Before sunset, the soldiers began filing back into their makeshift command post. Causey’s nerves were shot. Each day, he had to psych himself up to go on patrol. Sometimes he played mind games when unarmed Vietnamese were killed while fleeing for their lives. Just tell yourself, It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. But he knew, deep down, it did. This wasn’t war. It was murder. He realized others were playing the same mind games with themselves, especially the ones who didn’t want to go along.
Kerney had watched the total breakdown of a unit. He remembered in June when there was a camaraderie and sense of goodwill. Back then, the Tigers were badasses, but they weren’t murderers. There were too many good guys in the unit, checks and balances. But a dark force had taken over the platoon in the last few months, impossible to describe, and to watch people collectively descend into mayhem and murder was too much for any person to witness. For Kerney, the guilt was overwhelming. He was watching the killing but did nothing to stop it. If he tried, he would have risked his own life. “So we watched it and didn’t say anything,” he recalled. “Out in the jungle, there were no police officers, no judges, no law and order. Whenever someone felt like doing something, they did it.” What scared him was that there was no one to stop these assaults, that the leaders were actually encouraging it.
The Tigers were in a rage mode and were shutting down. When this happens, the soldier undergoes a unique set of physiological changes that few people understand outside combat. The midbrain—that part of the brain responsible for breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure—takes over for the forebrain, the part that processes information. The survival instinct takes over, and the soldier relies more on reflex than reasoning. In combat, this is good, because soldiers kick into a survival mode, and they kill. That’s what they’re supposed to do. But they’re also supposed to have strong leaders to set limits. Good soldiers use discretion. Good soldiers stay in control.
Harold Fischer and Dan Clint (who had just returned to the Tigers) volunteered to go on guard detail so they wouldn’t have to join the rest of the men. Clint, who had been gone since September, noticed how much his friend had changed. Fischer was deeply depressed. He didn’t want to be with the Tigers, whose uniforms, Clint noticed, were covered with black, dried blood. Fischer was hiding his surgical blades because the Tigers were stealing them to cut off ears. By now, just about everyone was carrying shriveled lumps of flesh in ration bags, openly and proudly. And Ybarra had increased his stash of teeth with gold fillings.
Fischer was clearly losing it. Clint had to keep his friend calm. Neither soldier was going to be leaving the unit anytime soon. Instead of allowing his friend to dwell on the insanity, Clint started talking about something they loved: music. Clint reminisced about their days at Fort Campbell when they drove to Nashville to see the Monkees in concert. At the base, they would spend hours listening to Beatles albums.
“What are the Beatles doing now?” he asked Fischer.
For a moment, Fischer thought about the question, then piped up, “Yeah, Sergeant Pepper. It’s their newest album.”
Clint shook his head. He had arrived in South Vietnam in May—a month before the album was released. He hadn’t heard anything about it. “Is it any good?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Fischer, “it’s different than anything they’ve ever done.”
Fischer began humming the first song on the album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and then slowly broke into the lyrics, the words fresh in his mind: “It was twenty years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play . . .”
Fischer began singing other songs from the album, just like he did in the days before leaving for South Vietnam. Clint smiled as he listened. For a short time, the madness went away.
For eleven consecutive nights, the Tigers called in their body counts. “What I best remember about that time,” Causey recalled, “was that no one who was killed had any weapons. I don’t remember any enemy soldiers.” Fischer said the Tigers didn’t know how many they were killing but were only reporting estimates. “They didn’t want to report every death,” he said, because the lack of weapons seized would raise too many suspicions. “We’ll never know how many were killed,” he said. By this point, Causey said he came up with his own count of 120 murdered—all unarmed, and mostly males between the ages of sixteen and seventy—but that was just his own count. “Who knows how many others?” he mused.
Kerney said the Tigers had a sick joke for anyone who questioned the lack of weapons: “We would just say they were carrying getaway sticks.”
The magic number of 327 kills was reached on November 19 when a Tiger shot a villager “running from a hut,” according to the records. No weapon was found. Their goal achieved, the Tigers remained in the field, hoping to add to it. Their chance came quickly when they received an urgent radio message that part of the line company known as the Cutthroats was under fire. The Cutthroats hadn’t taken any precautions when coming upon four huts on the side of a mountain and were ambushed.
A seven-man team of Tigers checked the coordinates. They were within a half mile. With Ybarra leading the way, the team found the trail heading west. As they moved closer to the area, they could hear gunfire. Stalking on their own, the Tigers hadn’t run into a line company for weeks.
When they came within twenty meters of the tiny hamlet, the soldiers could see the other Army unit soldiers on the ground, spread around the perimeter and firing into the huts. The Tigers hit the ground and began firing their M16s and an M79 grenade launcher into the huts.
It didn’t take long before the enemy fire ceased. The Tigers moved closer and, with some of the line company soldiers, began searching the huts. Kerrigan stood outside the doorway of one hooch while Ybarra bolted inside. In the corner was the lifeless body of a young mother shredded by bullets. Next to her was an infant, still alive and crying. Shortly after Ybarra ran into the hut, the crying stopped.
Kerrigan inched closer to the doorway, then peeked inside. Ybarra was kneeling over the infant’s body, a knife in his hand and the baby’s severed head on the ground. Kerrigan watched as Ybarra placed a bloodied band on his wrist. Kerrigan quickly turned around and walked away.
He hurriedly passed by Fischer and, with trembling voice, recounted what he had just seen. “Sam just cut a baby’s head off.” Fischer walked to the hut and, as he reached the doorway, brushed by Ybarra, noticing the point man was wearing a bloodied bracelet. When Fischer went inside, he saw the baby’s headless body.
Sickened, he turned around and left.
Cutthroat line company soldier John Ahern had been in Vietnam since July 7 but had never heard of anything so vicious. He watched as Ybarra passed by wearing the bracelet, a Buddha band placed on children to bring good luck.
Ahern had heard stories about the Tigers but hadn’t believed them. Soldiers from his company had killed civilians caught in the cross fire, but never like this. It was an unwritten rule to turn the other way, but he couldn’t keep it to himself. Two nights later, while gathered with other company soldiers, he pulled aside his close friend and fellow line soldier Gary Coy.
“I’ve seen rotten shit during this war. Bad shit. But I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said, his voice quivering. He then recounted the story and the blood on Ybarra’s hand.
Coy shook his head. He had never heard anything like this. They spent most of the night talking about the brutality of the war and how people were caught between both sides. Before they dozed off, they made a pact: Whoever survived the war would tell the people back home about the innocent civilians who were killed. They would tell the people back home about how a soldier beheaded a baby.
What they didn’t know was whether anyone would believe them.
CHAPTER 20
1972
Gus Apsey was shuffling through a stack of files on his desk when he heard a knock on the door. He assumed it was his secretary, coming to retrieve his weekly report, but when he looked
up, he was surprised to see Colonel Kenneth Weinstein in the doorway. It wasn’t a routine visit. Ken Weinstein never made routine visits.
Weinstein was one of the Army’s top officers in the Criminal Investigation Command (known as the CID, despite the 1971 upgrade from “division” to “command”), and when he came to an agent’s office at Fort MacArthur on the Los Angeles Harbor, some four hundred miles from his own office in San Francisco, it was usually about a pending case that had snared the attention of the upper echelon. A small, wiry officer and lawyer whose moralistic approach to his job set him apart from other CID commanders, Weinstein was known for inspiring believers and pissing off career agents who had long been passed over for promotions.
As Apsey rose to greet the commander, Weinstein motioned for the investigator to stay seated. “I need you to look at this, Gus,” the colonel said as he tossed a file on Apsey’s desk.
The two men had known each other through other cases, including a homicide just two months earlier involving a soldier who was about to be promoted. Weinstein liked and respected Apsey, and would periodically steer difficult situations to him. Unlike other agents who left their jobs at 5:00 P.M., Apsey worked long days, often staying late to type reports or drive to remote locations to question suspects. And Weinstein knew he could trust his warrant officer—Apsey shared information on a need-to-know basis, often to the chagrin of other agents.
Apsey opened the file and began reading the cover sheet. At first glance, it looked like just another war-crimes case from Vietnam. This one was stamped NO. 221, the COY ALLEGATION.
The Army had been trying to clear up these cases ever since revelations of the My Lai Massacre. In a small cluster of hamlets known as My Lai in Quang Ngai province, more than five hundred Vietnamese had been slaughtered just after dawn on March 16, 1968, by an angry Army brigade led by Lieutenant William Calley. Details of the massacre were exposed by journalist Seymour Hersh the following year, sparking a media frenzy and bitter protests.
My Lai had been too much for an Army investigations command untrained in applying the rules of engagement and Uniform Code of Military Justice to war crimes. Three years later, there was still a backlog of additional cases to be cleared and decidedly mixed feelings in the military about bothering to investigate.
As a regional commander of the CID, with more than one hundred agents under his command, the forty-one-year-old Weinstein could have picked anyone for the Coy Allegation. Apsey had spent a year in Vietnam as a CID agent, and by the time he returned to the United States in 1970, he was far more experienced in recognizing atrocities than the average CID investigator. That experience, along with his tenacity, was enough for Weinstein to assign Apsey to the case.
To some agents, Apsey was the Army’s version of Columbo, a plodding detective whose inane questions and mannerisms were often mistaken for incompetence. He even looked the part, with baggy pants and shirts that always seemed to be several sizes too big. After a childhood in Austria, he spoke with an obvious accent and at times fumbled to find the right word. But Weinstein knew Apsey was anything but incompetent. His cases were so thoroughly investigated that the vast majority led to military convictions—far better than the average 50 percent conviction rate for CID agents. Part of his success was due to the fact that suspects were lured into a sense of security by Apsey’s harmless demeanor and sincerity. But he was also relentless.
Apsey had become a CID agent at the age of twenty-three. While stationed in Germany as a military policeman, he watched as an Oldsmobile barreling down the road struck and killed a woman, before the driver sped away. Apsey jumped into his car with a German policeman and gave chase. He followed the car for twenty kilometers, passing along narrow roads and over bridges that cut through villages. “I lost contact with my post,” he said—a violation of Army regulations. “But I said the hell with it. I was going to catch that guy.”
After an hour, he rounded a corner and spotted the Oldsmobile parked outside a bar. He stopped and went inside, where he saw the suspect downing a beer. Irate that someone could be so casual after running over another human being, Apsey immediately slapped the cuffs on him before he could take another drink. “You’re coming with me,” he snapped to the surprised driver.
When he returned to his base, his company commander jumped all over him, saying he violated regulations. But one commander was impressed: CID senior agent Frank Sugar. He said he was looking for the kind of agent who would take those types of risks to follow a case. Over the next year, he took Apsey under his wing and taught the young agent the intricacies of detective work.
Sugar was meticulous. He wore suits, carried a white handkerchief, and always stressed that his agents behave like professionals—not hacks. CID agents used to be derisively described as hapless gumshoes who couldn’t make it as soldiers. Sugar was aware of that reputation, but also saw how crucial the agents were to maintaining a well-disciplined Army. He wanted to elevate his staff to be like FBI agents, personally helping them write reports, conduct interviews, and follow leads—all leads. And Sugar was never intimidated by rank, questioning generals just as easily and aggressively as privates.
Apsey tried to be like Sugar in every way, and in turn, the elder CID supervisor looked out for Apsey. Sugar knew that his underling had not always been treated fairly by the military. Apsey had spent four years in the Marines prior to joining the Army. The Marine Corps had promised him admission to Officer Candidate School, but in the end, Apsey was passed over and quit in disgust. He finally rejoined the military—the Army this time—after beating around the streets for three months and longing to return to the structured service life.
Sitting there on his desk, the Coy file looked like dozens of others Apsey had investigated in the last few years. But once he turned the first page and read the actual description of the allegation, he stopped short. “The baby’s throat had been cut,” said the report, “and there was a lot of blood on its throat and front.” The report listed only the first name of the suspect: Sam.
Apsey looked up from the report and shook his head. Weinstein nodded. “I’m giving you the case because it has been sitting around for a year,” he said. “We’ve had an agent working this, but he hasn’t gotten anywhere.” He told Apsey to put all his other cases on hold. This was a priority one investigation—the highest category for a CID case.
The date was March 8, 1972.
Apsey quickly determined why the previous agent had struggled to close the case: the initial complaint contained only a few pages and an imprecise description of where the alleged incident took place. The military was full of soldiers with the first name of Sam—thousands, probably.
But the real problem was the timing of the case. It had been a year since a sergeant, Gary Coy, tipped off Army investigators that a soldier somewhere in the mountains near Chu Lai had severed the head of a baby. But while Coy had first talked to investigators on February 3, 1971, the atrocity had taken place back in November 1967.
“Five years old,” said Apsey. So much had happened since 1967. Even the war was different. Americans were trying to win in 1967, and now the military was just trying to get out of South Vietnam without things getting even worse.
By now, most of the soldiers who could have witnessed the alleged crime were probably out of the Army, scattered all over the country. No doubt, some were dead.
Apsey decided to take the case home that night, knowing he would need extensive records of Coy’s unit, the 1st Battalion/327th Infantry, and that he would have to track down Coy for an interview. Probably more than three thousand soldiers had rotated in and out of the battalion during the period in question. Where would he start? Where should he start?
Sitting at his desk, Apsey thought about some additional obstacles. Most immediately, this would probably not be a popular investigation with other agents at Fort MacArthur, since they would have to pick up the rest of his caseload. This was a busy CID office, with eight agents juggling up to twenty-five cases a
t any given time.
The fact that it would be a war-crimes case didn’t make things any better. These days, few agents at the CID office liked these investigations. Scores of soldiers were stepping forward with allegations, sometimes after their military discharges a year or two later, and often for infractions that could never be proven. Potential witnesses were scared to talk, and in the end, hundreds of investigations went nowhere fast. Furthermore, these investigations were often seen by the troops as unpatriotic, attacking soldiers who had to carry out impossible orders. But to the commanders, war-crimes cases were a political priority since My Lai. All agents were now on notice that such allegations had to be investigated swiftly.
Apsey took his job seriously—maybe too seriously. He was married without children, and the CID had become his life. He would often carry his files home, spreading them out on the kitchen table in the small apartment he shared with his wife, Luise, in San Pedro, an old port city on the Los Angeles Harbor.
It was at night in the quiet of his home, his wife asleep in the next room, when cases would come together in his mind—a shred of evidence, a single word or phrase from an interview, connections between moments that had seemed distant. They were lonely nights, full of darkness and the ghosts of hamlets, rice paddies, and jungles many miles away.
There were also the demons in his own past: a young boy growing up in Innsbruck, Austria, and a father—a Nazi in the German Army—killed by the Yugoslavian resistance in 1944. For years, young Gus and his mother were left to fend for themselves. And for years, the young boy was left wondering what had happened to his father and why he had sworn his allegiance to a demon like Adolf Hitler.
As he opened the file Weinstein had given him, Apsey’s eyes were again drawn to the words on the typewritten sheet. “The baby’s throat had been cut, and there was a lot of blood on its throat and front.” He had investigated atrocities in Vietnam—rapes, murders, assaults. He was well aware of the frustrations of soldiers fighting a war with civilians caught in the middle. But the act of cutting off the head of a baby went beyond anything he had ever encountered. He knew then he was not just looking for a soldier who had used poor judgment or panicked under fire. He was looking for someone completely different.
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