Dan Bernath likes to accuse us of “self-murder” of veterans. If you watch the video at Extreme SEAL Experience, he tells the reporter that we’ve “self-murdered” seven or eight veterans with our “brown shirt tactics”. I don’t think I even have a brown shirt in my closet, but, he knows more than I know about my wardrobe.
But, back to the suicide thing. As far as I know, there has been only one successful suicide out of the 600 or so on our stolen valor page. Demographically speaking, that’s a pretty good record. According to the World Health Organization, 12.1 out of 100,000 Americans commit suicide every year. So it would stand to reason that we have one.
That one successful suicide was Ike Densmore who killed himself on a California beach in January, 2013. According to the police, who called Don Shipley when Densmore’s body was found, Ike had tried to make it look like he had been murdered by SEALs, but the police proved otherwise. Don Shipley first contacted Densmore in September 2012, and Densmore was featured on the news by Dan Noyes in November, 2012.
Bernath likes to say that we also drove Nick Androsky and Michael McManus to suicide. We first wrote about Androsky in June 2011, and he died of respiratory failure from long term drug abuse at Fort Riley, Kansas (not on an Air Force base like Bernath tells the reporter), on February 2014. Androsky was booted from the Air Force for huffing “shoe cleaner” and dealing meth in 2005.
We first encountered Michael McManus in January 2010. He died more than two years later, again from respiratory failure related to long term drug abuse. McManus was also booted from the Army after about two years of service with a General discharge for some reason.
Bruce Pendlay was busted for his phony service in January, 2015. He spent more time in prison than his four months of active duty in the Army. But he made a show of trying to commit suicide a few weeks after he was busted. He parked on a secluded road and put a single round into his chest. But, I don’t think he was serious about killing himself. If he was, he would have finished the job, but instead, he disposed of the firearm and called 9-1-1 and told police that someone in a dark vehicle had tried to kill him. He’s facing charges for filing a false report and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
We busted Jeffrey Alcorn in January, 2015. In August, 2015, he was arrested for duping two veteran-related charities out of thousands of dollars. He attempted suicide, but two problems with Bernath’s claims that we made a veteran want to kill himself in this case; 1) Alcorn never served in the military – that’s why we busted him, so he wasn’t a veteran and 2) he attempted suicide because he was facing charges stemming from his masquerade as a Marine. He was looking at jail time. It had nothing to do with our bust eight months prior to his arrest. By the way, Alcorn wasn’t successful in his attempt.
So, Ike Densmore was successful, but I think he failed – I don’t think he intended to die during his attempt since he tried to make it look like someone else was trying to kill him – he failed at merely attempting to harm himself. As far as I know, those are the only deaths and attempted deaths from our list of hundreds of veterans and non-veterans on our Stolen Valor page.
We don’t encourage suicide to deal with your phoniness. You should stop pretending now and avoid getting caught. Actually, I’ve had several of our phonies thank me for busting them so they could stop pretending (I know how strange that sounds, but I’m no therapist) – many more than have attempted to kill themselves. You don’t remember their names, because they just stopped doing their thing without the drama of others, like Bernath and Wittgenfeld.
But, we don’t do photo shops like this one from the circus that the DRC calls a website, A Special Day Guide;
There’s also one that has me at the edge of a cliff in a wheelchair that encourages me to “Jump, Jonn, jump!” but, I’m not looking for it right now.
Here it is, thanks to one of our ninjas;
If you watched Part Two of the Shipleys v. Bernath video, Bernath shows this picture to the reporter claiming that it’s something that I created, and that “it’s what they [we] do”.
That’s another of the Dutch Rudder Group’s photoshops, not mine. The picture of my head (I don’t wear Air Force uniforms) was taken at one of The Sniper’s parties and alcohol was involved and the DRG photoshopped my head into a funeral scene, not me.
The only time I ever made mention of the “only milblog with a body count” was when I quoted another blogger – I wasn’t boasting, merely reporting.
