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StarrEise wrote:

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Because I'm too lazy to look this up for myself, what was this guy's ultimate motive for killing all those people (aside from being a giant asshole)?

Motive

Investigators and the prosecution at trial suggested that Muhammad intended to kill his ex-wife Mildred, who had estranged him from his children. According to this theory, she would appear to be just another random victim of the snipers. Muhammad frequented the neighborhood where she lived during the attacks, and some of the incidents occurred nearby. Additionally, he had earlier made threats against her. Mildred herself made the claim that she was his intended target. However Judge LeRoy Millette Jr. prevented prosecutors from presenting that theory during the trial, saying that a link had not been firmly established.

While imprisoned, Malvo wrote a number of erratic diatribes about what he termed "jihad" against the United States.^[20] "I have been accused on my mission. Allah knows I'm gonna suffer now", he wrote.^[20] Because his rants and drawings featured not only such figures as Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, but also characters from the film series The Matrix, these musings were dismissed as immaterial.^[20] Some investigators reportedly said they had all but eliminated terrorist ties or political ideologies as a motive.^[21][22][23] Nonetheless, in at least one of the ensuing murder trials, a Virginia court found Muhammad guilty of killing "pursuant to the direction or order" of terrorism.^[24]

At the 2006 trial of Muhammad, Malvo testified that the aim of the killing spree was to kidnap children for the purpose of extorting money from the government and to "set up a camp to train children how to terrorize cities",^[25] with the ultimate goal being to "shut things down" across the United States.^[26]