Tacoma, Wash. ? Two suspects charged in the rash of recent East Coast sniper attacks were linked by authorities Monday to the murder of a Tacoma woman last winter, and a shooting at a synagogue.

Tacoma Police Chief David Brame said John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17, are suspects in the killing of 21-year-old Keenya Cook. She was shot in the face Feb. 16 when she opened the door at the house where she lived.

Brame said a man contacted the FBI last week and told authorities he’d allowed Muhammad and Malvo to borrow his weapons, including a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, while the pair were staying with him earlier this year.

Investigators recovered three handguns and two rifles from the man, including two allegedly used in the crimes, Tacoma Police spokesman Jim Mattheis said. Ballistics tests confirmed that both weapons were used in separate shootings, he said.

“As a result, we now consider John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo as suspects in the Keenya Cook homicide,” Brame said.

Mattheis has said Cook’s family recognized Muhammad from news photos after his arrest in the sniper cases and called authorities. The man who provided police with the weapons also “came forward after the news coverage,” Mattheis said. “He’s been very cooperative.”

Cook’s aunt, Isa Nichols, used to be a bookkeeper for Muhammad’s auto repair business in the 1990s. Nichols became friends with Muhammad and his then-wife Mildred, and sided with Mildred during that couple’s bitter divorce and child-custody dispute, officials said.

Cook had moved into Nichols’ home in the fall of 2001 for protection from an abusive boyfriend. Members of Cook’s family wondered whether Isa Nichols was the intended target and that Cook was shot by mistake when she opened the door.

In the synagogue case, Brame said a .44-caliber Magnum, borrowed from the same man, was used in a shooting between May 1 and May 4 at Temple Beth El. No one was believed at the synagogue at the time.

In the East Coast cases, the pair now face murder charges in both Virginia and Maryland in the three-week series of attacks that killed 10 people and wounded three. Alabama has charged them in a killing during a robbery. No decision had been made yet on federal charges.

On Monday, officials said that Malvo may have been the triggerman in the killing of an FBI analyst as Virginia prosecutors announced their charges against the pair, which could bring the death penalty.

Fairfax County prosecutor Robert Horan Jr. said evidence shows that Malvo may have fired the shot that killed Linda Franklin on Oct. 14 outside a Home Depot in Falls Church. He would not elaborate on the evidence.

The pair also were charged Monday in Spotsylvania County with the murder of Kenneth Bridges on Oct. 11 and the Oct. 4 wounding of an unidentified woman. The murder charges were based on state law allowing capital punishment for the killing of more than one person within three years.