In video, Wasilla soldier describes 1 event that led to murder charges

WASILLA — It could be several weeks before a military court judge decides if a Wasilla man will face a court marshal for premeditated murder.

Details revealed in a day-long Article 32 hearing Monday for 22-year-old Jeremy Morlock paint a picture of a renegade group of soldiers in Afghanistan who allegedly conspired to kill civilians.

Morlock, a Houston High School graduate, is one of five Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year with grenades and machine guns. Monday’s hearing, which is the military equivalent to a grand jury, is the first of many expected hearings, said Maj. Kathleen Turner, a spokeswoman for the base.

The military judge presiding over the hearing could take up to several weeks before handing down a decision, which could include ordering a court martial, she said.

During Monday’s hearing it was revealed Morlock has admitted to playing a part in the killings, according to a report by Caleb Hannan of Seattle Weekly, who was at the hearing. Morlock’s defense argued the soldier was influenced by medications he was talking at the time he admitted his involvement.

Morlock’s attorney Michael Waddington of Georgia did not return a call to comment on the case by press time.

Morlock and other soldiers said Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, also one of the soldiers charged in the murders, was the ringleader, Hannan reports. It’s an accusation repeated in a video interview with Morlock obtained by ABC News. In the video, Morlock describes how Gibbs allegedly orchestrated the killing of one of the Afghan civilians.

“’Hey, you guys wanna wax this guy or what?’” Morlock states Gibbs said. “And, you know, he set it up. So he grabbed the dude, you know, put him …”

“While he was still alive?” the investigator interrupts.

“Yeah,” Morlock answers. “It set the whole scenario up. … We had the guy by his compound so Gibbs, you know, walked him out and set him in place — ‘OK, stand here.’”

The man was not armed, Morlock says in the video.

He was stood “next to a wall,” he says. “It’s where Gibbs could get, like, behind cover after the grenade went off, and then he kind of placed me and (Adam) Winfield off over here to have a clean line of sight for this guy. And, uh, you know, he pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, you know, popped it, throws the grenade and then tells me and Winfield, ‘All right dude, wax this guy. Kill this guy, kill this guy.’”

Morlock also told investigators that after arriving in Afghanistan, Gibbs started telling other soldiers in his unit about a desire for “getting away with some of these things,” according to a sworn statement obtained by the Seattle Times.

In addition to the five accused of premeditated murder, seven other soldiers were charged in August in relation to the acts, Turner said.

“It’s not really clear yet what their roles were,” she said.

In the charging documentation, Morlock is accused of murdering Gul Mudin, a civilian, “by means of throwing a fragmentary grenade at him and shooting him with a rifle” between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31.

The second charge alleges that on or about Feb. 22, Morlock, “with premeditation,” killed Marach Agha “by means of shooting him with a rifle.” The third murder charge says that on or about May 2, he killed Mullah Adahdad, also by throwing a grenade and shooting him with a rifle.

An assault charge stems from an alleged assault of a soldier who was believed to have reported alleged drug use among the accused soldiers to superiors. Another video leaked to ABC News shows a soldier talking about a conversation he had with Gibbs about what the sergeant allegedly threatened to do to the informant, dubbed “Stoner.”

“Gibbs and I were talking, you know, like man, ‘Stoner’s a shithead, this is so stupid, blah, blah, blah,’ you know, just bitching up a storm. ‘I want somebody to hear me,’” the soldier says in the video. “And he’s, like, man, when we get back to Ft. Lewis, he basically told me that, uh, he was going to cripple him, you know, paralyze him, something to that effect. Basically, just (mess) him up so that he’ll never be right again. And that he was going to kill his mom so he would forever have to live with that and know that, you know, you can’t just — you know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Article 32 hearings for the other soldiers charged in the killings are expected “sometime this fall,” Turner said, but have not been scheduled.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.