The last picture: A mugshot of Muhammad handed out by the Virginia Department of Corrections
The Washington sniper was executed by lethal injection last night just a few miles from the city he terrorised for three weeks.
John Allen Muhammad was led into Virginia's death chamber and within seconds he was lying on a gurney, tapping his left foot, his arms spread wide with a needle dug into each.
'Mr. Muhammad, do you have any last words?' the warden asked the mastermind behind the attacks that killed 10 people in 2002.
Muhammad, calm and stoic, was defiant to the end, refusing to speak. But just a few hours before it was revealed that the killer had asked his ex-wife to tell his children of his love for them.
Carol Williams and son Lindbergh, 27, saw Muhammad hours before his death. She told U.S. talkshow host Larry King how she had received a letter from Muhammad just days ago.
She added: 'He wanted his kids to know how much he loved them. He loved his kids so much. And he wanted them to know that.'
The 48-year-old died by injection at 9:11pm as relatives of the victims watched, reliving the killing spree that terrorised the Washington DC area for three weeks that October.
Victims' families sat behind glass, separated from the rest of the 27 witnesses, who were quiet, looking straight forward, intent on what was happening.
'He died very peacefully, much more than most of his victims,' said Prince William County prosecutor Paul Ebert, who witnessed the execution at Greensville Correctional Centre, south of Richmond.
Muhammad was executed for killing Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot in the head at a Manassas petrol station during the spree across Maryland, Virginia and the U.S. capital.
Answers to why he and a teenage accomplice methodically hunted people going about their daily business, why he chose his victims, including a schoolboy on his way to class, and how many there were went to the grave with him.
Meyers' brother, Bob Meyers, said watching the execution was sobering and 'surreal.'
He added that other witnesses expressed a range of feelings, including some who were overcome with emotion.
Derick Lane (L) and his son Desmond (R) of Richmond, Virginia, shortly before the scheduled execution by lethal injection of John Allen Muhammad
A van carrying execution witnesses and victim family members leaves Greenville Correctional facility in Jarratt after the execution
The gurney on which convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad was put to death at the Greensville Correctional Centre this morning
'I would have liked him at some point in the process to take responsibility, to show remorse,' Meyers said.
'We didn't get any of that tonight.'
After the first of the three-drug lethal cocktail was administered, Muhammad blinked repeatedly and took about seven deep breaths. Within a minute, he was motionless.
Nelson Rivera, whose wife, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, was gunned down as she vacuumed her van at a Maryland petrol station, said that when he watched Muhammad's chest moving for the last time, he was glad.
'I feel better. I think I can breathe better,' he said. 'I'm glad he's gone because he's not going to hurt anyone else.'
J. Wyndal Gordon, one of Muhammad's attorneys, described his client in his final hours as fearless and still insisting he was innocent.
'He will die with dignity - dignity to the point of defiance,' Gordon said before going inside to watch the execution.
The killer's last meal was chicken in red sauce, followed by strawberry cakes, his lawyer added.
Sheron Norman, Muhammad's sister-in-law talks to reporters outside the prison yesterday
Family members of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad pray together
Milton Perry, a friend of the late Conrad Johnson that was a murder victim of John Allen Muhammad, waits outside Greensville Correctional Centr shortly before the scheduled execution
The terror ended on October 24, 2002, when police captured Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo while they slept at a Maryland rest stop in a car they had outfitted for a shooter to perch in its boot without being detected.
Malvo, who was 17 when carrying out the attacks, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing Linda Franklin, a 47-year-old FBI analyst who was shot as she and her husband loaded supplies at a Home Depot in Falls Church, Virginia.
The men also were suspected of fatal shootings in other states, including Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Muhammad's final appeal Monday, and Governor Timothy M. Kaine denied clemency Tuesday.
Muhammad's attorneys had asked Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison because they said Muhammad was severely mentally ill.
'I think crimes that are this horrible, you just can't understand them, you can't explain them,' said Kaine, a Democrat known for carefully considering death penalty cases.
After the execution, a van carrying the sniper's body leaves the prison
Police search the specially adapted car that John Muhammad and his young travelling companion Lee Malvo were in when police surprised them in 2002
A small group of death penalty opponents gathered on a grassy area near the prison and had a sign reading, 'We remember the victims, but not with more killing.'
Muhammad was born John Allen Williams and changed his name after converting to Islam. He had been in and out of the military since he graduated from high school in Louisiana and entered the National Guard. He joined the Army in 1985.
He did not take special sniper training but earned an expert rating in the M-16 rifle - the military cousin of the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle used in the Washington shootings.
The motive for the attacks remains murky.
Malvo said Muhammad wanted to extort $10 million from the government to set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would be trained as terrorists.
Muhammad's ex-wife said she believes they were a smoke screen for his plan to kill her and regain custody of their three children.
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