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Pastimes : Understanding Islam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tommy Moore who wrote (2223)	10/27/2002 12:18:21 PM
From: Tommy Moore	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2926

Now, I might be out on a limb with this one, but I haven't read anything to tie the motives of the sniper killings to their religion. Appears to be more money motivated than anything else. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A chilling letter left at the scene of a sniper attack last weekend in Virginia demands that authorities deposit $10 million into a credit card account in return for an end to sniper attacks that killed 10 people and wounded three others. In a copy of the letter -- obtained by CNN -- the author says, in this lettering and spelling, that he wants the account to give him "unlimited withdrawl (sic) at any atm worldwide." (Copy of letter) "Try to catch us withdrawing at least you will have less body bags," the author wrote. "(But) if trying to catch us now more important then prepare you body bags." The letter, with misspellings and grammatical errors, lists five phone numbers that the author claims "took of calls for a Hoax or Joke," adding, "your failure to respond has cost you five lives." The phone numbers in the letter include the Montgomery County, Maryland, police; the Rockville, Maryland, police department; the FBI Task force hot line, a priest in Ashland, Virginia -- where last weekend's attack took place -- and CNN's Washington bureau. A CNN spokeswoman said, "To our knowledge, no one at CNN received such a call." Law enforcement officials said the letter was left by the snipers near a Ponderosa restaurant in Ashland on October 19, where a 37-year-old man was shot and critically wounded as he and his wife crossed the restaurant's parking lot. Authorities said they believe the letter was written by either John Allen Williams, 41 -- also known as John Allen Muhammad -- or John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican citizen, each charged Friday with six counts of first-degree murder in Montgomery County. Williams and Malvo -- identified as Lee Boyd Malvo on his birth certificate -- were arrested early Thursday morning sleeping in a car at a freeway rest stop 50 miles from northwest of Washington. Both once lived in Tacoma, Washington. The author demands $10 million to be deposited into a Bank of America account, which he claims he can access using a credit card under a woman's name. "If stopping the killing is more important than catching us now, then you will accept our demand which are non-negotiable," the sniper says in the letter. The Washington Post, which also obtained a copy of the letter, reported that the credit card was stolen from a Flagstaff, Arizona, woman. The woman realized her Visa card had been stolen when her bank closed the account after the card was used for a gasoline purchase in Tacoma that the bank determined was fraudulent. The letter also reflects a line that Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose delivered in a message to the snipers, hours before their arrests early Thursday. "If we give you our word that is what takes place, 'Word is Bond,'" the letter says. Moose echoed those words during a Wednesday evening news conference, saying to snipers, "Our word is our bond." The author says he will contact authorities at the Ponderosa in Ashland Sunday morning at 6 a.m. and gives authorities until 9 a.m. Monday to complete the transfer to the credit card account. But investigators hadn't even opened the plastic-wrapped note by 6 a.m. Sunday morning -- it was in a lab undoing tests for contamination. In a news conference Tuesday -- after the last shooting before Williams and Malvo were arrested early Thursday -- Moose asked the sniper to call again "at the number you provided. "The person you called could not hear everything that you said," Moose said. "The audio was unclear. We want to get it right. Call us back so that we can clearly understand." "We do things very meticulously so to ensure that we are doing the things the right way," said ATF spokesman Michael Bouchard. "It may take longer than people expect, so I don't think there is anything else we could have done there." The letter concludes with the line that Moose release