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DC Sniper's Ex: Rampage Was Scheme to Kill Me

Muhammad hoped to pass off murder on madman and regain custody of kids

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted Oct 6, 2009 1:17 PM CDT

(Newser) – The ex-wife of convicted Beltway Sniper John Muhammad was the ultimate target of his murderous 2002 DC rampage that killed 10 people. Mildred Muhammad says her ex intended to pass off her murder as the work of a madman and regain custody of their three children. She got wise to the scheme when ATF agents visited her in 2002. “They said, 'Ms Muhammad, didn't you know he was shooting people around you?'” she tells NPR.

“You were the target,” the agents told her. “His end-game scenario was to come in as the grieving father,” Muhammad says. “He maybe would have been called father of the year.” She says she was the victim of domestic abuse and that John Muhammad had threatened her life before, which she details in a new book, Scared Silent. She blames his service in the first Gulf war with his dangerous deterioration. If “he would have received the counseling that he needed,” Muhammad says, none of it might have happened.

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (2)]

John Allen Muhammad at his sentencing in 2004. (AP Photo)

Mildred Muhammad. (AP Photo)

Lee Boyd Malvo, Muhammad's accomplice, in 2003. (AP Photo)

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The man he shot in the hand with the laptop, that's right down the street from you. The gentleman that was shot at the store in Brandywine — that's two miles away from you. You were the target. - ATF agents in 2002, to Mildred Muhammad

I believe what would have made a difference for me is that when John came back from Saudi that he would have been debriefed, and he would have received the counseling that he needed to become a more productive person in a non-war zone. - Mildred Muhammad

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DC Sniper's Ex: Rampage Was Scheme to Kill Me