Varnado Simpson was an American soldier of the US Army who participated in the My Lai Massacre, murdering, raping, torturing and mutilating Vietnamese civilians. He was wracked with remorse after the killings, and eventually committed suicide nearly 30 years later.
Early career
Simpson joined the U.S. Army in 1967, at the age of 18, and the following year was posted to South Vietnam. He was assigned to Second Platoon, Charlie Company, under the command of Captain Ernest Medina.
Under Captain Medina's command, Simpson participated in the massacre at the village of My Lai, where he reportedly killed at least eight unarmed villagers, including a mother and her baby. TIME magazine quotes him as stating: "I shot them, the lady and the little boy. He was about two years old." His official statement on the event was succinct: "I killed about eight people that day. I shot a couple of old men who were running away. I also shot some women and children. I would shoot them as they ran out of huts or tried to hide." Simpsons words from this interview were later reinterpreted by Robert Lowell in his poem "Women, Children, Babies, Cows, Cats"
After My Lai
Personal tragedies
In 1977, Simpson's 10-year-old son was accidentally killed by a random shot fired by some neighborhood teenagers. Simpson recalled the day later by stating, "He died in my arms. And when I looked at him, his face was like the same face of the child that I had killed. And I said: This is the punishment for killing the people that I killed." Simpson's daughter died of meningitis a few years before he himself committed suicide.
In 1982, he was admitted to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, where he was diagnosed with chronic and severe post-traumatic stress disorder after recounting his actions in the village, as well as his recurring fears that the dead villagers would come back to wreak vengeance upon him. In 1989, in an interview for the British documentary Four Hours in My Lai, Simpson claimed to have killed about 25 people and added scalping and bodily mutilation to his description of events. "The baby’s face was half gone, my mind just went…and I just started killing. Old men, women, children, water buffaloes, everything… I just killed… That day in My Lai, I was personally responsible for killing about 25 people. Personally. Men, women. From shooting them, to cutting their throats, scalping them, to...cutting off their hands and cutting out their tongues. I did it.", he said. At this point, Simpson was heavily medicated for his severe psychological disorders, and it is unclear which memories of the events are truthful or accurate. For years, Simpson had lived with all his doors and windows locked and shuttered.
Suicide
After three unsuccessful attempts, Simpson took his own life in his home on Sunday, May 4, 1997, at the age of 48, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
