First there was Walter Banks Beacham Jr., and it was his real name.
Then came Mark Richard Gerardi, the first of many aliases, followed by Cedrick Houston and Chris Villanueva and Zachary Pitt and George Perez.
Advertisement
The Eight Lives of a Serial Serviceman and His Army-Navy Shell Game : Military: For more than 12 years until he was court-martialed, a chameleon-like loner enlisted over and over using multiple aliases.
Four times he served in the Navy.
Four times he served in the Army.
And then he was court-martialed.
For more than a dozen years, he managed to foil recruiters by using fictitious names and fictitious credentials. And after serving just long enough to receive his signing bonus, he would hop a fence or hail a taxi and then slip unnoticed back into civilian life.
"Look at the things I've seen and done," he said the other day. "My life is a facade."
But perhaps his greatest accomplishment was beating the largest and most complex organization in the United States: the military.
And he did it at a time when the armed forces have been letting fewer people in, the Pentagon is downsizing and closing bases, and the Army and Navy have offered early retirements and buyouts in order to get people out.
"It's amazing. I'm intrigued. I'm appalled," said Kathleen M. Gilberd, a paralegal counselor who specializes in military administrative matters in San Diego, where Beacham went through several of his Navy boot camps.
"Eight is a hell of a lot of enlistments, and I'm a little puzzled because you'd think the background checks would catch him."
Robert Bowers, a Fairfield, Calif., attorney who as an Army captain prosecuted Beacham at Ft. Ord, said that in the 500 courts-martial he has handled, nothing compares in scope to the revolving-door antics of Navy Petty Officer-turned-Army Pvt. Walter Banks Beacham Jr.
"He knew the system, he knew the right codes," Bowers said. "And that's all stuff that even most prosecutors and lawyers don't know.
"And you have to consider that recruiters have certain quotas they have to make, and recruiting is difficult right now with the drawdown. There may be some oversight by recruiters who look the other way."
With phony birth certificates, fake driver's licenses and fraudulent Social Security cards, Beacham enlisted over and over again under multiple aliases. It was a pattern that turned his life into a double-entendre.
The product of a mixed marriage, he can easily pass as either white, African American, Cuban or Puerto Rican. He said he was raised in and out of juvenile halls in Chicago and California. He took the nickname "Sonny," and on his left shoulder is etched a tattoo of battling good and bad angels. "It reminds me I'm in conflict with myself," he said.
Today, at age 34, he lives in a $160-a-month room near Los Angeles City College, works as a private security guard but is still so restless that during an interview in a downtown office building he could not resist the urge to deceive others. After excusing himself to use the men's room, he returned with the distinct smell of cigarette smoke on his breath.
"I guess I can only take it back to my childhood," he said. "I had the features of a white kid but the attitude of a black kid. I could pass for anything. I could be an innocent, cute, little kid or a troublemaker. I took chances and I got away with it.
"And I observe things. I keep my eyes open. I see stuff. And I never want to be lost. I look for shortcuts. I see life differently. Basically it's just like I'm seeing for myself that I'm a loner. I like to take chances, and by being a loner, you're the leader of your gang because you're the only one in it."
His mother also tried to explain her son's psyche, recalling how he was made a ward of the state when he was 9 years old because "I couldn't control his behavior."
"They said he had a double personality, and he was almost diagnosed schizophrenic," said Mary Ann Beacham of Oakland. "Sometimes he would act one way and sometimes another.
"He needs to get his life together," she added.
Reassembling his life is now Beacham's greatest challenge. In the past, he joined the service for signing bonuses of up $4,000, for trips to exotic ports in Asia and Europe, and for his greatest love--the chance to live someone else's life.
According to military records and Beacham's own recollections, he first joined the Navy in 1980 in Oakland. He had stopped in at a recruiting station at a local mini-mall, full of patriotic zeal to "defend my country and do the good thing."
"I had a big Afro," he said. "It was out there. It looked like I was in one of those Snoop Doggy Dogg videos."
He said the recruiter later came to his home. "There were about eight of my friends and we were all sitting around and smoking and drinking and he recruited us all," Beacham said.
His Navy days ended in six weeks.
During boot camp at a San Diego training center, Beacham felt uncomfortable in what he called the "white man's Navy." After seven brief AWOL incidents, he left for good. "I put away my uniform, I got my money, I took a cab out of the front gate and then a Greyhound to L.A."
FEATURED
MORE:
Advertisement
