The story of the Marine who wasn’t

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. —  Retired Marine Capt. Rick Duncan carried a list of phone numbers of those in the business of helping veterans. One was for the VA clinic in Colorado Springs, and in 2008 he pressed it upon Mike Flaherty, a young Army veteran struggling with depression.

He understood, Duncan told Flaherty. He’d been to Iraq three times. Attacked in Fallouja, he’d returned home with a metal plate in his head and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Flaherty made the call and saw a counselor; in time his depression lessened. He had his friend Rick Duncan to thank.

He would not learn the truth about Duncan for a year, and when he and other veterans did, it rolled over them with the weight of a tank: Rick Duncan had never served in Iraq, had never been wounded, had never been a Marine at all. He wasn’t even Rick Duncan.

He was Rick Strandlof, and he was a fraud -- a young man with a prison record, a penchant for embellishment and a history of mental illness. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he would describe himself after his unveiling as a schizophrenic, saying, “I sometimes believe things other people know not to be true.”

In a little more than a year, Strandlof convinced many other people to believe things that were not true too, establishing a high profile here as an advocate for veterans and a passionate activist against the war in Iraq.

Even after learning the truth, Flaherty recalled the sincerity in his friend’s eyes. The man he knew as Rick Duncan seemed to genuinely care, and Flaherty was better for it. What was he to think now?

The first of many lies that Richard Glen Strandlof, 32, told was that he was from California. He made that admission recently from the El Paso County Jail, where he was being held on a traffic warrant as the FBI investigated whether he had committed fraud in posing as a Marine.

Actually, Strandlof said, he was from Montana. He spoke over a video link, his dark brown hair still cut in the buzz that was part of his military persona.

As a child, Strandlof said, he had the same fascination with the military that many boys do, playing with toy Army men. Even then, he made up stories about his adventures.

“He was very dramatic, making up stories,” said Marcia Strandlof of Hot Springs, Mont., who once was married to Strandlof’s grandfather. “It was an ongoing thing with Rick ever since he was little.”

One story he told at 14 was true: He was gay. That, Strandlof said, left him estranged from his parents: “I’ve never forgiven them for that.”

Eventually, he ran afoul of the law, convicted of forgery and passing bad checks in Montana. After prison, he moved to California and then Reno, and began to actively protest the war in Iraq.

While in Reno, Strandlof volunteered for two political action groups and was provided a rented Ford Explorer so he could help voters to the polls. But after the 2004 election, the SUV wasn’t returned to the rental agency, and police spotted it months later near his apartment.

Strandlof pleaded guilty in July 2005 to car theft and was sentenced to probation. A judge ordered him to participate in a program for defendants with severe mental illnesses. She also ordered him to take his medications and read a book on bipolar disorder.

According to Reno officials, he later presented himself to them as a promoter intent on bringing a grand prix race to the city. Strandlof hinted at wealth, telling them that he lived in Incline Village, a high-income community near Lake Tahoe. In fact, he was living in a Reno apartment complex with his boyfriend.

The plan went nowhere, though he boasted to local media that he had brought in $25,000 at a fundraising event -- a claim the FBI is also investigating. By mid-2006, Strandlof the race promoter vanished, disconnecting his phone and taking down his website.

By mid-2007, Strandlof was in Colorado, where his boyfriend had gotten a job. “I just followed along,” he recalled. What happened next, Strandlof said, is as much a mystery to him as anyone. He said he did not set out to assume a new identity.

Yet that’s what he did, bursting onto the scene as Rick Duncan, an ex-Marine outspoken against the war. He also told new friends and the local media that he had been at the Pentagon when it was hit in the Sept. 11 attacks. It’s unclear whether his boyfriend, who could not be reached for comment, went along with his activities.

But now his hair was cropped short, and a fellow war protester, Rich Haber, said Strandlof was more muscular than he recalled him being in Reno -- as if he’d worked out to develop a Marine physique. He dressed in close-fitting T-shirts and sometimes a camouflage hat.

One day, Duncan introduced himself to Joe Barrera, a Vietnam veteran and activist. “He just calls me out of the blue one day,” Barrera said. “He talks really fast, so fast it’s hard to understand what he’s saying. He’s got all kinds of wonderful ideas -- so eager to tell you.”

Barrera agreed to help Duncan start an advocacy group for young veterans, though he had some misgivings. For one thing, there was the scar, a small mark on the right side of Duncan’s head. If he’d had major surgery, why wasn’t it bigger?

He also wondered why an openly gay man hadn’t been kicked out of the service. “But I assumed he’d hidden his orientation, and now that he was out, he was free to express it,” Barrera said.

As for Duncan’s erratic nature, he figured the brain injury and wounded psyche were to blame.

Barrera wasn’t the only veteran to supply his own explanations for Duncan’s oddities. Terrance McWilliams, who recently retired as command sergeant major at Ft. Carson, also chalked them up to the injury. “There were moments where you could see he had a memory lapse, where you can just see he’s trying to think of the next sentence to say, but he was having difficulty formulating it,” he said.

Duncan apparently threw himself into his new world. He formed the Colorado Veterans Alliance and organized open-mike nights where troops could discuss their war experiences. When Duncan spoke, Barrera said, he was different than other young vets, who were typically stoic. “Tears would roll down his face,” he said. “People in the audience would start to cry.”

At such gatherings, volunteers would put together care packages for troops as Duncan collected donations to pay for the shipping. Some, including local peace activist Mark Lewis, said they didn’t know whether Duncan actually sent the packages.

Last year, Duncan learned that Colorado Springs officials were conducting homeless sweeps, cleaning up encampments. He said that police were confiscating homeless veterans’ military papers and medals and demanded they stop.

“I thought it was a reasonable approach,” said Councilman Jerry Heimlicher. “He didn’t ask for any money. All he wanted was to change how homeless people were treated.”

But people began noticing the inconsistencies in his stories and how he was so unlike other veterans. Duncan spoke incessantly about his PTSD, something that others never did. “They don’t talk about it, and if they do, it’s because they’re drunk and it just comes out,” Flaherty said.

His own board of directors at the veterans alliance quietly began to look into his past.

They discovered that a Rick Strandlof had reserved the name “Colorado Veterans Alliance” at the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office, the Colorado Springs Gazette later reported. They traced Strandlof’s name to Nevada, where they found his car theft conviction -- at the very time when Duncan said he’d been serving in Iraq.

The board contacted the FBI, which arranged a meeting with Duncan. According to board members who attended, an agent asked if his name was Duncan or Strandlof.

Both, he replied.

Police arrested him on the outstanding traffic warrant. The board quickly disbanded the Colorado Veterans Alliance, and the FBI launched an investigation into whether Strandlof had committed fraud or violated the federal Stolen Valor Act, which criminalizes false claims of being a decorated veteran.

When the story hit the local newspaper, reactions ranged from anger to confusion.

Some veterans joined a Facebook group demanding his prosecution. “He slandered the good name of thousands of people who have served honorably,” one Florida man wrote on the website. “That mental illness excuse is bull -- he just wanted to be somebody.”

Some veterans wondered whether they now would have to question the credibility of each vet they encountered. “I don’t want to get into a position where if you tell me you’re a veteran, I say, ‘Prove it to me,’ ” McWilliams said.

Others struggled over how to feel about him. “What harm did he really do?” asked Heimlicher, the City Council member.

Flaherty decided he still owed Strandlof a debt. “If it wasn’t for Rick having good talks with me,” he said, “I probably wouldn’t have gotten help for my depression.”

Neither he nor any of Strandlof’s other onetime friends visited him in jail, where he remained for several weeks on a $1,000 bond. No one wanted to help him, Strandlof said, and he understood why. “They have the right to be angry,” he said.

He repeatedly denied that he had plotted his deceit, and said even he wasn’t sure how it grew over time. Yet Strandlof also said that he had a greater effect in his antiwar efforts as Duncan the veteran than he ever did as Strandlof the liberal protester.

“Any good production has to have a compelling character,” he said.

In June, Strandlof pleaded guilty in his traffic case and was released. The FBI, meanwhile, is still investigating.

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