By PEGGY ANDERSEN : Associated Press Writer Oct 29, 2002 : 3:13 am ET

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) -- Long before a series of sniper attacks terrorized the suburbs of Washington, D.C., police say the suspected gunmen may have begun their reign of terror on the West Coast with the slaying of a Tacoma woman and a shooting at a synagogue.

Authorities said Monday they had linked John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo to the February shooting death of a 21-year-old woman whose aunt once worked for Muhammad's auto repair business. Police also identified the pair as suspects in a May shooting at a Tacoma synagogue in which no one was injured.

The connection to Muhammad and Malvo is based on information from a Tacoma man who came forward last week and told authorities he loaned the pair his guns. Ballistics tests matched the weapons to slugs found at both shooting scenes.

Malvo, 17, and Muhammad, 41, currently face murder charges in both Virginia and Maryland in the three-week series of attacks that killed 10 people and wounded three. Alabama has charged them in a killing outside a liquor store in Montgomery.

Tacoma Police Chief David Brame said a man contacted the FBI last week and told authorities he'd allowed Muhammad and Malvo to borrow his weapons, including a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, while the pair were staying with him earlier this year.

"As a result, we now consider John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo as suspects in the Keenya Cook homicide," Brame said. Authorities said there were no plans to charge the man who came forward.

Investigators recovered three handguns and two rifles from the man, including two allegedly used in the crimes, Tacoma police spokesman Jim Mattheis said.

Cook was shot in the face Feb. 16 when she opened the door to the house where she lived.

Cook's aunt, Isa Nichols, used to be a bookkeeper for Muhammad's auto repair business in the 1990s. Nichols became friends with Muhammad and his then-wife Mildred, and sided with Mildred during that couple's bitter divorce and child-custody dispute.

Cook had moved into Nichols' home in the fall of 2001 for protection from an abusive boyfriend. Members of Cook's family wondered if Isa Nichols may have been the intended target and Cook could have been shot by mistake when she opened the door.

In the synagogue case, Brame said a .44-caliber Magnum, borrowed from the same man, was used in a shooting at Temple Beth El between May 1 and May 4. No one was believed at the synagogue at the time.

One shot struck an outer wall. The other lodged in an interior wall where religious scrolls are kept. The scrolls were not damaged.

Muhammad was in the Army based at Fort Lewis beginning in 1985 and lived in Tacoma off and on after he was honorably discharged in 1994.

On Monday, prosecutors in three Virginia counties announced charges against the pair that could bring the death penalty, a key point in the debate over which jurisdiction should try the alleged gunmen. A fourth county brought attempted murder charges.

Fairfax County prosecutor Robert Horan Jr. said evidence shows that Malvo may have fired the shot that killed FBI analyst Linda Franklin on Oct. 14 outside a Home Depot in Falls Church. He would not elaborate on the evidence.

The pair also were charged in Spotsylvania County with the murder of Kenneth Bridges on Oct. 11 and the Oct. 4 wounding of an unidentified woman. The murder charges were based on state law allowing capital punishment for the killing of more than one person within three years.

In Prince William County, where Dean Meyers was slain Oct. 9 while pumping gas, a grand jury charged Muhammad and Malvo with capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder under a new post-Sept. 11 terrorism law.

Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore said the terrorism law gives Virginia prosecutors a "backup, another option in their arsenal" to seek the death penalty against Muhammad or Malvo if either eludes a death sentence for capital murder.

In Hanover County, where an unidentified man was wounded on Oct. 19, the two suspects also were named in a variety of charges including attempted murder and terrorizing the public.

Last week, Maryland filed six first-degree murder counts against the two. But the top elected official in Maryland's Montgomery County urged prosecutors to choose the strongest venue.

Virginia has the death penalty for both adults and juveniles. In Maryland, 17-year-olds are not eligible for the death penalty, and there is no death penalty in the District of Columbia.

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2002