The man who terrorised Washington and its suburbs for three weeks with sniper killings of ordinary people going about their daily lives was executed in Virginia last night as the families of his victims looked on.
John Allen Muhammad was put to death by lethal injection for one of the 10 murders he carried out in 2002 with a teenage cohort, Lee Boyd Malvo, during which they targeted their victims at random in petrol stations, outside shopping malls and on the streets of Maryland, Washington and Virginia. They also terrified parents by wounding a 13- year-old schoolboy and threatening to kill children.
The supreme court and Virginia's governor turned down last minute appeals from Muhammad's lawyers who argued that he was mentally ill. He was led in to the death chamber in a denim outfit and flip flops. Muhammad, 48, declined to make a final statement and never revealed why he embarked on the series of killings, which followed other murders in the southern US.
His state appointed lawyer, Wyndal Gordon, said that Muhammad was 'a martyr for everything that's wrong with the death penalty'.
Malvo is serving life without parole.
Relatives of the dead, including of people murdered by Muhammad in other parts of the country before the Washington attacks, crowded the viewing area of the death chamber.
Among them was Robert Meyers who wanted to see Muhammad die for the murder of his brother, Dean – the killing that led to the death sentence. 'Honestly it was surreal watching the life being sapped out of somebody intentionally was very different,' he told CNN.
Nelson Rivera's wife, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, was shot at a Maryland garage, leaving their two-year-old daughter without a mother. 'I feel better. I think I can breathe better and I'm happy he's gone. Because he's not going to hurt anyone else,' he said.
The prosecutor in Muhammad's death row case, Paul Ebert, also witnessed the execution.
'He died very peacefully, much more than most of his victims. I felt a sense of closure and I hope that they did too,' he said.
Charles Moore, whose daughter, Linda Franklyn, was shot as she loaded her car with shopping, was disappointed that Malvo was not also executed.
'The only thing that would give me closure would be if I knew that Lee Boyd Malvo was being punished properly,' he said. 'I don't see how someone can plan and plot and commit murder, one right after the other, and get off with just life in prison, I don't care what their age is.'
The attacks around Washington began on the evening of 2 October in Maryland when James Martin was shot dead in a grocery store car park. But it was not until the next morning, when four people were murdered over the following two hours, that the police realised they had something extraordinary on their hands and a pall of fear descended over the area.
James Buchanan, a 39-year-old landscaper, was shot dead while mowing the lawn at a car showroom. The next three victims were murdered while refuelling a car, sitting on a bench waiting for a bus and vacuuming a car at a petrol station.
Twelve hours later Muhammad and Malvo shot a 72-year-old man walking down a street in Washington.
It was the randomness that sowed most terror. Motorists sought out petrol stations that appeared to be less vulnerable to attack.
The next day, the killers crossed into Virginia and shot and wounded a woman as she was loading her shopping in to her car. Three days later they wounded a 13-year-old, Iran Brown, as he arrived at his school in Maryland.
A Tarot death card was discovered at the scene with the handwritten inscription: 'For you Mr. Police. Code: 'Call me God.' Do not release to the press.'
Other killings followed, of people filling their cars with petrol and shopping in Virginia.
After Jeffrey Hopper was murdered on 19 October in a Virginian car park, a four page letter from the killers was discovered nearby demanding $10m (£6m).
The pair also threatened to kill children.
'Your children are not safe, anywhere, at any time,' they said in a note. Parents kept their children off of school buses. Schools cancelled outdoor activities.
Conrad Johnson, a bus driver who was shot dead at dawn on 22 October as he stood on the steps of his bus in Maryland, was the last to die. Two days later, Muhammad and Malvo were arrested after they were found asleep in the blue Chevrolet car at a Maryland rest stop. The police discovered that the sniper, using a sight to aim at people up to 100 yards away, were firing through a small hole cut in the boot.
Muhammad declined to speak to the police and has never explained his crimes. Malvo's claims to have been in a 'jihad' against America were not taken seriously by the authorities. However, at Muhammad's trial three years ago, Malvo testified that the killings were intended, along with abducting children, to extort money from the government.
• This article was amended on Friday 13 November 2009. We said Lee Malvo is serving life without parole because, as a juvenile at the time of the crime, he was too young to receive the death penalty. In fact, he was sentenced in 2003, before a 2005 Supreme Court decision ending the death penalty for crimes committed by juveniles. This has been corrected.
I have to confess: I was suckered by the trailer for American Sniper. It’s a masterpiece of short-form tension – a confluence of sound and image so viscerally evocative it feels almost domineering. You cannot resist. You will be stressed out. You will feel. Or, as I believe I put it in a blog about the trailer, “Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper trailer will ruin your pants.”
But however effective it is as a piece of cinema, even a cursory look into the film’s backstory – and particularly the public reaction to its release – raises disturbing questions about which stories we choose to codify into truth, and whose, and why, and the messy social costs of transmogrifying real life into entertainment.
Chris Kyle, a US navy Seal from Texas, was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and claimed to have killed more than 255 people during his six-year military career. In his memoir, Kyle reportedly described killing as “fun”, something he “loved”; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy”. “I hate the damn savages,” he wrote. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis.” He bragged about murdering looters during Hurricane Katrina, though that was never substantiated.
He was murdered in 2013 at a Texas gun range by a 25-year-old veteran reportedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
However we diverge politically, I have enough faith in Eastwood’s artistry and intellect to trust that he is not a black-and-white ideologue – or, at least, that he knows that the limitations of such a worldview would make for an extremely dull movie. But the same can’t be said for Eastwood’s subject, or, as response to the film has demonstrated, many of his fans.
As Laura Miller wrote in Salon: “In Kyle’s version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of Americans, who are good by virtue of being American, and fanatic Muslims whose ‘savage, despicable evil’ led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christians.”
Adds Scott Foundas at Variety: “Chris Kyle saw the world in clearly demarcated terms of good and evil, and American Sniper suggests that such dichromatism may have been key to both his success and survival; on the battlefield, doubt is akin to death.”
Eastwood, on the other hand, Foundas says, “sees only shades of gray”, and American Sniper is a morally ambiguous, emotionally complex film. But there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world, and the chasm between Eastwood’s intent and his audience’s reception touches on the old Chappelle’s Show conundrum: a lot of white people laughed at Dave Chappelle’s rapier racial satire for the wrong reasons, in ways that may have actually exacerbated stereotypes about black people in the minds of intellectual underachievers. Is that Chappelle’s fault? Should he care?
Likewise, much of the US right wing appears to have seized upon American Sniper with similarly shallow comprehension – treating it with the same unconsidered, rah-rah reverence that they would the national anthem or the flag itself. Only a few weeks into its release, the film has been flattened into a symbol to serve the interests of an ideology that, arguably, runs counter to the ethos of the film itself. How much, if at all, should Eastwood concern himself with fans who misunderstand and misuse his work? If he, intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle – who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people – is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda?
That question came to the fore last week on Twitter when several liberal journalists drew attention to Kyle’s less Oscar-worthy statements. “Chris Kyle boasted of looting the apartments of Iraqi families in Fallujah,” wrote author and former Daily Beast writer Max Blumenthal. “Kill every male you see,” Rania Khalek quoted, calling Kyle an “American psycho”.
Retaliation from the rightwing twittersphere was swift and violent, as Khalek documented in an exhaustive (and exhausting) post at Alternet. “Move your America hating ass to Iraq, let ISIS rape you then cut your cunt head off, fucking media whore muslim,” wrote a rather unassuming-looking mom named Donna. “Rania, maybe we to take you ass overthere and give it to ISIS … Dumb bitch,” offered a bearded man named Ronald, who enjoys either bass fishing or playing the bass (we may never know). “Waterboarding is far from torture,” explained an army pilot named Benjamin, all helpfulness. “I wouldn’t mind giving you two a demonstration.”
The patriots go on, and on and on. They cannot believe what they are reading. They are rushing to the defence of not just Kyle, but their country, what their country means. They call for the rape or death of anyone ungrateful enough to criticise American hero Chris Kyle. Because Chris Kyle is good, and brown people are bad, and America is in danger, and Chris Kyle saved us. The attitude echoes what Miller articulated about Kyle in her Salon piece: “his steadfast imperviousness to any nuance, subtlety or ambiguity, and his lack of imagination and curiosity, seem particularly notable”.
There is no room for the idea that Kyle might have been a good soldier but a bad guy; or a mediocre guy doing a difficult job badly; or a complex guy in a bad war who convinced himself he loved killing to cope with an impossible situation; or a straight-up serial killer exploiting an oppressive system that, yes, also employs lots of well-meaning, often impoverished, non-serial-killer people to do oppressive things over which they have no control. Or that Iraqis might be fully realised human beings with complex inner lives who find joy in food and sunshine and family, and anguish in the murders of their children. Or that you can support your country while thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry. Or that many truths can be true at once.
Always meet your heroes.
- Alex Horton:American Sniper feeds America’s hero complex, and it isn’t the truth about war
Cops are hinting at it and residents are worried after three eerily similar fatal shootings in the same normally low-key neighborhood.
A makeshift memorial for shooting victim Anthony Naiboa sits on a sidewalk in the Seminole Heights section of Tampa, Fla., Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Composite image by Lia Kantrowitz
Around 8 PM last Thursday, a loud pop pierced the quiet streets of Southeast Seminole Heights, a suburban neighborhood in Tampa, Florida. Police officers who heard the gunfire descended on North 15th Street and East Wilder Avenue, where, about 200 yards away from a bus stop, cops found the body of Anthony Taino Naiboa on the sidewalk.
A week later, Tampa Police officials don't have any serious leads or a clear motive in Naiboa's killing. But they believe the person who shot the 20-year-old autistic man also murdered 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell and 32-year-old Monica Hoffa, two people who lost their lives earlier this month in the same vicinity. Mitchell was shot on October 9 around 9 PM while waiting for a bus. Hoffa's body was found four days later in a vacant lot about half a mile from where the two men were killed, after she disappeared two nights earlier.
'When you look at the time frame, the proximity, that there is no apparent motive, that the victims are alone at the time, it's clear to me that they are all linked,' interim Tampa police chief Brian Dugan told reporters in a press conference last Friday.
The three homicides have fueled speculation that a serial killer might be prowling for victims in Southeast Seminole Heights, prompting police to provide escorts for children and the distribution of light bulbs to illuminate front porches in the neighborhood. The red beret–wearing Guardian Angels are even patrolling sidewalks.
Still, at the same press conference, Dugan was cryptic when asked if the murders were the work of a serial killer. 'We can call it what we want,' he said. 'If that brings attention to it, that's fine.' Three days later, at a community meeting attended by 400 people, Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn promised the perpetrator would be caught, but stopped short of using the term 'serial killer.'
'We need you to call us and let us know what's going on,' Buckhorn said. 'That's how we're gonna catch this guy. And we will hunt this son of a bitch down until we find him!'
Sherry Genovar-Simons, a Southeast Seminole Heights homeowner for 25 years, said there is a heightened sense of awareness in her neighborhood. Still, she's not exactly terrified. 'Obviously, we are not dumb enough to go out at night by ourselves,' she said. 'I am not going to walk down the streets with my dogs at eight o'clock or nine o'clock in the evening like I usually do. But I am also not going to sit in my house and quake.'
Florida certainly has a long and sordid history with serial killers. In January 1978, Ted Bundy—who by then was responsible for dozens of murders in at least six states—broke into a Florida State University sorority house, where he attacked four young women, bludgeoning two of them to death. A few weeks later, Bundy abducted his final target, a 12-year-old girl named Kimberly Leach, whom he raped and beat to death. Soon after, Bundy was arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced to death for the three Florida murders. He was executed in January 1989.
Eleven months later, Aileen Wournos began a year-long campaign of terror across the Sunshine State during which she murdered at least six men. She was arrested in January 1991 and subsequently confessed to the killings, which were allegedly targeted at men who sexually assaulted her. She was executed by lethal injection in 2002, ten years after her conviction.
Historically, though, Southeast Seminole Heights has not been a magnet for violent crimes, according to Genovar-Simmons, who served as president of the neighborhood civic association four years ago. 'Most of the crime that I am aware of are crimes of opportunity like people breaking into cars or an unlocked home,' she said. 'We have never had any big crime sprees. I could go out to my car at two o'clock in the morning and never had any fear.'
Homicide experts canvassed by VICE said the three murders in Southeast Seminole Heights this month do bear some characteristics pointing to a serial killer. But they suggested the perp might be more accurately described as a spree killer—the distinction being that the latter snuffs out two or more victims at multiple locations with almost no break between the crimes.
Most fundamentally, Scott Bonn, a criminology professor at Drew University who authored the 2014 book, Why We Love Serial Killers, said the fact Naiboa, Mitchell and Hoffa rode the bus and were killed within a one-mile radius of each other amounted to a 'rather uncanny pattern.'
'This may be a mission killer,' Bonn said, adding, 'He or she could be trying to terrorize the community. That may the goal. It could be an individual who feels disenfranchised in some way and is sending out a message that says, 'The world will recognize me,' by committing these murders.'
Nelson Andreu, who worked six serial-murder cases during 20-plus years as a Miami Police homicide detective, wondered if Tampa cops had concluded the bullets used in the three Seminole Heights murders came from the same gun. 'If they have recovered projectiles or casings that match, then the police can say without any doubt that it is the same killer,' Andreu said. 'Some killers want you to know that they are serial in nature.'
Andreu, who is now chief of the West Miami Police Department, believes the Tampa Police Department has done a good job of informing the public about the danger posed to the community. 'They are using a lot of manpower and community outreach to thwart this suspect before he or she strikes again,' he told me.
Rather than notorious serial killers like Bundy, Bonn, and Andreu both cited the Washington, DC, sniper attacks of 2002 when trying to make sense of the Tampa situation. Over a period of about three weeks, John Allen Muhammad and teenager Lee Boyd Malvo killed ten people and critically injured three others across Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
'It has the earmarks of a spree killing,' Bonn offered of the Tampa saga. 'It is happening in a very short time frame, and there is no cooling off period between the murders. Serial killers tend to have protracted cooling-off periods.'
Andreu suggested serial killings usually have some sort of sexual undertone to them. 'There is a deviancy of some sort at play,' he told me. 'In Tampa, that is missing. The killer is just walking up and shooting people. It reminds me of the two guys who were just picking off people in DC.'
As the New York Times reported, some other experts think the days in between these incidents amount to enough of a cooling-off period to apply the serial killer label, assuming the three killings were the work of the same person.
During the community meeting on Monday, Tampa's Chief Dugan told the standing-room only crowd at Edison Elementary School that they had to dispel any preconceived notions of what a serial killer might look or act like.
'When I think of a serial killer, I think of Ted Bundy,' Dugan said. 'But here is the problem. It may not be a white person and it may not be a male. How do we know there is not two step brothers living in a house and they are doing it together? Let's not let labels and stereotypes box in our vision and miss what is right in front of us.'
Mayor Buckhorn has been a bit less careful with his language. 'Bring his head to me, all right?' he ordered police officers Wednesday in a video aired by NBC News. 'Let's go get it done.' On Thursday, police released a new video showing what they described as a person of interest (rather than a suspect) brandishing what appeared to be a phone and, later, running in the area on the night Mitchell was shot.
For her part, Genovar-Simons said she didn't want to speculate about whether the suspect is indeed a serial killer. 'The police seem to think it might be,' she said. 'Usually, we don't have murders, especially three so close at one time. There is definitely something strange about it.'
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I appreciated the fact they shot this on the streets in San Francisco, where the story takes place, instead of some Hollywood back-lot. That city, in particular, with its steep streets and bay-windowed houses, is fun to look at in any era. This happens to be very early 1950s. As with many noirs, the photography was notable, too. I liked a number of the camera angles used in this movie.
I also appreciated that cast. Arthur Franz is excellent in the lead role of the tormented killer, 'Eddie Miller.' Eddie knows right from the start that he's a sick man, that he can't help himself and that he needs him. (So, why didn't he turn himself in?) It was fun to see an older and sans-mustached Adolphe Menjou as the police lieutenant, and Humphrey Bogart- lookalike Gerald Mohr as a police sergeant. It was most fun, being a film noir buff, to see Marie Windsor. This 'queen of noir,' unfortunately, didn't have that big a role in here.
What really struck were some bizarre scenes, things I have never seen in these crime movies on the '30s through '50s. For example, there was an investigation of sniper suspects held at the police building in which three suspects at a time were grilled - in front of about a hundred cops. The grilling was more like taunting and insult-throwing by this sadistic cop in charge, who made fun of each guy. Man, if they tried that today, there would lawsuits up the wazoo (so to speak).
Then there was this James Dean-type teen who was on top of a city building with a rifle, right in the middle of this citywide sniper scare. The cops bravely bring him in without killing him and are yelled at for doing so, since the gun wasn't in serviceable order. Duh! The cops were supposed to just see a guy waving a gun on top of a rooftop and let him go, no questions asked?
A number of things in here stretched credibility, but there were some intelligent aspects, too. 'Dr. Richard Kent,' played by Richard Kiely, was a case in point. He was the police psychologist and gave strong speeches (the film got a little preachy at times) advocating what should be done with sex-crime offenders, some of it Liberal and some of it Conservative in nature. He made some good points. 'Eddie' had sex problems, I guess, but I don't remember it being discussed in the film. Maybe I missed that. The film did miss that aspect: Eddie's background, which triggered all the violence.
The second half of this film is far better, because the killings increase and the suspense starts to mount. As it goes on, we get more of a feel of what motivates Eddie as we see his reactions to people and how he views things they say. I was surprised, frankly, that he didn't shoot his nasty female boss, since he only harmed women. She was the nastiest woman in the film, and nothing happened to her. What was Eddie thinking?
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ARTHUR FRANZ gets his big break here, a starring role in a well-written thriller about a serial killer who wishes he could stop killing, if the police would only catch him. The final scene is a summation of that wish, but almost seems like a letdown after all the build-up to what we presume would be a bloody climax (if directed by someone like today's Martin Scorsese).
Franz's trouble is that he looks too much like any clean-cut, normal, handsome young man and his looks work against the grain of the role. He's intense when he has to be, but lacks the intenseness of a James Dean or even a Dane Clark as the man given to sudden outbursts of temper and a psyche that is screaming for help and attention. He's good, but never manages to be better than his material. Think of what someone like DANIEL CRAIG would do with this role today.
MARIE WINDSOR does a nice job as a glamorous night club pianist who has the young man (who works as an errand boy for the local cleaners) as a sort of friend she trusts. Her walk through an almost deserted looking San Francisco at night, down hilly streets on the way to her workplace, is photographed with noir precision and style, as is most of the film. Neat use of San Francisco's hilly environment is a constant point of interest throughout.
ADOLPHE MENJOU is not quite as colorful as Barry Fitzgerald was in THE NAKED CITY, playing a detective determined to catch the serial killer before he strikes again. MABEL PAIGE does a nice job as Franz's landlady who talks to her black and white cat as though it was her own dear child, and GERALD MOHR is briskly efficient as a psychiatrist who thinks the police are going about their search the wrong way.
Wonderfully photographed in B&W shadowy photography, it's a compact and efficient film noir that is perhaps a little too restrained in dealing with frank subject matter but nevertheless gets its points across with chilling clarity, thanks to a tight script and some good suspenseful footage.
Summing up: Stands on its own as a good thriller from the early '50s.
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Franz paints us a portrayal of a socially challenged man who just can't get anywhere with the opposite sex. He conceives a pathological hatred of all women and an innocent encounter with a nightclub performer played by Marie Windsor finally triggers him off.
After that Franz is on a rampage, killing women almost at random from various San Francisco rooftops. The film was shot on location in San Francisco and The Sniper bears a whole lot of resemblance to The Naked City where Jules Dassin made New York's mean streets as much a star as the human players. Director Edward Dmytryk does the same for San Francisco.
And the cops here are much like Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor from that film. Watching the film I wonder how much persuasion it took to get Adolphe Menjou to shave off that famous wax mustache of his, a remnant of fashion from a bygone era. It certainly wouldn't have gone with his role as a homicide cop. But the voice is distinctive and Menjou put it over. Acting as his younger sidekick is Gerald Mohr.
What's ironic in The Sniper is that the whole thing is a desperate cry for help to a world to busy to care. The minor key ending of The Sniper brings that point home quite vividly.
The Sniper is a noir classic, not as glamorous as Dirty Harry Callahan's pursuit of another twisted individual through San Francisco, but a whole lot more realistic.
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It's certainly a very watchable movie. The San Francisco locations are used to great effect-- the cops surveilling downtown rooftops from on high sets up a marvelous panoramic look at the city. Then too, the smokestack scene with its human fly amounts to pure cinematic magic. A problem in the film lies with too much obviousness where a lighter hand is needed. Thus, when Eddie goes on a little downtown stroll, he doesn't encounter just one woman-caused frustration, but a whole heavy-handed series of them. Too bad, because we get the idea early on that petty annoyances involving women amount to major injuries in Eddie's twisted world. Then there's the let's- hit-you-over-the-head-in-case-you-don't-get-it last scene; it's about as necessary as strip-poker at a nudist colony. Still and all, the movie's heart is in the right place, even if it appears made at times for the slow-witted.
One big benefit for 50's-era fans is cult favorite Marie Windsor in a low-cut evening gown, purring her seductive lines to Eddie even as she exploits him to the hilt. What a great cameo from a really unusual actress.Too bad their scene together comes so early because it's a pip and a movie high point. Speaking of film eras, compare the themes and locations of this movie (1951) with the cinematically similar, Vietnam-era Dirty Harry (1971). Tellingly, the hopeful reformism that Kramer&Co. plead for in Sniper has been replaced by a kind of hopeless vigilantism where Harry (Clint Eastwood) ends up rejecting city hall, killing the sniper, and throwing away his policeman's badge. Mark it down to what you will, but the change-over is pretty stark and startling. Anyway, this little B-film created quite a stir at the time and remains an interesting piece of movie history, well worth thinking about
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Suffice it to say that this film not only deals intelligently with a serious subject matter, it ends in such a believable and non-cliched way that I loved this film!
Fritz Lang's M was probably the best of this genre and Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer was pretty impressive for a modern audience. Somewhere in between, The Sniper has its place from a fifties sensibility as a sleeper to be studied by today's more discerning audiences. Indeed, as Marnie is being rediscovered for its merits, The Sniper is a film ahead of its time.
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As I said, it's pretty dated, isn't it? Compare it to 'Dirty Harry,' in which the sniper is nothing more than an evildoer who shoots San Franciscans 'because he likes it.' The Dirty Harry sniper is protected by an ineffectual judicial system. We root for Harry who simply wants to 'shoot the b******.' How times have changed. About the time this movie was released, my underaged friends and I used to peek through the windows of a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village. Every third or fourth time we were lined up with our noses against the glass, a police officer would sneak up behind us and go down the row hitting us on top of the head with his baton -- BOP,BOP,BOP.. Always the same cop! And without even reading us our rights! That's the attitude of the police in this movie. The cops are practically paleolithic. Nobody's hampered by this business about fair treatment. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out! (Please, that's called 'sarcasm'.)
Menjou is outraged and snappish, Kiley the voice of sweet reason. And Franz, the sniper? Well, it had something to do with his mother. We don't find this out until about half way through the movie when his landlady tells him to be careful with his stove, didn't his mother ever teach him that? Franz stops in mid-stair and grimly announces, 'My mother never taught me anything.'
The movie is dated in two other ways. I can't tell you how shocking the murder scenes were in 1952. The critics were appalled and some theaters edited out the shootings. But the two or three that are shown on the screen are in long shot and by current standards ludicrously tame.
Here's the other way in which its dated -- the resolution. The police finally identify the sniper, find out which barren room Franz lives in, determine that he's at home, and surround the place with an army of cop cars and tommy-gun agents of the law, every sight trained on the windows of Franz's digs. Franz spots them, assembles and loads his rifle, and waits for them. Menjou, who has by this time begun to see what Kiley has been driving at, calls through a bullhorn for Franz to come out with his hands up. Silence. The cops want to turn the apartment into lace but Menjou demurs. Let's try to talk to him first. A party of them, bristling with guns, sneaks up the stairs and slowly swings open the door to Franz's room expecting him to start shooting. Instead they find Franz sitting in front of the windows, rifle across his lap, catatonic, tears on his face.
Imagine a similar contemporary movie ending with such a dying fall. Would the cops find Franz sitting quietly alone? That's meant to be a rhetorical question. I think we all know what would happen in a modern movie when the police surrounded Franz's apartment. Just follow the numbers. Every window for miles around would be shattered by bullets. The walls would be splattered with blood and brains. The sniper would drag a 40 millimeter cannon out of his closet. San Francisco would be levelled. The actual quiet resolution would generate in modern audiences a vague sense of disappointment. 'Talky,' the kids would complain between gulps of high-energy soft drinks. 'Too slow.'
Stanley Kramer, never an articulate man in his own right, turned extraordinarily preachy in his later movies, but this is Kramer during his early period, when he didn't LOOM over his productions quite so much. Splendid use is made of unfamiliar and very ordinary San Francisco locations, by the way. The movie was shot at a time when the city still had a sizable working-class population, now largely disappeared.
Worth seeing, definitely.
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1953:'the juggler' A Jew ,a survivor from the concentration camps , is a juggler and a ventriloquist;his hand 'talks' and during one scene,he gags it.
1954:'the Caine mutiny ' :a supporting character,played by José Ferrer arrives with his arm in a sling.There is no connection with the plot.Someone wrote me to tell me there was an explanation (Ferrer would have been really injured or something like that) Those are strange coincidences though: some critics think that it's Dmytryk feeling guilt after the witch hunt .
Gossips ,you will say. And you are certainly right.
'The sniper' is an excellent thriller: when you see the dismal contemporary movies dealing with the subject,you realize how much Dmytryk and Powell ('Peeping Tom' 1960) were ahead of their time.
Whatever the shrink says or explains , the sniper will remain a mystery to the world.'His mother probably treated him badly'he says.
His misogyny is monstrous and knows no bounds .Some clues are given to us: the sniper cannot stand the sight of lovers kissing, he sees narcissistic Mary Windsor looking at her picture ,and most of all,at work,he is humiliated cause he must obey a woman,which ,at the time,was not so obvious.But the most terrifying scene takes place at the fair ! Hatred for women was never filmed with such a strength.
Another admirable scene: the sniper, on the roof,with that little man,up there, on the high chimney , accusing him; his escape in the streets where the walls seem to imprison him (there's a similar sequence in ' the juggler' when Kirk Douglas's claustrophobia drives him insane)
And if the last picture does not move you,nothing will..
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Produced by Stanley Kramer, directed by Edward Dmytryk and photographed by Burnett Guffey. Those three things were enough to make me positively desperate to see this film at the earliest opportunity, what I hadn't counted on, and what a true surprise it was too, was just what a taut and tightly scripted picture it is. Written by Edward and Edna Anhalt, who were academy award nominated for their efforts, The Sniper has an edgy griminess to it that itches away at the skin. It's not that the violence is particularly harsh, because it isn't and it's simply executed, it's that our protagonist Edward 'Eddie' Miller is on the surface a normal every day Joe, someone who may be living in our respective neighbourhoods.
This is one of those films that, and I disagree with some of my fellow reviewers here, is as relevant today as it was back in 1952. Problems of not recognising psychotic tendencies do still way lay our respective societies, the police and medical staff do still have problems nipping in the bud potential street walking maniacs from being in our midst. Here we get Arthur Franz (Sands of Iwo Jima & The Caine Mutiny) as Miller brilliantly essaying a mind fragmenting by the day, his hatred of women born from some dark place long back in his childhood. Even little girls on the street bring him out in a sweat, as a mother slaps her child, Miller feels the burn on his very own face as well. Some scenes linger once the film has long since finished, a chimney stack shooting or a fair ground sequence as Miller's built up frenzy rises to the surface, all brilliantly put together by Dmytryk and Guffey, with the latter's work in and around San Francisco very impressive. Fleshing out the cast with impacting results is Adolphe Menjou, Gerald Mohr, Marie Windsor, Frank Faylen & Richard Kiley.
It's a fabulous character study that also excellently brings notice to the plight of police procedural matters on a case such as this. No this film isn't some sex maniac shocker that defined a genre, it is however an important film in many ways. Its themes that it highlights are not to be ignored, and for 1952 this film to me has to be seen as a landmark of sorts, certainly its influence can be found in many a similar film that followed further on down the line. Finally, because it's largely unseen, it's now available on DVD, so hopefully more people can get to see this highly recommended film. A film that may be beautiful to look at, but most assuredly is very very dark in thematics. 8/10
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Surprisingly frank in a professional manner, addresses sexual deviancy preaching the word against allowing sex offenders and predators(.peeping toms, etc.)on the streets so easily. The film is handled with kid gloves thanks to good direction by the reliable Edward Dmytryk and intelligent writing. We see how the public can not get enough of the case as people always rush to crime scenes and such trying to see for themselves Eddie's handiwork. Arthur Franz is quite good as the killer, showing the agony tormenting him.that festering desire to kill etched on his face and in how he carries himself. We also see how the case takes it's toll on the detectives really mounted with pressure to find the assassin.
Beltway Shooters
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The movie does have Eddie involved with women like his boss at the Alpine Cleaners & Dryers and his elderly landlady where he seems to act normal with them. It's when he tries to make it with night-club piano player Jean Darr, Marie Windsor, who's dress he, as a diver for Alpine cleaners & Dryers, was delivering and the way she treats him as if he were just a little boy instead of a man that has Eddie finally freak out and go psycho. To the point of murdering some half dozen people, with Jean as his first victim, and sending the people, mostly women, of San Francisco into a total state of panic where they didn't feel safe on the streets or in their homes anytime of the day and night.
The movie seems to be based on the string of murders in Chicago back in 1946 by 17 year-old William Heirens who had the same kind of hangups that the fictitious Eddie Miller had. In that Heirens had an uncontrollable hatred of women and murdered three of them , one of his victims was a 7 year-old girl, until he was finally caught by the police. Heirens like Eddie Miller knew that he was sick and desperately wanted to get help. But back then people like himself weren't treated for their mental illness, by being put away and treated in a mental institution, but for their criminal actions by locking them up in prison. Where they would get no help and later when, if they didn't murder anyone, after being let out continue their life of crime.
The movie has in it a prison psychiatrist Dr.Kent, Richard Kiley, giving a speech to a number of city officials, including the mayor, about how people like the at large sniper, Eddie Miller, in the movie is the victim of an uncaring society in not recognizing his illness and not having him treated for it that makes him as much of a victim as those that he victimizes. Eddie himself knows that he's a sick man, he spent time in a prison psycho ward for assault, and tries to get help by going as far as burning his right hand on a stove in order to get admitted into a local hospital. Only to end up getting his hand bandaged and released within an hour.
One of the first films to address mental illness and does it with a man who's not only sick but murderous as well. Which makes it very very difficult to have any kind of sympathy for him but at the same time realize that his actions are that of a man who can't control them, they control him. The film 'The Sniper' has as the cop in charge of the sniper killings an almost unrecognizable, with out his famous mustache, Adolphe Menjou as SFPD detective Let. Kafka, was there a hidden meaning in that?. Let. Kafkas assistant and sidekick is the tough Humphrey Bogart look-alike, but looking some 15 years younger, Gerald Mohr as Sgt. Joe Ferris. The two track the killer down in his rooming house in the films very tense and nerve wracking final with almost the entire population of San Francisco looking on.
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Filmed in San Francisco, though the city isn't mentioned, the film stars Arthur Franz, a familiar face to TV audiences and a man who rarely had a lead in films -- in fact, this may be his only lead. Nevertheless, he does a compelling job as a disturbed man who wants to be stopped.
The chase scene at the end is particularly good. Another familiar face, the wonderful Richard Kiley, plays a psychiatrist.
Violence against women certainly became a big subject later on, but there wasn't much about it back in the'40s and '50s. There was, however, during and post-war, a good deal about the psychological trauma of returning soldiers. This is one of them, and it's excellent.
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Keeping in mind this was a low-budget film made quickly on-site with minimum studio interference, it's a riveting, if occasionally dated, thriller. A note: although set in San Francisco, the film goes out of its way NOT to identify the city, a fact pointed out in the casually excellent feature commentary by Eddie Muller, one of my personal faves.
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Dc Sniper Serial Killer
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Also notable is this film's plea to its audience to have sympathy with its tortured killer, and the suggestion that murderers might be sick rather than evil. The end shot in particular left me chilled and heartbroken at the same time.
The story won screen writing couple Edward and Edna Anhalt their second Oscar nomination, though that year's winner was 'The Greatest Show on Earth.'
Grade: A
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This is just a beautifully filmed little noir. The San Fransisco scenery is just stunning. A really well put together film about a guy who just doesn't like women who talk down to him. You can see him seething underneath as he slunks away in those instances but you just know that he's gonna pop..and he does.
This one all comes down to getting people help for psychological problems early on in life. Some go through the system and never get what they need in the way of some kinda therapy and they eventually..fall through the cracks. This guy wants the help but it's just not their.
I can't say enough at how well this film looks. Add substance and a really good story and that makes for a worthwhile watch. Give this one a go.
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And things kick off brilliantly as soon as we fade in. From the opening shot, where we are introduced to the main character pulling the drawer out to see the rifle, all the way to the celebrated final shot-- it's a story that holds your attention from start to finish.
This was the first of nine occasions where director Edward Dmytryk would work with star Arthur Franz, who plays the troubled title character. It certainly helped that Franz wasn't allowed a showy or over-the-top performance, like we might find by Richard Widmark or Dan Duryea. The sniper could easily have been the guy next door, that's what is so grim about it.
Probably the best part, though, is not the ending. It happens maybe fifteen minutes or so before the end of the movie. It's where he fires the rifle at the man painting the tall tower/chimney. The guy must have been 12 stories up. At first, when the painter is hit, he falls rather slowly-- then in the last few feet, he plummets quickly to the ground. It's very shocking.
In fact, I think this part of THE SNIPER is more harrowing to watch than anything in VERTIGO where Hitchcock often uses rather artificial-looking process shots. Talk about dizzying heights! And the way it's staged with Franz's character watching from the bottom left hand corner of the frame, seeing that he's brought the painter down with such a sudden act of violence, sends chills down your spine. What great stunt work.
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October marks the 15-year anniversary of the “D.C. snipers” shooting spree, an act of mayhem that forced Americans to confront domestic terrorism after 9/11.
Law enforcement at first assumed the shootings were burglaries and unconnected acts of violence. Over nine months, however, investigators pieced together a complicated web of violent acts and discovered an oddball pair of men were the perpetrators: a 17-year-old Jamaican teenager and a former American soldier.
The media anointed Lee Boyd Malvo, the teen, and John Allen Muhammad, 41, his father-figure-cum-svengali, the D.C. snipers – but the two men actually terrorized innocent people across America. From February 2002 until October 2002, a terrifyingly high number of people were shot in ordinary places in a number of states: a Home Depot parking lot in Virginia, liquor stores in Alabama and Georgia, even at the front door of a home in Washington state.
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Flashback: Serial Killer Appears on 'The Dating Game' Mid-Spree
During three tense weeks in October 2002, the D.C. snipers targeted their killing spree on Virginia and – their deadliest period. Before being apprehended, they killed 10 people in the D.C. area and injured three others. Police later connected them for more shootings in other states as well.
But before all that, preparations for their grotesque torrent of violence had begun many years before.
Violence and Retaliation
Born John Williams, John Allen Muhammad took his name after a conversion to Islam in 1987. A 2004 Vanity Fairprofile describes a troubled Army combat engineer and metal worker who returned from the Gulf War in 1991 with his demeanor radically changed. One of his two ex-wives, Mildred Muhammad, told The Frederick News-Postthat she believed he suffered from untreated post-traumatic stress syndrome after his service in the Middle East. (At the time, this was referred to as Gulf War Syndrome.) The couple had three children but he lost custody in an ugly split, according tothe News-Post, and she became his “enemy.”
In an interview with NPR, Mildred Muhammad said police told her she may been her ex-husband’s target as well, possibly as retaliation for their custody battle. “His end-game scenario was to come in as a grieving father,” she told host Michel Martin. Indeed, The Baltimore Sunreported that Mildred’s neighbors confirmed seeing the blue Caprice driven by the shooters multiple times.
The Vanity Fair profile describes Lee Boyd Malvo, Muhammad’s teenaged accomplice, as a lonely child familiar with abandonment. Born on Jamaica, Malvo was separated from his father at a young age after his parents split and raised by a strict Christian mom. Although a good student, the boy moved frequently, bouncing from school to school. He was often cared for others, including one teacher who considered adopting him. “Most of the children went home on weekends but not Lee,” the former teacher told the magazine. “He had nowhere to go. On the weekends, he was totally alone.”
In late 1999, Malvo’s mother summoned him to the island Antigua. According toVanity Fair, it was there that he met Muhammad, who was essentially hiding on the island with his three children, over whom he did not have custody. Although the exact circumstances where the pair met are unclear, Muhammad began spending time with Malvo.
After meeting on Antigua, the pair told most people they were father and son. And they were convincing, too: Muhammad’s cousin, Edward Holiday, told The Washington Postthey fooled him. “He played the role of son so good,” Holiday said of Malvo. “When you can fool me, and I’m blood, you’re good.”
In January 2001, Malvo, then 15, moved into Muhammad’s home. People who knew Malvo told Vanity Fairthat they began to notice him changing. He attended a Christian school but converted to Islam. He began talking knowledgeably about guns. He worked out relentlessly with Muhammad.
But as the police began to grow suspicious, Muhammad left the Caribbean and returned to the U.S. with his childrenm where his wife soon retained her rightful custody. He dropped Malvo in Florida with his mother – and some freshly made fake immigration documents – and headed to Washington state, according to Vanity Fair.
Malvo ran away from home the first time to join Muhammad in Washington state. The pair moved into a shelter and carried on a life, Vanity Fair described, filled with target practices, exercise drills and militant Islamic teachings. Malvo’s mother tracked down her son in the shelter, and reported Muhammad to the local police.
Malvo ran away from home once again to his twisted ‘father figure’ and then the violence began.
The killings begin
On February 16th, 2002, Lee Boyd Malvo murdered his first victim, Keenya Cook, a 21-year-old new mom. That evening in Tacoma, Washington, the clothing store manager was about to give her baby a bath when she heard someone at the front door, according to The Washington Post. It was Malvo, who shot her to death with a .45-caliber pistol. The young woman was the niece of a woman who Muhammad felt had sided with his wife in his custody dispute, according to Vanity Fair. (Experts who examined the boy said this first killing was a “test” by Muhammad to see how far Malvo would go following orders.)
After Cook’s murder, the pair left town. Sometimes they stayed in shelters and sometimes they stayed with members of Muhammad’s family. But mostly it was just the two of them, traveling the country from the Southwest to the Mid-Atlantic, and living as vagrants.
During their murder spree, the pair used a Bushmaster rifle from afar and handguns at close range, according to the Post, and mostly drove a blue Chevrolet Caprice. Sometimes they used the vehicle only as a getaway car, while other times, they shot from the vehicle and sped away. They purposely shot people on or near highways as a tactic to escape authorities.
In May, the pair shot and injured a man on golf course in Florida, according to the Post. Later that month, the pair murdered a man in Texas while he did landscaping work. (In 2006, the Associated Press reported that Malvo had confessed to committing Dillon’s murder.)
On August 1st, 2002,the pair shot and robbed a man outside of a mall in Louisiana, according to the Washington Post. And ion September 5th, 2002 they shot a man five times in his car as he left a restaurant in Maryland. After the shooting, the victim told NPR, one of the shooters stole a laptop and a briefcase containing about $3,500.
Many of the murders followed a similar pattern: a victim would be shot with a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle or a handgun leaving their workplace at closing time. Although at times the pair stopped to steal money or equipment, usually the perpetrators drove away. Liquor stores were frequent site for the killings, as were parking lots of big box stores like Sears, Home Depot and Michaels. They were indiscriminate in their murders, killing men and women of all ages and races.
In late September, the pair killed an Ethiopian immigrant outside the liquor outlet in Atlanta where he worked, according to the Los Angeles Times. They shot and injured a man as he locked up his family’s grocery store in Baton Rouge, the Washington Post reported. And they murdered a Korean woman in Baton Rouge as she left the beauty supply store where she worked.
Then they headed north.
The D.C. shooting spree
The shootings in the Washington, D.C., area began in early October and started with James D. Martin, 55. He was shot in the parking lot of a grocery store on October 2nd, 2002. That same day, shots were fired into a Michael’s craft store in Aspen Hill, MD, although no one was injured, according to CNN.
On October 3rd, 2002, the killers took five victims. They murdered James “Sonny” Buchanan, 39, as he mowed the lawn outside a car dealership in Rockville, Maryland, according toVanity Fair. Premkumar Walekar, 54, a cab driver, was murdered at a gas station, in Aspen Hill, Maryland. Sarah Ramos, 34, a recent immigrant from El Salvador, was murdered while sitting on a in Silver Spring, Maryland, according to the New York Times. Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, 25, was killed at a Shell gas station in Kensington, Maryland. And lastly, Pascal Charlot, 72, was shot while waiting for a bus in D.C.
The next day, the pair shot Caroline Seawell, 43, in the parking lot of a Michael’s craft store in Fredericksburg, VA, as she Halloween decorations into her car. She survived her injuries and later testified against Muhammad at trial, according to CNN.
The snipers wounded their youngest victim, 13-year-old Iran Brown, on October 7th outside his middle school in Maryland. They killed a Vietnam veteran a gas station on Oct. 9 and killed the father of six at another gas station two days later. They murdered Linda Fraklin in a Home Depot parking lot on October 14th – the killing prosecutors later used to pursue a life sentence for Malvo. On October 19th, they shot a man leaving a steakhouse in Virginia. The duo committed their last killing on October 22nd, 2002 when they murdered a man on a bus in Maryland.
The arrest and Muhammad’s trial
The twisted cat-and-mouse game ended on October 24th when Malvo and Muhammad were arrested at a highway rest stop in VA, where they had been sleeping in their Chevrolet Caprice, according to ABC News.
Malvo was forthcoming with information to law enforcement, and later, the media, after being apprehended. Muhammad was stubbornly tight-lipped to law enforcement all the way until his execution. Muhammad chose to represent himself at trial, pleading not guilty.
As the murders spanned several states, prosecutors chose to focus on the death of Dean H. Meyers, who had been killed pumping gas outside a Virginia gas station, when seeking the death sentence for Muhammad, according to The Washington Post.
A key part of the prosecution’s argument was demonstrating how Muhammad and Malvo’s shootings across the country were a plan to inflict terror and acquire $10 million from the government in order to stop, the New York Times explained. (Psychologists speaking in behalf of Malvo’s trial explained that Muhammad believed the government would give them $10 million dollars to create a “black utopia” in Canada populated by 70 black boys and 70 black girls, according to CNN.)
On November 17th, 2003 Muhammad was convicted of one count of capital murder, committing a murder in an act of terrorism, conspiracy, and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, according to CNN.
A trained killer who couldn’t say no
Lee Boyd Malvo was tried on two counts of murder for Franklin, the woman who was shot in the Home Depot parking lot in Virginia. He pleaded not guilty by reasons of insanity, according to CNN, and the defense for Malvo focused on his brainwashing by his so-called ‘father figure’ who trained him in killing.
On December 18th, 2003, Malvo was convicted of capital murder and terrorism. According to NPR, his young age at the time of the killings was a key the reason why the jury rejected a death sentence. In March 2004, Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
During a 10-year anniversary interview with Matt Lauer on Today in 2012, Malvo said he had been sexually abused by the man who trained him to kill.
“From the entire time, from when I was 15 until I got arrested, I was sexually abused by John Muhammad,” he told Lauer. “I felt a sense of shame and I just said, ‘That’s something that I’d never tell anyone.’ And to a certain extent, up until that point, I really couldn’t handle it.”
Malvo further described in his interview with Lauer the extent of the control that Muhammad held on his life. “I couldn’t say no,” he said, according to Today. “I had wanted that level of love and acceptance and consistency for all my life and couldn’t find it. And even if unconsciously, or even in moments of short reflection, I knew that it was wrong, I did not have the willpower to say no.”
In May 2017, a federal judge ruled that Malvo must be re-sentenced, according to the Times. His life sentence was handed down prior to a Supreme Court ruling in 2012 forbidding mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles.
Death sentence for Muhammad
On November 10th, 2009, the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrett, Virginia, executed John Allen Muhammad by lethal injection. Both then-Governor Tim Kaine and the Supreme Court declined to intervene with last-minute clemency requests, according to CNN.
Family members of of victims attended the execution, according to USA Today, while others declined.
One survivor of shootings, Paul LaRuffia, who refused an invitation to watch Muhammad put to death, told ABC News: “I’ve given every day of the past seven years to thinking about what he did to me. I don’t need to give up another day for him. It’s enough to know justice is being done.”