The family of a Marine killed by a bomb in Afghanistan believes the former Green Beret facing trial for killing the suspected bomb-maker is a “hero” who deserves a pardon from President Trump.
“I would think that would be the best thing possible,” Ashley Tester told the Washington Examiner. “[H]e deserves to live his life happily, and he is a hero. He shouldn’t be treated as if he’s a murderer, because that’s not the case.” She added that a pardon “would be the least the president could do for him.” The case is one of a handful Trump is reportedly reviewing for possible pardons on Memorial Day.
Tester’s brother Lance Cpl. Larry Johnson was a 19-year-old Marine Corps sapper, a combat engineer tasked with detecting enemy explosives, deployed to Afghanistan in the early days of the Battle of Marjah, one of the most deadly campaigns of the war. His unit was conducting bomb-clearing operations in support of a Special Forces unit on Feb. 18, 2010, when it discovered an improvised explosive device wired to a door in a bazaar. The device exploded, killing Johnson and another Marine.
The Army announced last week it would court-martial Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, 38, on charges of premeditated murder for killing the suspected bomb-maker. It stripped him of his Special Forces tab and the Silver Star awarded to him for bravery in 2015, reopening the case after he spoke about the incident in a 2011 CIA job interview.
Golsteyn was with the 3rd Special Forces group conducting operations to retake Marjah from the Taliban. The suspected bomb-maker was apprehended, and a local tribal elder identified him as a Taliban member. Army prosecutors say Golsteyn walked the unarmed man off base and shot and buried him. Golsteyn says he released the man and, concerned for the safety of the elder and his troops, set up an ambush off base in case the suspect went toward the Taliban position. The suspect did just that, Golsteyn says, so he shot and killed him.
What the Army considers a war crime the Johnson family believes was a soldier protecting his fellow warriors from an enemy that might have killed again.
“You should have the right to do what you gotta do to help others [who] are being killed. He was a bomb maker … he belongs dead,” Johanna Johnson, Larry’s mother, said. “If I was out there in Afghanistan, I would have done it myself. And what would they have done, charged me with murder? Because [he] killed my son. And I wanted to get that guy back. That’s the way I look at it. I mean, he didn’t do anything wrong. He did his job. That’s what he went there to do. He was there to protect us.”
Johnson’s family remembers him as a kind young man with a constant smile who aspired to be a veterinarian before he decided to join the Marine Corps. Raised outside Scranton, Pa., he brought home all kinds of animals growing up, including an injured skunk he insisted on caring for.
“[I]t was never a dull moment,” said Tester. “He took life as it came, and he just made the best of everything.”
Jeff Whitney, Johanna Johnson’s fiancé, recalled a gentle young man who helped care for Whitney’s elderly mother.
“She got up [in] age, and we needed somebody to watch her at times. She had Alzheimer’s and dementia,” he said. “And Larry was one of the ones that had a real good bond with my mother.”
Johnson continued to look out for others in the Corps. While in Afghanistan, he took the place of a fellow Marine who left to be with his wife as she was about to give birth.
Johnson’s family has become close to Julie Golsteyn, Mathew’s wife, particularly after learning of his murder charge in December. Tester, in particular, has become an outspoken advocate on his behalf.
“I feel like now it’s my duty to try to help them,” she said.
A date has yet to be announced for Golsteyn’s court-martial, where he could face the death penalty.
