To Catch A Sniper

The sniper who is stalking victims around Washington D.C. appears to have left a message for police. Not far from the school where a 13-year-old was shot on Monday, investigators found a Tarot card -— the kind used in fortune telling.

It was the card for death; on it were the words: "Dear policeman, I am God." Nearby was the shell casing of the bullet that hit the boy. In a week, eight people have been hit with single shots fired from afar. Six are dead.

The man in charge of the investigation is Charles Moose, the police chief in Montgomery County, Maryland. In his long career, Moose rose from beat cop to chief of police in Portland, Oregon. He has a PhD in criminology. But never has he matched wits with a killer quite like this.

Chief Moose has been at his post almost around the clock since the attacks began. "It just felt unpatriotic to go home you raise your hand and tell people in this community that you are committed to keeping them safe and it was out of control and you say I'm obligated to do this, I took an oath to do this. I can't leave cause it's not done."

For Moose, it spiraled out of control with the shooting at the school on Monday. "To hunt down a child who is going to school ...unacceptable," he says.

The shootings appear to have started last Wednesday with a bullet through the window of a crafts store. No one was hurt. But an hour later, a 55-year old man was killed in a grocery store parking lot. The next day, Thursday, was a bloodbath. A 39-year-old man was murdered while mowing a lawn. Thirty minutes later, a cab driver was killed at a gas station. Twenty five minutes after that a woman was murdered outside a post office. Little more than an hour after that, a woman was killed at another gas station.

Then, Thursday night, a 72-year-old man was killed on a street corner in Washington D.C.: Five shots, five dead, Thursday alone. The next day, another shooting, a woman was wounded outside a crafts store.

As a precaution, county officials secured the schools, keeping children inside. But they also made a point of reassuring parents.

"None of the victims have been of anything close to school age. None of the locations are close to schools so please, continue with the day, I think the school kids are safe," Moose said in a press conference Thursday.

But on Monday, the 13-year-old was shot.

Did those statements goad the sniper? Says Moose: "My only response is that we will continue to talk about the safety of our children it will remain a priority, so if people want to surmise that showing concern for children goaded this individual into harming a child, I don't know what to do about that because we will continue to focus on protecting our children."

The heavy media coverage cuts both ways. Thousands of tips are being generated but there is also a dangerous mind game with the killer himself. Moose is asked if he thinks the killer is watching him on TV: "I don't know, but certainly experience and training tells you it is very likely. But I don't want to assume anything."

Moose is using top behavioral scientists from the FBI and Secret Service. They are trying to understand the mind of the killer. Gregg McCrary is a former profiler for the FBI. He is not working on this case, but he has tracked similar serial killers in the past.

From his past experience, McCrary offers a view of the killer: "He sees the world as a very threatening place. And a place that's been very unfair to him. That he's underappreciated, that his skills have not been recognized and he's taking it out on us."

What does the killer get out of it? "Playing god he's like a hunter, warrior type of person," says McCrary.

Today, Moose suggested that former cops and FBI agents, speculating about the case, are undermining the investigation.

"Unfortunately we have any number of talking heads in the media, retired police professionals, and as you know as a police professional it's very, very insulting when it's a retired police professional because we know they have not been briefed, they have not seen any of the evidence, they've not talked to any of the investigators," says Moose. "They are calling the suspect or suspects in this case. They're calling them names. They're ranting and raving on all of the various stations.

They're telling people in the community information about the age and therefore those people are starting to have a closed mind about calling us and giving us information because they've heard someone on TV say that this is the age and therefore they're not calling about someone that may be younger or older so I would hope that those police professionals would realize that maybe they don't live here, maybe they don't have children that live here and so its all fun to be on television."

Frustration is growing because this is a race against time with little help from hard evidence. Meticulous searches turned up the tarot card and two shell casings. But the type of rifle is common. It doesn't require much training to fire accurately. One witness saw a white panel truck leaving the scene of one shooting. Now police are searching every similar truck they find. There are no clues in how the victims were chosen. They range in age from 13 to 72, men and women, minority and white.

Sonny Buchanan, 39, was a landscaper, mowing a lawn for a friend. Jack Snider was his nephew. "He would always volunteer every waking hour he could you know. He was either working or volunteering," says Snider.

With perhaps little time to catch the killer, Moose has turned to a Canadian criminologist, Kim Rossmo, who's developed a computer program that helps police sharpen their focus. It tries to narrow down where a criminal lives based on where he strikes. The geographical pattern of the killings is not random, Rossmo says.

Rossmo showed Pelley a successful case in Vancouver where the computer mapped the crimes and narrowed the search from square miles to a few square blocks.

"There is a balance between a desire to operate in a comfort zone a place they are familiar with and the desire for anonymity," says Rossmo. "The offender doesn't want to be seen, the offender wants a wide range of target choices, he doesn't want his vehicle or his face recognized by somebody who knows him in the neighborhood. At the same time, he doesn't want to go so far a field that he is unfamiliar with the turf and he accidentally may do something that he doesn't mean to do. So you have those two forces pushing on the offender."

Moose says he needs a tip: "I think that we are bring a lot of different things to the situation we're bring science, we're bringing technology we bring old-fashioned detective work. But the most important piece for me is that we need community members to talk to us about things that they things that they have heard people that may be acting in a way that is uncommon, people that may be excited about these deaths. People that may be upset with the police and their reaction to the situation so many things are solved in law enforcement because people talk to the police, the police and the community working together solve many more crimes than we have been able to solve with science a lot of our business is done with community members talking to police officers."

There is no amount of money, no facility, no equipment that can replace a tip," he continues.

In the last few days in the community, outdoor cafes have pulled their tables and chairs inside. Teachers have taped paper over the windows in their classrooms. Is Moose surprised by this level of fear?

"After Sept. 11, I'm not surprised," he says. "We were that scared then. I just hope it does not become a constant state of affairs for anybody in this country. We are trying the best we can because it doesn't feel good to live this way."