No clues, no motives: How a suburban killer left a city in fear

The first killing seemed to be a one-off. At 5.20pm on the warm and pleasant evening of Wednesday, 2 October, James Martin, a 55-year-old government programme analyst was shot dead as he crossed the parking lot of Shoppers Food Warehouse, a discount supermarket in bustling suburban Maryland, about 10 miles north of the DC line.

He was married with a son aged 11, and the news made a brief three-paragraph item on an inside page of The Washington Post's metro section, which covers local news. Indeed what could be more routine – a tragic and wicked deed certainly, but ultimately another murder in a country that experiences about 25,000 every year.

How different 24 hours later. Mr Martin's death had become part of the biggest local crime story in a decade – episode one of a five-murder killing spree inside 16 hours, in a 10 square mile area north of Washington. Forget Iraq, terrorism, and the forthcoming mid-term congressional elections. The story that filled four entire pages in the Post was devoted to a sniper on the loose.

Within two hours, four more people had been shot, pointlessly and inexplicably, apparently by the same unknown person. A slice of affluent suburban America went into a panic unmatched since 11 September 2001.

Some commuters skipped work yesterday. Many public places were empty.

Schools were in virtual lockdown, while trauma counsellors fanned out across local television and radio stations advising people how to cope with this eruption of violence in a most unaccustomed place.

This sort of thing does not happen in Montgomery County. In the badlands of south-east Washington itself maybe, or in rough north-eastern Baltimore. But not in this happy enclave just into Maryland from north-west Washington, one of the six richest counties in the entire United States, a citadel of "soccer moms" and whose main claim to fame hitherto has been the enactment by the local council of some of the toughest anti-smoking laws in the country.

The average murder rate in Montgomery County is fewer two a month. Not since since 1995 has the place experienced a remotely comparable bloodbath – when a contractor's assistant went berserk at the home of a wealthy doctor in upmarket Potomac, killing him, his three daughters and the contractor. "Our homicide rate just went up by 25 per cent," was the bitter comment of the police chief, Charles Moose.

This time, moreover, the shooting spree happened not in a wealthy subdivision but among the people that service the wealthy subdivisions, in an area full of shopping malls, gas stations and modest apartment complexes. The victims were a cross-section of everyday greater Washington, people whose names don't feature in the big political stories: a cab driver born in Bombay, Mr Martin, the government worker, a young mother shot while vacuuming her van, a landscape gardener and a Hispanic immigrant.

Police have precious little to go on. The victims were unconnected, apparently chosen at random by a killer who seems to have had no motive other than the pleasure of killing. He appears to be a deadly marksman – each of the victims was killed by a single shot – and a careful one as well.

Not a single cartridge casing has been found at the five murder sites.

The nearest thing to a clue has come from a witness of shooting number four, of Sarah Ramos, a 34-year old Hispanic woman who was sitting on a bench near a bus stop reading when she was shot dead at 8.37am on Thursday.

This witness claims to have seen a white van speeding from the scene with two men inside. But there were no such sightings at the other crime scenes. All day on Thursday and yesterday, scores of vehicles that fitted this description were stopped at impromptu police roadblocks. But searches turned up nothing.

Preliminary forensic examination of the .223 bullets indicates the weapon was a high-velocity hunting or assault rifle with a so-called "tumbler" round that makes an ugly mess of its targets. James "Sonny" Buchanan, the landscape gardener and first of Thursday's victims, shot as he mowed the lawn outside his home, had a wound described by a person who found him as "as wide as a coffee cup".

Yesterday, Mr Moose showed the press a selection of four fearsome weapons that could have been used, including a gunmetal black Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, among 19 lethal assault weapons banned by Congress in 1994, but still legal if the weapon was acquired before that date. The AR-15 is accurate at a range of 100 yards (90 metres) to 150 yards. He also produced a bolt-action hunting rifle with telescopic sights, deadly, Mr Moose said, at up to 600 yards in expert hands.

Thus the working assumption is that the killer operated from long range, selecting and dispatching a victim before anyone realised what was happening, from far beyond the range of closed circuit security cameras.

Barring a lucky break, police can only hope someone will make the connection between a missing friend, relative or acquaintance and a missing weapon, and come forward. But no one is sure. No suspect has been named, no Identikit picture issued.

Police are almost, but not absolutely, certain that just one killer was involved. While they search, this little slice of wealthy suburban America continues an uneasy vigil.

"We've had a lot of reports of backshots and loud noises and checked them all out," Mr Moose said yesterday. "But we've had no incidents, no acts of violence. But I'm on edge, our whole community is on edge. Each moment that passes without further incident, I say a small prayer."

Last night, the sniper was still on the loose, perhaps ready to strike again.