William Shatner interviews 'DC sniper' Lee Boyd Malvo, who claims more shootings

07/29/2010 by Corinne Heller

William Shatner has interviewed Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the killers known as the "DC Snipers," for a television special and he told the Star Trek actor he and John Allen Muhammad had committed about 42 shootings and tried to recruit more people to carry out the 2002 killings that terrified the Washington, D.C. region.

"Getting the opportunity to speak with Lee Malvo is a moment I'll never forget," Shatner said in a press statement provided by A&E.

"He was only 17 when he committed these horrific acts, a monster forged by the only father figure in his life, and it was simply astonishing that he's found the maturity and humility to admit so many new crimes in his effort to make amends," the actor said.

Malvo told Shatner in the interview, made via telephone from a southwest Virginia prison cell for A&E's Confessions of the DC Sniper with William Shatner: An Aftermath Special that is set to air on Thursday, that he and Muhammed had worked with three co-conspirators who planned on using silenced rifles to "create terror along the entire Eastern Seaboard."

However, they backed out and Malvo shot two of them by Muhammad's orders, his forensic psychiatrist Dr. Neil Blumberg says in the program. Malvo told Shatner only one of the men was killed, and that Muhammad did it. The whereabouts of the third person is unknown. Malvo also says he had purchased weapons from a white supremacist group in Arizona, the A&E statement said.

Malvo and Muhammad had before been linked to up to 27 shootings, resulting in 17 deaths in 10 states and the District of Columbia during a three-week period in October 2002. One young boy was shot as he went to school. The shooters were believed to have used a high-powered rifle and had fired from the trunk of a modified Chevy Caprice.

Malvo was sentenced in 2003 to life in prison without parole for his role in the killings. Muhammad was sentenced to death for masterminding and carrying out the shootings with Malvo and was executed in 2009 at age 48 via lethal injection.

Malvo's statements have often been inconsistent and authorities have cast doubt on some of his public confessions since his sentencing.

The special is part of Shatner's new series, Aftermath with William Shatner, which premieres on BIO on Monday and takes an in-depth look at what happens when people are tragically or infamously transformed from unknown citizens into household names overnight.