Sympathy for the Devil? D.C. Sniper Seeks Forgiveness
"What I've done cannot be justified,'' Lee Boyd Malvo tells ABC News.
Oct. 4, 2007 — -- He sounds so normal sometimes, so rational, you can almost forget you're talking to a serial killer.
In a wide-ranging series of phone calls to ABC News' Law & Justice Unit, convicted sniper Lee Boyd Malvo described the sheer torment of coming to terms with the destruction he and John Allen Muhammed wrought during their killing spree five years ago in the Washington area.
Malvo — who once boasted and laughed about taking "head shots" when his victims entered "the killing zone" — says today he was just a pawn in the harrowing, three-week explosion of domestic terrorism in October 2002 that panicked a shaken nation still reeling from the attacks of Sept. 11.
During the conversations with ABC News, Malvo also apologized to the daughter of one of his victims, who was killed in Arizona, seven months before the shooting spree began in earnest. He told ABC that the conversation was an attempt to salvage some shred of his humanity.
"Yes, yes I'm a murderer," he told ABC News earlier this month. "Yes, I've killed. Yes, I've taken life. Yes, I'm in prison, Yes, yeah I deserve to be. But," he emphasized, "when I get up tomorrow morning I can choose what to do with my time."
"We can always change. We can always grow, and that's what gives me hope. Yes, I am a murderer, OK? … But if we don't — see, yes I've killed, but if nothing is learned, nothing is gained from this, than what is, what is the entire purpose?"
"I'm not trying to justify what I've done," he said. "What I've done cannot be justified. … That is, that is an immutable fact. But at the same time, if it [is] possible for us to learn, and if we can make some amends from this, if others can learn from my mistakes and not make the same mistake, then some good has come out of my experience. … I'm not going to stay in the gutter, and just, you know, 'squalor, self pity, woe is me.' I've done enough of that."
By turns rambling, repentant, defensive and hopeful, Malvo spent hours over the course of five months on the phone with ABC News from the Red Onion State Prison in Virginia. He described his daily routine of exercise, journal writing and reading Ralph Waldo Emerson and the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and books on forgiveness and tai chi.
Related Stories
ABC News Live