“I hope I can be instrumental in finding out what happened, because he was a brother of mine and such a good friend,” said Sandoval. “She’ll be a lifelong friend,” he said, referring to Cindy. “She knows that my mind holds a treasure for her in memories of him.”
Cindy met some of the other soldiers who served with Adam, and through them she learned what many veterans were coping with. The military prescribed Paxil and Valium for them (anti-depression and antianxiety medications, respectively), but Cindy felt they never received enough treatment for what they endured in Iraq. She noticed Adam’s friends were frequently getting drunk and getting into fights. They had difficulty focusing on their work and maintaining lasting relationships.
“This is not just about Adam. This is about all of these kids that are in serious trouble,” Cindy said. “I want to be a voice to say that these kids are not getting their medical treatments.”
Cindy felt that such “serious trouble” wasn’t just a result of the difficulties that veterans had faced coming home.
“I just know that something happened in Iraq,” she said. “I want to know exactly what screwed all these kids up in Iraq.”
During the time that Cindy first sought answers, she and Roy received from Fort Wainwright a videotape of the memorial service that the Army put together for Adam in 2004. There were grainy images of a military gathering in a packed auditorium.
“We gather here today to remember Sergeant Adam Gray and bring closure to his death,” began an officer. Minutes later, the same officer described how many on the base thought Adam had committed suicide. Roy and Cindy were taken aback.
What gave him the right to say that? they asked.
Was it, in fact, a suicide? True, he had acute PTSD, but his family believed his condition had been stabilizing. Or did he inadvertently kill himself using improvised recreational drugs? The military assumed it was the latter. Investigators said Adam accidentally killed himself when he inhaled the fumes from the Dust-Off. Others, including Cindy, weren’t so sure. She felt it didn’t add up.
“It was a blow. How can you talk to your kid one night and the next day they tell you your boy is dead?” said Roy, explaining the continued confusion over Adam’s death. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Tony Sandoval agreed. He also puzzled over the military’s response.
“Now if somebody should come back and say, ‘It’s true, it’s positive, he committed suicide,’ then there’s still another big fight,” said Sandoval. “Why? Why did he have to do that? Nobody was there to help him. It doesn’t just happen. How come somebody didn’t notice this?”
Six months after uniformed officers came to their house with news about Adam, Cindy was finally able to start probing what had happened to her son. She first went through the personal effects from his barracks room in Fort Wainwright. Then she tried to make sense of the paperwork that the military sent her. Cindy figured there were more Army documents about Adam and tussled with the military for months just to get basic information.
Eventually she contacted her congressman, Bill Thomas, to apply further pressure on the Army. Thanks to their combined pressure, Cindy finally received a pile of paperwork from the military. Thumbing through the pages, she saw that investigators had classified Adam’s room as a crime scene and labeled his belongings in a “Record of Personal Effects.” There were also reports about discovering Adam’s body and his physical pathology, his medication, a death certificate, and finally a psychological autopsy.
During one of my visits to Tehachapi, Cindy allowed me to examine the files. The pages of the autopsy revealed that Adam “had experienced poor sleep, decreased appetite, stomachaches, headaches, and hypervigilance” since returning from Iraq.
“Gray was upset by thoughts of not being a good NCO,” the report said. “Gray said that those problems were due to the way he felt about what happened to him during his deployment. Gray said that he could not sleep without alcohol, and that the last time he did sleep without alcohol, he woke up screaming with the sheets soaked with his sweat.”
Such symptoms weren’t uncommon for veterans who suffered from PTSD. But perhaps the most arresting part of the report was this: “Gray had risk factors for suicide. He had made a suicide gesture three weeks before his death.”
On August 8, 2004, a friend of Adam’s and his girlfriend entered his barracks room around 9:30 p.m. There they found him hanging by a belt that was fastened to the top bunk bed. Adam was breathing but unconscious. His friends hoisted him up to loosen the belt tied around his neck, then quickly called 911. Adam might have died that evening had they not stumbled into his room and roused him.
According to the report, Adam “suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from his experiences in Iraq, and he had a substance abuse problem. Both conditions increase his suicide risk. His status as recently being released from a psychiatric hospital increases his statistical risk of suicide.”
And yet the forensic opinion ended with the statement that Adam Gray’s “death is best classified as an accident.”
Cindy felt that the investigation was incomplete; basic information about the barracks’ guard rotations that would have checked in on Adam during the night, the record of his phone calls, and his financial information appeared to be missing. Apart from the lack of investigative follow-up work, there also seemed to be basic unanswered questions about Adam. If he “had risk factors for suicide”—and even attempted suicide three weeks before his death—why hadn’t the military taken more aggressive measures to monitor and treat him? Why didn’t the military try to deal with the particular “problems … due to the way he felt about what happened to him during his deployment”?
Was the Army covering something up? she wondered. Why didn’t they seek answers to such seemingly obvious questions?
Cindy tried to contact the doctor who treated Adam in Alaska to see if he could help explain what had happened to her son. But her calls went unanswered. Then she tried to locate former unit members from Alaska. She finally got a reply from Richard Boone’s wife, Lisa, in the form of a handwritten letter. She was contrite about Cindy’s loss and tried to offer some insight into Adam’s state of mind during the time she and her husband knew him in Alaska.
“Adam stated something to the effect that he had a hard time dealing with what he had done,” she wrote.
By way of explanation, she recalled that Adam came over to their house during the summer for a night of heavy drinking.
“That night those boys tied a good one on. I’m talking two cases of beer between them both,” wrote Lisa. As the night progressed, Adam’s friends drifted off to bed. He decided to stay up longer, drinking and smoking on a recliner.
“He was tired, and had way too much to drink, began rubbing his forehead and saying, ‘I just wish I could show them what I had to do,’ ” continued Lisa. “At that point I took the beer away and everyone decided to go to bed.”
Her letter then made a vague reference to Adam’s troubled thoughts: “Anyway…it was the comment he made about the things he did that I was getting to.” Despite the vagueness, Adam Gray’s family and friends agreed that they needed to further understand “the things he did” in order to make sense of his decline.
Throughout the time I reported on Adam Gray and Battalion 1-68, I told Cindy that I was concerned about relaying any new details that would add to her pain.
“I’m not worried,” she insisted. “This chapter has been opened for three years … I’ve already been through the worst. I just want answers. But I want the truth. I want to find somebody on this planet to find me that information.”
Cindy had already been through the worst. Nothing could undo the loss of a beloved son.
“They’re born with part of your soul,” said Cindy. “And once they’re gone, that’s a whole part of you that’s gone.”
She