BODY COUNT...HOW MANY MUST DIE?

John Gray finally gets death penalty after        —Raping and killing Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay of Fayetteville on Dec. 15, 1986. She was shot four times with a .22-caliber pistol that Gray confessed to stealing. She suffered blunt force trauma over much of her body.President Bush refused to commute his sentence.

The Fayetteville Observer / AP

Marine Cpl. John Patrick Wimunc , 23, of 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, was charged by the Fayetteville Police Department with first-degree murder, first-degree arson and conspiracy to commit first-degree arson.

Wimunc - who served two tours in Iraq , including one that ended in January - is accused of killing his wife, Fort Bragg soldier 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc. Holley Wimunc was reported missing when her Fayetteville apartment was torched .

In May, Wimunc secured a temporary restraining order against her husband. She told authorities he got drunk and held a loaded handgun to her head and his.

Holley Wimunc's parents released a statement to the media about the loss of their daughter.

"Since last Thursday morning's shocking news about Holley's burned apartment and her missing-person status, our family throughout the country has nonetheless been holding on to a thin thread of hope that she would be found alive," her family stated.

"Today, that thread of hope broke as her body was discovered."

Wimunc's death is the third homicide of a young North Carolina-based female service member in the past seven months in 2008.

 Edgar Patima, 27, married soldier also stationed at Fort Bragg, has been arrested in connection with Megan Tuma's murder.

Again the Army never looked for her even though she was dead for a week! She had been stationed with him and told her friends he proposed to her. She was wearing a ring and said the baby was his. When she showed up at Fort Bragg she thought he would be divorced but he was not.

Touma, a five-year veteran of the Army, had served with the U.S. Army Dental
Activity Clinic in Bamberg, Germany, and in Fort Drum, New York, before her
stint at Fort Bragg.

Two of Touma's friends told CNN that Touma and Patino had been stationed
together in Germany and dated in the past.

Touma's friends said Patino proposed to her in Germany before Touma learned,
on her return to North Carolina, that Patino was still married.

In June, the decomposing body of Spc. Megan Touma, of Cold Spring, Ky., was discovered in a motel near Fort Bragg. Authorities have stressed  it has no connection to Wimunc's death.

 JUNE 21, 2008  MEGAN LYNN TOUMA, 7 MONTHS PREGNANT WAS FOUND DEAD IN A MOTEL ROOM TUB.     killer tells news there will be many more.

In a report completed by the Department of Defense Armed Forces Institute of Pathology May 7, analysts concluded that DNA from former Cpl. Cesar Laurean did not match that of the unborn child of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach.

"Therefore, Cesar A. Laurean can be excluded as being the biological father of Baby Lauterbach," the report reads

Laurean was expelled from the Marine Corps on Wednesday because he "was unavailable to perform his mission," said Maj. Cliff Gilmore, a Second Marine Expeditionary Force spokesman. Gilmore said the Marine Corps would not release anything more specific, citing privacy rules.

McNeil said Laurean received an "other than honorable discharge." Laurean was notified April 17 and waived his right to appeal the discharge

LAUREAN was ARRESTED IN MEXICO APRIL 10, 2008,  ALMOST 3 MONTHS AFTER HIS FLIGHT, THANKS TO THE COOPERATION OF MEXICAN AUTHORITIES AND fought EXTRADICTion. IT LOOKS LIKE THE MARINES ARE BACKING OFF ALL CHARGES.(ARE WE SURPRISED?) They also have allowed his marine wife to visit him in Mexico for Congugal visits.

As early as June 2007 a protective order was in place against Corporal  Cesar Laurean, age 21,  for the protection of Lance CpL. Maria Lauterbach , age 20. Maria told the Marines he had raped her and was the father of her unborn son. She retracted her statement he was the father of her unborn child later but not the rape charges.

Did the Marines do a rape kit? Did they prosecute the "alleged" rape in normal proceedings?  No!

They told her they didn't believe her! Her so-called joke of a victims advocate told her she believed Laurean and he held more credibility than Lauterbach. (not her call to make!)

 Did the Marines do all they could to protect Maria?  No!

They acted as they have done for the past 40 years! What an outrage, what a human rights outrage to women everywhere!

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! ON THE MARINES AT CAMP LEJEUNE! FIRINGS AND HEADS SHOULD BE ROLLING! SENATE AND CONGRESS SHOULD BE INVESTIGATING BUT IT'S BUSINESS AS USUAL!

WHAT AN OUTRAGE! WHAT A SHAME ON THE MARINE UNIFORM TO THOSE WHO WOULD SERVE HONORABLY!

ARE THERE ANY WHO SERVE HONORABLY? LET THEM SPEAK OUT NOW ABOUT THIS SOLDIER WHO WAS LEFT BEHIND BY HER COMRADES OR FOREVER HIDE IN SHAME!

There will be much CYA as there has been to date. The Marines say they were waiting for DNA evidence that the baby was Laurean's.  What did that have to do with the rape case? Well I guess they know now, he lied. Laurean claimed to his wife Maria killed herself. Well I guess we all know Laurean lied again!

She was brutally murdered and her body and that of her unborn son was buried in Laurean's back yard. Then Laurean celebrated his massacre with a barbecue with marine buddies! How much did they know?

Maria's charred remains were found January 12, 2008, almost a month after her murder (December 15, 2007), after Christine, Laurean's wife, finally told police where she was, "cooperating with authorities."

Where were the Marines when Laurean took a bus cross country in Raleigh-Durham to Houston and then to San Luis Potosi using an alias "Armando Ramirez," the same last name as his 31 year old cousin who saw him mid January?

The Marines don't even know if Laurean retained his Mexican citizenship it seems! Capt. Rick Sutherland, spokesman for the Onslow County Sheriff's Office that has had jurisdiction of the murder doesn't seem to be getting much out of the Marines. The sherriff wasn't even told about the rape charges or Laurean until January 7, 2008, 20 days after Maria disappeared.

In fact, most information has come to light through the authorities at the sherriff's office teaming up with "America's Most Wanted" TV show!

Laurean himself has a child of 18 months old but that didn't stop him from running away like the gutless coward he is.

Some Marine! Colonel Gary Sokoloski, the judge advocate  general officer for the Marine Expeditionary Force claimed Laurean never violated the protective order to stay away from Lauterbach. Duh, Dude! She's dead! Obviously he did!

 But because Laurean reported to work and denied sexual contact Sokoloski believed him even though Maria months earlier had told her superiors he had raped her . They alleged they asked her if she felt threatened.(Rape charges weren't enough?)

The Marines or FBI didn't act on tips in Morrisville, NC at the hotel or bother to notify the police until after her death but did bother to consider UA charges and list her as a deserter even as they interviewed him December 27, 2007! 

This sounds too familiar to those of us who know too well how the military handles rape! Rape should be taken out of the military jurisdiction completely! They keep proving they won't handle these crimes.

After 40 years of this type of insanity it should be in the hands of civilian courts or federal courts with juries and prison time, not the good ole boys club!

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/109-h5212/show   This link is a current bill on domestic violence you may be interested in reading

and sounding off to your representative in Congress. We'd like to hear from you on the results.

http://www.feminist.com/news/news178.html     This link explains more about the problem

The Fort Bragg murders: a grim warning on the use of the military

By Bill Vann
2 August 2002

The murders of four Fort Bragg soldiers’ wives in the space of six weeks has stunned the North Carolina army post and shocked the American public. Fort Bragg is the home of the elite Special Forces Command. Three of the four soldiers had recently returned from Afghanistan, where they served with Special Forces units.

The string of murders began June 11, when Sergeant First Class Rigoberto Nieves, returned just two days earlier from Special Forces duty in Afghanistan, fatally shot his wife, Teresa, and then killed himself.

On June 29, just weeks after returning from Afghanistan, another Special Forces soldier, Master Sergeant William Wright, strangled his wife Jennifer and buried her in a shallow grave.

Sergeant Cedric Ramon Griffin, a member of an engineering battalion, stabbed his estranged wife, Marilyn, 50 times and then set her house on fire July 9.

On July 19, the same day that Wright was arrested for murder, Sergeant First Class Brandon Floyd shot his wife Andrea to death and then turned the gun on himself, taking his own life. According to the Fayetteville Observer, Floyd was a member of the super-secret Delta Force, an elite unit specializing in assassination and covert hit-and-run operations, who had returned from Afghanistan in October.

In a fifth domestic-related killing involving a member of the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, police on July 30 arrested the wife of a major for allegedly shooting him in the head and chest while he slept.

These killings, tragic from an individual standpoint, are all the more troubling in the context of the government’s expanding use of military forces to carry out policing operations within the US. In the wake of September 11, the American people have been conditioned to accept the presence of National Guard troops armed with automatic weapons at airports, train stations and bridges. Within the ruling elite, any commitment to the core democratic principle of military subordination to civilian authority has vastly eroded.

Most ominously, the Bush administration has floated plans to lift existing restrictions on the use of the military for domestic police functions. These were laid down in a 124-year-old statute known as the Posse Comatitus Act, passed at the end of the Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War. If Bush succeeds in this effort—and there is little reason to believe that the Democrats in Congress will seriously oppose it—forces such as the Green Berets could be sent into action on US soil.

Undoubtedly, each of the killings at Fort Bragg involved unique personal problems and, very likely, pre-existing marital conflicts. But they had one thing in common: soldiers who were deployed to kill defenseless civilians in Afghanistan employed the same methods after returning home.

Pentagon spokesmen, who at first dismissed any connection between the homicidal domestic violence and the Afghan war, now say military internal investigations will consider the soldiers’ experience in Afghanistan as one possible contributing factor. In point of fact, Special Forces troops in Afghanistan have been at the center of operations that can only be described as massacres: the bombing of villages, the slaughter of unarmed prisoners, the killing of bands of irregular and largely defenseless militiamen.

Some of those closest to the victims have drawn a direct connection between the killings and the recent combat. "He was like my own child," said Wilma Watson, describing her son-in-law Master Sergeant Wright. "Until he came back from Afghanistan, I didn’t worry about violence," said Ms. Watson of the man who killed her daughter. "He was getting these attacks of rage. She was afraid of him. I begged her to come home. She still loved him."

"I truly in my heart believe that his training was such that if you can’t control it, you kill it," said Penny Flitcraft, the mother of Andrea Floyd, whoSE husband killed her .

=====================================

June 11, Sgt. 1st Class Rigoberto Nieves, 32, and his wife, Teresa, were found shot to death at their residence in a suspected murder-suicide. Nieves was assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group. He was deployed to Afghanistan in early January and returned in mid-March. On June 29, Jennifer Wright, the wife of Master Sgt. William Wright, 36, was found strangled. Wright was charged with first degree murder. He was assigned to the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion. He was deployed to Afghanistan in mid-March and returned in mid-May. On July 9, Marilyn Griffin, wife of Sgt. Cedric Griffin, 28, was stabbed to death. Griffin is charged with first degree murder. He was assigned to the 37th Engineer Battalion, 20th Engineer Brigade. He had not been deployed to Afghanistan and no such deployment was planned. On July 19, Sgt. 1st Class Brandon S. Floyd, 30, and his wife, Andrea, were shot at their home in an apparent murder-suicide. Floyd was assigned to Headquarters Company, U.S. Army Special Operations Command. He was deployed to Afghanistan in November and returned in January.   July 23, 1994: FORT BRAGG, NC.  A former Army sergeant was given a mandatory life sentence Friday for shooting a Lieutenant to death after he tried to rape her in a dormitory they shared. Former Sergeant 1st Class Ervin Graves, who was once an honor guard in the White House, was convicted Thursday night by a military jury of killing 2nd Lieutenant Lisa Bryant with 4 blasts from his .357-caliber Magnum. Graves also was convicted of attempted rape. Graves' life sentence was automatic. The jury met Friday to decide his other punishments, which included the forfeiture of all pay and allowances, a reduction in rank to private and a dishonorable discharge. Because the panel did not convict him unanimously, Graves avoided the death penalty. The balloting was secret. He will be eligible for parole in 2004. Bryant, 21, was a newly commissioned officer who had graduated with honors from Princeton a month before she was killed on July 10, 1993. Bryant and Graves, 34, lived on the same floor in Hardy Hall, an Army dormitory for soldiers on temporary duty. Graves, an Omaha, Nebraska, native, enlisted 15 years ago and rose to membership in the Old Guard, a prestigious unit that provides honor guards for the White House and ANC. People Magazine Story: The Bryants: Two numbered lives go on hold after a daughter's murder On many mornings at 4:30, in the comfortable colonial-style house in Fairfax Station, Va., Wilbert and Emily Bryant wake with a start. It was at that hour on July 10, 1993, that their phone shrilled, announcing the tragedy that destroyed part of their lives forever: Their daughter Lisa, 21, had been murdered. "I wake up with the thought that that call is coming in again," says Wilbert, 54, a retired Army colonel who is now Virginia's deputy secretary of education. A man used to order and precision, Bryant remains at war with a senseless act that has plunged him and his wife of 31 years into a minefield of unresolved emotions and questions. "It's hard to explain to anyone what losing a child means," says Emily, 53, an assistant director in Fairfax County's Office for Children. "There's not 10 minutes in a day that I don't think about my daughter. She was the one who said, if you were dressed up, 'You look so nice.' Or she'd tell me, `You know, you're really special.' The Bryants' anger too remains intense. Questions were raised at the time of Lisa's death about the Army's cost-cutting policy of allowing enlisted and commissioned personnel to share barracks and facilities. But Wilbert's emotions are more elemental. "Even when I was in Vietnam, I didn't feel the rage for the Vietcong I feel for this man," he says. "I'm a nonviolent person, but this murder has made me into somebody I'm not. The military better keep him locked up because there are a lot of people who are angry at him." Adds Emily: "When you're the victim, there's almost no justice.  Someone has lost a loved one, and this criminal's going to come back out, to get to laugh, be happy and carry on like anybody else, when he's taken a life? It doesn't make sense."		sell you swamp land?

 

June 12, 2006 letter from Catherine Komp at The News Standard in reply to my comments that the military is incapable of dealing with punishments to its members.

Dear Diane,

Thanks for writing in with information about sexual assault in the military. Last week we published an article about domestic violence in  military families that may be of interest to you.

we hope you continue to find our coverage useful and share our work with your friends, family, and colleagues. And do stay in touch if an article ever inspires you enough to share your thoughts or you catch something we've missed!

In the meanwhile, we'll keep our eyes out for more important and underreported stories about military sexual and domestic violence.

All the best,

Catherine Komp

The above references the entire article but the part that is such a common threat with our issue is the GAO report. "SIX YEARS AFTER A TASK FORCE ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE TO ASSESS THE MILITARY'S RESPONSE TO THE ISSUE AND MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT" DOMESTIC ABUSE IS GROWING AND SYSTEMIC!

THE GENERAL ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE STATES THAT OUT OF 194 RECOMMENDATIONS, ONLY 92 OR LESS HAVE BEEN IMPLEMENTED, INCLUDING PROPER TRAINING OF POLICEMEN TO HANDLE INTERVENTION! THE MILITARY'S WEBSITE DEDICATED TO ABUSE INFORMATION HASN'T BEEN UPDATED SINCE 2002 AND CONTAINS MANY NON-WORKING LINKS!

THE DOD HAS REFUSED TO ESTABLISH A DOMESTIC-VIOLENCE COORDINATOR AT EACH MAJOR MILITARY INSTALLATION OR TRAIN FIRST RESPONDERS.

THERE IS LACK OF ACCURATE DATA, FAILING TO COLLECT OFF BASE INCIDENTS, UNREPORTED CRIMINAL ACTS, AND FOR PERSONNEL FOUND GUILTY OF WRONGDOING, THE GAO FOUND A LACK OF DISCIPLINARY ACTION REPORTED.

LET'S FACE IT! THE MILITARY MINDSET IN CHARGE AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL LACKS HONOR AND INTEGRITY TO DEAL WITH SIMPLE HUMAN DECENCY. . IT MUST EFFECT THE MORALE OF ANY WHO WOULD SERVE THEIR COUNTRY IN A DIGNIFIED AND HONORABLE WAY TO KNOW THE SYSTEMIC NATURE OF THE CORRUPTION WITHIN DOD..