The Island Packet - Ex-wife of the DC sniper comes to Bluffton to ask just one question

Ex-wife of the DC sniper comes to Bluffton to ask just one question

BY LIZ FARRELL

lfarrell@islandpacket.com

Mildred Muhammad gestured to an ottoman in front of the small couch in her Bluffton hotel suite Friday afternoon.

“Put your feet up,” she said.

I hesitated.

“Put your feet up,” she smiled.

“OK,” I told her, “but you have to do it too.”

I stuck my legs out straight in front of me. She sat down, sat back and did the same.

Then we looked at each other and laughed as if we already knew each other.

And in a way we did.

Or rather, I knew her.

Muhammad is the ex-wife of John Muhammad, the man known as “the D.C. sniper.”

In October 2002, John terrorized the Washington, D.C., area, and was caught just miles from where I lived at the time.

Over the course of three weeks, he killed 10 people and injured three. And he did so in the most cowardly of ways, giving his victims — all of whom were going about their lives in ordinary ways — no chance of protecting themselves or fighting back.

He lined them up in his sights and popped them off as if they weren’t human and as if nothing matters.

At the time, I worked at a newspaper in Frederick, Md., and each day and night I would run from the office to my car in a zig-zag. It sounds funny now. It was not funny then.