Episode 6: The Full Picture

Summary

In The Dark: Episode 6 - "The Full Picture"

Release Date: August 27, 2024

Introduction

In Episode 6 of Season 3, titled "The Full Picture," In The Dark delves deep into one of the most harrowing incidents of modern military history: the Haditha massacre. This episode meticulously reconstructs the events of November 19, 2005, when U.S. Marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq. Hosted by Madeleine Baran, the episode explores not only the brutal killings but also the subsequent investigations that failed to bring any of the perpetrators to justice despite overwhelming evidence.

Background of the Haditha Massacre

The Haditha massacre occurred in the aftermath of an improvised explosive device (IED) attack that killed a Marine, triggering a retaliatory response by U.S. forces. Over the course of a single day, Marines systematically killed men, women, and children in several houses within the town. The initial investigation, led by Colonel Watt, was criticized for its brevity and lack of depth, ultimately recommending a more thorough criminal investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).

Military Investigations: Colonel Watt vs. NCIS

Madeline Barron explains, “The first investigation into what happened on November 19, 2005, in Haditha, the one conducted by Colonel Watt, was brief and friendly and not too detailed. But for all of Watt's inclination to give the Marines the benefit of the doubt, he did recommend another investigation, a criminal one” (01:33). This recommendation set the stage for NCIS to undertake an extensive and rigorous investigation, involving dozens of agents both in Iraq and the United States. Kelly Garbo, one of the leading NCIS investigators, emphasized the responsibility they felt towards both the Iraqi people and the U.S. Military in seeking justice (02:10).

Marine Statements and Admissions

The episode introduces six key Marines involved in the massacre:

1. Sergeant Frank Wuderich: Described as quiet and reserved, Wuderich was the squad leader who, according to his subordinate, initiated the shootings (03:41).

2. Corporal Sonic Delacruz: Delacruz expressed an unyielding love for the Marine Corps and admitted to following orders from Wuderich to shoot innocents, initially claiming the victims were running (03:45).

3. Corporal Hector Salinas: Salinas was reported to have executed an elderly woman in the doorway and another man nearby, despite there being no visible weapon threat (04:06).

4. Private First Class Umberto Mendoza: Mendoza reiterated similar claims of following orders and shooting without proper identification of threats (04:09).

5. Lance Corporal Justin Sharrit: Sharrit described his actions as shooting blindly until he ran out of ammo, presenting a façade of ignorance about the victims' identities (04:09).

6. Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum: Tatum emerged as the most damning figure, having admitted to knowingly killing women and children. His statements to NCIS starkly contradicted earlier accounts (04:06).

Pursuit of Interviews with Involved Marines

Barron and her team made concerted efforts to interview the involved Marines to gain firsthand accounts. However, their attempts were largely unsuccessful. Salinas and Wuderich either declined to speak or were unresponsive despite multiple outreach efforts (15:20). The team’s pursuit of Tatum, in particular, revealed a systematic reluctance to engage, with his lawyer firmly declining to facilitate an interview (17:08).

Discovery of Missing Evidence: Military Photos

A pivotal moment in the investigation was the acquisition of over 100 photographs taken by Marines and NCIS investigators on the day of the massacre. Barron details the emotional impact of these photos: “The photos are horrifying, showing bullet holes, blood-stained walls, and the bodies of innocent civilians” (24:48). These images, obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and lawsuits, provided visual evidence that starkly contradicted the Marines' official statements.

Forensic Analysis with Kevin Parmalee

To interpret the graphic photos, Barron enlisted the expertise of Kevin Parmalee, a former detective specializing in forensic reconstruction. Parmalee’s analysis was crucial in piecing together the sequence of events:

• Shootings by the White Car: Initial Marine accounts suggested that civilians were running from an IED, justifying the shootings. However, Parmalee noted that the positioning of the victims indicated they were either standing still or possibly kneeling, directly contradicting claims of them fleeing (28:12). “They almost certainly were not running. At least some of the men may have even been kneeling,” Parmalee concluded (29:25).

• Abdul Rahman’s House: Tatum’s confession to shooting innocents in Abdul Rahman’s living room was supported by photos showing victims in non-threatening positions. Parmalee identified that the trajectory of a bullet fired at Abdul Rahman’s child indicated a deliberate execution rather than a chaotic firefight (35:08). “There’s no doubt that that’s an execution,” Parmalee stated (36:33).

• Safa’s House: The photos revealed that Safa, an 11-year-old girl, was hiding with her sister Noor while her family members were shot dead in the bedroom. The forensic evidence suggested that children were clearly identifiable targets, contradicting any notion of mistaken identity (41:07).

• Four Brothers’ House: In the final house, photos showed four brothers killed in positions that indicated they were not posing any threat. The bullet trajectories and body positions suggested execution-style killings rather than a defensive engagement (43:47).

Parmalee's meticulous analysis underscored the irrefutable evidence of intentional killings, debunking the Marines' claims of self-defense and confusion (39:04). “Once you decide to stand a foot next to a four-year-old child and put a bullet in his head, there's no way you cannot see that that's a child,” Parmalee asserted (36:33).

Impact on Victims’ Families

The families of the victims, particularly Khalid Jamal, sought closure through the release of the photos and the detailed forensic findings. Jamal expressed profound sorrow upon learning that his father and uncles were killed while in completely defenseless positions, shattering any hope that they had resisted or fought back (43:22). The emotional toll on the families was immense, with Jamal requesting copies of the photos to remember his lost loved ones accurately.

Conclusion: Lack of Prosecutions Despite Evidence

Despite the overwhelming evidence — including photographic documentation, forensic analysis, and admittances from the Marines themselves — no criminal convictions were secured. The episode raises critical questions about the military’s handling of war crimes and the systemic failures that allowed such atrocities to go unpunished. Barron poignantly asks, “How did the military go from having all this evidence to having the cases completely fall apart?” (50:59), highlighting a profound disconnect between evidence and justice.

Publishing of Photos

Faced with the moral imperative to reveal the truth, Barron and her team decided to publish a selection of the most impactful photos, with the consent of the surviving family members. These images provide an unvarnished glimpse into the brutality of the Haditha massacre, serving as a stark reminder of the atrocities that occurred (52:59).

Final Thoughts

Episode 6, "The Full Picture," serves as a powerful exposé on the Haditha massacre, meticulously unraveling the layers of deception and revealing the stark truth through evidence and expert analysis. It underscores the resilience of investigative journalism in seeking justice and holding powerful institutions accountable, even when the odds seem insurmountable.

Notable Quotes

• Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum:

  • “Knowing it was a kid, I still shot him.” (35:22)

• Kevin Parmalee:

  • “There’s no doubt that that’s an execution.” (36:33)
  • “It really pulls at my emotions a lot.” (37:12)

• Terri Zimmerman (Tatum’s lawyer):

  • “He was just doing his job the way he was trained to do.” (18:33)
  • “Lance Corporal Tatum was doing what he was trained to do on the orders of people senior to him.” (19:46)

Conclusion

"In The Dark: Episode 6 - The Full Picture" is a compelling and essential listen for anyone seeking to understand the complexities and failures surrounding one of the most tragic military incidents in recent history. Through relentless investigation, expert analysis, and unwavering dedication, the episode illuminates the dark corners of war crimes investigations and the ongoing quest for accountability and justice.

Transcript

[Madeline Barron]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. Previously on in the Dark. How did the Marine seem?

[Parker Yesko]

They are angry and they want just to shoot.

[Madeline Barron]

He get his rifle in the bed and start shooting at us.

[Parker Yesko]

When we are under the bed, he.

[Madeline Barron]

Put his rifle and start shooting to me and Noor. Maybe a lot of this is imagination. None of this was near as bad as it seemed. I'm talking about what actually happened to the civilians.

[Parker Yesko]

They did not get the pictures. Pictures today is still not insane.

[Madeline Barron]

Where are they? Frankly, I believe I gave the Marines the benefit of the doubt every opportunity that I could. Yeah, I mean, did you think that a war crime had been committed?

[Parker Yesko]

I don't have any opinion on that.

[Madeline Barron]

The first investigation into what happened on November 19, 2005 in Haditha, the one conducted by Colonel Watt, was brief and friendly and not too detailed. But for all of Watt's inclination to give the Marines the benefit of the doubt, he did recommend another investigation, a criminal one. And this investigation was conducted by investigators who were not so friendly, not so willing to give the Marines the benefit of the doubt. This investigation was conducted by ncis, the investigative arm of the Navy. The NCIS investigation was massive. It went on for months. It involved dozens of agents working in Iraq and the United States. We very much had a responsibility to the Iraqi people and to the US Military. We talked to one of those investigators. Her name is Kelly Garbo. Everybody involved deserved to understand exactly what happened. And should the military attorneys find that prosecutions were warranted, we wanted to be able to have provided all of the possible information so that the families of the victims could feel like we had served justice. NCIS agents went inside the houses, the killing sites, and took measurements of the rooms. They pried bullets out of walls. They picked shell casings off the ground. They talked to hundreds of people. It was one of the largest war crimes investigations since the one into the killings at My Lai during the Vietnam War. The full records of the NCIS investigation, as far as I can tell, had never been released to the public until we received them by suing the US military. And that's how I found out that perhaps these investigators greatest accomplishment was what they were able to find out from the shooters themselves. There were six people involved in the shootings that day at the white car and inside the houses, there was the squad leader, Sergeant Frank Wuderich, who the Marines we spoke with described as quiet and reserved.

[Parker Yesko]

Like, he was quiet, but a good dude.

[Madeline Barron]

There was Corporal Sonic Delacruz. That dude loved the. He fucking loved the Marine Corps and four other men. Corporal Hector Salinas. He was experienced and definitely would probably have not taken any shit over there. Private First Class Umberto Mendoza never gave us a hard time. He did what I was told. Lance Corporal Justin Sharrit, he was just a cool guy.

[Kevin Parmalee]

He was that cool guy that you wanted to hang out with.

[Madeline Barron]

And Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, a lanky Marine from Oklahoma who no one could remember much about. NCIS investigators interviewed most of these men for hours over months, often in multiple sessions. They would come back to the shooters, tell them what they'd heard from other people, challenge their accounts. And the statements that NCIS got out of all this told a very different story than the one the Marines had told to Colonel Watt. This is season three of in the Dark, an investigative podcast from the New Yorker. This season is about the killing of 24 men, women and children by US Marines in Haditha, Iraq. It's a story not just about the killings themselves, but also about the failure of the US Military to bring the men responsible for them to justice. This is episode six, the full picture. The accounts the Marines gave over hours and hours of interrogation by NCIS were full of revelations. Like take what one Marine, Sonic Delacruz, admitted to NCIS about what happened to the very first people shot by Marines that day. The five men who'd been traveling in a white car on the same road as the Marines convoy. Dela Cruz told NCIS that he shot at the men. He said he only did it because his squad leader, Sergeant Frank Wuderich, shot them first. As for why the men were shot, Dela Cruz had told the first investigative team, the one led by Colonel Watt, that the men were shot because they were running away. The sort of thing that might be suspicious. But Dela Cruz told NCIS that was actually a lie. The men were just standing there, some of them with their hands up. He said he'd lied about it after Woodrich told him to. After the shooting by the white car, the Marines moved to the houses. And the NCIS statements from the shooters about what happened inside those houses were full of startling admissions. Like how when the Marines arrived at 11 year old Safa's house, they apparently rang the doorbell. And then Safa's dad, Yunus came to the door to answer it. One of the Marines, Umberto Mendoza, told NCIS that he then shot Eunice right in the doorway. Shot a man for answering his own door. And Mendoza also told investigators that he'd shot another man in the house nearby because he thought he was reaching for something, even though he never saw a gun. I read statement after statement from Marines describing firing quickly inside the houses without identifying who they were shooting at, even though the rules of engagement said you had to identify people, had to determine that they were the enemy before shooting at them. One Marine, Hector Salinas, described shooting a figure in the hallway of six year old Abdul Rahman's house. That figure turned out to be a grandmother. Another Marine, Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt, told investigators that he stood near the doorway of Abdelrahman's living room and fired blindly until he ran out of ammo. All right, it is Friday and I am on page 10,900. One day in my apartment, I was sitting down for my daily reading of the investigative file, making my way through the thousands of pages we'd received. So I'm diving in. It's 9:44 in the morning and I've made a lot of coffee to get me through this because this is a particularly dense batch of documents I know I have in front of me today. And then I came across something buried in all these documents. A statement, actually a series of statements that I'd never seen before. This is a Tatum thing. These statements were from a Marine who had seemed to be relatively unremarkable. When we talked to other Marines, almost no one could remember anything about him. Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum. Tatum had flown under the radar during the initial investigation by Colonel Watt. His statement to Watt was vague and unmemorable. He'd admitted to being in the first two houses that morning. The house where six year old Abdul Rahman lived with his family and the next house where 11 year old Safa lived with her family. But Tatum didn't mention shooting at anyone inside the houses. It was all incredibly vague, but right away, when Tatum started talking to NCIS investigators, he admitted that he'd been one of the shooters. He said he'd actually shot at people in both of those houses. He'd shot in the living room of Abdul Rahman's house and inside Safa's house in the bedroom where Safa and her mother and siblings and aunt were, many of them lying close to each other on a bed. But that wasn't all Tatum told ncis. Tatum talked to NCIS several times and at first, he claimed he didn't know who he was firing at. He said it was dusty and smoky, and he could only make out shapes. He was just shooting at targets, targets he assumed to be hostile. Then one day, NCIS investigators were interrogating Tatum again, and this time, he broke down. He started crying. In this interview and in other interviews to ncis, Tatum revealed that he knew that he was shooting women and children. He was looking right at them, but he shot them anyway. Tatum told investigators that in the first house, Abdelrahman's house, inside the living room, he personally had shot four people, all on the right side of the room. He said he knew he was shooting women and children in that room. He said he hadn't seen any weapons on any of them and that none of the people were even standing up when he shot them. Tatum told NCIS that he only stopped shooting after everything in the room stopped moving. He recalled how later that day, he saw two children being let out of the house to get medical treatment. Those two children, Rabdorrahman and his sister Iman Tatum said he wondered, how did they survive in the next house, Safa's house, The house where Safa hid in the back bedroom while her entire family was killed around her? Tatum's statements were even more detailed. Tatum said he saw his squad leader, Sergeant Woodrich, firing in that back bedroom, and he followed Woodrich inside. He said he recognized that women and children were together in that back bedroom before he shot them. He said some of the children were kneeling. I don't remember the exact number, Tatum said, but only that it was a lot. And then Tatum described one child in particular. He said he wasn't sure if this child was a boy or a girl, but that they were wearing a white shirt and had short hair and were standing on the bed. Tatum told investigators that he looked at the child and then fired. He said, quote, knowing it was a kid, I still shot him. Knowing it was a kid, I still shot him. Tatum had admitted to knowingly shooting a child, actually several children, in two houses. It was about as clear cut of admission of guilt that you could get. At the risk of stating the obvious, it's illegal to knowingly kill children who don't pose a threat. It's a war crime. And yet Tatum had never been convicted of a crime, never served a day in prison. Tatum appeared to place at least some of the blame on his squad leader, Sergeant Mutterich. Tatum said the only reason he shot the children in the bedroom was because he saw Wouterich shooting at them. First, as for what happened in the house nearby Abdelrahman's house, Tatum told investigators that he shot the women and children in that house because women and kids can hurt you, too. Tatum told investigators, quote, I regret that innocent children were killed that day, but I also know I did what I had to do. These statements by Tatum ended up being used by military prosecutors to file charges against him. After the charges were filed, Tatum's defense was that he actually hadn't made any of those statements about knowingly killing women and children. The implication being that the statements had been fabricated by ncis. The investigators hadn't recorded audio of the interviews with Tatum or with any of the Marines, but they had taken detailed notes. Notes from all the interviews they'd had with Tatum, where he'd admitted to knowing who he was shooting. I have those notes, and they match the typed up statements. These notes and statements were written by multiple investigators over the course of several interviews conducted weeks apart. As for Sergeant Mutterich, the squad leader, the one who Tatum said had shot first in Abdul Rahman's living room and in the back bedroom of Safa's house, and who Delacruz said shot first at the people by the white car, Wouterich never talked to ncis. He refused to. Wouterich had admitted to the first investigator, Colonel Watt, that he shot at people by the white car, but his statement to Watt about what happened inside the houses was vague. He would later forcefully deny that he ever fired his weapon inside either of those houses. I wanted to talk to all six of the men who were involved in the killings that day. Hi, I'm trying to reach Mr. Mendoza. My name is Madeline. I called, I sent letters. I want to get the story right. I got no response. Hi. I went to Dela Cruz's house in Texas. Remember you were stopping by to talk to Mr. Delacruz? He wasn't home.

[Parker Yesko]

He's not in town right now.

[Madeline Barron]

Oh, okay. I knocked on Salinas door, also in Texas, with our producer, Natalie. He was not happy to see us. He declined to talk. Maybe we can leave our contact info at least.

[Parker Yesko]

Absolutely not.

[Madeline Barron]

We later sent Salinas a letter with our findings about what he did that day, some of which were pulled from his own statements to investigators. Salinas responded in a brief email calling it all false. I tried to go to Mendoza's house and to Wuderich's. Both of them, it turns out, live in the same city in California and separate gated communities. There's a lot of signs. Private property, no trespassing, violators will be prosecuted. It wasn't possible to get inside.

[Parker Yesko]

Shoot.

[Madeline Barron]

Well, there goes our plan to door knock. And we tried to talk to Steven Tatum, the Marine who NCIS said admitted to knowingly killing women and children in two houses. Our reporter Parker and our producer Natalie went to try to find him. Well, we're at the 711 outside of Oklahoma City and we're about to.

[Parker Yesko]

We're about to drive to Steven Tatum's house.

[Madeline Barron]

They drove into the subdivision in Oklahoma City where Tatum lives out in the flat, windy plains. It was November. The trees were bare. The grass was dead. They passed one red brick house after another.

[Parker Yesko]

We need to get a handle on.

[Madeline Barron]

Some house numbers until they found his.

[Parker Yesko]

Oh, I think that's his house right there.

[Madeline Barron]

Yeah.

[Parker Yesko]

Are you ready? Mm.

[Madeline Barron]

Tatum opened the door. He was tall and clean shaven, with the same side parted hair we'd seen in photos of him back in Iraq. His hair was now graying. He was wearing a blue hoodie and jeans.

[Parker Yesko]

Hey, Natalie. My name's Parker. This is Natalie. We're radio reporters. We're working on a project about the Iraq war and we've been researching the day in Haditha when Renz Corporal Tarazas was killed. Sounds like it was quite an intense no comment day. If you have any questions, you can talk to my lawyer. How would we get in touch with Zimmerman and Zimmerman throughout of Houston? There's. We've read some of your statements to investigators and it sounds like you really regret the way things turned out that day.

[Madeline Barron]

Who wouldn't?

[Parker Yesko]

But like I said, I have no comment. You can talk to my lawyer. You can give him the questions and he'll decide whether I answer them or not. You said you do regret what happened that day. What. What about that day again? You can contact my lawyer and he will forward the questions on to me and I'll decide what I want to answer.

[Madeline Barron]

Okay.

[Parker Yesko]

There's just one thing we need to make sure we ask you while we're here. I've already told you everything you're going to get, which is that we've read your statements to investigators where you said, have a nice day, that you saw women and children in those rooms and you shot them anyway.

[Madeline Barron]

Tatum Witten sighed. The interview was over. A couple weeks later, I called the law firm that represented Tatum to try to see if Tatum would reconsider our interview request. I ended up talking to one of Tatum's lawyers, a woman named Terri Zimmerman. I explained that I wanted to talk to Tatum. I said I wondered what his life was like. Now, she told me that she thought my questions were valuable, but that she thought it probably wouldn't be a good idea for Tatum to talk to us. She said, quote, you know, there's no statute of limitations for murder. So as a lawyer, I'm kind of hesitant to advise a client to make any statements about a case when his case isn't resolved. Zimmerman said she'd check in with Tatum and get back to me. We spoke a few weeks later, and she told me she had a statement for me from Tatum.

[Terri Zimmerman]

So he's authorized me to tell you that he's doing really, really well today. He's grown up a lot. And he authorized me to tell you that he feels terrible about the loss of life. I mean, obviously, nobody wants to be responsible for killing another human being, but he was just doing his job the way he was trained to do. And as his lawyers, we've analyzed, you know, the facts and the law that applied at the time, and we don't feel like he violated any kind of rule, any kind of authority or law in any way. He never intended to break the law. He never intended to do anything wrong. And we, as his lawyers, don't think he did anything wrong.

[Parker Yesko]

Got it.

[Madeline Barron]

You know, one of the statements that really does stand out to me is something that Tatum told investigators that in one of the houses, he shot at a child, knowing it was a child. And so I just wonder how you can reconcile that statement with the idea that he didn't do anything wrong.

[Terri Zimmerman]

That's a totally fair question. I'll have to go through my file and find the statement that you're talking about.

[Madeline Barron]

I told Zimmerman I could send her a copy of Tatum's statements.

[Terri Zimmerman]

Yeah, if you'll email that to me, I will take a look at it.

[Madeline Barron]

Sounds good.

[Terri Zimmerman]

Okay, thank you.

[Madeline Barron]

Yeah, take care. Bye.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Bye.

[Madeline Barron]

I emailed her Tatum statements. A few weeks later, she emailed me back. She said she was going to stick with what she told me on the phone. She wrote, quote, lance Corporal Tatum was doing what he was trained to do on the orders of people senior to him, and was just as upset to learn of a loss of life as anyone else. He obviously wishes that had not happened, but he never meant to, nor, in my opinion, did he break the law, as I do with all of my clients. I have advised him not to make any statements to anyone about this situation, but he thinks about this situation every day. He's done his best to get his education and a job and to be successful in life. We'll be back after the Break. Hey, it's Madeline. If you're a fan of in the Dark and you love long form storytelling and you've listened to all the serialized investigative podcasts and you've already watched everything good on Netflix, there is a wealth of stories you're going to love waiting for you at the New Yorker. Like this story published just this year by Patrick Radden Keefe, about a teen who got mixed up in the London underworld and then mysteriously fell into the Thames. In the four years since Zach's death, the family has had to confront the extent to which the boy they thought they knew had been living a double existence. None of the Brettlers had ever imagined that Zach might be moving about London, pretending to be someone else altogether. This season of in the Dark took us four years to report. You're hearing it now because the New Yorker believes in what we do. So go to newyorker.com/ and become a subscriber today. That's newyorker.com/dark. By this point, there was so much that I'd learned about what had happened that day in Haditha, but there was still something missing.

[Parker Yesko]

Those pictures today have still not been seen. Be quite proud of that.

[Madeline Barron]

Where are they? The pictures? The photos of the bodies taken by Marines just hours after the killings. The photos that the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Michael Hagee, had bragged about keeping secret. The photos that we'd sued the US Military to get with the help of the survivors. The two Khalid's who went house to house collecting signatures from family members of the dead, saying they wanted us to have these images. Photos that the public has never seen. These photos could show us what statements and memories could not. They could take us to the killing sites to see these sites as they looked that day to show us the bodies of the dead. I'd wanted these photos for one reason. They were evidence that could help me better understand what really happened that day. That's why all the family members had signed those forms saying they wanted us to have them. And then one day.

[Parker Yesko]

Holy shit. I am like vibrating right now. I just woke up to an email that says. Well, it actually says something really boring, but I know how to decipher. Says NCIS Freedom of Information act, request release of information photograph.

[Madeline Barron]

Wow.

[Parker Yesko]

Okay. I'm going to tell Madeline.

[Madeline Barron]

Hello.

[Parker Yesko]

Hello.

[Madeline Barron]

What's up?

[Parker Yesko]

I. We have the photos. We have all the photos.

[Madeline Barron]

Oh, my gosh. Okay. This is a very big deal. Okay, let me open this. All right, I'm opening. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. After four years of FOIA requests and lawsuits and help from the survivors. The military had finally agreed to turn over the photos to us. My God, there's so many photos. There are more than 100 photos. They included many taken by Marines on the day of the killings. And they included photos taken months later by the criminal investigators from ncis. The photos go through the entire chronology of the killings.

[Parker Yesko]

So this is all photos of the.

[Madeline Barron]

People from the car?

[Parker Yesko]

Yep.

[Madeline Barron]

There are images of every single person the Marines killed that day. I'm going to open the next file. In the photos, you can see the numbers that the Marines scrawled on the bodies of the dead with a red Sharpie. I'm looking at a photo of someone who looks like they have a. Maybe a 20 drawn on their head. It's a little unclear. There are wide shots of rooms with bullet holes and blood covering the walls. Maybe shrapnel or bullet holes. Shattered window. Bullet hole in the window. And there are close ups of faces.

[Parker Yesko]

These are horrible.

[Madeline Barron]

Yeah, I see why you wouldn't want these photos released to the public. We kept going through them, one horrible photo after another. Oh, this one photo is so devastating. There's a mom on her back lying dead on the bed, and then all of her dead children around her. And there's a little boy who's, like, curled up next to his mom. You can see how he's, like, kind of has his arm on his mom's stomach.

[Parker Yesko]

Yeah. And he's just, like, burrowing into the blanket.

[Madeline Barron]

Yeah, it was terrible.

[Parker Yesko]

Yeah.

[Madeline Barron]

Now that we had the photos, we needed to make sense of them, to see what exactly these photos could tell us. I needed to look at these photos with someone who knows what to look for. So we got in touch with a forensics expert named Kevin Parmalee. Do you go by Mr. Parmalee or Kevin or. How shall I address you?

[Kevin Parmalee]

If it's informal, we could just do it. Kevin. That's fine.

[Madeline Barron]

Okay. All right. Well, I'm Madeline Barron. It's great to meet you. Parmalee is a former detective with more than 20 years experience in law enforcement. His specialties include forensic reconstruction. He helped create national standards for how to investigate crime scenes. When I first called up Parmalee to ask if he'd be willing to review the materials I had, he agreed to take a look, but he cautioned me not to expect him to get too worked up over the photos. He said he'd spent his career looking at photos that most people would consider terribly gruesome. Photos like that, he said, can look really bad, but not actually prove anything. He added that his brother was a Marine who'd fought in Iraq. He said he knew that in war zones, decisions about what to do can get really complicated.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Over there, it's a different environment, and your threats can come from anywhere. You know, it's a much more hostile environment because it's a war zone. I mean, you can't let your guard down at all.

[Madeline Barron]

With all those caveats out of the way, we sent Parmalee what we had. He emailed back saying he'd stayed up until 2 in the morning the first night he got the materials, and he continued meticulously reviewing everything we'd sent. A few weeks later, I gave him a call. So, I mean, overall, how valuable would you say these photos are?

[Kevin Parmalee]

Oh, exceptionally valuable. They are very powerful. Like, these photos are beautiful.

[Madeline Barron]

It might sound like an odd thing to say, these photos are beautiful, but Parmalee is a forensics expert. He was looking at these photos in a very particular way to see what they could tell us. And it turned out they could tell.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Us a lot, especially with the bullet defects and the blood and the positioning of the bodies. That actually lends a lot of information towards reconstructing the sequence of events. So this is how we kind of piece it all together.

[Madeline Barron]

Let's start with the first people the Marines killed that day. Five men who were killed after getting out of a white car near the site of the IED explosion. Some of the Marines had claimed those men were running when they were shot. But then one of those Marines changed his story. Sonic Dela Cruz told NCIS that actually the men were just standing by the car, some of them with their hands up when they were killed. The photos clearly showed that the men were right next to the car, not where you'd expect to see them if they'd been running away. And there was something else that was a little less obvious, something that Parmelee noticed that indicated that maybe what happened to these men was even more chilling than what Dela Cruz had said. It was the way the body of one of the men was positioned. It looked like his legs were tucked underneath them. He was lying on his back.

[Kevin Parmalee]

So he has his knees up against that mound. He's the one that is have his legs underneath him.

[Madeline Barron]

It made Parmalee wonder something about what the man was doing when he was killed. Given the man's position on the ground, Parmalee ventured a guess.

[Kevin Parmalee]

He could have been kneeling.

[Madeline Barron]

Kneeling. Parmalee was careful to say that he couldn't say that for sure. It was just a possibility that the way this man's body was a logical explanation for how it got that way was that he'd been kneeling when he was shot. This possibility that some of the men were kneeling was actually corroborated by the statements of two soldiers from the Iraqi army who were in the convoy with the Marines that day. They have their statements to NCIS and they both said that the men were kneeling. One of them even said the men had their hands on top of their heads when they were shot. So the truth of what happened to the men by the white car was now becoming clear. They almost certainly were not running. At least some of the men may have even been kneeling. We moved on to the next set of photos. These were taken inside six year old Abdelrahman's house, the first house that Marines entered that morning. Tatum had admitted to NCIS that he'd shot people inside the living room of this house. According to NCIS records, Tatum said that he shot four people all on the right side of the room, and that he knew that the people he shot included women and children and that the people hadn't even been standing when he shot them. Tatum didn't provide many details beyond that. The only person we talked to who'd seen what happened inside this room was Abdulrahman and he really couldn't remember much. And so it was hard for me to picture this scene. I had the memories of a man who was just six years old when the killings happened and the statements of Marines under investigation for murder. All he knew for sure was that four people had been killed in that room. Three adults, Abdul Rahman's mother, his uncle and his grandfather, and one child, Abdulrahman's four year old brother, Abdullah. The photos show that the grandfather's body was very badly damaged and the uncle had been shot in the head. But it was what the photos showed about what happened to Abdul Rahman's mom, Asma and her four year old son Abdullah that really stood out to Parmalee.

[Kevin Parmalee]

This one broke everything open.

[Madeline Barron]

The first photo of the living room that we looked at was a wide shot. You can see white walls, a patterned red rug on the floor and pillows scattered around. There's a couch along the back wall and what looks like a space heater, a typical living room in Iraq.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Could you zoom in especially to the position of them?

[Madeline Barron]

And there in the far corner of the room next to the couch, I saw two bodies huddled together. I realized I was looking at Asma and her four year old son Abdullah. They were on the right side of the room. The side of the room Where Tatum said he shot four people. Asma and Abdullah were kneeling in the corner of the room, heads down, their foreheads touching the ground. In a position like you would be in if you ever had to do a tornado drill at school. Basically the least threatening position the human body can be in.

[Kevin Parmalee]

They're kneeling, facing, well, they're facing the floor, but they're kneeling with the bottom of their head facing towards the doorway. So they're next to each other.

[Madeline Barron]

Asma looked like she'd been wounded on her neck. It's not clear how exactly she was killed, but looking at these photos, you could imagine this moment of a mom trying to protect her son. Four year old Abdullah was pressed up between his mom and the wall and his mom had put her arm around him in what would be their final moments.

[Kevin Parmalee]

The photo has her left arm over.

[Madeline Barron]

Him, almost like she's getting as close to the wall as she can. My guess, I mean, who knows, but seems like she might have put him in the safest possible place she could try to put him.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

[Madeline Barron]

This was all awful. But what Parmalee was about to tell me was even worse. It had to do with what the photos could tell us about how exactly Asma's son was killed. In the photos the military sent us, there's a close up photo of 4 year old Abdullah. It looks like someone had taken him out of the position he was in next to his mom and propped him up. He was wearing a T shirt with a cartoon helicopter on it. And the first thing the photo clearly showed was that Abdullah had been shot in the head.

[Kevin Parmalee]

The wound goes from his back, right neck and it goes forward to his left temple.

[Madeline Barron]

So what does that tell you?

[Kevin Parmalee]

Oh, that, that, that lines up the trajectory.

[Madeline Barron]

The trajectory where Parmelee was going now was right to the question of where the shot came from, where the shooter would have had to have been when he fired at Abdullah's head. Parmelee saw this question as a math problem. Geometry, actually. It's something that forensics experts do all the time. Determine where a shooter would have been shooting from their position. If you shoot a bullet from a gun, you can pretty much determine what the bullet trajectory would have been. You're basically drawing a straight line from where the shooter's gun was through the entry wound and the exit wound.

[Kevin Parmalee]

So now we have that line segment. And then what you do is you go from the exit wound, which is blown out on the left side, you go to the entry wound, which is his right neck, and you're going to bring that back towards where the shooter was located.

[Madeline Barron]

There was furniture in the room that would have limited the places a shooter could have stood. And of course, there were also walls. We also had the measurements of the room. They'd been taken by military investigators. Parmalee took all that into account too. And then he gave me his analysis.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Overwhelmingly, the information from that child, his wounds and the trajectory are very, very clear.

[Madeline Barron]

The person who shot Abdullah couldn't have been doing something like firing blindly from the entryway.

[Kevin Parmalee]

That's total opposite trajectory.

[Madeline Barron]

That angle just didn't line up. Not at all like, not in the doorway?

[Kevin Parmalee]

Oh, absolutely not.

[Madeline Barron]

Parmalee pointed to a small object, the space heater, right next to Abdullah's mom, Asma, just a few feet from Abdullah. That spot right next to that space heater, Parmalee said, was where the person who shot Abdullah would have been standing.

[Kevin Parmalee]

So he was standing right next to her in front of that object. He's pointing his rifle down at the boy, pointing it down towards the boy's head. That would be the angle that he was shooting him from.

[Madeline Barron]

Parmalee was saying the shooter was incredibly close to this little boy just a few feet away, basically standing over the mom, Asma, and shooting down into Abdullah's head.

[Kevin Parmalee]

This is an up close and personal shot where you're putting a bullet into a little boy.

[Madeline Barron]

Like he was shot from like one side of his head to the other.

[Kevin Parmalee]

He was executed from the back right to the front left temple while his face was down in a kneeling position.

[Madeline Barron]

And you're saying executed? Talk about that. Why are you saying executed?

[Kevin Parmalee]

There's, there's no misconstruing the size of this child and the position that they're in, that they're not a threat to them.

[Madeline Barron]

As Parmalee was telling me this, it was obvious that he was getting upset. At one point, it almost looked like he was about to cry. I wondered how he was feeling. He paused for a long time.

[Kevin Parmalee]

I've seen a lot of kids killed throughout my career. It's not easy, but it just takes me back to all those experiences as well. It's just, it's disgusting. It really is. You know, I, I wasn't in a war zone. I give a lot of latitude and tolerance to understanding what people were going through in those times. And, and we're all human and we make decisions in a fast pace and, and, you know, split seconds. This wasn't split second. And this is really, it really pulls at my emotions a lot.

[Madeline Barron]

Looking at the photos of Abdullah, he's so small, he's clearly just a little kid huddled in a corner with his mom, maybe trying to calm him or protect him by putting her arm around him. And someone stood over this mother, aimed their gun at this little boy and shot him in the head.

[Kevin Parmalee]

There's no doubt that that's an execution. Once they decide to stand a foot next to a four year old child and put a bullet in his head, there's no way that you cannot see that that's a child. There's no way that you can't process that information. That's why I firmly believe that that was an execut.

[Madeline Barron]

Parmalee and I moved on to the photos of the next house. The house where 11 year old Safa had hidden next to the bed while her mom and siblings were shot to death. The Marines killed eight people inside this house. They killed Safa's father, Eunice, when he answered the door. And then the Marines killed seven people, all in the back bedroom. Tatum had told NCIS that he'd seen Wouterich shooting in this back bedroom and so he'd followed Wouterich inside. According to NCIS records, Tatum said he'd seen children in the room on the bed, including a child who was actually standing on the bed. Tatum said this child was wearing a white shirt. Tatum told NCIS he looked at this child and then opened fire. There are several photos of this bedroom. In the photos you can see the spot where Safa had said she was hiding with her sister Noor, next to the bed. Noor's body is right there, exactly where Safa said it was. Crouching down in the small space between the bed and the wall. And on the other side of the bed near the doorway, was Safa's aunt lying dead on the floor. The aunt that Safa said was shot after she peeked out into the hallway to see what was going on. And then there was the bed where Safa had said her siblings had huddled with their mom, terrified. The photos of this bed are devastating. Safa's mom is lying on her back, her head on a pillow. Lying next to her are four of her children. There's little Aisha, just three years old, wearing a shirt with a flower on it, her head covered in blood. There's her older sister, 10 year old Seba, lying next to her. There's her brother, 8 year old Mohammad, the one Hussafa had told us had initially survived the shooting but was injured and screaming. He's curled up next to his mom, his elbow touching her stomach. And then there was 5 year old Zaynab Zainab's injuries were particularly gruesome. Her head was so badly damaged, I couldn't even see it in the photos. I had to ask Parmalee to show it to me.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Her head is to the right. It's just under. It's next to the child that's in green.

[Madeline Barron]

Okay.

[Kevin Parmalee]

You see it down at the bottom. It's a little bit dark. It's a bottom center.

[Madeline Barron]

Without getting too detailed here, I'll just say that there wasn't much left of her head. It was mostly gone. Parmelee pointed out a yellow blanket on the bed in front of Zaynab. He said that if Zayneb had been shot lying down, you'd expect to see a lot of blood and other parts of her head on the blanket. But the blanket didn't appear to have much blood on it at all.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Because right now if you look at the yellow blanket or that yellow cloth right there.

[Madeline Barron]

Yeah.

[Kevin Parmalee]

It's not consistent with being shot in that location.

[Madeline Barron]

Instead, there was a lot of blood on the wall next to the bed, which to Parmalee suggested that at the time that Zayneb was shot, she was actually sitting up on the bed or maybe even standing on it.

[Kevin Parmalee]

I would think that the head was higher. If the child's head is up and I shoot, it's going to go towards that wall that has all of that.

[Madeline Barron]

A five year old shot standing on a bed, just as Tatum had described. This bedroom was small. We have the measurements. It was just 13 by 17ft. The bed took up a lot of that space and there was furniture along some of the walls, making the space seem even smaller. No matter where the Marines were in the room, they would have been close to the people they were shooting. In general, looking at the photos of Safa's house, what is your assessment of whether the shooters would have been able to see that they were shooting women and children?

[Kevin Parmalee]

So they go in, they went into the room, and they were just taking shots at the people in the bed. How did they not perceive that these were children? As they have to. They have to identify that they're in the bed. Yeah, don't expect me to rationalize that one.

[Madeline Barron]

According to NCIS's forensic examiner, who analyzed the bullet trajectories, one of the shooters would have had to have been standing near the foot of the bed. The space was so small that the tip of the Marine's rifle likely reached over the bed when it was being fired. After the break, one last set of photos.

[Parker Yesko]

On October 3, 1980, a bomb was detonated outside a Synagogue on Copernic street in Paris. Three decades later, French investigators finally identified a suspect in the case. A Lebanese Canadian sociology professor living a quiet life on the outskirts of Ottawa, Canada. Is Hasan Diab guilty? Can you introduce yourself or is he a scapegoat? Hassan Diab from Canadaland. This is the Copernic affair. Listen wherever you get your podcast.

[Madeline Barron]

The final house the Marines went into that day was the house where the Marines killed the four brothers. When we spoke with their surviving family members, Ehab Najla and Najla's son, Khalid Jamal, they all said they wanted more than anything to know exactly what happened inside that house. She just wants to know who put who've been murdered first. The last thing the family said they saw was the four brothers being marched into the house by two Marines. And then a short while later, they'd heard gunshots. He wants to know the little details after they couldn't see them anymore. Khalid Jamal had told us that he's always going over and over that day in his mind, wondering exactly what happened inside that house. Who was killed first? Did his father have to watch as his younger brothers were killed? He told us he'd even dreamt about it. That's why he signed the form saying he wanted us to have the photos and why he helped the other Khalid Khalid, Salman Rasif, take those forms door to door in Haditha to collect signatures from other surviving family members of those killed, to know the photos of the inside of this house. The photos of Khalid Jamal's father and his three younger brothers were the last set of photos we looked at. Khalid Jamal and his mom Najla and aunt Ehab had described each one of the four brothers in loving detail, what they were like as fathers, husbands, uncles. Now I was looking at photos of all four men lying dead on the floor. The Marines who were involved in this shooting had told investigators that when they entered the house, there were four men inside, two of them holding AK47s. A Marine fired first and all four men were shot dead. The photos show the men lying dead, shot in the head. And there were other photos, photos that didn't have any bodies in them that turned out to be more revealing. These were photos of bullet holes and blood stains on the furniture and walls of the room. They've been taken by forensic investigators from NCIS who'd entered this house four months after the killings to try to collect evidence from this room. They have the tiniest bit of audio of these investigators recording themselves entering this house back in 2006.

[Kevin Parmalee]

Time is 12:33, we've been clearanced to enter house four.

[Madeline Barron]

Marking in the hall. Wallway marking what appears to be reddish brown. This will be B1. Potential bloody fingerprints. We're going to be here longer than we thought. When the NCIS investigators entered the room, they looked for any evidence of the shootings. By then, months after the killings, the blood on the floor had been cleaned up and most of the room by this point looked pretty normal. But something caught the investigators eyes. There was a big piece of furniture in the room, a freestanding wooden wardrobe. The family said they'd found the body of one of the brothers, Marwan inside this wardrobe and on the door of that wardrobe, the investigators noticed something. A small hole the size of a bullet. They opened the door, and inside they found bloodstains and another hole leading out the back. Then they moved the wardrobe away from the wall, and that's when they noticed something metallic in the wall. A bullet. They pulled it out. It was a.556 round, the type of bullet used in an M16. There were two Marines who admitted to being in that house. Lance Corporal Justin Sherritt and Sergeant Frank Wuderich. Sherritt didn't have an M16, but his squad leader, Sergeant Wouterich, did. NCIS concluded that most likely Wouterich shot Marwan as Marwan hid in the wardrobe with the door closed. Then there was the question of how Khalid Jamal's father, Jamal, had died. Investigators found another set of bullet holes and bloodstains that lined up with where Khalid Jamal's father's body had been found. They concluded that Khalid Jamal's father had been sitting or crouching down against the wall next to the wardrobe. Investigators found a 9 millimeter bullet in the wall behind where his body had been. The only Marine who had a 9 millimeter in that house was Sherrit. And then there were the two other men in the room, Jassib and Katan. Both of them had been shot in the face right by the doorway while they were standing. What the NCIS investigators had found and what these photos showed contradicted the Marines accounts, especially Sharratt's, which was particularly detailed. Sharratt claimed that after he shot the first two men near the doorway, the other two men started moving toward them. Or as Sharratt put it in a statement to investigators, he, quote, saw others in the corner moving to their fallen comrades. So I was not taking any chances of them picking up the AKs. I fired at them and took them out. But according to the photos and the NCIS forensic analysis, these two men were definitely not moving toward their fallen comrades. One of them, Marwan, had jumped into a wardrobe. The other, Khalid Jamal's father, was crouched down or sitting in a far corner. This hardly sounded like the behavior of insurgents who had lured the Marines to a house to kill them. It sounded a lot more like what terrified unarmed men would do when they realized they were trapped in a room with Marines intent on killing them. Marines who were standing in the doorway blocking their escape. This stood out to Parmalee, too.

[Kevin Parmalee]

So you have people in the room moving away from the doorway. They're not, you know, coming together. And, yeah, you couldn't be more isolated trying to get into a closet as opposed to going towards your comrades. So that definitely refutes that statement right off the bat. And then that also reduces the credibility of the people that are giving those statements.

[Madeline Barron]

Taken together, all this evidence allowed NCIS to reconstruct what most likely happened inside this room. NCIS concluded that most likely the first person killed was Katan, because his body was closest to the doorway. Then Chaseb, who was right behind his brother, Katan. NCIS thought it most likely that Jamal, Khalid Jamal's father, was shot next as he sat or crouched on the floor across the room. Marwan was probably the last brother to be killed. NCIS thought it most likely that the Marines saw Marwan go into the wardrobe and that then Wouterich stood in front of the wardrobe and opened fire with a single shot at the closed door. A shot that hit Marwan in the head. After looking at all the photos and reading the NCIS reports, I got in touch with Khalid Jamal and told him that if he wanted, I could tell him what the photos and the other forensic evidence indicated about what most likely happened in the final moments of the lives of his father and uncles. Khaled Amal told me, yes, he wanted to know. And so we set up a call with an interpreter, and I told Khalid Amal what we'd learned. Khalid Amal had wanted to know, but knowing brought its own pain. Khalidjamal told me that he'd hoped to hear, that his father and uncles had fought back, had resisted the Marines somehow. And now, knowing that his father had been crouching down behind a door and one of his uncles had been inside a wardrobe, the idea that his father and uncles had died fighting had been replaced by something that was somehow even sadder. Khalid Jamal asked me a question. Could I send him the photos of his dead father and uncles? I told him yes, but I cautioned him that the photos were very graphic. He said he understood. And so I sent him copies of the photos. The photos of his own family that the military had kept for all these years. The photos at college. Amal had worked so hard to get by gathering all of those signatures. They were now his. I'd looked at all the evidence. I'd looked at the photos, at the Marine statements, at all the thousands of pages of documents in the investigative files. I'd watched the video that Khalid Salman Rasif had helped to make. We'd interviewed the Marines who'd responded to the killings and we'd interviewed the survivors, including people who'd actually witnessed the killings. What happened on the morning of November 19, 2005, was no longer a mystery. Dela Cruz and Wouterich had shot at the five men by the white car. Some of the men, Delacruz said, had their hands up. The photos showed at least one of the men was maybe even kneeling. Some of the Marines had then gone into Abdulrahman's house. A Marine named Hector Salinas had killed a grandmother in the hallway. A Marine named Umberto Mendoza had killed the father. The Marines went into the living room. Sharratt and Tatum both admit to shooting in this room. Sharratt told investigators that he stood near the doorway and fired blindly until he ran out of ammo. Tatum says Wuderich was shooting too. Tatum said he shot four people all along the right side of the room. The photo showed that the people on the right side included four year old Abdullah and his mom, Asma. One man escaped from the house but was later shot by Marines outside. The Marines went to a house close by. They apparently rang the doorbell. Safa's dad, Eunice, answered. Mendoza shot and killed him. The Marines entered the house. Tatum made his way to the back bedroom. He said he saw Wouterich already inside the bedroom, shooting at people. Tatum went inside the bedroom too. According to NCIS records, Tatum said he saw women and children. He saw a child, maybe five year old Zaynab, standing on the bed and Tatum opened fire. The Marines went into one last house. According to the survivors, the Marines separated the men from the women, children and elderly and ordered the men, four of them, all brothers, into one of the houses. Woodrich and Sharratt went into the house and killed them. Sharratt did most of the killing. He shot three of the brothers in the head. The fourth brother, Marwan, appeared to have jumped into a wardrobe. But according to ncis, Wouterich shot through the wardrobe door and the bullet hit Marwan in the head. This was a case full of evidence. Photos, forensics, statements from Iraqi eyewitnesses, statements where Marines implicated themselves and each other. There were even the confessions from Tatum 24 killings, and yet there wasn't a single criminal conviction for any of them. How did that happen? How did the military go from having all this evidence to having the cases completely fall apart? The answer to that question coming up on in the Dark. One last thing about the photos. Once we got them, we talked for a long time as a team about what to do with them. We talked with our editors and with other colleagues at the New Yorker, and we talked to some of the survivors as well. And we decided to publish a selection of photos that we thought were especially important to understanding what happened that day. All these photos were published with the permission of the surviving family members of the people depicted. You can find [e-mail] Season three in the dark is reported and produced by me, Madeline Barron, managing producer Samara Freemark, producers Natalie Jablonski and Raymond Tungakar, and reporter Parker Yesko. In the Dark is edited by Catherine Winter and Willing Davidson. Interpreting in Iraq by Aya Muthena Additional interpreting and translation by Aya Alshikarchi. This episode was fact checked by Linnea Feldman Emerson Original music by Alison Leighton Brown Additional music by Chris Julen Sound design and mix by John Delore. Our theme is by Gary Meister. Our art is by Emiliano Ponzi art direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Michaelov. FOIA Legal representation from the FOIA team at Lovie and Lovie Legal Review by Fabio Bertoni. In the Dark was created by American Public Media and is produced by the New Yorker. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of Global audio for Conde Nast is Chris Bannon. The editor of the New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, you can send them to [e-mail] and make sure to follow in the Dark Wherever you get your podcasts. I'm David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's nothing like finding a story you can really sink into that lets you tune out the noise and focus on what matters in print or here on the podcast. The New Yorker brings you thoughtfulness and depth and even humor that you can't find anywhere else. So please join me every week for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Parker Yesko]

From PRX.