Who is Yusef Rahman, the convicted Riverhead Sniper?

The man known as the Riverhead Sniper sits on a bench outside a visiting room at the maximum security Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate Stormville, near Poughkeepsie.

A tall man, clad in the New York State prison system’s greens, his posture is stooped, his hands resting on his knees as he waits. His head is covered by a taqiyah, a Muslim prayer cap, that matches the color of his uniform.

Yusef Abdullah Rahman has been incarcerated for most of his 44 years, since his arrest on Jan. 28, 1989 after a four-day shooting spree in Riverhead that left one dead and three injured — and paralyzed the community with fear during the holiday season of 1988. [See parts one and two in this series.]

The jury’s verdict: guilty

Convicted on Oct. 24, 1990 after a two-week jury trial on charges of murder, attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment, he’s serving 42-years-to-life in New York, a sentence running concurrently with a life sentence for the murder of a Kansas City man in August 1987. [After his trial in Riverhead, Rahman was extradited to Missouri, where he pleaded guilty to the murder.]

The jury that heard the testimony in Rahman’s trial took two-and-a-half days to render its verdict: guilty of depraved-indifference murder in the shooting death of Bernard Timothy Heaney, 30, on Dec. 5, 1988; guilty of attempted murder and first-degree assault in the shootings of Theodore Squires on Dec. 6, 1988, Richard Jensen on Dec. 7, 1988 and Donald Crump on Dec. 8, 1988; and guilty of reckless endangerment for shooting at Southampton Police Officer Larry Doscinski on Dec. 31, 1988. 

Rahman’s insanity defense centered on his competence to understand the consequences of his actions and the jury was initially split on the issue of Rahman’s mental competence, a juror told Newsday reporter Don Smith after the verdict.

“What helped swing everyone to a guilty verdict, the juror said, were the telephone calls Rahman admitted making after two of the shootings,” Smith wrote.

Rahman, in a signed confession, said he called Riverhead Police after killing Heaney to say, “I had just declared war on crooked cops and drug dealers. I did this to make police think the guy I shot was a drug dealer. I had been thinking about shooting someone for a long time before I did this.” [See signed confession]

During the trial, Rahman had testified that he did the shootings as a member of a SWAT-type team including eight other people, who acted after getting coded radio messages, and were part of a government-ordered mission.

His calls to police made jurors doubt his assertion at trial that he believed himself on a mission for the government. “If he really felt he was on a mission for the government, it seemed hard to see why he would call the police,” a juror told Newsday.

Rahman was a young man obsessed with military operations and guns. He dressed in fatigues and had a collection of weapons. He told Riverhead police he’d been practicing commando operations with guns since age 6 and bought his first gun, a 357 handgun, at age 14.

At the time of the Riverhead shootings, Rahman was a suspect in another four-day spree of shootings in Kansas City, Missouri, that left five men dead between July 28 and Aug. 3, 1987. Rahman had been indicted for the murder of one of those men, Frederick C. Beard, 21, whose body, shot multiple times, was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car. Rahman was on the Kansas City police department’s “10 most wanted” list. The FBI had a warrant out for his arrest on charges of fleeing to avoid prosecution.

From shootout in a Brooklyn mosque to training for jihad in Missouri

Rahman had been living in an isolated survivalist encampment in the backwoods of Missouri, where police found military gear and ammunition in a tent when they’d gone searching for him.

As a youth, Rahman moved with his mother and stepfather to Kansas City and then to Kingsville, a rural Muslim community 50 miles outside of Kansas City. The family had previously lived in Compton, California, moving there from Brooklyn in the late 1970s.

Rahman’s biological father, Bilal Abdullah Rahman (born Patrick Quince), was the head minister of the Ya Sin mosque in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Rahman and his deputy were gunned down in a shootout at the mosque on the night of Feb. 5, 1974, when five armed assailants raided the mosque. Return gunfire from men inside the mosque killed two of the attackers. Police said the shootout was either between two rival Sunni Muslim factions or between the Sunni Muslims and the Black Muslims. The leader of that group, Louis Farrahkan, denied any involvement in the shootings.

The bloodbath left 5-year-old Yusef Abdullah Rahman — and nine siblings born to three wives — fatherless. His mother quickly remarried, as required by their sect’s religious tenets. Her new husband began following a radical Pakistani sheik with a sect called “Jamaatul Fuqra.” At age 6, Yusef “found himself submerged in a world saturated with incessant rhetoric of jihad and military preparedness,” his sister, Sayyidah Abdullah Rahman, told Muslim blogger Abdur Rahman Muhammad, author of “A Singular Voice” blog, in 2009.

“Much like the child soldiers of Rwanda or Sierra Leone, he was denied the innocence of youth, and received instead intensive military and ideological training,” Muhammed wrote. “In essence, they made Yusef Abdullah Rahman into a killing machine.”

Sometime after his 1987 shooting rampage in Kansas City, Rahman returned to New York and made his way to Riverhead, where he lived with an uncle on Fanning Street and sometimes stayed with his grandfather on Old Quogue Road. It was in his grandfather’s garage that Rahman hid his guns, including the Marlin .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle he took into the woods with him as night fell on Dec. 5, 1988 on a “mission” that would end in the murder of 30-year-old Timothy Heaney, father of two young daughters, outside his auto-body shop on Flanders Road at 6:30 that night.

RiverheadLOCAL reporter Micah Danney interviewed Rahman at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, N.Y. on Dec. 4.

RiverheadLOCAL: How has your adjustment to prison gone?

Rahman: I haven’t fully adjusted. I’m making do.

RiverheadLOCAL: It’s been 25 years since the crimes for which you were convicted. How do you now reflect on those events?

Rahman: It’s a tragedy. I regret the loss of life.

RiverheadLOCAL: When did feelings of remorse come into the picture for you?

Rahman: When I was in the box. It became more concentrated, I should say, when I was in the box in ’95.

RiverheadLOCAL: How long a stretch were you in isolation?

Rahman: Two…two-and-a-half to three years.

RiverheadLOCAL: Your defense at trial was insanity. Your attorney said you were suffering from delusions caused by paranoid schizophrenia. Have you been diagnosed with that condition?

Rahman: I’m in ICP [Intermediate Care Program] and I’m dealing with OMH [Office of Mental Health].

RiverheadLOCAL: Do you agree that you experience delusions?

Rahman: To a degree. According to psychiatry.

RiverheadLOCAL: But not according to you?

Rahman: Personally, I don’t feel I do. I haven’t really concluded on that.

RiverheadLOCAL: Have you changed since you committed those acts?

Rahman: I’ve become more spiritual. I think I’m more in touch with more heavenly forces. I didn’t have an understanding of the forces that were being in touch with me. I’m more peaceful now.

RiverheadLOCAL: At the time you said you were carrying out a mission. How do you understand what you did in this new context of being peaceful?

Rahman: It was real.

RiverheadLOCAL: What were you trying to accomplish by shooting these people?

Rahman: One, to save the hostages, and to rid the world of illegal drugs.

RiverheadLOCAL: Where did you get information that there were hostages?

Rahman: I just knew that there were hostages.

RiverheadLOCAL: What was your beef about illegal drugs? Had they affected your life in any way?

Rahman: Well I met two people who took me to this place where there were lots of babies who were affected by their mothers’ drug use.

RiverheadLOCAL: What have you done with your time in here?

Rahman: In prison, I’ve come to an awareness of many different religions.

RiverheadLOCAL: Did you ever have any other aspirations for your life than the course you took?

Rahman: I always wanted to be on a SWAT team. At the time it seemed like a higher calling.

RiverheadLOCAL: You don’t deny any of the killings you are accused of?

Rahman: No.

RiverheadLOCAL: How many people did you kill in Kansas City?

Rahman: Four.

RiverheadLOCAL: In your letter granting permission for this interview, you quote the Bible and speak of love. How do you view the violence you committed in that context? How do you feel now about the lives you ended?

Rahman: I regret the loss of life. I’ve come to realize and honor life. I don’t believe in the concept anymore of taking one life to save a village. Now I believe that all life can be saved.

RiverheadLOCAL: How often do you think about what you did 25 years ago?

Rahman: Not every day but I think about it often.

RiverheadLOCAL: How did you choose the people you would shoot?

Rahman: It would all start with a phone call.

RiverheadLOCAL: Receiving or making one?

Rahman: Making, to my superiors.

RiverheadLOCAL: Once you arrived at the locations, how did you decide who to target?

Rahman: There was always confrontation.

RiverheadLOCAL: Did you ever speak to anyone about your missions?

Rahman: I never told anyone about the missions.

RiverheadLOCAL: Where did you get the guns you used?

Rahman: Bought them off people.

RiverheadLOCAL: You’re also serving a life sentence for a murder in Missouri, so you probably won’t ever be released. If you were, what do you think you would do with your life?

Rahman: I don’t think I’ll ever see the street again. If I was released I would go to a research temple where they do a lot of studying and stuff.

When his picture was taken, Rahman slowly folded his arms and sat with his face set as it had been the rest of the interview, save for the few times he looked down with a slightly furrowed brow as he tried to remember something.

RiverheadLOCAL: Is there anything you’d like to say to the people you shot and their families?

Rahman: I just say I’m sorry for the loss.