Oct 10, 2006 6:00 pm US/Eastern
Malvo Pleads Guilty To Maryland Sniper Murders
by Derek Valcourt
(WJZ)
Washington area sniper Lee Boyd Malvo formally pleaded guilty Tuesday to six 2002 shootings in Maryland,
confessing to the carefully plotted string of killings that he described with vivid detail in testimony against one-time mentor John Allen Muhammad.
Already serving a life prison term for sniper shootings in Virginia, Malvo reached a plea agreement for the Maryland killings in May. In return, Malvo is expected to receive six life sentences.
Malvo, 21, spoke only briefly in Montgomery County Circuit Court, giving yes or no responses to basic legal questions from his attorney. He stared straight ahead while prosecutors read a narrative of the events.
Malvo is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 9.
The short hearing to formalize his plea contrasted with the two days of riveting testimony Malvo gave while helping prosecutors win convictions against Muhammad. It was the first insider account of the three-week rampage across the Washington region by Muhammad and Malvo. The two snipers shot random victims with a high-powered rifle using a beat-up Chevrolet Caprice as cover.
Malvo described the genesis of the plot, saying Muhammad wanted to use it to extort $10 million and wreak havoc on the Washington region. He described how they mapped out shooting sites in advance and worked as a team -- one spotting random victims, the other firing a .223-caliber bullet.
The young sniper also laid out Muhammad's grander scheme to shoot up to six people each day for a month, target school buses and police officers with explosives, and set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would be trained as terrorists.
In all, 10 people were murdered and three wounded during the October 2002 shootings in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Authorities also tied the pair to earlier shootings in the region, as well as sniper attacks in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana and Washington state. Before testifying in May, Malvo also confessed to shooting two liquor store clerks in Montgomery, Ala.
Malvo reportedly told authorities that he and Muhammad were behind unsolved shootings in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and California. Prosecutors and Malvo's lawyers have not confirmed those claims.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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