CHRIS USHER/APIX FOR TIME DRAGNET: Police use flashlights to scour a Virginia gas station after the seventh murder

Inside the Sniper Manhunt
	How a killer's diabolical methods and terrifying effect have launched an investigation like no other, with new methods and armies of cops on the case. A look behind the police-tape lines
	By Amanda Ripley | Washington

Posted Sunday, Oct. 13, 2002; 10:31 a.m. EST
Pay attention, profilers have long warned, to a serial killer's first strike. The first of the bullets that strafed the suburbs of America's capital last week sliced through the air over a drab strip-mall parking lot in Aspen Hill, Md., and cracked a nickel-size hole in the front window of a Michaels craft store. It then arched through a leafy display of silk autumnal bouquets, zipped behind the head of a female cashier and pierced a hole through the lamp over the register of lane No. 5. Emerging on the other side, it whizzed over a Christmas ornament display and finally ricocheted off a shelf of "Inspiration for the Heart" mini prayer books. Unlike every shot to come, the bullet hurt no one.

The bullet fragments, lying there on the store floor, not far from a selection of bride and groom wedding-cake figurines, communicated the theme of this diabolical case: no matter how upscale the neighborhood, no matter how comfortable the surroundings, you too could be a target. Here, among the endless rows of supermarkets, party stores and gas stations, not unlike the other strip malls that crisscross the U.S., a malicious hunter—or hunters—has taken position in the natural habitat of contemporary Americans. And incredibly, each time, despite busy, well-lit streets, no one noticed the shooter. As it turns out, the suburbs, with the camouflage of hedgerows, neon signs and anonymous traffic, make a better shooting gallery than a dark alley.

But if the randomness of the crime is rare, it has been met with an equally ground-breaking counterattack. Because the crime scenes ring the nation's capital—and because this area was so recently scarred by terrorist attacks—little has been spared in the search for the killer. Says Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan: "Everyone rushed forward to help us that first day. I don't think that would have happened before 9/11." An estimated 1,000 people are working on the case, including Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms units, U.S. Marshals and state police. One kindergarten-through-second-grade school in Montgomery County was alternately watched over last week by police, Secret Service agents and the FBI. The feds have donated premiere ballistics forensics investigators. The FBI. is creating animated 3-D computer-graphic displays to reconstruct the crime scene and help calculate the sniper's position, in hopes of jogging potential witnesses' memories. And federal law-enforcement sources tell TIME that the bureau has asked the Pentagon to search its records for recently discharged GIs who went through sniper school. The schools teach snipers to work in tandem—one as the spotter, the other as the shooter.

For the police, the P.R. challenge alone has been a dizzying challenge. Investigators had to carefully weigh their obligation to keep the public informed and calmed while knowing that they were also talking to the killer. At each of the 50 or so press briefings since the first shooting, officials have agonized over what effect public statements may have on the shooter. Hopefully, Montgomery County police chief Charles Moose told TIME, "Nobody ever has to live with the fact that maybe something they did kept this person or these people out there any longer than they have been." In one week, Moose handled almost three times as many murders as his department usually sees in a month.

Meanwhile, regular folks have awkwardly adapted to the presence of a sniper in their community. After a 13-year-old boy was shot in the stomach walking into school on Oct. 7, events were unilaterally canceled: field trips, all outdoor school sporting events, four homecoming celebrations, even sat exams. Park rangers have been spotted monitoring soccer fields—the de facto town squares for Montgomery County's affluent families. From the backseat of a Fairfax, Va., woman's car, a 5-year-old who has been newly forbidden from riding his bike asks, "Mommy, will it hurt if I get shot?" At the scene of the first, victimless shooting, employees now walk zigzag across the parking lot. They still take smoke breaks, but now they stand pressed up against cement columns, trying to act nonchalant.

The day the shootings began on Oct. 2, it took several hours for the bewildered Michaels employees to realize they might be part of something bigger. That's when they heard that a middle-aged man had been gunned down walking through a Shoppers Food Warehouse parking lot, a little over two miles away. Not only did the killer brazenly fire in the waning daylight hours of rush-hour congestion; he shot James Martin right across from a police station.

Just five miles away, James (Sonny) Buchanan was mowing a patch of grass off the clogged Rockville Pike artery the next morning when a bullet ripped open his chest. Five miles northeast and half an hour later, Premkumar Walekar crumpled to the ground, murdered while putting $5 worth of gas into his cab. His daughter, watching the live bulletin on TV, recognized the American flags in the back window of his cab and rushed to the scene, where she identified him. Two miles away, unaware of the rippling circle of violence, Sarah Ramos was killed while sitting on a park bench, waiting for a ride. A witness reported seeing a white van with two occupants screech out of the area. Police began frantically stopping white vans, but a little over an hour later, Lori Lewis Rivera was struck down while vacuuming her minivan outside a Shell station. At 9:20 p.m., about a five-mile drive from the last shooting, 72-year-old Pascal Charlot was cut down with a shot below the neck as he crossed the street.

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