Yakima investigator recalls role in solving D.C. sniper killings

YAKIMA, Wash. — It took Bob Wyatt two weeks to find the bullet in the synagogue’s wall.

What Wyatt didn’t know then — what nobody knew then — was that John Allen Muhammad had fired on the Tacoma synagogue in a prelude to the killing spree that terrorized the Washington D.C. area in 2002.

On the eve of Muhammad’s scheduled execution, the now retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent said he has mixed emotions about the nature of justice and the death penalty.

“I’m a Christian, and I don’t necessarily advocate killing someone,” he said. “But based on his past actions, he certainly ranks right up there. He altered a lot of lives in the wrong way.”

For Wyatt, the case began in the spring of 2002, when he was asked to investigate the Tacoma synagogue shooting while on temporary assignment from his Yakima base.

Someone had fired several shots at the synagogue, apparently in the middle of the night. No one had been hurt, but one shot was powerful enough to have penetrated an exterior wall and then two more walls inside the building.

After digging one bullet from a window sill outside the synagogue, Wyatt had to wait two weeks for a portable X-ray machine from Seattle before finding a second bullet deep inside a closet.

Testing concluded the bullets had been fired from a .44-caliber pistol. Aside from that, investigators had nothing to go on.

“All we had was a couple of bullets,” Wyatt recalls. “There were no suspects. It wasn’t even really a drive-by shooting.”

Fast forward a couple of months to October, when Wyatt again found himself on temporary assignment.

This time it was in Prince William County, Va., where Wyatt and dozens of federal agents from around the country had been sent to help local authorities catch a sniper who had killed more than a dozen people in a matter of weeks.

The atmosphere was extremely tense, Wyatt recalled. The sniper had picked off people performing the most random of tasks, including mowing lawns and pumping gas.

“One day I was waiting outside a restaurant for some guys to arrive and of a sudden it dawned on me, Man, we could be shot at standing right here in this parking lot,” he says. “At the time, it didn’t seem far-fetched.”

Within a few days of his arrival, however, authorities arrested Muhammad and teenage protégé Lee Malvo. Not long after that, Wyatt got a call about the synagogue bullets.

“The rabbi had seen something about a .44-caliber pistol that was connected to the sniper attacks and called an ATF investigator in Seattle about it,” Wyatt says. “I guess an old Army buddy had loaned Muhammad a .44. It was a match.”

For Wyatt, the case did not end there. He eventually returned to Virginia to testify about the synagogue attack during Muhammad’s sentencing trial.

Apparently, prosecutors wanted to bolster their case for the death penalty by showing Muhammad’s involvement in a crime of bias, Wyatt says.

“We’re looking at a person who committed murder,” he says. “What difference does it make if he committed a hate crime previously?”

Now retired after 28 years with the ATF, Wyatt said he misses the job and wishes retirement wasn’t mandatory for federal agents at the age of 57.

Temporary assignments like the one that crossed his path with Muhammad’s were a welcome relief from routine. He flew as an air marshal after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, worked the streets of Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney King riots and saw several presidential candidates up close on detail to the Secret Service.

These days he’s working as a substitute security officer for the Yakima School District and says he would love to get back in the thick of things should an opportunity come knocking.

“I looked forward to Monday mornings, not Friday evenings,” he says. “The only thing I never cared for were arson cases. That part of the job I don’t miss.”

• Chris Bristol can be reached at 577-7748 or at cbristol@yakimaherald.com.