Surprise apology from Malvo

(AP) — Cheryll Witz was in the Costco store in Tucson, Ariz., shopping for a birthday cake when her cell phone rang.

Waiting to speak to her was one of the nation’s most notorious serial killers — the man who five years earlier had killed her father.

“I need to apologize for what I’ve done to you and your family,” Lee Boyd Malvo told her during the Sept. 20 call.

Miss Witz stood, stunned, in the shopping aisle.

“I was standing in the Costco bawling my eyes out,” she said.

In March 2002, Malvo fatally shot Miss Witz’s father, Jerry Taylor, as he practiced chip shots on a golf course practice green in Arizona. Mr. Taylor’s slaying was a precursor to the killing spree that terrorized the D.C. area seven months later.

That’s when the teenage Malvo and partner John Allen Muhammad killed 10 persons and wounded three others over a three-week span that began Oct. 2, 2002, with a shooting in Aspen Hill. The pair killed four persons in Montgomery County during a three-hour spree five years ago today and a fifth person that night in the District.

Malvo placed the call to Miss Witz through a third party. He had initially called a producer at ABC News, who then used three-way calling to connect Malvo to Miss Witz after she agreed to take the call.

Such calls violate prison policy, said Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor. He would not comment, though, on Malvo’s specific phone calls or whether he has called any other victims’ relatives. A network spokesman said the producer did not know three-way calls were prohibited and would not have connected the two had she been aware.

At one point, Miss Witz said Malvo broke down as he spoke.

“The first thing he said was, ‘I tried to write a letter to you but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say,’ ” Miss Witz said.

Miss Witz has tried for years to learn more about the circumstances of her father’s death, and at one point even wrote to Malvo, urging him to divulge what he knew.

Unfortunately, some of the answers Malvo provided in the brief, five-minute call were far from comforting.

For personal reasons, Miss Witz did not want to discuss all the details of the call, particularly those surrounding the exact circumstances of her father’s death. But she said some of what Malvo said raised more questions in her mind about exactly what happened and why.

“I would like to know why they picked my father,” she said.

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