When war kills at home "48 Hours Mystery"

When war kills at home "48 Hours Mystery" follows my 2009 Salon story about a troubled Iraq war vet and his tragic, controversial end BY MICHAEL DE YOANNA

I’ll never forget the first time I saw John Wiley Needham. It was at Denver International Airport in late 2007. John, a private in the Army, was wearing camouflage clothing, toting his backpack and helmet over his shoulder. His father, Mike Needham, told me that John, a fun-loving champion surfer from Southern California, was called “Needhammer.” He was tough, built like an NFL quarterback. Yet he seemed nothing like these descriptions when I first set eyes on him, limping through the baggage claim, slouching. He avoided making eye contact with anyone.

At the time, John was part of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment at Fort Carson, Colo. He had done a long, bloody combat tour in the al-Dora neighborhood in Baghdad. His medical records confirm he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He also had a brain injury. Both were the result of combat.

John received an Army Commendation Medal for saving the lives of his comrades by firing on an insurgent who had a grenade. He also got a Purple Heart for the shrapnel that entered his leg when the grenade exploded. Those honors, and others, were important to John. They were things he held onto, helping him to remember that at one point during the war, he was a hero.

John told me he felt slighted that some medals he had received were never actually pinned on him in a ceremony. He blamed it on his breakdown. He felt he became a pariah after he cracked, and certainly some of my interviews with others in his platoon confirm that. We was drinking a lot. He became reckless on missions. It was the bloodshed. He recalled one incident in which his unit killed suspected insurgents in a truck. He was sent to inspect the truck and when he opened the door, a man slid out, his brains spilling on John’s chest as women and children watched and cried, yelling at him. John thinks they were the family.
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