Lee Boyd Malvo biography

Synopsis

Friendship with John Allen Muhammad

Lee Boyd Malvo was born on February 18, 1985 in Kingston, Jamaica. Malvo, along with John Allen Muhammad, is infamously known for participating in a shooting spree near Washington, D.C. for three weeks in 2002, and killing 10 people. The son of Una James and Leslie Samuel Malvo, Lee Boyd Malvo spent most of his childhood in Jamaica. With an absent father and a mother who often left him in the care of others, he was shuffled around a lot with little supervision.

Around 1998, Malvo and his mother moved to Antigua. It is believed that Malvo and Muhammad met there. He eventually made his way to the United States in 2001. He lived with his mother in Miami, where Malvo briefly attended high school, and they later moved to Bellingham, Washington. It was in a homeless shelter there that Malvo and Muhammad really began to develop their strange bond. While it was reported that Muhammad and Malvo's mother dated for a time, Muhammad seemed more dedicated to her son. Muhammad became a father figure of sorts to Malvo, playing chess with him, and putting him on  a challenging exercise and diet regimen. A former member of the U.S. military, Muhammad also taught Malvo how to shoot, and they spent hours practicing. Many who knew the pair said that Muhammad appeared to be very controlling of Malvo.

In December 2001, Malvo and his mother were apprehended by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for being in the country illegally. They were freed a month later, pending a deportation hearing. Malvo caught up with Muhammad soon after, and the two have been linked to a murder that happened that February.

Washington, D.C. Sniper Attacks

By the fall of 2002, Malvo and Muhammad had begun their deadly tour around the country. They have been tied to four shootings that left three dead and one injured in Maryland and Louisiana in September, and the next month they began their assault on the Washington, D.C. area. Using a rifle and creating their own sniper nest in the trunk of their car, Malvo and Muhammad worked as a murderous team—one selected the victim while the other pulled the trigger. From the car, they killed 10 people and injured three others.

For more than 20 days, people in Maryland, Virginia and the nation's capital were living in fear of the sniper shooters. Many were afraid to pump their own gas or cross a parking lot, as several of the victims had been killed while performing these once-mundane tasks.