Duty, Death, Dishonor

A Soldier Returns From War And Vanishes

(CBS) 
But as the weeks in Iraq wore on, the stress on the company was growing. And Richard's behavior, according to some soldiers, was becoming erratic and even dangerous.

"When we were supposed to be doing a job he wouldn't do it," says Woodcoff.

Richard's troubles seemed to come to a head one night in Baghdad when he came to company medic Edward Wulff, his hand bleeding from a knife wound.

Richard claimed two soldiers, Mario Navarette and Alberto Martinez, had cut his hand open.

Wulff says Richard also told him the soldiers had hit him several times.

But Navarette says the wound was self-inflicted, and just one more example of Richard's increasingly strange behavior.

"All of a sudden, Davis jumps up and says 'Make a pact, become blood brothers,' " he says. "I remember cutting our hands, and Davis cut his hand on top."

Regardless of what really happened that night, on May 20, Richard made a desperate phone call to his parents.

"He said he didn't have a safe place to lay his head. He's tired of looking out for himself," Lanny recalls.

But Lanny didn't think Richard was scared of the enemy. "I think he was talking about his own people, his own soldiers, the comrades that he was afraid of. He was crying. And he was begging me, 'Dad, can't you get me out of here.' "

Lanny says it was the first time he heard his son cry or beg for anything. It was also the last time he would ever hear from his son.

In that last phone call to his parents, Richard was distraught, but wouldn't say why. Lanny knew some of his son's comrades considered him eccentric, and now he wondered if Richard was being threatened by them.

"Does that make any sense to you that he'd be afraid of his own fellow soldiers?" Moriarty asks Davis.

"Yes, it does. A lot of people picked on my son. Even in the military," he replies.

But Richard hung up without explanation. He spent two more months in the Middle East without calling again. And even when he touched down on U.S. soil on July 13, 2003, he didn't phone home. Richard's friend and comrade Justin Harris wasn't surprised, and says this was part of his plan.

"He was gonna come home from the war, he had his Class As all fixed up with his new ribbons and he was gonna go fly to Missouri and knock on his parents' door and surprise them."

But on his second afternoon back from the war, Richard wasn't thinking about going home. He was going out on the town, with four other soldiers, Douglas Woodcoff, Alberto Martinez, Mario Navarette and Jacob Burgoyne.

"We all went together to get somethin' to eat. Went out to Hooters," Burgoyne recalls. "It was spur of the moment. We're all happy bein' back. I mean, everybody's gung ho, everybody wants to go out with everybody."

"We didn't believe that we were actually in the States and we were actually drinking and eating chicken wings. But it was a wonderful feeling that we were all together again," remembers Navarette.

After drinking beer for several hours at the restaurant, the group drove to a strip club, where Navarette says they had more drinks and played pool.

It was at this point, say the others, that Richard began acting strangely.

"He was being rowdy and he was being insultive to one of the women," claims Burgoyne.

And Navarette says Davis was making odd gestures towards one of the dancers.

Woodcoff says Davis was "very drunk" at that point and the bouncer "told us, referring to Davis, that he had too much to drink and he was starting to pass out at the bar. So Martinez and myself took him out to the car and put him in the back seat so he can sleep. Went back inside."

The other four soldiers continued to drink for about another hour, but then left abruptly. Burgoyne and Navarette apparently believed they had been kicked out of the club because of Richard's behavior.

But Woodcoff disagrees. "I think Martinez told them that to get them to leave."