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Police are checking unsolved murders around the nation for ties to the Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks — a task that took on renewed urgency Thursday as the extraordinary crime spree’s latest leg extended to Louisiana. 

Law enforcement officials said they had linked the rifle used in the sniper case to a Sept. 23 killing in Baton Rouge. Authorities already have laid charges in Alabama and connected two shooting cases in Washington state, all with ballistics evidence. 

Police have identified at least two other cases — a killing in Michigan and a separate string of slayings in Louisiana — they believe could be linked, but with little real evidence so far. 

The task of determining the spree’s full scope is daunting. 

The two men accused in the capital-area sniper shootings, John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, have lived in or drifted through many states and spent time in the Caribbean. 

Beyond the D.C.-area, Alabama and Louisiana cases, police have linked Muhammad to other seemingly disparate crimes — a possible rage killing at a home and an attack on a synagogue, both in Washington state. The capital-area sniper demanded $10 million — a twist that further expands the range of possible criminal methods and motives. 

“It’s difficult because he could reasonably be a suspect in just about anything,” said Stanton Samenow, a psychologist who evaluates violent criminals for the courts and wrote “Inside the Criminal Mind.” 

Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday that investigators were also still exploring if other people took part in the crime spree. 

Spurred by a national advisory from the Maryland-based sniper task force, police in many states have reopened old files to check for elements common with the sniper case. That three-week killing field left 10 dead and three wounded and brought charges from Virginia, Maryland and federal prosecutors. 

State and local police have reported checks for any related cases in at least Washington state, Oregon, California, Arizona, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and Michigan. 

— In the Louisiana case, beauty supply worker Hong Im Ballenger was killed during a Baton Rouge robbery. There is suspicion the rifle used to shoot her in the head also might have been involved in another shooting in the city that did not kill anybody. Muhammad grew up in Baton Rouge and also visited relatives with Malvo there in the weeks before the sniper attacks. 

Baton Rouge police also are seeking DNA samples from each man to check for links to the other case — the serial murders of three women between fall 2001 and last summer. One woman was strangled, one stabbed and one had a slit throat. 

Authorities, however, say they are still leaning toward a white man, as predicted in an FBI profile, as a more likely kind of suspect in those murders. Muhammad and Malvo are black. 

— In Michigan, Lansing police were following up with the sniper task force to check on any connection to the shooting death of Bernita White at a zoo entrance in June 2001. She was shot by someone hiding behind a fence about 200 yards away. The capital-area sniper also fired at long range. 

“It’s something we’re looking into, but it’s nothing formal,” said police Lt. John Parks in Lansing. “You can’t ignore it.” 

There is no known evidence that Muhammad and Malvo were in Michigan. However, a friend of Muhammad’s, who helped buy the car allegedly used in the sniper case, was arrested in Michigan as a material witness. 

In Montgomery, Ala., the Sept. 21 robbery attempt left one woman dead and another wounded outside a liquor store. Police also have linked Muhammad and Malvo to the February murder of a woman shot in the face at her door in Tacoma, Wash., possibly out of fury toward her aunt for taking sides with Muhammad’s ex-wife in a custody scrap. Police suspect the pair, too, in connection with shots fired at a Tacoma synagogue in May, an incident in which no one was hurt. 

At the sniper command center in Montgomery County, Md., detectives asked police agencies around the country to scan for similar cases soon after the sniper arrests. 

But what is similar? Should they look at all long-range sniper shootings, crimes with the same caliber rifle, fatal shootings, all homicides or even severe assaults? Departments are taking varying approaches. 

“You just kind of look at everything to check if it really fits,” said Brooks Wilkins, who oversees criminal intelligence for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. 

Knowing Muhammad lived in Monterey, Calif., for about a year while in the military, the county sheriff’s department scanned for any likely matches with all unsolved murders during that time. It came up empty, Deputy Bill Cassara said. 

In Oregon, where Muhammad once served in the national guard, state police glanced back at several dozen sniping cases over the last decade or so, without finding any matches, spokesman Andy Olsen said. 

N.G. Berrill, who teaches about criminal behavior at John Jay College in New York City, said investigators should try to reconstruct every place the men went — especially Muhammad. 

“There’s every opportunity and every possibility that if he ran out of money, there would have been a robbery. If he had become angry or disconsolate or highly agitated, he might have shot someone,” Berrill said. 

“You would look at unsolved crimes that you had an itch to solve. I wouldn’t confine it to a certain type of crime,” added Jeffrey Smalldon, a forensic psychologist in Columbus, Ohio, who worked on the serial sniper case of Thomas Lee Dillon. Dillon pleaded guilty in 1993 to killing five strangers. 

However, Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI agent who examined patterns of criminal behavior, suggested police could focus their search. “I think part of what they need to look for is unsolved assaults or homicides where it appears the victim was again chosen at random,” he said. 

Northeastern University criminologist Jack Levin, in Boston, who writes on serial murders, cautioned against scanning too aggressively for connections, because police could waste time and resources and finger the wrong suspect. 

“When you’ve got guys like Muhammad and Malvo who are charged with crimes in a number of jurisdictions, there’s a tendency for police departments around the country to want to clear their cases. Sometimes they go overboard,” he said.