FT. BRAGG, N.C. — Day after day, the widows sit silently in court, a few feet from the soldier accused of murdering their husbands. They listen as their husbands' violent deaths play out again and again in witness testimony. Sometimes, they say, the defendant stares at them with a contempt that both terrifies and enrages them.
Barbara Allen and Siobhan Esposito have put their lives on hold since June 7, 2005, the day prosecutors say Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez killed their husbands in Iraq. Capt. Phillip Esposito and 1st Lt. Louis Allen died after a claymore mine, a plastic shell filled with 700 steel balls and C-4 explosive, blew up as they played the board game Risk inside one of Saddam Hussein's palaces in Tikrit.
Martinez, a short, stout man with spectacles and clipped hair, is on trial for his life. Barbara and Siobhan have attended more than three years of hearings, determined to see Martinez convicted and given the death penalty.
The two women have found solace and support in their shared ordeal. After sitting through countless hearings in Kuwait and the U.S., they have forged a tight bond. They sometimes finish each other's sentences. Barbara calls Siobhan "my life partner." Siobhan calls Barbara "my faux spouse."
They did not meet until Phillip Esposito's wake but they are now inextricably linked, soul mates for life. Each says she could not have persevered without the other.
The last 3 1/2 years have been emotionally debilitating. The women, in seeking justice for their husbands' deaths, spend weeks at a time away from their children. They have rented apartments in the same complex in nearby Fayetteville, N.C., for the military trial, which began Oct. 22 and will continue into December. Their determination has cost them about $15,000, which they have paid out of their savings and private donations.
They file into court every weekday, past Martinez perched at a defense table, and sit in the front row. They have endured testimony from nearly 100 military witnesses, delivered in crisp, clinical tones that belie the brutality of their husbands' deaths. They have heard the prosecution portray Martinez as a seething, incompetent supply sergeant who openly threatened to kill Esposito, his commander, for disciplining him. They have heard the defense describe a flawed investigation that relied on circumstantial evidence and failed to pursue other potential suspects.
