Page 90 - Bragg News Today

Portugals dealing coast at the beginning of july high season is just getting underway but hoteliers here are wondering just how many britons will come last year their numbers fell 511-0000 the british or the regions tourist mainstay of the games they were always about 30 percent or more of the total overnight stays now were down to 292 to 3 percent less thats clearly a break that effect because of the. breaks that competition from other vacation destinations is also hurting the. hotels here have...

Hes an attractive guy and, you know, his personality makes him that much more attractive. >> then a few days after meeting online, they met in person at a local restaurant. >> he was charming, he was funny. movies and music and things we talked about. >> he was an army sergeant, trained at ft. bragg, trained as a sniper, highly decorated. >> he was a great soldier but he was a playboy, himself. he had been married once before and had a child from his first marriage and he left the first wife and...

Murder weapon. did he still have it? well, apparently not. because just a short time after cops went to the home of diamonds army buddy asking about that gun, diamond made a phone call to ft. bragg and reported that his car, which he claimed to have left in the base parking lot, had been broken into and one of the things stolen from it was a .9 millimeter handgun. >> when we got there the passenger door had already been open and there was a pile of glass sitting next to the rocker panel on the p...

160,000 acres back there is the armys ft. bragg where soldiers prepare to go to war. nestled up beside that is the air force base. two institutions, two professional military men, one woman. and that woman, michelle theer, now found herself caught between her husband, marty, the air force captain and her former lover, army staff sergeant john diamond who just wouldnt go away. >> i told him, i dont want to leave my husband. i never told him, i love you, i never said, i want to be with you. i mean...

Executed his romantic rival? he may have had a motive. police were very suspicious. but the physical evidence was, frankly, rather weak. so detectives kept digging in the arcane world of phone records. boring, but sometimes revealing. and one telephone number in particular caught their attention. a call from diamond to one of his army buddies at ft. bragg. >> so we asked them if diamond had any access to any weapons. he said that he loaned diamond his personal pistol. >> which just happened to b...

Bragg, north carolina, is a nondescript red brick building, this is where army staff sergeant john diamond found himself a prime suspect in the murder of air force captain marty theer. >> military justice is much swifter than civilian justice. so he goes to the article 32 hearing which is like the grand jury. they immediately find cause and they charge him. >> and nine months after the murder, in a small ft. bragg courtroom, diamond went on trial before a military jury. >> diamond was very, very...

So detective murphy paid a call on wilson, also a soldier here at ft. bragg. >> jeffrey did confirm he was involved in a romantic relationship with joan shannon. >> where was he when this murder occurred? >> he was actually working at the time of the homicide. >> in fact, a little checking revealed it was an unassailable alibi. jeffrey wilson was innocent. of murder, that is. but as for a three-month relationship with joan, wilson was very cooperative. he revealed every lurid detail. >> back in ...

His life in 2002. his mother shirley comes here to visit and remember. his sister brenda too when shes in town. oh, how they worried that war might put him here. except war didnt. no, there never was a thought back then about what could happen far from combat, what did happen. all those strange things down south in north carolina. fayetteville is an old town, steeped in revolutionary and civil war history. smack in the middle of the bible belt. but now, cargo planes buzz in and out of pope air f...

Everybody getting along, fighting, as you do. he loved them, definitely. >> soon the shannons became six, with the birth of their two boys. and in 2000, david took the family south to fayetteville, when he was transferred to ft. bragg. >> david loved the military. he loved being the soldier. you talk about somebody having a first love or something they loved more than anything. he loved that uniform. >> and the military had been good to david. he was major shannon by now, well on his way to beco...

Always trying to be discreet, of course, so their four children wouldnt find out. they would often find themselves hustled off to a friends for the weekend and come home to find their bedroom rearranged. their daughters had an idea that something was going on in their absence. but murder exposes secrets, as they say. maybe there was some sort of triangle involved here? >> some type of love triangle. we asked questions, the couples they might have met, anybody that she was involved romantically w...