End of the line for John Alan Muhammed, the D.C. sniper

I remember loading old rusty stoves from the back of a pickup truck into a trash receptacle that was located across the street at an all-girls Catholic school.
Once I loaded the last appliance and the clattering echoes stopped, I noticed there was no sound coming from anywhere else along the street, not even at the school.
The building was empty. The eerie part was that it was the middle of October.
St. Gertrude High School is located in the Fan District of Richmond, Va., a short distance from the Powhite Parkway near Interstate 95. It closed that day in the wake of a shooting in Ashland, Va., which is 30 miles north.
The Washington D.C. snipers were making their way toward Richmond. The frenzy and paranoia that had blanketed Suburban Maryland weeks earlier had spread southward along the I-95 corridor.
Kids weren't going to school. Gas stations were covered with tarps. Athletic practices were canceled. Restaurant owners were getting nervous.
I'm not sure whether Internet shopping spiked across the Mid-Atlantic during October 2002, but I'd be willing to bet a small fortune that it did. A lot of people didn't leave their homes unless it was absolutely necessary.
A week or so later, a maintenance man called me on my two-way radio and said the snipers were arrested outside a rest stop in Maryland.
I was relieved, but understandably interested in the ensuing news coverage. Nonetheless, I was hundreds of miles away - at least figuratively - from being caught in the middle.
I was a laborer at the time. I was moving lumber and flipping apartments for a living.
Soon after John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were behind bars my fascination level tapered. It felt good to see Richmond and Washington D.C. residents exhale and live free of fear again.
Six months later, an editor at a suburban daily newspaper in Northern Virginia took a chance on me and offered me a job covering cops and courts. It was a superb opportunity for someone with such a humble news background.
I previously had short, unremarkable stints at two community newspapers, but I was about to cover crime in one of the fastest-sprawling suburbs in the country. I didn't think it could get anymore exciting - or nerve-racking. Then my editor stopped mid-sentence and told me something.
"Oh yeah, you're going to be covering the Malvo trial," she said.
The trial ran for six weeks in late 2003 - barely more than a year after the shooting spree that claimed 10 lives and injured three others.
Muhammad's trial ran concurrently.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft wanted them to be tried in Virginia first, even though most of the victims were in Maryland.
Malvo was a minor at the time he committed the murders. Virginia didn't have a law against sentencing a 17-year-old boy to death (although the U.S. Supreme Court would put an end to that practice in 2005).
The judges in both cases sided with defense attorneys, who requested a venue change. They moved the trials 150 miles southward.
Malvo was tried in Chesapeake, Va. Muhammad in Virginia Beach, Va.
There were piles of DNA evidence. There were the stories from detectives, witnesses, acquaintances - even a couple survivors.
Then-NBC anchor Stone Phillips had a front-row seat for part of the trial. So did Jeanne Meserve of CNN and other heavy hitters from the networks. Reporters from The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times were there.
The Washington Post sent a platoon of writers. The day-by-day, detailed reporting the paper offered each day was astounding - almost ridiculous.
The Malvo and Muhammad trials plodded along until they were convicted of capital murder.
Then came the sentencing.
In my years of covering court cases, I've seen former Marines, police officers and other tough-as-nails men break down on the witness stand.
Never had I seen an entire courtroom lose it the way the press pool did when family members of the deceased testified. They all wanted Malvo to die. Most of them received phone calls the day their loved ones were killed.
That's not how William Franklin learned about his wife's murder.
He heard it and felt it.
The two were outside the Home Depot in Falls Church, Va., when Franklin heard a loud bang. Simultaneously, he felt something wet strike the side of his head.
Then he turned and noticed his wife's face. Half of it was gone.
The 911 call was harrowing. Nothing I've heard inside a courtroom since would compare.
He wailed into his cell phone. The operator struggled to understand him.
Thinking he was talking to a woman, the dispatcher asked whether his husband had been shot.
"It's my wife!" Franklin screamed.
A photo of Linda Franklin's corpse was shown to jurors. Family members were seated nearby and they turned away when the prosecutor hit the button to show the slide. They probably caught a glimpse of the grisly photo, but for their sake I hope they didn't.Malvo was 19 at the time of the trial, but he looked no older than 13. His defense attorneys dressed him in church clothes and he spent most of the time drawing pictures.
He never testified.
Jurors mustered some mercy and sentenced him to life in prison.
Muhammad's trial was zanier. He insisted on defending himself during the first few days in spite of having two competent attorneys. After at least a couple embarrassing snafus, he turned it over to them.
He was convicted and sentenced to death. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court or governor says otherwise, he will die by lethal injection Tuesday.
It feels trite and obvious to state this part, but the tragedies at Fort Hood, Texas, and Orlando coming days before Muhammad's execution was a maddening and unexpected coincidence.
This is somewhat theoretical and controversial, but the senior sniper did successfully cast a spell over Malvo. Muhammad had that sort of power over him.
If only in his last breaths he could pull that kind of evilness out of the likes of future Malvos, Nidal Hassans and Jason Rodriguezes - and have it buried along with him.