THE witness room on death row at the Greensville correctional centre in Virginia will be crowded for John Allen Muhammad’s execution on Tuesday, writes Tony Allen-Mills. But his former wife Mildred will not attend the final act in the life of the Washington sniper.

Muhammad, who randomly murdered 10 people in 2002 during a 23-day shooting spree, is scheduled to die by lethal injection.

Muhammad, an African-American convert to Islam who toured the US capital in a battered Chevrolet with a teenage sidekick, Lee Boyd Malvo, claims he intended to demand a $10m ransom to stop the shootings. But his ex-wife has written a book in which she puts forward a different motive.

When the couple’s marriage broke down she won custody of their three children and, in her book, she says her ex-husband warned her: “You have become my enemy, and as my enemy I will kill you.”

Mildred Muhammad’s belief that the sniper killings were a smokescreen that would have led to her front door is supported by Dr Park Dietz, a psychiatrist who examined Muhammad. “The other shootings were designed to provide him cover so that he wouldn’t be suspected when she became a victim,” he said.

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