And in North Carolina, there is no statute of limitations for rape. Scanlons SVC her fifth discouraged her from attending, she says. According to a source who spoke to SOFREP on the condition of anonymity, Army investigators discovered that the truck belonged to 37-year-old William J. Lavigne II, an Army Master Sergeant. He transferred to Fort Bragg three years later to attend the JFK Special Warfare School, the completion of which entitles a soldier to wear a coveted green beret. Do you realize what you did? she replied at 4:25 a.m. There might be a good reason for Vallejo to avoid the spot where, almost five years ago to the day, he met Scanlon. Its very controlled, she says. 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. Meanwhile, Lavigne's career continued unabated at USASOC. While awaiting trial, Vallejo had stood down as an active-duty operator, attached to USASOC as an ignominious SURPLUS SLDR, according to his enlistment-record brief. Thats what it felt like. . Click hereto sign up for our weekly newsletter. Did it disappear or melt? (U.S. Army) Like Lavigne, Dumas had ties to the Special. Do Delta Force operators have a license to kill? Whether the friend also secured Lavigne's phone is unknown. I looked at my daddy's face and I knew he was gone, the girl told her family members.
Special Forces soldier found dead next to Army vet at Fort Bragg 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. The trial record shows that Vallejos defense called eight additional witnesses. 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. Fort Bragg officials announced that the Master Sgt.
Fort Bragg deaths of Special Forces soldier, veteran remain unsolved In a motion dated June 12, the defense stated that one of the civil-affairs officers was expected to testify that she had observed close, friendly, and flirtatious interaction between Vallejo and Scanlon all night. They would have these epic parties, tailgate pool parties, where they would put a liner in the back of a truck and fill it up with water. On one occasion, they hired midget wrestlers to come out, she says. But it was a disheartening conclusion, she says, to a difficult and drawn-out ordeal that she insists was not my fault.. 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. Then the shooter then winds up dead on the military base, basically gets assassinated. As soon as it concluded with an acquittal, the Army deleted the audio recordings. 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. While Leshikar's daughter has been able to grow and thrive despite a traumatic event, the rest of the family feels they have been cheated by the Army and the Sheriff's Office out of ever seeing justice served, especially after Lavigne's apparent homicide. LaVigne also was involved in other Cumberland County cases that never resulted in charges, records show. The special operations community was rocked this week when the bodies of MSG Lavigne, a decorated Special Operator and Delta Force member, and Timothy Dumas an Army veteran were found in a . A source familiar with Army Special Operations told Connecting Vets that Delta Force operators use proprietary encryption software on their phones for day-to-day work related calls and text messages. Lavigne was assigned. 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. 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. He was taught how to survive behind enemy lines, resist interrogation, and escape from POW camps. F A senior defense official told ABC News in late March 2018 that the shooter was an active-duty member of a Special Missions Unit, known as Delta Force. RIP, bro., One year later, the authorities have identified no suspects, arrested no perpetrators, and disclosed nothing about the evidence theyve gathered to date. He returned the phone to his wife Laura days later saying he found it between the driver's seat and center console of Leshikar's car. It was him and Maj. Stacey Cohen.. The body of Master Sgt. William Lavigne II, 37, pictured above, was found in Fort Bragg on December 2. His death certificate states his last place of residence was in Hope Mills. 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. A spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command said the investigation continues into the deaths of Master Sgt. There are no coincidences in life like this.
Special Forces soldier found dead at Fort Bragg killed a Green Beret Howell was unable to say what threats Dumas directed toward the victim but that there was enough evidence to charge him with the crimes. Master Sergeant. He came with us, rode the ride. Among some operators, the result can be an unhealthy sense of entitlement, in the words of a Special Operations Command internal ethics review made public in 2020. According to a 2014 ATF report leaked to The Intercept, outlaw motorcycle gangs are proliferating in the military in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but aside from their vests and patches, the present-day Coast x Coast club looks more like customers in a Bass Pro Shop than Hells Angels. Investigators are seeking to create a timeline of. It's like winning the lottery twice in a couple years, that's what these odds are.. 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. The record states Dumas yelled police open the door after knocking. Mostly doing the talking, that I remember, was Capt. Its possible that it was expunged, a clerk tells me. I was pissed that another obstacle had gone up, she says. 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. 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. Poppe was unable to remember the substance of Matrafailos testimony, only that it involved some aspects of the investigation that had not been discussed., A few months after the trial, Matrafailo would be accused of making inappropriate contact with Scanlon on social media: sending her suggestive emojis, making weird comments about ads for lingerie, and the like. The certificates dont indicate how long the bodies were in the woods. Its like a saddle vibrator, she explains. She lives a very different life and has no contact with the elite soldiers who had been her colleagues, friends, and lovers for the better part of a decade. 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.. The Cumberland County Sheriffs Office investigated and declared the death justifiable homicide.. But Scanlon didnt get caught with the staff sergeant, nor with Vallejo. This industrially zoned property, which Vallejo rented from a chemical company, is cut off from any obvious street access, being surrounded on all three sides by train tracks, storage buildings, and scrap yards. Once people started getting drunk, they would bust it out, and drunk girls would try it and get all hornied up. 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. The trial began on a Monday morning. You get everyone in for a forensic interview, get emails, social media and everything else in the next 48 hours. 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. 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. 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.
More Human Remains Found on Fort Bragg | SOFREP The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time The death certificates say the two men were found about 3:30 p.m. Dec. 2, in the woods on Fort Bragg. Because she is a minor, Connecting Vets is not identifying Leshikar's daughter and has not spoken directly to her.
Do Delta Force operators have a license to kill? Green Beret - Reddit Delta Force is the Army's special-mission unit for counterterrorism and hostage rescues. 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. 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. 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. In Dumas' case, he had a Dec. 17 court date in. Going around chatting with people like a politician.. They have zero remorse. She doesnt mean that any of the killings she witnessed were illegal or outside the rules of engagement. It was standard practice at the time, Col. Kazin says. Leshikar's daughter said that, Uncle Billy was acting strange and that's why I let my daddy in, to the house.
Two men found dead at Fort Bragg: Update : This ain't Hell, but you can He was investigated in 2018 after fatally shooting his friend, Sgt. I knew about Mark's drugs, I knew about Billy's drugs, Leshikar's mother said. 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. Poppe says there was no connection between the two cases. They didnt care with who. 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.
10 Facts About Secretive US Army Unit Delta Force | History Hit This list of Delta Force members includes both current and former notable members of the United States Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, a tier one special mission unit and part of Joint Special Operations Command. Most Delta Force soldiers keep a very low profile. She says she didnt tell her lawyer about it till months later. North Carolina court records show that the sheriff and DAs office dismissed the charges every time. In fact, studies show that the conviction rate on penetrative-rape and forcible-sodomy charges is generally lower in military courts than civilian ones. 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. Reach Jack Murphy:jack@connectingvets.comor@JackMurphyRGR.Want to get more connected to the stories and resources Connecting Vets has to offer? She has photos to prove that she knew them.
St. Louis man telling stories of his thousands of 'capture or kill The doctrine, long a target of legislative reform, bars soldiers and sailors and Marines from recovering damages resulting from wrongful acts by the military.
How the Army Finds Out Who Has What It Takes to Join Delta Force The Ft. Bragg Delta Force Murders: New Details Come to Light They belonged to members of the Coast x Coast motorcycle club, made up of active-duty soldiers on Delta Force, a classified manhunting unit that is the Army component of JSOC. Now, he is telling his stories to help other veterans. Leshikar was a member of 19th Special Forces Group and had previously deployed to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Over the course of 18 months between 2020 and 2021, more than 80 military members stationed at the base died from "sudden" and.
Delta Force operator kills a Green Beret, but was it murder? - Audacy Finally, at the end of the first day of trial, she was allowed to step down. 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. As of 2010, the document shows, he was a TEAM MEMBER/OPERATOR in the organization demarcated 1ST SFOD-D (DELTA FORCE)., Like SEAL Team 6, its sister unit and only military peer, Delta Force is whats known as a Special Mission Unit. The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History The LaVigne and Leshikar familes had just returned from a trip to Disneyland. Unlike Tier 2, or white, special-operations forces, made up of ordinary Green Berets, Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs, JSOC units operate under Title 50 of the U.S. Code, which was controversially reinterpreted after 9/11 to permit the military to carry out covert actions, defined by the statute as foreign operations where it is intended that the role of the United States will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.. William told me that my brother had a screw driver but nothing was found at the scene, Leshikar's sister told Connecting Vets. We want to hear it. And no one seems to know quite why. Either way, Scanlon was immersed in an unfamiliar process and taking her cues from military lawyers and the judge, all of whom outranked her. At the time he met Scanlon, who was nearly 10 years his junior, Vallejo was a sergeant first class. William Lavigne II, 37, was found dead in the training area of Fort Bragg on December 2 alongside the body of Army veteran Timothy Dumas, 44 New reports reveal that Lavigne was. First Class Mark Leshikar, two years prior. PART OF AUDACY NEWS. A Defense Department memorandum noted that Lavigne wasn't credible but Leshikar's death was in the line of duty, while the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office described it as "justifiable homicide." Leshikar's family has alleged evidence was tampered with and that Lavigne called another Delta Force Operator to come to the scene. In this regard, Poppe says that she was a commissioned officer a lieutenant who got caught having sex in a compromising position with an enlisted man, Vallejo, technically her military inferior. 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. 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.". Maybe I wasnt clear enough, she texted a girlfriend at 8:59 a.m. on Sept. 12. So who did, and why?
Green Beret and Army veteran found dead at Fort Bragg were facing Special Forces soldier, Army veteran found dead on Fort Bragg were shot His truck, a black quad-cab Dodge Ram, was found some 40 miles away, in Scotland County, burned to a fucking crisp, according to his 24-year-old son. He took that and he always was the one who would protect people who were being bullied in school because he was a big man.. Then, just before the opening arguments were scheduled to take place, military lawyers from Fort Bragg intervened. 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. Instead, her aunt and grandmother relayed what she described.
Jack Murphy, Covert ops, Soleimani, The Team House, Special Forces Leshikar's family alleged that Lavigne was never administered a toxicology screen to test him for alcohol or narcotics in his system following the shooting. There have not been any arrest(s) and we are not releasing any additional details at this time, Shelly Lynch, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Charlotte, said in an email this week. A Delta Force operator known to be good friends with both Lavigne and Leshikar was allegedly the first person Lavigne called as things deteriorated with Leshikar the day he died. Dumas, an ex-soldier with a shady past, was found murdered along with Lavigne in the woods outside Fayetteville in December 2020. I dont see how anyone could have believed that consensual sex occurred there., When she finished using the toilet and opened the door, she was startled to find Vallejo standing right there. The person who seems to be in charge is a tall, barrel-chested man of about 40, whose long, scraggly beard is streaked with gray. On the afternoon of March 21, they arrived at Lavigne's home in the 1300 block of Anhinga Court in Fayetteville.
Two men found dead at Fort Bragg identified as USASOC - Army Times A third juror asked the nurse who did the rape kit, In your experience, is it abnormal for the victim to smile in an exam photo?, Scanlon was called in for the reading of the verdict. Looking back on the court-martial, it was a solid case and my testimony was powerful, Scanlon says, but I was this lowly lieutenant up against Delta Force and USASOC and JSOC, and all that entails. 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. An Uber driver started toward the warehouse at 2:50 a.m., according to screen shots of the app that Scanlon gave police. William LaVigne II, 37 Army veteran Timothy Dumas, 44. shooting Bragg In Other News Some companies charge hefty fees to help vets with disability claims On Sept. 8, 2021, the Coast x Coast club holds a public event in Fayetteville, at their usual haunt, Macs Speed Shop. Twice she broke down in tears and the court had to call a recess, she says. Leshikar was found by police officers and the medical examiner in a prone position with multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and neck. 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.
This Week on SOFREP: A Delta Operator Found Dead, Russian Mercenaries In his heart, he was all for defending people who could not defend themselves, his mother said about her late son. He was a great dude. Even with the rape kit and the testimony of witnesses like Tina, much would have hinged on Scanlons credibility. A guy whos in Delta Force would not be flashing his name around and having a nonprofit and partying at a bar. He had done three combat rotations with Delta Force two in Afghanistan and one in Iraq but she never guessed that he was a trained killer, in her words. With Leshikar and Lavigne dead, there remains only one witness to the killing: Leshikar's daughter. A brief report by CBS 17 in Raleigh-Durham on Sept. 30 named Vallejo as an N.C. . The nurse took swabs from Scanlons vagina and cervix, and collected as evidence her soiled underwear. Vallejo is considered a ladies man and groupies hang out at the ware house [sic] looking for an opportunity to sleep with Mr. Vallejo. This, the detective noted, was according to an employee of the Fayetteville Police Department who had to recuse herself from the case because she herself had once spent the night at Vallejos apartment.