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Muhammad's Inexorable Slide
Friends and Acquaintances Depict A Life Unraveling, a Growing Fury
By Marcia Slacum Greene and Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 12, 2003; Page A01
On a sticky August night last year, a sleep-deprived John Allen Muhammad seemed weighed down by regrets.
As he and his cousin Edward Holiday rode through Baton Rouge toward the neighborhood where they had grown up, he lowered his head and let the worries tumble out.
"Man, I wish I had stayed with my first wife," Muhammad told Holiday. "I'm so disappointed in myself. Things just didn't work out. I'm ashamed of myself. . . . I wouldn't be in the situation I'm in now."
Muhammad seemed ready to expand on his troubles when Holiday turned on the radio.
"I had never seen him pity himself like that," Holiday said. "I was scared he would tell me what was wrong. I didn't want to know."
Barely a month later, prosecutors allege, Muhammad captained a killing team that terrorized the Washington region with calculated shootings that left 10 people dead and three others wounded over the course of three weeks.
As Muhammad prepared to go on trial this week in Virginia Beach in the shooting death of one of them, Dean H. Meyers, scores of his friends, family and business associates looked back on his life and described a man who was unraveling as the shootings began.
Muhammad, 42, the accused mastermind of the attacks, had botched every aspect of his life, they said -- able in the end to squeeze all his possessions into a couple of duffle bags.
In the two dozen years before his arrest, his troubles mounted like some kind of prolonged torture. He failed at every major role he undertook -- soldier, husband, father, businessman. Even his mistresses eventually rejected him.
His military comrades witnessed flashes of his intense anger. But with others, he stifled his frustrations and cloaked his shortcomings with elaborate deceptions, propping up his personal life with lies. He portrayed himself as a devoted family man yet abducted his children and convinced them it was "not safe" to call their mother. He was a mechanic pretending he owned health spas and lavish homes in the Caribbean.
Sometimes he insisted he was working undercover for the government. A keen observer, he pounced on others' weaknesses, boasting about having people under this thumb. In him, people saw what he wanted them to see. He seemed to have total control. Then he lost custody of his children. It was a defeat he could not bear.
The arc of Muhammad's life that has emerged from the interviews followed a predictable pattern: promising beginnings, rising doubts, then failure.
more on post website
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11949-2003Oct11.html
When he walked into Sure Shot Auto Sales in Trenton, N.J., the first week in September, he said he was looking for a car for his son. Owner Christopher Okupski thought the old, beat-up Caprice that Muhammad singled out was an odd choice for a teenager. "It was a bomb," he said of the 1990 vehicle that had been sitting on the lot for months. But Muhammad paid him $250 for it.
Okupski handed the keys to Muhammad, who opened the door, checked out the interior and walked around to the rear. He opened the trunk and lay down on his back inside. At 6 feet 1, Muhammad's legs dangled over the trunk while he checked out its dimensions.
Friends and Acquaintances Depict A Life Unraveling, a Growing Fury
By Marcia Slacum Greene and Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 12, 2003; Page A01
On a sticky August night last year, a sleep-deprived John Allen Muhammad seemed weighed down by regrets.
As he and his cousin Edward Holiday rode through Baton Rouge toward the neighborhood where they had grown up, he lowered his head and let the worries tumble out.
"Man, I wish I had stayed with my first wife," Muhammad told Holiday. "I'm so disappointed in myself. Things just didn't work out. I'm ashamed of myself. . . . I wouldn't be in the situation I'm in now."
Muhammad seemed ready to expand on his troubles when Holiday turned on the radio.
"I had never seen him pity himself like that," Holiday said. "I was scared he would tell me what was wrong. I didn't want to know."
Barely a month later, prosecutors allege, Muhammad captained a killing team that terrorized the Washington region with calculated shootings that left 10 people dead and three others wounded over the course of three weeks.
As Muhammad prepared to go on trial this week in Virginia Beach in the shooting death of one of them, Dean H. Meyers, scores of his friends, family and business associates looked back on his life and described a man who was unraveling as the shootings began.
Muhammad, 42, the accused mastermind of the attacks, had botched every aspect of his life, they said -- able in the end to squeeze all his possessions into a couple of duffle bags.
In the two dozen years before his arrest, his troubles mounted like some kind of prolonged torture. He failed at every major role he undertook -- soldier, husband, father, businessman. Even his mistresses eventually rejected him.
His military comrades witnessed flashes of his intense anger. But with others, he stifled his frustrations and cloaked his shortcomings with elaborate deceptions, propping up his personal life with lies. He portrayed himself as a devoted family man yet abducted his children and convinced them it was "not safe" to call their mother. He was a mechanic pretending he owned health spas and lavish homes in the Caribbean.
Sometimes he insisted he was working undercover for the government. A keen observer, he pounced on others' weaknesses, boasting about having people under this thumb. In him, people saw what he wanted them to see. He seemed to have total control. Then he lost custody of his children. It was a defeat he could not bear.
The arc of Muhammad's life that has emerged from the interviews followed a predictable pattern: promising beginnings, rising doubts, then failure.
more on post website
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11949-2003Oct11.html
When he walked into Sure Shot Auto Sales in Trenton, N.J., the first week in September, he said he was looking for a car for his son. Owner Christopher Okupski thought the old, beat-up Caprice that Muhammad singled out was an odd choice for a teenager. "It was a bomb," he said of the 1990 vehicle that had been sitting on the lot for months. But Muhammad paid him $250 for it.
Okupski handed the keys to Muhammad, who opened the door, checked out the interior and walked around to the rear. He opened the trunk and lay down on his back inside. At 6 feet 1, Muhammad's legs dangled over the trunk while he checked out its dimensions.
