FLORISSANT, MO. — Inside the tidy suburban St. Louis home of John and Linda Johnson, no photos of their eldest daughter grace the walls. Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson was just 19 when she died in Iraq in 2005; to this day her parents cannot bear to display reminders of her life.
John Johnson does possess other photos of his daughter -- explicit color shots of her autopsy and death scene. He shows them to a visitor. They are horrifying: LaVena in a pool of blood. LaVena's corpse on a coroner's table.
Johnson does not let his wife, Linda, and his four children see these images, but he studies the photos for hours at a time, trying to determine how his daughter died.
Army investigators ruled that LaVena committed suicide by firing her M-16 automatic rifle into her mouth. Her body was found beside the rifle in a contractor's storage tent on a U.S. military base in Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005.
There was no suicide note, no recovered bullet and no significant gunshot residue on her hands. But the Army cited fellow soldiers' reports that she was depressed and had spoken of killing herself.
Johnson maintains that his daughter was raped and killed, and that her death scene was staged to make it appear as if she shot herself. He accuses the Army of covering up for a killer or killers to conceal a soldier-on-soldier slaying, explaining that military personnel would have had unrestricted access to the area where his daughter died and therefore would not have attracted undue attention.
If LaVena's death were investigated as a homicide, Johnson added, it would raise questions about base security and discourage women from enlisting.
In 2005, in response to concerns about sexual assaults against female service members, the Pentagon established the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. Citing a reluctance among female service members to report rape for fear of stigma or reprisals, the office does not share information with law enforcement or the military command.
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More cases
Like the Johnsons, other families have questioned the military's suicide findings in the deaths of their daughters in Iraq or Afghanistan. They too accuse the military of jumping to conclusions and ignoring evidence of murder.
But these grieving families have discovered that there are no clear answers and few conclusive facts, only murky evidence that can be interpreted more than one way. The result is a climate of mistrust and suspicion that leaves the military on the defensive and the families feeling deceived.
