Murder of a Fake Brig. Gen.
Maggie
first place I've seen all the details lain out together. A fascinating story.
From the Washington Post:
What Lies Beneath
By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 12, 2000; Page F01
HIS FLAG FLEW ALL THAT WINTRY NIGHT.
That's when neighbors first began to worry. The man they knew as U.S. Army
Reserve Brig. Gen. Michael K. Blankenship was very particular about his flag.
He raised it with the sun each day and took it down each night. If he was going
to be delayed, neighbors Florence and Mike Michalski took it down for him.
Nothing was to soil the Stars and Stripes. "You know, I could never fold it as
good as he could," Flo Michalski says.
The flag flew on through the next day and into the next, Jan. 25, the worst
snowstorm of the year.
It was crusted with ice and clumps of snow by the time the bundled-up St.
Mary's County sheriff's detective knocked on the Michalskis' door and told them
Blankenship was dead.
"It was still so bad out I was shocked to see a policewoman standing there,"
Flo Michalski remembers.
It seemed unbelievable to the Michalskis that their wonderful neighbor was
gone, strangled in his downstairs bathroom in his well-kept town house in quiet
Leonardtown, 60 miles south of the District line.
Blankenship, 49, had been such a lovely, caring person, neighbors say. He
worked as a mortician at nearby Brinsfield Funeral Home, but he had done so
much more for the community--taught volunteers to work with the dying for the
county hospice, spearheaded fundraisers for the Rotary Club of Leonardtown,
kept meticulous books as the treasurer for the local Democratic Club.
He also was not too modest to tell people he was a brigadier general in the
U.S. Army Reserve who oversaw funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, and that
he was a special friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton's who had been helping the
president's speechwriting team on the upcoming State of the Union address.
Because Blankenship was such a well-known do-gooder in the county of 89,000,
news of his death traveled quickly by telephone trees, even before some
residents dug themselves out from under the week's heavy snow. Even in a county
that only gets three to five murders a year, folks could tell this one was a
doozy.
There was no sign of forced entry to Blankenship's home, yet inside, drawers
had been opened, a pair of Blankenship's glasses thrown on a table, a tie slung
on a doorknob. At the computer table, a crumpled napkin with a handwritten
message: "FAG." A gun lay undisturbed on a dresser.
"We couldn't think of anybody who had it in for him," Florence Michalski says.
"There wasn't a person around here who didn't like him."
It's been nine months. And in that time residents of St. Mary's County have
learned truths about Michael Blankenship's private life they never would have
dreamed. As St. Mary's County State's Attorney Richard Fritz put it, "This guy
is an absolute, total fraud."
But today, even after Blankenship's lives--both real and imagined--have been
revealed, the Michalskis and other friends in St. Mary's County still remember
Michael Blankenship fondly. It's the friendship that has mattered, not the
lies.
"He added so much to our lives," says another neighbor, former Leonardtown
Council member Jay Battle. "He added a lot more than he took away, with his
life in the shadows."
Fritz isn't so sure. Even though his job was to prosecute the killer, he found
himself shaken by the unsavory secrets of the victim's life. "Nobody ever, ever
suspected. Nobody looks behind what they're standing next to. It's shocking. .
. . There's a dark side out there. We have to open our eyes to it."
'Good Stories to Tell'
Armed with a resume that was thick with Kiwanis service awards, Blankenship
arrived in Southern Maryland in 1989, taking a job at Huntt Funeral Home in
Waldorf. "He was very helpful and very nice," says a former co-worker there.
"That's why I believed everything he said. Like he told me he had a sister but
he didn't have a sister."
At least one of the things Blankenship told people at Huntt was true: He had
been an aide to an Army general.
In 1993 he moved to St. Mary's County and purchased a $100,000 town house on
Courthouse Drive near his new job at Brinsfield Funeral Home. At some point
after the move, he began telling his new friends that he was a major, and then
a colonel, in the U.S. Army Reserve. Using what appeared to be a valid military
ID card identifying him as a major, he was able to obtain a membership in the
Patuxent River Naval Air Station's officers club, according to officials there.
He would frequently treat visitors and friends to fancy dinners at Cedar Point,
the officers club overlooking the restive waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
"He was a marvelous host," Mervyn Hampton said shortly after the murder.
Hampton, then president of the Democratic Club of St. Mary's County, was a
frequent guest of Blankenship's at Cedar Point. "Michael could spin a good
yarn. He had a lot of good stories to tell about politics and government and
his relationships with the White House people." Among other things, he told
Hampton he had gone to school with Hillary Clinton.
Blankenship joined the Democratic Club, serving as its treasurer from 1997 to
1999--he was particularly passionate about health care and military issues. At
the time of his death, he was in line to become president of the Rotary Club of
Leonardtown, after he had spearheaded a successful rodeo and "Dream Night"
dance fundraisers for the service group.
At Christ Church in Chaptico, he read lessons at the Episcopal services and
worked as an usher.
Passing himself off as an officer had apparently been so easy that in 1998 he
decided to give himself a promotion.
The Jan. 13, 1998, issue of the Democratic Club's newsletter, the Party Line,
contained this sunny little item: "A formal salute may not be necessary, but
congratulations are certainly in order. Club Treasurer Michael Blankenship was
nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate as a Brigadier General
in the U.S. Army Reserve. . . . Congratulations Michael!"
"When he showed up at social functions in his dress uniform, he was a sight to
behold," Hampton said shortly after the murder. Although impressive, the
uniform and insignia were not hard to come by--available at military surplus
stores and on the Internet. He wore the ribbons of a Vietnam veteran, and a
patch that identified him as a member of the U.S. Army Reserve Command.
Around this time, Blankenship began dropping hints around the county that he
was a special friend of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. He was always vague
but matter-of-fact enough about his association with the White House that St.
Mary's Countians generally took him at his word.
He gave a presentation to the Rotary Club about Air Force One, complete with
slides, and people just assumed he had ridden on it. He also said he was
serving as a voluntary adviser to the White House speechwriting office on
military affairs.
"It always seemed to be connected with the State of the Union," Hampton
recalled in an earlier interview. "He was just 'going uptown' to look at,
review and add to, polish up, whatever."
At least one politician raised an eyebrow over Blankenship's claims.
"His claims of close relations with the Clintons never struck me as
particularly credible, but it never dawned on me that he wasn't a general,"
says Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who had spoken with Blankenship on a handful of
occasions. "He said he was close to the Clintons, knew them from Arkansas,
wrote speeches for them. I know a lot of those speechwriters, and they know I
represent St. Mary's, and they had never mentioned him to me."
But he was still talking the talk at Christmastime last year during a chat with
the Michalskis before he left to spend the holidays with his family in West
Virginia.
"Before he left, we exchanged Christmas gifts," says Flo Michalski. "He said
President Clinton was right concerned over the Y2K situation."
The Actual Army
"It was a great place to grow up," says Postmaster Relief Lorna Jones, 38,
leaning up against the counter in the tiny post office in Rock, W.Va., a town
so small it isn't even on some maps. This day her post office is as quiet as an
empty church.
This little town--just a "wide spot in the road," the locals say--is where
Michael Blankenship was born and raised, in a two-story white house on the side
of a smoky gray hill, overlooking farms and the Blue Stone River. His father
had managed a company store for a mining camp and his mother was a
schoolteacher at a local high school.
The Blankenship boys are remembered here as nice, polite, from a good family,
locals say.
"Here, he was perfectly normal," says Sam Davis, 81, a retired Matoaka grocer.
"That's all we can tell you."
After graduating from Matoaka High School in 1968, Blankenship went off to
Concord College in Athens, W.Va., where he spent four semesters before joining
the Army.
He served three years, from 1970 to 1973, according to military records at the
National Archives and Records Administration in St. Louis. He was never an
officer, but reached the rank of specialist (E-5).
His last duty assignment was with the U.S. Theater Army Support Command Europe,
in West Germany. There he served under Maj. Gen. J.E. Pieklik, the commander of
the U.S. Army Materiel Command Europe, who is now retired and lives in Chester,
Va.
Pieklik's reminiscences of his former underling--whom he calls "a very good
aide" who always kept his brass buttons sparkling--provide a tantalizing
glimpse of behavior Blankenship was to exhibit later in life. Blankenship was
an excellent cook who made delicious pastries and "flamboyant" hors d'oeuvres,
the general remembers.
When Pieklik got his second star, he recalls, he threw a promotion party at the
officers club in Zwiebruecken and Blankenship stood at the door, greeting
guests in a uniform he designed himself. A very fanciful costume, the general
said. Blankenship added blue epaulets and other fancy trimmings to a coat in a
way that was fetching but definitely not regulation.
"I was shocked when I saw it," Pieklik remembers. "He was standing at the door
greeting everybody . . . saluting everybody with a happy manner. He was
designing his own uniform like Ike or MacArthur. It really was a very nice
outfit."
Blankenship left active Army service in 1973--later earning an honorable
discharge from the Reserve in 1976--and went to mortuary school at the
Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science in Ohio, graduating in 1979. Then,
already in his mid-thirties, Blankenship moved back in with his parents in his
childhood home on Rock River Road and took a job at Bailey Funeral Home in
nearby Princeton.
His father, Auldie K. Blankenship, brought him into the Matoaka Kiwanis Club
and Michael enlivened its aging membership, remembers Davis, also a former
Kiwanian. "Michael was a shot in the arm for our Kiwanis Club," Davis says.
"Any type of service project. He took it on--pancake breakfast, bean dinner. He
was right in the middle of it all." He eventually rose to become a lieutenant
governor, a kind of regional officer for the service group.
He did other, less visible good works.
Charles Carl describes himself as "young, dumb and going no place fast" when
Blankenship befriended him in 1976. He took up for Carl, a flower delivery boy,
and encouraged him to get an education. Carl ended up attending Blankenship's
alma mater, graduating in 1983 and becoming a mortician.
A decade later, when Carl was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Blankenship
gave him a loan to help his family scrape by while he awaited his first
disability check.
"He was a perfectionist," Carl recalls. "Everything he did he tried to do the
right way."
But by 1986, cracks began to appear in Blankenship's peppy, well-groomed
facade. In October of that year he was indicted on three felony counts of
embezzlement by a Mercer County grand jury for allegedly stealing more than
$4,000 from several elderly West Virginians who had prepaid for their funerals
with Blankenship, the manager of "pre-need burial contracts" with Bailey
Funeral Home.
He ultimately pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to six months
work release, served in the Harrison County Correctional Facility. A friend
from Kiwanis then helped him get a job managing a Bonanza steakhouse.
"He done me so dirty that I don't have much love for him," Rowland Bailey, his
former boss, said that summer, according to court records. "He really throwed
it to me."
The E-Mail
Blankenship was not openly homosexual, but many who knew him assumed it. When
he was working at Huntt in Waldorf, he made some rudimentary effort to hide it.
He often spoke of his ill sister languishing in a convalescent home--a sister
who didn't exist--and introduced a clean-cut, bespectacled man in his twenties
who would frequently come and stay with Blankenship and accompany him on trips
to the beach as that sister's grown son, his "nephew" James.
On Jan. 22, a Saturday, Blankenship worked a Saturday shift at Brinsfield
Funeral home as planned. He had excitedly e-mailed a friend in California a few
days before that his lover was coming for a short visit.
The following Monday, Blankenship did not show up for work.
Even with the bad weather, such behavior was so greatly out of character for
Blankenship, generally so meticulous and punctual, that his boss, Edward "Ned"
Brinsfield, grew concerned. When he failed to show up for a second day,
Brinsfield went to the sheriff's office, and together they drove to
Blankenship's home.
"You walk in, the house is secure, locked, no sign of forced entry. Inside, the
house was in disarray. You have the victim laying in the bathroom with the door
closed, with ligature marks on his neck," recalls Sheriff's Lt. John Horne, the
criminal investigations division commander.
Later, investigators and others who viewed the crime scene photos would remark
at how calmly Blankenship seemed to have accepted his fate. Aside from the
strangulation marks, there was not a scratch on him, his clothing undisturbed.
No sign of a struggle. As if he had laid himself out for his own funeral.
Neighbors told police of Blankenship's military record, but investigators
quickly learned the truth. At that point, Horne and other detectives were less
concerned with Blankenship's lies than finding a motive and a killer.
Investigators were able to reconstruct Blankenship's Web surfing as well as
e-mail correspondence between Blankenship and a young soldier at Fort Lewis,
Wash., Jairo Torres.
Their electronic correspondence was a road map to their relationship, which
began when Blankenship attempted to mentor the young soldier--playing the wiser
experienced officer--and quickly deepened into romance.
"Blankenship is telling this kid: Look, you're 19 now. I want to get you into
ROTC, into college. I want to introduce you to all my admiral and general
friends," Fritz says. "He's basically leading this boy to believe he was going
to be made into something very special. An officer and a gentleman, shall we
say."
The Recruit
Jairo F. Torres, who is now 20, was 11 when he immigrated from Quertaro,
Mexico, to Randleman, N.C. His father had left the family when Jairo was 5,
leaving his mother, a high school dropout, with five children. Before they
immigrated, Jairo, his mother and two other siblings spent time living in a
homeless shelter.
Arriving at Randleman, the Torres family opened up a small Mexican grocery
store where Jairo and his brothers and sisters helped out.
"We were enrolled in public school and at night worked hard on our homework,"
Torres wrote in his college application essay, which Blankenship helped him
write. "It was difficult. We did not speak any English, so we had to learn the
language as we learned our lessons."
His was the classic American success story, according to prosecutor Fritz, who
now views the young man he prosecuted with a measure of sympathy.
Torres excelled, ultimately graduating with honors in 1998 from Asheboro High
School. Shortly thereafter he joined the Army, hoping to earn money for
college.
"When I graduated from the United States Army Basic Infantry Training School, I
felt like an American," Torres wrote. "Although I still carried a 'green card'
in my wallet, I also carried a United States Army Identification Card, just
like every other GI. I was serving this country. I was part of this country. I
was on my way to being a success. The sun was shining."
He ended up in the Army's 20th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis, part of a
"platform unit" that was constantly drilling and training. During his time
there he received two promotions, winding up a specialist--the same rank
Blankenship had attained.
By "pure luck," as Torres put it in his essay, he met a man calling himself a
high-ranking officer who agreed to be his military mentor.
"On a very sunny day in July, 1999, I stepped off an airplane at Ronald Reagan
National Airport in Washington," he wrote. "At the end of the ramp I met for
the first time, Brigadier General Michael K. Blankenship. The sun was
glistening on the insignia of his rank and reflecting in my eyes. Reflections I
would appreciate for the remainder of my life."
The Arrest
READ THE REST AT:
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61079-2000Nov10.html
Maggie
"Pretty smart campaign for a dumb guy."--Newsweek on George W.