Posted on October 1, 2012

D.C. Sniper Describes Look of Horror on Husband’s Face as He Shot Wife Dead Next to Him

Daily Mail (London), September 30, 2012

Convicted D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo says in a newspaper interview that seeing the reaction of a victim’s husband made him feel like ‘scum.’

Malvo expresses remorse in an interview with The Washington Post published Sunday.

The interview is timed with Tuesday’s 10th anniversary of the beginning of the deadly spree in the Washington area carried by Malvo and John Allen Muhammad.

The pair has been linked to 27 shootings across the country, including 13 attacks in the greater Washington area which left 10 dead.

Malvo tells the Post that the devastated reaction from victim Linda Franklin’s husband as he stood next to his wife when she was shot. The image of Ted Franklin’s eyes remains seared in Malvo’s memory.

Describing how he felt when he saw the man’s face right after the shooting, Malvo says: ‘You feel like the worst piece of scum on the planet.’

‘Words do not possess the depth in which to fully convey that emotion and what I felt when I saw it,’ he told The Washington Post.

Mrs Franklin was 47-years-old when she was killed outside a Home Depot in northern Virginia. She was the 11th shooting victim.

The sniper-style attacks all but paralyzed the nation’s capital, as people were shot at random while going about their everyday life – pumping gas, buying groceries, and for one young boy, as he went to school.

The shooters used a high-powered rifle, firing from the trunk of a modified Chevy Caprice until they were tracked down at a Maryland rest stop.

Malvo is serving six consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole in Red Onion state prison in Virginia. Muhammed was killed via lethal injection in 2009 for his crimes.

The shootings were detailed, meticulously planned, and far more widespread than initially predicted as Muhammed and Malvo later admitted that they also had victims in Louisiana, California, and Texas.

‘There is no feeling. At that point in time, I had been desensitized. I’d been killing people for months, if not a whole year, day in and day out,’ Malvo said in the interview with The Post’s Josh White.

‘It got to a point where I’d get in a zone. There was nothing else but whoever is before me, and anything that comes between me and, as you would say, the target, I’m either going to destroy, or if it’s too big, find a way around it. Nothing is going to stop me but death to get that done.’

Now 27-years-old, Malvo’s defiant attitude that he showed during initial interviews and the trial have all but disappeared as he reflects on his role in the events.

‘I was a monster. If you look up the definition, that’s what a monster is. I was a ghoul. I was a thief. I stole people’s lives. I did someone else’s bidding just because they said so. . . . There is no rhyme or reason or sense.’

When asked by the Post what he would say to victims’ families, the remorseful Malvo said there’s no way to properly convey an apology.

‘We can never change what happened,’ Malvo said.

‘There’s nothing that I can say except don’t allow me and my actions to continue to victimize you for the rest of your life.’

He added: ‘Don’t allow myself or Muhammad to continue to make you a victim for the rest of your life. It isn’t worth it.’