The DC Sniper killings in 2002 were committed by John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. Malvo had a difficult childhood, moving frequently with his mother and later living alone with Muhammad. Muhammad became a father figure for Malvo and trained him in religion, tactics, and shooting. Social learning theory best explains Malvo's criminal behavior, as he learned it from Muhammad through differential association, definitions of acceptable violence, differential reinforcement of rewards, and imitation of Muhammad's killing style.

1. Colton Robinson
DC Snipers
Lee Boyd Malvo

2. The “DC Sniper” killings were brutal attacks that will leave an impact on many families
and area they took place. One of the snipers that caused this chaos was Lee Boyd Malvo. Malvo
was born 1985 in Kingston, Jamaica where many families had to live in cardboard boxes. As an
infant, Lee lived with his mother and father, Una and Leslie. Leslie Malvo, as a mason, left to
work in the Cayman Islands for two years and when he returned, Una and Lee left and had no
connections to the father. They relocated many times as the mother would change jobs often and
this would cause Lee Boyd to transfer schools throughout the year. Malvo excelled in school
and classmates and staff would say he was bright, charming, and all about God and schoolwork.
In 1999, Malvo and his mother moved to Antigua where Una later left Malvo by himself. This
caused Malvo to move in with John Muhammad when he could not afford rent. When Malvo
moved in with Muhammad, he finally had another father figure in his life. Malvo has not had
someone to look up to since his father left when he was an infant. Malvo converted his religion
to Islamic and he recited the Koran so often that he let his grades slip. A few years later, Malvo
and Muhammad moved to Florida before eventually settling in Washington D.C. After living in
a homeless shelter for a while, the directed of the shelter stated that “The thing that stood out to
us was that Malvo was a follower of John’s, that his purpose was to please John and always be in
John’s favor and do whatever John wanted him to do. While growing up with Muhammad, it
seemed as if Lee was being trained rather than raised. He was being taught about religion,
exercises, army tactics, and shooting including with snipers. Everything that Muhammad taught
Malvo throughout his life leads our group to believe that Social Learning Theory best represents
Malvo’s behavior of the shootings (Leyton, 2003).
Social Learning Theory is a criminological theory that was created by Ronald L. Akers.
Akers wanted to focus on redressing the previous imbalance of attention to the deviant behavior
itself (Akers, 1968). “Social learning theory as a general perspective in deviance is part of a
larger move towards incorporation of modern behaviorism into sociological theory.” (Akers,
Krohn, Lanza-Kaduce & Radosevich, 1979). The main concern with Social Learning Theory is
that al behavior is learned. We are born empty without good or evil already in us. Akers states
that positive learning corresponds to a positive individual and vice versa. Another important
concept to the Social Learning Theory are the four categories of learning. The first is differential
association meaning one learns from others. This category shows the most impact for juveniles.
The second category would be definitions. Definitions is how one defines a behavior and the
rationalization. Next, differential reinforcement is taking the rewards and punishments into
consideration for a specific behavior. Lastly, imitation is the copying of one’s behavior.
According to (children.gov.on.ca, 2013), two major factors that influence one’s behavior is the
role of family and the role of peers. Social Learning Theory has been applied within many
studies when looking at the four categories of differential association, definitions, differential
reinforcement, and imitation. Using these principles, they found that the theoretical value
supported the relationship between social learning concepts and criminal behavior.
After following the D.C. Sniper case, our group grew to believe Social Learning Theory
is the best to explain the rationality of Lee Boyd Malvo. We believe that his criminal behavior
was learned and by most means through Muhammad. We think that Muhammad took advantage
Malvo. Malvo looked up to Muhammad as a father figure and thought he owed his life to

3. Muhammad for him taking in Malvo and taking care of him with food and shelter once his
mother left. With Muhammad being the father figure of Lee Boyd, he had someone to learn
from. This would explain how Malvo connects to Social Learning Theory through differential
association. Stated in the last paragraph, the role of the family is a major factor in Social
Learning Theory. The role of the family can have an impact on the juvenile dealing with the
concern of past violence (children.gov.on.ca, 2013). Through research, we found that there was
some pressure of aggressive violence in Malvo’s childhood. During a basketball incident,
Muhammad physically abused Malvo. This was the first time Muhammad took that action but it
was also the last because Malvo was determined to never disappoint John Muhammad again.
Another family member that influenced violence was his aunt. She would beat him as a
punishment if he did anything wrong and would tell him how important it was to be physical. A
third instance violence took place in his youth years would deal with the fact that there is an
effect with the role of peers. There was an incident in school where he was attacked by two boys
in the bathroom (Albarus & Mack, 2012). Other cases we found connected to differential
association would be his training from Muhammad. Stated early, Malvo was more trained than
raised and learned his beliefs, high trained skills, and exercises from Muhammad (Leyton, 2003).
Malvo also learned definitions from Muhammad. Lee Boyd was taught how this heinous
crime should be looked at. John, with his military background, made it sound okay for one to
shoot another and Malvo learned it as this (Leyton, 2003). This is how he rationalized the
murders. He did not know the right vs. wrong of the situation because he was taught that it was
not seen as negative in the eyes of Muhammad, who he thought he owed his life to.
In accordance to differential reinforcement, Malvo had to take in consideration of the
rewards and punishment. We thought he focused on the rewards and did not think about the
punishment as much. Again, he looked up to Muhammad and thought he had to do whatever he
wanted him to do (Leyton 2003). This leads to the inference that he is continuing with these
killings to prove himself to Muhammad with Muhammad’s approval being the reward. At the
end of the case, we learned that the main goal was for Muhammad’s ex-wife to be killed and
look as though it was random. This would be a reward for Lee because it would complete their
goal. It was both of them that wanted to achieve this goal because Malvo is the follower
(Albarus & Mack, 2012). Obviously Malvo would know that there was punishment if they were
caught, our group thought that Malvo came to the conclusions of the rewards outweighing the
punishment if completed.
Finally, imitation is the last concept of learning. One example of this would be the
murders. He may have learned how to shoot from Muhammad, but the actual shooting of a
person was the copying behavior that has been portrayed by John. It may seem like this is
differential association, but the murder was not taught, just the steps leading up to it was learned.
The actual killing was just Malvo copying the style of Muhammad killing someone. Looking
back at the evidence given to us in class, our group believed Lee Boyd Malvo’s behavior best
connected to the Social Learning Theory by Akers when looking at the ideas it is based off of.

4. Works Cited:
Leyton, E., & Leyton, E. (2003). Hunting humans: The rise of the modern multiple murderer.
New York: Carroll & Graf.
Akers, R. L., Krohn, M. D., Lanza-Kaduce, L., & Radosevich, M.. (1979). Social Learning and
Deviant Behavior: A Specific Test of a General Theory. American Sociological Review, 44(4),
636–655. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2094592
Burgess, R. L., & Akers, R. L. (2013, September 3). Review of the Roots of Youth Violence:
Literature Reviews. Retrieved from
http://www.children.gov.on.ca/htdocs/English/topics/youthandthelaw/roots/volume5/chapter08_s
ocial_learning.aspx
Albarus, C., & Mack, J. H. (2012). The making of Lee Boyd Malvo: The D.C. sniper. New York:
Columbia University Press.