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In May the judge, Colonel James Young III, granted the government's request that the earlier botched repairs could not be used in the mechanics' defense. In June, Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall rejected the pair's request to see the secret crash report that might help their case. The Air Force even wanted Lowry's parents to come to Germany to tell the jury of the pain they had suffered. Instead, Donald Lowry Sr. sent a letter urging leniency for Mueller. "This has already been a tragedy for all concerned," he wrote, "and the infliction of further pain will give no solace to me or to my family."(Lowry's widow Margret has sued McDonnell Douglas, which builds the F-15, alleging that "defects in design" caused the accident.) On Sept. 27, Young granted the prosecution's request for a gag order in the case. Mueller wrote his family: "The government is making it almost impossible for us to defend ourselves."
The first two days of October were filled with pre-court-martial motions and decisions, most of which went against the mechanics. A public admission by the Air Force's top safety official that the service had erred by not fixing the problem years ago was deemed not relevant by Young. "I feel like dirt right now," Mueller wrote in his trial notebook. "Every second of every minute of every day, I fall apart a little more." The case was forcing his sons to grow up too quickly. "How do I tell them how sorry I am for putting them though this?"
The next day, Oct. 3, was Tom and Rosa's 19th wedding anniversary. It also was to be the formal start of the court-martial. But when Rosa awoke that morning, her husband was gone. By early afternoon, Rosa had found his Peugeot near a mountain creek where he loved to fish with his sons. The Air Force organized a search of the area. Soon Mueller's father Peter arrived on the scene, having just flown to Germany from his home in Florida for the court-martial.
Dozens of camouflage-clad Air Force men and women were slowly moving up a nearby steep ridge, calling Mueller's name. Peter Mueller was distressed. "It was a manhunt," he says. "Thomas, Poppa is here," he pleaded over a police bullhorn. "Come out." But Thomas was nearly a mile away, and the sound of his father's voice was drowned out by those of the Air Force personnel. "I was sure I could find him, but they wouldn't let me go in." Peter Mueller says. Instead, he found a road that wended closer to the ridge line, where he stood, calling for his son in the twilight.
About half a mile away, three searchers came upon an elevated hunters' shack. As his commander, Major Dee Mills, clambered up the 10-ft. ladder, Mueller put a gun to his head and fired. "Rosa, I love you," he had written on the shack's window frame in his final moments. "I was not negligent." Back home he'd left the Lowry family a note. "I know I am going to heaven. And in heaven I cannot hurt anyone else, not even by accident."
On Nov. 13, the service, citing "justice and the interests of the Air Force," dropped its case against Campbell, the other mechanic, in exchange for his decision to leave the military.