After that, she put up no more physical resistance. Thats a significant omission, because Scanlons case is also a signal example of another systemic issue in the military: the entitled attitudes and hard-partying lifestyles of some elite soldiers more than two decades into the war on terrorism; the apparent breakdown in good order and discipline in the Special Forces in recent years, with rising instances of alleged criminality among Green Berets and Navy SEALs; and the special treatment often accorded to special operators by civilian and military law enforcement in and around Fort Bragg. He loved weapons. Locklear shows me the spot where she says he once threw a knife into the trunk of a tree in the front yard, which is littered with hundreds if not thousands of cigarette butts. If her aim was to avoid disciplinary action or professional embarrassment, she could have simply said nothing and no one would have been the wiser. Connecting Vets reached out to members of Lavigne's family for comment, but did not receive a reply by the time of publication. William LaVigne II, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas, 44. Fort Bragg Delta Force Master Sgt. Maybe I wasnt clear enough, she texted a girlfriend at 8:59 a.m. on Sept. 12. Subsequently, the Army swapped out her SVC four separate times. Whoever they are, they were capable of taking out one of the worlds most skilled and experienced gunfighters, without leaving any apparent clue for the FBI or CID to follow. I knew him, Joe says of Lavigne. 2023 Audacy, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Because I had been in for 18 months. They lived like there was no tomorrow., The relentless physical drive that she describes is part of what made these men the very best at what they did. Still no arrests in deaths of Special Forces soldier, veteran at Fort Bragg He was addicted to Tramadol and self-medicated with . It is not clear how the men knew each other. Why they didn't do anything is because someone shit canned this whole thing very high up. The blond 25-year-old from suburban Phoenix had secured a lieutenants slot in the storied 82nd Airborne Division thanks to the good offices of one of her ROTC instructors at the University of Arizona. Stateside they lived intense lives, too. The next morning, she told the guy she was dating at the time that his buddy had raped her, but he didnt believe her, she says. (U.S. Army) Special Forces soldier found dead next to Army vet at Fort Bragg The offense was aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a class E felony that could have landed Lavigne in prison for years, but as usual, he wasnt charged with a crime. Connecting Vets contacted Cumberland County Sheriff's Office to obtain a copy of the full incident report, but was told that it will only be released with a court order from a judge. She Asked the Army to Investigate a Rape Trial. They Fired Her It was standard practice at the time, Col. Kazin says. I said no over and over.. They didnt care with who. Delta Force operator kills a Green Beret, but was it murder? - Audacy Vallejo was briefly detained in jail on a $100,000 bond. This is a very secluded parcel, the fire marshal wrote in an email to the zoning department. Foul play suspected in deaths of sergeant and veteran at Fort Bragg The memorandum from 1st Special Forces Command written by an investigating officer appointed by the command, concluded that Lavigne was not credible. The military had kept it quiet, though. It was their annual Ride for the Fallen, a coast-to-coast convoy of ex-military bikers to raise money for wounded special operators, and the families of those slain in battle. Her first SVC was at the meeting with the DA, but did not advise her that she might be better off pressing her case in civilian court. How coincidental is it? she says. Scanlon agreed to go on the record again, in greater detail, if you would be willing to reiterate that my perpetrator was Delta Force. Army records show Dumas served in the Army as a property accounting technician from November 1996 to March 2016, separating as a chief warrant officer 3. In fact, studies show that the conviction rate on penetrative-rape and forcible-sodomy charges is generally lower in military courts than civilian ones. William J. Lavigne II, 37, was one of two men found dead Dec. 2 in a training area on Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army said in a statement. Someone might easily have connected the rape case to the unexplained shooting of a Green Beret by a fellow Special Forces soldier three months earlier. Finally, at the end of the first day of trial, she was allowed to step down. The Special Forces of the U.S. Army are based out of Fort Bragg, as is the powerful and secretive Joint Special Operations Command, making this spot, inland of the Eastern Seaboard, the central node in the United States global special-operations complex. On the back patio, they are standing around a red tent with the Coast x Coast logo, drinking beer, chatting at the bar, and smoking cigarettes. No reporters attended the subsequent court-martial, and no transcript was made of the proceedings. Delta Force Member and Veteran Found Dead at Ft. Bragg Years of proximity to military violence, as well as a culture of functional alcoholism and casual sex, left Jane feeling unworthy, damaged, and lost. Jane has dated multiple men on Delta Force at various times in her life. I asked him if I could take a picture in front of their logo to send to my instructor, she says. Shes troubled by the memory of a night in 2012, when she woke up after having passed out drunk to find a man she knew having sex with her without her consent, she says. Only 11 of the deaths were determined to have been from natural causes. Scanlon never knew Lavigne, not by name. Like Gallagher, Anayat was an ordinary Tier 2 special operator, of whom there are as many as 10,000. Shortly after she and Tina arrived at Macs the night of the fundraiser, Scanlon recognized the Coast x Coast clubs logo from a Facebook photo of her old ROTC mentor, the ex-Delta soldier, which made her implicitly trust Vallejo and his crew, she recalls. 2023 Audacy, Inc. All rights reserved. One of the four Delta Force soldiers present that night was a 33-year-old from Michigan, Master Sgt. Next came back-to-back tours in Iraq. A guy whos in Delta Force would not be flashing his name around and having a nonprofit and partying at a bar. Part of Audacy. Though attorney-client privilege normally protects the SVC-client relationship, Judge Nance found that Scanlon had waived the privilege by including the prosecution in the supposed conversation with her SVC. Guys like Vallejo and Lavigne are constantly told that theyre the elite, the best of the best, the ultimate badasses, and when it comes to killing and capturing people overseas, they are. In February 2019, Lavigne had another brush with the law. or Erin Scanlon, a junior Army officer in the artillery branch, Fort Bragg was a prime posting. He never denied having sex with Scanlon, but maintained that it was consensual. Even after her father dropped to the ground, he kept shooting. Anything other than you saying yes or asking for it is not consent, her friend replied. As a senior non-commissioned officer of Delta Force, the most elite and secretive special operations unit in the U.S. military, Command Sergeant Major Tom Satterly fought some of this country's most fearsome enemies. But he couldnt really explain why the Army waited 16 months to intervene on the eve of the trial, rather than let civilian justice take its course. She understood that beyond a reasonable doubt was a high burden of proof, and evinced no particular desire to see Vallejo in prison. The 37 year old deployed 14 times and was a member of the Delta Squad, an elite special operations force which of course necessitates a wide variety of skills and training to join. Jane was once deployed to a country in Southwest Asia and was stationed on the same base as a contingent from Delta Force. He just ambushed me, she says, repeating what she told Fayetteville police, according to the written report of the detective assigned to the case, Paul Matrafailo. Delta Force was chiefly formed by Charles Beckwith, an officer in the Green Berets and a veteran of the American war in Vietnam.He had served with the British SAS (Special Air Service) during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation (1963-66), when Indonesia opposed the formation of The Federation of Malaysia.. It is a lot for a jury to make a decision like that, she says. Do Delta Force operators have a license to kill? Soldier and veteran found dead at Fort Bragg had longtime ties to the He was originally set to be tried in civilian court, but Army prosecutors assigned to Special Forces swooped in at the last minute and caused the Cumberland County district attorney to drop the charges so that Vallejo could be tried by the military. Then the Army erased all record of the trial testimony. Someone tampered with the crime scene or he's lying," said Paul Ciolino, president of the International Association of Forensic Criminologists, after reviewing documents from the case. It was a fundraiser to honor five slain Green Berets, hosted by some SF guys, Tina texted. We all knew him, says Roy Lynn Parker, 35. Officials have identified Master Sgt. The death certificates say the two men were found about 3:30 p.m. Dec. 2, in the woods on Fort Bragg. Sgt Lavigne was a Green Beret and Delta Force member. He was investigated in 2018 after fatally shooting his friend, Sgt. Between the summer of 2018 and the fall of 2020, Lavignes behavior became increasingly erratic and dangerous. She attained the rank of captain, but the missed deployment, the transfers between units, and the stigma that attaches to female soldiers who report being raped all the gossipy, nontangible ways, she says, that marks you out as a problem child diminished her prospects of advancement. The second man, whose name was not disclosed, was an army veteran previously stationed at the North Carolina military base. The latter was for firing shots at a guy outside a crack house on Enloe Street in Fayetteville, a very serious offense, but Lavigne was not prosecuted for any of these crimes. I dont think they go around on shooting sprees. An anonymous Army source leaked to CBS News that authorities suspected a double homicide from a drug deal gone wrong, but to date, there is no clear evidence to support that theory. They only stayed that long because Tina was famished and there was a Crock-Pot of food on a folding table. Even if she werent actually barred from the trial by order of the court, she believed that she had to stay in the witness room until called, and according to Scanlon, the SVC did nothing to correct the misapprehension. Whether the friend also secured Lavigne's phone is unknown. Even if Lavigne had been charged with or convicted of murder, says Col. Kazin of Army JAG, Vallejo would have had a constitutional right to call him as a witness, if he were in possession of relevant information. It was drink, sex, drink, sex. Scanlon says reporting the alleged attack, and the subsequent ordeal, hurt her military career. The doctrine, long a target of legislative reform, bars soldiers and sailors and Marines from recovering damages resulting from wrongful acts by the military. I knew I would never find out what really happened that night, that her son had been killed. As reported in the Army Times, MSG William J. Lavigne was found dead in the training area of Ft. Bragg in North Carolina. William J Lavigne II, 37, was identified as one of two men found dead at a Fort Bragg training area Credit: Army 4 Sgt First Class Mark Leshikar's family have now said Lavigne, 37, allegedly shot Leshikar dead during a heated argument It was right around 3 a.m. My phone was being blown up by my friend [the staff sergeant] and the Uber driver, who was there trying to find me., Tina had gone out front to smoke a cigarette. I looked at my daddy's face and I knew he was gone, the girl told her family members. According to Vallejos enlistment-record brief, obtained by Rolling Stone, he was born in California and joined the Army shortly before 9/11, when he was 19. Now she demands answers, Illustration by Mike McQuade for Rolling Stone, Former Army Capt. Additional abrasions were found on his left hand and both knees. I had to get shots and blood drawn to get tested for STDs so many horrible times. Constant appointments with lawyers, detectives, investigators, and advocates had disrupted her military career, and caused her to miss out on her units 2017 deployment to Iraq. Everything revolved around drinking booze and hooking up. Delta Force member found dead at Ft. Bragg training site had a dark past. A sort of Delta Force biker gang that story wouldnt have been good for the Army, not at a time when the Navy was getting hammered by allegations of rampant drug abuse, fratricidal violence, and sexual assault in the ranks of its SEAL teams. The body of Master Sgt. Its the first time during many hours of interviews that she has lost her composure, and I can understand why. But neither ABC News nor the Observer named Vallejo, and ABC only mentioned in passing that the alleged rapist was a member of Delta Force. The Army never made a transcript of the court-martial, and destroyed the audio recordings as soon as it concluded, leaving no record of the testimony the witnesses gave, the arguments the lawyers made, or the judges oral rulings. 2023 Rolling Stone, LLC. A spokeswoman for the Forsyth County Sheriffs Office said the 911 call for the Walkertown incident came it at 12:54 a.m. April 11, 2020, as an anonymous assault in progress. Scanlon went to the Fayetteville police the next day. Then, on Dec. 2, 2020, Lavigne turned up dead, shot multiple times in the chest, his body wrapped up as if for disposal, and placed in the back of his truck, which was left abandoned on a dirt road near Lake MacArthur. . His dad and I divorced when he was not even a year old so he kind of stepped into those shoes as the protector. Besides Scanlon, the only people who testified for the government were Tina, the staff sergeant, the nurse who did the rape kit, and the friend who encouraged Scanlon to go to the police. It was the last time they would ever speak. A CID investigation reached the same conclusions as the sheriff's office, that Leshikar's killing was deemed justifiable. The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, Vallejo, dressed in camouflage cargo shorts and a T-shirt, was tall, lean, strong, and fiercely handsome, with a black beard and shaggy brown hair much longer than most soldiers get to wear. I feel guilty, Scanlon texted. The Army couldnt give Scanlon a transcript because no transcript ever existed. The hard-partying antics of the Coast x Coast club could certainly be seen as a manifestation of that sort of attitude, a sense of exemption from ordinary strictures and petty rules. USASOC declined to comment based on concerns about privacy, but pointed out that a police investigation and a line of duty report have different burdens of proof. Ill have to refer you to Army CID, Shelley Lynch of the FBIs Charlotte, North Carolina, office writes in an email. Dumas, an ex-soldier with a shady past, was found murdered along with Lavigne in the woods outside Fayetteville in December 2020. He was seven inches taller than her and 70 pounds heavier. Lavigne and Vallejo were on an altogether different level, one rarely touched by scandal. This experience led Beckwith to advocate for a similar unit in the US Army. He was charged with a felony for allegedly harboring an escapee. There were several people present, and the ABC officers learned that the men were military with security clearances. Out of deference to their service of our nation, the ABC officers let them off with a verbal warning. In his statement to police later that day he said that Leshikar was acting paranoid and believed that they were being followed, and that their conversation was being listened to by a third party. Leshikar began working on his car out in the driveway. She said that when she opened the door, and her daddy was mad and walking towards uncle Billy and uncle Billy came around and shot him, and then my daddy did this, her family described. He was scheduled to appear in court March 12, 2019, but the charges and court date disappeared from court records. In his heart, he was all for defending people who could not defend themselves, his mother said about her late son. DELTA FORCE' S DIRTY SECRET - PressReader Special Forces Command decided he died in the line of duty, while the local sheriff's office ruled his death a justifiable homicide, all while Lavigne, continued his work with Delta Force. Other than the one local-news blip on Vallejos arrest, the allegations against them remained confined to Fort Bragg. As soon as they said not guilty, my people just kind of quickly escorted me out.. William Billy Lavigne II, whose violent life and cryptic death in the woods outside of Fort Bragg I wrote about for Rolling Stone last year. He maintains that Scanlon and Vallejo were witnessed in the act by people at the warehouse that night. But Scanlons unit, despite its distinguished pedigree going back to World War I, is a division of the conventional Army, which is kept separate from top-secret JSOC by high walls, both literal and figurative. No arrests have been made nearly five months after a Special Forces soldier and veteran were found dead Dec. 2, at Fort Bragg, an official said last week. A brief report by CBS 17 in Raleigh-Durham on Sept. 30 named Vallejo as an N.C. Because she is a minor, Connecting Vets is not identifying Leshikar's daughter and has not spoken directly to her. Dumas was an Army veteran who previously served as the property book officer at 7th Special Forces Group before serving in the same role at Fort Bragg for nine years, according to his LinkedIn profile. I was resolved to be stoic no matter what, because I knew I had stood up for myself as much as possible. Sgt Lavigne was a Green Beret and Delta Force member. On Sept. 8, 2021, the Coast x Coast club holds a public event in Fayetteville, at their usual haunt, Macs Speed Shop. A spokeswoman for the FBI confirmed this month that the homicide investigation into the shooting deaths of Master Sgt. During a stretch of Janes military career, her social and professional circle overlapped with the five men, who made up the core of the motorcycle club, all active-duty soldiers on Delta Force. She vividly recalls the day that one Delta soldier, a Coast x Coast guy (neither Vallejo nor Lavigne), came in from an operation outside the wire. . He proceeded to rack up practically every qualification an infantryman can attain, undergoing advanced training in land navigation, reconnaissance, surveillance, sniping, and high-altitude parachuting. Hes at home, doing work shit. Thats all hell say about Coast x Coasts founder and CEO. Later that day, a city fire inspector went to the property and found multiple storage buildings in disrepair, surrounded by junked vehicles, barbecue grills, piles of wooden pallets, tiki torches, and other combustible materials. At one point, while posing for a group photo, Vallejo grabbed my ass, Scanlon claims. One penetrated his neck and lodged in his back. The rest of the court-martial is a black box to her, because she spent it sequestered in the prosecutions witness room, which she says she was not permitted to leave. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time The police department promptly fired Matrafailo, who had allegedly done the same to two other alleged rape victims. Attempts to reach these people by phone were unsuccessful, but pretrial filings show that at least two of them were summoned to buttress Vallejos defense of consent. William J. Lavigne II, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas deepens with the revelation that Lavigne was also involved in the death of Sgt. Two US servicemen, one who was a member of the elite Delta - Reddit In September 2021, I visit the crack house where the incident occurred, a run-down home on Enloe Street accessible by a dirt road that a spokeswoman for the sheriff describes as a known drug house. Seven or eight people are sitting on the stoop or standing around the driveway. He had been in Delta Force. Scanlon lived off-post in an apartment in Fayetteville, a moody military town in the North Carolina pines just outside of Fort Bragg, the biggest Army base in the U.S. On the evening of Sept. 9, 2016, a friend of hers from the gym, a military wife whom Ill call Tina to protect her privacy, invited her to a charitable event at a barbecue restaurant and bar called Macs Speed Shop. He was fatally shot in March 2018 by Army Delta Force member William J. Lavigne, his best friend, who was known as "Billy" to Leshikar's family. He was the foundation of my family, Leshikar's mother, Tammy Mabey said of her son. The three Delta operators who had been at the warehouse that night took the stand, as did the retired bomb technician, the two civil-affairs officers, and the dancing bartender, as well as the red-haired widow. But it was a disheartening conclusion, she says, to a difficult and drawn-out ordeal that she insists was not my fault.. Though open to the public, no reporters were in the courtroom. Women made up the rest of the party: two young Army officers, the widow of a slain Green Beret, and a Las Vegas woman who belonged to a traveling company of women bartenders that dance and sing, according to her blog posts. Just three months before he was called to the stand, in March 2018, at Lavignes house in Fayetteville, he had shot and killed his closest friend, a Green Beret named Mark Leshikar, with whom he had been drinking and doing drugs for days on end during a family vacation to Disney World. William J. Lavigne II and Timothy Dumas, a veteran previously stationed at the post, were found dead at a training site on the base Wednesday afternoon. I was too scared to go to stores, the gym, and other crowded places. Delta Force is the Army's special-mission unit for counterterrorism and hostage rescues. But I have accepted this new path. Its not going to be good for you., For the jury, it must have been a somewhat close call, because they submitted at least 18 questions to the witnesses. From the perspective of the Armys image-conscious leadership, the failure on the part of the press to catch wind of Vallejos court-martial was a lucky break. It appears that a lot goes on here.. But the instructions to the jury show that the judge, Col. Jeffrey Nance, allowed the panel to consider Scanlons relationship with the staff sergeant insofar as it was probative of her motive, if any, to fabricate her allegations against the accused. The judge cautioned the panel that they were forbidden to conclude that Scanlon, having willingly slept with one enlisted man, was likely to do it again; but to use an old legal clich, that was a bit like throwing a skunk into the jury box and instructing the jurors not to smell it. That night he shattered my whole world, the statement read. She felt the implication was clear: Obviously youre a liar.. With Leshikar and Lavigne dead, there remains only one witness to the killing: Leshikar's daughter.

Brian Daboll Grandparents, Hollie Davidson Partner, Gun Shooting Heart Emoji, Articles W