Cruel Death (11 page)

“It’s not here, Beej,” Erika said.

“Son of a bitch,” he seethed.

“Why are you doing this?” Joshua said. Same as BJ, Joshua was a military man. He had spent eight years in the army, traveling as far as Korea. At six foot one, he wasn’t a small dude by any means. He had a black belt in karate, yet was never one to flaunt it or brag about what he could do. As two military men, Joshua and BJ were far different, however. Joshua had gotten out of the army with an honorable discharge; whereas BJ, it was well stated, had gotten into some serious trouble and, after a court-martial, pleaded guilty to a litany of charges. In fact, one report said that back in October 2000, BJ was convicted at “a special court-martial of two charges of going AWOL, three charges of insubordination, one charge of drunken or reckless driving, and one charge of wearing unauthorized insignia.” Based on those charges, BJ was given a bad-conduct discharge, three months’ prison time, forfeiture of his $600-a-month pay, and a reduction in rank. After an appellate review, the navy issued a notice that BJ’s discharge had been finalized. Later, however, BJ would say he did it all—staged the crimes—for Erika’s sake because she couldn’t survive in the world without her hubby next to her all the time—and the navy was interfering with that. It was best for both of them if he left the navy.

As Joshua and BJ stood, toe to toe, BJ had that crazy, drunken, evil gaze in his eyes, Erika later speculated:
Make a move and I’ll kill you!
He had crossed a threshold, for sure. And once BJ set his mind on something—especially where pride, ego, and crossing him were involved—there was no turning back until he felt confident the situation was under
his
control.

“I’m sure in my brain,” Erika said later, speaking of that moment, “he’s gonna go crazy. He’s gonna do something fucking crazy, because he doesn’t care about the shit that’s missing. He was jumping at the opportunity to whack somebody. He’s always wanting to kill somebody, ‘Let’s do this, let’s do that.’ So I’m freaking out because I know . . . I almost
know
what’s coming.”

Geney grabbed Erika by both her arms and started shaking her, according to what Erika later told the government agent, saying, “We didn’t take your stuff. . . .” Geney sounded sincere. She was begging Erika to believe her. “We’d never
do
that.”

BJ started to laugh.

“We’ve been good to you guys all night,” Geney continued. “We paid your bus fare.... We’re drinking.... We’d never do that stuff to you.”

BJ was thinking again. Erika could tell. He had something on his mind. He was quiet. The wheels were spinning.

After a few intense moments of uncomfortable silence, BJ finally said, “Get in the bathroom,” using the gun as a wand to direct Geney and Joshua toward the door.

Joshua and Geney started toward the bathroom—and then ran as BJ hurried after them. But Joshua was quicker and managed to get himself and Geney into the bathroom first, slamming the door shut behind them, and then locking it before BJ had a chance to catch up.

21

Military Man

BJ was the oldest of Elizabeth Sifrit’s two children (he has a younger sister). By the time he met Erika, BJ’s parents had been married for close to twenty-eight years. BJ grew up in the Midwest—Iowa and Minnesota—but during his sophomore year of high school, the family uprooted because of his dad’s job and moved just outside Houston, Texas. At Cypress-Fairbanks (Cy-Fair) High School, whose school motto seemed to fit with BJ’s future, “Bobcat Fight Never Dies,” BJ was a competitive swimmer. He was not a lazy kid and often had several jobs: YMCA swimming instructor, grocery store worker, lifeguard.

One job BJ took to, like a shark to blood, was when he worked for a locksmith. He just seemed to relish the work. A friend said that she was once locked out of her house, her new key wouldn’t work. It took BJ just a few minutes and he had the key fixed. Friends described coming home and finding BJ sitting on their couch, watching television. “He could get through any lock.”

BJ’s mother and father—good, hardworking people, according to those who knew them—adored their son and thought he was the model child.

“His parents were great people, as was his sister,” said a former friend. “They had a very good relationship with BJ, that was obvious.”

During his senior year, eighteen-year-old BJ decided he wanted to pursue a life in the military. At first, he wanted to join the marines, an admirable profession only the “few and the proud” were able to make a career out of. BJ’s personality seemed to juxtapose perfectly with the marine’s
“Semper Fidelis ”
motto, loyalty and commitment, or, “Always faithful.” This phrase summed up the drive and dedication BJ had in his heart at the time. He wanted to serve. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to earn his liberty for his country. The military was the best place to sustain that compulsion and, at the same time, fulfill what is a noble vocation. Yet, as he thought about it and discussed it with his mother, father, and recruiter, the navy seemed to be a far better fit for BJ’s character. Sure, he’d make a hell of a marine, but after getting very high scores on his recruiting tests, it was made clear to BJ and his family that he had qualified for SEAL training if he opted for the navy—in particular, a nuclear-engineering program the navy was offering then.

BJ did his basic training outside Chicago in Great Lakes and then shipped out to field training in Coronado, California, just outside San Diego. It was here where BJ endured the rigorous twenty-five-week conditioning program any future SEAL is required to complete. Many drop out at this point; this is the period of the training that separates, as SEALs like to say, the men from the boys. In fact, out of the 160 candidates enrolled in BJ’s class, he and only seventeen additional recruits would ultimately graduate. BJ was named honor man of the class, a position designated by the group commanders to the top performer of the class. So dedicated and tenacious, BJ had not only made it through hell week and the rest of SEAL training, but he had finished on top. Several of BJ’s former SEAL peers later reported that he could spend all night drinking at a bar, get home at 3:00
A.M
., sleep for two hours, show up for drills, and have no trouble running ten miles and completing the day’s maneuvers. Meanwhile, some of his SEAL peers, heading off to bed at 8:00
P.M
., eating rice cakes and drinking energy shakes, had trouble keeping up after five miles.

For BJ, indeed, it was mind over matter. He had read that the powerfully dedicated mind could accomplish anything—and he proved it.

After SEAL graduation on August 15, 1997, BJ was sent to his first SEAL platoon in Norfolk, Virginia, where he kept in close contact with his mother, father, and sister, flying home any chance he could and, if not, calling nearly every other day, just as he had in San Diego.

By the end of the year 1998, BJ had completed medic training in North Carolina, another twenty-five-week, intense training course (Corpsman Training Delta 18), where he learned everything from working on injured soldiers in the field, to conducting autopsies on cadavers. Next to God, most field soldiers will say, the corpsman is the soldier’s best friend.

During this part of his training, BJ conducted between “six and twelve” dissections, he later explained, of cadavers. At first, that initial cut, BJ said, “was awkward.” The first time he had worked on an expired human body was not the most pleasant thing he had ever done. “But you got used to it.” It was the nature of every part of the SEAL training: All of it seemed impossible if you sat down and went through it on paper, or in your head, thinking about what you had to do; but you made it through because you didn’t think about what you were doing. Instead, you just did it.

The field training—making wounds look real—was something the military went to great lengths to stage for its SEAL candidates. They had what were called “Hollywood kits.” With fake blood and special effects, the military made the scenes look as gruesome as possible.

After a while, a SEAL became immune to the effects of the injuries and brutality of what he was involved in. Regarding battlefield triage injuries, “I was told to treat [injured soldiers] like machines . . . and I would be the mechanic and try to fix the problem,” BJ explained in court. A soldier would never look at it as his best friend lying there injured, fighting for his life. A corpsman took emotion out of it. He did the job and moved on to the next situation.

And that was that.

After a while, a soldier with his guts hanging out of the side of his body was not what a medic saw; he took himself out of the situation and understood that it was something he needed to fix, like a broken robot.

Beyond the graphic Hollywood effects and cadavers BJ worked on during training, live beings were brought in, too. This was where things got really weird during training, BJ later said.

“I worked on mainly goats, but also pigs.”

As the training drew to completion, corpsmen were asked to take part in, as a final exam, a final training exercise (FTX). In BJ’s case, it was a “realistic [helicopter] crash scene with multiple casualties.” In this exercise, the trainers brought in several live goats and, as BJ explained it, “some were injured intentionally more than others.” Some were dead. Others were maimed and hurt beyond repair.

It was BJ’s unit’s job to help save as many animals as they could.

“But in the end,” BJ said, “they all died.”

Another part of BJ’s training included serving on an EMT ambulance squad in New York City and a stint in an emergency room at a Manhattan hospital for one month, where he witnessed people die and people maimed and people in all sorts of real life-threatening situations.

During BJ’s first three years in the military, he put up stellar performance numbers and records. Bar none. He had a reputation that few ever achieve, earning a good-conduct medal and expert marksmanship status with a rifle and .45-caliber pistol. According to his military record, his career was running swimmingly, but then things started to change for him when, he later said, “I met Erika.”

Indeed, if you believe BJ’s version, once he hooked up with Erika, his military life quickly spiraled out of control, like a plane that had lost its wings. It had become unmanageable very rapidly, without him even realizing it.

“BJ was not a violent person,” said one former friend who knew BJ before he met Erika. “I felt completely safe around him all the time—except for maybe when we got into a car and he was driving.” This woman, whose husband was a SEAL buddy of BJ’s, had spent four months alone with BJ in her home. He lived there. “BJ was just quiet and very shy with girls,” she said. “He would not even approach a girl in a bar. He’d ask me to approach the woman for him.”

But then, Erika came around—and everything changed. Erika was so obsessed with BJ, said this same former friend, “that she asked me not to look at him, and definitely not talk to him.” BJ was ten minutes late coming home one day after taking off with a SEAL buddy to go look at guns. He was right down the street from the home. Erika came in and “freaked out. She let out this bloodcurdling scream and threw her frozen pizzas all over the kitchen floor.

“‘Where is he? Where is he?’”

Calm down. He was right around the corner.

Erika called his cell phone. “What are you doing?”

“I’m just down the street. You know where I am and what I’m doing. Relax.”

She wouldn’t calm down.

Come home, come home, come home. Right now.

She called BJ at least fifteen times, her friend said, until he finally shut off his cell phone.

BJ was soon faced with a choice: Erika or the SEALs?

BJ’s parents had never met Erika, nor had they even heard of her when BJ called shortly after the wedding to announce that he was now married.

“August 21, [1999],” BJ told his mother over the phone. He sounded happy. “We met three weeks ago.” Recalling the incident later, Elizabeth Sifrit had tears in her eyes, her voice scratchy and weak from the pain of having to recall how her son’s life took such a nosedive into chaos.

BJ’s problems in the SEALs started as early as 2000, merely months after he ran off with Erika to Las Vegas to get hitched. Mrs. Sifrit got a call one day. She was informed that her son had gotten into some sort of trouble, and by July 2000, she later said, “I knew he was going to select out of the SEALs.”

One of the incidents involving Erika that added to BJ’s list of growing problems with the navy took place in Alaska. BJ was in the Northwest as part of his Mountain and Arctic Warfare training, a rigorous test of endurance, patience, strength, and emotional stability. Only the tough survived the SEAL Alaska maneuvers—and BJ was certainly expected to complete his training without any problem, given his extraordinary performance rating up to this point, and likely to exceed expectation.

BJ was not allowed to tell Erika where he was going, whenever he went on training maneuvers. None of the SEALs were. It was policy. Part of the navy’s disciplinary tactic of getting these soldiers ready for what could be the most covert operations in the world.