Morlock pleads guilty to Afghan killings

MAT-SU — Saying “I lost my moral compass,” Army Spc. Jeremy Morlock was sentenced to 24 years in a federal prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to participating in the murder of three Afghan civilians last year.

The Wasilla resident and former Houston High School student pleaded guilty to three charges of murdering the civilians while stationed in Afghanistan with the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He was the first of five soldiers charged with premeditated murder for using grenades and machine guns to commit the crimes.

At Wednesday’s hearing, which was scheduled to be the beginning of his court-martial, Morlock wore his full dress uniform and answered “yes sir” and “no sir” to questions posed by the judge, Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks, reports Hal Bernton, a Seattle Times reporter who attending the hearing.

“The plan was to kill people,” Bernton quotes Morlock as telling the court. The statement is consistent with a videotaped interview with investigators after Morlock’s arrest last year, where he describes how the soldiers killed the civilians. He also fingers Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs as the ringleader. Gibbs has denied the charges, saying the Afghans died as a result of combat.

“I violated not only the law, but the Army core values,” Bernton quotes Morlock saying. “I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on my actions … and how I lost my moral compass. I don’t know if I will be able to fully answer those questions.”

In return for his plea, Morlock is expected to testify against others charged. Accounting for nearly a year already in a military jail, he could be eligible for parole in as soon as seven years.

Among many of Morlock’s friends and family attending Wednesday’s hearing in Seattle was his mother, Audrey Morlock. She spent the day with her son on Tuesday and admitted the situation at times seems surreal.

“It’s hard to keep it together, to be honest,” she said in a Tuesday telephone interview from Seattle. “You just have to, but it’s hard. I cry every day, but you have to keep it together for (the family) so they can make it through life.”

Jeremy is the third of eight children, with two older brothers and five younger sisters, she said. Although her son was the first of the five accused soldiers to be charged in the case, she believes Jeremy, Gibbs and the others are “scapegoats” for higher ranking military and government officials.

“They don’t back these guys, they don’t care if they die or don’t die,” she said. “They turn their backs as quick as they can. It’s not only his unit (involved in criminal activity), there’s all kinds of (stuff) going on over there.”

She said the military knew or should have known about what was happening and could have intervened. She also believes her son and the other soldiers were doing what they were ordered to by superior officers.

“You know, he followed orders,” Audrey Morlock said. “It’s just like he followed orders on the (Houston High) hockey team. If (the coach) told him to go check, even if it meant going in the penalty box, he’d go in the penalty box for the team.”

She also doesn’t have harsh words for Gibbs, the accused ringleader.

“I believe he was taking orders from somebody else, just like my son took orders,” she said. “I believe there are higher up people involved, and these guys are the scapegoats for the whole thing. That’s my opinion on it. They got orders, Gibbs got orders.”

A helpful kid

When Audrey Morlock saw her son on Tuesday, he was jittery and nervous, perhaps as a result of the numerous medications — as many as seven — he was prescribed while in Afghanistan. He has trouble sleeping and has nightmares, she said. And after only about two months into his deployment, Jeremy Morlock didn’t believe he’d be coming home.

His mother recalls a letter she received in September 2009, in which he wrote about his fears. It was a 180-degree turn from the son Audrey Morlock knew before his deployment.

The son of a 20-year military veteran, Jeremy wanted to join the Army most of his young life, she said.

“He was, like, 5 years old and ever since that age he talked about joining the Army,” she said. “His dad jumped out of planes and he thought that was just awesome. Jeremy graduated from Airborne school, and that’s where he was supposed to be, an Airborne unit. Then they transferred him to Seattle where they have no Airborne units.”

Growing up, Jeremy was always the helpful child, the one who would look out for other kids, she said.

“He was awesome, funny, had tons of friends,” she said. “Jeremy drew friends like magnets. He was kind and always helping, always helping. If there was a little kid left behind, Jeremy would make sure that little kid was involved in whatever game they were playing, whether it was street hockey or soccer.”

The family didn’t have video games, and Jeremy and his siblings spent many hours playing outdoors in the woods, she said.

“He’d get his buddies and he’d put his dad’s uniforms on and they’d go play G.I. Joe in the woods,” she said. “They built forts and were very adventurous. If they could play outside, they played outside. He always made people laugh. He was a good kid, he is a good kid.”

‘I’m not coming back home’

At Wednesday’s sentencing, Jeremy Morlock admitted the death of his father in a 2007 boating accident affected him.

“His death left a giant hole in my life and my heart,” Bernton quotes the soldier from his statement at the sentencing hearing. “If he had been alive when I was in Afghanistan, it would have made a difference.”

Audrey Morlock knew Jeremy was having a hard time deployed to a war zone in Afghanistan. After that September 2009 letter, her son came home on leave and resisted returning. After missing his date to report back to duty, Jeremy finally went back at the urging of family, she said.

“He wasn’t sleeping, he was looking over his shoulder all the time, he didn’t want to go back,” she said. “He made it home, and when you leave that (war zone) situation, there’s such a relief in your body. Mentally, it was hard for him to go back, and he didn’t want to go back. He thought he wasn’t going to make it if he went back. He told us the whole time, ‘I’m not coming back home.’ He truly believed that.”

He finally returned, and if she could do it again, Audrey Morlock said she wouldn’t have advised him to return to duty.

“If we could take that time back, we would,” she said. “But at the time, we just thought he had to go back and finish his tour of duty.”

What came next was a total shock, his mother said. She learned about the Afghan killings and that her son was one of the soldiers charged with the murders. And she learned that the way most everyone else did, through news reports.

“When I first heard, I heard it just like anybody else. I looked on the news and it was all over the news,” she said.

She was flying to Florida to start a vacation when she saw the news at the airport in Seattle.

“I was devastated,” she said. “They barely let me back on the plane.”

Without knowing more or hearing anything from the military, Audrey Morlock spent the next three weeks trying to find out what was happening with her son.

“They didn’t call me or nothing,” she said. “Then I couldn’t speak to my son for three weeks or find out what was going on. I was in hell. I was calling constantly trying to get hold of somebody. Nobody would give me any answers. I called the governor, senators, called lawyers. I didn’t know what to do. I spent my entire vacation crying every day because I couldn’t find my son, couldn’t talk to him.”

There was also a strong feeling of disbelief, she said, that there was no way her son could have been guilty of what the news reports were saying.

“I flat-out didn’t believe it,” she said.

‘War changes people’

Audrey Morlock never claimed her son’s innocence or denied his role in the killings on Tuesday, but said the young man who participated in the crimes was not the same person she sent off to serve his country.

“That’s not the kind of person he is,” she said. “He was a really kind, tender spirit and I’m not saying that was taken away, but war changes people, sadly.”

Now, “he has the shakes all the time, he’s been in solitary confinement since he’s been in custody. … No one will ever understand what happens in a war zone unless you’re there. We can’t understand what these guys are going through. I can’t sit and imagine just what my son was going through (in Afghanistan). I just couldn’t do that. I had to believe he was going to come home and he was over there for a purpose and for a reason he believed in.”

Her son’s military service has affected the family profoundly, Audrey Morlock said.

“For his sisters, it’s hard,” she said. “They’re devastated. Who’s going to walk them down the aisle? They all believe in him, they have no doubt in him at all and love him very much. His brothers and sisters are all very proud of him and we’re all going to miss him very much.”

For a mother who used to be proud of a husband who spent 20 years in service to his country and watched a son enlist, Audrey Morlock’s opinion of the military has changed.

“I hate the military,” she said, adding that when the smoke clears, there will be other officials who will have gotten away with allowing those killings to happen. “They’re never going to find the truth now, are they?”

While she said she had to deal with the fear associated with having a son serving in a war zone, she wasn’t prepared for the result.

“You never think you son will become a prisoner of war of his own country.”

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