Muhammad Is Gulf War Vet, Expert Marksman

Oct. 24, 2002 -- The older of the two suspects in the Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks is a Gulf War veteran who qualified as an "expert" rifle marksman but faced two courts-martial and has a tumultuous past that includes allegations of kidnapping and domestic abuse.

Investigators are cobbling together clues from records and personal accounts of neighbors, family and friends about the personalities of John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, a 17-year-old Jamaican citizen whom Muhammad often described as his son or stepson.

Born in Louisiana on Dec. 31, 1960, Muhammad legally changed his name from John Allen Williams last year. He had converted to Islam some years ago.

Muhammad joined the Army National Guard in Louisiana in 1978, and moved to the active Army in 1985. He served as an Army combat engineer in the 1991 Gulf War. He eventually attained the rank of sergeant (E-5), and received an honorable discharge on April 25, 1994, from Fort Lewis in Washington state, Pentagon sources said.

That, however, did not end his association with the military. Muhammad joined the Army National Guard in Oregon in 1995 and served for a year. Again, he left with an honorable discharge.

Pentagon sources said his military record shows Muhammad qualified as "expert" marksman with his engineering unit.

"Expert" is the highest rating. Lower ratings are "marksman," and "sharpshooter." To qualify as an expert, an applicant must, in a timed sequence, hit 36 of 40 targets at a variety of ranges from 50 meters to 300 meters.

Military officials said most soldiers eventually earn an expert rating.

Troubled Marriages, Custody Disputes

Muhammad has two failed marriages behind him. In 1981, he married a woman now known as Carol Williams. Her sister Jackie married Muhammad's brother, Edward Williams.

Muhammad and Carol had a son, Lindberg, but the couple separated in 1985 and later divorced. Sheron Norman, another sister of Carol's, said the couple had a bitter custody dispute over Lindberg, now 20.

Norman told The Associated Press the son visited Muhammad for the summer of 1994, but failed to return until his mother got a court order. When he returned, Norman said, the boy had lost 20 pounds.

Muhammad was based for a while at Fort Lewis in Washington state, and he stayed in the area after leaving the Army.He married again, and he and wife Mildred had three children, a son and two younger daughters.

But neither his second marriage nor his attempts to settle into civilian life worked out. A karate school that he co-owned was failing, and bills and lawsuits mounted. In March 2000, Mildred obtained a restraining order against him. There were allegations of domestic abuse.

Williams accused her ex-husband of threatening to destroy her life.

"I am afraid of John," she wrote in her application for the restraining order. "He was a demolition expert in the military. He is behaving very, very irrational. Whenever he does talk with me, he always says that he's going to destroy my life and I hang up the phone."

A Washington state Superior Court judge issued a protection order barring Muhammad from contacting his wife and the couple's children. But shortly after the restraining order was issued, Muhammad allegedly kidnapped the children.

The children were later returned to their mother, but while they were with Muhammad, he took them to the Caribbean, relatives said. It was there he reportedly met John Lee Malvo.

A New ‘Son’

Malvo became a sort of informal stepson to Muhammad, who had a relationship with the boy's mother. For a while the three lived in a familial-type arrangement, a senior law enforcement source told The Associated Press.

Malvo attended Bellingham High School in Washington state for a time. He is believed to have had minor run-ins with the police, although he does not have a criminal record.

Relatives claimed Muhammad controlled the youth, even forcing him to follow a strange but very strict diet. "When he was here, only thing John allowed him to eat was crackers and honey," said Norman, Muhammad's former sister-in-law.

She told The Associated Press she met Malvo three months ago, when he accompanied Muhammad during a visit. "You could tell he was scared," she said. "He was very, very quiet. You could tell he didn't like the way he was living."

Recently, Muhammad and Malvo lived like nomads. They spent time at a number of homeless shelters in Washington state. One shelter, the Lighthouse Mission in Bellingham, said Muhammad was at times accompanied by a teenage male who used the name Lee Malvo, and whom John identified as his stepson.

Muhammad, Malvo and the teen's mother, Uma Sceon James, were involved in a domestic incident in Bellingham on Dec. 19, 2001. Police called in the Border Patrol, who detained Malvo and James.

Both were released pending a hearing set for Nov. 20. Apparently there was some question about whether mother and son were in the United States legally. They were almost certainly facing deportation.

Muhammad was broke, living in a mission. He had lost two families and was set to lose a third.

James' whereabouts are currently unknown, but Muhammad and Malvo were sleeping in a car at a highway rest stop in Frederick County, Md., when police nabbed them.

A Quick Temper

Family members, neighbors and business associates give conflicting accounts of Muhammad's personality.

Felix Strozier, who ran a karate school with Muhammad from 1997-1998, told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America his former business partner was a quiet man who kept to himself.

"We taught 90 percent mental, 10 percent physical, so we were trying to, you know, raise kids to be positive adults," said Strozier. "So that's one reason why it [the arrest] was kind of shocking."

But he said Muhammad also had a temper. "Sometimes he could get upset," Strozier said. "Sometimes I didn't want to be around him."

According to The Associated Press, Muhammad faced two summary courts-martial while serving with the Louisiana National Guard. He was fined $100 and given a suspended sentence of seven days confinement for striking a noncommissioned officer on the head while on duty in August 1982. In an earlier incident, he pleaded guilty towillfully disobeying a lawful order of a noncommissioned officer by failing to appear on time for post police duty.

Sheila Tezano, a former sister-in-law, said she had a strong feeling. "I was thinking that it could be him and praying that it wasn't him."

Deborah Waters, who was a neighbor of Muhammad's when he lived in Tacoma, said she let her son spent time with Muhammad and Malvo.

"I feel like a bad mom for letting my son go with him," she said. "Now that we know more about him, I feel like I should have seen something in him that was that horrible."

The Seattle Times today quoted unidentified sources as saying Muhammad and Malvo may have been motivated by anti-American sentiments and had allegedly expressed sympathy for the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But speaking to reporters today, Bellingham Police Chief Randy Carroll said neither Malvo nor Muhammad appeared to be linked to any group.

"It appears that these people that have been taken into custody are not acting with any group or with any organized group of people. It appears that they have acted on their own," Carroll said.

The Seattle area is known as an area where terrorist cells have operated in the past.

ABCNEWS' John McWethy in Washington, Mike Gudgell in Seattle and Neal Karlinsky in Tacoma, Wash., contributed to this report.