MARVYILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Kelli Heard, wife of convicted Blackwater security contractor Dustin Heard, understands that many casual observers will view her husband as a killer, and not a caring family man. And she believes she understands why.
“They’re looking at the prosecution’s side of the story,” says Heard. “Because that’s all that’s been repeated.”
Dustin Laurent Heard was a member of the security team for Blackwater USA involved in a now-infamous 2007 incident in Baghdad, Iraq, wherein 32 unarmed civilians were either killed or wounded when shooting started as a Blackwater convoy passed through Nisour Square.
Heard, a Maryville resident, was one of four Blackwater contractors convicted on multiple counts of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter, and a charge of using a firearm in a violent crime. Heard was sentenced earlier this month in federal court to 30 years in prison.
A native of Texas, Kelli Heard has lived in Maryville since 1998, and considers herself “pretty much a Maryvillian now.” She met Dustin Heard during his military service; his best friend was dating Kelli’s sister, and Dustin would often accompany him during his trips to Maryville on leave.
Kelli and Dustin began dating. They married 12 years ago, soon after she graduated from Heritage High School.
According to published accounts of the Nisour Square incident, Dustin Heard and other members of his Blackwater convoy began firing as they passed through the city, believing they were being fired upon by insurgents.
The various accounts of what happened in Nisour differ. But at trial, several Iraqi witnesses and a few fellow Blackwater contractors testified that the shooting was unprovoked.
But Kelli Heard says those accounts don’t square with the man she married. “During the whole process, we were looking for people to provide character statements about Dustin,” she says. “What I found both funny and heart-warming was that several people who were completely unrelated to one another all characterized him as ’a man who would give you the shirt off his back.’ I think that describes him more than anything else.”
Kelli Heard says her memories from the Nisour incident, now more than eight years past, are less vivid now. Mostly, she says, her husband tried to shield the family from the fallout of the event.
“I didn’t hear much,” she says. “My husband has always been the protector, and he was worried, when it happened, that I would hear it on the news, that accounts would be skewed. The first thing he did was call me and say, ’There’s been an incident,’ and assure me things were OK.”
Tensions came to a head when manslaughter charges were filed against Heard and his fellows in 2008. Heard was back on the homefront then - his Blackwater contract called for 90 days of service in Iraq followed by 30 days leave.
But Kelli Heard says her husband had suffered a back injury in an accident that happened shortly before Nisour, requiring spinal fusion surgery when he returned home. “At that point, he could not get any work in the field in which he was trained,” she says. “So he became a stay-at-home dad.”
The Heards had one child at that point, daughter Hannah Kylie, now age 9. With charges against Dustin Heard pending, the couple had decided to hold off on further additions to the family. When those initial charges were dismissed in December 2009, “we decided to proceed with life as usual,” Kelli Heard says. “We decided to add to our family, comfortable in the knowledge that Dustin was cleared of all charges.”
The Heards’ second child, son Quinn, was born in 2011. But then Heard says she and her husband began hearing rumors, rumblings that a new case might be brought forth again.
A federal appeals court revived the Justice Department’s charges in April 2011. “I don’t know whether I can put the feeling I had then into words,” Kelli Heard says. “I guess it was disbelief.
“The case was dismissed the first time for specific reasons,” she continues. “So when it happened again, I was in shock. It seems to me that they were being used as scapegoats.”
In Kelli Heard’s view, the trial against her husband and his fellow contractors was a politically motivated event. She says their convictions were based on scarce or questionable forensic evidence, and were largely dependent on the testimony of another Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, who wanted to trade his testimony for a reduced sentence.
Because she feels media coverage has ignored exculpatory evidence in the trial, she and other Blackwater defendant family members have started a website, supportraven23.com, to tell their side of the story.
It’s been a long and painful ordeal for Kelli Heard, who - barring appeals - now faces the prospect of living her life without the man she married. In the end, she says her husband is a good man caught up in a tragic circumstance.
“He is an innocent man, and an honorable man,” she says, her voice a little cracked with the stress of the retelling. “And I have two kids now who don’t understand why their dad is in jail.”
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