Fear in a Sniper's Wake: 'This Guy's Our Neighbor'

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Fear in a Sniper's Wake: 'This Guy's Our Neighbor'

By FRANCIS X CLINES

ASPEN HILL, Md., Oct. 6 — The police chief, his offerings of fresh information running thin, could offer only a guess today that the elusive dead-aim sniper "may be gloating" nearby in a suburban enclave much like this one.

Kevin Boink, a local resident bucking the mood of fear by going shopping, agreed as he skirted a gasoline station where on Thursday the rifleman killed one victim with a single shot from afar.

"I feel like most people: that this guy's our neighbor," Mr. Boink said, taking a casual look around.

He stood in the sort of prosaic shoppers' parking lot that the police theorize the sniper has favored. Since Wednesday, the shooter has killed six people at random and wounded a seventh in a 50-mile swath of Washington suburbs.

"I tend to think he lives a few miles from here and he's more meticulous than the usual thrill killer," Mr. Boink said, adding his theory to the speculation that has been flooding the region in lieu of facts. "I don't think he's done; he's going to do something else."

This was also the fear of Police Chief Charles Moose of Montgomery County when he imagined the killer safely gloating.

In a news conference this morning, the first of four, the chief asked the public once more to call with any fresh bit of information.

"We remain convinced someone in our county knows who's engaged in this," Chief Moose said, suggesting that an altered routine or a touch of strange behavior could signal someone as a suspect.

"We're not convinced we've talked to the right people yet," he said.

The suspicion that the gunman remains nearby was bolstered this evening when Chief Moose introduced Dr. Kim Rossmo, a criminologist who will apply his new specialty as a geographic profiler to try to find the killer's likely neighborhood.

Using a computer technique developed in Canada, Dr. Rossmo will work in Montgomery County with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms by inserting all known data, including information from the crime scenes, hundreds of tips and criminal behavior patterns, into the program.

Geographic profiling manages information, but it does not solve crimes, Dr. Rossmo said. It could be useful in solving "the needle in the haystack problem" when investigators are flooded around the clock with information, suspicions and tips, as in this case, he said.

Dr. Rossmo said the technique had been used in Canada and Britain with some success in investigations of multiple homicides, rape, theft, fraud and other felonies.

"On average we can determine where an offender lives within the top half-square-mile" of a crime scene measuring 10 square miles, once the data is fed in and cross-referenced, Dr. Rossmo said. He added that the computer would not be stymied by the fact that the sniper here ranged 50 miles farther afield on Friday when he wounded a woman in Fredericksburg, Va.

Chief Moose quickly stepped in to emphasize that he was trying geographic profiling as one more tool in a difficult investigation. "We'll see how helpful it is," he said.

The police still searched for a white cargo truck that the one known witness told detectives had sped from a shooting scene on Thursday in a two-hour rampage in which four people were shot at separate locations within five mile of one another in Montgomery County.

The sixth victim was killed Thursday night just across the county line in Washington, and the Virginia woman was wounded the next afternoon. Investigators conceded that the manhunt would have to cover a much larger part of the Washington commuter area.

Chief Moose again played down the arrest on an unrelated auto theft charge of Robert Baker, 33, a Montgomery County resident who was the subject of phone tips about his possible involvement with guns or a militia movement. He is not a suspect, Chief Moose repeated even as more tips about gun fanciers poured into the police hot line.

On this clear, sunny day, residents moved gingerly about town in a mood summed up by Doug Duncan, the Montgomery County executive. "Every day you wake up and there hasn't been another reported shooting is a good day," Mr. Duncan said.

Puzzlement vied with grief at the funeral this morning of Premkumar A. Walekar, 54, a cabdriver who was shot on Thursday as he fueled his taxi here at a Mobil station across from a parking lot.

"I don't know what the killer gained," Lazarus Borge, a relative, said at Mr. Walekar's funeral in Takoma Park, Md. "I don't know how he profited by killing an innocent, God-fearing person who has a loving family at home."

The police theorize that the sniper used a long-range hunting rifle or a military assault rifle to fire from cover and sped away from the crime scenes without being seen or leaving evidence.

His victims were shot once. Six died almost instantly, and the seventh, a woman shopping in Fredericksburg, Va., was severely wounded in the back.

"Smoking-gun type leads maybe aren't there," Chief Moose said at a news conference, but detectives have more than 800 tips to pursue and are asking for more. He warned against simplistic labels that could cause tunnel vision in the search, saying the terms terrorist, thrill killer or serial killer did not seem to fit the sniper's pattern so far.

Wary residents tended to agree.

"This guy is much more meticulous than the typical spree killer," Mr. Boink maintained, sounding as authoritative as anyone else in the target zone of the killer and, now, of the geographic profiler.