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on In the Dark. How

0:25

did the Marine seem? They

0:31

are angry and they want just to shoot.

0:37

They get his rifle and the bird

0:39

and start shooting at us. When we are under

0:41

the bird. He

0:44

put his rifle and start shooting to me and North. Maybe

0:47

a lot of this is imagination

0:49

and none of this was near as bad as

0:51

it seemed. I'm talking about what actually happened to

0:53

the civilians. Those

0:57

pictures today are still not

0:59

the same. Frankly,

1:07

I believe I gave the Marines the

1:09

benefit of the doubt, every opportunity that

1:12

I could. Yeah, I

1:14

mean, did you think that a war crime

1:16

had been committed? I

1:18

don't have any opinion on that. The

1:30

first investigation into what happened on November 19,

1:32

2005 in Haditha, the one conducted by

1:36

Colonel Watt, was brief and friendly and

1:38

not too detailed. But for

1:40

all of Watt's inclination to give the Marines the

1:42

benefit of the doubt, he did recommend another

1:45

investigation, a criminal one. And this

1:48

investigation was conducted by investigators who

1:50

were not so friendly, not so

1:52

willing to give the Marines the benefit of the doubt. This

1:56

investigation was conducted by NCIS.

6:00

told NCIS that was actually a

6:02

lie. The men were just

6:04

standing there, some of them with their hands up.

6:07

He said he'd lied about it after Wudirich

6:09

told him to. After

6:12

the shooting by the white car, the Marines moved

6:14

to the houses. And the

6:17

NCIS statements from the shooters about what

6:19

happened inside those houses were full of

6:21

startling admissions. Like how

6:23

when the Marines arrived at 11-year-old Safa's house,

6:26

they apparently rang the doorbell, and then Safa's

6:28

dad, Eunice, came to the door to answer

6:30

it. One of the

6:32

Marines, Humberto Mendoza, told NCIS that he

6:35

then shot Eunice right in the doorway,

6:38

shot a man for answering his own door. And

6:41

Mendoza also told investigators that he'd

6:43

shot another man in the house nearby because he

6:45

thought he was reaching for something, even

6:47

though he never saw a gun. I

6:51

read statement after statement from Marines describing

6:54

firing quickly inside the houses without

6:56

identifying who they were shooting at, even

6:58

though the rules of engagement said you had

7:00

to identify people, had to determine that they

7:02

were the enemy before shooting at them. One

7:06

Marine, Hector Salinas, described shooting a

7:08

figure in the hallway of six-year-old

7:10

Abdul-Rahman's house. That figure turned

7:12

out to be a grandmother. Another

7:15

Marine, Lance Corporal Justin Sherritt, told

7:18

investigators that he stood near the doorway

7:20

of Abdul-Rahman's living room and fired

7:22

blindly until he ran out of ammo. All

7:30

right, it is Friday and I

7:32

am on page 10,091. One

7:35

day in my apartment, I was sitting down for

7:37

my daily reading of the investigative file, making

7:40

my way through the thousands of pages we'd

7:42

received. So I'm diving in. It's

7:44

9.44 in the morning.

7:48

And I've made a lot of coffee to get me

7:50

through this because this is a particularly

7:52

dense batch of documents I know I

7:54

have in front of me today. And

7:56

then I came across something buried in all

7:58

these documents. A statement, actually

8:01

a series of statements that I'd never

8:03

seen before. This is a Tatum thing.

8:06

These statements were from a Marine who had

8:08

seemed to be relatively unremarkable. When

8:10

we talked to other Marines, almost no one could remember

8:12

anything about him. Lance Corporal

8:15

Steven Tatum. Tatum

8:17

had flown under the radar during the initial

8:19

investigation by Colonel Watt. His

8:21

statement to Watt was vague and unmemorable.

8:24

He'd admitted to being in the first two houses that

8:26

morning. The house where six-year-old Abdul-Rahman

8:28

lived with his family, and the next

8:31

house where 11-year-old Safa lived with her

8:33

family. But Tatum didn't mention

8:35

shooting at anyone inside the houses. It

8:37

was all incredibly vague. But

8:39

right away, when Tatum started talking to

8:41

NCIS investigators, he admitted that he'd

8:44

been one of the shooters. He

8:46

said he'd actually shot at people in both of

8:48

those houses. He'd shot in the

8:50

living room of Abdul-Rahman's house and

8:52

inside Safa's house, in the bedroom, where Safa

8:54

and her mother and siblings and aunt were.

8:57

Many of them lying close to each other on a bed.

9:01

But that wasn't all Tatum told NCIS. Tatum

9:07

talked to NCIS several times. And

9:09

at first, he claimed he didn't know who he was

9:11

firing at. He said it was dusty

9:13

and smoky. They could only make out shapes. He

9:16

was just shooting at targets, targets

9:18

he assumed to be hostile. Then

9:21

one day, NCIS investigators were

9:23

interrogating Tatum again. And

9:26

this time, he broke down. He started

9:28

crying. In this interview

9:30

and in other interviews to NCIS, Tatum

9:33

revealed that he knew that he was

9:35

shooting women and children. He

9:37

was looking right at them, but he

9:39

shot them anyway. Tatum

9:43

told investigators that in the first

9:45

house, Abdul-Rahman's house, inside the living

9:47

room, he personally had shot

9:49

four people, all on the right side of

9:51

the room. He said he knew

9:53

he was shooting women and children in that room. He

9:56

said he hadn't seen any weapons on any of them and

9:59

that none of the people. were even standing up when he

10:01

shot them. Tatum told

10:03

NCIS that he only stopped shooting after

10:05

everything in the room stopped moving. He

10:09

recalled how later that day, he saw two children being

10:11

let out of the house to get medical treatment. Those

10:14

two children robbed Will Rachman and his

10:16

sister Iman. Tatum said

10:18

he wondered, how did they survive? In

10:23

the next house, Safa's house, the house where

10:25

Safa hid in the back bedroom while her

10:28

entire family was killed around her, Tatum's statements

10:30

were even more detailed. Tatum

10:32

said he saw his squad leader,

10:34

Sergeant Wudrich, firing in that back

10:37

bedroom. And he followed

10:39

Wudrich inside. He said

10:41

he recognized that women and children were together in

10:43

that back bedroom before he shot them. He

10:45

said some of the children were kneeling. I

10:48

don't remember the exact number, Tatum said, but

10:50

only that it was a lot. And

10:53

then Tatum described one child in particular. He

10:56

said he wasn't sure if this child was a boy or a girl,

10:59

but that they were wearing a white shirt and had short

11:01

hair and were standing on the bed.

11:04

Tatum told investigators that he looked at the

11:06

child and then fired. He

11:09

said, quote, knowing it was a kid,

11:12

I still shot him. Knowing

11:23

it was a kid, I still shot him.

11:26

Tatum had admitted to knowingly shooting

11:28

a child, actually several children, in

11:30

two houses. It was

11:32

about as clear cut of an admission of guilt that you could

11:34

get. At the risk of

11:36

stating the obvious, it's illegal to knowingly

11:38

kill children who don't pose a threat. It's

11:41

a war crime. And yet Tatum

11:43

had never been convicted of a crime, never

11:45

served a day in prison. Tatum

11:48

appeared to place at least some of the blame

11:51

on his squad leader, Sergeant Wudrich. Tatum

11:53

said the only reason he shot the children in

11:55

the bedroom was because he saw Wudrich

11:57

shooting at them first. happened

12:00

in the house nearby, Abdul-Rahman's house,

12:03

Tatum told investigators that he shot the women

12:05

and children in that house because, quote, women

12:08

and kids can hurt you too. Tatum

12:10

told investigators, quote, I

12:12

regret that innocent children were killed that day, but

12:15

I also know I did what I had to do.

13:01

These statements by Tatum ended up being

13:04

used by military prosecutors to file charges

13:06

against him. After the

13:08

charges were filed, Tatum's defense was that

13:10

he actually hadn't made any of those statements

13:13

about knowingly killing women and children, the

13:15

implication being that the statements had been

13:18

fabricated by NCIS. The

13:20

investigators hadn't recorded audio of the interviews with

13:22

Tatum or with any of the Marines, but

13:25

they had taken detailed notes, notes

13:27

from all the interviews they'd had with Tatum where

13:29

he'd admitted to knowing who he was shooting. I

13:32

have those notes and they match the typed up

13:34

statements. These notes and

13:36

statements were written by multiple investigators

13:38

over the course of several interviews

13:40

conducted weeks apart. As

13:43

for Sergeant Wudarich, the squad leader, the one

13:45

who Tatum said had shot first in Abdul-Rahman's

13:47

living room and in the back bedroom of

13:50

Safa's house and who Delacruz said shot first

13:52

at the people by the white car. Wudarich

13:55

never talked to NCIS. He refused

13:57

to. Wudarich had admitted

16:00

November, the trees were bare, the grass

16:02

was dead, they passed one red brick

16:04

house after another until they found his.

16:10

Oh, I think that's his house right there. Yeah,

16:12

are you ready? Yeah.

16:26

Tatum opened the door. He was tall

16:28

and clean shaven. With the same side parted

16:30

hair, we'd seen in photos of him back in Iraq. His

16:33

hair was now graying. He was wearing a blue

16:35

hoodie and jeans. Hey, hello. My name's

16:37

Parker. This is Natalie. We're radio

16:39

reporters. We're working on a project about the

16:42

Iraq war. And we're searching the day in

16:44

Hadith elements corporal trousers was killed. It sounds

16:46

like it was quite an intense day. I

16:48

have no comment. If you

16:50

have any questions, we need to talk to my lawyer. How

16:53

would we get in touch with? Zimmerman and Zimmerman.

16:55

They're out of Houston. We've

16:58

read some of your statements to investigators and it

17:00

sounds like you really regret the way things turned

17:02

out that day. Who wouldn't?

17:05

But like I said, I have no comment. You

17:07

can talk to my lawyer. You can give him

17:09

the questions and he'll decide what I answer. You said

17:12

you do regret what happened that day. What about that

17:14

day? Again,

17:18

you can contact my lawyer. And

17:20

he will forward the questions on to me and I'll decide

17:22

what I want to answer. Okay. There's

17:24

just one thing we need to make sure we ask you

17:26

while we're here. I've already told you everything you're going to

17:28

get. Which is that we've read your statements to investigators where

17:30

you said... Have a nice day. ...that

17:32

you saw women and children in those rooms and you shot

17:34

them anyway. Tatum

17:39

went inside. The interview was over. A

17:48

couple weeks later, I called the law firm

17:50

that represented Tatum to try to see if

17:52

Tatum would reconsider our interview request. I ended

17:54

up talking to one of Tatum's lawyers, a

17:57

woman named Terry Zimmerman. I explained that I wanted to talk to her.

18:00

to talk to Tatum. I said I wondered what his life

18:02

was like now. She told me

18:04

that she thought my questions were valuable, but

18:06

that she thought it probably wouldn't be a good idea

18:08

for Tatum to talk to us. She

18:10

said, quote, you know, there's no

18:12

statute of limitations for murder. So

18:15

as a lawyer, I'm kind of hesitant to advise

18:17

a client to make any statements about a case

18:19

when his case isn't resolved. Zimmerman

18:22

said she'd check in with Tatum and get back to me.

18:25

We spoke a few weeks later, and she told me she

18:27

had a statement for me from Tatum. So

18:30

he's authorized me to tell you that he's

18:32

doing really, really well today. He's

18:35

grown up a lot and he authorized me

18:37

to tell you that he feels

18:41

terrible about the loss of life. I

18:43

mean, obviously nobody wants to

18:45

be responsible for killing another human being, but

18:48

he was just doing his job the way

18:50

he was trained to do. And

18:53

as his lawyers, we've analyzed, you know, the

18:55

facts and the law that applied

18:57

at the time. And we don't feel like he

18:59

violated any kind of rule, any

19:01

kind of authority or law in any

19:03

way. He never intended to break

19:06

the law. He never intended to do anything

19:08

wrong. And we as his lawyers don't think

19:10

he did anything wrong. Got it.

19:13

You know, one of the statements that really

19:16

does stand out to me is something

19:18

that Tatum told investigators that

19:21

in one of the houses, he shot

19:23

at a child knowing it was a

19:26

child. And so I

19:28

just wonder how you can reconcile that statement

19:30

with the idea that he didn't do anything

19:32

wrong. That's a totally fair

19:34

question. I'll have to

19:36

go through my file and find the statement that you're

19:39

talking about. I told Zimmerman I

19:41

could send her a copy of Tatum statements. Yeah.

19:43

If you'll email me that to me, I will

19:45

take a look at it. Sounds good. OK,

19:47

thank you. Yeah, take care. Bye. Bye.

19:51

I emailed her Tatum statements. A

19:54

few weeks later, she emailed me back. She

19:56

said she was going to stick with what she told me on the phone.

19:59

She wrote, quote. Lance Corporal Tatum

20:01

was doing what he was trained to do on

20:03

the orders of people senior to him and

20:05

was just as upset to learn of a loss of life

20:08

as anyone else. He obviously

20:10

wishes that had not happened, but he never

20:12

meant to nor in my opinion did he

20:14

break the law. As I

20:16

do with all of my clients, I've advised him

20:18

not to make any statements to anyone about this

20:20

situation. But he thinks about this

20:22

situation every day. He's done

20:24

his best to get his education and a job

20:26

and to be successful in life. We'll

20:36

be back after the break. Hey,

20:48

it's Madeline. If

20:50

you're a fan of In the Dark and

20:52

you love long form storytelling, and you've listened

20:54

to all the serialized investigative podcasts, and and

20:57

you've already watched everything good on Netflix,

21:00

there is a wealth of stories you're going to

21:02

love waiting for you at the New Yorker. Like

21:05

this story published just this year by Patrick

21:07

Radd and Keefe about a teen who got

21:09

mixed up in the London underworld and then

21:11

mysteriously fell into the Thames. In

21:14

the four years since Zach's death, the

21:16

family has had to confront the extent to which

21:18

the boy they thought they knew had been living

21:20

a double existence. None of the

21:23

Brettlers had ever imagined that Zach might be

21:25

moving about London pretending to be someone else

21:27

altogether. This

21:30

season of In the Dark took us four years

21:32

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21:34

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My Devo, an Apple original podcast

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produced by Futuro Studios. Follow and

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listen on Apple Podcasts. By

22:24

this point, there was so much that I'd learned

22:26

about what had happened that day in Haditha. But

22:29

there was still something missing. The

22:32

pictures, the photos of

22:35

the bodies taken by

22:45

Marines just hours after the killings. The

22:48

photos that the commandant of the Marine

22:50

Corps, General Michael Hagee, had bragged about

22:52

keeping secret. The photos

22:54

that we'd sued the U.S. military to get

22:57

with the help of the survivors, the two collards,

23:00

who went house to house collecting signatures from

23:02

family members of the dead, saying

23:04

they wanted us to have these images, photos

23:07

that the public has never seen. These

23:10

photos could show us what statements and memories

23:12

could not. They could take us

23:14

to the killing sites, to see these sites

23:16

as they looked that day, to show

23:19

us the bodies of the dead. I'd

23:21

wanted these photos for one reason. They

23:24

were evidence that could help me better understand

23:26

what really happened that day. That's

23:28

why all the family members had signed those forms,

23:30

saying they wanted us to have them. And

23:33

then one day... Holy

23:37

shit. I

23:39

am, like, vibrating right now. I look...

23:43

I just woke up to an

23:45

email that says... Well, it

23:47

actually says something really boring, but I

23:50

know how to decipher it. It says,

23:53

NCIS Freedom of Information Act

23:55

Request Release of Information Dash

23:58

Photographs. Wow.

24:05

Okay, I'm going to

24:10

tell Madeline. Hello.

24:12

Hello. What's up? I,

24:16

we have the photos. We

24:19

have all the photos. Oh

24:23

my gosh. Okay.

24:28

This is a very big deal. Okay,

24:34

let me open this. All

24:37

right, I'm opening. Oh

24:40

my God. Oh

24:42

my God. After

24:44

four years of FOIA

24:46

requests and lawsuits and

24:48

help from the survivors, the military

24:51

had finally agreed to turn over

24:53

the photos to us. Oh

24:55

my God, there's so many photos. There

24:58

were more than a hundred photos. They

25:00

included many taken by Marines on the day of

25:02

the killings, and they included

25:04

photos taken months later by

25:06

the criminal investigators from NCIS. The

25:11

photos go through the entire chronology of the

25:13

killings. So this is all photos of

25:15

the people from the car? Yep.

25:17

There are images of every single person the Marines

25:19

killed that day. I'm going to open the next

25:21

file. For photos, you can

25:23

see the numbers that the Marines scrawled on the

25:25

bodies of the dead with a red sharpie. I'm

25:27

looking at a photo of someone who

25:30

looks like they have maybe a 20

25:32

drawn on their head. It's a little unclear.

25:36

There are wide shots of rooms,

25:38

bullet holes, and blood covering the

25:40

walls. Maybe shrapnel or bullet holes,

25:42

shattered window, bullet hole in the

25:44

window. And there are close-ups

25:46

of faces. These are horrible.

25:49

Yeah, I see why you wouldn't want these photos released

25:51

to the public. We kept

25:53

going through them. One horrible

25:55

photo after another. Oh, there's

25:58

one photo. It's so devastating. There's

26:00

a mom on her back lying

26:03

dead on the bed. And

26:07

then all of her dead children around her. And

26:12

there's a little boy who's like curled up next

26:15

to his mom. You can see how he's like

26:18

kind of has his arm on

26:20

his mom's stomach. Yeah, and

26:22

he's just like burrowing into the blanket.

26:25

Yeah. It's

26:30

terrible. Yeah.

26:42

Now that we had the photos, we needed to

26:44

make sense of them to see

26:46

what exactly these photos could tell us. I

26:49

needed to look at these photos with someone who knows what

26:51

to look for. So we got

26:53

in touch with a forensics expert named Kevin

26:56

Parmalee. You go by Mr. Parmalee

26:58

or Kevin or how shall I address you?

27:00

If it's informal, we could just do a

27:02

Kevin, that's fine. Okay, all right. Well, I'm

27:05

Madeline Barron. It's great to meet you. Parmalee

27:07

is a former detective with more than 20

27:09

years experience in law enforcement. His

27:11

specialties include forensic reconstruction. He

27:14

helped create national standards for how to investigate

27:16

crime scenes. When I

27:18

first called up Parmalee to ask if he'd be willing

27:20

to review the materials I had, he agreed

27:22

to take a look. But he cautioned

27:24

me not to expect him to get too worked up

27:26

over the photos. He said he'd

27:29

spend his career looking at photos that most

27:31

people would consider terribly gruesome. Photos

27:33

like that, he said, can look really bad, but

27:36

not actually prove anything. He

27:38

added that his brother was a Marine who'd fought in Iraq. He

27:41

said he knew that in war zones, decisions about

27:43

what to do can get really complicated. Over

27:46

there, it's a different environment and your

27:48

threats can come from anywhere. You

27:50

know, it's a much more hostile

27:53

environment because it's a war zone. I

27:55

mean, you can't let your guard

27:57

down at all with

27:59

all those caveats. out of the way, we

28:01

sent Parmalee what we had. He

28:03

emailed back saying he'd stayed up until two in the

28:06

morning, the first night he got the materials. And

28:08

he continued meticulously reviewing everything we'd

28:10

sent. A few weeks later, I

28:13

gave him a call. So I

28:15

mean, overall, how valuable would you say

28:17

these photos are? Oh, exceptionally

28:19

valuable. They are very

28:21

powerful. Like these photos are beautiful.

28:24

It might sound like an odd thing to say, these

28:27

photos are beautiful. But Parmalee

28:29

is a forensics expert. He

28:31

was looking at these photos in a very particular

28:33

way to see what they could tell us. And

28:36

it turned out they could tell us a lot. Especially

28:39

with the bullet defects and the

28:41

blood and the positioning of the

28:43

bodies, that actually lends

28:45

a lot of information towards

28:48

reconstructing the sequence of events.

28:50

So this is how we kind of piece

28:53

it all together. Let's

28:55

start with the first people the Marines killed that day.

28:58

Five men who were killed after getting out of

29:00

a white car near the site of the IED

29:02

explosion. Some of the Marines had claimed

29:04

those men were running when they were shot. But

29:07

then one of those Marines changed the story. Sonic

29:11

Delacruz told NCIS that actually the

29:13

men were just standing by the

29:15

car. Some of them with their

29:17

hands up when they were killed. The

29:19

photos clearly showed that the men were right next to

29:21

the car, not where you'd expect to

29:23

see them if they'd been running away. And

29:26

there was something else that was a little less obvious. Something

29:29

that Parmalee noticed that indicated that maybe

29:31

what happened to these men was

29:33

even more chilling than what Delacruz had said. It

29:37

was the way the body of one of the men was positioned.

29:40

It looked like his legs were tucked underneath him. He

29:42

was lying on his back. So he

29:44

has his knees up against that

29:46

mound. He's the one that has

29:49

his legs underneath him. It made

29:51

Parmalee wonder something about what the man was doing

29:54

when he was killed. Given the

29:56

man's position on the ground, Parmalee ventured

29:58

a guess. He could have have been

30:00

kneeling. Kneeling.

30:03

Parmalee was careful to say that he couldn't say

30:05

that for sure. It was just a possibility that

30:08

the way this man's body was, a

30:10

logical explanation for how it got that way, was

30:13

that he'd been kneeling when he was shot. This

30:16

possibility that some of the men were

30:19

kneeling was actually corroborated by the statements

30:21

of two soldiers from the Iraqi army

30:23

who were in the convoy with the

30:25

Marines that day. They have their statements

30:27

to NCIS and they both said that

30:29

the men were kneeling. One

30:31

of them even said the men had their hands on

30:33

top of their heads when they were shot. So

30:37

the truth of what happened to the men by the white car

30:40

was now becoming clear. They

30:42

almost certainly were not running. At

30:44

least some of the men may have even been kneeling.

30:51

We moved on to the next set of photos. These

30:53

were taken inside six-year-old Abdul-Rahman's house,

30:56

the first house that Marines entered that morning. Tatum

30:59

had admitted to NCIS that he'd shot

31:01

people inside the living room of this house. According

31:04

to NCIS records, Tatum said that he shot

31:06

four people, all on the right side of

31:08

the room, and that he

31:10

knew that the people he shot included women and children

31:12

and that the people hadn't even been

31:14

standing when he shot them. Tatum

31:17

didn't provide many details beyond that. The

31:20

only person we talked to who'd seen what

31:22

happened inside this room was Abdul-Rahman, and

31:25

he really couldn't remember much. And

31:27

so it was hard for me to picture this scene. I

31:30

had the memories of a man who was just six

31:32

years old when the killings happened and

31:34

the statements of Marines under investigation for

31:36

murder. All

31:38

I knew for sure was that four people had

31:40

been killed in that room. Three

31:43

adults, Abdul-Rahman's mother, his

31:45

uncle, and his grandfather, and

31:47

one child, Abdul-Rahman's

31:49

four-year-old brother, Abdullah. The

31:53

photos show that the grandfather's body was

31:55

very badly damaged and the uncle had

31:57

been shot in the head. It

32:00

was what the photos showed about what

32:02

happened to Abdul-Rahman's mom, Asma, and

32:04

her four-year-old son Abdullah, that really

32:06

stood out to Parmalee. This one

32:08

broke everything open. The

32:11

first photo of the living room that we looked at was

32:13

a wide shot. You can see

32:15

white walls, a patterned red rug on the

32:17

floor, and pillows scattered around. There's

32:19

a couch along the back wall and what looks

32:21

like a space heater, a typical living room

32:24

in Iraq. Could you zoom in,

32:27

especially to the position of them?

32:30

And there, in the far corner of the room,

32:32

next to the couch, I saw

32:34

two bodies huddled together. I

32:37

realized I was looking at Asma and

32:39

her four-year-old son Abdullah. They

32:42

were on the right side of the room, the

32:44

side of the room where Tatum said he shot

32:46

four people. Asma

32:48

and Abdullah were kneeling in the corner of the

32:50

room, heads down, their foreheads

32:52

touching the ground. In a position

32:55

like you would be in if you ever had to do

32:57

a tornado drill at school. Basically,

32:59

the least threatening position the human body can be

33:01

in. They're kneeling facing,

33:03

oh, they're facing the floor,

33:05

but they're kneeling with the

33:07

bottom of their head facing towards the doorway,

33:09

so they're next to each other. Asma

33:13

looked like she'd been wounded on her neck. It's

33:16

not clear how exactly she was killed. But

33:18

looking at these photos, you could imagine this

33:20

moment of a mom trying to protect

33:23

her son. Four-year-old Abdullah

33:25

was pressed up between his mom and the

33:27

wall, and his mom had put her

33:29

arm around him in what would be

33:31

their final moments. The photo

33:33

has her left arm over him. Almost

33:36

like she's getting as close to the wall as she

33:38

can. I guess, I mean, who knows,

33:40

but it seems like she might have put him in

33:42

the safest possible place she could try to put him.

33:45

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

33:49

This was all awful, but what Parmalee

33:51

was about to tell me was even worse. It

33:54

had to do with what the photos could tell us about

33:57

how exactly Asma's son was killed. In

34:00

the photos the military sent us, there's

34:02

a close-up photo of four-year-old Abdullah. It

34:05

looks like someone had taken him out of the position

34:07

he was in next to his mom and propped him

34:09

up. He was wearing a

34:11

t-shirt with a cartoon helicopter on it. And

34:14

the first thing the photo clearly showed was

34:16

that Abdullah had been shot in the head. The

34:19

wound goes from his back right neck and

34:21

it goes forward to his left temple. So

34:24

what does that tell you? Oh, that

34:26

lines up the trajectory. The

34:29

trajectory, where Parmally was

34:31

going now, was right to the question of

34:33

where the shot came from. Where

34:35

the shooter would have had to have been when he

34:38

fired at Abdullah's head. Parmally

34:40

saw this question as a math

34:42

problem, geometry actually. It's something

34:44

that forensics experts do all the time. Determine

34:47

where a shooter would have been shooting from,

34:49

their position. If you shoot

34:51

a bullet from a gun, you can pretty

34:53

much determine what the bullet trajectory would have

34:55

been. You're basically drawing a straight line from

34:58

where the shooter's gun was through the entry

35:00

wound and the exit wound. So

35:02

now we have that line segment and

35:04

then what you do is you go from the exit wound,

35:06

which is blown out in the left side, you

35:10

go to the entry wound, which is his

35:12

right neck, and you're

35:14

gonna bring that back towards where the shooter

35:16

was located. There was furniture in the room

35:19

that would have limited the places a shooter

35:21

could have stood. And of course

35:23

there were also walls. We

35:25

also had the measurements of the room. They'd been

35:27

taken by military investigators. Parmally

35:29

took all that into account too. And

35:32

then he gave me his analysis. Overwhelmingly,

35:35

the information from that child,

35:37

his wounds and the trajectory

35:40

are very, very clear. The

35:43

person who shot Abdullah couldn't have

35:45

been doing something like firing blindly

35:48

from the entryway. That's total opposite

35:50

trajectory. That angle just didn't

35:52

line up. Not at all. Like,

35:55

not in the doorway. Oh, absolutely

35:57

not. Parmally pointed

35:59

to a small object, the space heater,

36:02

right next to Abdullah's mom, Asmaa, just

36:04

a few feet from Abdullah. That

36:07

spot, right next to that space heater,

36:09

Parmalee said, was where the

36:11

person who shot Abdullah would have been standing. So

36:14

he was standing right next to her in front of that

36:16

object. He's pointing his rifle

36:18

down at the boy, pointing

36:21

it down towards the boy's head.

36:24

That would be the angle that he was shooting him from.

36:27

Parmalee was saying the shooter was incredibly

36:29

close to this little boy, just

36:32

a few feet away, basically

36:34

standing over the mom, Asmaa, and

36:36

shooting down into Abdullah's head. This

36:39

is an up close and personal shot, where

36:41

you're putting a bullet into a

36:43

little boy. Like he was shot from like one

36:45

side of his head to the other. He

36:48

was executed from the back right to

36:50

the front left temple while his face

36:53

was down in an annealing position. And

36:55

you're saying executed. Talk about that. Why

36:58

are you saying executed? There's no

37:00

misconstruing the size of this child and the

37:02

position that they're in, that they're

37:04

not a threat to them. As

37:07

Parmalee was telling me this, it was obvious that he

37:09

was getting upset. At one point,

37:11

it almost looked like he was about to cry. I

37:14

wondered how he was feeling. He

37:16

paused for a long time. I've

37:26

seen a lot of kids killed throughout my career.

37:29

It's not easy, but it

37:32

just takes me back to all those

37:34

experiences as well. It's

37:39

just, it's disgusting. It

37:41

really is. You

37:45

know, I

37:48

wasn't in a war zone. I give

37:50

a lot of latitude and

37:52

tolerance to understanding what

37:54

people were going through in

37:57

those times. And

37:59

we're all human. make decisions in

38:03

a fast pace and split

38:05

seconds. This

38:08

wasn't split second. And

38:14

this is really, it

38:18

really pulls at my

38:20

emotions a lot. Looking

38:29

at the photos of Abdullah, he's so small,

38:32

he's clearly just a little kid, huddled

38:35

in a corner, with his mom maybe trying

38:37

to calm him or protect him by putting

38:39

her arm around him. And

38:41

someone stood over this mother, aimed

38:44

their gun at this little boy, and

38:46

shot him in the head. There's

38:48

no doubt that that's an execution.

38:51

Once they decide to stand a foot

38:54

next to a four-year-old child and put a bullet

38:56

in his head, there's

38:58

no way that you cannot see that that's a

39:00

child. There's no way that you can't process that

39:03

information. That's why

39:05

I firmly believe that that was an execution.

39:30

Parmalee and I moved on to the photos of the

39:32

next house, the house where 11-year-old

39:34

Safa had hidden next to the bed while

39:37

her mom and siblings were shot to death. The

39:40

Marines killed eight people inside this house.

39:42

They killed Safa's father, Eunice, when he

39:44

answered the door. And then

39:46

the Marines killed seven people all in the back

39:48

bedroom. Tatum had

39:51

told NCIS that he'd seen Wooterich shooting

39:53

in this back bedroom, and

39:55

so he'd followed Wooterich inside. According

39:58

to NCIS records, Tatum said... He'd

40:00

seen children in the room, on the bed, including

40:03

a child who was actually standing on the bed.

40:06

Tatum said this child was wearing a white

40:08

shirt. Tatum told NCIS he

40:10

looked at this child and

40:12

then opened fire. There

40:15

are several photos of this bedroom. In

40:17

the photos, you can see the spot where Safa

40:19

had said she was hiding with her sister, Nor,

40:21

next to the bed. Nor's body

40:24

is right there, exactly where Safa said it

40:26

was, crouching down in the small

40:28

space between the bed and the wall. And

40:31

on the other side of the bed, near the doorway, was

40:33

Safa's aunt lying dead on the floor. The

40:36

aunt that Safa said was shot after she peeked

40:38

out into the hallway to see what was going

40:40

on. And then there

40:42

was the bed, where Safa had said

40:44

her siblings had huddled with their mom,

40:46

terrified. The

40:48

photos of this bed are devastating. Safa's

40:51

mom is lying on her back, her head on

40:53

a pillow. Lying next to

40:56

her are four of her children. There's

40:58

little Aisha, just three years old, wearing a

41:00

shirt with a flower on it, her head

41:03

covered in blood. There's her

41:05

older sister, 10-year-old Saba, lying next to

41:07

her. There's her

41:09

brother, 8-year-old Mohammed, the one

41:11

who Safa had told us had initially survived

41:13

the shooting, but was injured and screaming. He's

41:16

curled up next to his mom, his elbow

41:19

touching her stomach. And

41:22

then there was 5-year-old Zainab. Zainab's

41:24

injuries were particularly gruesome. Her

41:27

head was so badly damaged, I couldn't even see

41:29

it in the photos. I had to

41:31

ask Parmalee to show it to me. Her

41:33

head is to the right. It's

41:36

just under... It's

41:39

next to the child that's in green. Okay.

41:41

You see it down at the bottom, it's a little bit dark. It's

41:45

a bottom center. Without

41:48

getting too detailed here, I'll just

41:50

say that there wasn't much left of her head. It

41:52

was mostly gone. Parmalee

41:55

pointed out a yellow blanket on

41:57

the bed in front of Zainab. He

41:59

said... that if Zainab had been shot lying down,

42:02

you'd expect to see a lot of blood and other

42:04

parts of her head on the blanket. But

42:07

the blanket didn't appear to have much blood on it

42:09

at all. Because right now,

42:11

if you look at the yellow blanket

42:13

or that yellow cloth right there, it's

42:18

not consistent with being shot in that location. Instead,

42:20

there was a lot of blood on the wall

42:23

next to the bed, which

42:25

de-parmily suggested that at the time

42:27

that Zainab was shot, she was actually

42:29

sitting up on the bed, or maybe even

42:31

standing on it. But I would think

42:34

that the head was higher. If

42:36

the child's head is up and I

42:38

shoot, it's going to go towards that

42:40

wall that has all of that.

42:43

A five-year-old shot standing on a bed, just

42:46

as Tatum had described. This

42:49

bedroom was small. We have the measurements. It

42:52

was just 13 by 17 feet. The bed took up a

42:55

lot of that space. And there was furniture

42:57

along some of the walls, making the

42:59

space seem even smaller. No

43:01

matter where the Marines were in the room, they

43:04

would have been close to the people they were shooting. In

43:07

general, looking at the photos of Safa's

43:09

house, what is

43:12

your assessment of whether the

43:14

shooters would have been able to see that

43:16

they were shooting women and children? So

43:22

they go in, they

43:24

went into the room, and they were just taking

43:26

shots at the people

43:28

in the bed. How did they not

43:31

perceive that the viewers were children, as

43:33

they have to identify

43:35

that they were in the

43:37

bed? Yeah, don't expect me

43:39

to rationalize that one. According

43:43

to NCIS's forensic examiner, who

43:45

analyzed the bullet trajectories, one

43:47

of the shooters would have had to have been standing near

43:49

the foot of the bed. The

43:51

space was so small that the tip

43:54

of the Marine's rifle likely reached over the

43:56

bed when it was being fired. moving

50:00

toward their fallen comrades. One

50:03

of them, Marwan, had jumped into a

50:05

wardrobe. The other, College of

50:07

Mall's father, was crouched down or

50:09

sitting in a far corner. This

50:11

hardly sounded like the behavior of insurgents who had lured

50:14

the Marines to a house to kill them. It

50:17

sounded a lot more like what terrified, unarmed

50:19

men would do when they realized

50:21

they were trapped in a room with Marines

50:23

intent on killing them. Marines

50:25

who were standing in the doorway, blocking

50:27

their escape. This stood

50:29

out to Parmalee, too. So

50:32

you have people in the room

50:34

moving away from the doorway. They're

50:37

not, you know, coming together.

50:40

And yeah, you couldn't be

50:42

more isolated trying to get into a closet as

50:45

opposed to going towards your comrades.

50:48

So that definitely refutes that statement

50:50

right off the bat. And then

50:52

that also reduces the

50:54

credibility of the

50:57

people that are giving those statements. Taken

51:00

together, all this evidence allowed

51:03

NCIS to reconstruct what most likely

51:05

happened inside this room. NCIS

51:08

concluded that most likely the first

51:10

person killed was Katan, because

51:12

his body was closest to the doorway. Then

51:15

Chasib, who was right behind his brother Katan.

51:19

NCIS thought it most likely that Jamal,

51:21

College of Mall's father, was

51:23

shot next, as he sat or crouched on the

51:25

floor across the room. Marwan

51:27

was probably the last brother to be killed.

51:30

NCIS thought it most likely that the

51:32

Marines saw Marwan go into the wardrobe,

51:34

and that then Wudarich stood in front

51:36

of the wardrobe and opened fire with

51:38

a single shot at the closed door.

51:41

A shot that hit Marwan

51:44

in the head. After looking

51:46

at all the photos and

51:48

reading the NCIS reports, I

51:51

got in touch with College of Mall. And

51:57

told him that if he wanted, I could tell

51:59

him what the photo. full

56:00

of evidence. Photos,

56:02

forensics, statements from Iraqi

56:04

eyewitnesses, statements where

56:06

Marines implicated themselves and each other.

56:09

There were even the confessions from Tatum. 24

56:12

killings. And

56:15

yet, there wasn't a single criminal

56:17

conviction for any of them. How

56:20

did that happen? How

56:23

did the military go from having all this

56:25

evidence to having the cases

56:28

completely fall apart? The

56:31

answer to that question, coming

56:34

up on In the Dark. One

56:41

last thing about the photos. Once

56:44

we got them, we talked for a long time as

56:46

a team about what to do with them. We

56:48

talked with our editors and with other colleagues at

56:50

The New Yorker. And we talked

56:53

to some of the survivors as well. And

56:55

we decided to publish a selection of

56:57

photos that we thought were especially important

56:59

to understanding what happened that day. All

57:02

these photos were published with the permission of

57:04

the surviving family members of the people depicted.

57:07

You can find them

57:09

at newyorker.com/season 3. In

57:17

the Dark is reported and produced by me,

57:19

Madeline Barron, managing producer Samara

57:22

Freemark, producers Natalie

57:24

Jablonski and Raymond Tungekar, and

57:26

reporter Parker Jesko. In

57:29

the Dark is edited by Catherine Winter and

57:31

Willing Davidson. Interpreting in

57:33

a Rock by Aya Muthena. Additional

57:35

interpreting and translation by Aya

57:37

Alshakarchi. This episode was

57:39

fact-checked by Linnea Feldman Emison. Original

57:42

music by Allison Leighton Brown. Additional

57:45

music by Chris Julin. Sound

57:47

design and mix by John Delor. Our

57:50

theme is by Gary Meister. Our

57:52

art is by Emiliano Ponzi. Art

57:55

direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva

57:57

Michaelove. FOIA legal

57:59

representation.