Dayton Daily News
Copyright 2003

Monday, May 5, 2003

ORPHANS' PLIGHT PROMPTS PLEA TO ARMY, CONGRESS
Lawrence Budd Warren County Bureau

Slaying, suicide leave children without benefits

MASON - As his former comrades pushed toward Baghdad, a recently decorated Green Beret was buried in someone else's uniform in a quiet ceremony.

William C. Wright Jr., 36, was buried March 28 in Rose Hill Cemetery in downtown Mason two days after he hanged himself in a North Carolina jail cell.

Wright, a Bronze Star winner with 18 years of service, received no 21-gun salute. A relative provided the uniform. The former master sergeant left behind three young sons.

Wright was charged with murdering his wife, Jennifer - one of four wives slain by soldier husbands last summer at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Wright's service fell short of the 20 years required, so the Army has awarded no benefits to the boys, 13, 9 and 7, who now live in Springboro. When Wright hanged himself in his jail cell, a $250,000 insurance policy failed to pay because he died five days after a cutoff date.

The lack of pension benefits has angered family members who are now taking their case - and those of other military dependents in the same straits - to the Army and Congress.

"I'm not trying to run the military down. It's something we need real bad," said Jennifer Wright's father, Archie Watson.

"The military motto is we leave no one behind," Watson said. "They walked away from Bill when he needed them most. Then they turned their backs on their financial responsibilities to his children."

Jennifer Wright was one of four wives slain by their Fort Bragg soldier husbands in June and July 2002. Three were Special Forces soldiers who had recently returned from Afghanistan. The killings orphaned nine children, none of whom has received pension benefits.

Recently, Jennifer Wright's brother sat watching coverage of the war in Iraq. Gesturing toward the TV, Mark Watson asked, "What's going to happen to these guys coming back from this?"

In response to the killings, Fort Bragg has revamped its programs to detect and protect against domestic violence. The Army is expected to make more changes in response to an investigation that attributed the seven deaths to marital problems.

While the Wright boys qualify for no pension benefits, the military will for the next three years provide them with monthly payments of more than $700 and health insurance.

A trust has been established with $100,000 from Jennifer Wright's life insurance policy.

"Our people in the command have done everything we can to help the kids without breaking the law," said Ben Abel, a spokesman for the Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command at Fort Bragg.

The Army is still rewriting its domestic violence policies in hopes of preventing a recurrence of the killings that attracted national publicity.

However, it continues to direct soldiers to use an anti-malarial drug called Lariam, despite suspicions from critics that it fueled extreme violence in households already pressurized by marital difficulties and the military life.

There's also no sign of any revision to the pension policy.

"To me, my sister was a victim of war," said aunt Donna Walker, who has custody of the boys.

Happier times

Jennifer Watson met Billy Wright in the early 1980s, after he moved with his mother and brother temporarily into Shadow Lake Village, a mobile home park on the western edge of Warren County. She attended school in Lebanon, finally studying early child development at the Warren County Career Center.

For two years she represented Warren County at state leadership conferences. During the Ohio State Fair, she served as a hostess transporting celebrities, including Willie Nelson. In 1987, she was awarded a gold medal for a nursery home learning game entered in state competition.

Three years older than Jennifer, Billy Wright was "only the third wrestler in Mason's history to go to the state tournament," according to the 1983 Masonian. One yearbook picture, decorated with a banner announcing 'Mason Takes the Wright Way to the State!', shows a serious Wright, his hand held aloft in victory by a referee.

Within three months, the Wrights were evicted from the mobile home park, Archie Watson said. But Billy continued to court the brunette, even after graduation and induction into the U.S. Army in 1984.

After Jennifer's graduation, they were married Dec. 19, 1987, at the Loveland Park Baptist Church, and moved to Fort Drum, N.Y. Born at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., Wright followed in the footsteps of his father, a military veteran.

Jennifer raised, then home-schooled the three boys, while Bill rose in rank with the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne). The family moved to Fort Bragg, then Fort Polk., La., before returning to the Fort Bragg, home of the Army's elite fighting force.

In 1997, they renewed their vows at the Loveland church. "Everyone that was around them could tell how much in love they were," Archie Watson said.

In August 2001, Bill returned from Texas a Master Sergeant. Assigned to the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion, Wright left for Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, in February 2002.

The 96th is the Army's only active Civil Affairs unit. Wright was responsible for about 35 soldiers, Abel said.

But back home, Jennifer was seeking a separation from Bill - and the Army. In May, the Army permitted Wright to leave his unit and return home.

"My sister was tired of the Army life. She asked Bill to leave the Army. He said no," Walker recalled. "He came back from Afghanistan straight into the situation."

Domestic wars

During June and July 2002, four Fort Bragg soldiers killed their wives, two killed themselves soon after. Bill Wright spent eight months in a North Carolina county jail, while awaiting trial. In March of this year he committed suicide in his jail cell.

What drove the soldiers to violence remains a point of debate. Some point to marital discord, a common problem for couples who are separated for up to six months at a time. Others point to pressures on Special Forces soldiers routinely called on to take the point in international conflicts.

During the past decades, Fort Bragg has sent soldiers to Panama, Grenada, Haiti, Somalia, the Balkans, Bosnia and Afghanistan. Today, almost half its 40,000 soldiers are deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere in the Middle East.

"The operation tempo in the last 15-20 years has been very high," said Tallman, public affairs officer for Fort Bragg and the 18th Airborne Corps..

Archie Watson blames Lariam, the drug of choice for American soldiers trying to prevent malaria.

In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration changed Lariam labels to warn it "may cause psychiatric symptoms in a number of patients, ranging from anxiety, paranoia and depression to hallucinations and psychotic behavior."

However, an Army investigation failed to connect it to the murders. Today, Lariam is still prescribed.

"Its a force-protection issue. It's riskier not to take the medication," Tallman said.

While awaiting Army guidance, Fort Bragg has taken steps to quell the domestic wars. Chaplains train soldiers how to downshift from the front to domestic life. In some cases, soldiers are assigned 10 days of light duty as a cooling-off period.

Wright came home in hopes of talking his wife out of leaving him and taking their three sons, but soon moved out of the house.

"He had gone over there that morning to ask her to reconsider. She was sticking fast to her decision," said Lt. Sam Pennica of the Cumberland County, N.C., Sheriff's Department.

Wright first hit his 33-year-old wife with a coffee mug, police said. He then hit her with a baseball bat before strangling her to death, Pennica said.

The eldest son heard the noise and came to the bedroom door. But Wright convinced him his mother was suffering another migraine headache and needed to be left alone, Pennica said.

After the children left the house, Wright put his wife's body in his parachute bag, then buried it in woods just off base where he often squirrel hunted, Pennica said.

Then Wright went off to work at a part-time off-base carpentry job. The next day he took the boys fishing. The next Monday he reported his wife missing, convincing sheriff's deputies she had run off on him and her sons.

For three weeks, he continued this ruse. He finally confessed July 19 and led sheriff's deputies to her body.

Prosecutors sought the death penalty, while Wright sat in the county jail and publicity engulfed the base. In November, the Army completed its investigation, which attributed the rash of violence to marital problems.

In March, Wright appeared at a hearing to decide whether he should face the death penalty. Also in March, he was awarded a Bronze Star for his valor in Afghanistan - about a week before his death.

On March 26, before the death penalty ruling, jail officials found Wright hanging in his cell. Pennica declined to comment on family claims he left a journal, citing a pending investigation by state police. He did confirm that after an initial monitoring period, Wright had been taken off suicide watch.

Noting Wright killed himself months after the other soldiers, some suspect he committed suicide in despair at his incarceration, while his unit headed back into action. No one knows for sure.

"Being behind bars, being away from his boys, knowing what he'd done to my daughter, I'd say his mind was in the lowest depths of hell," Archie Watson said.

Anxious to bury Wright, the family decided not to wait for the Army to ship the uniform. On March 28, dressed in an old uniform obtained by a relative, Wright was buried, three rows behind his wife at the Mason cemetery.

Retirement and redemption

Since July, the Wright boys have been living with Walker. Left without either parent and living in a new state, the boys, who were home-schooled by their mother, are struggling to adapt to public schools. Counselors are helping them cope. Meanwhile their aunt, Donna Walker, and her husband have contended with financial and emotional stress.

"It's been a nightmare financially," Walker said.

Last week, Fort Bragg spokesman Ben Abel said veterans and their families receive military pensions only after 20 years' service or a medical discharge. He referred questions about this policy to an Army office specializing in pension issues, whose staff did not respond to interview requests.

A victim's advocate in Warren County referred Donna Walker to Jonathan Sams, a lawyer in Mason. The attorney and the family hope to convince the Army to pay the boys for Wright's $250,000 insurance policy. They also hope to convince Congress to change the Army's pension policy.

"We're trying to accomplish more, not just for my sisters' children, but all children who are in this situation," Walker said. So far nothing has come of their appeals to about 65 federal lawmakers. Only recently did they realize Rep. Mike Turner, R- Centerville, became Walker's Congressman in the redistricting.

"I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a politician, I'm just a regular person trying to do what's right for these kids," she said.