D.C. snipers worked to get recruits, Malvo says

RICHMOND, Va. — Convicted D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo says he and his partner tried to recruit fellow shooters for their 2002 spree and that his accomplice killed one man for backing out, according to a cable-TV special that aired Thursday night.

In a telephone conversation with actor William Shatner for an A&E program, Malvo said two men planned to join in the attacks to make them more deadly but reneged.

Malvo said his fellow shooter, John Allen Muhammad, killed one of the men in retaliation. Malvo did not identify them.

Muhammad was a former Fort Lewis soldier and Gulf War veteran who lived in Tacoma and Bellingham before heading East.

The rifle used in the sniper killings was stolen by Malvo from a Tacoma gun shop, Bull's Eye Shooting Sports, and the two men are suspected in at least two shootings in Washington state, including the killing of a 21-year-old Tacoma woman, Keenya Cook, in February 2002, eight months before the D.C. shootings began.

Cook's slaying is thought to be the first of the suspected sniper tandem's killings.

The young mother was changing the diaper of her baby daughter when she answered the door and was shot in the face.

Cook's aunt, Isa Nichols — who is thought to have been the actual target of the shooting — had been the bookkeeper for Muhammad's auto-repair business and had angered him by siding with his wife during a bitter divorce.

Malvo's revelations, made from a southwest Virginia prison and broadcast Thursday, came in response to questions about claims by a psychiatrist that the duo had co-conspirators.

The psychiatrist, Neil Blumberg, who worked with Malvo before his trial, also said Malvo had confessed to more shootings in addition to the spree that began in Washington state and terrorized the Washington, D.C., region in 2002, when 13 people were hit and 10 of them died.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday on the claims.

Malvo's lawyer during his trial, Timothy Sullivan, did not immediately return a call.

In the TV interview, Malvo initially denied his psychiatrist's claims that he and Muhammad had co-conspirators.

Once pressured, he said someone in Arizona helped them get weapons and explosives, and a man in New York was supposed to help them escape the country "when it's all said and done."

He said both backed out of plans to help with the shootings.

"There was supposed to be three to four snipers with silenced weapons," said Malvo, 17 at the time of the shootings. "In this way, we could do a lot more damage along the entire Eastern Seaboard."

Blumberg said Malvo told him Muhammad made him shoot two of the co-conspirators once they backed out of the plan.

Malvo told Shatner only one of the men was killed, and that Muhammad did it.

Blumberg also said Malvo told him there was a third co-conspirator who was supposed to have joined them in Washington, D.C., but did not. Malvo did not mention that person during the interview with Shatner.

The one-hour "Confessions of the D.C. Sniper with William Shatner: An Aftermath Special" premiered at 7 p.m. PDT on Thursday.

Malvo and Muhammad previously had been linked to as many as 27 shootings resulting in 17 deaths in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

Blumberg told the show that Malvo had confessed to him to at least 42 shootings.

When Shatner asked about the number of shootings, Malvo rattled off states where he claims he and Muhammad shot people but didn't give an exact number.

Malvo's statements have been inconsistent in the past, and authorities have cast doubt on some of his reported confessions since he was sentenced to life in prison.

Muhammad was executed in Virginia last year.

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.

Authorities involved with the massive hunt and prosecution of the pair are reluctant to say how many shootings they may have been involved in as they drove across the country to the nation's capital.

Before Muhammad was executed in November, the prosecutor who put him on death row said it may be impossible to ever know how many were killed.

Malvo has confessed to authorities only in jurisdictions that promised not to prosecute him.

"I don't know that you can trust anything Malvo says," Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert said.

Information from The Seattle Times archives was included in this report.