The man already on death row for terrorising the Washington area in a 2002 sniper rampage was found guilty this week on six counts of murder in Maryland and sentenced to six life terms in prison on Thursday, United States media reported.
The jury’s verdict came after a drama-filled trial in which the defendant, John Allen Muhammad, acting as his own attorney, grilled his young accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, on the witness stand.
Muhammad has already been sentenced to death for one of the murders in neighbouring Virginia, where Malvo is serving a life sentence.
In total, the three-week killing spree claimed 10 lives in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, and spooked a region still living in dread of a repeat of the September 11 attacks and deadly anthrax mailings a year earlier.
Malvo (21) provided dramatic courtroom testimony last week as he faced off with his former mentor, calling Muhammad (45) a ”coward” and accusing him of turning him into a ”monster”.
The young murder convict told how he and Muhammad mounted a three-week rampage against ordinary people picked off in the sprawling United States capital region as they pumped gas, waited for a bus or shopped.
Malvo testified that Muhammad had told him: ”There are going to be six shootings a day for 30 days” targeting the largely white, affluent suburbs around Washington, a city overwhelmingly populated by African-Americans.
The first month of killings was to have been followed by bombings and attacks on schools, Malvo said. ”For the sheer terror of it, the worst thing you can do to people is aim at their children,” Malvo quoted Muhammad as saying.
Malvo said Muhammad planned to use the spree to extort $10-million to set up a training camp in Canada, to send out 140 young men to wreak terror all over the US.
Malvo admitted to prosecutors he pulled the trigger in three of the attacks, killing one man and injuring two other people.
The trigger man for the rest of the victims was Muhammad, he told the court. Malvo originally claimed to have fired every shot but said last week victims deserved the truth.
In addition, Malvo told how Muhammad would lie in the rear of a converted blue Chevrolet, poking his high-velocity rifle through a hole above the rear bumper, lining up oblivious victims as they went about their daily lives.
Malvo agreed to a plea deal to testify against Muhammad.
Asked what he felt now about Muhammad, who took him under his wing after a miserable childhood in the West Indies, Malvo looked directly at the man he once called ”father”.
”I think he is a coward; you took me in your house and made me a monster,” he said in a biting, angry tone. ”You clothed me and fed me and took me in as your child.” — AFP
