The Florida Masochist

No charges filed in fake soldier story

You may recall this story from my earlier posts here, and here. The prosecutor has decided not to file charges in the case. This was what I thought would be the likely outcome. I still don't believe in Mr. Brenner's innocence in this story. Hopefully his career in journalism is over.

Open Post- Bright&Early and Outside the Beltway

CARBONDALE, Ill. - No laws were broken by a woman who duped Southern Illinois University's student newspaper with a tale that she was the guardian of a motherless girl whose father was a soldier in Iraq, a prosecutor said.

"I can't see any crime here," State's Attorney Mike Wepsiec said Monday, explaining his decision not to seek criminal charges against Jaimie Reynolds of Marion.
An investigation indicated Reynolds did not profit from the scam, which Wepsiec said could have elevated it to a criminal act.

Reynolds, who graduated from SIU last year, has said she and Michael Brenner, a former editor of the school's Daily Egyptian, concocted the story of the anguish of 8-year-old Kodee Kennings at seeing her dad go to war to help Brenner's career.

Brenner denies her claim. Wepsiec did not address whether he thought Brenner had any role.

The Daily Egyptian had reported about Reynolds and Kodee for nearly two years, publishing supposed letters from Kodee about the difficulty of being apart from her father.

The ruse unraveled in August when the student newspaper heard the soldier had been killed in Iraq, and subsequent investigations by it and the Chicago Tribune reveal that he did not exist.

A 10-year-old girl who posed as Kodee in public appearances and a man who pretended to be her father have said they were unwitting participants in the scam and believed they were acting in a film.

The case remains under review by the university's School of Journalism. Director Walter Jaehnig said Monday that no disciplinary action had been taken against any student or faculty member in connection with the hoax.

More on the Soldier hoax

I blogged before about how a Southern Illinois graduate student fooled the school newspaper into printing letters from a girl whose Kodee father Sgt Dan Kennings was supposedly serving in Iraq. This hoax went on for two years till the 'soldier' supposedly died and the Chicago Tribune did some elementary fact checking. It was soon discovered that Sgt Dan Kennings never existed.

Today's Chicago Tribune reports that the SIU Carbondale police department is investigating whether any laws were broken during the perpertration of the Kennings hoax.

The Southern Illinois University Carbondale Police Department is investigating the "Sgt. Dan Kennings" hoax to determine whether anyone broke the law in carrying on the two-year ruse about a phony soldier in Iraq and his daughter, the campus police chief said Tuesday.

SIU police have interviewed "some of the people involved," said SIU Public Safety Director Todd Sigler. They also are collecting documents, including e-mails, to help figure out whether Jaimie Reynolds or anyone else profited from the hoax, which played out in the pages of the student newspaper, the Daily Egyptian.

Investigators are piecing together various deceptions carried out since May 6, 2003, when former Daily Egyptian reporter Michael Brenner published his first story about Kennings going off to war in Iraq, leaving his 8-year-old daughter Kodee behind with Kennings' stepbrother and his wife. Many people in the community responded sympathetically to the story and letters--ostensibly from Kodee to her father--that the paper subsequently published.

"It's a bit of a unique situation, so we're moving at a very deliberate, methodical pace," Sigler said. "The devil will be in the details with this."

First comment. The campus police or the Carbondale city police are investigating? Obviously campus police don't have arrest powers.

But what crimes were committed?

A local firefighter said he gave the child toys, and the girl said she remembers members of a Detroit church giving her envelopes containing small amounts of cash during visits in December and May. A lawyer for the Detroit World Outreach ministry said the church did not give any money, but individuals in the congregation may have made contributions.

As despicable as fooling a church congregation is, I don't know if it builds to being an actual crime. My church congregation here in Florida was fooled by a hoax a few years back. This is not as uncommon as you may think but it is disgusting however.

The Carbondale Illinois Southern Illinoisan has more on both the fire department and the church angles. Click here and here. The SI also ran a brief story on Kodee in September 2004.

Reading the whole the whole Kennings affair, you sometimes have to shake your head at how gullible people can be. I can understand a little girl thinking a documentary was being shot. But adults? The college students are a little more understandable, they let their political views color their reporting. Just like much of the MSM today. Click here for an example.

The Tribune article went on.

Reynolds has said there was no financial motive to the hoax, and that she was trying to help her reporter friend Brenner concoct a heart-rending story that might advance his career.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Brenner again denied vehemently that he was anything other than a misled reporter who never bothered to check the facts of the story.

"I'm so sick of being crucified when I am the victim of this whole thing," he said. "I'm really getting worn out talking to the media."

For the moment I believe Reynolds. I don't think she did it for financial gain. Rather Ms. Reynolds did it to get attention. Something she is getting plenty of now but not of the type she wants.

As to Michael Brenner, I have a much harder time believing in his innocence. The first reason is his reporting on Kodee and her father.

The story the Daily Egyptian published reads as if Brenner was on the scene of the emotional parting between father and daughter at Fort Campbell, Ky.Following is an excerpt from Brenner's Daily Egyptian story:

"In an attempt to delay his departure, Kodee swiped his helmet and refused to let go, saying he could not leave without his helmet.

ìStill in tears, Kennings took his helmet back from his 8-year-old daughter, but he still could not convince her he had to go. She refused to let go of his arms, and pleaded with her father.

ìëPlease donít leave,í Kodee begged. ëIíll be good if you stay. I wonít get in trouble

During the Friday interview, Brenner defended the style of writing he had used in the story."It was the style going around the newsroom at the time," Brenner said.

So he gives a first accounting tale of the emotional separation. Now Brenner is saying that was a stylistic selection. He lied therefore in his reporting, why are we to believe he had no part in the story?

There's also something out of the original Tribune story.

Tribune reporters continued asking questions, and some students and a faculty member were growing increasingly hostile because of suggestions that Kennings did not exist. By Tuesday night, however, Brenner was pacing nervously outside a Dairy Queen in Carterville, Ill., talking to Hastings on his cell phone.

He handed the phone to a Tribune reporter, and Hastings said she would come to the Dairy Queen and listen to questions.Brenner, 25, said he was still convinced of Kennings' existence and defended Hastings for trying to protect a little girl.

Hastings pulled into the parking lot in the same red car she'd driven to the memorial service. She was told that the military denied Kennings' existence and that the name Colleen Hastings appeared in no public-records databases in Illinois. She was asked for a driver's license and for a death certificate for Kennings.

With each question, Hastings shook her head no.After Brenner spoke to her for a minute alone, she drove off.

This meeting sounds suspicious unless the non-responses from Reynolds are her reacting to the hoax and her embarassment in taking part in it. In my opinion these two are were working together. Brenner who was promoted to editor of the Daily Egyptian after the first Kodee story was published, had something to gain from the whole affair.

After finishing his studies at SIU, Brenner went to work for a newspaper in Oregon. He quit a few months back. The reason? He wanted to be closer to Kodee.

Brenner recently quit his job as a sportswriter with the East Oregonian, a job he landed shortly after donning his gown and receiving his diploma in the December 2004 SIUC graduation ceremonies.

He said he left the Oregon job after only a few months because he wanted to spend time with his family in Illinois - and with the girl he said he had known as "Kodee Kennings."

Just an incredible story. Mr. Brenner should take up fiction writing.

Must read in the Washington Post

On the same day the Post publishes a Knucklehead of a Consumer article, another story was published. It featured our favorite milblogger Chuck and the non-profit group Soldiers' Angels. You really must go over and read it. Registration is required, but its free. I'm only going to excerpt the very end.

Now they're all sitting in a room at Mologne House, the outpatient center that's part of the Walter Reed complex. Everyone is headed home next week. Ziegenfuss is wearing walking shorts and a knit shirt. The clothing covers up many of his injuries. The skin over the wounds is purple, bright in some spots and dark in others. He, Carren, Alice and Bair sit around a table talking. They're going for pizza in a minute.

"I think he's had nine operations," says Alice.

"Does that include the ear?" he asks.

"Ten," she corrects herself.

"They took a piece of my head and put it in my ear," he says, explaining surgery to repair a perforated eardrum.

Ziegenfuss is in good spirits, if slightly apprehensive about his future. What does a captain with nine fingers do?

"Get back in line," he says, citing what he most wants to do -- return to Iraq and his command.

For Bair, the relationship is winding down. There are other soldiers she looks in on, other wounds to mend. None of it will change the world. Hand-holding and sandwiches and toothbrushes rarely do.

They just make it a little more bearable, these acts of kindness from strangers in a time of war, these things that bind us.

Thank you Kathleen Bair and Soldiers' Angels for helping care for Chuck and our other servicemen. Get well Chuck and God bless you and your family.

Hat tip- Mudville Gazette

Those Full House and The Nanny reruns must be too much

According to Reuters, Saddaam Hussein is willing to sacrifice his soul for the Arab cause right now. As Steven Taylor at Poliblog says, Hussein will probably get the chance. All joking aside, I think 1.5 years of confinement after being leader of a country would have to be depressing. It wouldn't surprise me if Saddam Hussein preferred death. His statement of life being meaningless now rings true, at least in this blogger's opinion.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has said in a letter he would sacrifice himself for Arab nationalism and to end foreign occupation.

The International Committee of the Red Cross delivered the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, on Sunday to a Jordanian friend of Saddam who declined to be named.

"I sacrifice my soul and very existence to the Arab cause and liberation of our homeland from foreign liberation," the former Iraqi leader said in the undated letter that was heavily censored by the U.S. military which holds him on behalf of the Iraqi government.

Saddam's family, who have had no access to him since his arrest in late 2003, have complained all his letters reach them with big chunks deleted and censored.

"Life is meaningless without the considerations of faith, love and inherited history in our nation," Saddam said.

Relatives say Saddam's lawyer tells them he spends much of his time reading the Koran and has become a devout Muslim in captivity.

For many Arabs Saddam is revered as a symbol of Arab pride and resistance to the United States.

"My brother, love your people, love Palestine, love your nation, long live Palestine," Saddam wrote.