Dissecting the Psyche and Motives of DC Snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo

Retired FBI profiler and author Jim Clemente delves into the minds and motives of serial killers – including John Allen Muhammad & Lee Malvo – the snipers who killed 10 people while terrorizing the Washington DC area over several weeks in 2002.

Clemente - author of the crime thriller Without Consent - says in this case the pair of serial killers who teamed had a clear leader in Muhammad, who was in his 40s while Malvo was just a 15-year-old boy. “He pulled Malvo out of a shelter, a men’s shelter and took him under his wing. Basically he treated him like he was his son in certain respects and they used that relationship to actually groom him into a killer.”

The duo also went to other U.S. states during their killing spree, killing a total of 17 people and injuring 10 more.

“This was a major serial killer team, but it was a very different one than we ever expected before.”

Clemente explains that snipers have a so-called god complex, meaning they like to kill from above so they feel some kind of omnipotence. “That they’re actually taking life from above and nobody even sees them, they have no direct interaction with them.”

He said this type of individual differs from other types of serial killers who like being close to their victims so they can stab them with a knife or shooting or strangling them in a more personal way. “What they want to do is take away life, and they don’t want to have any interaction with the person, other than piercing their skull with a bullet.”

He points out that despite this cold and distant form of killing the pair adopted, they actually did have a connection to one intended victim that didn’t get to – Muhammad’s ex-wife.

“He killed all those people, 17 other people and shot 10 more, so 27 people that he and Malvo shot. The whole purpose of it was to hide the fact that he was going to kill his wife – make her one of the 20 or 30 victims they had – and that her body would just be buried with the rest of them.”

He also speaks about working and living in the DC area when the sniper shootings were going on and how people were terrified just to go about their daily business.

“It was our neighborhoods, that’s the thing. Parents were running from schools with their children because they were afraid they were going to get shot. People when they were going to get gas, they would be crouching down behind their cars, everybody’s crawling around to get into stores and things like that.”

Clemente explains how agents investigating the sniper case determined from a crudely written letter that didn’t seem to be consistent with a sophisticated killer who was 48 years old. So they knew that either the suspect was operating in some way on a child’s level, or there was a younger member of the team.

He adds that it later became clear from interviews Malvo did later that Muhammad had been grooming the young man to be a killer from the moment he took him out of the shelter and was also sexually abusing him the entire time.

“It was a control mechanism that Muhammad used to take advantage of this kid sexually, totally undermine his self-confidence, self-worth, make him feel shameful, and the only way he felt he could get power was to take it out on other people.”

Muhammad definitely fits the profile Clemente identifies for a mass killer. “When you have a serial killer, it’s a combination – it’s like a perfect storm – of bio, psycho and social. Your genetics loads the gun, personality and psychology aim it, and your experiences pull the trigger.

“In this case for Muhammad, he’s the one who planned this. He’s the one who had the military experience, he’s the one who was an avid shooter and semi-automatic and weapons shooter.”

Clemente adds that one way the FBI was able to ultimately tie Muhammad to the crime was by going to his house in the state of Washington and dug up a tree stump he had used in his backyard for target practice. Investigators were then able to match the same rounds found at his home to those used in the DC area sniper shootings.

Watch the full episode to also hear Clemente’s analysis of rapist-murderer Timothy Wayne Krajcir, who actually went out of his way to study criminal investigation in an effort to try and outsmart the investigators following his murderous trail.