Man Arrested for Misleading Account in Sniper Case

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

A man who claimed to be a witness to the most recent killing in the series of sniping attacks in suburban areas around Washington was arrested today after doubts were raised about his account.

The man, Matthew Dowdy, 37, of Falls Church, Va., was taken into custody this afternoon by the police in Fairfax County, Va. He was charged with making "a materially and intentionally false statement or representation to a law enforcement officer who is in the course of conducting an investigation of a crime by another."

[ed note: this entry has been substantially eited from what I originally posted.  On re-reading it, my thoughts seemed to be a bit more jumbled than I like. The basic concept and points, hwoever, are the same]

Too often, people fail to grasp the consequences of their actions.  A couple days ago, I wrote about how the media was noticing some disturbing patterns in the snipers behaviour that make it appear that he is not only paying attention to what is being said about him, but is responding (see "Speculation -> Action").

Now we have a man who decided - for whatever reason - to give the police false information, claiming to have witnessed the latest shooting.  Whether he was hoping to gain attention (from either the police or the media) by being a "witness" or to have a shot at the $500,000 reward (if any of his information proved to be a lucky guess, apparently), or for some other unfathomable reason, the very real effect of his actions could have been disasterous. As it is, the police have already wasted time trying to follow up his information through investigations, and inaccurate or misleading information has been released to the public.  Even though the public has now been told that the information this man provided was a lie, with as much attention as this story (as a whole) gets, its going to be difficult for people to remember what was based on this alleged witnesses stories and what is legitimate. 

Given the killers apparenty tendency to want to demonstrate to the police that they're on the wrong track, this man's lies could have led to another death.  On previous occasions, when the police or media have commented on patterns that have been observed, or mentioned that the police may be speaking to a possible suspect, the sniper has taken lethal action to demonstrate that they're not talking to him, or to change the patterns that had been reported. 

Fortunately, this hasn't been the case in this particular situation, and there have been no further killings since Monday night. I sincerely hope, however, that the quick identification of this man as being a false witness and his subsequent arrest (even if only on misdemeanor charges) will give others who might contemplate gaining their few minutes of fame or a shot at the witness lottery more than a few second thoughts. And I also hope that they will remember that this isn't some kind of a game.