IRA Terrorists Had Car Like Beltway Sniper

Oct. 30 -- The techniques used by the Beltway sniper to evade capture during a three-week killing spree in Washington were also employed by a terrorist death squad in Ireland for as long as five years in the mid-1990s.

Police believe John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo used a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice modified to hide a sniper's nest in the back seat and trunk, from which the pair allegedly killed 10 people and wounded three others in the Washington, D.C., area.

The Caprice's back seat folded down, sources told ABCNEWS, allowing the shooter to lie prone and aim from at least one hole in the trunk. All the attacks were accomplished with a single shot.

The method is remarkably similar to the tactics of a single-shot sniper who killed at least nine soldiers and policemen in the troubled Armagh border area of Northern Ireland starting in 1992.

"There's a striking similarity," said Adam Dolnik, a researcher who studies patterns in terrorist tactics and motivations at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

The slayings ended in April 1997 when police swooped down on a farm and caught four members of the Provisional IRA, who were later described as a sniper team. Police believed two of them were the trigger men.

In their possession, they found weapons, radios — and a Mazda 626, which had a cavity in the rear from which a gunman could crouch and fire.

Fortified Perch

While the IRA sniper squad claimed a lower body count than the Beltway sniper, they were potentially even more threatening.

The Mazda used by the sniper squad was not only adapted as a firing platform, but it was, in the provocative language of one British newspaper, a "provo" tank.

It had been fitted with makeshift armor, to protect the sniper in case of return fire. The armor, stored in a concealed position, could be hoisted up behind the rear seats using a rope.

The sniper team also had another car, with a CB radio tuned to the same channel as the radio in the Mazda, presumably to be used as another spotting platform.