Ft. Hood Exposed the Paper Tiger

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(Photo Source: thedailybeast.com)

The first terrorist attack, not workplace violence, at Ft. Hood exposed the U.S. Army and our entire military to the world. Ft. Hood was a precursor to what we have seen since and what is to come if we don’t learn our lessons.

We have a “Go Team” moment in West Virginia where a woman fought back and may have killed an active serial killer. Mississippi is proving once again that it is indeed Free America. The news from the Governor’s office regarding National Guard Recruiters is heartening.

SOURCES:

From www.cnn.com:

“He pulled a gun on me! He was going to kill me!”

Those are the chilling words caught in the background of a 911 call placed earlier this month after a woman faced off with an attacker who tried to rape her, pointing a 9 mm gun to her chest.

The victim, who is being called “Heather” by investigators, fought back so hard, police in Charleston, West Virginia said, that her attacker — who police now believe may be linked to other crimes — lost control of his gun.

Heather grabbed the weapon and blindly fired it, killing 45-year-old Neal Falls in self-defense, police said.

Heather, who met Falls after connecting via the escort section of backpage.com, was not charged in the incident.

Because the offender died during the crime, “our case is closed,” according to Lt. Steve Cooper, chief of detectives of the Charleston, West Virginia, Police Department.

But while the West Virginia part of the story might be over, what police discovered in the trunk of Falls’ car has investigators in other states wondering if he could be linked to other unsolved cases involving escorts.

Cooper said Falls had what police are calling a “kill kit,” which included four sets of handcuffs, an ax, a machete, bulletproof vests, knives, a box cutter, a large container of bleach, and a large number of trash bags.

Police say it’s unlikely this was the 45-year-old Falls’ first violent crime.

The last person to see Falls alive said she knew her attacker had experience committing violence.

“I knew he was there to kill me,” Heather told CNN affiliate WCSH, “I could tell he had already done something because he said he was going to prison for a long time.”

Police said Falls also carried a list of about 10 women — all escorts in West Virginia — along with their ages and phone numbers. Those women are all alive and have not had any previous contact with Falls, Cooper said.

The nature of the crimes and where the crimes occurred have also given officials pause.

In 2005, Falls lived in Las Vegas, the same year four women who were working as escorts in the area disappeared. Their dismembered bodies were later discovered in Illinois.

One of those women, Lindsay Marie Harris, was 21 when she disappeared from Henderson, Nevada, in May 2005. Her legs were found in Springfield, Illinois, three weeks later.

Representatives from the Henderson and Illinois State Police departments both confirm they have been in contact with officials in Charleston.

“Our role is simply to share DNA, other crime-scene information, and witness and victim information with any other agency that wants to compare their cases with this one,” Cooper said.

The Las Vegas Police Department has not returned CNN’s calls for comment.

Falls’ car had an Oregon license plate, and he is believed to have lived in that state for a time, though police couldn’t say for sure when he was last a resident.

CNN spoke to a woman in Eugene, Oregon, who said she is Falls’ sister. She said she wants nothing to do with her brother and that the family will have no further comment.

Falls’ former landlord told CNN affiliate KVAL that Falls lived at her house in 2010. The woman, who asked to be identified only as Pauline, said she evicted Falls after one year because his strange behavior made her uncomfortable.

“The first thing that he did that was a little odd was that he immediately changed the deadbolt to his own room so that only he had a key,” Pauline told KVAL. “He said he had guns and weapons and that he was a security guard.”

Springfield, Oregon, Police Sgt. Rich Charboneau said his department had some contact with Falls during the last few years for minor offenses like traffic tickets and a dog at large.

Falls also filed a complaint against someone else for trespassing on his property.

“Little creepy, very tightly lipped and not a chummy guy, definitely not a chummy guy,” Pauline said. “Somebody who doesn’t like to be exposed.”

Though there are no open murder investigations in Springfield, police have assigned a homicide detective to work as a liaison with officials in West Virginia, Charboneau said.

With just 120 miles separating Charleston, West Virginia and Chillicothe, Ohio, officials had considered a possible connection between Falls and six women who have gone missing or have turned up dead in a little more than a year.

But that connection has been ruled out.

“There is nothing whatsoever that can tie him to the missing women in Chillicothe,” said Lt. Michael E. Preston, spokesman for Ross County Sheriff’s Office.“

From fox4kc.com:

“Detectives across the country are re-examining cold cases after a possible serial killer was shot to death while allegedly attacking a West Virginia woman, CBS News reports.

That woman managed to kill 45-year-old Neal Falls, who investigators believe is connected to a string of murders in Ohio, Illinois and Nevada.

Charleston Gazette-Mail reports Falls had responded to an ad for an escort on Backpage.com. When he arrived at the home of a woman who asked only to be identified as Heather on Saturday, July 18, she said things quickly went from bad to worse.

Heather said minutes after she opened the door, Falls started beating and strangling her. She said he held a gun in one hand and held her by the throat with the other. Heather managed to grab a rake in an attempt to fight off her attacker.

Heather said Falls started beating and strangling her.
“He put the gun down to get the rake out of my hand and I just grabbed the gun and shot over behind me,” Heather said as she gestured over her shoulder.

That one shot hit Falls in the head and he was killed.

“He was going to shoot me. He was going to kill me,” Heather said.

Heather ran out of the house and flagged down a neighbor, who called 911.

“She had to defend herself and she shot him and he’s in the kitchen,” the woman told dispatchers.

Heather can be heard in the background saying, “He pulled a gun on me.”

“He pulled a gun on her. She’s got cuts and stuff all over her,” the neighbor told dispatchers.

When investigators responded, they found a cache of weapons inside Falls’ SUV including knives, a machete, axes, a sledgehammer, shovel, plastic trash bags, bleach, and a bulletproof vest. They also found four sets of handcuffs in his pockets.

“What comes to mind when you look at those items is a serial killer kit,” said Lt. Steve Cooper, who was the Charleston police detective who responded to the scene .

Cooper said the items, Falls’ methods and his previous known locations may tie him to the murder or disappearance of nine women in three states.

Falls lived in Las Vegas for eight years and worked at Hoover Dam. During that time, four women disappeared. Three of those women’s bodies were later found dismembered.

Authorities said all of those women, most like Heather, advertised online.

“I believe that Heather saved lives and hopefully we’ll be able to bring some closure to some other families, too,” Cooper said. “If she didn’t fight back, she most certainly would be dead.“

From www.thedailybeast.com:

“Nidal Hasan’s victims must suffer twice—first when they were shot by the army shrink turned jihadi, and again as the government calls the murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood ‘workplace violence.’
As U.S. Army psychiatrist turned jihadi Nidal Hasan finally goes on trial for shooting 13 fellow soldiers to death at Fort Hood, here is what the government continues to classify the 2009 attack: “Workplace violence.”

In what might be termed the audacity of nope, the government has declined to call this al Qaeda–inspired mass murder an act of terrorism because to do so would be “unfair to the victims.”

The official reasoning is that it would jeopardize the case because, as stated in a Pentagon memo, “defense counsel will argue that Major Hasan cannot receive a fair trial because a branch of government has indirectly declared that Major Hasan is a terrorist—that he is criminally culpable.”

That has not stopped the government from calling the 9/11 attacks anything but terrorism. The 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon has on display the Purple Heart, the medal awarded to all the soldiers who were killed or injured there that day.

But the Purple Heart has been denied the soldiers who were killed or wounded at Fort Hood. And, because they were classified as victims of simple calamity rather than of combat, they and their families have been denied the accompanying benefits. A number of them say they have not even been able to secure adequate care for their wounds.

And, perhaps in part because people assumed that the army would take care of the soldiers as it would any other fallen and wounded warriors, there was no huge outpouring of financial support for them as there would later be for, say, the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings.

To her great and everlasting credit, nobody has been more vocal about all this than one of the two heroic police officers who took Hasan down and ended the carnage.

“Betrayed is a good word,” Police Sgt. Kimberly Munley has said of the way the soldiers have been treated.

Imagine coming home shaken up by the war and seeking psychiatric help and having this guy call you a war criminal?
Munley speaks up on behalf of the soldiers even though as a civilian she would be ineligible for the medal or the benefits, even though she was wounded in the attack.

And Munley has more than enough cause to complain about how she and her equally heroic comrade, Police Sgt. Mark Todd, have been treated themselves.

You likely recall all the accolades that Munley and Todd received after the attack.

Maybe you saw them on television seated beside the first lady at the State of the Union address, Munley still in pain from the bullet wound in her leg.

You may not know that both of them were subsequently laid off due to budget cuts.

You also may not know that Todd suffered a stroke this past Christmas, two days after returning from Afghanistan, having gone to work there for a civilian contractor when his heroism at Fort Hood failed to save him from being “excessed.”

The stroke apparently left him unable to speak, but he has nonetheless been placed on the list of potential witnesses as the trial gets under way at Ford Hood.

The judge in the military tribunal initially denied—but may reconsider—a prosecution request for permission to submit instead Todd’s testimony at an earlier hearing, when he had his full powers of speech. He may still be required to testify in writing.

Munley almost certainly will testify at the trial. Her lawyer, Reid Rubinstein, reports that she is as ready as ever to do whatever duty requires.

She is presently honoring a request by the prosecutors to refrain from public comment during the trial. But you can be sure she will have plenty to say afterward. And likely little of it will be about her own troubles.

In the meanwhile, Rubenstein has joined with another attorney, Neal Sher, in filing a lawsuit against the government on behalf of Munley, a number of the shot soldiers, and their families. The suit notes that the army and the FBI ignored repeated warnings that an increasingly militant Hasan was bent on jihadist violence.

The suit charges that, among other things, the authorities “knew or should have known that Hasan was abusing his patients, who were American soldiers returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, by calling them ‘war criminals’ in the course of psychiatric treatment sessions, and promising criminal prosecution against them because these soldiers had killed Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

How nuts is that?

Imagine coming home shaken up by the war and seeking psychiatric help and having this guy call you a war criminal?

Imagine later hearing that this same sick shrink was allowed just to spout lines from the Quran in place of the formal oral presentation required of all new doctors.

And that Hasan’s communications with al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki were initially excused as research into radical Islam.

And that Hasan spoke of being “happy” when a fellow jihadist shot an American soldier to death outside an Arkansas recruiting station in June of 2009—a soldier who would also be denied a Purple Heart.

And that five months later Hasan allegedly went with a gun into an area where soldiers were either returning from a deployment or preparing to deploy.

Among those who were shot was Lt. Col. Juanita Warman, a physician who specialized in treating PTSD. She died while using her body to shield a fellow soldier, an act that should have earned her a medal for valor as well as a Purple Heart.

Also shot was Pvt. Francheska Velez, just back from Iraq, completing paperwork for education benefits and pregnant with her first child.

“She lived for a short time in terrible pain and agony, knowing that she and her child were dying,” the lawsuit says.

The suit also says that just before the gunfire, Hasan was heard to shout, “Allah akbar!” as Awlaki had reportedly advised.

In 2011, Awlaki was killed by a drone strike in Yemen. The government said the killing was justified even though he was an American citizen because he was also an enemy combatant in a foreign land. He had, in the words of Attorney General Holder, “repeatedly made clear his intent to attack U.S. persons and his hope that these attacks would take American lives.”

Yet the attack that Hasan allegedly carried out after being inspired and guided by Awlaki remains ”workplace violence.”

In an added twist, Hasan will be representing himself at the trial. That means Munley and perhaps even Todd may have to endure being cross-examined by him.

As a consolation, the cops might consider that the trial is going ahead only because the judge nixed Hasan’s effort to avoid the death penalty by pleading guilty. He has apparently lost some of his fervor for martyrdom even though he has said in the past that martyrs are rewarded in paradise with 72 virgins.

Let us hope that whenever he departs this realm, if he meets anybody, Hasan is instead greeted by 13 soldiers with some serious anger to vent.“

From www.wlox.com:

“After a short stint of being closed, the National Guard recruiting offices in Mississippi have reopened. This time, things are a little different. The recruiters are carrying an extra piece of equipment.

“We’re kind of having a grand reopening,” said Lieutenant Colonel Rodney Harris.

After being closed for about a week, National Guardsmen have resumed their posts at recruitment centers across the state.

“We took a step back after the incident in Chattanooga and looked at what our security looked like,” said Harris.

That security assessment led to a decision. Governor Phil Bryant issued an order that allows guardsmen to be equipped with a firearm while on the job. According to Harris, the holstered guns will serve multiple purposes.

“The purpose that we hope it serves is that it serves as a deterrent to an individual that may have the mindset to do something that tampers with our security measures,” he said.

But if an individual is not deterred by the sight of the weapon, that’s when the second purpose kicks in.

“Of course, we are the armed forces, so we’re accustomed to being in a position by which we have the opportunity to return fire,” said Harris.

According to Harris, the addition of the guns isn’t the only security measure that will be changing at the 10 offices statewide. He says there may be some adjustments to the storefront glass, visibility, and general access.

Veterans, like Chris Overfield, are happy to see the offices open back up so quickly.

“I think we need to show people we’re not scared to go about our daily lives,” said Overfield.

He thinks that reopening these offices does just that by showing our enemies that we’re still carrying on fighting for the freedoms that we stand for. The Guardsmen were specially trained sometime over the past week to ready themselves for this new responsibility.“

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Paul G. Markel has worn many hats during his lifetime. He has been a U.S. Marine, Police Officer, Professional Bodyguard, and Small Arms and Tactics Instructor. Mr. Markel has been writing professionally for law enforcement and firearms periodicals for nearly twenty years with hundreds and hundreds of articles in print. Paul is a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio talk shows and subject matter expert in firearms training and use of force. Mr. Markel has been teaching safe and effective firearms handling to students young and old for decades and has worked actively with the 4-H Shooting Sports program. Paul holds numerous instructor certifications in multiple disciplines and a Bachelor’s degree in conflict resolution; nonetheless, he is and will remain a dedicated Student of the Gun.