I was watching Investigation Discovery (ID) one night in 2018 when Forbidden Dying for Love came on the television. I was what you would consider an #IDAddict and I regularly watched the new programming from 9-11 p.m. every night. I also tweeted with other #IDAddicts while the show was live. On this particular night, Love is a Battlefield was featured. And as it would turn out, it was a show about military crime so it immediately caught my attention and I hung on every last word. This particular show was an episode about Kamisha Block. She was a U.S. Army soldier who was murdered by her supervisor in her chain of command in Iraq in 2007. I was very familiar with the situation as I had researched every woman who died via non combat death overseas and it was documented on my website. This situation is exactly what I was afraid of when I was serving. I did not want to be sent overseas to Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere with the offenders I encountered or the toxic military leadership I worked for. Read here.
2. Investigation Reveals Retired Marine Daniel Vandecar Not Involved in Schutzler Homicide
A Stranger in My Home, an Investigation Discovery program, featured the 2010 case of Roy Schutzler and Rosemary Vandecar in North Las Vegas, Nevada. It was appropriately titled The Two-Faced Murder because Rosemary considered herself Roy’s caregiver yet in the end she was the one who would end his life. We were initially led to believe that her son, Daniel Vandecar, was also involved in the crime but as it turns out the investigation revealed that he had no involvement. He was a victim of circumstance in the matter. He too may have needed a caregiver because he was a retired disabled Marine who had served during a time of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He had Post Traumatic Stress and quite possibly a traumatic brain injury from a roadside bomb he encountered on his last tour. He moved in with his mother Rosemary and Roy in an attempt to decompress after retiring from the military. Read here.
3. Prosecutor: Navy Petty Officer Rebecca Braswell Considered a Pure Sociopath
Investigation Discovery featured the 2006 case of Rebecca Braswell and John Marmo, Jr. on a show called I’d Kill For You recently. This couple went through a bitter divorce and child custody battle that led to one of them taking lethal action to win. They met in the US Navy while stationed at Naval Air Station, Sigonella, Italy. They quickly formed an intimate relationship despite regulations prohibiting on-base dating. They kept their elicit fling a secret from their superiors for twelve months and then Rebecca learned that she was pregnant. She was very concerned about her superiors finding out because a single pregnant woman could face immediate discharge from the Navy. John was described by friends as an easy going, nice guy, who wasn’t a stressed out kind of person. John asked Rebecca to marry him to remedy the situation. Read here.
4. Nowhere to Turn: Soldier Extorted by a Military Wife Ends in Murder
Investigation Discovery featured a Very Kenda Christmas with back to back episodes of Homicide Hunter with Lt. Joe Kenda over the holidays. Kenda is a retired detective from the Colorado Springs Police Department. Colorado Springs is also the home of US Army base Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base. As a result, Lt. Kenda worked closely with investigating authorities at both bases throughout the years when one of his murder cases involved a member of the military or their dependents. If a crime against a military member or their dependents occurred off-base within the jurisdiction of Colorado Springs, Lt. Joe Kenda had the legal authority to investigate the case. And that’s exactly what he did in the 1985 murder investigation of an Air Force wife, Lourdes Riddle. Read here.
5. The Fastest Discharge in Military History
Lt Joe Kenda once again displayed phenomenal investigation skills in the episode Death Grip on Homicide Hunter. This particular episode focused on a 1979 report of a car accident in a parking lot that led police on the scene to deduce that this was no accident. A pick up truck hit the side of a residential building and then rolled back into the parking lot where it finally rested. They found a man with a single entry gunshot wound to the head behind the wheel of the vehicle involved in the accident. They found a woman who was so traumatized by what she just witnessed that she was in shock and couldn’t speak. While the witness to the incident was being treated, Lt. Kenda continued his investigation during the critical hours following any violent crime. Read here.
The day we learned about the execution of SrA Roger Fortson by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office was the day that changed us for life. It hit us so hard given our own terrifying experiences with rogue police officers, the erasure of second amendment rights, and the fact Roger could have been someone we worked beside and cared about. The ACLU in San Diego found prior to George Floyd’s murder in 2020 that data show there are disparities in police practices among communities of color and people with disabilities. We were home in quarantine like everyone else when the news broke about George Floyd. This too hit us in the heart like a dagger. We felt deep wounds as we watched things unfold. The quarantine allowed us the time to immerse ourselves in the issues and become more familiar with the practices of U.S. police officers. Read here.
I lost all respect for Congress, the military, and the media after witnessing how they handled the missing and murder case of Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood in Texas. What a bunch of fake a$$holes. I cannot even believe I use to affiliate with anyone in the U.S. military after what I have learned over the last decade researching military crime and non combat deaths. I know there are good people in the military. I was one of them; my husband is another… and the majority of our military members are awesome but military leadership is weak and corrupt. The more they hide; the worse they look. And they have done a fantastic job at hiding their toxic since the country witnessed the dead bodies pile up at this base in 2020. Read here.
8. Parental Alienation: I Watched What Happened to My Father Happen to My Husband & It Broke Me
I struggle to express how I feel on this day, Parental Alienation Awareness Day. I not only live with the pain from my own childhood experiences with parental alienation but I watched what happened to my father happen to my husband right in front of my very own eyes. I didn’t put two and two together until I moved to California and finally broke the ties with my toxic family. We left because we were sick and tired of being in the middle of family drama amongst narcissists. My whole life I was expected to choose sides. First when I was a kid, it was expected that I would choose my custodial parent (and the new spouse) over my father. Then, as I got older and my mother’s toxic relationship deteriorated with her second husband, I was expected to again choose sides. But guess what? She never chose mine and now we know why. Read here.
9. “I Just Want to Disappear”: The End Result of a Lifetime of Dehumanization and Abuse
“I just want to disappear” are the last words I said to medical personnel and those same words would end my Air Force career for good. I’m not exactly sure where to start as I’ve never put words to any of this before but here goes. I want to talk about the anger and sadness I felt my entire life. It would not be until I went through some old family pictures and moved from Maine to California to save my life that everything would present itself to me. All it took was some narcissist experts on Twitter and Instagram and I started figuring sh*t out one person at a time. You see this behavior started for me in childhood and much like my military career at the end, I wanted to disappear from my home life too. And that’s exactly what I did. When I turned 18, I left for college and was planning on never looking back. I hated my life in rural western Maine. There was nothing there for me yet that’s exactly where I would end up even though I swore to never return. Read here.
My life has been nothing but a lesson in dehumanization and abuse since my mother kidnapped me at the age of two and left the State of Colorado and my loving father behind in the dust. After she left him, I no longer had a loving parent to guide me, support me, and encourage me the way my father would have and did when given the chance. She alienated me from my father with psychological manipulation to punish him while simultaneously psychologically abusing and abandoning me because I f*cked with her second meal ticket husband. Both of them were toxic and more toxic together and investigated by the State of Maine after the school observed bruises on the back of my legs when I was in the sixth grade. But the State too would abandon me and let me downward spiral into alcoholism due to retaliation and no treatment for the negative effects of childhood trauma and parental alienation. The alcoholism conveniently used against me to dehumanize me and hide the ill effects of abuse. Of course, “she’s crazy,” “she’s lying,” and “she deserved it.” Read here.
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Jennifer and Lee 