The Beltway Snipers: Trained to Kill— Ep. 3 | MK Confidential

The Megyn Kelly Show

This episode of MK Confidential explores the chilling story of Lee Boyd Malvo, the teenage sniper involved in the 2002 Beltway Sniper attacks, and his complex

Key takeaways

• Malvo's upbringing was marked by abandonment, instability, and emotional trauma, making him highly vulnerable to manipulation.
• John Allen Muhammad exploited Malvo's desire for familial connection, grooming him as a 'son' and military-style disciple.

Main topics

• The psychological manipulation of Lee Boyd Malvo by John Allen Muhammad
• The FBI's forensic linguistic analysis during the Beltway Sniper investigation

Notable quotes

He's now 15 years old.

Then Mr. Muhammad came by one day and found the back door slightly ajar... He lifted me out of bed and carried me out in his arms because I was too weak to walk.

Conclusion

The episode reveals that Malvo was not merely a willing participant but a deeply traumatized youth

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) It is a drizzly Saturday evening in Tacoma, Washington, February 16, 2002. On the corner of East 34th Street and East Roosevelt Avenue, there is a pale yellow house that looks out over the city's dockyards, the Puyallup River, and the fog sitting on Commencement Bay. The porch faces the street and the city spread out below it. Beside the front door, a small sign reads, Please Remove Shoes. This house belongs to a U.S. Army soldier named Joseph Nichols and his wife, Issa. Neither of them is home. Issa has gone to collect their 13-year-old daughter, Tamara, from a sleepover. The only people in the house are the Nichols' 21-year-old niece, Kenya Cook, who lives here with her aunt and uncle, and Kenya's six-month-old daughter, Angelia. There is food on the stove. Upstairs, the baby is lying on a towel on a bed. It's nearly bath time. At about 7 o'clock, the doorbell rings. Kenya comes downstairs in a shirt, jeans, and socks. The porch light is on, throwing light onto the front steps under the overhang that keeps whoever is standing out there dry. But it is dark, and the window set into the front door is a long, narrow strip of cut glass. It's hard to see anything through it. Everyone who knows Kenya Cook says the same thing about her. She is careful. She would never open that door to a stranger. So she has a reason. Maybe it's her estranged boyfriend who came by the house earlier in the day. Or maybe through that narrow strip of glass, whoever is out there simply looks like a kid from the neighborhood. Kenya opens the front door and looks out onto Roosevelt Avenue. A single bullet goes through the thin bone just below her left eye and lodges at the base of her skull. She goes down in the foyer. And then nothing happens. The ejected shell casing lies on the floor beside her. Upstairs, the baby is still on her towel waiting to be washed. In the kitchen, the food is still on the stove. A few minutes later, headlights turn into the driveway. Issa Nichols stays in the car to pull it into the garage. Her daughter gets out and walks around to the front of the home to go in the front door and open the garage from the inside. The front door is wide open, which is odd. A second later, the 13-year-old is running back to the car. Mommy, she screams, Mommy, hurry. Police look at Kenya's boyfriend first because he had been at the house earlier the same day. They bring him in, they question him, then they let him go. After that, there is nowhere to go. There was a young woman dead in a foyer, a brass casing on the floor, and a doorbell that rang. The case is cold right from the start. Issa Nichols has the blood cleaned out of the foyer. Her husband installs a camera above the front door. There are no viable clues to go on. For eight months, nobody knows who fired that shot. Speaker 3 (3:15) But there would be more. Speaker 2 (3:17) Many more. 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Use my promo code Megan at HomeTitleLock.com to get a free title history report plus a free trial of million dollar triple lock protection so you can make sure you're not already a victim. That's HomeTitleLock.com promo code Megan or use the link in the description. The person who rang Kenya Cook's doorbell is Lee Boyd Malvo. He is 16 years old, two days away from his 17th birthday. How did this teenager end up on that doorstep? And the question that has never been settled about him, not in a courtroom, not in the 20 years since, how much of what he did was his to choose? He's born in Kingston, Jamaica, on the 18th of February, 1985. His father is Leslie Malvo, a brick mason who went as far as the sixth grade. He has other children by other women, which in Jamaica at the time is neither unusual nor a point of conversation. Of all his children, Leslie says Lee looks the most like him. His mother is Una James. She is 20 when she has him. As a girl, she walked miles to find her own father and ask him to pay for her schooling, and he said no. What she wants for her son is the education she was refused. Speaker 2 (5:44) Leslie, the father, is the soft one. The boy says he wants to be a pilot, so his dad folds him a paper plane and the two of them fly it around the furniture carefully so as not to break anything. When the boy does break his mother's porcelain vase and hears her shriek his name from the other room, it's Leslie who steps in front of him. Leave the boy alone, he says. I broke it. He takes his son everywhere. He calls him Little Man. Una is the hard one. Playing is an interruption of studying, and by his father's account, when Leslie is not there, she beats Malvo. In 1988, Leslie takes a masonry contract in Grand Cayman, six months at a stretch. He sends money home twice a month and opens a savings account because he's going to buy them a house. He never does. In August of 1990, Una empties the account, packs up the entire house, and moves the boys somewhere she is fairly sure Leslie will not find them. But Leslie does find them. In the summer of 1991, and he brings two flight jackets covered in military tags because he remembered his son wants to be a pilot. He goes away for good. Malvo is only five. Malvo is nine the first time his mother leaves him. She boards him with a woman he met the day before. This is the first of many separations. Over the next five years, Malvo is handed from one household to another. When he's 10, he goes looking for his father, finds him, and asks if he can stay. Leslie tells him no. Malvo believes the real reason was the woman with whom his father was living, who treated Malvo like an intrusion. Through all of it, Malvo is consistently on the honor roll at school. In January of 1999, Malvo's mother leaves Jamaica for the Caribbean island of Antigua in the care of a friend and then of a teacher. She sends for him to join her in the summer of 1999. He is 14. when he reaches Antigua, and his mother is the only person he knows on the island. In the early days of October 2000, in St. John's, the capital of Antigua, there is an electronics shop called Zaza Yellows, where the neighborhood kids go to use the computers and play video games. Malvo goes there. The place is usually crowded, so mostly he finds a corner and watches other people play. And on several Fridays, he notices a father and a son. They're playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, and they're laughing. The boy is flying from the outside view, and his father says, nice scenery, but remind me not to fly with you. Malvo stands in the corner and watches them. Speaker 7 (8:36) He's now 15 years old. Speaker 2 (8:39) Malvo says later the level of trust, their