Editor’s Note: This article contains references to sexual assault.
The Marine Corps recruiter showed up at the young recruit’s door twice in one hour, according to the police report. On that hot Texas summer day, the woman, just a few months past 18, was not home.
Her parents were. The doorbell rang two times, and they called 911 after the recruiter, who by this time had become a terrifying, controlling presence to the prospective Marine, left something on their porch.
“He’s calling me, he’s leaving messages, he’s going crazy, Mom — he’s going to kill me,” Kathlyn would later recall her daughter, the would-be recruit, telling her as she went to check the porch.
Read Next: Another High-Profile Firing at West Point, This Time Due to Criminal Sexual Conduct Allegations
There, Kathlyn found two bottles of whiskey and a letter written on lined, three-punch paper. Thirty-six-year-old Gunnery Sgt. Christopher Champagne, now under investigation by military authorities after self-publishing a memoir about his year-plus relationship with Kathlyn’s daughter that began when she was 17, had left them as a thank you for inviting him over for Christmas eight months earlier.
The family took the unannounced visit as threatening, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, would later confiscate the bottles, Kathlyn said.
Earlier this month, Military.com reported on the memoir, which appeared to outline behavior Kathlyn has…
