SEATTLE (AP) - Long before a serial sniper terrorized the Washington, D.C. area, John Allen Muhammad’s second wife said he made her fear for her life.

“He has threatened to kill me. I may never see my children again,” Mildred Muhammad said in a request for a restraining order.

Interviews with friends, relatives and acquaintances suggest there were two sides to Muhammad, the man arrested with 17-year-old John Lee Malvo in the sniper shootings that left 10 dead and three more critically wounded.

He was disciplined for hitting an officer in the Louisiana National Guard, but later earned Army honors for marksmanship and Gulf War service.

One neighbor trusted him to watch her 7-year-old son; another remembers him as reclusive and unfriendly.

His successful car repair business supported a middle-class life, but after his second marriage ended he slid into homelessness.

And when he returned to his home state of Louisiana in July for one of his sporadic visits, some saw a definite change.

“He just wasn’t that same fresh, clean and ready-for-business,” said Edward Holiday, a younger cousin who considered Muhammad a role model. “He didn’t look like a guy who is doing as good as he said he did.”

Said Denitra King, a neighbor: “He wasn’t the same person.” Muhammad, 41, and Malvo were arrested Thursday while sleeping in a car at a Maryland rest stop. They are considered suspects in the sniper shootings, said Charles Moose, police chief in Montgomery County, Md., and leader of the sniper task force.

The Seattle Times quoted federal sources as saying Muhammad and Malvo had been known to speak sympathetically about the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There was no indication Muhammad or Malvo were linked to al-Qaida or any terrorist group, authorities said.