“The Making of Lee Boyd Malvo offers the unabashed truth about children who face emotional and psychological scars resulting from feelings of rejection, abandonment, and other trauma by being left home by parents who immigrated overseas.” — Geneive Brown Metzger

This week our featured book is The Making of Lee Boyd Malvo by Carmeta Albarus, MSW, LCSW, with forensic analysis by Jonathan H. Mack, Psy.D..

To enter our book giveaway, simply e-mail pl2164@columbia.edu with your name and address. We will randomly select one winner on Friday at 1:00 pm. Good luck and spread the word!

Throughout the week we will highlight aspects of The Making of Lee Boyd Malvo: The D.C. Sniper and we are offering a FREE copy of the book to one winner.

In October of 2002, a series of sniper attacks paralyzed the Washington Beltway, turning normally placid gas stations, parking lots, restaurants, and school grounds into chaotic killing fields. After the spree, ten people were dead and several others wounded. The perpetrators were forty-one-year-old John Allen Muhammad and his seventeen-year-old protégé, Lee Boyd Malvo.

Called in by the judge to serve on Malvo’s defense team, social worker Carmeta Albarus was instructed by the court to uncover any information that might help mitigate the death sentence the teen faced. Albarus met with Malvo numerous times and repeatedly traveled back to his homeland of Jamaica, as well as to Antigua, to interview his parents, family members, teachers, and friends.

In this intimate and carefully documented account, Albarus details the nature of Malvo’s tragic attachment to his perceived “hero father,” his indoctrination, and his subsequent dissociation. She recounts her role in helping to extricate Malvo from the psychological clutches of Muhammad, which led to a dramatic courtroom confrontation with the man who manipulated and exploited him. Psychologist Jonathan H. Mack identifies and analyzes the underlying clinical psychological and behavioral processes that led to Malvo’s dissociation and turn toward serial violence. With this tragic tale, the authors emphasize the importance of parental attachment and the need for positive and loving relationships during the critical years of early childhood development. By closely examining the impact of Lee Boyd Malvo’s childhood on his later development, they reach out to parents, social workers, and the community for greater awareness and prevention.