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. Throughout the whole night he kind of acted like a celebrity, Scanlon says. 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. Hes in JSOC.. 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. Either way, Scanlon was immersed in an unfamiliar process and taking her cues from military lawyers and the judge, all of whom outranked her. As Jane puts it, They did what they wanted when they wanted, and wouldnt take no for an answer.. I didnt say anything when he did that. Finally, on June 25, 2018, the court-martial convened: United States v. Sergeant First Class Cristobal Vallejo. 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. And no one seems to know quite why. 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. Hes vague about the shooting incident. As a criminal profiler, Ciolino has investigated and exonerated death row inmates. 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. It was a warm night in the Carolinas, with a quarter-moon in the sky. I was with them for years, constantly, she says. Rick said Lavigne was also in Delta Force. Lavigne was due in Cumberland County District Court next week in connection with a hit-and-run charge from last February, the newspaper reported. And I was in law enforcement for all of the years that he was growing up so I was very hard on my kids, tried to make them strong and independent. Lavigne and a retired soldier named Anthony Dumas were found dead last year on Ft. Bragg, and now the FBI is involved in the investigation which is being treated as a homicide. I said no over and over.. It was him and Maj. Stacey Cohen.. First Class Mark Leshikar were best friends. Then, on Sept. 1, 2018, Lavigne was charged with felony harboring an escapee and maintaining a vehicle or dwelling to manufacture a controlled substance. Scanlon and Vallejo both continued to live in Fayetteville and work on Fort Bragg. Master Sgt. She filed a FOIA request for the transcript in 2019, and the Army gave her the trial record instead. 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. The nurse who did the rape kit noted in her report that Scanlons eyes were red and her makeup was smeared. "Hard drugs and murder in JSOC: "'We have a lot of Delta Force members in our community,' says Ballard, the police detective.'Some of them are really . 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. 1st Class Mark Leshikar. Scanlon went to the Fayetteville police the next day. But I have accepted this new path. . Since learning of Lavigne's death, Leshikar's daughter has opened up about it, saying she was previously afraid Lavigne would kill her mother if she spoke of it, Rick told Connecting Vets. 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. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time In his mug shot, Vallejo appeared freshly shaved, his beard gone. I said, No, find someone else. William told me that my brother had a screw driver but nothing was found at the scene, Leshikar's sister told Connecting Vets. Scanlon was on the stand for eight hours, she says. You get everyone in for a forensic interview, get emails, social media and everything else in the next 48 hours. Another struck hit him in his right side. Spouses, children, grandchildren, and on and on.. The mystery around the deaths of Master Sgt. 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. I dont know how we survived., Jane was well-acquainted with the site known as Warehouse 13. Scanlon agreed to go on the record again, in greater detail, if you would be willing to reiterate that my perpetrator was Delta Force. It turned into some sort of wrestling match, but what the argument was about remains unclear. The police department promptly fired Matrafailo, who had allegedly done the same to two other alleged rape victims. I held really, really tightly to my [family members] hands and stared straight ahead, she says. DELTA FORCE' S DIRTY SECRET 2022-01-04 - [ Cont. Its hundreds of pages long, but does not include the testimony of witnesses or the arguments the lawyers made. 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. The alleged perpetrator, Adel Anayat, eventually copped to a misdemeanor. Poppe couldnt recall why that was the case, but conceded that it was somewhat unusual for the main police witness in a criminal trial not to align with the prosecution. Its very controlled, she says. However, documents say that Leshikar's wife Laura spoke with him that day and he sounded lucid to her. Her superiors didnt know about the former, and she herself had reported the latter. In local news reports, the shooter wasnt named. His spiral into drugs and paranoia culminated in him shooting at a man on the streets of Fayetteville in July 2020. She accused a Special Forces operative of rape. Delta Force member found dead at Ft. Bragg training site had a dark past. 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. Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. In August 2016 just two weeks before he met Scanlon he threw out the first pitch at a Padres game in San Diego. Ultimately, both CID and the sheriffs office determined there was no criminal culpability.. None are able to say why the shooting took place, but they all remember Lavigne. Master Sgt. Scanlon realized that this was not going to stop, Matrafailo wrote, and gave up fighting back in the hopes that it would end quickly.. William LaVigne II, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas, 44. On the afternoon of March 21, they arrived at Lavigne's home in the 1300 block of Anhinga Court in Fayetteville. soldier who had been accused of rape, and published his photo. They avoid social media, and their traces on the internet tend to be very few: an old photo with mom, a defunct phone number, a real-estate deed. 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. . I followed her, the detectives notes of the conversation read. 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. LaVigne and Dumas were each scheduled to appear in court on unrelated cases in December and January, according to court records. That was a crazy ethical mistake.. 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. On Dec. 2, 2020, Master Sgt. Together they make up the core of JSOC, the black ops component of the military. Its not even clear what agency, military or civilian, is investigating. 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. 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. That was how they operated.. But the warehouse had no plumbing; there was only a portable toilet out back. Connecting Vets is not naming the Delta Force operator as attempts to contact him were unsuccessful, and he may still work on sensitive assignments. Reached through his lawyer, Vallejo declined to comment for this story. Do you realize what you did? she replied at 4:25 a.m. In Dumas' case, he had a Dec. 17 court date in. All rights reserved. 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. It was standard practice at the time, Col. Kazin says. In the event of a terrorist strike, international hostage situation, or loose nuclear weapon, its Delta or Team 6 that the president will call on to respond. Tina watched Vallejo walk up behind Scanlon, causing Scanlon to dart off, according to the statement Tina gave Matrafailo. But he was in JAG for 20 years and has represented such high-profile military clients as Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and is unable to recall another time when a JSOC operator was arrested for a violent felony against a fellow soldier on U.S. soil, as was the case for both Lavigne and Vallejo. He was a broken operator, a worn-out military part, destroyed by PTSD and substance abuse. 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. He was charged with a felony for allegedly harboring an escapee. They picked him up down at the stop sign., A big, crazy white man is how a 52-year-old woman named Renee Locklear describes Lavigne. He was a part of Leshikar's funeral service, she said. 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. 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. The death certificate lists LaVignes cause of death as multiple gunshot wounds. 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. Vallejo was briefly detained in jail on a $100,000 bond. On the way to the staff sergeants house, where shed spend the night, she looked at her phone and saw that Vallejo had sent her a text: How are you? On Sept. 30, he arrested Vallejo on a felony warrant for second-degree rape, second-degree sex offense, and sexual battery. The Army couldnt give Scanlon a transcript because no transcript ever existed. Which is all I wanted to do: deploy with my soldiers. Out of fear that Vallejo [would try to] come looking for me, she wrote, she moved from Fayetteville to another small town nearby. It is a lot for a jury to make a decision like that, she says. No awards. 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. We are not granting interviews at this time., If you murder a guy who is one of your most elite soldiers in the world and no one gives a shit, it is bothersome, Ciolino said. 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. More than she questions Vallejos acquittal or the jurys decision, Scanlon simply wants to know what happened at the court-martial. I represented 1LT [First Lieutenant] Erin Scanlon as her special-victim counsel, Capt. Three of four gunshots struck Leshikar, according to the ME report. 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. Once people started getting drunk, they would bust it out, and drunk girls would try it and get all hornied up. PART OF AUDACY NEWS. This experience led Beckwith to advocate for a similar unit in the US Army. They said Lavigne's harboring a fugitive felony charge could be used to kick him out of Special Forces and discharge him from the military. And when it comes to courts-martial for whatever crime where the accused is a Navy SEAL or Green Beret, they can be more full of anomalies and surprises than a cheap legal thriller. He was not a quiet professional, she says, using a term that special-operations generals came up with in the 1980s to describe themselves, and since repeated endlessly in the news media. She wasnt being truthful about her encounter with Cris Vallejo., They should not have allowed my lawyer to testify against me, Scanlon says. This is classic, let's cover it up. On March 21, 2018, at his Anhinga Drive home, LaVigne shot to death his friend, Army Sgt. She felt the implication was clear: Obviously youre a liar.. What the defense has to say, you dont want to hear. Youre lucky Im the Army, she told him jokingly, setting her phone and purse on the folding table. After taking her statement and reviewing her text messages, Detective Matrafailo drove her the three blocks to the warehouse in an effort to identify the precise location. For good reason: The person or persons who killed Lavigne and Dumas remain at large. This is not how I wanted my time. In Fayetteville, the Coast x Coast club was riding high, leading rock star lifestyles, in Janes words. For reasons that remain a mystery, Lavigne had pulled out the .40-caliber sidearm he carried and double-tapped his best buddy right in front of two horrified little girls, his daughter and Leshikars. Leshikar's daughter said that, Uncle Billy was acting strange and that's why I let my daddy in, to the house. 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. 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. Im not a police officer. I dont think they go around on shooting sprees. There are recordings somewhere, Scanlon says. 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. So Marky just took everything, the pride in America that I have, she continued. The next morning, Scanlon went directly to the Womack Army Medical Center and underwent a sexual-assault forensic examination. And that was the reason why my case was handled the way it was. (Phyllis B. Dooney for Rolling Stone). 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. She has photos to prove that she knew them. His dad and I divorced when he was not even a year old so he kind of stepped into those shoes as the protector. William Lavigne II, 37, pictured above, was found in Fort Bragg on December 2. On March 17, Leshikar called his sister, Nicole Rick, to wish her a happy Saint Patrick's Day. We want to hear it. I knew him, Joe says of Lavigne. He denies that Lavigne was ever into dealing any sort of narcotics. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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