Over a terrifying three-week period in October of 2002, residents of a large area comprising Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia felt as though they were under siege, as a series of random sniper attacks took the lives of ten people and wounded three others. When the culprits were finally caught, it turned out to be a two-man team: 41-year-old John Allen Muhammad and his 17-year-old protégé Lee Boyd Malvo. The pair’s killing spree along the Beltway, authorities discovered, was only the latest barrage in a trail of destruction that had begun in February of 2002, in which Muhammad and Malvo had perpetrated several murders and robberies in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Texas, Washington State, and in Washington, D.C., which resulted in seven deaths and seven wounded. This brought the death toll at the hands of the so-called Beltway Snipers up to 17. What motivated these seemingly normal men to commit such atrocities? Join Tom and Jenny on a ten-month, cross-country journey into darkness on a harrowing episode 298.

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Channel art and audio & video editing by Jenny Ashford. Music & sound effects courtesy of freesound.org users jamespotterboy, corsica-s, enjoypa, capturedlv, luffy, kiddpark, and justkiddink. Video clips courtesy of Videezy & Videvo.