Speaking of the shooter...tomorrow's news tonight: Sniper suspect's secret trail led to Antigua
Muhammad plowed trail of deceit, records show
BY MARIKA LYNCH
mlynch@herald.com
Posted on Sat, Nov. 02, 2002
miami.com
ST. JOHN'S, Antigua -- Islanders here live between white-sand beaches and rusting sugar mills in the brush-filled hills. Life is so tranquil, goats mow the soccer fields when the kids aren't playing, and shopkeepers draw the blinds at 5 p.m.
It is an ideal place to disappear. Or so it seemed for John Allen Muhammad, the alleged sniper, who moved here under a fake name two years ago with his three children. Muhammad rented a room in a wood stilt home and set up a veritable cottage industry of human smuggling, authorities say.
He managed to elude local police even after they discovered he had a phony U.S. birth certificate and driver's license. A year earlier, Una James, who hopscotched around the Caribbean escaping unemployment in her native Jamaica, moved to St. John's, too. She brought her son, John Lee Malvo.
The three met, and Muhammad eventually provided James and her son with fake documents to emigrate to the United States, authorities say. But aside from Muhammad's alleged involvement in nonviolent criminal activity, there is nothing in the story of how their lives intersected on this tiny Caribbean idyll to foreshadow the bloody drama that would claim at least 10 lives in the Washington, D.C., area and conclude with Muhammad and Malvo, 17, charged with murder after what U.S. authorities say was a cross-country shooting spree.
The story begins on Rose Street. Running away from marital troubles in the States, Muhammad arrived in March 2000 with documents identifying him as Thomas Lee Allen, settled into a home and enrolled his children next door at a one-room schoolhouse. He had taken two daughters and a son -- Taliba, Selina and John -- from the estranged wife he left behind in Tacoma, Wash.
PHONY NAME
He registered them at the private school under his phony name.
Muhammad dropped by their classroom often, even joining in games of schoolyard cricket. The kids seemed happy, headmistress Janet Harris said, and even wrote their names in the concrete steps of the Greensville Primary School. The only thing that stood out was that the kids never talked about their mother.
Each afternoon, Muhammad and his kids jogged around the island, leaving their house, circling the Prime Minister's residence and back -- about an hour's workout, neighbors said. He took frequent trips to the States, which he told one friend were for military training, and often brought back power tools, blank tapes, fertilizer and even an herbal remedy to sell.
''He came in just like gentle Jesus,'' said Augustin Sheppard, a farmer who says Muhammad visited his home to sell goods. ''A real friendly individual.'' But Muhammad also plowed a trail of deceit, forged documents and alleged fraud, according to records and interviews.
He applied for a job coaching at government schools, but his credentials were rife with errors. One example: On a college diploma, the word Louisiana, as in Louisiana State University, is misspelled. Muhammad applied for, and received, an Antiguan passport on the basis that his mother was born here. She wasn't.
FORGED DOCUMENTS
To get the document, Muhammad forged his own birth certificate. In addition, he handed in the birth certificate of his daughter's fourth-grade teacher, an Antiguan, in place of that of his real mother, according to records.
Attorney General Gretel Thom was supposed to release a preliminary report Thursday on the immigration failures, but its release has been indefinitely postponed.
The FBI this week joined the probe in Antigua. Part of the investigation centers on allegations that Muhammad forged U.S. birth certificates and driver's licenses so Caribbean migrants could enter the United States. Under U.S. law, an American citizen doesn't need a passport -- only those documents -- to enter the country.
Muhammad's former housemate, Kithlyn Nedd, described the operation this way: Muhammad would fabricate fake driver's licenses and birth certificates for immigrants, or pick them up from somebody else in the United States. Muhammad charged $1,000 for a set of documents, Nedd said.
CALLING CARD
Muhammad left behind a calling card when he left their house, Nedd said, as he produced a fake Antigua and Barbuda social security card.
Nedd, a self-employed mechanic, said he complained to the Antigua passport office twice, the last time after Sept. 11, 2001. He said he was afraid Muhammad had some link to terrorist groups and could cause harm by providing immigrants with documents. Nedd also said Muhammad had magazine pictures in his room of a man that Nedd now says he realizes was Osama bin Laden.
''They called me a crazy man,'' Nedd said. Investigators haven't found any links between Muhammad and terrorist groups, Thom said. The alleged scam, though, does fit in with a March 2001 incident in which Muhammad showed up at the Antigua airport trying to check into a flight with a fake Florida birth certificate and flimsy Washington state driver's license under the name Russel Dwight.
The license had Muhammad's picture on it, though Dwight was supposedly 15 years younger, according to the birth date on the license.
Police detained him, but somehow Muhammad walked out of the St. John's police station, never to be found again. They now believe Muhammad was trying to check someone else into the flight, who would then take the documents and fly into Miami, said Truehart Smith, Commissioner of the Royal Police Force of Antigua and Barbuda.
ACCESS TO U.S.
By then, Una James, Malvo's mother, had already been in Antigua for two years surviving off roadside soda and juice sales. When they met, she realized Muhammad had what she wanted -- access to the United States, a source close to the investigation here said.
James and Malvo told immigration officials in the United States they arrived in Miami on a boat from Haiti in June 2001, but authorities here believe they actually used Muhammad's documents to arrive by plane. While the government has records of when the mother and son arrived in Antigua, they have not found record of their departure, at least not under the names James and Malvo. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has declined to comment.
James had worked as a maid in St. Maarten, friends said. She had saved enough to buy a parcel of land in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, for her family, she told friends here.
While looking for work in her hometown, a friend gave her the name and number of a fellow Jamaican in Antigua, a security guard named Vicent White, who could help find her work and housing. James packed her bags, left her son with his grandmother in Jamaica and headed to St. John's.
SELLING SODAS
She called White when she arrived at the airport, White said. That was Jan. 25, 1999. Soon after, she bought a white cooler and started selling sodas under a shady tree on a major road. All she talked about was her boy, White said. ''She used to tell me anywhere she is, she need her son with her,'' said White, who was briefly James' boyfriend.
Six months after James moved to St. John's, Malvo arrived, immigration records show. He enrolled in the Antigua and Barbuda Seventh Day Adventist School, where he had to don khaki pants and a blue plaid tie each day. He was enrolled for 18 months, his mother paying the $600 a trimester tuition, said Calvin Josiah, the school's business manager.
It is unclear whether Malvo or his mother met Muhammad first.
Some friends told investigators that Malvo started hanging out with fellow Jamaicans who lived in Muhammad's house and took a liking to the former military man, a source said.
FAMILY JOGS
Others, like the former housemate Nedd, said James sought out Muhammad for the documents. But friends and neighbors agree Una James left for the States first, leaving Malvo behind. The boy ended up moving in with Muhammad in the spring of 2001 for about two months. Muhammad started introducing him as his son and taking him on jogs with his kids.
Malvo told people his mother was in the States, said the school principal, Harris. Muhammad and Malvo slept in separate sleeping bags on the floor of their rented room while Muhammad's three children shared the bed. Then one morning in May or June 2001, Muhammad said his good-byes, Nedd said. Around 5 a.m., Muhammad, his three kids, and Malvo boarded a taxi and headed to the airport for the United States.
''All of them left in the same taxi. I never saw any of them again,'' Nedd said. |
