515 - Fort Hood: Murders, Mysteries, and Silence
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What prompted online fears about being assigned to Fort Hood?
In 2026, when we're looking for places to live or a new job, in other words, places where we will be uprooting our lives and spending a lot of time, how do we know what we're getting ourselves into? The internet, for most of us, I would argue, and for some members of the military, even if their jobs look a lot different from the majority of civilians, it's reportedly no different. About a year ago, a young infantryman posted a simple question on the Army subreddit. He had just received orders to report to Fort Hood, and he wanted to know what kind of life awaited him there. The replies were mostly what you'd expect from soldiers discussing a new duty station Some talked about the brutal training tempo Others mentioned nearby weekend escapes to Austin, Dallas, or Houston A few offered the kind of advice that appears in a lot of military forum threads Keep your head down, work hard, make the best of it But then came a very different kind of response You gon' die Uh, sorry?
Come again? You gon' die. On most message boards, a comment like that would barely earn a second glance. If it wasn't downright trolling by someone who's anti-military or someone just trying to stir up shit for the sake of stirring up shit or one of those legions of fucking bots, it could have easily been another soldier joking about the danger of military life in general. Indeed, danger is at the center of military life, even on base. The danger of being in high pressure, physically intense training situations surrounded by training on and using a bunch of massive deadly equipment. Unfortunately, accidental deaths at military bases are nothing new. And that's part of what many service members have come to accept as part of their sacrifice for the good of the country.
Perhaps this user's three word comment was nothing more than an attempt at dark humor. Or maybe not in this case. It might have been a friendly heads up, actually. It may have been a genuine warning about what waited for that soldier, not just in military life, but at Fort Hood in particular. Since the mid-2010s, the sprawling Texas installation has become associated not just with training accidents or combat deployments, but with the persistent kind of darkness that feels almost unexplainable. A string of deaths, disappearances, and high-profile criminal cases in recent years has drawn national attention time and time again and left many soldiers and their families wondering what the fuck is going on behind the gates.
For example, there was the 2020 disappearance and murder of soldier Vanessa Guillen, who vanished from base only to be found dismembered, her body parts burned and buried under concrete. There was Private Gregory Waddell Morales, whose remains were discovered almost a year after he disappeared in the summer of 2019. There was Specialist Elder Fernandez, whose body was found hanging from a tree branch along some railroad tracks after his own mysterious disappearance. And those were only some of the cases that made national headlines. There were many, many others. In 2020 alone, nearly 40 soldiers assigned to Fort Hood had died under a variety of circumstances, some by suicide, some in accidents, maybe accidents, and some definitely were the victims of homicide.
Many of the soldiers had been described by friends and commanders as motivated, successful, full of plans for the future. In other words, seemingly not the kind of people who would die by suicide or hang out with recklessly dangerous, violent people. But still suddenly, they were gone. As case after case surfaced and a culture of pervasive sexual harassment and sexual assault was exposed, more and more people both inside and outside of the military began asking, how had one of the Army's largest and most important installations become a site of seemingly never-ending tragedy and violence? And why couldn't the Army, one of the most powerful institutions in the country, if not the world, seem to stop it?
Fort Hood's mysterious disappearances, deaths, sexual assaults, and the silence from the powers that be that has often surrounded all of that, right now on another What in the Actual Fuck is Going On Here edition of Time Suck.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What prompted online fears about being assigned to Fort Hood?
0:00–29:11
2
How has Fort Hood's size, community, and leadership culture shaped soldier safety?
29:11–1:22:00
3
How did the 2014 and 2016 Fort Hood shootings unfold and who was involved?
1:22:00–1:25:01
4
What suspicious deaths and disappearances at Fort Hood raised concerns about coverups?
1:25:01–1:32:13
5
How did Vanessa Guillen’s disappearance expose failures in reporting and leadership?
1:32:13–1:42:23
6
What investigations, reforms, and ongoing cultural problems were revealed after the 2020 fallout?
1:42:23–2:31:43
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Timesuck with Dan Cummins
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