A frustrating series of battles to gain custody of his children – including his surrogate son John Malvo – may have pushed John Allen Muhammad over the edge, court documents from Tacoma, Wash., reveal.
“I am afraid of John,” wrote Mildred Muhammad, his estranged second wife, in a 2000 appeal for a restraining order. “He is behaving very, very irrational.”
Five years before that, John’s battles for his children began.
In July 1995, Muhammad tried to gain custody of Linbergh, his son from his first marriage, to Carol Williams, who lives in Baton Rouge, La.
When the 12-year-old visited him in Tacoma, Muhammad filed to keep him, alleging abuse by his ex-wife – but the claim was rejected. Several years later, Muhammad began a new custody battle, this time for his son and two daughters by Mildred after their divorce.
In a February 2000 petition to the court, she wrote: “John came over at 7 a.m. to inform me he had tapped the phone lines. He said the information he had would destroy me. He started threatening me and I became very unsafe.”
Ten days later, on March 27, 2000, John picked up his kids – and went on the run with them for 18 months, spending much of that time in Antigua.
In June 2000, they ended up in a Bellingham, Wash., shelter. It was there Muhammad probably met John Lee Malvo, authorities said.
Muhammad’s children were returned to Mildred when he was caught applying for state aid in August 2001. She took them into hiding and moved to Clinton, Md.