The mystery around the deaths of Master Sgt. Because every man with a dark beard or a hat terrified me., But, the statement continued, I am strong. The death certificates say the two men were found about 3:30 p.m. Dec. 2, in the woods on Fort Bragg. 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. Its hundreds of pages long, but does not include the testimony of witnesses or the arguments the lawyers made. 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. The Delta Force Operator Who Went Rogue - YouTube She said that this friend got in his vehicle and was driving to Lavigne's house to help sort things out when he allegedly got a second, frantic phone call from Lavigne saying he had killed Leshikar. Timothy Dumas, Sr. and Master Sergeant William Lavigne Iii Sgt Lavigne was a Green Beret and Delta Force member. Those guys, they would drink, and they would need to have sex, she says. At the time, he was so depressed, anxious, guilt-stricken, and strung out on drugs that its a wonder he was able to put on his full-dress uniform that morning. Once out of uniform, Scanlon began to meet advocates, lawyers, and people knowledgeable about sexual assault in the military. Investigators ask that anyone with information about the deaths of LaVigne and Dumas call the FBI Charlotte office at 704-672-6100 or Army CID at 910-396-8777. the deaths of Master Sgt. 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. Werent there plenty of people you could have called out to? Sgt Lavigne was a Green Beret and Delta Force member. There is zero respect for women in that community, she says. Arriving at the site in the early morning hours of Sept. 10, 2016, Scanlon and Tina were immediately creeped out by the griminess of the location. The memorandum from 1st Special Forces Command written by an investigating officer appointed by the command, concluded that Lavigne was not credible. The staff sergeant had invited her over to his house earlier in the evening, but she and Tina hadnt wanted to leave the party. The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History FBI joins Army investigation into 2 bodies found on Fort Bragg The jury should have been brought to the location at night, she says. It was a fundraiser to honor five slain Green Berets, hosted by some SF guys, Tina texted. . He busted a few rounds in the direction of Ian Detar, an inveterate burglar who has no fewer than 29 mug shots on file with the county. When USASOC announced Lavigne's death, and homicide, at a training area on Fort Bragg this month, Leshikar's mother described her reaction: When I found out he died, I wasn't happy, it made me sick. Over the course of twenty years and thousands of missions, he's fought desperately for his life, rescued hostages, killed and . The girl then mimicking how her father collapsed to the floor. According to Lavigne's statement to police, Leshikar began acting irrationally on the car ride back to Fayetteville, North Carolina. For good reason: The person or persons who killed Lavigne and Dumas remain at large. It seems he crashed there from time to time. William J. Lavigne Wiki - William J. Lavigne Biography Poppe does not find it remarkable, he says, that he simultaneously represented two members of the most elite military unit in the United States, one suspected of murder, the other accused of rape. William LaVigne II, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas, 44. William LaVigne II, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas Sr., 44, is. The Ft. Bragg Delta Force Murders: New Details Come to Light At the time Lavignes path crossed Scanlons, his cocaine habit was firmly established, but he remained a team member in good standing on Delta Force, and still had a clean arrest record in Cumberland County. 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. It was on a public docket, so people can go look it up, says Col. Kazin; however, it was not necessarily on everyones radar.. But Scanlon was in the courtroom on the first day of trial, and Rolling Stone obtained the trial record, which includes a list of witnesses, the lawyers written motions, the judges orders, his instructions to the jury, and other documents that make it possible to reconstruct much if not nearly enough of what happened. He was also suffering from a traumatic brain injury due to an improvised explosive device detonating near him, which was why he was assigned to a desk job at Fort Bragg. A CID investigation reached the same conclusions as the sheriff's office, that Leshikar's killing was deemed justifiable. I was with them for years, constantly, she says. First Class Mark Leshikar, two years prior. 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. Other than the one local-news blip on Vallejos arrest, the allegations against them remained confined to Fort Bragg. or Erin Scanlon, a junior Army officer in the artillery branch, Fort Bragg was a prime posting. Its very controlled, she says. As Rolling Stone reported in a previous piece, "The Fort Bragg Murders," in March 2018 right around the time that military prosecutors took control of Vallejo's trial Lavigne shot and killed a Green Beret in the living room of his house in Fayetteville without suffering the slightest legal consequences.". Lavigne and Sgt. Im still spooked. She read USASOCs statement in The Fort Bragg Murders that some unspecified adverse administrative action had been pending against Lavigne at the time of his death. The case is being investigated as a homicide, a spokesperson for Army Criminal Investigations Division told Connecting Vets. Scanlon realized that this was not going to stop, Matrafailo wrote, and gave up fighting back in the hopes that it would end quickly.. By the time of Vallejos trial, it was clear that the Army had missed a chance to intervene in the boundary-pushing, motorcycle-borne debauchery of the Coast x Coast club as early as September 2016, when Scanlon went to CID and alleged that Vallejo had raped her behind their un-permitted clubhouse in downtown Fayetteville, which just happens to be adjacent to the county jail, a building full of cops. He and Lavigne would talk and argue with one another like they were brothers, Leshikar's sister Nicole Rick recalled in an interview with Connecting Vets. Instead, everything was hushed up. As I wrote in The Fort Bragg Murders, Lavignes dozen-plus deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere had left him addled with trauma and addicted to hard drugs and alcohol. Im not doing this., She remembers being pinned against the grille of a vehicle, Vallejo putting his hands up her dress, into her underwear, and penetrating her with his fingers. Those deleted files were the only record of the testimony the jurors chose to believe over hers. Foul play suspected in deaths of sergeant and veteran at Fort Bragg A major weakness for the defense was Scanlons apparent absence of a motive to fabricate a rape claim, complete with a trip to the hospital and all. She yelled something unintelligible before disappearing. Scanlons testimony was that she had told her special-victims counsel about seeing the Green Berets widow, albeit months after the fact, and that she had instructed the SVC to inform the prosecution of her belated recollection. 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. Her experience with the military-justice system illustrates the myriad difficulties faced by women in the overwhelmingly male armed forces who report being raped, and raises questions about the adequacy of the uniformed chain of command to protect the interests of victims of sex crimes allegedly committed by service members. Vallejo, wearing his full-dress uniform, was seated at the defense table, next to his defense attorney, Kris Poppe, a former JAG prosecutor who previously served as an infantry officer. I defaulted to what the USASOC prosecutor and the DA would decide, and consented to removal of the case to Fort Bragg, which resulted in an unanticipated four-month delay. I was pushing him away saying no stop but I think by the time he got me back to the cars in the dark and he wouldnt stop so I just let him do it.. . In 2020, The New York Times, Associated Press, and CNN would cover the sexual-assault allegation against a Navy SEAL on a base in Iraq. The trial began on a Monday morning. Lavigne was due in Cumberland County District Court next week in connection with a hit-and-run charge from last February, the newspaper reported. A review of his uniform and decorations shows he was likely assigned to. He was a part of Leshikar's funeral service, she said. They have zero remorse. She doesnt mean that any of the killings she witnessed were illegal or outside the rules of engagement. Scanlon says reporting the alleged attack, and the subsequent ordeal, hurt her military career. Since he was tried by the military, a branch of the federal government, the double-jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution would not bar the state from prosecuting him all over again. Fort Bragg deaths of Special Forces soldier, veteran remain unsolved Law enforcement later told Leshikar's family that they had found a screw driver, not at the scene of his death, but outside near his car where he had been removing the battery. Two men found dead at Fort Bragg identified as USASOC - Army Times Sketchy-looking, Scanlon describes it, comparing it to a rundown CrossFit gym, with a roll-up garage door, by a railroad track and a junkyard.. On Sept. 8, 2021, the Coast x Coast club holds a public event in Fayetteville, at their usual haunt, Macs Speed Shop. I will keep fighting to put my life back together. They might have noticed that the shooter was a witness for the alleged rapist, and that they both belonged to the same motorcycle club, made up of soldiers from the Armys most elite unit. Erin Scanlon wants to go on the record again so that her alleged attacker is identified as Delta Force. This is why people don't have any faith in the justice system, Ciolino continued. The founder and CEO of the nonprofit is a 39-year-old man, Cristobal Lopez Vallejo, who goes by the alias Cris Valley. Scanlon went to the Fayetteville police the next day. They only stayed that long because Tina was famished and there was a Crock-Pot of food on a folding table. Four months before the night in question, Cumberland Countys Alcoholic Beverage Control received a tip from a police officer in Hope Mills, another satellite town of Fort Bragg, about a party occurring in downtown [Fayetteville] in which donations would be accepted, an ABC agent wrote in an affidavit attached to a warrant to search the warehouse and seize alcohol. 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. She described Scanlons general demeanor as tearful.. He was brought down to the sheriff's office the day he killed Leshikar, and a Delta Force member came to pick him up, according to Leshikar's family. William J. Lavigne II, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas deepens with the revelation that Lavigne was also involved in the death of Sgt. I know this was specifically Delta Force, but its like this across the whole of USASOC, using an acronym for the U.S. Armys Special Operations Command. And that was the reason why my case was handled the way it was. (Phyllis B. Dooney for Rolling Stone). But Castro cant say when that investigation began, why Scanlon felt that her initial complaint had been dismissed, or whether the recordings she mentioned still exist. That is not accurate, a spokesman for Army CID, Jeffrey Castro, writes in a statement. On one occasion, she says, she had to hide in the bathroom after he walked into a tavern in Southern Pines. William Lavigne II, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas, 44, were both found dead in a training area at Fort Bragg on December 2 It has now been revealed that both men were facing. I didnt say anything when he did that. Scanlon agonized over what to do next. To buttress his depiction of her as a woman on the prowl, he put up photos of her taken that night in which she was wearing a sleeveless dress with a short skirt, and texts between her and Tina joking about going out braless or commando., Isnt it true you were flirting with him? she recalls him asking. He was taught how to survive behind enemy lines, resist interrogation, and escape from POW camps. I ask whether Cris Valley is in attendance. Delta Force operator kills a Green Beret, but was it murder? - Audacy Scanlon began to cry, he wrote in his report, as she pointed out the building., Matrafailo obtained a warrant, took DNA samples from the hood of the Saab, reviewed security footage, visited Macs, and interviewed Tina, among other witnesses. Connecting Vets was provided screen shots of those charges and the court date. Green Beret death raises questions, 1st Special Forces Command Line of Duty Memorandum. soldier who had been accused of rape, and published his photo. Scanlon was on the stand for eight hours, she says. Special Forces soldier, Army veteran found dead on Fort Bragg were shot She was the first witness called to the stand, on day one. Investigators have asked anyone with information on the case to contact the FBI or Army Criminal Investigation Command. 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. One penetrated his neck and lodged in his back. Leshikar's family allege evidence was tampered with and that Lavigne called another Delta Force Operator to come to the scene Credit: Facebook. Yet, the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office which ran the investigation of Leshikar's death since it happened off post, ruled it to be a "justifiable homicide." At the time the body was rolled no screw driver was found, the Medical Examiner's report states. 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. F Dumas was scheduled to appear in Forsyth County District Court on Dec. 17 for charges of breaking and entering, communicating threats and impersonating a law enforcement officer, according to court records. Money Minute, What's next for experimental AI projects in the C4ISR sphere. My (biased) experience, too. Connecting Vets reached out to members of Lavigne's family for comment, but did not receive a reply by the time of publication. There are no coincidences in life like this. Poppe says he take[s] exception to this absurd characterization. After I gave my statement, the CID agents left the room. Thereafter, things moved very slowly toward a trial. He would also self medicate with Valium. I represented him in Cumberland County.. This was in violation of regulations that forbid fraternization, or close personal relationships between officers and enlisted soldiers, but as the staff sergeant wasnt in her unit or her chain of command, she thought of it as little more than a peccadillo.
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