◆ SpookStack

FO-38%iRev. 5-8-81) 4. a aa - me Greer tet cape F . (Mount Clipping in Space Below) The sniper is keeping the police guessing He works to prove experts’ talk of his ‘patterns’ is Wrong By ALLEN G, BREED _ ASSOCIATED-PRESS WRITER : * ASPEN HILL, Md—The media i started. calling him the Beltway Sniper after a cluster of killings around Washington. Then he moved 80 miles south to Virginia. After the first eight killings, authorities expressed cold com- fort in the fact that at least the shooter was. sparing childten. Then he shot and wounded a 18- year-old boy walking into school. - People began putting off their errands until the weekend, believing the killer to be a weekday warrior. . Then he struck on a Saturday. - Slaughtering by -day or night, in quick succession or after a five-day lull, targeting white, black, Hispanic or Indian, escaping perhaps ina yan, perhaps ina box truck, the killer has kept police and residents guessing. “One thing we can predict is that . he’s unpredictable,” said: Northeast- ern University criminology profes- sor James Alan Fox. “In the past, when we've focused on patterns, he’s strived:to prove them wrong.” Since Oct. 2, terrified residents in an, ever-widening kill zone in rr, the Washington-Richmond, Va., area have been running zigzag across parking lots and pumping - gas behind blue tarpaulins as police look fér a shadow. * “The-person or people involved in this have shown a clear willingness and ability to kill people of all ages, allraces, all genders, all professions, at different times, different days, different locations,” Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose - gaid after it appeared the sniper had ° claimed a 10th life. After nine—and possibly 10— deaths, three woundings and. one miss, all anyone knows for sute is that this one-shot sniper prefers ammunition in the .22-caliber family. Commentators have taken to saying “he, she or they,” since it is nof even. clear if it is one person or more, Psychologists and criminolo- gists fight over whether to call this person a sérial killer or a mass murderer, while trained marks- men bristle at media accounts conferring the title “sniper” -on a shooter they see as amateurish. Newsday columnist Jimmy ¢ Breslin, who -once found himself the object of correspondence from, New York’s “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, said profiling the shooter is a pointless exercise: *T would give death sentences to all See GHOST, BACK PAGE (Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) Free lonw-Star bate [ODOR Title: Character: or Classification: Submitting Office: n Fol Bh-lOALTF FBIJO0O5