Justin Robert Fisher and the Murder of Barry Winchell

Justin Robert Fisher was the U.S. Army specialist whose harassment and goading set up the July 5, 1999, murder of his roommate, Private First Class Barry Winchell, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Fisher never swung the baseball bat that killed Winchell. He spent roughly 15 hours provoking the 18-year-old private who did, then helped wash the blood off the weapon and lied to Army investigators. In January 2000, he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, false swearing, and providing alcohol to a minor, and was sentenced to 12½ years in military prison.¹ He served about seven and was released in 2006.²

Who Justin Fisher Was

Fisher was born on January 20, 1973, and enlisted in the Army after receiving a waiver for prior criminal convictions in Nebraska. By 1998 he was a specialist in Delta Company at Fort Campbell and was assigned as roommate to Winchell, a 21-year-old Kansas City soldier and skilled marksman on a track toward warrant-officer school.³

Winchell had begun a relationship with Calpernia Addams, a pre-operative transsexual performer working as a showgirl in Nashville.⁴ The relationship was conducted off-duty and off-post. In the spring of 1999, rumors about Winchell’s sexual orientation began moving through the unit, and Fisher was their main source. He told sergeants he had seen Winchell engaged in sexual acts at a Nashville gay club, an account witnesses said was false.⁵ Under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy then in force, no formal complaint was filed and no official investigation opened.³

The Harassment Before the Killing

Fisher’s conduct toward Winchell was not limited to talk. In 1998 he struck Winchell in the head with a dustpan hard enough to require stitches, then refused to let him clean the blood off the barracks wall. On another occasion he tried to choke Winchell during a car ride from Nashville back to post. He threatened Winchell verbally, telling him he would “beat you like I did before,” and boasted to other soldiers that he wanted to attack his roommate.⁵

Staff Sergeant Michael Kleifgen later testified at Glover’s court-martial that Fisher “often harassed” Winchell. Kleifgen said he spoke to both soldiers and raised the conflict with a first sergeant, but was told “there was nothing we could do because of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”⁶

The Night of July 4, 1999

Delta Company held a keg party for Independence Day. Private Calvin Glover, an 18-year-old from Sulphur, Oklahoma, drank about 17 beers over the day.³ The night before, Glover had lost a fistfight to Winchell.

Fisher spent roughly 15 hours “working on” Glover, humiliating him over the loss and pushing him toward violence.⁵ He supplied alcohol to the underage Glover and kept baiting him as they drank.⁷ Fisher played the Psycho soundtrack in his room while taunting Glover about the fight: “How does your face feel? How did it feel to have your ass kicked by a faggot?”

Glover picked up a baseball bat, made chopping motions, and mumbled the word “faggot.” He told Fisher he wanted to “f**k up” Winchell. By Fisher’s own later admission, his response was “go for it.”⁷ At about 2:00 a.m. on July 5, 1999, Glover attacked the sleeping Winchell on his cot, crushing his skull with the bat.³ Winchell, born August 31, 1977, died of his injuries at 21.

The Cover-Up

After the beating, Glover came back to Fisher’s room and said he had “whooped” Winchell. Fisher helped him wash blood off the bat. In the days that followed, Fisher gave the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Command a series of sworn statements he later admitted were false, saying he lied “to cover for” himself.⁷

He told investigators he assumed Glover had simply gone home, leaving out that Glover had walked out carrying the bat and had said what he intended to do. He hid his own encouragement of the attack, and he said nothing about the hours of taunting that led into it.⁷

Charges, Plea, and Sentence

Glover was tried first. In December 1999, a military jury at Fort Campbell convicted him of premeditated murder and sentenced him to life with the possibility of parole, along with a demotion and dishonorable discharge. Prosecutors argued he was driven by hatred of homosexuals; his defense argued Fisher had goaded him into the killing.⁸

Fisher originally faced charges of participating as a principal to premeditated murder and acting as an accessory after the fact. A pretrial agreement dropped those.¹ On January 8, 2000, before Military Judge Kenneth D. Pangburn at a general court-martial at Fort Campbell, Fisher pleaded guilty to two specifications of obstruction of justice, one specification of providing alcohol to a minor, and three specifications of false swearing, all under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.⁷

The military judge sentenced him to 14 years of confinement, a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and reduction to the lowest enlisted grade. Under the pretrial agreement, the convening authority cut the confinement to 150 months, or 12½ years.⁷ At sentencing Fisher said: “I’m sorry for the part I played in this. I know you are now in a better place. I hope you know that if I could go back to the morning it happened, I would have changed it all.”¹

The Appeal

Fisher appealed, arguing that one of the false swearing specifications was legally deficient because the statement at issue was “false by omission” rather than an outright lie, and that his guilty plea to that charge should be thrown out. The Army Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces affirmed on June 17, 2003, finding that whatever the military judge’s reference to “false statements by omission,” the statement contained “literally false assertions” and Fisher had stipulated to its falsity, making the plea valid.⁹

Release From Prison

Fisher served roughly seven years of his 12½-year sentence and was released from military prison in 2006.²¹⁰ Glover was also eventually released.⁴ No public information is available about Fisher’s life afterward.

Why the Case Mattered Beyond Fisher

Winchell’s killing was widely described as an anti-gay hate crime, and Senator Edward Kennedy called it exactly that during a 2003 Senate floor debate.¹¹ Human Rights Watch and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network pointed to it as evidence that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” by stigmatizing homosexuality, invited harassment and violence against gay service members.¹²

In February 2000, the Pentagon responded by formally adding “Don’t Harass” to the policy’s name, expanding it from “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue, Don’t Harass.”¹³¹⁴¹⁵ Winchell’s mother, Patricia Kutteles, spent years afterward pressing for repeal of the policy, which took effect in 2011.¹⁶

1
Los Angeles Times. Soldier Sentenced in Slaying at Fort Campbell
2
The Advocate. Former Soldier Convicted in Winchell Murder Released
3
Vanity Fair. Kentucky Murder
4
Out. Barry Winchell Murder
5
Vanity Fair. Kentucky Murder
6
CBS News. Army Private Guilty of Murder
7
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. United States v. Fisher, No. 03-0059
8
The Oklahoman. Soldier Gets Life Sentence in Killing
9
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. United States v. Fisher, No. 03-0059
10
Windy City Times. Winchell Murder Co-Conspirator Released
11
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Congressional Record, November 18, 2003
12
Human Rights Watch. Uniform Discrimination – The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy of the US Military
13
Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – Labor and Employment Law Journal
14
GovInfo. Congressional Record, November 18, 2003
15
Plainview Herald. Nomination of Former Fort Campbell Commander
16
CNN. Kutteles: DADT and Our Son