Sniper Attacks Investigation.(Investigations)

In October 2002 sniper attacks paralyzed the Washington, DC, area. A multijurisdictional sniper task force was established to investigate multiple deaths in several states. Latent prints, DNA, trace, and questioned documents evidence was recovered from some of the crime scenes and sent to the Laboratory for analysis.

Latent Prints

Law enforcement officials from the Montgomery, Alabama, Police Department noticed similarities between the Washington, DC, area attacks and a killing in their jurisdiction. They requested that Latent Print Unit personnel examine evidence seized in connection with their case.

A Latent Print Unit examiner entered latent fingerprints from the Alabama evidence into the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). IAFIS returned Lee Boyd Malvo's name. After manual comparisons of the candidate image and the latent fingerprints developed on a gun catalog found at the Alabama crime scene, Malvo's identity was confirmed.

This information was sent to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to see if additional information was available from Malvo's arrest record for an immigration violation. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service returned a second name taken from text associated with Malvo's arrest--John Allen Muhammad.

A Unit examiner identified the suspects' fingerprints on a bag discovered at the Ashland, Virginia, shooting; on a laptop computer stolen from a victim in Clinton, Maryland; and on computer-generated documents.

The latent print examiner relayed this information to the task force, and within 12 hours, Muhammad and Malvo were arrested at a Maryland highway rest stop.