I just watched a fascinating and deeply disturbing documentary on CNN that explained how the infamous DC snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, turned a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice (which, ironically, was a used police car) into a hacked killing machine. Here's an excerpt from the transcript of the show, called Minds of the D.C. Snipers (the original air date was October 2007):
It was a customized killing machine, darker than normal tinting on the back windows. The firewall between the trunk and the rear seat removed, allowing the snipers to lie down and crawl into the trunk, as in this FBI recreation. Half of the inside trunk lid was sprayed with blue paint to prevent light from bouncing off when raised. The car's battery was rigged to run a stolen laptop computer with map software to make killing locations easy to find. And this is the view that John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo had when they pulled the trigger.
Malvo, who was only 17 at the time of the killings, is serving a life sentence in a Virginia prison. Muhammad, 48, will be executed on November 10th.
