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Gazette reporter David Abrams is covering the trial of John Allen
Muhammad in Virginia Beach, Va. He will be posting to this site a few
times each day to update readers continuously on the events of the
trials. Muhammad and fellow suspect Lee Boyd Malvo are charged with the October 2002 shootings that killed 10 people and wounded three; for background, see www.gazette.net/sniper. For The Gazette's regular coverage, please click on the links in the righthand column of this page. |
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Thursday, Oct. 30
5:10 p.m. Court adjourned for the day around 5 p.m.; tomorrow, more testimony about the Ponderosa shooting is expected.
4:52 p.m.
"We had gotten a late start, and were driving through the Washington, D.C. area," Stephanie Hopper recalled. "We wanted to get pretty far out of the D.C. area before we stopped." They pulled off Interstate 95 with about three gallons of gas left in the tank of their white Cadillac. The gas station was only a few blocks off of the highway, and a Ponderosa Steak House was across the street from the gas station. They went inside, had a leisurely meal and talked. Then the Hoppers left the restaurant, walking to their car parked around the back. Jeffrey Hopper was walking on the asphalt parking lot with his wife up on the sidewalk, holding hands. "I had teased him about being my height, and we kissed and walked down the sidewalk," she testified this afternoon. She remembered hearing a loud noise, and closed her eyes in telling the story. "Take your time," reassured Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Richard A. Conway. Jeffrey Hopper had been shot in the abdomen, and told his wife, "I think I've been shot." "I probably said something stupid, you know, like, 'Really?'" Stephanie Hopper testified. Jeffrey Hopper said he immediately knew he was shot, but he wasn't sure exactly how he knew. He and his wife had both heard the explosion. "When I heard that, both of us, it seemed like we were shocked," he said. "I jerked." When he slumped to the ground, she fumbled with her cell phone to call 911, but the keyguard was on. She yelled for bystanders to call for an ambulance. She lifted up his shirt and found an entry wound "about the size of a pencil eraser." She applied pressure to the wound. "I'm blessed that it wasn't as painful as I thought it would feel," Jeffrey Hopper said. "We prayed together." Hopper would spend a total of 29 days at the Medical College of Virginia. He had five surgeries in two weeks. The shot went through his stomach, and Hopper said it exploded from being full after he ate a full dinner. His pancreas, kidneys, diaphragm and liver were also damaged. He underwent another surgery last month to repair his abdominal muscles. --- Several pieces of evidence were found near the site of the Ponderosa shooting. Law enforcement officials searched a wooded area behind the restaurant, between the Ponderosa and a Wal-Mart under construction. Canine units found a shell casing just inside the woodline. Hanover County Sheriff's deputy James S. Sizemore walked back farther into the woods about 60 feet with a flashlight attached to his weapon, and spotted a Halloween baggie tacked to a tree. It would contain yet another note to police. Another 40 or 50 feet back into the woods, Sizemore noticed a wrapper from Dole Cinnaraisins. He said it stood out because there was a lot of old trash lying around, and the wrapper looked "brand new and shiny."
4:31 p.m.
First he heard a voice saying, "There's someone wants to speak to you or someone needs to speak with you. I don't remember," the priest said. St. Ann’s is located near Ashland, Va., where Jeffrey Hopper was shot and wounded in a Ponderosa parking lot on Oct. 19. Another man came on the line, telling him, "Now, write this down." "He was speaking far more rapidly than I could write about a shooting, a liquor store robbery, he said, in Montgomery, Alabama," Sullivan said. Sullivan grabbed a grocery list and started taking notes on the back. "Mr. Policeman, I am God," Sullivan remembers the caller saying. "Do not tell the press." "I said the police already know this, because I knew it," he continued. Sullivan thought the caller was anxious about the shootings. "They will find the person. Don't be anxious," he remembered saying. Sullivan scrawled notes down on his grocery list: "Montgomery, Ala., ... Anne ... liquor store ... ballistics test will show same gun ... on card, for you, Mr. Policeman, Call me God, Do not release to press ... Verify, I have seen video of it." Sullivan had trouble remembering the details of the call. He just remembered the man saying "people do not have to die." On cross examination, Sullivan said recordings of other calls were played for him, and he was not able to say if they contained the same voice. "I don't know if I've ever had the opportunity to cross examine a priest," admitted Muhammad’s attorneys, Jonathan Shapiro. Sullivan was unable to estimate the age of either caller, and said the first voice sounded like a hotel operator.
3:41 p.m.
Two days after the Oct. 14, 2002 murder, Rockville Police dispatcher Amy M. Lefkoff took the first call. "Good morning," a male voice told her. "Don't say anything. Just listen. We're the people that are causing the killing in your area. Look on the tarot card. It says, 'Call me God. Do not release to the press.' We have called you three times before, trying to set up negotiations. We have got no response." Lefkoff told the caller that Rockville Police were not handling the case, and tried to give the caller another hot line number. He hung up. "I was bombarded with phone calls," Lefkoff testified this afternoon. "I work by myself, and they just kept coming in." On Oct. 18, Derek Baliles, a Montgomery County public information officer, got another call. "That phone call was unlike any phone call I ever received," Baliles testified. The defense objected to the statement and was sustained by the judge. "I was told to shut up and listen and not ask any questions," Baliles said. He was told to call a Sgt. Martino in Montgomery County, Ala., about a double shooting at a liquor store. Baliles wrote down the caller’s from his caller ID. Baliles kept trying to get more information. The call ended abruptly with a recorded message: "To continue this call, please deposit more money," he remembered. Baliles said the voice was "firm" and "insistent," like calls he would get from victims to the county's Crime Solvers line describing an assailant saying, "Shut up and give me your wallet!" Again the defense objected to his statement and was sustained by the judge. Baliles called the number given to him, and a Montgomery, Ala., detective told him about the double shooting at the ABC Beverage Store. The caller called back a few hours later, asking for "Officer Derek," as Baliles had instructed him. "He told me to speak quickly because he didn't have time" and said he needed more coins and needed to move to a phone with no surveillance cameras, Baliles testified. Baliles again wrote down the number from his caller ID. This time it was a different number. "I was able to with confidence say that was the same voice I heard on the phone," Baliles testified, after he listened to a recording of the Lefkoff call. On cross examination, Shapiro questioned several inconsistencies in Baliles' notes, which he had with him on the stand. They were typed two days after the first call. Baliles had written down the wrong date of the call. He had also identified the caller as a "black" male and then crossed it out because he wasn't sure. He also admitted that the first call lasted only "a moment" and that the second one was even shorter.
12:54 p.m.
Marta Goodwin was having dinner at a Chevy's restaurant in Merrifield, Va. When she got in her Ford Explorer, she heard chatter over her police radio about the shooting. She then got on Interstate 66 westbound; at 9:40 p.m, she noticed the Caprice about one car length ahead of her. It had tinted windows and New Jersey plates. "They appeared that they would be illegal in Virginia," she said about the tinted windows. She said she saw a young "Afro-American" male with an afro hair style an inch to an inch-and-a-half long driving the car, and later identified the driver as Malvo from a photo. She said she was about nine miles from the Home Depot in Falls Church. I-66 was clogged from the massive roadblocks put up after the shooting. "The only window that I could see into was the front driver's side window," Goodwin said. "It was rolled down." She could not tell if anyone else was in the car. This is the first time a witness has described Malvo driving the Caprice. On cross examination, Greenspun called her story into question. Goodwin did not report seeing the car until the day after the suspects were arrested, on Oct. 25, 2002. She had already seen a photo of Malvo. Greenspun asked if she was saying she thought Malvo was the same person driving the car. "I said, ‘I know that's the person in the newspaper picture,’" she testified. Greenspun also asked the officer if she had anything to drink that night. "We were there for quite a while," Goodwin said. "I had about three beers and we were there for about six hours." Greenspun asked if she was as certain about seeing Malvo as she was about how many drinks she had.
12:22 p.m.
The shooting occurred Oct. 14, 2002, at 9:15 p.m, after the Franklins had just finished shopping at a Home Depot in Falls Church, Va. Linda and Ted Franklin were loading items into their car, including a shelf that wouldn’t fit into their Mercury Capri. A shot rang out, striking Franklin in the front of the left side of her head. Her husband felt something hit the side of his face. "I didn’t know at the time, but I later realized it was her blood," he said. After his testimony, the jury was shown graphic photos of Linda Franklin, the entire right side of her face bloodied and her left eye wide open. The defense objected to the photos, but the photos were shown to the jury for a short period of time. The prosecution then played the 911 tape. It was nearly impossible to tell what Ted Franklin was saying. He was breathing heavily, crying and hysterical. "Ma’am, you need to calm down, so I can send help," the dispatcher said, confused by the high-pitched sound of Ted Franklin’s voice. Jurors were visibly affected by the succession of the photos and the tape. At least two jurors seemed to be crying, wiping their eyes and noses. All of them sat with their heads bowed, listening intently. Franklin’s daughter, Katrina E. Hannum, identified a portrait of her mother while she was alive. "That’s my mom," she said, at first smiling and then uttering a quivering response. Hannum described her mother as a very strong person, a single mother who put herself through college and went to teach in Guatemala "in the middle of a war zone." Franklin traveled all over the world as a teacher for the Department of Defense. She met Hannum’s father, William Franklin, in Okinawa, Japan. "She was good at everything she did," Hannum said. "She was an amazing, amazing woman who touched everyone she met." Hannum did not learn of her mother’s death right away because her stepfather could not reach her by phone. When he did, he first asked to talk to her husband. "I called him and he found it so strange," she said, regarding the call to her stepfather. "Something was terrible, something was horrible… everything after that was a blur. All I could do was scream and throw myself on the bed." Prosecutor Paul Ebert warned Hannum to shield her eyes as the crime scene photos were shown to the jury. She stayed in the courtroom as the 911 tape was played, but Ted Franklin left the courtroom during the playing of the tape. Defense attorney Peter Greenspun tried to again to avoid showing the crime scene photos. "I have no problem with Mr. Franklin not having to look at this," he said. The judge overruled him, however, and Franklin identified the photos for the jury.
10:29 a.m.
The card was found in a woodline near the spot where police believe the shot was fired, about 25 feet away from the shell casing found later in a line search. “Call me God” was written on the face of the death card. On the reverse side it read, “For you Mr. Police. Code: Call me God. Do not release to the press.” Defense attorney Jonathan Shapiro asked Nelson to mark the position of the tarot card and the shell casing on an aerial photo, but it is unclear why. Shapiro then asked for the markings to be preserved. --- Click here for yesterday's coverage.
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