RedHanded - Episode 215 - Robert Bales: The Kandahar Massacre

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

In Panjwai, a district in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan, on the 11th of March 2012, U.S Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales committed what is considered to be the deadliest war crime blamed on a single member of the U.S Armed Forces since the Vietnam War. During this brutal massacre, Robert Bales took the lives of 16 innocent Afghan civilians – 9 of them were children. In this week's episode, Hannah and Suruthi explore the various and disturbing factors that led to this unbelievable atrocity. UK TOUR 2021 - new dates added! Get your tickets here: https://linktr.ee/RedHandedthepod Book: https://linktr.ee/RedHanded_Book Subscribe to our new YouTube Channel: YouTube - Subscribe Pre-order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Signed copies - US & Canada Pre-order on Wellesley Books Pre-order on Amazon.com Pre-order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Signed copies - UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus Pre-order on Amazon.co.uk Pre-order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Facebook Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Welcome to Red Handed. Again, I'm going to start this show the same way we did last week. Hopefully we sound different, not worse. Yes, it's a work in progress over here at Red Handed. Brand new mics. We're very excited. We are very excited.

We're coming to grips with it slowly but surely. We don't have any sort of in-house sound engineers we just have to figure it out so thank you very much for bearing with us you've all been extremely patient having said that we're hoping the levels are better this week we're hoping it doesn't sound as noise gaty as it did last week plosives might be a problem so we're going to try our absolute best but please bear with us plosives are my worst nightmare i've got a very plosive mouth i really do she does she's got a very plosive mouth and a very and very whistly teeth i do maybe it's because of my weird like simba teeth i don't know we'll never know but no that is it guys um bear with us we're working on it and all with the hopes of just bringing you

golden fleece quality audio god God, what a throwback. I know. What a throwback. If you don't know what I'm talking about, someone needs to go back and listen to the violin cupboard episode. I think if I went back and listened to the violin cupboard episode now. I won't let you. My ears will bleed.

No. And I'll cry and go into a coma and then you'll be on your own. That's why you're never allowed to listen to it again. Great. I feel great about that choice. Excellent. Well, guys, that is all the intro out of the way. We better get on with it because it's a fucking hell of a case. Yep.

All right. Okay. Everyone ready? Strap yourselves in. Because today we're heading to Panjwai, a district in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. It was here on the 11th of March 2012, that US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales committed what is considered to be the deadliest war crime blamed on a single member of the US Armed Forces since the Vietnam War. In what is now known as the Kandahar Massacre, Robert Bales took the lives of 16 innocent Afghan civilians. Nine of them were children. He kicked in the front doors of family homes in the dead of night and executed these people. It's reported that he put guns in the mouths of screaming children as young as two

years old and pulled the trigger after having killed their parents right in front of them. And what caused this atrocity? Was it racism, PTSD, TBI, steroid abuse, financial-slash-domestic troubles, side effects of malaria drug, or battlefield exhaustion due to multiple deployments? Could be any of those. I know what most of them are.

What is TBI? Traumatic brain injury. Ah, okay. Yes, it could be any of those. I know what most of them are. What is TBI? Traumatic brain injury. Ah, okay. Yes, it could be any of them. We don't know for sure. It could be a combination of all of the factors that we just listed and more. But what caused this massacre has been a controversial debate that has raged for absolutely years. And it is one that in this episode we are going to try and pick apart. But for now, let us take you through the life of Robert Bales, and the events that led up to the 11th of March 2012. The youngest of five brothers, Robert Bales, was born on the 30th of June 1973 in Norwood,

Ohio, to a fairly affluent upper middle class family. Looking at his early years, it seemed like he was going to have a promising future. He was a talented hand-egg player, class president in his high school, and he was pretty popular with his fellow students. After high school, Bales pursued an economics degree, absolutely that's how you spot a wrong-un, at Ohio State University. And he did that for three whole years, but he left without graduating in 1996. It's still smarts when I saw that Twitter thread. You don't know what I'm talking about.

I can't remember where I talked about it last. There was a Twitter thread started by somebody. They were like, name the degree that would put you off dating a person the most. And economics was consistently the one that everyone was quoting i was like how why i think with her master's in economics i think it's honestly because it's a combination of maths and capitalism which is what quite a lot of people hate delicious my favorite yummy yummy uh oppression it's the study of the allocation of scarce resources into your pockets uh sure unless you go to so as in which case it's just marxism never never would have worked for me you're really not i actually i saw something um on

instagram where someone was rating universities you went to like if you went to this university you are this and the birmingham one was if you go to birmingham you are from birmingham who moves to birmingham and the so asked one was like i don't want your pamphlet i'm busy fair so fair that is very fair in my defense i went to the university of birmingham and it was third or fourth in the country for economics at the time i went and that's the only reason do you know where the top university in the world for anthropology was the year I went no so us oh yeah world leaders there you go there you go well I wasn't bloody gonna go to LSE was I no thanks I don't know I think you would have gone all right at LSE. No, no, no, no, no. Didn't fancy Imperial? No, no, no, no.

So, sorry, everyone who doesn't have an in-depth knowledge of British universities, just stop listening. So he looked like he was going to do all right, but even for him, economics was too boring, so he dropped out. And following that, he went on to just an even worse situation and got his stockbroker's license and worked for a number of financial firms. And he was actually doing quite well for himself,

mainly trading in penny stocks, which is what Leonardo DiCaprio does in the middle of the Wharf of Wall Street. Also, dear listeners, you may be interested to know that the University of birmingham have put saruti bala on their notable alumni page and so as we see with robert bales he does he studies economics and then he goes into finance he goes into the stock market and on you can go and find this on the university of birmingham notable alumni page you'll see cerise's little

face and it'll say not everyone who studies economics goes into business yep yep there you go even though we literally run a business yeah they're like no no not everyone who studies economics at the university of birmingham goes into business i was like fuck you so hard so I have literally no interest in me because I'm not uh running a regime in Uganda or something they have literally no interest at all you're not a Marxist leader exactly somewhere in the developing world yeah not leading a Marxist revolution in Eritrea like I really feel like you're underachieving well I have underachieved my entire life. This isn't a new flavor of Hannah Maguire.

This is the ready salted version. So once the business is, you know, a bit more stable, we've got the levels on the sound recording right, I would fully support a sabbatical on your part to go to Uganda and become some sort of Marxist revolutionist leader. Perfect. We just need to get you in that Soas magazine, my friend. It's all I want.

It's literally all I think about day in, day out. We'll add it to the business strategy for 2022. Perfect. Done. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many

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So getting back to Bales, he's his colleagues were actually caught committing securities fraud. Oh, how uncharacteristic for people in financial services. God, unethical, lacking in integrity. Shocker. And this group of merry men who had been doing all of this dodgy business were accused of selling unsuitable and overly risky investments to an elderly couple from Ohio, which is very much the way in which the subprime mortgage lending crisis happened, which led to the financial crisis of 2008. So this is very much bad news bears what they're up to. But of course, Bales and his colleagues all denied any wrongdoing. But in 2003, they went up against an arbitration panel and were found guilty.

The panel said that Mr. Bales had, quote, engaged in fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and unauthorized trading. So, Bales and his colleagues were all fined altogether more than 1.2 million dollars in punitive and compensatory damages and you know secretly we all like to see that we all like to see the super rich get her get fucked but um was justice done not really not exactly as we said bales was accused of this fraud in 2000. And the panel found him guilty in 2003. But Bales wasn't actually present to appear before the arbitration panel. In fact, he never ended up paying a cent of the fine

and was subsequently suspended from the financial industry by regulators. Why wasn't he at his own... Can you even call it a trial? Panel hearing? Mm-hmm. Panel hearing, yeah. He wasn't at his very own panel because he had enlisted in the US Army following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And the lawyer of Bales' fraud victims claimed that they didn't pursue legal action against Bales to collect the money,

because they were simply unable to locate him. At the age of 28, Bales had joined the army, just 18 months after the arbitration case had been filed. Now, it kind of sounds very much like Bales did that, to maybe escape paying quite a lot of money to somebody that he defrauded. But if you ask his brother-in-law, he says that Bales joined the army after the 9-11 terror attacks because he, quote, felt it was something he should do because he felt he had to make something right. And it was its own way to vindicate himself. Okay.

If you commit a crime, and then you are found guilty of that crime, you don't get to pick how you vindicate yourself. No. It's kind of quite reminiscent of General Butt Naked being like, but I'm a Christian now, so you have to forgive me. And I do think that, not to bring this back to Don't Breathe 2, but I will, don't go and see it.

And this isn't a spoiler, but if you're upset about me spoiling this film, I can't help you. There's a bit in it where this woman is accosted by these two men. They're like blocking the road in a van. And she's like a sheriff or whatever. And she goes up to the car window and tells them to move and he looks at and he goes you serve um and uh and then he's like we did too and then there's this moment about being oh we were dishonorably discharged from a dishonorable war so doesn't that make us honorable and she's like no and then they kill her anyway

i do think there is i don't think we necessarily have the same thing in britain but i do think being in the armed forces in the states comes with this like oh automatic good person tick like they get on planes first thank you for your service blah blah we don't do any of that here no it's a very very different culture with the military i observed that firsthand having like produced conferences in the US. So if a speaker would go up there and say, you know, I served, everyone in the audience would stand up and clap. And here, that just would not happen ever. It's a completely different flavor. And not through any sort of disrespect to the military or anything. It just doesn't exist.

It really doesn't. And I think, you know know we obviously talk a lot about wars and the politics of wars and things like that but my gripe as i think we talked about when we did the command rape episode my gripe would always be with the institutions not with the individuals because actually like i have so much respect for people who join so i think that probably that culture of you kind of can't really say anything bad about the military is definitely him choosing to absolve himself in a way that he found agreeable. Spoilers, as we'll go on to discover, he's quite the narcissist. Yes. And because his fraud victims tried and failed to find him, we actually know exactly where he was. He was stationed near Tacoma, Washington, and he became what many who knew him have described as a gung-ho infantryman. He was

preparation-obsessed, focused, and incredibly eager to deploy into the thick of it. However, the darker side of his personality would occasionally reveal itself, especially when he had been drinking. My cousin told me something interesting the other day. Cousin, and also extremely close friend of mine, doesn't drink anymore. And she was saying that like one of like the markers of alcoholism in a person, like how to spot them. And she was like, one of the most obvious ones is if someone has one sip of a drink and their entire personality changes that's alcoholism because a lot of people look at it as this like ah stress relief thing and she's

like it's not that it's a dependency if you can see that switch in a person it's very likely they have a dependency i thought that was really interesting and you know it's no secret that like alcohol is a depressant it depresses your ability to uh lie basically or present a version of yourself that isn't 100 true so he's letting his darker side out because that's who he is i would argue my opinion in 2002 he was charged with assaulting his then girlfriend but the charges were dropped after he paid a small fine and agreed to attend anger management counselling. That's not fine. No, that doesn't seem like enough, probably.

Nope. And it only got worse, because later that same year, after a boozy night out at a casino in Tacoma, which sounds like my absolute fucking hell. No, don't want me to take you to Vegas for your birthday? Oh my god i would i would honestly rather i'm trying to think of something i would honestly rather just be locked in my room for an entire week you love doing that anyway that's true that's your idea that's true what else what sounds horrible and yeah so bales bales loved it So he goes out on this boozy night out in Tacoma and he was arrested for beating up a security guard.

So you can see, real top bloke here. But seeing as criminal assault is apparently only a misdemeanor, this little incident didn't affect his career in the military at all. That's mental. I don't see how criminal assault is a misdemeanor. That makes no impact on your ability to have a gun and be in the army right yeah like the city of london has its own laws and we were actually looking the other day the other day literally yesterday at the names of the wards

like the areas of the city of london city london is only about a square mile and is different it's still london but the city of westminster city of London, different places, different laws. And our favourite one, our favourite ward in the city of London is called Cripplegate Without. And there's also a Cripplegate Within. There's Farringdon Without, Farringdon Within. Oh, there was loads that were really, Bread Street. It was really fun. I feel like there should be something we could do with that. Because one of my favourite things used to be playing the cryptic tube game.

Cryptic tube stop game. We haven't done that in a long time we haven't i fucking love it i feel like i've exhausted all of the questions i've come across i think we have played it enough that we we probably have covered every single stube station now we need to take it up a level where we play cryptic cryptic wards of the city of london perfect i'm game if you don't know what we're talking about with the cryptic London tube stop game, you're missing out. Google it. It is so much fun. I'm trying to think of my favourite one. Oh, I'll tell you my

favourite one that I can remember. Oriental pig meat. East Ham. Yeah. Love it. That is your best one. Anyway, so, this little misdemeanor criminal assault wouldn't be bells's last brush with the law before the kandahar massacre in 2008 he was also detained after fleeing from an alcohol-fueled

hit and run in maryland as you can see it's just kind of like piling up and still no one takes any notice and it's very like bait is definitely the wrong word to be using here but it's very indicative of someone who probably shouldn't be given a weapon like someone who's getting super drunk beating people up beating their girlfriend up drunk driving they're not exactly indicators of stability i know i'm gonna keep saying and it just gets worse but it does does. Because the responding officer who, like, caught Bales after the hit and run, apparently only wrote Bales up for an open container ticket instead of giving him a DUI, which would have made it a felony, which in turn would have meant that Bales would have been kicked out of the armed forces.

And if this police officer had done that, and done their job, then the massacre in Kandahar would never have happened, and this episode of Red Handed would have been about some other arsehole. Obviously we don't know this because we weren't there, but I would place a fairly hefty wager that that policeman let him off because he was in the army. Oh yes, here's an angry white man in the army. Please sir, off you go. Thank you for your service. Between 2003 and 2010, Bales completed three tours in Iraq. Twelve months from 2003 to 2004, 15 months from 2006 to 2007, and then 10 months from 2009 to 2010.

Just before his first deployment in 2003, Bales met a woman named Carrie Primo at a local bar. The two instantly hit it off and they spent the night dancing and flirting into the early hours. Although Bales did warn her that he was set to be shipping out to Iraq within the month, but the spark that they had was just too real for Carrie to ignore, and the two decided to start a relationship. The following month in November of 2003, Bales was indeed deployed to Mosul. And regardless of his preparation-obsessed nature, nothing could have readied him for the visceral chaos of real warfare. And thinking back on that first deployment, Bales had this to say, quote, The first time you engage, I hate to say it, but you kind of spray everywhere because you're scared. You're hyped up. It's for real.

And over the 12-month tour, Bales was faced with almost constant enemy engagement. Right up until the moment he was boarding the plane home. Literally. Because he was shot at on the runway whilst getting on the plane back to America from Mosul. We're all quite familiar with people being shot at at runways in the Middle East at the moment. So I can, I mean, we can, can't imagine how terrifying it is, but it's not an image that we're unfamiliar with. I know that Bales isn't a serial killer, he's a mass murderer, but it's very interesting because we talk a lot often about how many serial killers in that end up having gone through the military or being drawn to that particular kind of role. But it's interesting because most of the serial killers who have been in the military, whether it's a BTK or

a Rodney Alcala or somebody like that, they don't actually see combat. And Bales stands out in that he is very, very much in the thick of it in terms of the fighting. Oh, he saw serious action for sure. Rodney Alcala wants to be a paratrooper and they just stuck him behind a desk. Yeah, same with Dahmer. He went there and they were like, you're a massive alcoholic. We're not going to let you do anything. Who was the other guy? Gary Heidnik, dishonorably discharged, discharged go home so although some of these guys are definitely drawn to the army because they have this kind of narcissistic or authoritative desires and some of them definitely also just want to go there so that they can go and fucking kill with impunity but it's not always the case that the army doesn't spot that kind of negative trait no and i think that's fair enough i actually it was

the army that diagnosed Rodney Alcala with antisocial personality disorder. Yeah, same with Gary Heidnik. And they were like, mate, you have got schizotypal personality disorder. You need to go home. And go, please, for the love of God. But it's interesting that Bales, interestingly, is quite an anomaly in that case.

And when he arrived back on US soil, Carrie picked him up from the airport. They went straight to a Seahawks football game seahawks my sister's favorite team you don't care never mind just five months later they tied the knot and although he was back home bales knew he was due to be deployed again at any time so he maintained the same intensity in his civilian life as he did on the army base and we're talking waking up at at 4am, working till 10pm most days. His newlywed wife didn't realise it then, but Bales was already showing signs of paranoia.

Apparently, she'd often wake Bales up in the middle of a recurring nightmare, where he was convinced someone had broken into their home. A name came to me in a dream last night. Oliver Jackson. Oh, that's interesting oliver jackson are you out there if so shall we get married get in touch i did let my friend who i went for dinner with last night play on my hinge and i was like just stop matching stop matching with these random people and then one guy she was like i'm i have a feeling this is the man for you she swiped right and then this when i got home he had matched back with me because obviously he'd been notified that i'd liked him or that she amy had liked him and his name is oliver

i don't know what his surname is because he hasn't got a surname on his hinge and i said to amy if me and this guy get married you can give a speech at the wedding about this very moment that you swiped right on him for me. Well, not if I had a fucking premonition she can't. You can do a joint speech. Now we just need to find out. Imagine if his surname is Jackson. I've got the third eye. We know I have.

I've already got a dodgy stomach. I'm feeling quite ill. It's okay, guys. It's not COVID again. So enough of my dreams. i should i just message him and be like what's your surname like actually please do i haven't said a single word to him my friend is a psychic i really think i am you know so after uh carrie would wake bales up from his recurring nightmares um who knows maybe it was was also about Oliver Jackson. After waking up,

Bales would then clear each room of the house. Then he would conduct a march around the perimeter of their property. Okay, that is not... Carrie, come on now. Let us pay attention to the red flags that are on display. Waking up in the middle of the night and doing a march of the perimeter of the house i'm gonna say is a deal breaker yes however i would probably if they're perfect in every way which this guy is not if this was the only thing okay so perfect in every way but he wakes up at 4 a.m every day to do a perimeter scout i mean not a deal breaker especially if he like maybe he's got ptsd and that's like a medical thing you can't be thinking about that no and also safe perimeter at all times i mean this is true because looking back on this uh particular incident or series of incidents carrie said quote i just thought oh that's just part of loving a soldier. He's taking care of his family.

Which, yes, but you guys just live in Seattle. Hey, man. Maybe Seattle's really dangerous. We don't know. All I know is that it rains all the time and they have a lot of drag queens. And it's where Starbucks started, right? Past, don't know. I think so.

I think so. Yeah, I think it says Tacoma on the thing, no? I don't know. I hate so. I think so. Yeah, I think it says Tacoma on the thing, no? I don't know. I hate Starbucks. Anyway, Bales, it didn't stop here with this kind of perimeter marching weirdness because his drinking also became more frequent. And in 2005, he even rolled a Mustang whilst under the influence. In 2006, Bales was then redeployed to Mosul for a tour that would last 15 long months. And it was during this trip, in January 2007, that Bales would engage in one of the bloodiest firefights of his entire career.

Today, that event is known as the Battle of Najaf. And it was the brutal standoff that saw coalition troops fighting against 600 Shiite fanatics known as the Jund As-Asama, or the Soldiers of Heaven. The battle lasted for two straight days and ended with around 250 Soldiers of Heaven dead and 407 captured following their surrender. Something that Bales took a lot of pride in at this particular time was how he and the other US soldiers actually helped to save the lives of surrendering enemy soldiers along with their wives and children. In an interview he later gave to an army newspaper, Bales said, I've never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day for the simple fact that we had discriminated

between the bad guys and the non-combatants. And then afterward, we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us. Haunting words, considering what was to come. And the worst of this tour wasn't even close to being through. Bales spent the final three months of this particular deployment in Dora, a notoriously dangerous neighbourhood of Baghdad. Bales later recalled having seen an IED detonate, blowing a hole through the bottom of a vehicle and killing the two soldiers inside. During an interview, he spoke about how he saw the insides of the soldiers plastered up against the interior of the vehicle, stating, quote, But, notably, according to the interviewer, Bales spoke about this harrowing incident with next to no visible emotion. And when this tour came to an end in 2007, Bales, who was now 34 years old,

was absolutely ready to leave the armed forces. But his retirement plans were put on hold when he was promoted to staff sergeant and chosen to go to sniper school. Something which even I, as someone who doesn't know really anything about the military understands that that's quite a prestigious thing quite an honor to have bestowed upon you oh yeah i've seen jarhead and that is how they get you oh you're thinking about the amount

leaving would you would you like a little bit more money and a shiny gun now like you seem to be expressing little to no emotion when you talk about harrowing things. Sniper? This decision to accept the promotion and stay in the forces led Bales to embark on his third tour of Iraq. This time, however, it was a relatively peaceful deployment compared to his first two. It was his inner turmoil this time that proved to be the most daunting battle during this tour. Bales' drinking, paranoia and sleeping issues were becoming increasingly worse. But to add to these problems, he was also experiencing regular migraines and volatile mood swings. Ding, ding, ding. Bad news bears. The bad

news bears have arrived. And after Bales arrived back on home soil in 2010, he decided that he couldn't ignore his mental health issues any longer. And actually decided to seek help, which, good for you. Absolutely. This is a huge step for Bales. Of course, it would be for anybody to kind of face up to having mental health issues or challenges that they want to deal with and going and getting help for it. But I think we can't ignore the fact that this is a big step when you're talking about a soldier. Because there does seem to have been within the army, a culture of judgment, where seeking help for mental health issues following wartime was kind of a sign of weakness and

cowardice, a sign that you weren't cut out for the job. And these aren't our words. As we'll go on to discuss, we have watched a lot of interviews with other servicemen who served alongside Bales and they said this was the problem with the culture. And to Bales's dismay the doctor that he went to see not only diagnosed him with mild TBI or traumatic brain injury likely as a result of exposure to exploding IEDs but also potentially from his high school football days but he also diagnosed Bales with the symptoms of PTSD. Reluctantly, Bales agreed to speak to a therapist, holding out hope that he'd receive medication for his migraines at the very least. The therapy sessions weren't that productive, however.

Bales was not one to speak openly about his emotions, and when the therapist told him that his anger was a mask for other emotions, Bales did not like that very much. In fact, he wrote a letter to an army judge saying, What emotion? The only thing I felt was weak talking about my emotions. Where I am from, men don't talk like that. I told the PTSD doctor I was doing better, and he let me stop coming. Toxic masculinity at its finest there,

I think. The following year, despite having been diagnosed with TBI and symptoms of PTSD, Bales was yet again deployed, and this time to Afghanistan. He was, however, demoted from platoon sergeant to squadron leader right before deployment, something Bales, yet again, did not take to particularly well. The other soldiers felt like he lusted for having control over his subordinates, and losing some of that power is what upset him the most. Bales and his squad were sent to Pandwai, stationed at VSP Bellamy Base specifically, and the list of the most common threats in the area were extensive. They needed to be prepared to face explosives, RPGs,

IED threats, rifle fire and persistent small arms fire. So some of the guys who served with Bales in the interviews that we watched said that when they were originally briefed for this, they knew it was going to be like nothing they'd ever encountered before and they knew they were being sent to one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan at the time. And this base that they were in, so VSP Belomai, was a group of buildings surrounded by walls of sandbags and concertina wire and it was situated about 20 miles from Kandahar city. And it's important to note for what's about to come that the village of Alakazai was just around 600 yards north of the base, and the village of Najabian was around a mile to the south. One of the biggest challenges they faced was that the entire area,

and all the roads surrounding it, were peppered with IEDs. The two infantry squads, led by Bales, were tasked with safeguarding the base and providing support to the special forces team that were already there. Soldiers serving under Bales had since reported that his behaviour was erratic from day one. And on their first patrol of the perimeter, Bales and his patrol team were just 30 yards from the front gate of the base, when an elderly man on a bicycle was cycling past. Apparently Bales pointed his weapon at him and told his team, if you want to smoke this guy, don't even hesitate. Everybody there was confused and scared. What was Bales doing? This old man was clearly no threat. But another troubling thing that he

told his squad that day was, quote, if you smoke anybody, make sure you take their hat as a trophy. I don't know where I've heard this, or maybe I have just made it up in my brain hole, but I'm sure I've heard it said that the only difference between serial killers and soldiers is that serial killers take trophies. Hmm. Interesting. I'm just going to leave that there. Please don't message me. This takes us up to incident number one, which we're going to call the jingle truck, which sounds fun. It's not. There's a lot of information out there on this incident.

And there's also a great podcast that we'd really recommend. It's on YouTube. It's called the Panjwai podcast. And they have three episodes where the two hosts, both of them, former soldiers interview, former infantry men, James Alexander and Brandon Chong.

Alexander and Chong both served under Bales at VSP Belmby. And they witnessed the troubling behaviour that we just described firsthand, as well as the aftermath of the massacre. And one of the stories they tell is about how Bales once brutally assaulted an innocent Afghan truck driver who was delivering food. At VSP Belomai, the troops had their food and mail delivered to them by what was called a jingle truck. And usually these trucks are driven by an Afghan, likely from out of town. The delivery route was of course highly risky, considering that this base was in Taliban territory, and that the Afghan driver was supplying the US forces. I mean, this case is just, obviously it happened over a decade ago, but it's still so relevant because we know now what the Taliban are doing. They're going door to door looking for anybody who colluded with the

Americans or helped the Americans. Imagine if you were doing it at the time on the ground while the Taliban had power in that area. Yeah. You were taking an enormous personal risk to deliver these supplies to these Americans. So that's what this guy's doing. So that day, the driver, who was clearly incredibly keen to quickly unload everything off his truck so that he could get the fuck out of Taliban territory as fast as he could, apparently began passing the pallets of food and resources to Bales faster and faster. So he's going faster than Bales can take them off him. And as a result, during his rush to unload the rations, the driver accidentally scraped Bales with a pallet. And Bales totally fucking lost it. According to Chong and Alexander, he started to grab the driver by his collar and then he repeatedly punched him in the face.

Everybody was shocked, yet news of the incident never left the base and Bales was never disciplined for his conduct by his superiors. Chong and Alexander also mentioned how Bales had really enjoyed working alongside the original Special Forces group who they had been supporting at VSP Bellamy. But after a few months, a new SF group took over in their place and Bales felt as though this group were not only too passive, but he also felt that they didn't treat him and the infantrymen under him as equals. And we'll see more of this as we go through the episode, but we start to see that kind of, I'm not getting the respect that I deserve. Yeah, it's a, again, it's a toxic

masculinity thing of like this assertion of dominance, as we have recently discovered. It happens in all male environments. Oh yes. So it was clear to Bales' men that something was off about him, but they were too focused on their mission and the threat of the surrounding enemy to fixate on him. And I think this is the thing. Bales is acting in a very bizarre way, for sure. But they're out in Afghanistan. Who should have been overseeing his behavior? Surely it should have been his superiors who were reporting outside of the base to get this man maybe some treatment, get him seen to, maybe bring him back if he's really acting this irrationally. But the people who are serving underneath him, they're too

fucking terrified about getting shot by the bloody Taliban to know what to do about Bales. Yeah, definitely. And I really hope that this isn't true, but there also may have been an element of, oh, it's only an Afghan. Yeah. So this kind of troubling behaviour from Bales continues to ramp up. But things only truly started to reach a fever pitch the following March. Bales' defence attorney would later argue in court that his actions on the night of the massacre were a result of PTSD, and that he had developed from having seen his best friend lose his legs in an IED explosion the previous day. But that's not entirely true. There had been an explosion, but it had taken place a whole week before Bales' massacre on the 11th of March. And what had happened was a truck carrying a number of Bales'

squad was heading back from Kandahar City when it rode over an IED on the road. The explosion ripped through the bottom of the vehicle. Nobody was severely injured. But now, those soldiers were stranded in a very open and vulnerable position and they needed to be rescued. During this time, Bells was on sniper duty keeping watch over them. And he noticed a man in a white tunic walking along a grape field near the area of the blast. He noticed that this man was holding a device in one hand and a shovel in the other.

From where he was situated, Bales couldn't make out what the device was exactly. If it was an ICOM radio, a device commonly used to detonate IEDs, then according to the rules of engagement, Bales would have been cleared to kill the man on sight. But he didn't take the shot. The man in the white tunic then began heading right towards the smouldering wreckage, where the IED had gone off just a few hours beforehand. This was strange, yet Bales still decided not to take the shot. And this is weird because it was really common for the Taliban to start their attacks with a blast and then follow up with additional bombs targeting responders. A few minutes later, a naval EOD, which is Explosive Ordnance Disposal, I'm just imagining

the Hurt Locker robot, like, yeah, something like that. A naval eod technician made his way to the blast site and as he climbed over a wall by a large dead tree he stepped on a secondary ied and lost a leg in the explosion brandon chong and james alexander very clearly stated in the pandroy podcast that this eod technician had only known bales for less than a month and had probably only met him about three times so for bales's attorney to claim that they were best of friends it's not really accurate though best friend or not and one day before or a week before of course absolutely seeing someone get blown up and lose a limb is going to have an impact yeah i think a lot of places are like well he's not his best friend and it didn't happen the

day before and i'm like it's still a guy he was watching it happen to and it happened a week before the massacre. I'm not excusing, obviously, the massacre, but I think to deny that incidents like this impact somebody's mental stability is denying the problem of PTSD playing a role at all in troubling behavior totally and i think even sort of making it the best friend thing completely takes out of the equation that like the feeling of that could have easily been me i think is more prevalent than like this sort of like band of brothers feeling of like oh he was my best friend i think the feeling of like i'm i'm in danger all the time is being played down a bit absolutely and it's not that he needed to be his brother or his best friend for that to have an impact. Like, it's just seeing it happen to another human being in front of you. Like, that's it.

And the randomness of it. Yeah. So a couple of days later, Bales and a group of infantrymen were sent out to investigate the blast site and see if there was any salvageable material left over from the vehicle. Once there, Bales fixated on the 30-foot-tall dead tree that had been used by the Taliban to mark the position of the IED. Bizarrely, Bales ordered his troops to cut this tree down. He said that he felt that it symbolized his failure to take out the insurgent whom he believed had detonated the second IED.

So that's the man in the white tunic that was walking around with something in his hand. So the men tried to cut the tree down, but unable to do so with a chainsaw, they decided instead to blow it up with explosives. I'm no ballistics expert, but I think blowing up things that blow up may be a bad move. And also, you're in Taliban-controlled area. Why are you drawing this much attention to yourself by setting off explosives to bring a tree down that symbolizes your failure like right yeah and again though his men while they are like this is weird behavior i don't think they were in a position to question him because it would have just been what like insubordination. So all the while they

were doing this, they're setting up explosives to blow up this tree, Bales and his men were under fire from nearby Taliban. So they're like in an actively dangerous situation but Bales is still making them prioritize bringing this tree down for no real or rational reason. Because Bales just insisted that they needed to stop and chop down the remaining tree stump with hatchets. And then he made them drag this 30-foot tree back to their base, which took in total six hours to do. The dead tree sat in their base for a few days until the 10th of march when bale spent eight straight hours hacking it into pieces that evening james alexander and branding chong recall seeing bale smoke a cigar whilst watching what was left of the dead tree burn in a pit

and they described it as if he was staring into the abyss. And you know what they say. You can't scream into the abyss for too long, because sooner or later it's going to start screaming back. I thought it was if you stare into the abyss for too long, the abyss stares back at you. Screams or stares. Screams or stares.

It's all the same. Same, same. That evening, Bales was on guard duty with another soldier. And this soldier later said that Bales spent the majority of the time complaining about how he'd previously been passed over for promotions that he felt he really deserved and how he was worried that it was going to happen again. During this watch Bales apparently noticed strange flashing lights coming from Najibiyen and coming from the nearby villages of Najibiyen and Al-Khazai. And apparently, Bales told this soldier that he believed those flashing lights were members of the Taliban communicating with each other. So when his guard duty ended at around 9pm,

Bales claims to have told the new guard team about what he'd seen. Although, the army has officially denied that he did this. After this, Bales then joined two other soldiers in watching the Denzel Washington movie Man on Fire, where Denzel is Dakota Fanning's bodyguard and goes on a murderous rampage after she's kidnapped. Have you seen it? I have. I actually watched it this weekend. Did you really? I did watch it this weekend.

I think I watched it in lockdown one, which was probably not the best mental time for me so not not a great time to watch it but i think the main thing about man on fire is that all of the things you just said are true denzel washington is dakota fanning's bodyguard in mexico city she's very wealthy blah blah he also attempts to shoot himself in like the first minute of the film and i'm almost certain he's an ex-serviceman as well yeah so he's a he's a former military man and he has an alcohol problem and it's kind of alluded to that that's why he isn't in the army anymore and he comes as like a cheap bodyguard and um because the dad of dakota fanning doesn't really think that she needs one so he's like and he doesn't have a lot of money. He kind of is like wealthy enough, but not as wealthy as his wife wants them to be

secretly. So he hires drunk Denzel Washington to be his daughter's bodyguard. And there's just lots of like rapid cut scenes, very like early 2000s filming. But it does a good job of showing a man's descent into madness which is what denzel washington is going through in the film and over the course of the bloody i think it's like a two and a half hour revenge film it's long it's long and during this time the three soldiers one of whom is bales apparently enjoyed around seven rounds of jack daniels and cokes we do have to point out that alcohol was contraband on the base, so they shouldn't have been doing this.

Yeah, I've seen Jarhead. I haven't. There's a bit where it's Christmas and they make, they either are allowed alcohol or they make it. Okay. And Jake Gyllenhaal does like a naked dance okay and then they all vomit

oh because they're not used to it because they're not allowed it because it's contraband that makes sense okay yeah so if if you haven't seen Man on Fire

I don't know would I recommend it maybe maybe it's very grisly and I think that's the thing that's quite important is because they're watching this

it's very grisly they're drinking they shouldn's the thing that's quite important is because they're watching this. It's very grisly. They're drinking. They shouldn't be. And Bales is already not on good form. No, it's not the film to watch if you are in the army, descending into madness, have PTSD and a drinking problem. Recommend it to everyone else. It made me want to go the fuck to Mexico like now when I watched it. Yeah. else it made me want to go the fuck to mexico like now when i watched it yeah my housemates were like that made you want to go to mexico city i was like yeah and

let's do it no one needs to kidnap me i'm old no one's gonna kidnap me in mexico i happily spent like five months in south america and nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to me they were just like nah she's got no money i think that's why you have no sense of your own danger is because like you do look quite ethnically ambiguous I think you are right because when I did my like 10 months abroad I did like five months in Asia and five months in South America everywhere people just left me alone so when I was in Cambodia even like Indonesia they just thought that I was from there so they were like whatever bitch I'm not gonna fucking kid, they just thought that I was from there. So they were like, whatever, bitch, I'm not gonna fucking kidnap you. Or not that I'm saying that everyone

there is trying to kidnap people. But you know what I mean? They're just like, whatever. And same in South America. So maybe that's why I'm not scared enough. Maybe I should go to like Norway, and something bad happens and I'll be scared. Nothing bad happens in Norway. This is true. This is true. So seven Jack and and cokes even though we may disagree on where saruti would feel endangered we can think we can all agree that seven jack and cokes is a lot of jack and cokes it is it's too many and apparently the more booze he had the more vocal bales became in complaining about the promotions he hadn't received how passive the special forces team were on the base his financial and marital troubles,

and the rage he felt about the IED explosion the week beforehand. Bales hadn't slept more than a few hours in the last week, and so he decided to swallow a handful of sleeping pills and get in bed. Which, when you've had that much to drink, is a bad idea. But he couldn't stop thinking about the flashing lights he'd seen on guard duty. In a GQ interview Bales gave, he said, I just kept thinking about those guys that were out there, moving around at night, doing something. They're getting closer to the base, closing in on our position, trying to kill us. And so Bales decided that he had to do something, and he walked into the leader of the Special Forces team, Clayton Blackshear's bedroom,

to air his concerns. Full of alcohol and sleeping pills, Bales told a half-asleep Blackshear that his Special Forces team were being sloppy on the field, and that they needed to take the fight to the enemy. Blackshear's job was to lead point on the patrols, but Bales asked him to let him have the responsibility instead, saying that it would matter less if he died. According to Blackshear's testimony, Bales said, quote, my life isn't worth as much as yours. It doesn't matter if I step on an IED. I'm 38. I've lived a life. And if I get blown up, it's so much less tragic than some twenty-one year old kid with all that promise ahead of him according to blackshear he told bales that the special forces team were short-staffed at the moment and that they'd have to wait to do any counter-attack but what bales heard was go away and mind your own business. Bales went back to bed but he still

couldn't sleep. It wasn't just the alcohol and sleeping pills in his system. He'd started a course of stenozolone which is an anabolic steroid and he'd started that just about three weeks earlier telling the other soldiers that he wanted to get jacked. Where the fuck are you getting anabolic steroids in Taliban controlled Afghanistan? I mean that's a good question i feel like obviously there's a lot of smuggling going on yes yeah and i know that this isn't the same but obviously back in the day the taliban were like that's where they got all their money was through like the opium trade i mean sure but heroin is is absolutely native to afghanistan where it grows this is true it must have been just being smuggled in because i don't know if you've been watching

the new bbc drama not sponsored but the new bbc drama i think it's called vigil or hms vigil and it's about submarine hasn't it got johnson in it though it has got johnson in it see that's why i can't that poor man like he's in such an excellent accent but i look at him and i'm like it's just alan johnson will you be my camilla mark if the public will have me um but yeah in hms vigil uh johnson is in it and he's like the captain of the submarine and he's like but we've always been at war and it's like oh my god but no in it basically a man dies and then the whole thing is like a murder mystery of how he died okay and they find heroin in his system but when they tested hair there's no heroin so it's not like he was doing it on the regular so someone had given it to him so how did this heroin get onto the submarine um

when they're not even allowed to have alcohol it's quite it's fine it's worth it like yeah how does someone go missing on a cruise ship the sort of exactly exactly so with the sleeping pills and the alcohol and the mystery anabolic steroids coursing through his veins bales lay there in bed wide awake with his mind racing about the impending taliban attack he felt certain was coming and he decided that he had to be the one to do something about it it was 3 a.m on the night of the 11th of March 2012, when Bales got out of bed, got dressed, put on his combat helmet and night vision goggles, loaded his 9mm pistol and his M4 assault rifle,

and snuck out of VSP Belenbai, past the sleeping Afghan soldiers on the ground. He then made his way to the village of Al-Akazai. Bales was headed straight to the homes of the village's elders, Sayed Jan and Mohammed Naim. Guided by the light fixed to his rifle, Bales made his way through the darkness until he arrived at Sayed Jan's home. The old man wasn't home, but his elderly wife, two grandchildren, and his cousin, and his family, were all sleeping inside.

As Bales burst into the small property with his gun at the ready, he told the screaming women and children to gather in the next room. Beside, Shan's wife panicked at the sight of his gun and began to wrestle with him, fearing for her family's life. This is when Bales threw the old woman to the floor and stamped on her. During the chaos, the women and children ran out of the house into the neighbouring home of another village elder, Muhammad Naim. Bales began to go after them, but before he did, he peeked inside another room in the house that he hadn't cleared yet. Here he spotted Saeed Jan's sleeping cousin in bed, and he instantly shot him dead at close range. With his adrenaline now pumping, Bales chased the screaming women and children

into Mohammed Naeem's compound across the small dirt road, when suddenly a dog jumped at him. And he killed that dog without a second thought. Bales would later attempt to argue that it was only the Taliban who kept dogs, something that the hosts of the Pandrai podcast declared to be a ridiculous statement. Most of the farmers in that area had dogs. At this point, other villagers had been woken up by the noise. And that's when a man named Nazir Mohammed attempted to confront Bales. Bales immediately began to viciously beat the man demanding to know where's the talib, where are the homemade explosives. Nazir's wife and

three-year-old daughter came outside. His wife was pleading with Bales to stop battering her husband. Bales stopped hitting Nazir and grabbed the screaming little girl from her mother's arms and stuck his gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Speaking on this moment in his GQ interview, which just feels so ridiculous to say, but yeah, he has a full-on GQ interview after the massacre. I'm not saying he shouldn't be interviewed because it is a major source of the research for this,

but it's just... GQ? I hate saying, in his G gq interview doesn't it stand for like gentlemen's quarterly or something something like that yeah what a gent so yes in his gq interview bales had this to say about this particular moment which again remember he's not denying this he's talking about it he said quote the kid comes running out, screaming, from almost the same direction where the dog had come from. I shot the kid. It was a quick reaction. You know, to be honest, you know I hate it. I hate it. Every day I think about it all the time. At this point,

I just kind of turned and killed the man, talking about Nazir Mohammed. And pretty much after that, it was autopilot. He continued chasing the group of terrified women and children through the darkness into Muhammad Naeem's compound. Muhammad, who was on blood pressure medication, had slept through all of the chaos, but the women woke him up, screaming, the American is shooting people. Naeem had these women and his whole family hide in his room,

whilst he went to see what was happening. The instant he stepped out into the hallway, Bale shot him in the face and stepped over his body into the room where around 30 women and children were hiding. The first person he recognised was the old woman who he'd stabbed on at Sayed Jan's house just moments earlier. Bale shot that same woman in the head. This is when Bale said that something quote switched inside him. He turned and started to blindly spray a barrage of bullets at the huddled group of 30 people in that room. Raifullah, a 13 year old boy, took two bullets in both of his

thighs. Parmina, a girl who was just around 15, was shot in the chest and groin area. And a 10-year-old, named Sadiqwala, took a bullet through his ear, which lodged itself in the back of his skull. And four-year-old Zadana took a bullet to the back of the head. And Bale said, I blamed them, meaning terrorists, but I took it out on the women

and the children. I was just raging. The time was now 1.40am and Bales had killed four people and severely wounded six others. Realising he was low on ammunition, he started to make his way back to the base, because his mission wasn't complete yet. Bales made it back to VSP Bellamy at around 2am, where he greeted the Afghan guard at the entrance in Pashtun, and casually strode past him. We'll come back to this when we talk about the trial, but I think it's worth mentioning this part because if he is in a complete state of just like psychotic something or other, the fact that he goes off, kills all those people, shoots children in the back of the head,

but then comes back to the base to restock and is casually speaking to the Afghan guard, not wanting to draw attention to himself. It throws doubt for me on the idea that he's completely out of control. Yeah, I mean, this is a very overworked example, but when someone like Richard Chase is truly in the throes of psychosis, they're not trying to convince anyone that they're not doing what they're doing. Because they don't necessarily think what they're doing is wrong

or they don't necessarily know the consequences of what they're even doing. So Bales is back at the base now and he made his way to Sergeant McLaughlin's room. This is one of the two soldiers that he'd been drinking with earlier watching Man on Fire and he told McLaughlin quote I just killed some military aged males in Alakazai and I'm going to go to Najabian and finish it. Take care of my wife and kids. Now again, this statement in itself shows that Bales had the wherewithal to lie about what he'd just really done. Because the only man that he'd killed at this point, who was even remotely close to military age, was the elderly man Naz muhammad everyone else he shot was a fucking child or a woman so he's lying because he needs to justify what he's just done mclaughlin was half

asleep and assumed that bales was just joking funny joke i again wish that i didn't think this and i wish that it's not true but i assume that jokes like that are quite common um on a base like that um someone i went to primary school with their occupation on facebook he's in the army um is taliban hunter so it doesn't surprise me even remotely that he thought he was joking bales apparently even held the barrel of his mf rifle under mclaughlin's nose and told him to smell it. But still, McLaughlin didn't take Bales seriously. The soldier just grew agitated and told Bales to leave, but he wouldn't go until McLaughlin promised to look after Bales' wife and kids. After this weird encounter, Bales got himself a grenade launcher, a grenade belt, some more magazines, and headed back out of the base into the night.

And this time, he was headed for Najibiyen. His first stop was the home of a man named Mohammed Dawood, where Dawood was sleeping with his entire family in a single room. Bales dragged the father of six outside into the courtyard, screaming, Talib! Talib! In his terror, and with his limited English, Muhammad Dawood could only say, no Talib, no Talib. But Bales shot him in the head, in front of his crying wife and six children. Bales then turned his attention to Dawood's wife, and stuck the barrel of his pistol into her baby's mouth,

while screaming, Where are the Talib? Thankfully, in this instant, he didn't pull the trigger. Instead, he left the home and walked to the house of a man named Muhammad Wazir, just a few hundred yards away. Wazir wasn't there, but his wife, mother, six children, and 13-year-old nephew were. By now, they're all wide awake and terrified. A young boy named Issa

tried to protect his family by hitting Bales with a shovel. Bales threw him across the room and began hitting and kicking people at random. According to reports, he beat one of the family members so badly that their skin and hair were stuck to the walls. Finally, Bales shot all six people in the room with his M4 rifle. Wazir's brother and sister-in-law were both hiding in the next room. Again, Bales dragged them both out into the main room, filled with the bodies of their dead family members, and emptied the rest of his magazine into the couple. Bales then set the bodies of all of these people he had just killed on fire, using the kerosene lamp that was lighting

the room. And this is really important because Bales has always denied that he did this and speculated that it was probably done by the other villagers. Because I think, again, it could be argued that if you're doing enough to do things like what could be considered a forensic countermeasure, like setting fire to a crime scene,

that you're not totally out of control. You're not in the throes of a psychotic break i agree and so bales are saying i didn't do that it must have been the other villagers but since burning the bodies of the dead is considered absolutely fucking haram in islam i find it highly doubtful that the neighbors of these people who were horribly murdered by this american soldier suddenly set fire to these people's bodies. No, I don't buy that either. Bales then made his way through the rest of the house searching for weapons and explosives.

But he never found any because there weren't any. But he did find Shahr Tarima, Muhammad Wazir's elderly mother. His rifle was out of ammunition, so he shot her in the head and chest with his pistol. But she was still alive, so Bales stomped on her head until her skull was crushed. That's like a grandma age. Then Bales picked her up and threw her onto the burning pile of her family's bodies. Again, doesn't sound like the villagers were around for that. According to the interview Bales gave to GQ, he claims that it was at this moment, stood there watching the flames engulf the bodies of three generations

of one family, where they were peacefully sleeping, just moments before. It was that moment, apparently, in which he realised what he had done. And he said, quote, Bales couldn't pull the trigger on himself. He claims to have thought about his kids. And so he stepped out of the compound, soaked head to toe in the blood of the 16 innocent lives he'd just taken. And the night sky lit up with mortar rounds. They were coming from VSB Belomai. The Afghan guards who'd seen Bales at the gate had alerted the Americans that a soldier had left the base. The mortars were being used to light up the area and help foot patrols search for Staff Sergeant

Robert Bales. The villagers from Alakazai, the first village that Bales hit, had gathered their dead and wounded in vehicles and started delivering them to FOB Zangabad, a larger military base about a mile away. The crowd of furious locals was growing larger by the hour outside of VSP Belomai, with vehicles bringing their dead to the entrance of the base too. Meanwhile, the desperate search for Bales continued. A high-tech thermal imaging balloon called a Persistent Ground Surveillance, was sent up into the sky. And at around 4.30am, it spotted Bales walking towards VSP Bellamy. He even dropped to the ground to avoid detection when he saw the flares. At around 4.47am, Bales approached the gate of the base, with what an army prosecutor apparently later described as, quote, the methodical,

confident gait of a man who'd accomplished his mission. As he arrived, Bales was greeted by his fellow American soldiers, all pointing their weapons at him. It's reported that the first words Bales said after dropping his guns were, are you fucking kidding me? Followed by, did you fucking rat me out? And those words were directed at Sergeant McLaughlin, the soldier who Bales had asked to look after his wife and kids. The special forces team took Bales into the base and placed him in a guarded room. Apparently, for the following eight hours, Bales flipped back and forth from confessing everything to denying knowing what had happened at all.

Bizarrely, at one point, Bales requested the medics bring him his laptop, and when they obliged, he snapped it in half and began to stamp on it, possibly in an attempt to destroy some evidence maybe of pre-planning. That's what it feels like to me. Why the fuck are they giving him his laptop just because he asked for it? He's been questioned for committing a war crime. Why does he need his laptop? Let me just check my emails.

Yeah, just need to watch some YouTubes and then I'll get back to you on the small war crime issue. I missed the last 20 minutes of Man on Fire. Can I just watch that before we proceed with what's going on here? Who knows what was going on, but that's what happened. So whilst waiting for army investigators to arrive, Bales said, quote, I thought I was doing the right thing. I'm sorry that I let you guys down. My count is 20. And here he's talking about the number of Afghans that he believed he killed. You will thank me come June. June being when it's usually kind of peak fighting season. And he finished off by saying, we shouldn't worry about collateral consequences. Yikes. Many yikes for you.

As the news of what had taken place that night spread across the country, the people of Afghanistan were obviously, and quite rightly, enraged. It was just recently that the footage had leaked of US soldiers urinating on dead bodies and burning copies of the Quran. So they're not winning any popularity contests at the moment, even in Taliban-controlled territory. No, and this is one of the things that we did briefly talk about on the episode of Under the Duvet, where we spoke about what's going on in Afghanistan at the moment. That absolutely, people in places like Kabul, they don't want the Taliban to come back. That's facts. But in many of the more rural provinces where there was a lot of horrendous things that happened,

thanks to the allied forces. And this is just one case that we picked, but there were so many cases that we could have spoken about where there were atrocities committed by western servicemen and this kind of thing that was happening how could it not make the local afghans feel like this is an aggressive occupation and the taliban are there promising we can get rid of them we'll bring back security we'll bring back safety we don't need these foreigners here this kind of thing played right into their hands this anger only grew when the population of Afghanistan discovered that Bales had been swiftly flown out and back over to America to be tried for his crimes there instead of being handed over to the Afghans. If he had been given to the Afghan government,

he would likely have been executed within days. But back in America, Bales was held in a cell on his own in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Whilst there, he sought the services of defense attorney John Henry Brown. And if that name sounds familiar to any of you, that's because John Henry Brown is the very same man who defended Ted Bundy in court before Ted Bundy decided that he was going to do a better job of defending himself because why the fuck not apparently John Henry Brown is also known as the plead guilty to avoid the death penalty lawyer which isn't the worst stand to take I mean no but you wouldn't want it on your gravestone would you no probably not so speaking at a press conference Brown said the following the government is going to

want to blame this on an individual rather than blame it on the war. Which, okay, let's not totally not blame the individual, shall we? Yeah. It's kind of like if a person had just gone on a mass shooting spree in say, downtownc would would this person just be like well we better blame society and all of the other things for that but not blame the person he doesn't need to go to jail like what what logic is this it's it's no logic at all and equally up until very recently it wouldn't surprise me if someone some sort of mass killing spree in dc would be like oh well it's the fault of the war in afghanistan you can't blame this poor white man he's so stressed about the middle east

so obviously from these words that brown is presenting it's obvious to see kind of where his intentions lie on how he's going to defend his client and so unsurprisingly brown's first idea was to argue that bales had snapped from the mounting pressure of being sent on four deployments, and that he was not sane when he committed the massacre. But he did realise quite quickly that blaming the military for Bales' actions was probably not going to go down particularly well in a military court. Something that helped Bales, on the other hand, was that the frankly undertrained Afghan local police investigators had been the first on the scene of the killings, and when they had arrived, the villagers had already buried the bodies of their dead, and the only forensic evidence they could gather was DNA they'd scraped off the walls. There were no photos taken of the

bodies, and in the end, the Afghan investigators only managed to put together a page and a half long of an official report. This lack of evidence made it very difficult to corroborate the version of events given by the surviving witnesses of the Bales massacre. John Henry Brown said, I don't know that the government is going to prove much. There's no forensic evidence, there's no confession, and he also claimed that his client didn't actually even remember much from the night in question. Eventually, however, in May 2013, Brown announced that Bales would give a full confession in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. Fun fact, did you know that there hasn't been a US military execution since 1961?

Oh, well, there you go. Always learning something there. but there hasn't been a US military execution since 1961. Oh, well, there you go. Mm. Always learning something new. On the 5th of June 2013, Bales pleaded guilty to 16 counts of murder, six counts of assault, and attempted murder. And on the 23rd of August 2013,

Bales was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, as well as being demoted to the lowest enlisted rank, dishonorably discharged, and he was forced to forfeit all pay and allowances. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan,

we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of

the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. During the trial, it was revealed that Bales had no officially documented history of mental health issues, and that he had actually passed an extensive mental health screening when becoming a sniper in 2008. And if you remember back to earlier in the episode, by 2008, when he gets promoted to be a sniper, he's already been to see a psychiatrist who has diagnosed him with symptoms of PTSD and traumatic brain injury. And so yeah, after he had undergone treatment for TBI at Fort Lewis

McCord, he was still deemed fit and healthy for deployment. After, bear in mind, he wrote a letter to an army judge saying, it was a load of nonsense that I told him what he needed to hear so that he said I could stop coming. Yeah, here's the thing though, Fort Lewis McCord has earned a bit of a reputation for itself over the years for being notorious for misdiagnosing PTSD symptoms in troops stationed there. And it's important to be aware that although PTSD is associated with an increased risk of violence, most people with PTSD have never engaged in any violence at all. Research suggests that when risk and protective factors correlated with PTSD are considered, the association between PTSD

and violence diminishes significantly. A study in the British Journal of Psychiatry titled Violent Behaviour and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in US, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans found among many things that younger age, financial instability, history of violence before military service, higher combat exposure, PTSD and alcohol misuse to be significantly associated with higher severe violence. And when combinations of these risk factors were present in one person, then the predicted probability of violence in veterans rose sharply. And I think here we can say he was young when he went into the military financial instability i mean he was sued for fraud and he had like those fines hanging over his head if he

ever came back history of violence before the military extreme levels of combat exposure and alcohol misuse he's ding ding ding he's a fucking a bingo card of danger yeah within the military veterans with both ptsd and alcohol misuse have a substantially higher rate of subsequent severe violence, 35.9% actually, it's hardly negligible. When you compare that to veterans with alcohol misuse but no PTSD, that percentage drops to 10.6%. And most importantly, veterans with PTSD but no alcohol misuse did not have a significantly higher risk of severe violence than any other veterans without both PTSD or alcohol misuse.

Details of Bales' alcohol-slash-steroid abuse, marital and financial problems also came out at trial, but they were ruled to be irrelevant as a cause for his actions. Possibly the most troubling thing that the military court ignored, however, was the fact that Bales had been taking the anti-malaria drug, mefloquine, and its side effects include aggression, paranoia, psychosis, hallucinations, and suicidal thinking. The prosecution also ignored testimony from two mefloquine experts who said that Bales was, quote, undeniably laboring under the effects of mefloquine intoxication. Funnily enough though, the military stopped administering mefloquine shortly after Bales's trial. A recording from

a phone call Bales had had with his wife was also played in court. Bales and Carrie could actually be heard laughing about the charges against him, and they joked at how he may have set a record for how many people he had killed. Ooh, more yikes. Like an avalanche of yikes. Mm-hmm. A yike tsunami.

Afghan families whose relatives were murdered by Bales received $46,000, that's £29,000, for each person who was killed, plus an additional $10,000, £6,300, for each person injured. The victims and their families were told that the money was an assistance from Obama. According to the BBC, the US usually pays around $2,500 as compensation for innocent civilians killed by international soldiers. So as you can see here, $2,500 compared to $46,000 paid per death. This figure is far larger than what they normally paid and it's around seven times the average annual income in Afghanistan. It's weird that they did it here, but they don't generally do it. Is it because it's one man doing it rather than in an actual like military fallout? I don't know. But it is sad to say that some sources have claimed that the Afghanistan

government actually took large portions of these payments though the victim's families only received a pittance in comparison which doesn't surprise me at all no me either uh but regardless of that bales is in prison and it's pretty safe to say that he is probably going to live out the remainder of his days in luxury compared to his surviving victims and their families. He's actually been working as a barber at Fort Leavenworth. And he was even allowed to take classes to finish his college degree whilst incarcerated. So at least there's, well, get an economist out of it. There you go.

An economist barber. Just what the world needs. So yeah, guys, that is the, it's so harrowing. It's so fucking miserable. And as we said, like, we wanted to cover, you know, something related to Afghanistan, given everything that's going on at the moment. And we can't really tell you just how many of these there are. So the sentiment of the Afghani people having a fucking enough of Western soldiers is something

that I can understand. Yeah, they truly are caught between a fucking rock and a hard place the devil in the deep blue sea whatever you want to say because it's the taliban or western occupation and yeah sure like we talked about in under the duvet i do feel like a lot of the intentions were were fair enough that we were good that we're trying to achieve but they didn't really reach past kabul and also there were just rogue people like this doing whatever the fuck they wanted that were good, that we were trying to achieve, but they didn't really reach past Kabul. And also, there were just rogue people like this doing whatever the fuck they wanted.

So yeah, if you want to know more about her thoughts on Afghanistan, you might consider becoming a patron, because even from $5 and up, we talk pretty regularly every single week over and under the duvet about what's going on in Afghanistan. And we have at least two episodes which are almost exclusively dedicated to it. And if you'd actually like to learn exactly how the Taliban even happened,

you can listen to us on the Imperial War Museum's podcast, Conflict of Interest, speaking to crazy intelligent academics about how the Taliban was completely the fault of the vacuum created after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in the 70s. Go and find that out, learn how it all got put together, how it all happened and become a patron on top of that anyway. And here are some people who have already done that. We are in December 2020 and we've got Astrid Ehrman, Michelle Hadjjeru, Amanda Cisneros, Stephanie Spurg Molly Byers Michelle Hajjajeru Georgina Cheek

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Gaston. Thank you guys so much. It means the world. Thank you. And we're, I mean, we're very closely approaching being able to say we can see you on the road because we are on tour next week. Birmingham and Leeds still have tickets. The rest of them are all gone. So we will see you next week and maybe, if you're extremely extremely lucky you'll see us physically with your eyeballs

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