Editor’s Pick: My Favorite Phone Call

Got a legal problem? Need a quick answer? There’s one lawyer that may be able to assist you.

Just Ask Lenny The Lawyer
Len Tillem of KGO NewsTalk Radio, takes your legal questions. Every weekday from 12 noon to 1 p.m. (Pacific Time).  Len Tillem answers legal questions, for free.

I heard a question asked on KGO this past weekend. The caller wanted to know if he was still liable for his case. Lenny assured the caller that the statute of limitations had already passed. The caller seemed very relieved.

I found the caller’s story after doing a Google search. I was blown away. Check this out…

Here’s the LA Times Story:  August 31, 1994

The Eight Lives of a Serial Serviceman

First there was Walter Banks Beacham Jr., and it was his real name.

 Then came Mark Richard Gerardi, the first of many aliases, followed by Cedrick Houston and Chris Villanueva and Zachary Pitt and George Perez.

Four times he served in the Navy. Four times he served in the Army. And then he was court-martialed.

For more than a dozen years, he managed to foil recruiters by using fictitious names and fictitious credentials. And after serving just long enough to receive his signing bonus, he would hop a fence or hail a taxi and then slip unnoticed back into civilian life.

His greatest accomplishment was beating the largest and most complex organization in the United States: the military.

“It’s amazing. I’m intrigued. I’m appalled,” said Kathleen M. Gilberd, a paralegal counselor who specializes in military administrative matters in San Diego, where Beacham went through several of his Navy boot camps.

“Eight is a hell of a lot of enlistments, and I’m a little puzzled because you’d think the background checks would catch him.”

Robert Bowers, a Fairfield, Calif., attorney who as an Army captain prosecuted Beacham at Ft. Ord, said that in the 500 courts-martial he has handled, nothing compares in scope to the revolving-door antics of Navy Petty Officer-turned-Army Pvt. Walter Banks Beacham Jr.

“He knew the system, he knew the right codes,” Bowers said. “And that’s all stuff that even most prosecutors and lawyers don’t know.

Reassembling his life is now Beacham’s greatest challenge. In the past, he joined the service for signing bonuses of up $4,000, for trips to exotic ports in Asia and Europe, and for his greatest love–the chance to live someone else’s life.

He was arrested by police in December, 1992, after an argument with a Los Angeles bus driver. Turned over to military authorities, he was court-martialed at Ft. Ord on multiple charges of unlawful enlistment, being AWOL and desertion, as well as the old drug case in Germany. He served eight months and 25 days in an Army prison at Ft. Lewis, Wash. He was dishonorably discharged.

At his court-martial, he stood before the Army judge and pleaded guilty, and he tried to explain who Walter Banks Beacham Jr. is. “I have had a lot of problems in the past,” he said. “A long time ago, these problems arose when I was merely trying to serve my country.”

Then he added, as if in understatement: “I know that it is difficult to see the real me.”