Inside the Beltway

Still the victim

After her presentation at a conference on domestic violence held at the University of Maryland on Wednesday, a woman was seen approaching Karen L. Bune, a victim specialist in the state’s attorney’s office for Prince George’s County.

Who was the woman intent on speaking with Miss Bune?

None other than Mildred Muhammad, the ex-wife of serial killer John Allen Muhammad, who with his young accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, shot and killed 10 persons in what became known as the Beltway sniper attacks.

At his death-penalty trial in Virginia Beach in 2003, Mrs. Muhammad testified that her ex-husband had threatened to kill her. ” ‘Just know this — you have become my enemy, and as my enemy, I will kill you,’ ” she quoted him as saying after their marriage collapsed in 1999.

Pete and Rudy

We ran into Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican, at the British Embassy on Wednesday night and asked him who he was supporting for president in 2008.

“Rudy Giuliani,” the congressman replied without hesitation.

The Manhattan-born son of Irish immigrants (his father was a New York City police detective), Mr. King reminded Inside the Beltway of something he first told us in 1999 — that while in law school he had clerked for one summer with Mr. Giuliani, the Brooklyn-born grandson of Italian immigrants, at RichardNixon’s New York City law firm.

“Rudy’s mellowed a lot since then,” Mr. King said, without elaborating.

However, during our 1999 interview with the congressman, he commented that Mr. Giuliani, at the time the mayor of New York, was “heavy-handed at times.” But he also called him “a very smart guy, you’ve got to give Rudy credit.”

The pair of New Yorkers were born within a month of each other in the spring of 1944. Their internships with Mr. Nixon began when they were 23, when they lived “next door to each other,” Mr. King noted.

“We even took the same train to work together. We were even assigned to the same project, some sort of bond issue for Mississippi. After that, we went in different directions.”

Or did they?

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