Military police arrested a former Fort Bragg sergeant Thursday in the 1999 slaying of his ex-girlfriend, reviving a case that was quietly shelved by commanders at the Army base in North Carolina two years ago.
Forest Nelson, a 36-year-old psychological operations veteran accused of strangling Tabitha Croom, was taken into custody in Washington, D.C., after a lengthy interrogation by investigators. He is expected to be extradited to Fayetteville, N.C., where the Cumberland County district attorney will pursue first-degree murder charges, authorities said.
Last year, the Department of Defense reopened the murder case after The Denver Post uncovered additional evidence of domestic violence in a previous marriage of Nelson’s and raised questions about why Fort Bragg commanders discharged him from the Army even though base police and military prosecutors wanted to take him to trial in connection with Croom’s death.
The Post cited the Nelson case in its November “Betrayal in the Ranks” investigative series as an example of how a secretive and lenient military justice system has failed many domestic-violence victims and their families – even in murder cases.
The Nelson homicide file obtained by the newspaper showed that his commanders, using discretionary powers allowed under military law, permitted him to leave the service in 2002 without being prosecuted. At the time, Fort Bragg was facing national scrutiny over its handling of a cluster of domestic-violence murders.
“This reinforces the hope that we have as investigators that unsolved cases can still be solved,” said Maj. Sam Pennica of the Cumberland County sheriff’s office in Fayetteville, where Croom lived.
Nelson, who denied wrongdoing in meetings with police, has not responded to interview requests from The Post.
In recent months, the sheriff’s department, working jointly with military police and the FBI, re-examined the evidence trail and tracked down Nelson, who married a Navy service member based in Washington, D.C.
On Wednesday, police interrogated him for the first time in more than three years, describing him as “nervous and paranoid.”
Pennica said investigators were able to establish from the interview “cause of death and a location of the crime.”
Investigators say that Nelson, the last person known to have seen Croom before she was reported missing, strangled her at her apartment during an argument and left her body in a wooded area behind his barracks.
“I’m so happy – this has gone on for four years, and I’ve prayed every single one of those days that her killer would be caught,” said Ann Croom, Tabitha’s mother. “Now, when I pray, I can say to Tabby, ‘They got him.”‘
Military police and Cumberland County investigators built the case to send Nelson, a specialist in Army propaganda strategies, to trial years ago.
The 23-year-old Croom, a theater worker and part-time exotic dancer, had reported at least two domestic-violence incidents involving Nelson to civilian police in the year before her slaying – believed to have occurred on Oct. 4, 1999. Croom had confided in friends that Nelson beat her and talked of knowing how to “dispose of bodies,” according to records and Post interviews.
Nelson picked up Croom from the local movie theater where she worked on Oct. 4. Around midnight, Croom’s next-door neighbor heard “rumbling and tussling” noises coming from her apartment and saw Nelson’s car backed up to her door with the trunk open, records show.
Weeks later, Croom’s body was found 500 feet behind Nelson’s barracks. Investigators began putting together a long string of evidence, starting with a search of Nelson’s car trunk that produced “head hairs microscopically similar” to Croom’s, records show.
Nelson also failed crucial portions of his polygraph, according to documents. And scratches that covered Nelson’s arms were found to be consistent with the thorny brush covering her body, among other evidence.
But despite the support of two prosecutors for pursuing a trial, records show, the investigation was inexplicably terminated in November 2002. In the military, commanders decide whether soldiers are prosecuted, instead of prosecutors.
The case file offered no details about why Nelson was not charged but indicated that he received an administrative punishment.
Croom’s mother told The Post last year that Fort Bragg officials did not tell her about his discharge: “We all thought he was going to trial. I will never understand how they could do that. Never.”
Last year, The Post tracked down an ex-wife of Nelson’s who said he shot her in the stomach with a handgun in 1992, then persuaded her to concoct a story that it was an accident.
Records at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, where she sought treatment, supported her account. Defense Department officials told The Post they never knew about the incident.
Fort Bragg officials subsequently announced that they were reopening their investigation into Nelson.
Pennica and Charlie Disponzio, a Cumberland homicide detective who has helped investigate the murder, said the civilian local district attorney will now take jurisdiction in prosecuting the case since it is believed the crime actually occurred outside Fort Bragg.
They credited The Post with “keeping the investigation alive” and the persistence of four agencies’ investigators to finally make an arrest.
“The article had a lot to do with it – playing a role in bringing him to justice,” Disponzio said.
Miles Moffeit can be reached at 303-820-1415.
