RICHMOND, Va. -- Twenty years ago this month, a string of sniper-style shootings terrorized people in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. At the end of the nearly month-long rampage, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed 10 people and injured three more.
The shooters targeted men, women, and children at standing gas stations and walking outside in shopping centers and restaurant parking lots.
The killings began Wednesday, October 2, 2002, when a man was gunned down crossing a Montgomery County, Maryland parking lot. Four more people were shot and killed the very next day in Maryland and a fifth victim was killed in Washington, D.C.
On October 4, 2002, the snipers attacked their first victim in Virginia, when Caroline Seawell was shot outside Michael's craft store in Spotsylvania County.
Seawell survived the shooting.
The snipers shot four more people over the next two weeks. including Kenneth Bridges.
The Philadelphia man was killed pumping gas in Spotsylvania County.
Bridges’ murder intensified the search for a white van or box truck which several witnesses reported seeing near some of the shooting scenes.
At the time, the Exxon shooting in Spotsylvania County was the closest the snipers came to Richmond. But that changed the night of Saturday, October 19.
Just before 8 p.m. that Saturday, a Florida man named Jeffrey Hopper was shot in the abdomen while walking to his car after dining with his wife at the Ponderosa restaurant on England Street in Ashland, Virginia.
Police closed roads and interstates around the restaurant after the shooting, but the snipers got away.
Hopper survived the shooting and evidence recovered at the crime scene would prove crucial in catching the snipers.
Investigators found a letter tacked to a tree in the woods near the Ashland restaurant. The message threatened law enforcement and indicated children were "not safe anywhere at any time."
Those words led to school shutdowns across Central Virginia.
The note also contained a phone number.
On Monday, October 21, 2002, the snipers call the number.
Law enforcement traced the call to a gas station at the corner of West Broad Street and Parham Road in Henrico's West End.
A small army of investigators swarmed the Exxon station and found a white van parked next to a pay phone.
About ten hours later, police announced the men arrested in the van were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But the end was finally near.
The day before the Ponderosa shooting, the sniper called Monsignor William Sullivan, a priest at an Ashland church.
The caller mentioned a fatal shooting at a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama.
The Sniper Task Force connected with police investigating the Alabama crime. A fingerprint taken from a gun magazine found at the Alabama scene was linked to 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo.
Investigators learn Malvo was traveling with John Allen Muhammad. The pair was not in a white box truck, but a blue Chevy Caprice.
Muhammad, a former Army sergeant, owned a Bushmaster rifle.
On October 22, 2002, the snipers kill a bus driver in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Two days later, at a rest stop along Interstate 70 in Myersville, Maryland police find Muhammad and Malvo sleeping in their car. In the trunk, investigators found the sniper rifle.
Both Muhammad and Malvo were convicted at trial.
Muhammad, the sniper shooting mastermind, was sentenced to death and executed in 2009.
Malvo, the teenage shooter, was given multiple life prison sentences at a supermax prison in southwest Virginia.
While many parts of the sniper investigation played out in public, there are still things that happened behind the scenes that were not made public.
In the coming weeks, CBS 6 Crime Insider Jon Burkett will share those previously untold accounts from people tasked with protecting Central Virginia and who helped crack this case.
This is a developing story, so anyone with more information can email newstips@wtvr.com to send a tip.
