Pentagon Records Missed Almost Half of Troops’ Domestic Abuse Killings

Angelina Resendiz’s voice on the phone was frantic. She was calling a friend from the barracks room of Jermiah Copeland, a fellow sailor at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. They had spent the evening together, kissing and drinking, and now Resendiz, 21, needed to leave. It was the last time anyone would hear from her. When Resendiz’s friend arrived at the barracks 15 minutes later, the pair was nowhere to be found. “The Navy failed her,” Resendiz’s mother, Esmerelda Castle, told The Intercept. After her daughter’s disappearance, friends and family spent a week scrambling to find Resendiz. Castle found the Navy’s reports in that time unclear, delayed, or downright false. A first-of-its-kind Intercept investigation has found critical shortcomings in the U.S. military’s procedures for documenting and preserving records of homicides that result from domestic abuse, including intimate partner violence. The Pentagon’s mandated reports to Congress appear to substantially undercount these killings, omitting nearly half of cases. In the six years before Copeland’s murder of Resendiz, the Pentagon recorded 41 domestic abuse-related homicides committed by service members. The Intercept identified nearly twice as many: at least 73 potential cases involving 79 victims — almost all of them women — during the same period. Reports for fiscal year 2025, when Resendiz was murdered, are due in November. The Intercept examined publicly available news articles, obituaries, court records, memorials, and other data to investigate the specifics behind the Defense Department’s numbers. Reporters also used data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request on Army noncombat fatalities to match names, because some news coverage did not mention the victims’ and alleged perpetrators’ military service. A killing qualified for the dataset if it occurred in fiscal years 2019 to 2024; if the perpetrator was a member of the military at the time of the crime; and if the case involved a homicide. The database only includes cases where a victim of the violence had dated or was in a romantic relationship with the suspected perpetrator, and it includes multiple women living abroad who were foreign citizens dating American troops. In the fiscal years since the second Trump administration took power, The Intercept found at least 10 service women or women working for the Defense Department have died from intimate partner and domestic violence, six of them killed by male co-workers. An additional 10 civilian women have been killed by male military personnel in intimate partner violence-related homicides during the same period. A Pentagon spokesperson acknowledged The Intercept’s queries about the discrepancy in homicide rates but did not respond to detailed questions before publication. “At this moment in our country’s history, I am afraid these numbers are going to increase even further,” said Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Nursing who has been studying domestic violence in the military for decades. “We need primary prevention for everyone in the military and their partners.” The findings come in the wake of President Donald Trump’s August announcement of a Military Spouse Commission, led by Jennifer Hegseth, the wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other high-level military leaders. The commission’s mandate is to guide policy around issues affecting military families. Though intimate partner violence and spousal abuse have concerned military family advocates for decades and thousands of new cases are reported each year, the commission does not mention the issue as one of its areas of focus. The Navy and DoD have said in public statements and communication with members of Congress and Castle that while “proper procedures were followed” following the death of Resendiz, they have identified several processes that require further review. “What Are the Statistics?” Copeland killed Resendiz on May 29, 2025. In the days after Resendiz’s disappearance, her friends filed missing person reports and called Castle in Texas, who in turn called the Navy. None of them knew that Resendiz was dead. The Navy’s official timeline of events says it did not start investigating her disappearance as a crime until a missing person’s report was filed on the 31st, and that Castle did not reach out until that day. Phone records she shared with The Intercept and members of Congress show she started calling on the 29th. “I was told she was found, and that the original missing person’s report was exaggerated,” Castle recalled. “I didn’t think for a second that the Navy would lie to me. “I was told she was found, and that the original missing person’s report was exaggerated.” Technically, Resendiz had been found — a Navy chief searching for her had seen Resendiz’s body packed under the covers in Copeland’s bed around 10 a.m. on the day of her disappearance. They assumed she was asleep, according to evidence later revealed during trial. But as Castle tells it — including in a congressional inquiry she wrote requesting a deeper investigation— a Navy chief claimed on the phone to have spoken to her daughter in Copeland’s room. She had been dead for hours. “He had Angie wrapped up in a blanket on his bed,” said Castle. “It was against policy for her to be in the barracks. And they just turned their backs and left.” Intimate partner violence in the military has long been a problem with unclear signs of progress. Killings in the 1990s on bases such as Fort Campbell made national headlines, leading Congress to establish the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence in 2000. Campbell, the nursing professor, was part of the effort, which issued over 200 suggestions for improvement by 2003. “Most of the recommendations we made a long time ago were never implemented,” she said. For one, she’d repeatedly requested better recordkeeping. “One of the things I kept asking was, ‘What are the statistics on intimate partner homicide in the military?’ We could never get them,” Campbell said. “And in the military’s suicide reports, you cannot determine how many suicides were part of homicide–suicides, where a service member killed a civilian wife or partner before killing himself.” This lack of clarity sounded familiar to Priscilla Rodriguez, who spent 10 years in the Marine Corps before working in strategic communications for the Navy. “The command chose not to pursue military legal action.” Rodriguez experienced domestic violence that met the Defense Department’s criteria from her husband, an active-duty Marine at the time, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept. Her husband pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child abuse in civilian courts, and military legal authorities recommended domestic violence charges. “The command chose not to pursue military legal action,” Rodriguez said. The Intercept’s analysis of the rates of domestic abuse reported in Pentagon data found intimate partner violence among married military couples was at least four times higher than the civilian rate. The Pentagon does not report the rate of abuse involving unmarried intimate partners, like Resendiz and Copeland. Gaps like these make it difficult to have a thorough reckoning of the problem’s scale. “When accountability is inconsistent,” Rodriguez said, “it sends a message that abuse can and will remain hidden.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth serves Thanksgiving meals to service members in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 28, 2025. He was joined by his wife, Jennifer Hegseth. Photo: Master Sgt. William Blankenship/U.S. Air Force photo Joint Task Force DC “I Knew My Kid Was Not Coming Back” Copeland kept Resendiz’s corpse hidden in his barracks room for four days, until June 2, 2025, when he put her body into a duffel bag and dumped it in a wooded area behind a nearby elementary school. By then, he was being questioned by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on her whereabouts, and Castle was still wondering about her daughter’s safety. She’d asked naval authorities to have her daughter give her a call, and when it never came, she contacted the base again. A Navy official suggested her daughter may have gone AWOL. “I didn’t believe that,” Castle said. “My kid is scared to miss work. She won’t take off.” Castle flew to Virginia herself. Resendiz had been dead for a week. Castle felt she wasn’t getting the information she needed after the Navy and local authorities had put out a statewide missing person’s alert. She requested that she be let into her daughter’s barracks room. “I didn’t want anyone else touching her stuff,” Castle said. “It was how she left it. There was still paint out; she had started painting again. Her yoga mat was still out. She had planned on returning. I knew my kid was not coming back.” She spent two more days in Virginia searching for her daughter, talking to local news, and asking naval authorities to give more updates. “They didn’t declare her AWOL or dead,” Castle said. “They said she was duty status unknown. I was worried they were going to wash their hands of her.” On June 7, Castle flew back to Texas. Police found Resendiz’s body in the duffel bag two days later. A History of Violence Jermiah Copeland was convicted of Resendiz’s murder on June 8, 2026. According to evidence entered into court records in his murder trial, he had also been accused of two instances of domestic violence, three sexual assaults, indecent recordings, and other crimes from during and before his Navy service. “He had a history of violence against women starting in high school,” Castle said. “And was still allowed to join with the charges against him. Then he was accused of raping another service member, and he was transferred. There were no safeguards in place at the new command.” The absence of safeguards against intimate partner violence in the military is part of a broader set of structural and cultural failings, experts told The Intercept. “There are many disincentives for a couple, particularly when one or both partners are on active duty, to seek help,” Campbell said. “Active-duty women who were being abused told us: ‘If my commanding officer knew, I would never get the next promotion.’ There is considerable stigma, even for the victim. That makes the violence much more likely to escalate and makes it more likely that we eventually end up with homicides.” Research indicates that the military’s hypermasculine culture and systematic mistreatment of women play a role in the increased risks of intimate partner violence. Some studies suggest that veterans offend at higher rates than those on active duty. A previous Intercept investigation found active-duty Army women were more likely to be killed by fellow service members than by enemy combatants and had a higher per capita risk of homicide than their fellow male soldiers between the years 2011 and 2025. More than 70 percent of the victims had an intimate relationship with the perpetrator at some point. Army women faced an intimate partner homicide rate at least three times higher than women nationally; controlling for those killed by service men and male veterans alone, it was double. The military’s systems for identifying and responding to abuse, meanwhile, have come under repeated scrutiny. A 2021 Government Accountability Office report found the department “has not collected and reported accurate data for all domestic abuse allegations received,” leaving it unable to assess the scope of alleged abuse. The same can be said for homicides. Almost a third of the 79 victims The Intercept found were killed in murder–suicides. Firearms were used in over two-thirds of the fatalities. Twenty-five of the victims were service members. Multiple homicides involved corollary victims who were not partners, including children, who research shows make up a sizable amount of intimate partner violence-related deaths. In response to The Intercept’s questions, the Department of Defense stated that data in its domestic abuse reports does not constitute estimates, as it is only using aggregated data from the Family Advocacy Program Central Registry, a database run by the DoD. It further stated it did not have any more information to share on the matter. “Right now, unless an incident is reported to the Family Advocacy Program,” said Campbell, “nobody knows about it. Those reports are only the tip of the iceberg.” Data tracking failures have had deadly consequences. The Air Force failed to submit the criminal history of a former service member convicted of assaulting his wife and stepson to a federal database that could have prevented him from purchasing firearms. In 2017, he killed 26 people in Sutherland Springs, Texas. When Rodriguez reported her own abuse to the DoD, she felt that they didn’t consider the previous information they had available. Installation-level committees review reported allegations and determine whether they meet criteria to be input into the central registry. But the process is plagued with issues, experts who spoke to the Intercept revealed, from investigation procedures to data tracking. “I was terrified to disclose the full extent of the abuse I was experiencing,” Rodriguez said. “What stands out to me now is that the Family Advocacy Program already had access to my husband’s history. Given that history, I believe the conversation should have been much broader than simply asking whether I wanted to report anything. I left that initial interaction without understanding what support existed or how I could safely leave.” While navigating her own case, Rodriguez was also watching the same problem surface through her communications work for the Navy. “It felt completely disconnected from the reality my family and so many others were living.” “Headlines I monitored involved active duty and Marine veterans accused of intimate partner homicide,” Rodriguez said. “At the same time, I reviewed serious incident reports that were elevated to senior leadership. … The narrative often indicated that intimate partner violence or domestic violence was a contributing or co-occurring factor.” Navy criminal investigative data showed domestic violence-related deaths increasing as Rodriguez was trying to raise the issue in 2022. She tried to compile domestic violence awareness resources, but she recalled being told the need wasn’t there. “I was told there was ‘no demand signal,’” Rodriguez said. “It felt completely disconnected from the reality my family and so many others were living.” Castle feels that the knowledge of Copeland’s history of abuse could have saved her daughter’s life. “No one knew anything about him,” Castle said. “The leadership created an environment that allowed him to harm women.” Winnable Cases Since her daughter’s murder, Castle has been at work pushing the Navy and Defense Department to strengthen their responses to intimate partner violence. Her work led to the Navy changing its policies in July on how it transfers sailors with allegations of sexual violence. Her wins, including potential plans by the Navy to change how it classifies missing sailors, are the latest in a long string of limited efforts toward progress. “Records are important,” said Castle. “With my daughter, they didn’t want to classify her case properly at first. For the military, if something isn’t in a database, it doesn’t exist.” Following the high-profile 2020 murder of Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén at Fort Hood — and two years after domestic violence became classified as a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice — Congress gave independent military prosecutors the power to decide which cases to bring to trial. Domestic violence prosecutions climbed, with charges brought in 359 cases last year alone, up from dozens of cases four years earlier. But Pentagon data identified at least 25,000 intimate partner and spouse abuse victims, and 37,000 cases, from 2021 to 2024. And while domestic violence prosecutions increased, military prosecutions of sexual assault — often related to intimate partner violence — fell by almost 60 percent in the past five years, based on data from its annual sexual assault prevention reports. A 20 percent drop occurred from 2024–2025 alone, and The Intercept’s analysis of military court data shows the trend is continuing into 2026. “In the Pete Hegseth era, sexual assault prosecutions have dropped significantly. Domestic violence is essentially filling that gap,” said Paul Newell, an Army veteran and activist who tracks military suicide, sexual assault, and domestic violence while engaging with members of Congress on the issue. “In the Pete Hegseth era, sexual assault prosecutions have dropped significantly.” Newell thinks the trial counsel’s office is “going for what they feel are stronger, more winnable cases,” he said. “They’ll tell you that their conviction rates at trial are still high, which shows that really, they’re just getting rid of the bad cases,” he said. “But we’re not down 60 percent in sexual assaults happening.” The Pentagon stated in response to The Intercept’s questions that it does not have any additional information to share on why prosecution rates for certain crimes are dropping. The Intercept also discovered preferential treatment in trial outcomes: Analyzing over 650 military court cases with guilty verdicts from 2021 on, reporters found less senior Navy, Marine, and Army service members had higher chances of losing their benefits and received more jail time after being convicted for domestic violence. Senior ranks closest to retirement received the best conviction outcomes, even compared to those of the same rank as them who had fewer years in service. Newell feels that these discrepancies give perpetrators increased power over their victims. “The justice system should not take time in service into consideration since that’s prioritizing the perpetrator. If the punishment for domestic violence is a discharge where you lose benefits, it should be applied equally.” In April, Hegseth directed installation commanders to allow service members to request permission to carry privately owned firearms on bases while off duty. He framed the change as a way to protect service members from attacks on military installations. Campbell disagrees. “I have reviewed far too many domestic violence homicide records,” Campbell said. “It is clear to me that, in many cases, there might have been a fight, and somebody might have been hit, but nobody would have died if there had not been a gun right there.” Rodriguez, who is now studying public health, is calling for recurring anonymous surveys using specific questions to measure the prevalence of intimate partner violence, standardized tracking, independent evaluation, and public reporting. Castle is still mourning her daughter and still pushing the Navy to reveal the full details about the investigation into her death. To add to the insult, she remembered the shock she felt late last June, when the Navy sent Resendiz home to Texas in a casket. Naval officials had told Castle that everything was taken care of, she recalled, including cleaning the body. The Navy acknowledges that it failed to clearly inform Castle of her daughter’s true state. She was returned to Texas in decay, her body crawling with maggots. “There’s nothing that can be done for her,” said Castle. “That’s injustice, and that’s what drives me. None of these women volunteered to be violated in this way.” How we analyzed the data Reporters searched through multiple databases to identify the number of potential victims of intimate partner violence, using definitions provided by health and policy research alongside government organizations, comparing it to the last six years of available DoD reporting from 2019 through 2024. The case of a U.S. Air Force airman who kidnapped and murdered a Mennonite woman in 2020 didn’t meet criteria because evidence revealed no previous or current relationship. The case of a soldier who was convicted a year later of the murder of a woman in Texas did, as evidence indicated they had a relationship before the woman’s death. Cases were broken down by the year of the offense, gender of the alleged perpetrator and victim, and branch of the perpetrator and victim, if applicable. To analyze court data, reporters from The Intercept pulled all court cases pertaining to domestic violence from the years 2021 to 2026 from the websites of the Air Force, Navy/Marines, and U.S. Army. Navy/Marine data was only available starting in 2021. Data included the offense type, rank of the accused, and whether the cases ended in acquittal, dismissal, or conviction. For those convicted, the analysis included the amount of jail time given and whether offenders received a punitive discharge, which costs them military retirement and other benefits. Retirement eligibility was calculated based on pay information provided in court documents, which in the military is based on years served. Air Force data could not be used for this analysis due to a lack of documentation and apparent discrepancies between the number of cases reported to Congress and those available on the Air Force portal. To obtain the number of cases the DoD is prosecuting for sexual assault, reporters utilized Annex B of the DoD’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military to calculate the number of unrestricted reports made to military authorities and the amount sent to the military justice system to begin the judicial process. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers 24-hour support for those experiencing suicidal thoughts or for those close to them, by chat, text, or telephone. Service members can dial 988 and press 1 to reach the Military and Veterans Crisis Line. Support is free and confidential.