Fate for the Beltway Snipers
John Gaeta received a letter of apology this week from the man who shot him point-blank in the neck at a Louisiana mall in 2002.
The shooter was Lee Boyd Malvo, the younger half of the so-called D.C. sniper team that terrorized the Southeast and the nation’s capital that year. Malvo is serving a life sentence. His mentor in crime, John Allen Muhammad, was executed in November.
The Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Ten people were killed and three others critically injured in various locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia. It was widely speculated that a single sniper was using the Capital Beltway for travel, possibly in a white van or truck. It was later learned that the rampage was perpetrated by one man, John Allen Muhammad, and one minor, Lee Boyd Malvo, driving a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan, and had apparently begun the month before with murders and robbery in Louisiana and Alabama, which had resulted in three deaths.
Though Gaeta, 58, has heard since 2006 that Malvo admitted shooting a man in Hammond, Louisiana, it wasn’t until last month that he received confirmation from a pair of Hammond police officers.
Then came Malvo’s succinct letter, dated February 21, which arrived on Monday.
“Mr. Gaeta,” it read. “I am truly sorry for the pain I caused you and your loved ones. I was relieved to hear that you suffered no paralyzing injuries and that you are alive. Sincerely, Lee Boyd Malvo.”
Gaeta, who read the letter to CNN over the phone Wednesday, said Malvo printed and signed his name.
Malvo was 17 when he shot Gaeta, just three months before he and Muhammad were arrested in Maryland and charged with multiple counts of murder.
