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http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=268142
Private Stephen Cox had been at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu for all of 10 days when the complaints began.
In handwritten statements to a Military Police corporal, a dozen platoon members said Pte. Cox had claimed to be the Son of Man and the Second Coming of Christ.
He said God had chosen him to cleanse the world of evil and that he was going to kill the Jews, Catholics, blacks, aboriginals, gays and lesbians, they wrote.
"I heard Private Cox talk of mass genocide of all humans who do not share his beliefs," one complaint read. Said another, "It was revealed to him that he was the second Christ and it was his duty to join the Canadian Army and get into JTF-2 [the special forces] so that he would be in place for the apocalypse in 2012."
The military is supposed to screen its recruits before sending them to basic training. The Canadian Forces calls screening "essential" to ensuring that Canada's soldiers are loyal, trustworthy and reliable.
So how did Pte. Cox make it to boot camp?
He was known to police as a marijuana trafficker and wannabe underworld figure who, during a police sting, had boasted about killing a B.C. couple and hacking up their bodies with a knife. But he still managed to pass the "reliability screening" that all applicants to the armed forces undergo.
How commonly this happens is anyone's guess. The Canadian Forces has no records on how many applicants fail the reliability screening -- which includes criminal records, credit and reference checks.
But rejection figures for the next level of screening, which begins only once a recruit has started basic training, are low: Since 2002, the military has found reason to deny just six of the almost 75,000 people it screened.
Mr. Cox says he was upfront with recruiters in Vancouver about his troubles with police, but Captain Cindy Tessier, spokeswoman for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshall, said Mr. Cox's past did not turn up during screening.
"It didn't. I don't know why it didn't," she said. "The bottom line is: The information wasn't available during the screening process. But the important thing is [that] as soon as his behaviour was brought to the attention of the authorities, it was dealt with."
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Stephen Cox grew up in Wales as Stephen Mark Richards. He was a Sea Cadet and Marine Cadet but in 1980 he left school at age 16 to join the Royal Marines Commando and was trained by the SAS, the British Special Forces.
He moved to British Columbia, worked as a welder and befriended an associate of the Hells Angels. When the headless remains of a marijuana grow-operator named John Bayer Jr. were found by spotted owl researchers on a logging road near Spuzzum, B.C., on Aug. 15, 1996, Mr. Cox became a suspect.
RCMP homicide investigators found a marijuana grow-room in a bunker under Mr. Bayer's garage. They also found documents linking him to Dale Weir. Phone records showed that, on the day of the murder, Mr. Cox had made calls from Mr. Weir's home in Chilliwack, B.C., and then left four days later for Colombia, the home of his wife, Maria Hurtado Zafra.
Private Stephen Cox had been at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu for all of 10 days when the complaints began.
In handwritten statements to a Military Police corporal, a dozen platoon members said Pte. Cox had claimed to be the Son of Man and the Second Coming of Christ.
He said God had chosen him to cleanse the world of evil and that he was going to kill the Jews, Catholics, blacks, aboriginals, gays and lesbians, they wrote.
"I heard Private Cox talk of mass genocide of all humans who do not share his beliefs," one complaint read. Said another, "It was revealed to him that he was the second Christ and it was his duty to join the Canadian Army and get into JTF-2 [the special forces] so that he would be in place for the apocalypse in 2012."
The military is supposed to screen its recruits before sending them to basic training. The Canadian Forces calls screening "essential" to ensuring that Canada's soldiers are loyal, trustworthy and reliable.
So how did Pte. Cox make it to boot camp?
He was known to police as a marijuana trafficker and wannabe underworld figure who, during a police sting, had boasted about killing a B.C. couple and hacking up their bodies with a knife. But he still managed to pass the "reliability screening" that all applicants to the armed forces undergo.
How commonly this happens is anyone's guess. The Canadian Forces has no records on how many applicants fail the reliability screening -- which includes criminal records, credit and reference checks.
But rejection figures for the next level of screening, which begins only once a recruit has started basic training, are low: Since 2002, the military has found reason to deny just six of the almost 75,000 people it screened.
Mr. Cox says he was upfront with recruiters in Vancouver about his troubles with police, but Captain Cindy Tessier, spokeswoman for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshall, said Mr. Cox's past did not turn up during screening.
"It didn't. I don't know why it didn't," she said. "The bottom line is: The information wasn't available during the screening process. But the important thing is [that] as soon as his behaviour was brought to the attention of the authorities, it was dealt with."
---
Stephen Cox grew up in Wales as Stephen Mark Richards. He was a Sea Cadet and Marine Cadet but in 1980 he left school at age 16 to join the Royal Marines Commando and was trained by the SAS, the British Special Forces.
He moved to British Columbia, worked as a welder and befriended an associate of the Hells Angels. When the headless remains of a marijuana grow-operator named John Bayer Jr. were found by spotted owl researchers on a logging road near Spuzzum, B.C., on Aug. 15, 1996, Mr. Cox became a suspect.
RCMP homicide investigators found a marijuana grow-room in a bunker under Mr. Bayer's garage. They also found documents linking him to Dale Weir. Phone records showed that, on the day of the murder, Mr. Cox had made calls from Mr. Weir's home in Chilliwack, B.C., and then left four days later for Colombia, the home of his wife, Maria Hurtado Zafra.
