Report: Itzcoatl Ocampa Joined Marines Because He Needed to Kill

According to court documents obtained by the Orange County Register, Itzcoatl Ocampo confessed to Detective Daron Wyatt that he joined the Marines in order to become a killer. He was disappointed when he did not see any combat in Iraq, and was made a truck driver instead.

Ocampo made the confession a few hours after he was arrested January 13, 2012 for the murder of a homeless man. He was eventually charged with killing six people in total.

Wyatt told a grand jury:

He felt in order to become a real Marine, he needed to kill. He said he needed to keep killing. And he actually had predesigned that he was going to select 16 victims. … He told me that Charles Whitman (the Texas Tower killer) had killed 16 people. … And that Charles Whitman had been a Marine.

I can’t help but be reminded of this scene from Full Metal Jacket:

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Do any of you people know where these individuals learned how to shoot?… Private Joker.

Private Joker: Sir. In the Marines, Sir.

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: In the Marines. Outstanding. Those individuals showed what one motivated Marine and his rifle can do. And before you ladies leave my Island, you will all be able to do the same thing.

To be fair, the ranks of the military have been populated by those more interested in recreational killing for thousands of years, certainly. And, I wonder if the Marines sensed that something was off about Ocampo, and held him out of combat intentionally.

Still, this is a black eye the United States Military just doesn’t need right now.