'War Torn' Series on G.I. Murders Debuts at 'NYT'

By: Greg Mitchell A remarkable series kicked off at www.nytimes.com late Saturday, and no doubt in print on Sunday. It is billed as "A series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home." Coincidentally, it appears just hours after the Times on Saturday morning carried an in-depth look at a recent case of three soldiers killing a former comrade.

Part I of the series carries on the Web the title, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles." It's written by Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez.

The multimedia includes, so far, a slideshow, an interactive look at specific cases, audio interviews.

An excerpt follows.
*

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: ?Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.? Pierre, S.D.: ?Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.? Colorado Springs: ?Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.?

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment ? along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems ? appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq. [Ed. Note: This is the case that inspired the recent movie, starring Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah."] ....

The Pentagon does not keep track of such killings, most of which are prosecuted not by the military justice system but by civilian courts in state after state. Neither does the Justice Department.

To compile and analyze its list, The Times conducted a search of local news reports, examined police, court and military records and interviewed the defendants, their lawyers and families, the victims? families and military and law enforcement officials.

This reporting most likely uncovered only the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings, especially in big cities and on military bases, are reported publicly or in detail. Also, it was often not possible to determine the deployment history of other service members arrested on homicide charges.

The Times used the same methods to research homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years before and after the present wartime period began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

This showed an 89 percent increase during the present wartime period, to 349 cases from 184, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The increase occurred even though there have been fewer troops stationed in the United States in the last six years and the American homicide rate has been, on average, lower.

The Pentagon was given The Times?s roster of homicides. It declined to comment because, a spokesman, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, said, the Department of Defense could not duplicate the newspaper?s research. Further, Colonel Melnyk questioned the validity of comparing prewar and wartime numbers based on news media reports, saying that the current increase might be explained by ?an increase in awareness of military service by reporters since 9/11.?
*

To comment, go to blog.