I was thinking about this while listening on the radio and looked up the times and dates of all the killings. He takes the weekend’s off. I find that interesting. For some reason it gives me the impression that the killer is married.
The killings are all during the week, he kills in the morning, and then sometimes after 9pm…so I am guessing he has a job from about 10 am to 4 or 5 at night. He kills before and after work, but on the weekends he is home with his wife.
Just my hunch. I think he is married and living a seriously double life.
—I was thinking about this while listening on the radio and looked up the times and dates of all the killings. He takes the weekend’s off. I find that interesting. For some reason it gives me the impression that the killer is married.—
A picture forms… perhaps he was fired from his job, and can’t admit it to his wife, and so spends his time killing people. However, he has killed most recently at night, hasn’t he? Wife out playing Bingo?
—Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t rememeber the “death” card in the vietnam books as being a tarot card.—
Koko. As I walk through the valley of darkness, I will fear no evil, because I’m the craziest son-of-a-bitch in the valley. She came out of the screams the way birds come out of the clouds.
A white van keeps being seen in the area. Now, would a killer this cautious use the same, highly visible van for each shooting? By now, I’d think that anyone seeing a white van would be pretty careful, and the tag number would get picked up pretty quickly. Doesn’t fit the MO of this guy.
A white van was stopped after leaving the scene of the last shooting, but the police decided it was the wrong one since no evidence was found.
So here’s what I’m thinking… What if the person/people in the white van are spotters/decoys? I don’t know the geography of the area, but is it possible that it’s going down like this:
[ul]
[li]Shooter positions himself 300-500 yards away, in a very secluded spot.[/li][li]Accomplices in van move in closer, look for police, and prepare to act as blockers/decoys[/li][li]After getting the clear from the van, the shooter takes out innocent person.[/li][li]white van speeds away from scene in a very visible manner, drawing all eyes to it. Not really worried about being stopped by police, since there is absolutely no evidence of a connection.[/li][li]Shooter quietly and cautiously withdraws from the scene[/li][/ul]
Is this possible? Does anyone know if these locations have a ‘likely’ close shooting position (i.e. the van), but also a less likely long-distance shot?
One thing I noticed is that the victims are white, black, hispanic and indian, both old and young. This either suggests he is going for whoever is the best target implying he is possibly not a conceited sniper, OR, he is consciously picking on varied people to increase the randomness thus increasing the terror and confusing the investigation.
Now, tell me to piss off if I am out of line here, but this thread disturbs me somewhat. Speculating as to the motivations of this person/persons?, while seemingly innocent enough, may in fact serve to perpetuate the very activities we condemn.
Apart from the mass-media coverage, this person may well be ‘Googling’ for reference to his crimes, and coming across a messageboard such as ours could perhaps feed his insanity even more. Imagine his egotistical delight in finding a heap of people from all around the world talking about him!! Could this perhaps spur him on? I dunno, it just doesn’t feel right to me… Especially the ‘profiling’ nature of the thread…if it was just a thread about how horrible the deeds are, then it might be a bit different. This is just a gut-feeling here, and I cannot back it with evidence of any kind. But after reading the posts, it hit me that if the perp was reading them too, he’d be feeling proud of his noteriety.
I read a rather scathing statement this morning, kambuckta, from the police chief in charge of the investigation. He’s very pissed off with former profilers making statements to the media about what the FBI profilers working on the case would be looking for and what conclusions they might have drawn. He all but called them has-beens who’re looking to claim some of the spotlight (the Tarot card information was not meant to be made public).
That said, the mass media is currently serving up a banquet of notoriety - so I wouldn’t be too concerned about discussions taking place on this or other messageboards.
This person(s) is out to terrorise Mr and Mrs Public, but the endgame is outwitting those charged with law enforcement - both the victims and the media are only pawns to be used to that end.
I’m always somewhat amazed by what information does make it into the media in the US while crimes are still under investigation, but I’m not sure that in the long run it will be a bad thing in this particular instance. I suspect this person(s) will establish more personal contact with either a senior law enforcement official or a senior news person (possibly even both) relatively soon, and every contact (no matter how incidental) provides a little bit more information.
I’d be extremely surprised if this person (using the singular in this instance because even if there’s more than one shooter, the basic plan has been formed by one person) fits the legal criteria for “insanity” though kambuckta.
Incidentally, has anyone seen any reports of which Tarot the card was from (I’m inclined to believe it was left for dramatic flair rather than any true symbolism, but it would be interesting to know whether it’s from one of the more obscure decks).
Reprise, I wasn’t using the word ‘insanity’ as a classification in my post…more just to suggest that the perpetrator may be ‘getting off’ on the publicity. I agree totally that he may well be ‘sane’ in the legal sense of the word, but I still doubt whether anyone who can commit such senseless acts of evil can be considered sane by ‘everymans’ standard. What is being done is bloody crazy…whether he is technically insane is another matter altogether.
Actually, being a little bit more intimate with the gun nut community, the .223 as an effective round is still a topic of constant debate, even 30 years after vietnam.
In some ways kambuckta, thrill killers exhibit a high degree of sanity and it’s one of the traits which makes it so hard to catch them. They tend to have no emotional investment in their choice of victims and so - unlike with serial killers - victimology is of little use in the investigation.
I think everyone’s big fear about this particular case is that we could be dealing with someone who has been trained to kill stealthily and dispassionately, rather than with someone who has simply turned their weapons skills to human targets; there are certainly some indications that this person has a high degree of familiarity with the kinds of clues law enforcement officials will be looking for (that doesn’t mean he’s an “insider”, but it probably does mean that he’s fairly well read).
There is certainly nothing funny about this situation but I’ve read two really amusing conspiracy theories on it over the past week. One theory holds that since some of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived in Bowie, MD for a time, the sniper(s) must be “leftover” Al-Quaida (sp?) guys trying to make their mark. The second theory is that yesterday’s shooting was faked by the police to try to piss off/drive the sniper(s) to some kind of rash action that will lead to their capture. Hee.
Special Forces apparently have a history, at least dating back until then, with leaving cards at the scene of their actions. At a botched raid in Afghanistan early this year, where some 14 Afghans were killed by US Spec Ops, a US soldier left behind a note with something written on to it akin to, “Hope You Enjoyed It- US Soldier.”
Given that four Afghan War veterans have killed their wives and/or themselves shortly after returning, it makes you wonder about their mental stability.
[hijack based on previous post]
Interestingly, on a visit to weeklystandard.com, I noticed a poll on who the public think the sniper is. An overwhelming 90% thought it was Al-Qaeda or a lone pyschopath. “Retired Vet” and “Militia Nut” (the most common hypothesis in this board) gets around 10% of the vote [end hijack]
If the card they showed on the news the other day was the card (which is not certain since it wasn’t meant to be made public in the first place), it looked like Rider-Waite.
It could very easily have just been a “go out and find a deck of Tarot cards so we have some kind of graphic for the 6:00 report…” thing.
I feel the sniper may do a completely brash and daring attack soon. Why? Because most news websites, for one, aren’t carrying sniper news as the main item. It’s all focused on the Bali bombing. This has also caused some shift on the broadcasted news, as well. If this maniac wants attention, he may really start going for the big kills, so to say, now.
I like your scenario. I would cut down the ranges some (due to extreme fragmentation, I’d go with 175-250 meters or so), but it is a clever plan, which would befit this evil, yet clever, shooter.
I have considered Sam Stone’s theory as well. If true, then this is likely a terrorist scenario rather than a psycho nut-job, as getting that sort of cooperation doesn’t fit with the profile of any historical mass-muderers.
My theory is that this guy chooses places where delivery vans are commonplace (Home Depot, Michaels, gas stations) and waits for one to show up, then fires. I can’t imagine that someone who has managed to pull this off and remain at large for this long would actually be using the same vehicle at all these places.
I should also say that I feel rather creepy just speculating about this.
I think putting our heads together, using our collective knowledge of ballistics (which i have none), mass murderers, human psycology, tactics, and investigation, is an extremely healthy discourse. It could be therapeutic to those horrified and disturbed by the events.
It is far more satisfying than simply listening to expert after expert prognosticate on the event on TV.
Heck, if the FBI and police were really clever, they would start a totally voluntary online club for amateur investigators to help analyze crime seen evidence. They could perform criminal background checks on anyone who wanted to join, possibly give the members access to evidence not made public, and let the power of a hard working intelligent group of people help them solve the case and pursue leads.
Open source crime scene investigation… Anyways, they say they have some strong evidence from the latest shooting…we shall see.
Long story short, The police are suppressing the descriptions they have received of the sniper(s) due to the panic that might arise, as the descriptions are of “Hispanic,” “Middle-Eastern,” “olive-skinned” and “dark-skinned” person or persons doing the shooting.
Especially the ‘profiling’ nature of the thread…if it was just a thread about how horrible the deeds are, then it might be a bit different. This is just a gut-feeling here, and I cannot back it with evidence of any kind. But after reading the posts, it hit me that if the perp was reading them too, he’d be feeling proud of his noteriety.