Tarot card report angers police in sniper manhunt
Posted on 10/10/2002 2:39:03 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Tarot card report angers police in sniper manhunt
Officials unsure if latest slaying at gas station is related to other killings
10/10/2002
As police investigated another fatal shooting in the Washington area Wednesday night, investigators assailed media reports about a note that a sniper apparently left for police, saying the disclosure may have jeopardized their chance to communicate with the man terrorizing the region.
Police sources who have read a tarot "death" card left by the assailant after he shot a 13-year-old boy Monday outside a Bowie, Md., school, said Wednesday that in addition to an apparent taunt scrawled on the back - "Dear Policeman, I am God" - the card also contained a handwritten request that the note not be revealed to the news media.
Sources said some detectives had hoped that if they honored the request, the sniper might communicate with investigators again.
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On Wednesday night, a man was shot to death as he pumped gas at a service station north of Manassas, Va., 25 miles west of the nation's capital. Investigators were trying to determine whether the same sniper was responsible.
"We have an adult male who was pumping gas who is deceased," said Prince William County, Va., police spokesman Dennis Mangan. "And that, at least on its surface, fits the pattern we've been seeing elsewhere."
Mr. Mangan cautioned: "It's still in the earliest stages of investigation. We don't know exactly what we have yet."
Police released few details of the shooting but said they were looking for two males seen driving away in a white vehicle afterward. Police said they did not know where the shots came from or how many were fired.
The incident was strikingly similar to earlier shootings in the wave of sniper violence. If a link is established, it will be the third shooting to occur at a gas station, the third within a few hundred yards of a major highway interchange and one of several that took place in heavily trafficked shopping areas.
Wednesday's shooting occurred 36 hours after the 13-year-old was shot outside the Maryland school.
The Monday shooting, which critically wounded the boy, followed similar sniper attacks in Montgomery County, Md.; Washington, D.C.; and Spotsylvania County, Va. Six people have died in the shootings, which began Oct. 2, and two have been wounded.
Investigators spent much of Wednesday trying to determine the significance of the tarot card, the insight the message may provide into the gunman's thinking, and the impact of its public disclosure.
Police in Prince George's County, Md., searching woods near the school after Monday's shooting, found the card, which one investigator called the sniper's "calling card." Sources said police discovered the card and a spent shell casing near an area of matted grass in the woods where the sniper apparently had lain in wait and fired at the schoolboy.
It was the first shell casing discovered in any of the shootings.
Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose angrily chastised reporters at a news conference Wednesday morning, saying disclosures about the card and its note threatened to impede the huge manhunt, which involves investigators from both states and Washington, D.C., as well as federal officials.
No tarot cards were found near the shooting scenes in Washington or Virginia, officials said. It could not be determined Wednesday whether investigators have found tarot cards near where the Montgomery County attacks occurred.
The 13-year-old boy, whose name is being withheld because he is considered a witness, remained hospitalized in critical but stable condition Wednesday night.
Ballistics tests have linked six of the eight shootings to the same high-powered rifle, according to authorities. Bullet fragments from the other two attacks could not be accurately tested. In a similar shooting, a clerk was wounded Sept. 14 by a bullet fired into a Silver Spring, Md., liquor store. Authorities said tests on bullet fragments from that shooting were inconclusive.
Although police sources did not describe the design on the "death" card found in Bowie, the author of the Encyclopedia of Tarot, Stuard Kaplan, said that such cards almost always bear the image of a skeleton, a reaper and the Roman numeral XIII.
Mr. Kaplan said tarot originated as a 15th-century Italian card game. He said the cards are now used in pursuits such as fortunetelling and meditation and are widely collected.
The "death" card "doesn't really mean death," Mr. Kaplan said. "More usually than not, it means transformation, a clearing away of the old to make way for the new."
James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said this killer, unlike most serial killers, doesn't get his satisfaction from seeing his victims suffer. Instead, this one appears to be enjoying a cat-and-mouse game with police, Mr. Fox said.
The Washington Post and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Question is, how WILL we track down these bastards ???
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