The Bizarre Investigatory Saga of the Maria Lauterbach Case

A couple of weeks ago I read a headline about a missing, pregnant woman in North Carolina. At first the articles indicated the woman, a Marine file clark, may have been the victim of foul play. She was about a month shy of delivering a child. At first it sounded like so many frightening cases of domestic disarray, but then the story began to twist and turn.

Early on it was revealed the Marine, Maira Lauterbach, had accused a superior officer of rape. According to news reports, when she'd last communicated with her mother, on December 14, 2007, she indicated to the mother that the case 'had gone' sour recently. As with any case of a missing woman, let alone a missing pregnant woman - it can be expected that law enforcement would focus on family, and the father of the child Lauterbach was carrying. Little was reported about who that person was, let alone that it was alleged the child's father was the same person accused by Lauterbach of rape eight months before her disappearance.

Here again it doesn't take an investigative wizard to figure out that the birth of a child might determine genetic certainties relevant to a pending rape case. DNA could be obtained before the birth of a child, but no news reports indicated that had been done in thise case.

Then, last week the sheriff of Onslow county, where Lauterbach lived, announced there were 'promising leads' in the case (TOday Show, 1/11/08). The same news accounts that pointed to these so-called promising leads contained seemingly random 'facts' about both Lauterbach and her prior associations. MSNBC's account stated both that Lauterbach's mother referred to the earlier rape accusation, but also to Maria Lauterbach's supposed bi-polar disorder and that it made her an habitual liar. In reading MSNBC and CNN's online accounts on Thursday January 10 and Friday January 11, it is difficult to tell whether each account was somehow making reference to the habitual liar having made up the rape charge. At one point stories said the military investigation into Lauterbach's allegation was stalled or shut down, but in another place they indicated Lauterbach was set to testify or to otherwise bring "significant" information into the evidentiary process, presumably with the birth of a child.

Lauterbach's mother isn't quoted directly, but is attributed with the assertion that Lauterbach lied all the time and somehow couldn't be trusted, and the mother also appears to have said she advised Lauterbach to give up the child for adoption once it was born. To be honest, I can't think of many women who are raped who go on to raise children born under those circumstances. But, again, the news accounts inferred the plea to give up the baby was more about Lauterbach's inadequacies than about an inability to financially and emotionally parent a child born of rape. In fact, the reports up to this point didn't even imply the pregnancy was related to the alleged rape, although clearly this reader was wondering at the coincidence.

Now, none of the news reports stated at what point Lauterbach made her claim with military authorities, so i'ts unclear if she'd been waiting around for months for some formal dispensation of the charges and situation, or if she only recently came forward. As late as Friday morning, January 11, news accounts were stating that Sheriff Ed brown expected to make a 'positive announcement' about the case as soon as Lauterbach's room mate came back from a trip later that day, and that it was now presumed Lauterbach had lied herself into a hole and had gone into hiding (MSNBC, CNN, Today - 1/11/08). Honestly, this perplexed me. Women who are nearing delivery of their babies, and I would presume especially women for whom there are very high stakes surrounding paternity outcome of the unborn child, simply don't go into hiding. They cannot hide from the inevitable - birth. This was not a woman who was in denial about being pregnant. This was not a woman who had been negotiating the adoption of her child or some other questionable enterprise. This was also, by all accounts, not a woman who was looking much beyond today. Clearly her life was in turmoil.

So, it was curious to me that the sheriff would make such a positive announcement in the morning. I was also surprised to read that law enforcement believed Lauerbach and the alleged rapist to have continued on with a 'friendly relationship' It wasn't even believable all those years ago in soap opera world when Luke and Laura ended up falling in love after their relationship was initiated by a forcible rape. You can forgive and move on, but you don't maintain a 'friendly relationship' with someone you are accusing of rape and against whom you are preparing to testify.

Unless, I guess, you are a habitual liar who has made all of this up and who is just in hiding until things settle down.

So, imagine my surprise (horror) at reading just hours later that Lauterbach was dead. In fact, she had been dead since December 15, 2007, a day after her mother last heard from her. She was found, her body burned along with that of her dead child, in a pit in the backyard of the man she had accused of rape. A man authorities hadn't taken into custody and hadn't questioned in custody because he was 'uncooperative' but whom they apparently didn't suspect in her disappearnce because somehow the message was transmitted that he and the dead woman had continued a friendly relationship while charges against him were pending. Far from the roomate coming home to tell everyone where he thought his room mate might have gone off to and put an end to all this silliness of rape charges and missing persons, what was discovered was that Lauterbach had been murdered along with her presumably unborn child, and their bodies had been burned and dumped in a pit in her superior officer's back yard. That man's wife came forward with a note he left behind, before fleeing the state some three weeks after Lauterbach's death, in which he alleged Lauterbach had killed herself so he had buried her.

Here's the thing. Emotionally fragile women are just as vulnerable to rape and murder as emotionally strong women. You can be bi-polar, you can even be someone who lies (or is presumed to lie because you've said someone has raped you) and still be victimized. In the midst on an ongoing military investigation even pretty, young allegedly bi-polar women can pose a presumed threat to violent individuals who would rather that they not testify against them at trial at inquest or court martial. Far from Maria Lauterbach's life coming apart with the approaching birth of her child, it appears someone else's life was going to fall apart if the baby was identified as his child. In fact, it appears Maria Lauterbach didn't dig herself a hole and then go off to hide in embarrassment, but after killing her, someone else dug a hole and hid her body and her babys body in it and stayed around for weeks after the crime.

Ironically the 'person of interest' brought back to North Carolina was not a suspect in a presumed violent crime, but a witness to a presumed non-violent flight. The actual suspect managed to slip away from military authorities and local law enforcement. Now we are told a 'worldwide' search is on for this man. And I guess the question is, nine months after one Marine alleged a crime was committed against her, and nearly a month after that young Marine's murder - is how and why did this person maintain his freedom?

I think the more we learn about this very tragic case, the more we might learn about basic biases in investigations. First we have a pretty young, perhaps mentally disordered woman of 20 years. She is serving in the military and has not been removed from her duties and by all acounts was performing them honorably. At some point she comes forward and accuses a superior officer (a married one in this case) of rape. She continues to be assigned to the same job and apparently the accused is also continued to be assigned there. The case at some point 'goes sour' according to relatives of the alleged victim. Details of a final phone conversation are sketchy, but they seem to include a mother advising her daughter to give up the child when it is born. Ironically, at the same time this is unfolding in the media (granted, months after the military investigation should have commenced), hreadlines are splattered everywhere about another young, emotionally fragile woman, Britney Spears. Spears loses custody of her two young sons and all the talk is about how she's in a downward mental spiral. This happens in the same timeframe that news accounts about Lauerbach begin to make reference to her mental instability, lying, and the potential that she might have made this whole scenario up and has now gone into hiding. It has an aroma that is not pleasant when fully inhaled.

The facts, as best I can discern them from media accounts, are that a woman alleged rape by someone she worked closely with and who was her superior officer. Obviously such an allegation carries with it the presumption that every day life for Marine Lauterbach must have been uncomfortable. She is living away from her family of origin, is in the military and is working with or near someone she has now alleged has raped her - and she is pregnant. I cannot imagine a work environment in this country that would allow an accused rapist and his accuser to continue to work in proximity - so hopefully that was not the case here - but I also can't imagine a setting where the accused would be allowed continued access to the accuser. Respecting one's right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty (though this is not the military standard), there is also the spectre of workplace and overall safety for someone who has come forward to say she is the victim of a violent crime. I would be very interested to know just how this idea of a 'continued friendly relationship' could be accommodated in a legal context.

It's also a big stretch to make a presumption that someone who is near term with a pregnancy, is involved in an adversarial criminal process and who has virtually no support network in her current job and location - would fabricate all of this and just disappear. Fabiractors usually turn up fairly quickly. They make up further stories. In very, very few cases where a pregnant woman disappears and goes unheard from for weeks - is she in control of her destiny, let alone alive. And yet, up until the afernoon of January 11, nearly a month after Maria Lauterbach was killed, authorities were not presuming the worst (her death and the death of her child at someone else's hands), but they were willing to entertain the worst sort of character assumptions about a missing person they had never met nor interviewed.

I believe very strongly the military legal system needs to provide a very transparaent accounting of the handling of this case from day one and needs to account for all efforts it made to preserve the safety of its personnel, in this case a pregnant Marine. I think local law enforcement also needs to account for sharing of information like assertions that Lauterbach was a liar, was bi-polar, and was likely to have fled under the weight of her own deceit and shame. Not since the Duke LaCrosee fiasco has so much disinformation been so carelessly put into the public realm. And, the reality is, none of this information makes any difference to the bottom line reality that long before authorities even knew this woman was missing, she was already dead. All that has been achieved thus far is a tainitng of her personal legacy. I do not know Maria Lauterbach and know absolutely nothing about her personal character. But I suppose it is precious comfort to her soul or to her loved ones that officials are now advising her presumed killer that he cannot escape justice - accusing him in public of murder the way they inferred Lauterbach was feigning victimization up to the point it was determined she was indeed dead.

There are just too many unanswered and very uncomfortable questions hovering over this case. Obviously, if things did end as authorities now believe they did - with the murder of Lauterbach and her unborn child and with the desecration of their corposes in a fiery burial in the backyard of the man she accused of raping her, then it begs the question of why this man wasn't in military custody and why he had continued access to a person who had already accused him of a serious violent crime. I certainly hope it doesn't come to light that this woman was simply disbelieved and dismissed. Other than the horror of surviving a rape, surviing the ongoing emotional trauma of carrying a child of rape to term, of being disbelieved, and then enduring a violent death at the hands of her previous tormenter, one cannot imagine a greater injustice repeatedly perpetrated against an innocent person.

Far from settling for more assurances from law enforcement, the American public and the people of North Caorlina should demand a full accounting of how Maria Lauterbach's case was handled from beginning to end. She was a human being, a daughter, family member, friend, even a mother, and she died in the course of honorable service to her country We owe her final justice.