On the phone call, the sniper, boasting of his cleverness, mentioned a previous unsolved murder in "Montgomery". This was identified as the September 21 shooting at a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama. On October 17 authorities said they matched Malvo's fingerprint found at the Benjamin Tasker Middle School site with one lifted from the Montgomery liquor store scene. After confirming the link between these two crime scenes, the FBI was able to link these fingerprints to Malvo due to his fingerprinting during a previous arrest in Washington state. After further research into Malvo's background, the police found he had close ties to John Allen Muhammad.