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This chapter provides a biography of Lee Boyd Malvo. Lee Boyd Malvo, the son of Una James and Leslie Malvo, was born on February 18, 1985 in Kingston, Jamaica. Malvo recalled that his father was the nurturing parent, while his mother, Una, was a hard taskmaster. She exercised the strict discipline with which she'd been raised, and often beat Malvo for any insignificant thing. In August 1990, Una left Leslie, accusing him of having an affair, and took Malvo with her, which resulted in Malvo's depression. He later lived with his Aunt Marie, who was also harsh and mean to him. However, despite all of his hardships, he became an exceptional student, and his high scores in the Common Entrance Exam ensured him a placement at York Castle High School, a prominent school in Brown's Town. In 1999, Una and Malvo tried to go to the U.S., but failed and later returned to Antigua, where Una's previous boyfriend, Thomas, assisted them and saw to their welfare.

This chapter provides a forensic mental health analysis of Lee Boyd Malvo. According to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Neil Blumberg, in his guilt phase, Malvo had a dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (NOS) as a consequence of his preexisting vulnerability to and the brainwashing and indoctrination by John Muhammad. Dr. Blumberg also diagnosed Malvo with depressive disorder NOS and conduct disorder, childhood-onset type. Acts of tragic violence are often foretold by tragedy in the childhood of the perpetrator. One of the lessons from the multiple tragedies of the D.C. sniper killings—of which Malvo himself is a victim—is that abandonment, instability, abuse, neglect, and extreme inconsistency in childhood can cause more problems and, frequently in the case of males, lead to violent criminal acts. The chapter concludes that the current epidemic of violence can be controlled by improving early childhood environments.

This introductory chapter provides a background of the Washington Beltway sniper attacks, and the arrest of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. The sniper shootings began on October 2, 2002, at 5:20 p.m. when a shot was fired through a window of a Michael's Craft Store in Aspen Hill, Maryland, and within twenty-three days, the Beltway sniper shootings claimed the lives of ten victims and injured four others. On October 24, forty-one-year-old Louisiana-born John Allen Muhammad, a black male veteran of the first Gulf War, and seventeen-year-old Jamaican-born Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested. In November 2003, Lee Boyd Malvo went on trial for the murder of FBI analyst Linda Franklin, one of the ten people killed in the sniper shootings, where his defense team presented an insanity defense. Social worker Carmeta Albarus was then appointed as an investigator to assist on the case, primarily because she is Jamaican born like Malvo.

This chapter recounts the extrication of Lee Boyd Malvo from the psychological control of John Muhammad. In order to separate Malvo from Muhammad, social worker Carmeta Albarus decided that it would be helpful to find an alternative object for Malvo's attachment. It had to be someone from his past who would be able to stimulate his reconciliation with himself as Lee Boyd Malvo, so she went to Jamaica and met Malvo's biological father, Leslie. In her description of Leslie's hate for Muhammad—the man who had taken his son down the path of destruction—she had given Malvo the hero father he had been seeking in Leslie, the one who would come and save him. However, it was not until Malvo's last meeting with Ms. Winsome Maxwell, his former teacher, that he agreed to testify against Muhammad.

This epilogue examines the lessons that can be learned from Lee Boyd Malvo's story. Ten years since the events recounted in the first three chapters of this book, John Muhammad has been executed and Lee Boyd Malvo remains incarcerated at Red Onion State Prison, where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life. In Malvo's story, issues of neglect, abuse, abandonment, and the missing father prevail. Such a crisis often begins with the break in the family unit; this is significant because it puts the child at greater risk for socially inappropriate behavior, including delinquency, by their teenage years. To prevent cases like Malvo's, the UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out fifty-four articles and two Optional Protocols that spell out the basic rights of children everywhere: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse, and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural, and social life.