Lee Boyd Malvo

Under federal laws, neither Muhammad nor Malvo was legally allowed to purchase or possess guns, with both classified as prohibited persons under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Malvo was initially arrested under federal charges, but they were dropped.

He was transferred to Virginian custody and sent to jail in Fairfax County.

He was charged by the Commonwealth of Virginia for two capital crimes: The murder of FBI analyst Linda Franklin "in the commission of an act of terrorism" (the phrase being added to Virginian law after the September 11 attacks) and the murder of more than one person in a three-year period.

He was also charged with the unlawful use of a firearm in the murder of Franklin.

Initially, a Fairfax attorney, Michael Arif, was appointed to represent him, along with Thomas B. Walsh and Mark J. Petrovich.

Later, prominent Richmond attorney Craig Cooley was appointed to the team and assumed a leadership role.

While in jail, Malvo made a recorded confession to Detective Samuel Walker in which he stated that he "intended to kill them all".

Due to extensive pre-trial publicity around the entire Washington metropolitan area, a change of venue was granted.

The trial was moved more than 150 miles to Chesapeake, Virginia.

Lee Boyd Malvo (born February 18, 1985), also known as John Lee Malvo, is an American convicted murderer who, along with John Allen Muhammad, committed a series of murders dubbed the D.C. sniper attacks over a three-week period in October 2002.

Malvo was aged 17 during the span of the shootings.

He was serving multiple life sentences at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, a supermax prison.

Lee Boyd Malvo was born on February 18, 1985, to Leslie Malvo, a mason, and Una James, a seamstress.

The couple, who never married, lived in Kingston, Jamaica.

Una James left Leslie Malvo in 1990, when Lee Malvo was five years old.

James and Malvo moved to the hill town of Endeavour, Jamaica, to be with her sister Marie Lawrence for almost a year.

They moved back to Kingston, and later to St. Martin.

When Malvo was nine years old he was sent to live with his aunt Marie, where he stayed for almost a year.

In sixth grade, Malvo did so well on an entrance exam that he was sent to York Castle High School.

Jamaican pastor Lorenzo King baptized Malvo into the Seventh-day Adventist Church at 14 years of age in 1999.

Malvo later moved to Antigua in 1999 to be with his mother.

He registered at Antigua and Barbuda Seventh-day Adventist School, where he got good grades and also won a school award in the 100 meter run.

Malvo and his mother, Una Sceon James, first met John Allen Muhammad in Antigua and Barbuda around 1999, where she and Muhammad developed a strong friendship.

Later, Una left Antigua for Fort Myers, Florida, using false documents.

She left her son with Muhammad, reportedly planning to have him follow her later.

Malvo was converted to Islam by Muhammad in March 2001.

Muhammad also isolated Malvo from his mother.

Malvo arrived illegally in Miami in 2001, and in December of that year, he and his mother were apprehended by the Border Patrol in Bellingham, Washington.

In January 2002, Malvo was released on a $1,500 bond.

Malvo subsequently lived in a homeless shelter with Muhammad in Bellingham.

Malvo enrolled in Bellingham High School with Muhammad falsely listed as his father.

He did not make any friends, according to his classmates.

While in the Tacoma, Washington, area, according to his statements to investigators, Malvo shoplifted a Bushmaster XM-15 from Bull's Eye Shooter Supply and practiced his marksmanship on the Bull's Eye firing range adjacent to the gun shop.

Muhammad was executed in 2009.

Although the two men's actions were classified by the media as psychopathy attributable to serial killer characteristics, researchers have debated whether their psychopathy meets this classification or that of spree killing.

The D.C. sniper attacks were the last in a series of shootings across the United States connected to these individuals which began on the West Coast.

Muhammad had befriended the juvenile Malvo and enlisted him in the attacks.

According to Craig Cooley, one of Malvo's defense attorneys, Malvo believed Muhammad when he told him that the $10 million ransom sought from the U.S. government to stop the sniper killings would be used to establish a Utopian society for 140 homeless Black children on a Canadian compound.

In 2012, Malvo claimed that Muhammad sexually abused him.