Published by The Tennessean. Tuesday, 7/13/99

FORT CAMPBELL
Soldier's death may be hate crime
By Monica Whitaker / Tennessean Staff Writer

A Fort Campbell soldier beaten to death last week may have been the target of a hate crime, killed as rumors about his relationship with another man circulated on the post, investigators with a private gay-rights legal group said yesterday.

Pfc. Barry Winchell was memorialized Friday by members of his company while a fellow soldier waited in confinement, facing military charges of premeditated murder.

Fort Campbell spokeswoman Maj. Pamela Hart said Army investigators conducted interviews on the case through the weekend and have "no conclusive evidence that this was a hate crime."

Pvt. Calvin N. Glover, 18, is the only person charged in the incident, she said.

But local and national gay rights leaders say their own interviews with enlisted people and civilians in Nashville and Clarksville lead them to suspect more people were involved in the Kansas City, Mo., native's beating, and that the attackers' ire was related to Winchell's sexual orientation.

Glover and Winchell were assigned to Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, in which Winchell served as a heavy anti-armor weapon operator.

"The army has arrested one soldier," said Bill Turner, co-chairman with the state Lesbian and Gay Coalition for Justice. "They claim that this was an altercation between two soldiers. I'm having a little trouble with the idea that two similarly trained soldiers get into a fight and one beats the other so badly."

Winchell, 21, died last Tuesday in Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville after a fight in the post barracks.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a nonprofit, Washington-based group formed to support gay and lesbians in the armed forces, sent an attorney to Clarksville late last week who reported "a general perception that Winchell might be gay," said the group's co-executive director, Dixon Osburn.

Gay or not, Winchell's death still concerns the group, he said. "A hate crime is also based on the perception of someone being gay. We certainly have heard enough rumors. We are not going to be quick to jump to conclusions."

The group talked to 50 Fort Campbell soldiers and civilians and distributed 3,000 fliers at gay bars and clubs in Middle Tennessee during the past few days, asking for help with the investigation, Osburn said.

The news of his death had preceded the notices, though, at The Connection, a club on Cowan Street in Nashville where Winchell befriended one of the employees, Turner said.

That man works at the club as a dancer and is a pre-operative transsexual, living and dressing as a woman while planning on a sex change operation, said Rhonda White, who also heads the state Lesbian and Gay Coalition for Justice. The group contacted him after sending out a general e-mail asking for any information on the case late last week.

Turner said the dancer acknowledged they were seeing one another but said that Winchell kept their visits "pretty private."

Nashville lawyer Penny Harrington will represent the dancer during questioning by Army officials, tentatively scheduled for later this week. Harrington said she does not know the extent of their relationship.

Though Hart said Army investigators hope to end their investigation soon, piecing together a crime involving rumors of homosexuality -- especially in the military -- could be a long, difficult process.

At its unveiling, the military's 5-year-old "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was heralded by politicians as a livable compromise for gays and lesbians in the service. In this investigation, though, people who come forward with information about Winchell's life could find their own sexual orientation questioned, gay rights activists said.

That could lead to more problems, according to a March study published by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. Their report said incidents of anti-gay harassment in the military more than doubled over the last year, jumping from 182 recorded in 1997 to 400 recorded in 1998. Instances ranged from verbal gay-bashing to death threats and violence, the report said.

If Winchell had felt threatened before the incident, he could have talked to his superiors or the post's Equal Opportunity Office, Hart said.

On a Web site maintained by the Legal Defense Network, though, a survival guide for gays in the military warns against reporting the incidents outright: "Currently, if gay servicemembers reveal their sexual orientation or activities when reporting harassment, death threats or hate crimes, they risk investigation and discharge."

While the private and military investigators continue their work this week, Glover remains in confinement at Fort Knox, Ky. A hearing, akin to a hearing before a civilian grand jury, has not yet been scheduled in his case, Hart said.