FAIRFAX, Va. — Fingerprints on a high-powered Bushmaster rifle link 17-year-old sniper suspect John Lee Malvo to three fatal attacks and a fourth that left a man critically wounded, a Virginia prosecutor argued Tuesday.
In addition, Malvo contacted police at least four times — twice in notes and twice in phone calls — asking for $10 million to end the string of attacks that rattled the nation’s capital last fall, Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Horan told the court.
Horan wants Fairfax County Juvenile Court Chief Judge Charles Maxfield to declare that Malvo should be tried as an adult. If he’s convicted as an adult, Malvo could be put to death.
Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, 42, are accused of shooting 18 people, killing 13 and wounding five in a nationwide spate of attacks, most of them on random victims doing routine tasks like shopping or pumping gas. Ten killings and three woundings were in the Washington area, and the first trials are in the capital’s Virginia suburbs.
In Fairfax, Malvo faces capital murder charges in the Oct. 14 death of Linda Franklin, an FBI analyst who was gunned down outside a Home Depot store in suburban Falls Church, Va.
Her husband, William Franklin, testified Tuesday that he and his wife were trying to put a long shelf into their 1991 Mercury Capri when he heard a loud noise and felt spray hit his face.
“I turned and saw my wife laying on the ground,” Franklin said. She’d been hit on the left side of her forehead by a bullet that exited on the right side near her eye, a police witness testified.
Malvo, wearing a green county jail jumpsuit, white sneakers and a white T-shirt, sat attentively with his attorneys. They asked Franklin and police witnesses whether Malvo had been seen at the crime scene. All answered no.
Malvo could face two counts of capital murder in connection with the Oct. 14 shooting. One permits the death penalty when a person commits more than one murder in a three-year period. The other allows the death penalty under an anti-terrorism statute.
The hearing resumes on Wednesday.