The Sydney
Morning Herald reports that John Allen Muhammad, a tough Gulf War veteran
schooled in marksmanship, the prime suspect in the deadly US sniper attacks,
once spent his evenings quietly playing chess with the boy with whom he was
later arrested. Sitting opposite each other at a small table in a trendy coffee
bar, John Muhammad and 17-year-old John Malvo would spend hours pondering the
board and trading chess pieces, ignoring the loud throng of youths around them.
The San
Francisco Chronicle reports: "The pair often whiled away the evening
at Stuart's Coffee House, a cozy place midway between the YMCA and the Light
House Mission where they lived. Muhammad would order a single cup of coffee
and challenge Malvo to chess matches that Muhammad usually won."
"They played chess, a game that requires careful attention to strategy,
for hours at a time. They were rarely out of each other's sight," says
the Miami
Herald.
The Bellingham
Herald says that the people at Stuart's Coffee House remember sniper suspect
John Allen Muhammad as a quiet chess player who never wanted to be separated
from his heavy Army duffel bag.
The New
York Times quotes a psychologist who specializes in extreme criminal behavior
and works for a major metropolitan police department: "There is a relationship
he is having with the police and the media. It is one in which he feels he is
superior, that he is God. He is enjoying the chess game."
The Globe
and Mail quotes William McDonald, a Georgetown University sociology professor
and expert in criminal law, who commented on the police tactics in the case
of the Beltway Sniper:"They're playing chess games with the guy,"
he said, "psychological games."
"Usually chess players like to play other chess players. They didn't,"
said Garry Fleming, owner of a Bellingham cafe where the two spent hours bent
over one of the restaurant's game sets, according to the Barbados
Daily Nation.