The public is scared to death.

The public is calling in tag numbers of every white van from here to Mississippi.

The public will help us find this guy.

All we gotta do is release it and within three minutes the phone rings and it's

a guy in the arrest area in Frederick County right at the top of the South

Mountain, the the I-70 Rest area that says that car is in the rest area.

I told them we don't have one weapon between us to fight back with and

there's a good chance that he'll kill three of us before we even

are, are, able to get up to the car.

So there was basically a very quiet standoff from, I wanna say 11:45 PM

until about four in the morning when we finally got the assets together.

23 days in late 2002.

Okay.

The Capital Beltway, the Washington DC, Northern Virginia, Maryland area,

lived under a kind of fear that, thank God most of us never have experienced.

That violence, that reign of terror, that was random.

That was invisible.

That was unpredictable.

I mean, you had people zigzagging when they went to get gas and

crouching down, uh, to get gas.

They had friends standing guard while they did their errands.

I mean, the schools got closed.

No place felt safe to the public.

The rules of, you know, the rules of engagement or the rules of protection,

they just didn't apply anymore.

So I am proud today to welcome our guest, Dave Reichenbaugh.

Dave is a retired Maryland state police lieutenant, and during the

Beltway sniper investigation served as the on-scene commander during the

actual capture of the two people, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.

So this man has the inside scoop.

Once, once it all came together, as and I've said in my

book, I've said it just about everywhere I've ever spoken, this was the most

incredible group of police officers, a more than a thousand that I ever had

the honor to work with and be a part of.

We were all singularly focused.

It didn't matter what your badge said or what your shoulder patch

said, we're all on one team.

And that's sort of where all of a sudden it broke down and, the old

fed versus state and local came in.

There was a real disagreement as to, okay, we've, we know what we're looking for.

We've got a tag number, we've got a car.

We know who's in the car.

What do we do with it?

Do we release it?

Do we keep it close in?

Try to find them ourselves.

And that's where the argument came in.

And of course, the, the, federal government was more on the line of,

Hey, let's keep this close to the vest, which, if you've worked with federal

agents, that's the way they're trained.

And I, get that, and there's valid reasons sometimes to do that.

As a state officer, and I was in on this meeting, and I, as luck would

have it, because this was at night, I was the highest ranking state Maryland

State police trooper in the room.

My argument was, is listen, public is calling in tag numbers of every

white van from here to Mississippi.

The public will help us find this guy.

All we gotta do is release it.

Of course there was a philosophical argument, what to do with that.

I made a phone call to Colonel, Mitchell and Colonel Mitchell agreed with me.

It, governor got involved and the decision was made.

Well, we don't care what the feds do, we're releasing it,

releasing the information to the public, and it got released.

In fact I was part of releasing that information and then I

License plate number.

Yeah.

Right.

Description.

Pretty much everything that we had.

Okay.

And at that point I was sorta persona non grata at the,

uh, task force office at that point.

and the colonel said, you've been up for several days.

Go home.

Home for me was Frederick County at that time, and I started up the road, and

this is probably 11, 11:30 at night.

By this time.

I get a call from the duty officer at the Frederick Barracks and he asked me

to go to the our so-called confidential channel, which wasn't confidential.

It was just an off the wall channel that nobody ever listened to.

And he told me, Hey, we got.

It came out on WFMD radio and we're sitting here listening to it and within

three minutes the phone rings and it's a guy in the rest area in Frederick

County, right at the top of the South Mountain, the the I-70 REST area that

says that car is in the rest area.

What do you wanna do?

I said, well send everybody you got.

And he said, well, sir, he said, counting you, that would be two of us, because

everybody else is in Montgomery County.

So that's how I wound up getting up there.

I was about number three, maybe four, four, officer up there.

And I happened to, because I was a lieutenant, I wound up being

in charge of, of the thing.

And, and, uh, I very quickly made the, the decision, 'cause we kicked it around.

The four of us kicked it around, Hey, let's just go in and storm that place.

And having known the case and that they were prone to hide the rifle in the

woods, my thought process was, is okay if I'm them, if I'm the bad guy, I'm

taking turns one sleeping in the car.

One in the woods on Overwatch and I told them we don't have one weapon between us

to fight back with.

and there's a good chance that he'll kill three of us

before we even are, are able to get up to the car.

Hmm.

Because you gotta remember, this was the middle of the night.

This was a rest area.

And at that time, those rest areas there, yeah, there was lights here and there, but

very dark, heavily wooded, mountainside.

And I thought, well, all right, we can prevent anybody from going in and we

can prevent anybody from coming out.

We have enough people to do that.

Let's do that and let's hold our ground and call for the cavalry.

So there was basically a very quiet standoff from, I wanna say 11:45 PM

until about four in the morning when we finally got the assets together and the

SWAT teams to be able to move in and take 'em 'cause my fear was if someone's,

they obviously could shoot based on.

The horrible results that we had all seen.

and you know, as any, as any commander would,

God knows, I was not going to unnecessarily risk anybody under

my command when we could stand our ground and move when we were

ready and not force the issue.

And that's how that all.

So how, how did it go down Dave?

Like, uh, were they both in the car?

Were they armed at the time?

Yes.

Were they sleeping?

How did it happen?

As it turns out, and as I mentioned before,

and I don't mind calling 'em, they were morons just as we suspected.

it turns out they were both fast asleep in that car.

and we had the, civilian that had called us.

Reported the car, they stayed in the rest area and they were sort of my

eyes, if you will, inside the rest area.

And certainly I told 'em, you stay in that vehicle and you just talk to me.

If you see moving around that vehicle, I wanna know about it.

And so I'm on one cell phone.

Now you gotta remember, this is a little bit ancient technology

compared to what we have now.

I had.

One cell phone that I'm, I'm talking to our witness, our

civilian, and that was being relayed through the Frederick Barracks.

I had another cell cell phone that I was talking to, the joint operations

Center in Montgomery County and a police radio that I'm trying to quietly.

Manage and, and get the people where I wanted them to, be.

So now that I think about it, that was forever, but it seemed like it

wasn't at the time because you're so laser focused on number one.

I, never thought during this thing that we were gonna get out of

there without taking casualties.

And, and of course that's any police commander's worst nightmare is, is,

you know, and if I'd have ordered those troopers in there, they would've said,

yes, sir. Let's go without a doubt.

And I know that, and it was sort of a little bit of a

strain, sort of like holding the canine back for his own safety.

So there was a little bit of that.

but as it went down, the, joint SWAT team, and that's, you know, the, the Maryland

State Police team is called state,

special tactical assault team element.

We had elements of Montgomery County SWAT team.

We also had FBI, so they had been.

A team practicing jointly during this whole operation, just suspecting

that whenever we did find him, this was going to be a shootout.

We all expected it.

they were able to infiltrate the woods and there was some technology that I

still will not talk about that was used,

to sort of.

Determine.

Okay, there's two warm bodies in that car.

The woods were appeared to be clear, they were able to move

in, walk up, smash a window out, flash, bang, and out they came.

And I don't believe either of them touched the ground as they

were brought out through windows.

Didn't bother opening the door.

They were brought out through windows and quickly subdued without firing a shot.

We didn't hurt the bad guys.

None of the good guys got hurt.

It really turned out to be a textbook operation and as I understand it,

that's still used in in training for various assault teams or

SWAT teams around the country.

The way that happened and the way it went down,

you know, you prepare for the absolute worst and you hope for the best.

Well, by God, it, it turned out perfect.

It couldn't have been any better.

So the, the, the arrest was made without incident.

I am guessing that the weapons were in the vehicle.

Did the subjects make any statements?

What, did they say after the fact?

Now you have to remember there was still.

I'm going to say 15% of the doubt whether we had the right people or

not, because it came together so quickly and there really wasn't time

to go back and check and recheck.

You know how investigations do this was, Hey, this is an active

situation, let's move and we did.

So there's still that 15% doubt.

There was no weapons obviously in.

Looking in the car.

and again, that was, I, I turned from incident commander to now I

gotta protect the evidence all in the course of a half a second because

as you can imagine, the police officers wanted to tear the car apart.

Nope.

Everybody out of the damn car we're getting a search warrant.

Muhammad, who was later executed by the state of Virginia.

Was terrified.

He soiled himself.

he very much looked like the defeated suspect that us and law

enforcement know when you got him.

And the bad guy knows he is gotten and it's that,

oh shit, they got me.

I'm done.

Look on his face, Malvo on the other hand.

and I was within six to eight feet of him, and we had him, of course, handcuffed

to the rear sitting, cross-legged on the pavement, he had, and the best way I can

describe it is if you've ever watched, um, any of the Discovery Shark Week

programs, they always show the white shark and all you see is the, the black eye.

That was Malvo.

I mean, his eyes were cold black.

There was no soul looking back at us.

And there was no doubt in my mind that if he would've had the chance, he

would've tried to kill every one of us.

I love dogs.

I love police dogs.

Their handlers hated me because I always brought 'em all kinds

of treats and stuff, which the handlers would get rather irritated.

But, um, Rich Hoffenberg, God rest his soul.

He has since left us.

Um, he had his state police canine and that that dog was 110 pound

German Shepherd, and he was riled up.

And the slobber, the teeth bearing.

He was holding him back, I'm telling you, six inches from that kid's face.

You tell me what human being doesn't react to that there was no reaction

and the less reaction, more pissed off that dog got.

And I also had, uh, trooper Dragovich, who was a rather very

large Maryland state trooper.

Six-seven, probably 240 and there wasn't any fat on that man,

and I had known him for years.

And I said, trooper Dragovich, if he's so much as blinks, break his neck.

No reaction.

None.

So he was a stone cold killer.

And in the interest of time, absolutely.

We gotta keep this moving along, we got other things we need to ask you,

but, uh, so you do the search warrant.

Do you find the guns in the car?

Uh, what else can you tell us?

Yes, the, uh, the, the gun was found after

we secured the search warrant.

Uh, so we're now well into daylight by this time.

The gun is found underneath the backseat where the backseat, the, back of the

backseat could be lowered so that they could move from the passenger area into

the trunk, into the prone sniper position.

The rifle was found there, and I'm telling you when that you

couldn't have heard a pin drop.

'cause we're all standing around watching the, uh, you know, the

ATF technicians do their thing.

They pulled that rifle out.

It was a collective.

We got 'em.

We, got the right guys.

This is over.

Talk about Malvo from how long

was a United States citizen from the Atlanta area.

Served in the military, was an average soldier at best, but he

was an extreme control freak.

And the way I've described it and after all of these years, I still believe

this, and I will take this to my grave.

Muhammad thought he was smarter than everybody else.

Muhammad was the brains Malvo, for the lack of a better term, was the, muscle.

I don't believe Muhammad had the stones to do what he did, and Malvo had no soul.

So Malvo was looking for a means, and Muhammad served that purpose.

Fed him, moved him around, enabled him to kill.

And as far as Malvo was concerned, he was Mohammad's vessel, if you will.

I, I believe he to this day.

Dave, you alluded to it earlier, so let's get into it.

Um, Mildred Muhammad is the ex-wife of John Muhammad.

Yeah.

And she lived in the DC area.

Um, there was a recent documentary, I think on Discovery tv.

And basically, she revealed, and I think others have talked about this, uh, since

the crimes occurred, that she was the ultimate target of all these mass killings

because, um, in her mind, Mohammed wanted to kill her, but to try to disguise,

him as the killer of his ex-wife.

He would kill all these other people randomly and she would just be a, a

random victim and they'd never figure out that he was the actual killer.

talk to me about that.

I mean, when did that come out?

Obviously that wasn't during the, the reign of terror, but when did we learn

about Mildred Muhammad and, and do you agree that she was the ultimate target?

Looking back, I do, but there's a caveat to this.

John Muhammad was.

And the public generally doesn't know this either.

He was a follower of Osama bin Laden.

he got disenfranchised for whatever reason.

His goal was to move into some barren land out in western Canada someplace.

And he was going to get kids just like malvo from various parts of

the country, disenfranchised kids.

Train them to be killers, then send sniper teams to various cities around

the country and do this only one problem.

He really didn't have the means to be able to put that plan together.

As I told you, he was a control freak and it just infuriated him in the fact that

his wife was able to get the children.

Because there for a while, um, he had control of the kids and it took the

courts to give the kids back to her, and she fled and wound up in Maryland.

The only thing he knew, she was somewhere in Maryland, he wasn't really

sure, but he was such a freak that there was no way that he was going to

permit her to have control of the kids.

So his goal sort of shifted, well, I'm, this is still my long range

plan is to set up sniper teams, but I'm gonna get Mildred first.

So basically he sort of morphed his plan, if you will, and came up with the, all

right, well, we'll start killing people in, in DC and eventually I'll kill her,

and then she'll just look like another.

yeah, it was more complex than just the way you stated it.

But yeah, there, his plan evolved.

The very honest, down to earth answer to that.

and I'm not above saying it, we were all scared to death.

we had no idea.

What we were looking for or who we were looking for when this thing started.

and, and as you said, this is, coming a year after 9-11.

Right.

So keep in mind that was all very, very fresh in

every American's mind and every police officer's mind, especially those of

us in criminal intelligence, because we were all expecting another attack.

We had no idea when it was gonna come, where it was gonna

come, or how it was gonna come.

And this had all the earmarks within a few hours of, oh my God, this is it.

It's on our back door.

Are, we dealing with criminals or are we dealing with some

sort of organized military unit?

you know, you can, we can sit here and argue all day whether terrorists

are up to that level or not, but when you're standing there and you've

got a nine millimeter on your hip and, a shotgun in your police car,

if you're lucky, you know, you're outgunned right out of the gate.

Right,

And and we knew that.

And so there was fear.

And I can tell you this, all my years in law enforcement.

I was really never, ever afraid of, back home, you know, the safety of my wife.

My kids at the time never crossed my mind, but this was the first time in

my career that I felt not only are we looking for this to, solve it and

to protect the public, but my God, I'm trying to protect my daughter

that was going to to middle school.

Yeah.

I think that's what changed it all because it changed the rules.

you know, we're kind of used to the, rules of how to stay out of trouble, you know,

how to keep our families out of trouble.

This changed all the rules.

Did it change the rules for law enforcement?

Did you guys eventually have to look at this differently

in order to get to a solution?

Yes, we did.

early on those first.

Probably 10, 14 days of this we're really focused on this has got to

be an act of terrorism and these are organized terrorists on a mission.

Then as the case started to unfold, we realized, you know what?

These guys are just killers and morons,

and that was a shift.

I mean, that was a shift.

Now we're going from, all right, this isn't an organized attack.

These are, I hate to say it, but sadistic killers that just want to kill, and they

liked hearing their names on the, on the, uh, or that they didn't know their names.

Yeah, but they liked the news clippings.

They liked the notoriety.

That's absolutely correct.

Yeah.

There, there were 10 people killed.

Uh, during this, the reign of terror that lasted 23 days, uh, three people injured.

Uh, I'm wondering, at what point in the investigation did you realize

it was the same killers that were committing these heinous crimes?

it, it had to take a while.

I mean, uh, one person's killed in Maryland, another

person's killed in Virginia.

How did you put it together?

Quite honestly forensics, good old fashioned forensics.

Um, we actually knew it was the same gun within, as I recall, 72 hours.

Wow.

okay.

From that first day when we had that spree of killings,

ATF and they were terrific.

They, as you know, their, their labs are some of the best in the world.

Within 72 hours, we knew we were, we're recovering bullets from the same gun.

And of course at that time that fed into the, you know, the whole aspect

of these are foreign terrorists organized and sent here on a mission.

And it really wasn't until we got the first note and it

was actually a tarot card.

And on top of the card was, call me God at that point.

I knew, all right, we're dealing with somebody that's on a God complex.

These guys aren't foreign trained terrorists.

These are homegrown idiots.

And that's when really the, for me, in my mind, that's, that's when it, it changed.

And quite honestly, it made it more terrifying in the sense.

Man, we really have no idea who was doing this or why, uh, because if you looked at

the victims, they were completely random.

You know, they were male, female, black, white, Hispanic.

There, there didn't seem to be any connection to any of these

victims other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We're talking about the, uh, the beltway snipers

up in the DC metro area there.

And, uh, my recollection is that they concealed themselves

in the trunk of their vehicle.

They had a hole in the side of the vehicle so that they could put the barrel of the

rifle through and, uh, shoot these folks.

Talk about that.

Let, let's set the stage and talk about some of that.

Well, this all goes back.

And then again, this is, uh, you know, how, how you've taught very, very early

on in your career to don't make the evidence fit what you think, develop

what you think based on the evidence.

In other words, tunnel vision.

And we fell victim to it.

Hook, line, and sinker, because that first day, the gardener that

looked up there was a shooting.

Um, a woman was shot on a park bench in front of a, a little chicken restaurant

and there was a guy there spreading mulch.

And he looks up and he happens to see a white van leaving the parking lot.

And it, the whole focus became the white.

Van, if you happen to be driving a donut delivery white van, you are

getting stopped four and five times a day with troopers, police officers,

county, state, local, with guns in your face four and five times a day.

And we became so focused in on finding this white van and anybody

knows this was all over the news.

If these guys were in a white van on that first day, they sure as hell were

not in a white van on by day four.

So there had to be other vehicles in involved in this.

And that's when we come up with sort of the idea,

cops are curious, we're taught to be curious.

And I just thought to myself, you know, if I'm out here working the

street, because that first day before we really got organized.

I was like every other police officer I was, even though I was a lieutenant, I

was out in my unmarked cars, patrolling Montgomery County looking for something.

and there were several tags, random tags.

Maybe the guy didn't look at me right, or looked a little

strange, and I ran those tags.

Well, that's all recorded.

Every tag that you ever run is, is recorded.

And I thought to myself, you know, you can't.

Sling a cat in Montgomery County without hitting a police officer.

We had the area completely flooded with police.

I thought to myself, you know what?

Somewhere along the line, there's a police officer that ran their

tag, but we're, they weren't in a white van, so they didn't act on

it, but they probably ran the tack.

They didn't look right and when we got into this and then the intelligence

start and we started drawing circles around the shootings and looking,

you know, an hour before or an hour after damn effect car didn't show up.

several times was called in.

The tag was run by police officers because they're cops.

Something didn't look right, something didn't feel right.

But hey.

I don't have time to stop a blue caprice.

I'm looking for a damn white van.

Yeah.

And when it all came together, really the case came together

within 12, 14 hours on that last day.

And we, got the tip from the old Army buddy out and on the west coast.

Hey, I, I think the sniper might be an old army buddy of mine, John Muhammad.

That's when the pieces all came together.

Sure enough.

Yeah, there's a car with New Jersey tags out there associated with him.

And guess what?

That car has shown up either an hour before or an hour after every shooting.

Police officers have called in the tag.

So when it came together, it all came together very, very quickly.

And then we knew really what we were looking for in that blue caprice.

Dave tell, talk to me about.

One aspect of this case that we haven't really, uh, touched on, uh, very deeply,

and that is the coordination between Fed State and local law enforcement.

As you said, there were literally hundreds, if not thousands of officers

working this case one way or another.

Charles Moose.

Uh, the chief of police in Montgomery County was kind of

the face of the investigation.

Yes, he would be the guy every day giving us updates.

Uh, the cameras, uh, the microphones in his face.

and he really became the case in many ways.

I got to meet him.

Years later, and actually took him out to the storage facility where we

had the car, uh, the blue Caprice.

That was the sniper's nest.

and interestingly, he said he had never seen the car.

Uh, he had never, interviewed or been part of the arrest or had any interaction

at, at all with Mohammed and Malvo, which I found interesting because as I

understood it, he was actually notified that you had the, guys at the rest

stop, you were gonna make the arrest.

And, and, uh, he was more or less invited to, you know, be part of that

since he was, uh, one of the heads of the investigation and he declined.

And he told me in a, in a very personal conversation, he said, you know, I

couldn't have helped any, uh, being there.

He said, uh, we had our SWAT team, we had all these other officers that,

that were trained to make the arrest and, uh, he had no reason to be there.

I found that interesting because I think a lot of people thought

Charles Moose was this, uh, egomaniac, uh, loved the attention.

He ended up writing.

A book about it.

and yet to me, he was a very humble man.

you know, the, the 24 hour news cycle had just really come out

with the various networks covering stuff, you know, like the CNN's and the, the,

the Fox News and the various networks.

That was at first for us, as, as, well.

And we really didn't know how.

It.

And the thought process was, is, well, we need to keep the public informed.

We need to tell these news people something.

And Chief Moose wound up being the face.

And quite honestly, we mistakenly put him out there, what, two or three times a day?

which was a huge mistake for a lot of reasons.

And, and I think now you see these shootings, like the ones that

we're currently dealing with now.

the press conferences are much more controlled.

and it's not a free for all.

Back in those days, it was a free for all and Chief Moose was, was the face.

Um, I found him to be as, as you said, Craig, a humble guy.

I, I can remember, this was day one or day two, actually it was

probably day two or day three.

Um, we're.

Montgomery County Police headquarters there in, in Rockville, and that was a,

a building that was meant for maybe 40, 50 people to be in it at any one time.

And, and we have a hundred police officers from every agency you can think

of, federal and state crammed in there.

At first, I was answering the phone just like everybody else taking tips, and I,

uh, it was getting late in the evening.

It was about 9:00 PM and we had basically been working around the clock.

I walked into the, to the hall to go to the men's room, and, there was Chief

Moose standing there, and he looked at me and he said, he introduced himself

and I introduced myself and he said, trooper, have you had anything to eat?

I said, no, sir, there hasn't been time.

He says, well, let me go get you some food.

We got some stuff coming in here.

Let me get you a cup of coffee and, a sandwich.

And I said, chief, you don't have to do that.

He says, oh, yes I do.

You're you're here for us.

And I've never forgotten that.

I, believe he was a man that, that cared deeply about his officers.

He cared deeply about his community and he got thrown into a situation that

I don't think, I'd argue there wasn't a police chief in, in the country that

was ready for that, and he did the best he could with what he had to work with.

Now, going back, should he be out there three and four times a day?

No.

We gave up way too much information to, to, to the public.

And then we had all the various networks as, you know, getting

tips inside information.

So now what do we do?

We've got leaks, internal leaks.

How do we manage it?

it's much better now than back then, but, but Chief Moose fell into that.

Yeah.

What's the old saying?

The first one into the jungle that's unknown.

He's gonna take a few hits.

Media.

He took a lot.

The media frenzy.

The media frenzy.

You know, I, I I like to ask the question because the media in this day

and age can sometimes be part of your solution or can be part of your problem.

Okay?

Yes.

We learned that in this case.

And, what would you, how would, I'm, kind of reading between

the lines, but how would you assess the media as it played out in this case?

Part of the problem or part of the solution?

The first two and a half, The first 22

days, they were a problem.

Got it.

Yeah.

Because we had to, we had to manage that as best we could.

We had internal leaks.

There was information, investigative information out there that should never

have been out there, and we all know that.

Now on the media's part they were in competition with each other.

Of course.

Yeah.

You had the Geraldo Rivera, who's typically

a night a a terrific guy.

You had him out there, but of course he wants the scoop.

That's right.

You had other folks from other networks that wanted to scoop, so

they had an internal competition to see who could outshine the other.

That's right.

And this investigation fell somewhere

in the middle with the police.

Us, quite honestly, we weren't prepared to handle this.

now much.

So we are, the last day, if it wasn't for the media, those guys might still

be out there because they were, their plan was, is the following day, they

only had one bullet left for that rifle.

Interesting.

They, they were scooting town.

They were off to parts unknown.

Yeah.

Um, because I, I can tell you, and I, you know, and

I'm digressing here a little bit, but one of the most chilling things,

and I can still hear it sometimes at night, is when ATF pulled that rifle

outta the car and they made it safe, the one bullet that was in the rifle,

of course, you know, they jacked that receiver back and I can still see that

bullet twirling in the air and hear the tinkle of it when it hit the pavement.

Wow.

That was the most chilling part of this whole thing for me.

I, it sounds a little ludicrous, but I can still picture that damn bullet

coming outta that receiver, you know, sort of twirling in the air and landing

on the, uh, the pavement with a tinkle.

the, the book came apart, came about as a part of being furious.

Watching, I don't know if you all recall, there was a movie, I think

it might have sold six tickets.

and that was six tickets too many.

Those people got ripped off.

It was called Blue Caprice.

and I see it every once in a while on, you know, the various movie channels

and it was about the beltway snipers.

But if you watch that movie, you knew nothing about law enforcement and

you knew nothing about any of this.

You watched that movie and you thought

those killers are nothing but poor folks that society has done wrong.

Oh, wow.

And that infuriated me.

And by the way, I've never watched the whole movie.

Then as I, I told you, my canine trooper up there at the time was a guy

by the name of Rich Hoffenberg, who became retired, became Chief of Police

of Boonsboro, and, he passed, passed away, had a heart attack and was gone.

And it dawned on me and I was asked, even though I'd retired, I was still

going around the country teaching at various, presenting this case at various

law enforcement, uh, functions, and.

I would tell the story and, and I would have detectives come up

to me after my presentation and say, wow, what you're telling me

is nothing that, that we've heard.

Uh, you need to write a book.

Ah,

my wife kept telling me, you need to write a book.

And when, when Rich, who was a good friend of mine passed, it

dawned on me, you know what?

If somebody doesn't write the truth?

It's gonna disappear.

And this still, and I believe it still is the largest single

manhunt in law enforcement, American law enforcement history.

We had over a thousand police officers on this manhunt nonstop.

And I decided to write a book.

I had no idea how to do it.

Um.

I thought, you know, I write a pretty mean police report.

I can do this.

So no problem, huh?

I, got some help from a high school friend who is a writer and she got me

started and we went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with

outlines, and finally she looked at me and called me up and said, stop sending

me outlines, write the damn book.

So I wrote the book and I got extremely lucky and I was able to.

get an attorney that had some connections and I wound up getting an agent

and the book got published in 2018.

So I, really put a lot of personal stuff in that book.

But keep in mind, um, one of the things that I feared was, I'm certainly no hero.

I was just one of the boys in the band here and happened to be.

In the right place at the right time.

'cause I knew the case from day one until obviously slapping

the handcuffs on the bad guys.

it's dedicated really to the thousand police officers from federal,

state, local that is out there.

And I wanted the police side of it.

To be written down for history.

So that really was my motivation for, writing.

It was to try to preserve history and as I think we discussed when we first came

on, you know, I'm sort of a civil war buff and, you know, yeah, I, I walk around the

battlefield that's in my backyard and, you know, everybody knows the public part of

it, but I, I like the little stories of.

Of the soldiers that fought and what they thought and, why they

were doing what they were doing.

So all of that was motivation for me to write the book.

Absolutely.

Well, again, I, I wanna thank you on behalf of Craig and Billy

and all of us at Heroes Behind the Badge, uh, for sharing today.

You really?

Yeah.

Also, uh, you can get the book on Amazon.

It,

I was gonna say, let's make sure we let people know where it is.

It's on Amazon, right?

Yes.

And, uh, Barnes and Noble, every once in a while you can

go in and ask them for the book.

If they don't have it on the shelf, they can get it for you.

Easiest

you don't doing with Amazon.

Yeah.

The easiest way is Amazon.

Some people don't like it.

But in Pursuit, the hunt for the beltway.

Snipers by our guests today.

Uh, Dave Reichenbaugh, who has told on this podcast an amazing story.

If you thought you knew a little bit about the Beltway Sniper case, Uhuh,

if you missed any part of this podcast.

Go back, rewind, listen to what Dave has to say.

He's sharing personal opinions, personal impressions of what happened.

That's invaluable and I thank you for, sharing that with

us and with our audience.

Dave, thanks for being our guest.

Well, it has been an absolute honor and it has been an

honor to be involved with the National Law Enforcement Officers Museum.

I was there when, when it opened.

Yes, sir. It's just an amazing tribute to all of our brothers and sisters

serving past and unfortunate ones that laid their life down for all of us.

It

absolutely,

it's an honor for me and I, and I will close

with, my granddaughter who's now 12, and this goes back a couple years.

She was probably eight years old and.

I took her down within, oh, I don't know, two or three weeks when the museum

opened and we paid a little visit and of course looked at the sniper visit,

visit, and I'll never forget, she looked at me and said, pap, you are in a museum.

So that was, I didn't quite know how to take that.

I think that's a little bit, actually I think it was, but when you think

about it, oh my God, I'm that old.

I'm in a museum and maybe I'm at this point 47 years.

I am a museum piece without a doubt.

Thank God.

And we're still kicking buddy.

We're still here.

Hey, when you wake up and you don't have dirt

in your face, it's a good day.

Yeah.

As long as you're looking down on the grass, you know, that's, that's,

that's exactly right.

Well, again, many, many thanks, Dave.

For, what you shared with us today.

I wanna remind our listeners, our viewers, you have been listening

to Heroes Behind the Badge.

Yes.

Our podcast is called Heroes.

Behind the Badge, we bring stories just like Dave's story.

You'll never hear this anywhere else.

This is Dave's story that he told to you right here on Heroes Behind the

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You can get involved right now, right today, CitizensBehindTheBadge.org.

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Signing off for now for Craig and Bill Frith.

It's Dennis Collins.

We'll see you next time.