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CNN Live Today

At Fort Bragg, Four Soldiers Accused of Killing Wives

Aired July 26, 2002 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: At the Army's Fort Bragg, four soldiers in the past six weeks have been accused of killing their wives. Two of the soldiers have committed suicide. CNN's Barbara Starr tells us more now live from the Pentagon -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, hello there.

Well, Fort Bragg, of course, is the home to some of the Army's most elite special forces, in fact, the headquarters for the Army's special operations command. And indeed, in the last six weeks, there have been four murders of army wives there. They believe all of them have been committed by their husbands, two of the men committing suicide, the other two in local law enforcement custody. The murders were brutal. Two of the women shot, one stabbed, one strangled.

The Army is trying to figure out is something going on here, trying to determine whether or not possibly combat stress is playing a role. Three of the men had just returned from deployments in Afghanistan. But Army officials tell us that they don't believe at the moment this is more than peculiar anomaly. You see one of the husbands here being led into custody after allegedly murdering his wife at Fort Bragg.

They believe that it's an anomaly, that they can't figure what's really going on, whether it's due to stress from being separated from their families, or inability to handle stress, or something like that. There had been family problems in a couple of the cases.

So military sources tell us today, they are looking into it. They are trying to determine whether or not the military has enough counseling and stress management programs available to soldiers, and particularly, whether special operations soldier, who are often loners, are willing to take advantage of that kind of assistance -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk more about this. Let's get some insight Chicago and our CNN military analyst General David Grange. The general is retired from the U.S. Army.

General, good to see you.

GEN. DAVID GRANGE, (RET.) CNN MILITARY ANALYST: How are you doing?

PHILLIPS: First of all, does this surprise you?

GRANGE: I think it does. I think this is very unusual that there was this many deaths, this many murders at Fort Bragg or any military installation in this short period of time.

PHILLIPS: Let's talk about combat stress. First of all, before a special ops soldier goes into the field, there's a lot of mental training that takes place. They have to train for extreme scenarios. How are they taught to not be a wimp but a warrior, mentally?

GRANGE: Well, the selection process for special operations soldiers and other services as well is quite detailed. It's physical and mental training, a lot of stress induced training in the field, and a lot of dealing with the unknown, lack of sleep, food and fear and things like this.

But usually special operating soldiers can deal with stress actually quite well, better than a regular soldier, because they're more senior. They're older. They've had more experience under their belt. They've had more situations they've had to cope with. So that's why I say, I think this is a very unusual situation.

PHILLIPS: Is there anything within the training that separate the warrior in the field to the man that comes home to be a father, a husband, a friend?

GRANGE: Well, what the army does, is that before you come back from a deployment, you go through what's called redeployment training, and some situations that may develop when you come back so you can prepare to deal with that, as well as the soldiers family go through what they call integration training, that kind of goes over what they can expect from their service member upon return. And then there's many family support group activities on different installations. There's refer to chaplain, refer to psychologists. So the means there, some mandatory and some voluntary, to prepare soldiers for stress or any problems that may incur, it's actually available to the soldiers.

PHILLIPS: General, we're talking about special ops soldiers here. These are the toughest, the most rugged. There are a lot of egos. Are these guys that will go and say, hey, I got to see counselor, I've got to seek some help?

GRANGE: Well, in most cases, they may not. But again, some training is mandatory. They have to go, no matter how tough they are, what unit they're in. There are some programs that they must go to, and then there's others that only go if they're referred. So they may avoid that. That could well have happened. But, you know, again, it's just -- it strikes me as unusual that that many would happen in this amount of time. I don't think it's Afghanistan. Vietnam probably put more stress on people than any war since then because it was sustained, it took so long; people re over there for such a long period of time, and it wasn't supported as well from back home. So I think it's more stress there. So you know, I don't think it's Afghanistan. PHILLIPS: So when you saw the realities of war, just being such a decorated soldier that you are, how did you deal with the death, destruction, the loss of human life, losing your comrades? How did you put everything into perspective?

GRANGE: Well, as you can probably imagine, you put it in perspective as that it was a mission that you went on, you were trained to see that, to feel that, to try and understand and cope with that, but then when you came back to the United States of America from an operation, I found that the contrast, in other words, experiencing the good things in life, running water, a bathroom, hot food, the company of a family, actually was very comforting. And so you enjoyed the contrast to going austere conditions to conditions that were very nice to be around. And so most soldiers, I think, that's what they experience.

PHILLIPS: General David Grange, thank you so much.

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