Hunt for minivan continues

MANASSAS, Va. -- Police hunting the Washington-area sniper searched Thursday for a white minivan seen leaving the scene of a seventh fatal shooting in the past week.\nPolice were trying to determine if Wednesday night's slaying at a gas station in northern Virginia was linked to the sniper. Dean Harold Meyers, 53, of Gaithersburg, Md., was gunned down moments after filling his tank.\nTwo men were seen in a white van shortly after the sniper slayings began eight days ago in the Washington suburbs. The vehicle described by witnesses to Wednesday's shooting was similar -- a white "panel truck."\n"It's a minivan but instead of windows around the side, it's solid. We don't know about windows in the back," Sgt. Kim Chinn, a Prince William County police spokeswoman, told reporters Thursday. The vehicle was described as looking like a Dodge Caravan, she said.\nShe stressed that the Virginia killing had not been definitely linked to the eight earlier sniper shootings, six of them fatal, in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia since Oct. 2. Manassas is approximately 30 miles west of the nation's capital and about 40 miles southwest of Bowie, Md., the site of Monday's shooting that wounded a boy outside a school.\n"The assurance we can give the community is we are working as hard as we can," Chinn said.\nMaryland investigators went to the scene of Wednesday's killing because of similarities with the previous shootings, and Virginia police were sharing information with them.\n"We are certainly working the case with that (a possible link) in mind," Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said Thursday morning. But at midday, he said investigators still had not established a connection.\nInvestigators say the sniper, or snipers, fired from a distance with a high-powered hunting or military-style rifle. All the earlier victims had been felled by a single bullet; authorities wouldn't comment Thursday on whether Meyers also was killed that way.\nA former neighbor of Meyers, Carol Iverson, described him as "perfectly delightful. ... He always had a kind word." She said they remained close after she moved, and he had visited her home just last week.\nOfficials announced Thursday they had set up a single tip line for people wanting to report information. That number is 1-888-324-9800.\nThe 13-year-old schoolboy wounded in Bowie on Monday remained in critical but stable condition Thursday. A woman wounded in Fredericksburg, Va., last week was released from the hospital Tuesday.\nA tarot card with the words "Dear policeman, I am God" was found near a .223-caliber shell casing outside the school in Bowie, a source familiar with the investigation said on the condition of anonymity.\nMoose wouldn't comment Wednesday when asked about the tarot card, and angrily suggested unapproved information had been leaked.\n"I need to make sure I don't do anything to hinder our ability to bring this person or these people into custody," Moose said.\nThe "I am God" message left on the tarot card called the Death card was first reported by WUSA-TV and then by The Washington Post. Police sources told the newspaper the items were found 150 yards from the school in a wooded area on matted grass, suggesting the gunman had lain in wait.\nThe Post on Thursday reported that the tarot card also contained a handwritten request from the sniper that it not be revealed to the media. Some detectives had hoped that if they honored the request, the sniper might communicate with investigators again, the newspaper quoted sources as saying.\nTarot cards, used mainly for fortunetelling, are believed to have been introduced into western Europe by Gypsies in the 15th century. Many tarot enthusiasts say the Death card usually does not connote physical death, but instead portrays a symbolic change or transformation.\nCrime experts, while noting that the link between the card and the sniper remained unconfirmed, recalled other serial killers who left "calling cards."\nOne of the most notorious was David Berkowitz, who killed six people in New York in 1976-77. He wrote a letter to newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin and left a note addressed to a police detective that said: "I am a monster. I am the 'Son of Sam.'"\nRobert K. Ressler, a former FBI profiler, interviewed Berkowitz after his arrest.\n"He said this was a stimulating thing for him to see the letters in the paper," Ressler said. "Even though he's the only one who knows, notoriety becomes very satisfying to an inadequate loser. It's a way of imposing power and control over society"