ROCKVILLE, Md. — The hunt for the suburban sniper grew more macabre on Wednesday with the disclosure that the gunman seemed to have left a Tarot death card openly challenging the police at the scene of his latest shooting Monday when a 13-year-old student was critically wounded.
This rare piece of crime-scene evidence was identified and confirmed by authoritative sources as a Tarot “La Mort” Card, numbered XIII in the deck, depicting an eerie skeletal figure with the card bearing the added message: “Dear Policeman, I am God.”
The finding of the card, which was first reported by a local television station Tuesday night, caused a day-long sensation as the roving sniper remained at large and police officials warned the unauthorized disclosure could endanger the manhunt.
“It is inappropriate to comment about this card,” Police Chief Charles A. Moose said, his fury about the disclosure virtually confirming what a crucial piece of evidence the police now have in what had been a week-long investigation with few tangible clues.
“It has caused us to make an adjustment,” Moose said of the disclosure. “My investigators made a clear and compelling argument that that information not be released.”
What the detectives’ adjustment was and how much progress might have been sparked by the Tarot card was not clear.
The disclosure caused officials to intensify the virtual information blackout that has been in effect across the past fearful week that the sniper has been roaming a 50-mile stretch of Washington and its suburbs.
With grim efficiency, the gunman has stalked apparent strangers going about their life’s routine, killing six people and critically wounding two others.
The Tarot card, one of 78 from a deck of the sort that has been used for centuries by fortune tellers, added a further chilling touch to the investigation with the stark message of direct address to detectives.
The disclosure deepened the region’s edginess, particularly here in Montgomery County, a busy commuter community area where the sniper has focused most of his fire and where many residents fear he lives and is plotting his next assault.
The Tarot card consumed the interest of both residents and criminologists through the day as a possible means of eventually tracking the gunman or at least better understanding his personality. According to Tarot lore, Death is the card that suggests changes, renewal, destruction — but not necessarily sudden or radical destruction — and rebirth. To Tarot fanciers, it foretells eliminating the old and going on to the new.
“Leaving the card suggests he is now comfortable with his elusiveness and feels safe leaving some information,” said professor James Alan Fox, the Lipman family professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University. “He didn’t give anything away about his identity, but it intensifies his aura.”
On the other hand, Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a professor of psychiatry at New York University who has intensely studied a number of murderers, including the serial killer Ted Bundy, said: “You wonder if this is a cry for help. He needn’t have left it. I’ve seen this before.”
Fox speculated that “the message reflects his arrogance, his narcissism, the notion that he is in control.”
Lewis said the sniper’s claim to be God struck her as “clearly psychotic, very out of touch with reality.”
“It is a common kind of fantasy to be a very important, very powerful person,” said Lewis. But she speculated the sniper had done so much damage in such a short period that he may be highly manic and “getting more delusional and more revved up” with each execution.
Moose and other investigators would offer absolutely no theories or information on how they might be attempting to track the particular Tarot card or the characteristics of its message.
The card and spent cartridge shell were found in a detailed search of the sniper’s suspected perch in shooting the 13-year-old student from about 150 yards away under cover in the woods bordering the boy’s school in Bowie, Md.
Using a high-powered hunting or military rifle with skilled marksmanship, the sniper has chosen locales offering fast escape routes via the main roads and highways lacing through the Washington commuter belt. He has fired only once at each victim in his assaults, hitting them with high-intensity, .223-caliber bullets designed to fragment and cause wide internal damage.
Even as Moose pleaded for media forbearance, reporters and television crews raced to a half-dozen scenes of police responding through the day to initial reports of gunfire or suspicious individuals. Several scenes were carried live on cable news stations, with local residents and the nation able to watch armed SWAT team police in searches eventually pronounced fruitless.
One incident produced the arrest Wednesday evening of a man at his home in Kensington after gunshots had been heard inside the house by neighbors. The police said no one was injured and they were questioning the man, although the incident was not similar to the sniper’s elusive, outdoor method of operation.
“Everyone’s at a heightened state of anxiety,” Moose noted in promising to offer explanations for each incident as they are investigated.
Once more, he placed his emphasis on the search for a white cargo truck that was reported seen speeding from a shooting scene last Thursday, when the sniper separately killed four people in 12 hours. And the chief repeated what has become his mantra, that some bit of recalled information from a member of the public will undo the sniper.
“I am convinced it is information from another person that could weigh heavily in our closing of this investigation,” Moose insisted.