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. 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. After that, she put up no more physical resistance. They only stayed that long because Tina was famished and there was a Crock-Pot of food on a folding table. I dont think they go around on shooting sprees. That night he shattered my whole world, the statement read. Why didnt you tell anyone about the witness that came around the corner? she remembers him asking. Lavigne was a member of the Army's elite counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force, and deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. 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. What the defense has to say, you dont want to hear. She says that she was excluded from hearing the testimony of the other witnesses, that her military-appointed attorney was swapped out five separate times, and that one of them was called to provide testimony against her. I asked him if I could take a picture in front of their logo to send to my instructor, she says. Both men were on active duty in Delta Force at the time. Ms. Which is why he became a Green Beret and why 'De Oppresso Liber' meant everything to him because that was who he was to his core.. Calls to Cumberland Country Sheriff's Office detectives to ask specific questions about the investigation went unanswered and the Sheriff's Office did not respond to requests for further comment. 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. 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. Lavigne and Sgt. or Erin Scanlon, a junior Army officer in the artillery branch, Fort Bragg was a prime posting. Scanlon was not excluded from the proceeding, a spokesman wrote in a statement. The trial record shows that the prosecution called only four more witnesses, half as many as the defense. Now she demands answers, Illustration by Mike McQuade for Rolling Stone, Former Army Capt. It took her months to get a military protective order against him. Some were deployed, others reassigned, or otherwise bureaucratically reshuffled. 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. None can be found referenced in available paperwork either. Scanlon had to order another Uber, as the first one had given up and driven off. Fort Bragg officials announced that the Master Sgt. The prosecution did not call Matrafailo, the Fayetteville detective who had investigated Scanlons claim, interviewed witnesses while their memories were fresh, collected evidence before it disappeared, and concluded by arresting Vallejo for second-degree rape. This was 37-year-old William Lavigne III, a Master Sergeant and former 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (aka Delta Force) soldier. I will keep fighting to put my life back together. On one occasion, she says, she had to hide in the bathroom after he walked into a tavern in Southern Pines. 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. Vallejo says the sex was consensual and was acquitted of all charges arising from the incident in a June 2018 court-martial on Fort Bragg. The case is being investigated as a homicide, a spokesperson for Army Criminal Investigations Division told Connecting Vets. Connecting Vets was provided screen shots of those charges and the court date. 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. 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 body of Master Sgt. Even after her father dropped to the ground, he kept shooting. A toxicology report revealed trace amounts of Tramadol and Valium in Leshikar's system. She says she didnt tell her lawyer about it till months later. 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. She took him for a run-of-the-mill special-forces veteran, retired from the Army or otherwise discharged, because shed been taught that its against regulations for active-duty personnel to solicit donations for a military cause, and that was the whole point of the Coast x Coast Foundation. Scanlon derisively refers to the latter four as groupies. A Fayetteville police detective used the same language in his report on her case. I was too scared to go to stores, the gym, and other crowded places. According to the Leshikar family, the investigators said they had no real jurisdiction over Lavigne since Leshikar was killed off post. In his mug shot, Vallejo appeared freshly shaved, his beard gone. The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office told Connecting Vets that it will not release the police report itself, which was written by police Sgt. Christine Booyer, without a court order. An Army memorandum states that Lavigne first alleged that Leshikar had killed himself, but then changed his account of what happened. William J. Lavigne Wiki - William J. Lavigne Biography He says Lavigne smoked crack, that was his main thing. It wasnt really that dark out., I dont remember the precise questions that I asked her, Poppe says today, or what exhibits were introduced in evidence, but I remember the facts of the case, and the evidence supported that she consented to the sexual acts with Cris Valley.. The certificates dont indicate how long the bodies were in the woods. Its like someone didnt want him to talk. She adds, Im scared to say words like this out loud.. (U.S. Army) Like Lavigne, Dumas had ties to the Special. The jury would have been able to see from her dress blues that, in stark contrast with Vallejo, she was a rookie officer in a conventional unit. The mystery around the deaths of Master Sgt. Subsequently, the Army swapped out her SVC four separate times. There are no coincidences in life like this. First Class Mark Leshikar . Over those five years, it paid out grants totaling $187,143. 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. It was not a decision to try to sneak it out of Cumberland County. The only purpose of convening the meeting with the DA, Col. Kazin says, was to make sure that the JAG prosecutors understood whether Scanlon preferred to have a military or civilian trial. That was how they operated.. 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. His first deployment was to Mali, in 2007. Consider the bombshell testimony that relieved ex-SEAL Eddie Gallagher of murder charges in 2019 or Trumps intervention in the Fort Bragg court-martial of Mathew Golsteyn, a Special Forces officer who admitted on live TV to killing an unarmed man. The LaVigne and Leshikar familes had just returned from a trip to Disneyland. 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. As a result, she says, she had to retell her ordeal to five different SVCs, some of whom were unprepared or missed meetings. That was a crazy ethical mistake.. They outfitted the warehouse with couches, a full bar, foosball and ping-pong tables, a stripper pole, and something called a Sybian. Twice she broke down in tears and the court had to call a recess, she says. Its hundreds of pages long, but does not include the testimony of witnesses or the arguments the lawyers made. Special Forces soldier found dead next to Army vet at Fort Bragg 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. Because I had been in for 18 months. The case is being investigated as a homicide, a spokesperson for Army Criminal Investigations Division told Connecting Vets. Delta Force member found dead at Ft. Bragg training site had a dark past. Werent there plenty of people you could have called out to? The nurse who did the rape kit noted in her report that Scanlons eyes were red and her makeup was smeared. 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. None are able to say why the shooting took place, but they all remember Lavigne. William Lavigne was the sixth witness for the defense, the trial rec-ord shows. Did it disappear or melt? . When her contract was up in 2019, she resigned from the Army. I had no idea why they were making me decide this. The second man, whose name was not disclosed, was an army veteran previously stationed at the North Carolina military base. 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.
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