ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) Alabama law enforcement officials filed murder charges Friday against the two sniper suspects and said they planned to seek the death penalty.

They said John Allen Muhammad was the gunman who fatally shot a woman during a robbery there last month.

The officials made their announcement as authorities from Alabama and two other states and the District of Columbia conferred about who should prosecute Muhammad and 17-year-old John Lee Malvo for the deadly sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington area for three weeks.

The two were charged in Alabama on Friday with one count each of capital murder and one count of attempted murder in the Sept. 21 robbery that killed a woman and wounded another outside a liquor store in Montgomery.

Police Chief John Wilson told reporters Friday that investigators believe Muhammad fired the shots and said witnesses saw Muhammad standing over the slain woman's body. On Thursday, Wilson said one person had been spotted at the scene and he suggested it was Malvo.

He said Alabama would seek the death penalty.

"We want to send a very strong message to not only this community and this state but the country that this is not the kind of conduct, this is not what we expect of civilized society," Wilson said. "We're going to make an example of somebody."

Muhammad, 41, was ordered held without bail on a federal weapons violation Thursday, hours after he and Malvo were captured at a Maryland rest stop where they had been sleeping in their car.

Testing on a high-powered rifle found in the car showed it was the weapon used in at least 11 attacks, authorities said. The car had been modified so a sniper could lie on his stomach and shoot through a hole in the trunk, undetected, they said.

Both are suspects in attacks that killed 10 people and critically wounded three in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said.

Prosecutors from the jurisdictions where the shootings happened were discussing charges Friday.

"I think the general consensus is that the case will be tried first in Montgomery County," said Douglas Gansler, state's attorney for the Maryland jurisdiction. "We have the best evidence in the case; also the investigation was run out of Montgomery County."