Disgruntled National Guard soldier Alberto Martinez used a powerful remote-control Claymore mine to murder his two superior officers in a plot to make the slaying resemble an Iraqi terrorist attack, it was revealed yesterday.
Shocking details of the carefully calculated killing of New York Guard Capt. Phillip Esposito and Lt. Louis Allen in Tikrit were revealed yesterday by retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, a Medal of Honor winner who spoke to senior military officials familiar with the investigation.
Jacobs said investigators believe the 37-year-old Martinez, a company supply sergeant from Troy, detonated the mine on a window sill. The sill was outside the room where company commander Esposito and operations officer Allen were having a nighttime meeting to plan the next day’s operations.
The deadly anti-personnel mine was connected by wires to a “clacker” – a small electrical generator, controlled by Martinez, that set off blasting caps in the mine.
The Claymore contains a pound of plastic explosive and buckshot shrapnel, and it throws off a “shaped” charge that channels the blast in a specific direction.
After the June 7 explosion inside the officer’s quarters in one of Saddam Hussein’s old palaces, Martinez tossed “a couple” of hand grenades in another direction to make it appear as though there was an Iraqi insurgent mortar attack on the base, Jacobs said.
He also threw the clacker in a nearby lake, but Army investigators later found it after draining the lake, Jacobs said.
“You have to be pretty calculating and pretty determined to do something like that,” Jacobs told The Post in an interview after revealing details of the attack on MSNBC.
Military officials in Iraq would not comment.
Esposito, a 30-year-old Wall Street broker and father of an infant girl from Pearl River, Rockland County, and Allen, 34, a high school science teacher and father of four boys from Milford, Pa., died of their wounds the next day.
They were members of the fabled New York National Guard, 42nd Infantry Division, known since World War I as the “Rainbow Division.”
Esposito had recently slapped Martinez with a “non-judicial” reprimand – a possible motive for the “fragging” attack, Jacobs said.
A reprimand from the company commander is one of the mildest forms of military justice for offenses that are usually punishable by a two-week detention to barracks, loss of two weeks’ pay or a demotion in rank.
It is believed that Martinez’s dispute was only with Esposito, because Allen had been in Iraq for just a few days before he was murdered.
A family friend of Allen’s told The Post yesterday that investigators had informed the family that a possible source of tension between Martinez and his superiors was his desire to return home after serving in Iraq for longer than the one-year requirement.
The National Guard said Martinez was first deployed to Iraq in May 2004.
Military officials confirmed that investigators quickly focused on the fact that the attack was an inside job.
Family members were told two days after the blast that the military believed one of its own was responsible and probers quickly homed in on Martinez, building what one has described as a “solid” case.
Meanwhile, a clearer picture emerged of recent mounting stresses on Martinez, including financial pressures after losing an insurance claim from a fire that destroyed his home in December 2002.
The family lost the claim after an electrical fire destroyed their home in upstate Cohoes and they had moved in with Martinez’s parents in Troy.
Although the Cohoes Fire Department ruled it an accidental fire, local fire Chief Joseph Fahd told The Post the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company denied the claim, saying Martinez had overinsured the home and that the fire was deliberately set.
WTEN-TV in Albany also reported last night that a live 155 mm cannon shell, made only at the Watervliet Arsenal where Martinez had worked, was later found in the home and had to be taken to an upstate military base.
Military officials would not say whether he was charged with any wrongdoing.
A woman at the family home near Troy who was believed to be Martinez’s sister, Kala, bitterly ripped the media for “making up stories” and said “yes” when asked whether her Martinez has been falsely accused.
Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli in Pearl River, N.Y., and Douglas Montero in Milford, Pa.
The M-18 Claymore Mine
Size: 8 ½ inches long. 1 3/8 inches wide. 3 1/4 inches high.
Explosives: 1 pound C-4 plastique explosive. 700 steel buckshot balls.
Purpose: Used primarily as a defensive anti-personnel weapon to protect bases from approaching infantry attacks.
Detonation: Either by trip wire or by electronic blasting caps wired to a small generator known as a “clacker.”
Explosion: Produces a “shaped” charge that can focus blast in a single direction. Steel balls fan out like grenade schrapnel.
Range: Can kill up to 100 meters.
Source: Globalsecurity.org