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Fisher ran down one flight of stairs to Sanarov's room because Sanarov had a car they could use to take Winchell to the hospital. "Winchell is dying!" he screamed. Sanarov saw Glover as he retrieved his car. "I saw Private Glover running with his hands full of gloves and clothes, heading toward the Dumpster," Sanarov said. (Army investigators say they found bloody jeans and gloves in the trash bin and a bloody T shirt and socks in Glover's room.) Back in the barracks, Winchell struggled to breathe, gurgling on his own blood. Both his eyes were blackened and swollen shut. Blood poured, and brains oozed, from the left side of his head. An Army investigator said it had been shattered "like an eggshell." Fisher, panicking, pulled the barracks fire alarm, which woke the rest of the soldiers. As medics loaded Winchell into an ambulance, a soaking-wet Glover showed up and asked the soldiers what was going on.
Winchell, airlifted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, died 30 hours after the attack. He never regained consciousness. That same day, Glover--by then in the Fort Campbell jail--allegedly confessed to a fellow prisoner. Glover claimed he had left the party to escape Winchell's homosexual passes. "He ran into the guy again, and that's when he beat him down," Private Kenneth Buckler said. "He said he didn't want to kill him--he wanted to teach him a lesson. But he could tell he was dead after he did what he was doing." Nonetheless, Glover pleaded not guilty to the murder charge last month.
He faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Fisher, scheduled to face a court-martial next week, could receive the same sentence. Their fate, and Winchell's, suggests that "Don't ask, don't tell" is an unfulfilled promise, not a functioning policy.