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In late 2005, the 1st Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division's fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment deployed to a 330 sq. mi. ribbon of land south of Baghdad that was dubbed the "Triangle of Death." Underequipped and undermanned, the 1-502nd arrived in perhaps the most dangerous part of Iraq at its most dangerous moment.

As heinous as the crime was, it did not happen without warning. Again and again, leaders up and down the 1-502nd's chain of command were either unable or unwilling to recognize the clear signs of breakdown that the unit's soldiers were exhibiting, not to mention the increasing homicidal threat that Green was becoming to Iraqi civilians. As this first of two excerpts from TIME contributing editor Jim Frederick's new book, Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death, demonstrates, Green should have been a soldier of concern for the unit's leadership from the day he reported for duty ...

Twenty-one-year-old Steven Green was one of the weirdest men in the company. He was an okay soldier when he wanted to be, but the oddest thing about him was that he never stopped talking. And the stuff that came out of his mouth was some of the most outrageous, racist invective many of the men had ever heard. Green could discourse on any number of topics, but they usually involved hate in some way, including how Hitler should be admired, how "white culture" was under threat in multi-ethnic America, and how much he wanted to kill every last Iraqi on the planet. He would go on and on and on like this until somebody literally would have to order him to shut up.

Growing up in Midland, Texas, Green was always the odd kid, the strange child on the margins picked last for kickball. According to court records, he was an unwanted child, something his mother did not hesitate to tell him. She called him "demon spawn," and constantly compared him unfavorably to his brother, Doug, who was three years older. Working nights at a bar, she largely let her children fend for themselves. Doug was, not surprisingly, unable to cope with the responsibility of being a surrogate parent from as young as age seven or eight. He subjected Steven and their little sister to frequent, brutal beatings.

Green's long estranged parents divorced when he was 8, and he lived with his mother until she kicked him out of the house at age 14. Green bounced around various family members' homes for the next few years. Desperate for attention, he did win a few friends in high school by being the class clown. After dropping out of high school in the 10th grade, however, trouble followed him wherever he went. Smoking cigarettes, drinking booze, and walking around with marijuana are fairly common activities for teenagers, but Green managed to get caught, arrested, and convicted for each of those things by the time he was 19.

Along the way, he had developed some pointed ideas about society, religion, and race. He decided to join the Army in early 2005, not just as a way out of his rut, but as a way to participate in what he saw as the latest flare-up of a centuries-long struggle between Western civilization and Eastern barbarism. "This is almost like a race war, like a cultural war," he said about 9/11, the March 2004 Spanish subway bombings and the now lengthening conflict in Iraq. "And anyone who is my age who is not going to go fight in it is a coward. They can say it's about this or that, but it's really about religion. It's about not even which culture is going to rule the Middle East, but which culture is going to rule the West. I felt like Islam is, was, and always will be like fascism."

Green spent several months obtaining a high school correspondence diploma and the Army granted him a "moral waiver" for his prior convictions. After graduating from basic training, Green headed to Ft. Campbell in July of 2005. Here, as in school, he developed a reputation for not being quite right in the head. There was no doubt he was smart, but he was a racist and a misanthrope. He remained socially awkward and unable to control his emotions or impulses. He did have some friends, but most of the platoon viewed him less as a class clown and more as the village idiot — occasionally entertaining as spectacle, but best kept at an arm's-length.

After three loved and respected leaders from 1st Platoon — First Lieutenant Ben Britt, Staff Sergeant Travis Nelson and Sergeant Kenith Casica — were killed in a two-week period in late December 2005, the unit went into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse and brutality. Green, however, was more noticeably and disturbingly affected than anyone else ...

While many men within 1st Platoon were having trouble adjusting to the casualties the unit incurred, the incessant pace of combat operations and the constant threat of violence, Private First Class Steven Green was reacting particularly badly. The day Nelson and Casica died, he had snapped. That was the when he gave up even pretending to support any notion of peace-keeping, society-building, or being nice to Iraqis. From then on out, all he cared about was killing them.

This was well known, and not something he attempted to hide, even from senior leaders. Many of the men by this point hated Iraqis and would offhandedly opine that the whole country needed to be leveled, or the only good Iraqi was a dead Iraqi. But only Green talked about killing Iraqis all the time, incessantly, obsessively.

At the prodding of his platoon sergeant, Green went to see Lieutenant Colonel Karen Marrs, a psychiatric nurse practitioner from the Combat Stress team who was visiting Bravo Company's base on December 21. The intake evaluation form she filled out while talking to him that day is a horror show of ailments and dysfunctions. In the entry marked "Chief Complaint," she quoted him: "It is f — ing pointless." Green told Marrs he had been suffering from symptoms of instability, extreme moods and angry outbursts, including punching walls. He told her he was experiencing all of the following: sadness, difficulty falling asleep, nightmares, anxiety, worry, increased heart rate, tightness of chest, shortness of breath, feelings of helplessness, being easily startled, being quick to anger and thoughts that he would not make it out of combat alive. Green told Marrs he was having suicidal and homicidal ideations, especially thoughts about killing Iraqi civilians. On his one-page intake sheet, Marrs noted his wanting to kill Iraqis four separate times. One entry states, "Interests: None other than killing Iraqis."

She diagnosed him with Combat Operational Stress Reaction (COSR), an Army term to describe typical and transient reactions to the stresses of warfare. COSR is not a condition recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV, the bible of the psychiatry profession, something the Army is well aware of, since it doesn't even consider COSR an ailment. As one Army journal article puts it, "Those with COSR are not referred to as 'patients,' but are described as having 'normal reactions to an abnormal event.' " Thus Marrs, believing Green's psychological state to be normal, prescribed him a small course of Seroquel, an anti-psychotic drug that can also be used to treat insomnia, recommended that he follow up with another visit (though she didn't specify when), and sent him back to his unit.

"I told her, 'My main preoccupation in life is wanting to kill Iraqis,' " Green recalled. "She said, 'Okay, here's these pills that will help you sleep, and we'll probably be around.' I don't think she thought I was serious, even though I was going out of my way to be like, 'Look, I'm serious about this.' "

According to Green's Company Commander Captain John Goodwin, Marrs reported back to him that Green "needed a little bit more counseling." Goodwin, like most of Green's superiors, thought Green's problems were manageable anger issues that could be dealt with, he said, "through time, through grief counseling, if necessary, medication, through combat stress, and supervision."

When Staff Sergeant Bob Davis, a combat stress technician, arrived in January 2006 as part of the team to relieve Marrs' team, she told them about Green. "She warned us that, given his experiences and the things that he's done, he might be someone we'd want to follow up with," Davis remembered. Despite this warning, they would not see Green until March 20, 2006 — eight days after he had already murdered the Janabi family.

Reprinted from Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death. Copyright © 2010 by Jim Frederick. Published by Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Tomorrow's excerpt: Anatomy of a war crime.

• Jim Frederick
• The first of two excerpts from TIME contributing editor Jim Frederick's new book, 'Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death'