Varnado Simpson

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Pfc. Varnado Simpson was an American soldier posted to Vietnam and a participant in the My Lai Massacre

Simpson joined the US military in 1967 at the age of eighteen, and the following year was posted to Vietnam. He was assigned to Charlie Company, under the command of Captain Ernest Medina, and participated in the massacre at the village of My Lai, where he reportedly killed at least 8 unarmed villagers, including a mother and her baby. His official statement on the event was succinct: "I killed about 8 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."[1]

Twenty years after that initial statement, in a 1989 interview with Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Simpson claimed to have killed over 25 people and added scalping and bodily mutilation to his description of events. At this point he was being heavily medicated for psychological disorders, and it is unclear which memories of the events are more accurate.

Some time after returning home from the war, Simpson's own son was accidentally shot by neighbours in his front yard. 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."

In 1982 he was admitted to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Jackson, Mississippi where he was diagnosed with paranoia after recounting his actions in the village, as well as his recurring fears that the dead villagers would come back for vengeance upon him.^{[citation needed]}

After three unsuccessful attempts, he successfully committed suicide in 1997, in his own home, a few months before the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre.