Washington sniper’s ex: ‘I know why he did it’

John Allen Muhammad, the 'Washington sniper' who is due to be executed tonight, has never explained why he embarked on his three-week, cross-country shooting spree in 2002. But his former wife, Mildred, has ventured a theory about why Muhammad gunned down 13 seemingly random people. She believes he was trying to create a smokescreen with the view to killing her too, and making it look as if she were another random victim.

All this was planned, she believes, in order to regain custody of their three children. "He was trying to place me in the middle of all these killings, so that when he finally took me out, the police would think I was just another sniper victim,” Mildred Muhammad told the Daily Mail. "It might sound bizarre and far-fetched, but not if you knew John Muhammad."
 
Mildred has written a memoir, Scared Silent, about the killings and the part her husband, a Gulf War veteran who was trained in psychological warfare, played in them.
 
Also known as the Beltway Sniper, Muhammad was the mastermind behind the attacks, which triggered one of the largest manhunts in America's history. Over an 18-day period Muhammad and 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo terrorised the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington DC as they picked off their victims from the converted boot of a Chevrolet Caprice car.

On October 24, 2002, both men were captured at a Maryland rest stop in the blue Chevy.
 
Muhammad has never acknowledged his guilt. Police have established the pair were responsible for six killings while Malvo, now 24, who is serving a life sentence, has confessed to another four shootings including two murders. The broad area of the attacks means that as many as 27 shootings have been linked to the two men.
 
Muhammad has continued to profess his innocence during two lengthy trials and several appeals. His lawyers have asked for his sentence to be commuted to life in prison because they say the Gulf War veteran is mentally ill after suffering post traumatic stress disorder.
 
But to no avail. Muhammad, now 48, is expected to be put to death at 9pm local time at the Greensville Correctional Center near Jarratt, Virginia, after the Supreme Court declined to hear his latest appeal.
 
His ex-wife Mildred says that because she's convinced she was the real target, she feels guilty about the killings. "All those innocent people were killed just because he was trying to kill me,” she said.  "I still have a hard time living with that. I constantly blank out of my mind the number of people who died in my name."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Since this item was posted, John Allen Muhammad was put to death by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia. He died at 9.11 pm local time on Tuesday, following a five-minute procedure.  ·