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Will Muhammad execution bring true closure to ‘Beltway Sniper’ case?

November 10, 8:36 AM

Seattle Gun Rights Examiner

Dave Workman

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If justice is served, by the time they close the doors for business Tuesday evening at Tacoma’s Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply, one of the two people who brought this shop national infamy, under its former ownership, will be dead by lethal injection.

What a pity, some in Tacoma might observe, that Virginia doesn’t publicly hang people like John Allen Muhammad, instead. Found guilty of ten slayings in the Autumn 2002 “Beltway Sniper” attacks with the help of his protégé, Lee Boyd Malvo, Muhammad left a trail of murder that began in Tacoma months before the Washington, D.C.-area homicides.

On Feb. 16, 2002 – months before the carnage in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia – Keenya Cook became their first victim, shot at point blank range with a borrowed .45-caliber pistol when she opened the door of her aunt’s home to a knock. That the bullet apparently was meant for Isa Nichols, Cook’s aunt who had testified against Muhammad in a child custody battle with his ex-wife, Mildred.

There is a theory that Muhammad intended to murder Mildred, who was then living in Maryland, and to mask that crime as just part of the broader sniper killings. Incredibly, Muhammad’s attorney is asserting that the State of Virginia is rushing to execute his client, even though Muhammad has been on death row for seven years. How much time does someone have to appeal a case in which he is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt?

Muhammad, born John Allen Williams in Louisiana, had been barred from seeing his children by a restraining order. An Army veteran who served in the first Gulf War, he made up fantastic stories about his activities. He became a mentor to Malvo, an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, whom he sometimes identified as his son. Neither could legally possess or own a firearm.

As a pair, they were a walking murder spree. Their reign of domestic terror brought down a prominent Tacoma businessman and former Army Ranger, Brian Borgelt, original owner of the Bull’s Eye, housed in an older building along Tacoma’s Puyallup Avenue. When the Bushmaster rifle Muhammad and Malvo used in the killings was traced back to the Bull’s Eye, a separate disturbing saga began.

In its effort to race John Allen Muhammad to his death before his appeals could be pursued, the state of Virginia will execute a severely mentally ill man who also suffered from Gulf War Syndrome the day before Veterans day."—Attorney Jonathan Sheldon

There was no record of the sale of that rifle, and an investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives discovered what amounted to a train wreck of records keeping that even today, Borgelt blames in part on the required method of keeping those gun sale records. He also points the finger at former Bull’s Eye employees, none of whom are still working at the store, which is now owned by Borgelt’s childhood friend, Kris Kindschuh, a man who had absolutely nothing to do with the former operation. Indeed, Kindshuh rode to Borgelt’s rescue, buying the store several years ago. Bull’s Eye has gone through a massive remodeling, both in a business sense and in the image arena.

The Internal Revenue Service got involved in the case, alleging that Borgelt had failed to file income tax returns for several years. He eventually settled the case, paying the IRS more than $230,000 for not filing a tax return for the year 1999.

“That’s all paid off,” Borgelt said in a telephone conversation a few weeks ago. He stressed that he was never prosecuted for tax evasion, as some believe.

During the initial ATF investigation, records could not be found for hundreds of firearm transfers, but Borgelt insists that most of those guns have been accounted for through careful reconstruction of records, even though all of his original files had been seized by investigators. Many of the so-called “missing guns,” he said, were missing only “on paper” because former employees had filed paperwork without logging the transfers in the store’s gun transfer log book.

Borgelt said that he worked at the store every day, and that he still works every day in the shooting range located upstairs from the gun shop. He is not connected to the current operation, which Kindschuh owns.

Recently, when it was reported that Borgelt’s firearms license revocation had been upheld, the public got the false impression that the store had closed. It caused Kindschuh no small amount of grief to explain that the Bull’s Eye is still open for business, under his license, and business is thriving. Kindshuh has a devoted staff, and he runs a tight ship.

Borgelt settled a civil lawsuit filed against his operation with support from the anti-gun Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. That lawsuit had been brought by survivors of the Beltway Sniper victims; lives indelibly touched by Muhammad and Malvo. No doubt many will be looking for some closure with Muhammad’s execution.

One thing Borgelt has noted repeatedly is that he was also a victim of the Muhammad/Malvo team. Malvo acknowledged that he stole the rifle from the gun shop, making Borgelt a victim of perhaps the most expensive shoplifting in American business history, considering the devastating aftermath.

Yet that does not explain how the theft was not noticed by Bull’s Eye employees for months, and only discovered when the investigation began.

In retrospect, Borgelt will acknowledge that it he was the boss, and the proverbial buck stopped with him.

“I thought I had hired competent people,” he says. “It was my mistake, trusting my employees. There’s no question about that.

“Do I take some blame for it? You bet I do in retrospect,” he adds. “I would have grown a company slower, run it smaller and not hired some of the people I did.”

He notes that there was ‘no incentive” for him to deliberately violate any law, “to be negligent in any way, shape or form.”

“The only thing that I didn’t do, regrettably,” Borgelt says, “I would have personally done more of the accounting.”

Today will probably give him more reason to reflect back on the past seven years.

“I’m still running the gun range and business has never been better,” he says. “It is just damned frustrating to talk to people day in and day out and realize that their perception has been completely skewed by the way this story has been reported.”

He looks at his tax settlement with no small amount of irony, sarcasm and a dash of dark humor.

“A single misdemeanor of failure to file a tax return qualifies me for a cabinet position, doesn’t it,” he observed.

Suggested reading: Assault on Weapons: The Campaign to Eliminate Your Guns

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More About: gunrights · Crime · Gun Control · Second Amendment · D.C. · Taxes · Media Bias · Gun Rights 101 · Bull's Eye · Beltway Snipers · Homicide

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Will Muhammad execution bring true closure to ‘Beltway Sniper’ case?

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