US: The sniper who has mesmerised a continent - and eluded the police of seven jurisdictions - has lost patience with his pursuers, saying he will kill until the corpses are stacked up in body bags unless he is paid a $10 million ransom.
Developments continued last night as police closed part of a major Maryland highway after receiving a report that a white box truck pulled up next to a school bus and pointed a gun at the children inside.
The increasingly angry threats from a man who has killed 10 and wounded three others in the greater Washington area were made in a series of handwritten letters, reports said yesterday.
Details of the letters revealed embarrassing details about the sprawling, multi-agency investigation which appears to have been too busy to listen to the man it was looking for.
It now appears that the killer himself had been trying to call the police hotline on six occasions, only to get a busy signal or ultimately have a harassed FBI official hang up on him.
As a result of the way he had been treated, the sniper wrote, "five people had to die".
The new threats emerged on a day when police cruisers patrolled the edges of schools in the counties of Virginia and Maryland where the sniper has stalked his victims, after the authorities made public a threat to kill children.
Classroom doors were bolted, and window shades drawn, as schools across the area imposed emergency measures.
The latest missive from the sniper, single-spaced and several pages long, was discovered in a wooded area of Montgomery county, the Baltimore Sun reported, where a bus driver was shot dead on his morning rounds on Tuesday. Yesterday, police confirmed the driver, Mr Conrad Johnson (35), a father of two, was the 13th victim of the sniper's three-week rampage.
Chillingly, it is believed to repeat threats first expressed in a letter tacked to a tree near the steakhouse in Virginia that was the scene of Saturday's shooting: to kill at least five people, and to kill until bodies come home in bags.
The letter said the deadline for handing over the ransom was Monday. However, the Washington Post reported that FBI analysts looking for forensic clues meant the letter was not read until noon on Sunday. The sniper said the threats were retribution for his treatment by police, who hung up on him six times.
Yesterday, the authorities confirmed at least two of his calls had been mishandled by an FBI trainee staffing the public tip line.
Apparently, the trainee thought the call from the sniper was a hoax, a mistaken assumption that set off an angry tirade, with the killer screaming "Hear me out" and "I'm in charge", and "I am God" before the trainee put the phone down, the Washington Post reported.
- (Guardian Service)