Spy Killer

• Share

ALL THAT WITNESSES REMEMBER IS A YOUNG MAN OF medium build with dark hair who wore a tan jacket -- and carried a semiautomatic rifle. He emerged from a brown compact car as commuters waited during an otherwise perfect, sunlit Monday-morning rush hour to turn left into the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Firing in bursts at close range, the man walked up the line of cars, then down, killing two CIA employees and wounding three others. In the chaos of shattered glass, screams and blood, he returned to his car and drove away. Was it a calculated hit or the demented act of a lonely psychopath? Police took all the usual steps: examining fingerprints on one victim's car, retrieving a spent shell casing, checking local gun shops for recent purchases of semiautomatic weapons and stopping commuters along Dolley Madison Boulevard in hopes of finding further witnesses. At week's end the killer and his motive remained a mystery despite the best efforts of federal and local investigators and support personnel.