-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/4374267.htm
Posted on Sat, Oct. 26, 2002 Police spotted suspects' car 10 times during sniper spree By Craig Whitlock and Josh White Washington Post Authorities in the Washington region spotted the same faded blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice and recorded its New Jersey plates on at least 10 different occasions this month, but saw no reason to link it to the sniper attacks until this week, law enforcement sources said Friday. Ten times, authorities thought the car warranted enough suspicion that they ran its license- plate number through a national police database, sources said. Each time, however, they let the driver go after finding no record that it had been stolen or that its occupants were wanted for any crimes. Police said the weather-beaten Chevrolet with whitewall tires did not attract closer scrutiny because they were mistakenly fixated on other vehicles -- a white van, a box truck, a cream- colored Toyota. ``We were looking for a white van with white people, and we ended up with a blue car with black people,'' said Washington, D.C., Police Chief Charles Ramsey, whose department ran the Caprice's license Oct. 3, just hours before a fatal shooting in Washington that has been tied to the sniper suspects, John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17. Before the suspects themselves dropped the clue that led to their arrests, the thousand or so agents and police officers working the case were painstakingly chasing tips and leads that led nowhere, many of them said. ``We were running a lot of leads into the ground,'' said one local law enforcement source. ``There were a ton of dead ends.'' Some of those might eventually have paid off, but none with the speed that the suspects' own tips provided. One of the more promising trails involved motels along the shooting path. Authorities combed through guest lists and later determined that Muhammad and Malvo had stopped for the night near the shootings in Spotsylvania and Prince William counties, as well as one outside a Ponderosa steakhouse in Ashland, Va. In all, Muhammad and Malvo are suspected of shooting 13 people, killing 10 of them. The two suspects were spotted at a YMCA on Route 1 -- less than a mile from the Ponderosa -- in the days before the Ashland shooting, according to police and YMCA officials in Richmond. Other guests said the pair stood out because they were unusually dirty and eager to use the YMCA's showers. Until the suspects dropped the hints that led to their arrests, investigators were mostly frustrated. ``We were chasing the nut of the day,'' one of them said. Then, on Oct. 17, a man claiming to be the sniper called the Montgomery County Police Department's public-information office, sounding frustrated and piqued. Apparently upset that he was not being taken more seriously, the caller said he was involved in a fatal shooting ``in Montgomery'' and urged agents to check it out. Police said they believe that the man called a second time, but that conversation did not last long because he was dialing from a pay phone and ran out of change, sources said. On Oct. 18, a Virginia priest received an eerily similar call from someone professing to be the sniper. The Rev. William Sullivan of St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in Ashland told authorities that the caller spoke about a robbery-murder in Montgomery, Ala., a telling detail that caught investigators' attention. The Alabama killing ultimately led to a fingerprint and the two suspects. Another big clue fell into agents' hands Oct. 19, after the fatal shooting in Ashland. Tacked to a tree near the crime scene was a three-page, handwritten letter, adorned with stars, that berated agents for ``incompitence.'' Specifically, the author accused agents of bungling at least six separate phone calls that the self-proclaimed sniper had placed to authorities. ``These people took [the calls] for a Hoax or a Joke, so your failure to respond has cost you five lives,'' the letter stated menacingly. The letter also led them to the priest, who related his own conversation with the sniper. In retrospect, investigators said Friday that they believe they unwittingly came close to finding the sniper on other occasions, but failed to corner their quarry because their vision was clouded by thousands of empty leads. Perhaps the best opportunity came Oct. 3, immediately after the sniper fatally shot a 72- year- old man waiting for a bus in Washington, near the Montgomery County border. About 10 seconds after the shooting, a witness saw a dark-colored Chevrolet Caprice creep away from the scene with its lights off. The witness later reported the sighting to police. Another witness, a restaurant employee in the area, said in an interview that he also saw a Caprice slowly driving away but did not volunteer the information to police until after the suspects were arrested, because he assumed agents were looking for a white van. Four days after that shooting, Washington police asked officers to look for ``an older- model Chevrolet Caprice,'' but it was described as burgundy-colored. Witnesses saw a Caprice with its lights out, Ramsey said, but they also saw a burgundy Toyota Camry speed away and might have confused the two and come up with the wrong color. In an Oct. 13 interview on CNN, Montgomery Police Chief Charles Moose was asked about the report of a Caprice leaving the scene of the slaying in Washington. Moose said task- force investigators were aware of the sighting, but he played it down, saying there was ``not a big push for public feedback on that.'' Ramsey noted Friday that Washington police never gave up on the possibility that a Caprice was involved and reissued the alert 10 days ago. The police sightings of the Caprice began as early as Oct. 3, the deadliest day of the shooting spree, when a Montgomery County patrol officer took note of the car for unknown reasons but found no basis to detain the driver or write a ticket. A Washington officer would also run the license that day. On Oct. 8, a Baltimore police officer stopped the Caprice and interviewed the man at the wheel, John Allen Muhammad, but sent him on his way. The car was seen again in Baileys Crossroads in Fairfax County, Va., and then on Oct. 21 at Tysons Corner in Virginia, where a red-light camera snapped its picture. © 2001 mercurynews and wire service sources. 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