SEATTLE — John Allen Muhammad’s life has followed a tangled path.
From what relatives describe as a normal childhood in Louisiana, he earned Army honors for marksmanship and Gulf War service. He embraced Islam. He also divorced twice, started and abandoned a karate school, and slid into homelessness.
Relatives say he exerted strict control over the boy he called his son, 17-year-old John Lee Malvo, and divorce papers chronicle the collapse of his second marriage and his ex-wife’s fear that he would follow through on threats to destroy her life.
“The more I think about it, you know, it seems like I can remember him being bitter, just bitter about life,” said Felix Strozier of Tacoma, who started a karate school with Muhammad in 1997.
Muhammad, 41, and Malvo were arrested early Thursday while sleeping in a car at a rest stop in Maryland, wanted for questioning in the serial slayings that have terrorized the Washington, D.C., area for three weeks. Thirteen people were shot, 10 fatally.
Two senior federal law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said decisions have yet to be made about possible charges against Muhammad and Malvo, who was believed to be a Jamaican citizen and whose relationship to Muhammad was not immediately clear.
Federal officials told The Seattle Times on condition of anonymity that Muhammad and Malvo might have been motivated by anti-American sentiments. But neither was believed to be associated with the al-Qaida terrorist network or with James Ujaama, a Seattle Muslim being held on a federal terrorism charge.
Muhammad, then known as John Allen Williams, was born and raised in Baton Rouge, La., where family members describe him as a normal kid who married his high school sweetheart.
Muhammad converted to Islam and changed his last name from Williams after he left Baton Rouge, according to relatives of his first wife, Carol Williams.
He served in the Louisiana National Guard from 1978 to 1985, then enlisted in the Army on Nov. 6, 1985, according to a senior defense official who disclosed parts of Muhammad’s Army record. He was first posted to Fort Lewis, Wash., transferred to Germany in 1990 and to Fort Ord, Calif., in 1992, and returned to Fort Lewis the following year.