OMINOUS TWIST: Pregnant Vindalee Smith was found slain at her Brooklyn home, lying atop a note in which her killer vowed to murder more pregnant women unless DC sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was freed. (Gabriella Bass)
Lee Boyd Malvo (Reuters)
(
)
The fiend who killed a pregnant Brooklyn bride-to-be left a chilling note under her body — vowing that more expectant moms would die unless “the DC sniper” is released from jail, law-enforcement sources told The Post yesterday.
The single-page, computer-printed message was discovered Saturday after cops were called to the blood-spattered Flatbush basement apartment where Vindalee Smith, 38, had been stabbed and slashed across the throat.
“The note was underneath the body. They found it when they rolled her over,” one law-enforcement source said.
Typed in big, black block letters, the note warned that one pregnant woman a week would die unless Washington, DC, sniper Lee Boyd Malvo were sprung from prison, said a source familiar with the message.
But skeptical investigators believe the note is a ruse by the killer to throw them off track — although they are not ruling anything out, sources said.
Police believe Smith — who was a day away from getting married and two weeks from giving birth — knew her killer. There was no sign of forced entry, and no weapon was found.
Malvo, 27, is serving life in prison for six of the 10 Beltway sniper attacks that terrorized the country in 2002. He and his murderous mentor, John Allen Muhammad, had planned to kill six white people a day for a month.
Muhammad was executed in November 2009. Malvo was back in the news last month, when he acknowledged in a jailhouse interview that he was “a monster.”
There is no indication of any connection among Smith, her murderer and Malvo, law-enforcement sources said.
Smith, a devout Seventh-day Adventist and mom of four kids in their late teens and early 20s, had planned to walk down the aisle yesterday with her fiancé, Anthony Jackman, friends said.
Police sources said Jackman, who spent yesterday being questioned by police, is still married. His BMW remained parked at the crime scene.
It is unclear whether Jackman, who works in construction, was the father of Smith’s unborn boy, who did not survive.
Smith — who had a history of apartment evictions — was involved in a vicious war of words with her sister as US marshals oversaw an eviction in March, former neighbors said.
“The sister was yelling, saying, ‘You’re messing with a married man,’ and, ‘You don’t know who the baby daddy is! You’re choosing your boyfriend over your kids! You’re so worried about this man, and you’re not worried about your kids. I’m sick of you getting kicked out of places,’ ” one neighbor recalled.
Friends said Smith spoke highly of Jackman. But most who knew her, including Pastor Ferronth Frances, who was to marry them at his New Dimensions church, said they’d never met him.
Frances yesterday backed off her earlier claims that Smith had received death threats from a former neighbor.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Bain and Reuven Fenton