Desperate for leads to the sniper, police are hoping their voices reach whoever has killed ten people in the Washington area.
”Your children are not safe anywhere at any time,” the purported killer writes in a note.
Tell us more — pleads a top cop and politely signs off, ”thank you.”
What has ensued is a tentative, jarring conversation between police and the sniper. ”They’re trying to get as much information as they possibly can about what’s motivating this guy, what the story is here,” said Scott Allen, senior psychologist with Miami-Dade police.
Someone believed to be the killer has contacted police at least four times. But authorities are staying mum on most of what they’ve been told in the messages, despite past success in tracking down killers once details of their communications got around.
”If you’ve got something like handwriting, mood or philosophy, it might help,” said Seattle University journalism professor Tomas Guillen. He found in a study that messages from serial killers have rarely helped police track down their prey but have assisted in convicting them once arrested.
Police should make them public more often, especially in cases where victims are randomly chosen, because they can be rich in clues to people who know the killer, he said.
Mansfield University criminal justice expert Scott Thornsley noted the successful outcome of revealing a killer’s writings in the Unabomber case: David Kaczynski’s brother recognised his brother Theodore’s style, and contacted the authorities.
Police have said such revelations would be detrimental to the investigation, although they have not explained why. Allen said police may be wary of enabling copycats by releasing details.
”Who’s to say they even know they’re speaking to the sniper?” he asked.
The first message was reported found on October 7 outside a Bowie, Maryland, middle school where the sniper wounded a 13-year-old boy.
A tarot death card had the words ”Dear Policeman, I am God” written on it. The second known message was a note left near a steakhouse parking lot in Ashland, Virginia, where a man was shot and critically wounded on Saturday night.
Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Chief Charles Moose would not release details except to say that it ended with the following threat: ”Your children are not safe anywhere at any time.”
The discovery of that note on Sunday night prompted a polite message from Moose, delivered in his trademark answering machine monotone: ”To the person who left us a message at the Ponderosa last night. You gave us a telephone number. We do want to talk to you. Call us at the number you provided. Thank you.”
The appeal elicited a phone call — but one that was garbled, which resulted in another carefully modulated message from the police chief: ”The person you called could not hear everything you said. The audio was unclear and we want to get it right. Call us back so that we can clearly understand.”
A fourth message came on Tuesday, Moose said, but he would not reveal its content or form, and said only he would respond soon. He later came out and said, again speaking to the sniper: ”We have researched the options you stated and found that it is not possible electronically to comply in the manner that you requested.
”However, we remain open and ready to talk to you about the options you have mentioned. It is important that we do this without anyone else getting hurt.”
Keeping the police messages neutral makes sense, Allen said, because unlike other serial killers, this one shows few idiosyncrasies — and leaves authorities without an idea of what would appeal to him and would alienate him.
”Moose doesn’t want there to be any errors in understanding,” he said. ”He’s being literal.” Moose acknowledged such difficulties on Tuesday, after a bus driver was shot and killed in Aspen Hill, Maryland.
”The person or people involved have shown a clear willingness and ability to kill people of all ages, all races, all genders, all professions, at different times, different days and different locations,” he said.
He appealed to the public to be alert ”for anyone behaving strangely or in a way that is maybe not themselves.”
That’s a vague brief, and experts said such appeals will work only when Moose and his task force make public more details from the messages. – Sapa-AP