'He Said He Was Sorry'
An Arizona woman sought and won a confession and apology from her dad's killer.
Oct. 4, 2007 — -- Cheryll Witz nearly collapsed after her cell phone rang two weeks ago while she shopped in a Costco in Arizona.
Her father's killer was calling from prison to apologize.
It was Lee Boyd Malvo, the younger of two snipers who terrorized the nation five years ago this week.
"I was in shock," she told ABC News of the private conversation. "He said he had tried to write me, but he did not know where to begin. He was very light-spoken and there were a lot of pauses. He said he was sorry for what he had done and he said the Lee Malvo then and the Lee Malvo now are two different people."
Witz said it was "incredible to hear those words, 'I am sorry.' I never imagined I would hear those words."
At the request of Malvo and Witz, an ABC News producer who received a series of phone calls from Malvo in prison, conferenced the two together. A spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections has since said that the conference call was a violation of prison policy. An ABC News spokesman has said the network was not aware of the policy at the time the call took place.
The journey toward that moment in the Costco is an extraordinary one, but Witz says she's begun an entirely new journey — the journey to forgive her father's murderer.
Her father, Jerry Taylor, was shot by a sniper in Tucson, Ariz., in March 2002, seven months before the Washington, D.C., crime spree that took 10 lives and wounded three in October 2002.
When Malvo and John Allen Muhammed were finally caught, Witz said she suspected they had killed her father, who was shot as he chipped golf balls on a course.
Malvo had been found with an Arizona credit card when he was caught and Witz said her father had been missing a credit card when his body was discovered. She went to authorities, but they dismissed her theories, telling her they had another suspect.
So in June 2006, on Father's Day, she wrote to Malvo in prison.
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