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John Allen Muhammad: Portrait of a sniper suspect By LANCE GAY & LISA HOFFMAN Scripps Howard News Service Oct 25, 2002, 05:58

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John Allen Muhammad led the life of a beaten man.

After disastrous business ventures collapsed, and following two marriages that ended in acrimonious disputes over his five children, Muhammad's life in the last two years degenerated into living in missions, sleeping in cars or squatting in a decaying apartment over a boarded-up liquor store in one of New Jersey's most depressing slums with his only close companion: a Jamaican teenager who called him father.

The riddle of how this happened has yet to be explained.

There's nothing in his life to indicate that the 41-year-old Baton Rouge, La., native - who was known as John Allen Williams until he changed his name a year ago - could be involved in the senseless rage of random killings. He converted to Islam in 1985.

Although there has been widespread speculation that the Washington-area sniper had to be very knowledgeable about the geography of the Washington, D.C. area, records and interviews with friends and relatives show Muhammad spent little time in the Capital.

Most of his life was lived in the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana where he grew up, and the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington state, where he last worked as a car mechanic earning $25,000 a year.

He did have some knowledge of Washington, D.C. Neighbors said he worked as a security guard for Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March," and he showed up in the Washington, D.C., area in February 2001 to visit his ex-wife, who was living with her relatives in the leafy subdivision of Clinton, Md., near Washington's Beltway in southern Prince Georges County - the county adjacent to Montgomery County, where the shooting spree started Oct. 2.

Maryland court records show the reunion did not go well, and his former wife filed a domestic violence suit against him in a county court last May.

Felix Strozier, a former business partner with Muhammad in a failed martial arts school in Tacoma, formed in 1996 and dissolved in 1999, said he could not believe the pictures he saw coming across TV screens Thursday.

"I watch 'America's Most Wanted,' and I always say one day I'm going to see somebody on there that I know, and I never do. Then this comes up, and it took me for a loop," Strozier said.

Like many other relations in Muhammad's life, his business relationship with Strozier ended up badly, in arguments and acrimony. There was no violence, said Strozier, a karate expert, but the dispute escalated into a court suit after Strozier said Muhammad refused to pay back $500 he took from the school.

"The relationship started off OK, but then I started seeing a different side of him because he stopped doing anything for the school. He never helped with any of the bills," Strozier said. After he confronted Muhammad about the missing $500, "there was a big stink about it. We got into an argument about it. He felt that he didn't have to pay it back and stuff like that, and the school needed it."

Muhammad's personal life was as messy as his business affairs. He had two marriages that produced five children, and both ended in bitter divorces, recriminations and one in a protective order.

His first wife, Carol Williams of Baton Rouge, La., reportedly clashed with Muhammad when he sought to dictate the diet their children would eat.

After the divorce, Muhammad entered the Army in 1985, and left with the rank of sergeant in 1994. In his nine-year military career, Muhammad served mainly as a combat engineer, and although never trained as a sniper or other elite role, he earned an Army Marksmanship Badge with the highest rating of "expert" with the standard-issue M-16 rifle, military records show. He also was an expert at throwing hand grenades.

He was dispatched to the Middle East for the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, where Muhammad played a behind-the-front-lines role as a metal machinist and water truck driver, mostly in Saudi Arabia. A defense official characterized Muhammad, at least according to the outline of his service record, as an "average" GI.

His military records show he was fined $100 for hitting a non-commissioned officer on the head when he was in the Louisiana National Guard in 1982, the only black mark on his record.

While serving at Fort Lewis, he married for a second time to Mildred Denice Muhammad in 1988. But three children later, that relationship failed and the couple divorced in 2000.

Washington state court papers show that Muhammad was ordered to pay $869 a month in child support payments, from his $2,118 monthly salary. But in a complaint filed in January 2001, Mildred Muhammad said that Muhammad had kidnapped the children in March 2000, and that she hadn't seen them for the last nine months. In a handwritten plea, she told the court she planned to move out of state with her sister to Clinton, Md., when she recovered custody of the children.

How Muhammad linked up with John Lee Malvo, a 17-year-old Jamaican, isn't clear. Bellingham Police Chief Dale Carroll said the two were living at the Lighthouse Mission in Bellingham, Wash., in late 2001. Malvo is said to have described Muhammad as his "play father" to acquaintances, but Strozier said Malvo was presented to him as Muhammad's stepson.

Relatives said Muhammad visited Baton Rouge last July and August, and Montgomery, Ala., police are investigating whether a fatal liquor store shooting Sept. 21 is linked to the Washington area snipings based on a fingerprint linked to Malvo found at the scene.

Muhammad stopped in Washington as well, prompting his ex-wife to ask the courts to stop him from harassing her at her home in Clinton.

Neighbors at the gated complex of 40 condominiums said Thursday they did not recognize Muhammad. "It's kind of strange, since I thought we had a pretty nice court here," said Lolita Dublin, a secretary who works in Virginia.

"We all thought that (the sniper) lived in Montgomery County," said resident Thelma Johnson, 51.

When he was arrested, Muhammad was driving a car registered to an apartment on top of a boarded-up bar in a depressed area of downtown Camden, N.J. The owner of the building denied he rented the apartment to Muhammad.
© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue
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