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Although he is scheduled to be executed Tuesday, Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad's death is unlikely to bring closure to the families and friends of his victims and those terrorized by his October 2002 shooting spree, said a spokeswoman for a victim advocacy group.
"We don't believe in closure. It's almost a dirty word to us," said Sherry Nolan, assistant volunteer coordinator for the group Parents of Murdered Children, headquartered in Cincinnati.
Still, family members of victims are hoping Muhammad's execution will provide at least a large measure of relief, if not closure.
Relatives of Dean H. Meyers, one of the shooting victims, want to see Muhammad pay his "debt to society," said his brother, Bob Meyers.
Muhammad and his then-teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, killed 10 people and wounded three others in the Washington region.
Dean Meyers was the seventh victim. The Gaithersburg man was on his way home from work when he stopped at a service station near Manassas, Va.
"We don't really have vengeance in mind or vindictiveness," said Bob Meyers, 56, of the impending execution. "We just feel it's an appropriate step in the process because of the choices [Muhammad] made. It provides some closure because of the horrific nature of my brother's murder."
Meyers is still haunted by photographs of the crime scene shown at the trial.
"It was a very horrific sight," he said. "This provides some closure in the final chapter of the whole sordid affair. At the same time, we feel we need to be at the execution for my brother. We feel it's the right step."
The responses of those who mourn the murdered can vary considerably when a death penalty is carried out, Nolan said. Some feel immediate relief, and others disappointment that execution did not provide what they were hoping for, she said.
The killer of her daughter, who was pregnant at the time of her murder, received a 40-year prison sentence, Nolan said.
"Every day my hope is to attend his funeral," Nolan said. "[But] it never brings a loved one back."
Executions seldom provide the sense of finality that family members of victims often seek, said Austin Sarat, a political science professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts and author of "When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition."
"There may be some benefit to individuals who suffered a tragedy of having a loved one killed, but that psychological benefit, to the extent it does occur, has to be weighed against the significant costs of capital punishment to society at large," he said.
"This desire for closure, this attitude that the death penalty can bring closure, is contested even among the family members of those killed," Sarat said. "The question of execution is not and should not be seen as a therapeutic one. It should be seen as a question of justice and the benefits and costs of the punishment."
After Oklahoma City terrorist bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed, many of the family members of those he killed expressed disappointment that the death did not provide them with closure, Sarat said.
"They had a kind of emptiness," he said.
Muhammad is scheduled to die Tuesday by lethal injection on Virginia's death row, nearly 200 miles from where he terrorized Montgomery County and the region.
"We had our backs against a wall, and we had to work fast and we had to work quickly to stop them," said Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Drew Tracy, who led tactical response teams during the sniper attacks. "It was a very tense situation for 22 days."
Unknown to police and the community, the sniper's attacks in the county began on Oct. 2, 2002, with the death of James D. Martin, 55, of Silver Spring, who was gunned down as he stepped out of his car at a grocery store.
At the time, police believed it was an isolated incident. But the next morning, Muhammad and Malvo shot and killed four others in Montgomery County.
Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the killings, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Virginia.
The older sniper's ex-wife, Mildred, who was believed to be a future target of Muhammad, told CNN on Thursday that she has no feelings for her ex-husband and has no desire to attend the execution.
"I don't want to take my children to see their father die, and I don't need to see John expire like that," she said.
Muhammad's attorneys filed an appeal Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that their client was insane. Muhammad also was expected to file a petition for clemency with Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D).
Still, whether there is ultimately closure, not many people will weep for Muhammad.
"There are but a small number of people whose execution really serves justice. Mr. Muhammad is among those few," Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said.
