Incidents, Special Circumstances, Professional Deficiencies

"When an incident, a special circumstance, or a professional deficiency occurs that calls into question the member's suitability for continued service, an administrative review will be initiated to ensure the most appropriate career administrative action is taken.
"The Canadian Armed Forces hold their members to a very high standard of conduct and performance."
Cpt. Joanna Labonte, spokesperson, Department of National Defence

Oh. Most reassuring. It is, then, entirely possible that 50-year-old warrant officer Howard Richmond, charged on Saturday by police, with murdering his 28-year-old wife Melissa, may be suspended from regular duties. Pending a Canadian Armed Forces review. Until which time he remains an active member of the military. It is uncertain whether, should a suspension occur, it would be without pay.

Cpt. Labonte was not speaking of some negligible charge like shop-lifting. Shades of the gruesomely deviant and demented crimes of Col. Russell Williams, former commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, also in eastern Ontario. Who, with all the evidence assembled against him pleaded guilty to all 88 charges brought against him, inclusive of two counts of first-degree murder, two of sexual assault and forcible confinement, break-ins and attempted break-ins.

Mr. Richmond, a member of the Canadian Armed Forces since 1988, was married to Melissa Richmond for eight years. He is said to be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Through his career with the Armed Forces he was dispatched to conflict zones at six foreign destinations, Afghanistan purportedly the last.

In 2009 in Afghanistan he was involved with the collection of "unclassified high-resolution colour stereo imagery". He wrote a first-person account of the mission for publication in the Canadian Military Mapper, a trade newsletter. Advanced teams, he wrote, set up instruments to aid in the mapping process throughout Afghanistan.

"I carried seven knives and got to fire an American M-60 [machine-gun] from a Chinook ... and we get paid for this!", he enthused. The teams he was part of with the Canadian military collected images every ten seconds to map 100,000 square kilometres of Afghanistan, in the process being up in the air for up to 13 hours at a time.

A soldier who was interviewed for a newspaper article about Mr. Richmond and who served with him in Afghanistan thought of him as a good team leader, an individual who never appeared overly aggressive, and showed no signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. He never shared war stories of having experienced a serious firefight.

His ease with knives appears to have been demonstrated with the condition his wife was found in. Found three days after her husband had reported her missing on July 24. Partially unclothed, dead of multiple stab wounds, her body in the process of decomposition. The mourning husband led the searches mounted by countless friends of the couple. He spoke movingly of his grief, not knowing where "my Melissa" could be.

And when her body was discovered grieving further. But not disclosing to anyone that he might have known where she was all along. His lies were revealed only when police confiscated videos from a gas station that picked up the images of a husband and wife, driving their separate cars, stopping for a gas fill-up, when the horrendously worried husband was supposed to have been at home that evening, awaiting his wife's return from a spontaneous short evening drive.

Before he was charged with his wife's murder, he had expressed his appreciation to everyone who had joined the intense search to discover his missing wife's whereabouts. He asked people in mourning once her body had been recovered, to send donations to their local food bank, rather than sending flowers to the funeral home.

He was arrested the day of her funeral.