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Did Muhammad, Malvo or another Sniper give the Real Clue?

The first real break the one that sent investigators scurrying from an Alabama liquor store to a backyard in Tacoma, Wash., and finally to a blue Chevrolet Caprice at a highway rest stop in Maryland came on Oct. 17 in an angry telephone call from a man claiming to be the sniper.

Law enforcement officials say the man on the phone furiously insisted to a startled employee of the Montgomery County, Md., police, "I am God!" Then, according to notes that officials made of the three-minute call, he shouted: "Don't you know who you're dealing with? Just check out the murder-robbery in Montgomery if you don't believe me!"

The next night, last Friday, the man made at least two phone calls to priests one in Ashland, Va., and the other in Bellingham, Wash. in an effort to enlist a messenger to establish his credibility with the police, the officials say.

They say the caller told the priest in Ashland that investigators should check for a crime in Montgomery, this time specifying that he meant Montgomery, Ala. The priest thought the caller a crank, but investigators showed up on Sunday at his parish, where he recounted the odd conversation.

The authorities were baffled. After nine murders in two weeks, they certainly took the sniper seriously. But "why was he telling us this?" an F.B.I. official said today. "Did he want to get caught?"

Law enforcement officials contacted the police in Montgomery, Ala., and, sure enough, learned that there had been a murder and robbery at a liquor store there four weeks earlier.

"That," the F.B.I. official said, "was the real linchpin."

The lead got better: investigators were able to trace a latent unidentified fingerprint found on a gun magazine at the liquor store to a Jamaican-born 17-year-old, John Lee Malvo. The teenager had gotten into some scrapes with the law and with iimmigration officials while living last year in Bellingham, and the F.B.I. and the Immigration and Naturalization Service had his fingerprints on file. The fingerprints were in juvenile-crime records maintained in Washington State and in records of the immigration service; though federal agents had access to both, the Montgomery police had had access to neither.

Further, investigators found in court and investigative files earlier this week that the boy had been known to hang out with a former soldier named John Allen Muhammad, also known as John Williams, law-enforcement officials said. Mr. Muhammad was under a restraining order after reportedly threatening a former wife, and officials indicated today that there might also have been forensic evidence, taken from a letter left at the scene of one of the sniper shootings, that pointed to him.

Investigators were intrigued by the pair, and an inquiry that had moved at a frustratingly slow pace began to move into high gear early this week, officials said. While there had been six or seven other people under surveillance in the investigation, "these guys now moved up to the top tier," a senior law enforcement official recounted.

By Tuesday, officials had also traced Mr. Muhammad to a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice registered in his name in New Jersey. Chris Okupski, owner of Sure Shot Auto in Trenton, said today that the Caprice was a former undercover police car that he sold to Mr. Muhammad and another man, Nathaniel Osborne, for $250 in August 2001.

Police investigators in Maryland had been on the lookout for an early-model Caprice spotted near the scene of a shooting on Oct. 3, at the very outset of the sniper spree. But even many law enforcement officials had overlooked that sighting amid widespread alerts to be on the lookout for a white van or a white box truck seen near several shootings.

By Wednesday, federal officials had obtained a search warrant for a house where Mr. Muhammad had lived in Tacoma. The current occupant agreed to the search, so officials did not end up having to use the warrant, a Justice Department official said. Neighbors told investigators that they remembered having occasionally heard what sounded like shots from high-powered guns in the area late at night.

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