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William Shatner’s road to snaring his exclusive phone in terview with Lee Malvo led through the DC sniper’s shrink.
The interview, which aired last night on BIO, took months to set up. It became a reality once Malvo — serving a life sentence — gave his psychiatrist, Dr. Neil Blumberg, permission to speak to Shatner for last night’s special, “Confessions of the D.C. Sniper,” a cur-
tain-raiser for Shatner’s new series, “Aftermath,” which premieres Monday.
“In doing this episode we contacted victims of the DC snipers . . . and Shatner also tried to get in touch with Lee Malvo,” says Robert Sharenow, A&E’s senior VP of nonfiction and alternative programming.
“In the process of doing that . . . Malvo granted permission for Shatner to interview Dr. Blumberg.”
Once that happened, Malvo then agreed to speak by phone to Shatner.
Malvo, now 25, is serving life without the possibility of parole in Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison after pleading guilty to six random sniper murders that terrorized the DC area in the fall of 2002. His fellow DC sniper, John Allen Muhammad, was executed last November.
“It was a strange and difficult process. Malvo is in a maximum-security pri-
son and just can’t pick up the phone and call,” Sharenow says. “He’s limited to one call a week and can only be on the phone for 20 minutes.”
In his interview with Shatner, Malvo claimed, among other things, that there were supposed to be “three-to-four snipers with silenced weapons” — and that Muhammad killed one would-be sniper after he backed out of the plot.
Sharenow says the Malvo-Shatner phone interview hit a few snafus — including Malvo not calling as scheduled, Shatner missing a call and technical difficulties.
“Shatner was sitting there waiting by the phone. It was like, ‘The call is happening now’ and he had to spring into action,” Sharenow says.
The interview was conducted last month — but, surprisingly, BIO waited until yesterday to announce its big “get.”
“We were really treating it like breaking news . . . it was so explosive that we didn’t want to risk exposing it or having the tapes circulating out there,” Sharenow says.