Message From A Madman?

Will whoever left a message for police at the scene of the shooting in Ashland, Va., heed an appeal from Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose to contact law enforcement authorities?

"To the person who left us a message at the Ponderosa last night. You gave us a telephone number. We do want to talk to you. Call us at the number you provided. Thank you," Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose said in a televised briefing.

Moose made his cryptic statement as sniper task force investigators said they were working on the assumption that the sniper has expanded his geographic reach after shooting 11 people, nine fatally, in the Washington area since Oct. 2.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch is reporting several other developments in the investigation. Quoting law enforcement sources, the paper says more than one Tarot card has been found since the shootings began. The paper also says detectives are investigating the possibility that the attacker in Saturday's shooting might have used a bicycle and toted his weapon to and from the scene in a backpack.

A witness interviewed by the newspaper says the shot sounded like it came from a light pole at the edge of the wooded area which separates the steakhouse parking lot from an access road for construction crews building a nearby Wal-Mart.

Surgeons at MCV Hospitals in Richmond succeeded Sunday night in removing the bullet from the 37-year-old man shot at the Ponderosa steakhouse in Ashland, Va., on Saturday night, and turned it over to investigators for testing.

It was a second round of surgery for the victim, whose name has not been released, and who is expected to very likely need more surgery.

Hospital spokeswoman Pam Lepley says the victim is in critical condition but doctors are cautiously optimistic about his prognosis.

Doctors had to remove part of the man's stomach, half of his pancreas and his spleen, according to Dr. Rao Ivatury, the hospital's director of trauma and critical care. The man is conscious but has been unable to talk because he is on a ventilator.

"The prognosis is still guarded, but since he is a very healthy man and he is very young, the chances are fair to good, I would say," says Ivatury.

While the term "the sniper" has been extensively used, police have not ruled out the possibility that there could be more than one person responsible for the shootings.

If tests prove a link to the D.C. area shootings, this is a big leap south for the killer or killers, as Ashland is some two hours south of Washington. The possibility that the shootings may be connected has caused great concern among residents in the area and as a result, school officials decided late Sunday that public schools Monday will be closed in the Ashland and Richmond areas.
That means about 200,000 thousand students will be home instead of in class.

Randolph-Macon College - which is in Ashland, about a mile from the scene of Saturday's shooting - has also cancelled classes for Monday.

"We've been in close contact with local law enforcement agencies, and basically we're following their advice," said Anne Marie Lauranzon, director of marketing and communications for the college.

Moose refused to elaborate or take questions about the message left at the steakhouse or how it was left. But he asked the news media to "carry it clearly and carry it often."

After Moose's briefing, Officer Joyce Utter, spokeswoman for Montgomery County police, said the chief's statement "should make complete sense" to the person who left the message.

"That is the only person Chief Moose wants to talk to," she said.

A law enforcement source close to the investigation said the person who left the message is probably the sniper who is responsible for the Washington area shootings.

The message contained significant text and was found in woods behind the restaurant, according to a source quoted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Investigators who combed the area outside the Ponderosa finished their search Sunday but said little about what, if anything, they had found.

If the shooting is linked to the sniper attacks, it would be the first weekend attack and the farthest the sniper has traveled - about 85 miles south of Washington.

The longest previous distance from the Washington area was Spotsylvania County, about 50 miles south of Washington. It would also break the longest lull between shootings, about five days.

Former FBI profiler Clinton Van Zandt said Saturday's shooting, if related, could show the killer's approach is changing in response to law enforcement tactics. For instance, reports last week that military surveillance planes would be used in the Washington suburbs probably prompted the sniper to move farther away, he said.

And since much had been made about the weekend lulls, "I think he reacted to that," Van Zandt said.

The most recent confirmed sniper attack was the Monday night slaying of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church.

Residents are on edge in Ashland, a town of about 6,500. At the Virginia Center Commons mall, about seven miles from the shooting, a normally busy food court sat half-empty Sunday. Shopper Nancy Elrod said she almost had been too afraid to come.

"We certainly felt sorry about all the people up north who were nervous and now it's down here and we're nervous too," said Elrod, 45.

Police say the victim of Saturday's shooting was traveling with his wife and the two had stopped in Ashland for gas and food. His wife told authorities the shot sounded like a car backfiring and said her husband took about three steps before collapsing.

Authorities have yet to announce whether tests on a shell casing found last week in a white rental truck near Dulles Airport have turned up any connection to the sniper spree. That announcement could come this week. A source close to the investigation said Sunday that "it has nothing to do with this case." The source did not confirm reports that the shell is a different size from those in the sniper cases, but he does say that the shell has "caliber problems" and "age problems."

Meanwhile, it's a strange time for the many law-abiding owners of white vans, over 51,000 of which were sold in the D.C. area in the past ten years, and that number refers only to vans made by Ford.

Dorwick Smith, who drives a Chevy Astro as maintenance man for a chain of day care centers, said he was stopped Tuesday afternoon by a fleet of police cars that seemed to materialize around his van in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 70 east of Frederick.

"There were lights on, so I knew what it was about," Smith said. "By the time I found a place to pull off, there were, like, 10 police cars behind me and two police cars ahead of me."

Smith's van has a ladder rack, like one of the vans in the FBI's "vehicle wanted" posters. So does the Econoline that Lazaro Portillo drives throughout the Washington region for Miller Home Services. Portillo, sipping coffee and listening to a taped sermon in Spanish while traveling to a job in Darnestown, said he hasn't been stopped - but he's ready for it.

"We cooperate with the law. We have to get this guy no matter what," he said.

Many people have been spooked by the Miller Home Services vans, according to the company's president, Mike Wilson.

"We had one the other day, he pulled up at a gas station and all the other people at gas pumps starting ducking for cover," Wilson said. Four sniper victims were killed at gas stations.

"I think it's kind of weird right now that the No. 1 most wanted enemy is a white van," says Wilson. "People are used to looking at white vans as something we can rely on. They're a symbol of service and America and everything to help you, not to harm you."