The tarot card left at a D.C. sniper scene that said 'Call me God'
The card was on the ground beside the body.
October 19, 2002. Falls Church, Virginia. A victim shot while loading groceries.
Police found a tarot card at the scene. On it, a message: "Call me God."
It was a taunt. It was not a confession. It named no one.
The card did not say who fired the shot. It did not say why. It did not say where the shooter was going next.
It is not established who wrote the message. It is not established whether it was left intentionally as a taunt.
The card became a symbol of the fear gripping the region. That fear was real. The card was a clue, not a solution.
A clue to what?
A clue to a mind? A clue to a motive? A clue to a name?
That would require evidence.
The card sat in the case file while the region waited. Ten people dead. Three wounded. Shootings at gas stations, at bus stops, in parking lots.
The card was the closest thing to a voice the killer had offered. It said nothing about the blue Chevrolet Caprice. Nothing about the Bushmaster rifle. Nothing about the two men sleeping at a rest stop five days later.
It was a piece of paper.
It was also the only thing the killer left behind.
THE FIRST SHOTS
The first shooting was on September 21, 2002, when a woman was wounded outside a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama.
That attack was not initially linked to anything.
It was a single gunshot in a different state, and investigators had no reason to connect it to the parking lots and gas stations that would follow.
The attacks began in earnest on October 2, 2002, when a 55-year-old man was killed in a parking lot in Wheaton, Maryland.
He was loading his vehicle when the shot came.
Over the next three weeks, ten people were killed and three wounded in random shootings across Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
The victims were struck while pumping gas.
They were struck while loading groceries.
They were struck while walking down suburban streets.
There was no pattern to the targets, no robbery, no argument, no demand.
Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose became the public face of the investigation, delivering emotional press conferences night after night.
He stood before the cameras and asked the region to stay alert.
He asked for help.
The identity of the shooter was not known at this point.
The Alabama shooting was not initially linked to the later attacks.
That link would come later, and only in retrospect, after the arrests.
For now, the region had a body count and a question.
Why these people?
Why these parking lots?
Why these streets?
That would require evidence, and the evidence had not yet arrived.
THE WRONG TRUCK
On October 7, a witness at a shooting in Manassas, Virginia, reported seeing a white box truck.
Police focused on that vehicle.
They looked for a white box truck on every highway, at every rest stop, in every parking lot.
The actual vehicle was a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice.
Why the witness reported a white box truck is not established.
It is not in the record.
The record shows only that the witness said it, and that the police believed it.
For ten days, the investigation chased the wrong truck.
Then, on October 17, a witness at a shooting in Ashland, Virginia, reported seeing a Chevrolet Caprice.
A blue Chevrolet Caprice.
The focus shifted.
On October 24, a tipster called the police hotline after recognizing the Caprice at a rest stop off Interstate 70 near Myersville, Maryland.
Police staked out the car.
John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested while sleeping inside.
Inside the car, police found a Bushmaster XM-15 .223-caliber rifle, a scope, and a tripod with a hole drilled in the trunk lid for shooting.
Ballistics linked the rifle to 11 of the shootings.
The wrong truck was a detour.
The Caprice was the destination.
The relief was not in the arrest itself, but in the end of the guessing.
THE CAR AND THE RIFLE
The Caprice was parked at a rest stop off Interstate 70 near Myersville, Maryland, when police moved in on October 24.
Inside, they found a Bushmaster XM-15 .223-caliber rifle, a scope, and a tripod.
The trunk lid had a hole drilled in it.
The rifle was meant to fire through that hole, from inside the car.
Ballistics linked the rifle to 11 of the shootings.
That was the physical record: one car, one rifle, two men asleep in it.
Muhammad, a 41-year-old Army veteran, was the triggerman in most shootings.
Malvo, a 17-year-old Jamaican national, acted as spotter and sometimes shooter.
The exact roles in each shooting are not fully established.
The source says "most," not all.
Muhammad was tried first in Prince William County, Virginia.
The county was chosen to ensure the death penalty was available.
He was convicted of first-degree murder on November 17, 2003.
He was sentenced to death on March 9, 2004.
Malvo was tried separately in Chesapeake, Virginia, in 2003.
He was tried for a murder in Falls Church.
He was 17 at the time.
He was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
The convictions closed the guessing.
The rifle had spoken.
The car had been found.
The men had been named.
The record, at last, had names attached to it.
AND THE STORY STILL ISN'T OVER
Muhammad was executed by lethal injection on November 10, 2009, in Virginia.
Malvo remains in prison serving multiple life sentences without parole.
In 2021, Malvo filed a motion for resentencing based on Supreme Court rulings about juvenile offenders.
His sentence was upheld.
The outcome of any future legal motions by Malvo is not in the record beyond that denial.
The Chevrolet Caprice used in the shootings was destroyed by authorities in 2004.
The car that carried the rifle, the scope, the tripod, the hole in the trunk lid — gone.
Chief Charles Moose retired from policing and wrote a book about the case.
The lead investigator, the public face of the manhunt, turned to the page.
The victims' families have continued to advocate for victims' rights.
Not because the case was closed.
Because the aftermath keeps unfolding.
The record has names.
The record has dates.
The record has an execution, a life sentence, a destroyed car, a retired chief.
What the record does not have is an ending for the families.
That would require evidence.
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