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Though an Army board of inquiry termed his defense of the hill "heroic" and cleared him of any blame in the massacre, he was repeatedly—and falsely—accused of having saved his own neck by failing to go to Custer's aid. The next year he was court-martialed for making a pass at a fellow officer's wife, and in 1880 he was dishonorably discharged on complaints—hardly startling in the Wild West—such as fighting, drunkenness, peeping in a window at the girl he loved, and unabashedly hiccuping at a dinner party. Though he had served with such distinction in the Civil War that he was given the rank of brevet brigadier general at the age of 30, Reno was never able to clear his name and return to the Army. He died in 1889, poor and friendless.
The Army Board for Correction of Military Records last week heard an intriguing explanation why Reno was hounded by malicious gossip and ousted on such flimsy charges. The reason, argued Reno Partisan Gene L. Fattig of the American Legion, was that "Mrs. Custer, who didn't happen to die until 1933, was obsessed with this matter. As a result of her persistent efforts to blame someone other than Custer, the blame fell on a man named Marcus Reno."