Captain Gordon Hess's Suicide Case Study

In the early hours of the morning on March 4, 1998, Captain Gordon Hess’s body was found face down in a ravine on the military base he was stationed. Although labeled a suicide by the military, speculation continues to persist whether this is really the case. Some of the evidence at the crime scene and information relayed from interviewees seem inconsistent with that of a suicide. Although anomalies may occur in cases, the number of inconsistencies found in the Hess reports make this seem unlikely.
Even though the military findings concluded that his death was the result of self-inflicted injury, some of the evidence says otherwise. CID investigators noted that Hess, as a perfectionist, became depressed after the fratricide incident. They also noted that Hess not being able to face his peers in the wake of such failure caused him to commit suicide. But by looking further into this simulation exercise, Hess did not make any mistakes during the simulation; his company was in

the right location and the land navigation error did not occur because of his decisions. His best friend also reported that although Hess was very competitive and unhappy with the results of the simulation, he did not show any signs of depression.
On the morning of his disappearance, Hess laid out items, such as his shaving kit, which could imply that he would return to prepare for the day. In one of the reports, it was noted by Major Zysk that Hess was sensitive to the cold weather and what he was dressed in implied that Hess would not be out long.
More characteristics that are an indicator of a homicide appear after finding Hess’s body in the ravine.

After examining the crime scene photographs, Major Zysk did not see any weapon evident in the photos. The four soldiers who recovered the body also did not see a weapon at the crime scene. Another thing to note about is the location of the Leatherman knife when it was discovered. It sounds unusual for Hess, after stabbing himself, to attempt to hide the knife under a rock. The Leatherman knife that authorities later found also did not seem to match the knife wounds on Captain Hess; the knife found had a 2 ½ inch blade while some of the wounds were 3 inch deep. Out of the 26 knife wounds, seven were fatal; two to the heart and five to the left lung. It seems highly unlikely that Hess would continue to stab himself after giving himself the first fatal wound or two; he would have been incapacitated. Also, Hess was an EMT and he would not need to stab himself that many times to commit

suicide.
The handling of the crime scene also seems unusual. Within a couple of days, the military dumped over two tons of dirt on the crime scene in the middle of an open investigation. This is excluding the multiple times the crime scene army personnel had contaminated the crime scene. Although labeled a suicide, from reading the reports, this specific case seems to be more along the lines of a homicide.