Cho Seung-Hui walked into a Virginia gun shop five weeks ago, put down a credit card and walked out with a Glock 19 handgun and a box of ammunition. He paid $572 (€421).

Christmas Day shootings in the United States left five people, including the gunman and his mother, dead, police said tonight.

A JUDGE rejected John Allen Muhammad's insistence of innocence and sentenced him to death, saying his actions in the Washington-area sniper shootings that left 10 people dead were "so vile that they were almost beyond comprehension".

A cocky Lee Malvo laughed repeatedly during a police interrogation as he recounted some of last year’s Washington sniper attacks, saying of one victim, ”He was hit good. Dead immediately”, a detective told the murder trial.

JURORS wept yesterday as they listened to a recording of Linda Franklin’s husband wailing and sobbing as he made the emergency call reporting his wife’s sniper shooting.

A 42-year-old man entered not guilty pleas today at the beginning of a trial over the killing of 10 people during a three-week reign of terror in and around Washington last year.

Lawyers for Washington sniper suspect Lee Malvo are to mount an insanity defence at his murder trial, arguing that the teenager was a victim of “indoctrination” by his older co-defendant John Muhammad.

A JUDGE yesterday ordered a change of venue for the trial of sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo, moving the case from Fairfax County to Chesapeake, 200 miles to the south.

Teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo implicated his alleged accomplice as an equal partner in their shooting spree, with John Allen Muhammad acting as a spotter and calling out shots, prosecutors said.

A judge has said 17-year-old sniper suspect John Lee Malvo can be tried as an adult, making him eligible for the death penalty.

Prosecutors seeking a death penalty case against 17-year-old sniper suspect John Lee Malvo said fingerprints on the murder weapon and other evidence linked him to three of the killings and a fourth attack that critically wounded a man.

A JUDGE yesterday denied a request from broadcasters to televise the trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad, saying such coverage could compromise Muhammad’s right to a fair trial.

JOHN LEE MALVO, the 17-year-old accused of a series of sniper attacks that terrorised the Washington DC suburbs, has admitted during a seven-hour interrogation that he carried out some of the killings, it was reported yesterday.

A prosecutor says the only fingerprints found on the rifle used in the Washington sniper attacks belonged to teenage suspect John Lee Malvo.

LOOKING unshaven and unkempt, Washington sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad made his first appearance in a Virginia state court yesterday, a state second only to Texas in executions of adults and juveniles.

Two men have been charged in the rash of recent sniper shootings in the US as authorities on the West Coast said they were also suspects in the killing of a woman last winter and a shooting at a synagogue.

SNIPER suspect John Allen Muhammad was indicted yesterday on capital murder and five other charges in two shootings in Virginia.

Sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad was indicted today on capital murder and five other charges in two shootings in Virginia.

PROSECUTORS are investigating whether to file charges against a witness accused of intentionally misleading investigators by falsely claiming he saw a sniper open fire with an assault rifle and flee in a cream-coloured van.

The hunt for the serial sniper stalking Washington suffered a setback today when a witness to the latest attack was labelled “not credible” by police.

BALLISTIC evidence conclusively links the death of a woman shot in the head in a suburban parking lot with eight other killings by the Washington-area sniper, authorities said yesterday.