as a sidelight raises the question how Mildred is named Muhammad, since she was separated or divorced from him by 2001.) Furthermore, once he was arrested, there was the prospect of endless years of judicial proceedings. Muhammad was in fact sentenced to death in one trial, but the appeals as well as numerous other trials in various jurisdictions where he committed murder have gone on year after year. He murdered 17 people, and is still alive on this earth, and who knows how long it will take for him to be executed. It’s not something one likes to think about. Such is criminal justice in our procedure-mad society. To paraphrase Hamlet’s remark to Polonius, we eat the air, procedure-crammed.

But not having followed the case during these years I had missed a major revelation, which I’ve now learned about in Wikipedia. Contradicting earlier testimony, Muhammad’s accomplice and disciple Lee Malvo testified in a May 2006 trial in Maryland (almost four years after their arrest) that Muhammad had much bigger plans in mind than had been known initially. According to Malvo, Muhammad planned to kill six white people a day for 30 days, a total of 180 people, but was unable to do so because there was too much traffic to get clear shots.

This alters the entire view of Muhammad. He wasn’t just carrying out a generalized animus against America, and killing Americans at random without reference to race. His aim was to slaughter white people. But he was unable to get clear shots at white people in all situations, so he shot whomever he could.

How many people know this?

Below is the relevant section from the Wikipedia article

Changing his name to Muhammad in October 2001, he was a member of the Nation of Islam for a time; friends allege Muhammad helped provide security for “Million Man March” in 1995, but Farrakhan has publicly distanced himself and his organization from Muhammad’s crimes [2]. Muhammad moved out of the country and spent time in Antigua around 1999, apparently engaging in credit card and immigration document fraud activities. It was during this time that he became close with Lee Boyd Malvo, who later acted as his partner in the killings.

After his arrest, authorities also claimed that Muhammad admitted that he admired and modeled himself after Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and approved of the September 11, 2001, attacks. One of Malvo’s psychiatric witnesses testified in his trial that Muhammad had indoctrinated him into believing that the proceeds of the extortion attempt would be used to begin a new nation of only young, “pure” black people somewhere in Canada.

Muhammad is twice divorced; his second wife, Mildred Muhammad, sought and was granted a restraining order. Muhammad was arrested on federal charges of violating the restraining order against him by possessing a weapon. Defense attorneys in the Malvo trial and the prosecution in Muhammad’s trial argued that the ultimate goal of the killings was to kill Mildred so he would regain custody of his three children.[3]

The real plan, as told by Lee Boyd Malvo

In John Allen Muhammad’s May 2006 trial in Montgomery County, Maryland, 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, D.C. and Baltimore 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 white people a day for 30 days (180 per month). 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. 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 abdomen. 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, D.C. and Baltimore.[5][6][7]

On a final note, it seems that Muhammad himself is tired of all the appeals. In June 2008 he told a judge he wanted the various appeals in his case to cease, “so that you can murder this innocent black man.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 26, 2008 02:51 PM | Send