In the last few weeks, Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper released a series of grisly photos showing American soldiers murdering Afghan civilians seemingly for the fun of it.
These photos shocked the world and resulted in the swift arrest of the so-called ‘kill team.’
One of the members of the ‘kill team’ has agreed to testify against the other members of the team in return for a reduced sentence. That soldier is Jeremy Morlock and he is the first to be court-martialed.
In an effort to find out what makes a man such a soulless killer, the Daily Beast’s Shushannah Walsh conducted a series of interviews with people close to him from his hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.
If the name sounds familiar, that is because Wasilla is the town where Sarah Palin got her start in politics as mayor.
Strangely enough, Jeremy Morlock is also a former hockey teammate and friend of Sarah Palin’s son Track. That this small town has produced an infamous murderer and a vice presidential candidate (and a possible republican presidential candidate) is a strange coincidence.
In one interview Morlock’s former physical education teacher and hockey coach Jamie Smith says of Jeremy that he was “an aggressive kid, no doubt about it.”
In the interview Smith does not deny that Jeremy was intimately involved with the crimes he is accused of, but he also stresses that he does not believe he acted alone. Some in the interviews note that there was certainly a personality change after the untimely death of Jeremy’s father in 2007, but it was not the beginning of his violent outbursts.
One story about Jeremy took place in a high school hockey game in which, during a fight with another player, Jeremy grabbed him by the throat, slammed him into a wall and then elbowed him in the face.
Jeremy Morlock’s actions and personality may have been rooted in his early life but his acts of incomprehensible brutality in Afghanistan has shocked and embarrassed America. Many are calling for him to receive the maximum sentence of 24 years, and it is hoped that his testimony will put the other members of the ‘kill team’ away for as long as possible.