Blood Fake, Stolen Valor, and the Fight to Protect Vulnerable Families

Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host: Identified by the opening introduction, the show name, and the host’s self-identification as Pamela L. Henderson.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest: Identified by the host’s introduction of Mr. David Wilson and his repeated discussion of his book, Blood Fake. The transcript also indicates that he uses a pen name connected to the book, which is listed under Items Requiring Verification.

Speaker 3 – Announcer / Prerecorded Promo Voice: Identified by the opening and closing show announcements.

Speaker 3 – Announcer / Prerecorded Promo Voice:
Welcome to All-Roads Lead 65 Max Radio, where the road ahead gets brighter as we journey toward truth, traveling through our dreams and inspiration into a new reality. It is time, and your ticket is waiting. All-Roads Lead 65 Max Radio with Pamela Henderson.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Greetings. Thank you for joining me on BBS Radio, All-Roads Lead 65 Max Radio. I am your host, Pamela L. Henderson.

Established in 2011, my focus is my mission statement: to help create a quality of life through social growth, inspiring jewels to become leaders by establishing partnerships with corporations, entrepreneurs, donors, sponsors, volunteers, the community, and abroad.

Please join me every other Tuesday at noon on BBS Radio, All-Roads Lead 65 Max, and follow me at allroads65max.org.

My special guest today is Mr. David Wilson, author of the book Blood Fake. He said he used a pen name for his book to protect the guilty. He also did not want a troubled veteran to pursue him and cause trouble for himself.

Mr. Wilson wants people to be horrified by the story, and he wants to accomplish three things. First, he wants to educate the general public. Second, he wants to amend or add to the Stolen Valor Act of 2013 so that it includes cases like his sister’s. Third, he wants to demonstrate how his Christian faith helped him overcome anger, hatred, and move toward forgiveness.

At last, I want to say thank you for joining me and giving me this interview, Mr. Wilson. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
Great to be here. How are you doing?

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
I’m doing well. You’re looking good. How’s the weather out there?

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
It is getting a little stormy. I’m over on the, I don’t want to say East Coast. I keep the names and locations of everything about the book different. It is wider than just a pen name. I am trying to protect a lot of people. Even though I was told I did not have to because I am speaking truth and I can prove it, I still think it was the better way to go. It turned into a bigger calling.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Before we get into the book, because I have a lot of questions, tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you determine that you needed to write this book? It is very inspiring. When I read a little bit of your bio and imagined how things took a left turn and what you went through, it was heartfelt, I must say.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
First and foremost, I love my sister. She is a good person. When I last visited her in the early fall of 2011, she was radiant. She had just gotten married about a year or so before, and she was beautiful. That is kind of where the story starts to unfold.

To answer that question, I was happy for her because she was so happy. She had some difficult things in her life. One difficult thing she had to deal with was an accident with her daughter, my niece, in 1995, where my niece was killed. My sister fought through an awful lot of pain with the loss of her daughter and also with a relationship and a husband at that time.

I always tried to be a little protective of her. I was trying to be happy for her when she was in this new relationship, this new marriage that I had concerns about. That will come out a little bit later.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Tell me about the book, stolen valor, and the meaning of Blood Fake.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
I was surprised when I started talking about this that a lot of people did not know what stolen valor was or is. I can define that for you very simply. It is when someone engages in a story about an act of military heroism to raise themselves up to be bigger than they are. Non-veterans can do it, and veterans can do it.

I believe it is worse when veterans do it because they understand what stolen valor truly means, and they should not degrade the acts of our true military heroes. That is part of the question.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
I was asking about the meaning of Blood Fake.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
Blood Fake is basically what it says. It is a story about an act of military heroism where there was no blood. So I gave it the name Blood Fake.

On the cover of the book, I have a baby-blue pop gun. I do not see them anymore, but I remember we had them when I was a kid, so we are going back into the 1960s. I remember those pop guns. There was a little cork on the end of it, and you would pull the trigger and the cork popped out.

Basically, I am telling a story that is almost like a cartoon. It never happened, and I can prove why it never happened when we get into that subject matter.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Yes. Mr. Wilson, what is the core message you want readers to take away when they purchase your book?

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
Education is a big issue with me. Like I said, a lot of people do not know what stolen valor is, and it is very dangerous. When I say my sister’s case is kind of the epitome of stolen valor, it is the highest level of stolen valor because of how he used it against my sister.

There is a major power issue here with stolen valor. It is generally men targeting women. I know there are other power structures to look at with different kinds of relationships, including gay relationships and LGBTQ relationships, but I can only focus on what I know of my sister and what I know of stolen valor. It is generally how a male will use it against a targeted female.

I want to educate people more on what that looks like, even the lesser evils. I want to show that range of what stolen valor can look like so people can be aware of it.

The other part is the Stolen Valor Act of 2013. Most of the act focuses on financial gain, and they will go after financial gain more than cases of emotional abuse. My stand is, look at my case and look what happened to my sister. It does not get worse than somebody killing themselves over something. To me, that is far more serious than putting a dollar amount on it, whether it is $1,000, $10,000, or $100,000.

He did steal from her. He did gain financially, and he had gained financially prior to my sister. He is still doing it. He just doubled down after the loss of my sister, and I will tell that story later.

It is worth far more than a money issue. I want them to include cases like my sister’s, cases so egregious that they have to look at this and prosecute.

The third part was my Christian walk. I was very hypocritical for about three and a half years. I was a very angry man. I was trying to write the book, and I was grieving. I was visualizing myself hurting him. He is from our neighborhood. We were friends with his older brothers. We knew the whole family.

We knew he was a little odd, and then I started hearing more stories about him after I started asking people about him. I believe I am a good Christian man, and this had taken me so far backward that I was hurting the Kingdom because people would look at me. I could not have this discussion with you until about December of this past year because I would get so worked up. I would not be able to keep my frustration out of the picture.

Then I came to an act of forgiveness. That does not mean I still do not want him to be accountable for his actions and how he has hurt people. But now I am also invested in him not hurting people ever again. Like I said, he doubled down after my sister.

His new woman showed up at the viewing of my sister and sat with them the entire time. They moved into a house together and were married within probably four or five months after my sister died. I can prove that they were in a phone relationship after my sister’s first suicide attempt.

It took a lot of me fighting for forgiveness, consulting with different pastors, and really a lot of that did not move me forward. Then suddenly one day, I looked at everything in a different way, and a sense of peace came over me. I said, I can do this. I can forgive them and move forward. From that day on, I do not get worked up. My blood pressure does not go up. I am not having visions of beating him senseless or trying to find him somewhere in the evening. All of that just stopped.

So it is the education, the accountability of what happened, the Stolen Valor Act, maybe modifying it or changing it in some way, and the forgiveness issue. That is where I am right now.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Isn’t that something? When we lose someone we love, and it is over things that are meaningless, over someone who is just pure evil, it is really hard. Even when you go through challenges and obstacles, sometimes they can become very traumatizing.

For me, I went through being persecuted, misjudged, bamboozled, you name it. I was on this journey, and I did not understand why. Here I am trying to move forward myself. I have these big dreams. I have my blueprint. I am working on this, and I was steadily, for over 12 years, dealing with abuse.

The abuse I experienced was outside abuse: being persecuted, being misjudged, which is the biggest one, and facing a lot of criticism. From the bottom of my heart, no one will really understand that within these 12 years, someone tried to run into me or make me run into them. I have been run off the road, bullied, followed, you name it. I have been there.

But the most horrific one was last year in March. Someone sprayed me with what I call a death spray because after I was sprayed, my whole body froze. Here I am thinking, what is happening to me? But the main thing about me is that I mastered how to remain calm when dealing with trauma or anything of that nature.

When I got home, I told my husband. He looked at me and said, “You look like the red devil.” My skin was red. My eyes were bloodshot red. I looked in the mirror, and I could not cry. All I knew and felt was that someone tried to kill me.

I remained calm. I got in the bath and did all those types of things. I accepted and acknowledged what happened to me. I must say, being spiritual and knowing I am one of God’s jewels, it left me.

My point is that I was angry. I wanted to hurt that person. If I ever saw him again, yes, I wanted to hurt that person. Or I wanted to do something to put him in jail because that was bodily harm.

So I understand what you mean. We have to go into prayer, and we have to make sure we understand and acknowledge the things that happened to us when we face losing someone or when we face being traumatized ourselves by going through anything harmful. I commend you for that, and I thank God for you being able to overcome the hate and the anger.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
What you are saying, and what we are talking about, is evil. This is different. I try to tell people when I took this on that this is not about being upset with your sister because she is with somebody someone would call a loser who does not contribute. This is about being around somebody in your life that you brought into your life and that you can die over. It does not get more intense than that.

A friend of mine uses this term. She will talk about someone like my sister and say they have a broken man picker. That was my sister’s history. She had that broken man picker. They would target my sister because she had a need. I do not know where it came from or how. We had a wonderful dad. My mom had mental health issues, but my sister just could not pick the good man.

This person, I did not pick up on it early on, but we do believe he attempted to murder his new sister-in-law because she was onto him. He was the only one outside of her property when she and her sister, who was his new target, were inside the house. She was taking things out to move in with him, and they were arguing and fighting for three hours. He was the only one who had access to her car.

The next day, she was going to New York City. She took her car and stopped at the gas station before she left. The guy came up to her window and said, “What are you trying to do, kill yourself?” She said, “Why?” He said, “Whoever took your tire off never put the lug nuts back on. They were barely on.”

He knew she was getting on the interstate the next day, but there were no cameras. Nobody could prove that. He does have that potential. He is a coward, but he has that potential to try to stop a story from getting out. I am too far ahead of him now, and I say in the book, if he wants to try something like that, she has the money, his new target has the money. They can give that a shot if they want, but the book is out. There is nothing they can do to stop that at this point.

Looking back at it, I do want listeners to know we are talking about evil. Your example was about evil. We are not talking about typical life events that are stressing us out.

From a brother’s perspective and a male perspective, if you have women in your family, whether they are daughters, sisters, grandmothers, or mothers, when they get into this kind of relationship and we try to confront it and they say, “Shut up, it is none of your business,” what I have come to believe is that it is our business. You brought someone into this family’s life that we are now stressed over. You do not see it because he is meeting a need of yours. You are lonely. You are accepting all of these other things, but we see it.

At the end of this story, what I came out feeling is that if I had not at least tried everything that I tried to protect her after her first suicide attempt, I would not be able to live with that. When she was in the hospital, that was the time to try to get a team together to rescue her from him. That failed, and I will tell you how it failed. But I tried.

So when she said, “Shut up, this is none of your business,” I thought, no, it is. Because you brought this into the family. You brought so much pain now by making that decision. We have a right to say something. We may all say it in a different way, but if I did not try right now and my sister was gone, I would be saying, what if I had said something? It did not work, but there was no way for me to know that if I did not try.

I tell people, try to be compassionate. Try to say it in a way that may be able to get through. Do not say it out of anger. But when someone’s life is at risk in so many different ways because of the people they bring into it, it affects your family and loved ones. We have a right to say something.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Absolutely. That was my next question to you, Mr. Wilson. You spoke about your sister killing herself in 2022. My condolences go out to you and your family as well.

I thank you for sharing a little bit about that. I want to discuss more because I can relate to what you are saying. I established my foundation on behalf of my daughter, who was in a very bad domestic-violence relationship. What she failed to understand, and what I teach now, is taking accountability for yourself.

When you do not take accountability for yourself, then you have the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, and the sisters taking accountability for you. Then here we are out here fighting a battle that can bring harm to us and can lead to different things. But we are not worried about that. We want the safety of the people we love and our family members.

That is absolutely heartfelt. Hearing what you are saying, it sounds to me, and let me know if I am wrong, that she committed suicide from the continued trauma she was going through.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
In the fall, I did not know what was happening. When I visited her, I had left a career to move back home and take care of my parents. My parents were aging. This was back in 2011. I drove all over the lower 48 visiting people with my dog before I got back to our family home, and she was one of my visits.

How I found out about the start of this was that he was there, and my oldest niece was there. My sister adopted two young girls. They were 11 or 12 when she adopted them. One of them kind of left the family, and the other one was there living in the home. She was about 20 when she was with them.

He walks out of the room, and my sister leans into me and says, “David, Judas was a war hero.” I call him Judas, or “the hero.” When I say “the hero,” I put it in quotes in the book.

She leaned into me and said, “Judas was a war hero.” I said, “What?” She said, “Yeah. He was in a battle, and they were killing all of his friends. They were using 55 caliber bullets that were illegal in war. He was seeing all of his buddies get killed, and he rushed that gun nest. He killed them, David, and he saved a lot of lives too.”

I looked at her and said, “I do not think so.” We knew the family. We were friends. My brother is still best friends with his one brother. I said, “I do not think so,” and she got upset with me. She did not want to make a big scene because he could come back into the room at any moment. She said, “You have to promise never to tell anybody that story.”

Anyway, I told my brother this, and he said, “No, he has been telling people that for years.” So I blew it off. If I have a regret, it is the fact that I blew it off and did not think anything else of it. That was in 2011.

Fast forward to the fall of 2020. She started breaking down. She was having a lot of health problems. Looking back at it, where does stress and all kinds of problems in your life attack the most? Your gastro system. My sister’s gastrointestinal functioning was horrible. She was going back and forth to hospitals. She was a mess.

She started emailing me, and we started talking on the phone about what was going on. She told me she caught him cheating on her. She said he steals from her and does all this kind of stuff. She was raising his kids, a couple of little twin girls and a nine-year-old. She got them when they were two or three, and the other one was about seven.

Her health was breaking down. She was telling me all these things in emails and texts. She was going to give him an ultimatum. These conversations were going on, and I was in the home taking care of my dad. My mom was in a nursing home. It was just me and my dad.

The last text came in around mid-December. We talked, and I have a lot of those messages. Then she went dark. Suddenly she was not answering her phone or responding to texts.

I was sitting there watching TV with my dad. I opened up my emails for a late-night check before we turned in, and there was a suicide letter. I was reading the suicide letter in an email. I did not tell my dad what was happening. I left the room and went to my computer in my bedroom. I found the police department in her area to share the address. I called and said, “I just got this message. Here is the address.”

I called my niece, who was living with somebody else at that point down there. I said, “Get over to the house and start yelling for your mother.” She said, “Why? Why?” I told her, “Just get over there now.”

Long story short, the police found my sister in the woods. She was still alive. She had actually shot herself in the heart, but it ricocheted off a rib bone and just nicked her heart, so she survived it. She was in bad shape, but she survived it.

During that period, I thought that if I could not get people in our corner now, the domestic-abuse investigator, the hospital social worker, and the hospital administration, if I could not keep him away from her during that period, it was going to be over. For five days, my battle went on.

The domestic-abuse investigator was not returning my calls. One corporal was saying, “David, I have given her everything. She will get back to you.” She was not getting back to me. Every hour that he was sitting in there with my sister worried me. My sister was pretty unconscious, but I was worried about when she started coming out of it.

If we did not intervene, if I did not get people to believe this story and what was going on, they would think he was the most wonderful husband and father they had ever met in that hospital. He is that good. That is why he is good at what he does.

The domestic-abuse investigator responded to about my fifth or sixth call, maybe on day two and a half, and she was angry. She said, “Why are you calling me like this? I got everything you sent me.” I said, “I am sending it to you because I want us to try to keep him away from her when my sister comes out of this, so she is not exposed to that pressure.”

She said, “Why don’t you come down here if you think it is so bad?” I said, “I am taking care of my father. He is about 84 years old and having a lot of health problems. I cannot go down there.”

She was mad, and her rendition of the story is totally different than mine, but I can prove mine through all my sister’s emails. I thought, why are you saying these things? I am not saying them. I am using my sister’s words. Look at the suicide letter. I sent that to you. It is all in my sister’s words, everything he was doing.

She was useless. She actually made things worse. The same thing happened with hospital social workers. I tried to intervene. They said HIPAA. Everybody hid behind HIPAA regulations. I said, “This is not a HIPAA issue. I know what HIPAA is. I am not asking you for private information. I am giving you information in order to protect her.”

Long story short, it did not work. I said, “If you guys cannot protect my sister and keep him away from her, she is not going to make it because she is going to fall right back into that. He is going to be the most wonderful person, and look at how he is taking care of her.” That is what happened.

I told them all, “My sister is not going to make it because this team let her down and let this happen. You did not intervene the way I was asking you to.”

I kept saying, “These are not my words. These are things my sister was saying.”

The only thing my sister did not give up, even though she talked about him stealing her Social Security checks, ruining her credit, cheating on her, drinking, and all of that, was the stolen valor story. That was the thing she could never give up.

She had to believe something. I guess she hung on to that. But it was not just the stolen valor story. It was the PTSD he got from that fake story. He used the PTSD. What he would do when she tried to confront him was get all of his guns out, put them on a bed, and say, “If you call the state police on me, it will be suicide by cop.”

When I asked the domestic-abuse investigator about that, she said there had not been a report from that property in 10 years. I said, “Didn’t you see in the report what he would do and how she was threatened?” She did not answer me.

My sister would not take it forward because she thought he would kill himself. He never killed himself. He is a coward.

I believe I can prove 95% that in this first suicide attempt, he left the property looking for her. He knew where she was, and he took the twins with him. At that point, the twins were there. You can see the whole backyard from the windows. She even said, I believe in her suicide letter, “Do not come out here looking for me.”

The tire tracks go through the snow and into the backyard. He drove past all of that. Her lights were on. It was nighttime. Her beams were pointing into the woods where she was. You could see the backyard from where they were watching TV downstairs. He leaves the property. He only comes back to the property. He parks somewhere down the road, sees all the police and sheriffs going up to the property, and follows them up.

He tells everybody he found her. He had a GoFundMe page trying to raise $10,000 for a Life Flight helicopter. There was no Life Flight helicopter, and we believe the $10,000 was paid by his newest target. So he did get that money.

He also said in his rant that he heard her mumbling in the woods and ran up and found her in the woods with the police right behind him. The police report has a different story. The police found her. He came onto the property after the police and followed some of the police back into the woods.

He always has to be the victim or the hero, or a combination of both. When you try to pick on him, his women, historically, will fight to the death to protect his reputation.

The woman he is with now, he estranges all the families from his target. He did that within three months with this new family. He had to ramp it up fast. He had them all estranged from her, and one sister reached out to me. I said, “This is how he acts. He estranges them because he knows that you know the truth and you are not buying the BS.” He starts putting pressure on.

My sister and all the women before her, I only know of the family before her, he destroyed them. That wife died young of cancer. Again, I believe stress was involved, and cancer feeds off stress too. That is why they tell you to get all the stressors out of your life. That woman could not get the stressor out of her life. My sister could not get it out. Right now, the new target is an absolute mess, for sure.

He took a picture of my sister when she was recovering from the suicide attempt. He did not know what I was up to at that point because I had decided to take a stand. The information at the bottom of the hospital bed showed how much my sister weighed. When I last saw my sister, she was tall, about 150 pounds, and she carried it very well. She was radiant. At the time of her suicide attempt, she was 253 pounds. When she actually killed herself about a year and a half later, she was probably closer to 300 pounds. Her body was destroyed, and I can prove it.

In her actual suicide, he knew it the day before he reported it to the police. She came October 27th. They got into an argument at a KOA campground where he had been put by his construction boss. He admitted that she came the night before and told him she was going to kill herself. He never called the police. This was a woman who attempted suicide a year and a half prior, looked at him, and said, “I am going to kill myself.”

He said she was mad and left because he was drinking. She would not have done that because he was drinking. I believe she caught him. I believe there was another woman there. I cannot prove that, but I believe it.

He had to admit that she told him she was going to kill herself because the police would find out about it. So he knew she was going to kill herself on the afternoon of the 27th. He reported it the next day, and the next day they found her in a hotel room. She killed herself on the 27th, the day she told him.

To me, in both events, he gave her extra time to die. That is the epitome of evil in this story, how he did that.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
It is evil. I know you touched a little bit on this, and I am going to go back over it because people need to be aware of situations where people are crying out, especially to leaders and people who are in authority to help do something.

I was inspired reading your biography. Again, it is a heartfelt story. I was going to ask you to tell me about the woman’s sister who reached out to you because she heard things. Tell me more about that experience because it is interesting when a family member of someone is interested in knowing exactly what happened.

Like you said, he could be putting this story out. But when you are looking at a narcissist or a serial person who has some kind of schizophrenic disease, a person who is evil, there has to be something wrong.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
One of the social workers at the hospital, after my sister’s first attempt, when I was opening up and exposing him, said, “People with that issue do not like it when they are outed like that.” I said, “My sister just tried to kill herself.” She said, “Well, yeah, there is that.” It was time. He is a sick dude, but he does not get the green light to keep hurting people.

The sister was leaning on me to tell her what was going on. I said, “He is estranging your sister from her family. That is the process of it.”

We know that in a very short period of time, he left and went up there saying he had no money. He had about $45,000 from the sale of the house. He told the new target that he had no money. She paid for my sister’s memorial stone, we believe she paid for the down payment on the house, and she may have bought him a new motorcycle. I know that in the first year, he probably got about $125,000 off her. It has been a lot more since.

The bigger issue that evolved is that we also believe he is sexually abusive to at least one of the girls. He was sexually approaching my elder niece when she was living in the house. He is not a parent like you and I would understand a parent. He never parents any of his children. He targets his women and gets his women to parent his children. He does not have a father-daughter relationship.

Here is the thing nobody knew in that police department because I did not want to put them on the defensive. I have three graduate degrees. I have everything but a PhD in counseling and school psychology, in the human services. I thought if I said that, they would get more defensive, so I kept it out of it.

Everything I did, I used my understanding. Even when I was trying to get them to intervene, I understood the HIPAA laws. I understood how someone like him can take advantage, manipulate, deceive, and control somebody. I knew all of those dynamics.

I just could not get through. That domestic-abuse investigator had the skill set of a bad intern. She should not have been doing that work. We had interns that I supervised when I was in college who we had to let go because they did not belong in the program. It was not for them. They could not make the human-service connection with the work.

I sent books to them, and here is the thing. I even said, “I do not want you to fire her. That is not what I am asking. She needs supervision and education.” I have all of that in writing.

It was the same with the hospital system. I know what HIPAA is about. I said, “You people blew it. You hid behind HIPAA so you did not have to do anything questionable.”

There is a clause in HIPAA, a statement about intervening if you believe the patient is at risk of something. They could have used that clause to help my sister. But most of them did not even know what I was talking about, even the hospital administrator when I told them that.

We tried everything we could. With this new family, it is bigger than stolen valor. When he was in his early 20s, he was telling people he was a brain surgeon. He lost his career. He was a radiology technician. He did have that degree while he was in the service. But he was passing himself off as a neuropsychologist, a doctor.

He ended up working construction, and he had everybody on the construction site calling him “Doc” for years. That construction boss wanted to talk to me after my sister’s death, and I wanted to talk to him. He was telling me, “He was having everybody call him Doc. Are you telling me he was not a doctor or anything?” I just started laughing. I said, “No, he is not a doctor. He does not have a PhD either.”

He would ask them what their ailments were and give them his opinion on what they were dealing with. So, like I said, if you go back in his records, you will see neuropsychologist. He played it all up.

He was also the inventor. Have you ever seen the naval aircraft carriers when the jets land? They use what is like a giant rubber band to slow them down, and then they use it to help catapult them off. He claimed he invented that. It was invented about 40 years before, back in the late 1940s or 1950s, and they kept building on it. He would say those kinds of things.

He brought in a bunch of tin badges once and threw them on a table in front of his new target, and the sister said, “They are not real.” When the sister would challenge him in front of his new target, he would run into the bedroom. The new target would go in after him, then she would come out and start fighting with the sister, saying, “You do not believe him, and you are hurting his feelings.”

That is what they would do. The sister could see the glaze over her eyes, like my sister. They just saw this hero, and he was a damaged hero because he had PTSD. How dare you pick on him and say this? He is a hero.

He has everybody convinced that if it ever comes out, the government would not acknowledge anything because it was super secret, double-super-secret operations. Nobody will ever know. It is crazy.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
In your opinion, why does empowering others matter more now than ever, pertaining to your story?

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
Because educating people about what stolen valor looks like matters. Stolen valor can be you sitting at a bar, and someone, generally a male, starts telling you about something great he did in the military, and then he gets a free drink. He just stole five dollars from you. You have to look at it differently.

First off, true heroes rarely ever tell stories about themselves. They do not initiate that story. Most of them will talk military with you, and they will never even tell you that story. Their story comes out from other people who served with them.

If somebody starts telling you about an act of military heroism that they did, your red flags have to go up. That could be anywhere. You can be at a supermarket, at a picnic, and all of a sudden you start talking to somebody and they do the same thing.

They target and watch for certain things in women. My sister told me in 2008, “I am not going to be single one more year. I will not be single.” I said, “You cannot talk like that because there is no way you can know that. You will get yourself in a bad situation thinking that way.” That is who she ended up with.

They see loneliness and desperation. That is through every woman you look at in the book: loneliness and desperation. When you have those two factors coming together, all you see is a beautiful person, and he is a hero too. You think you just struck the relational lottery. You got the big prize. That is how they start the relationship.

As the relationship unfolds and they see what his PTSD does to him, it makes him cheat on them. It makes him drink. It makes him do all these different things. Now you have to swallow it because he is still a big, beautiful hero, but he has all these other problems that you cannot leave him for. You have to help him because he is a military hero. The cheating and the drinking are part of his problem. You have to be patient. He just breaks them.

I look at my sister and say you have to watch for those kinds of cards to be called. Even if somebody else tells a woman the story about him, you have to go into those stories saying maybe it is true, maybe it is not.

It is sad, but a true veteran will say, good on you. Always be cautious of stories being told like that because most military heroes are not going to tell those stories. You always have to be cautious about hearing those stories out in the open. They do not even like other people telling those stories. When you hear military folks talk, they do not do it.

The fact that you are hearing it from either that person or from other people, I would say be cautious. Put your red lights out. It does not always have to be like the case of my sister, where it ended in a suicide attempt and he broke her. In the end, she just could not take it anymore, and I could not get anybody to help intervene. Then he simply replaced her.

As women with relational challenges, all I can say is really look at yourself. The other thing I tackle near the end of the book is that my sister believed her daughter who was killed was the best thing in her life, the most important thing in her life. But in the end, she made a decision and put a very inappropriate, immature husband ahead of my niece. That is a tough pill to swallow.

With the twins, she would say they were the most important thing in her life. But in the end, they were not the most important thing in her life. I had an elder neighbor who lost her child many years ago. When I went to tell her what happened with my sister, she looked at me and said, “Well, you know, David, she lost a child though.” She did not say another word. What that meant was, she lost a child, but she killed herself over a dude.

When you see that, it is a gut check to women who are prone to be with the bad guys and they have children. They have to be married. They have to get this guy. No. You have to protect your children from anybody you are dating for quite a while before you invite them into your home. You have to see if they have parenting skills.

You have to understand that it is a really difficult gut check because I am coming right out and saying it. Women who buy into this stuff and allow these men in their lives and have children may be saying their children are the most important things in their lives, but they are not acting it out. They are putting this guy up here, and in the end, that guy is going to win out if they let it go on long enough.

It won out against my sister twice in her life. With her marriage when she was with my niece, and he was not the biological dad. My sister got pregnant very young, and the guy did not refuse to admit it.

It is a tough discussion because I put a few examples near the end of the book about other women I knew who had this same issue. They keep saying their children are the most important thing in their lives, but these guys keep winning out in the end.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
They do. I totally agree with you. I look at what is going on now, especially in Hollywood, how a lot of women sit up and have kids by men, different fathers and everything of that nature, just to have income, especially men who are celebrities themselves.

It is sad. Sometimes you have to look at that. Through my program, that is what I teach, instill, and advocate: be your own self-advocate. What is wrong with you making lots of money yourself? What is wrong with you establishing yourself financially so you do not have to fall into that category?

Sometimes you can meet men who have a lot of money, and that is what they do. They are purchasing you. When they start purchasing you, that is when it comes with rules and regulations. You have to do what they say. Then comes the abuse because what that has shown is that you lack self-esteem and confidence, and you do not realize it because you want this man.

One, he is hiding behind the valor. I am going to call that being handsome. Two, he has all this money. You can overlook the darkness about him because a lot of times when you meet men, something about their past comes up in the relationship because you are going to talk about it. He tends to always blame what happened in the relationship on the woman. You have to really look and read between the lines because those are red messages.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
The gift of someone like this guy is that they have the gift whether they have money or not. What he is able to do to women is powerful.

The radiology-tech job was a good job, but he lost it. Here is what he told my sister. I did not realize he was not working as a radiology tech. He was working in construction for five years. I said, “What happened to his hospital job?” She said, “Oh, David, you would not believe what they did to him. The doctor made a mistake in a surgery, and the patient died. He called everybody into his office afterward and said, ‘If you do not say this happened and it was not my fault, all of you will be fired.’”

She said, “David, he could not do it. He could not sign that.”

I thought, no, that is not what happened. There is always that. He was a hero-victim there. Look what he did. He could not listen to the bad doctor. It is always a story.

He never has money. We do not know what he does with it, whether he has private accounts. Like I said, he came back north where we are living. He and this woman got their house. He cannot leave, by the way, because he is on parole. He got involved in a little conflict, and I made sure the judge had all the information. Rather than giving him a slap on the wrist, the judge gave him 90 days with the ankle bracelet and five years’ probation. So he has to stay back in our area, where we are all from. That is where they got the house.

He had at least $10,000 from that woman he is living with now. He got $45,000 from the sale of the property, but he never has the money. We do not know what he does with it, whether he has secret accounts or whatever. He constantly sucks money off the women and takes their money.

To have that gift is true evil. He could just make a regular paycheck if he wanted. But what he ends up doing is, if the women are making money, he will just quit and take the money they are making. This woman he is with now makes a lot of money. There is a lot going on there now that I am aware of, but basically he is still doing the same thing.

If he got word that I was going to forgive him, and I got to that level, he still refused. I asked if he wanted to talk with me. He refused it. Even then, he is still doing it. My goal is to still try to intervene to stop it, to get him to be accountable. We know he is going to be accountable in the next life, but I am also called to do what I can to try to stop that behavior because he keeps destroying families and children.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Absolutely. My next question for you is this: what is the one thing about military life that surprises you from this whole story?

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
I have worked with children for many years, and what I have always been amazed by is the military lifestyle, raising a family with children. Children have to become very resilient because of the moves.

A military family, somebody who does a career in the military, as the children are growing up from babies to their high school years, they may have been in four or five different states or countries. Yet the military does something very right with families. They support families. Maybe they have courses and classes for these parents to take because they are going to be moving their children around.

I have never really crossed paths with a military child who was adversely affected by that. On the other side, they actually developed very mature behaviors with moving. They either stayed in touch with some of their better friends over the years, but most families outside the military that jump around like that, in my experience, rarely see those children come out of it in a healthy way like the military-family kids did.

I think the family-support models in the military work very well.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
My next question following that is, what do you wish more people understood about veterans, the military, or military life?

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
I wish everybody could understand what stolen valor is. Let me read the definition I had.

Stolen valor dishonors genuine service. When someone falsely claims military honors or awards, they diminish the sacrifices and bravery of those who actually served.

Second, it erodes trust. Stolen valor can lead to skepticism among legitimate veterans and their experiences, making it harder for genuine service members to be believed. I take a little issue with that because true veterans will want you to be cautious when you start hearing stories, but it can have that effect.

Then there are genuine security risks. In some cases, stolen valor can pose security risks if impostors gain access to sensitive information or positions of authority.

What they are saying there is that if you are a military vet and you are giving up information about some of the things you knew while you were a vet openly in public, just to elevate your status, that is an issue. But I do not focus on those as much as the first one: it dishonors genuine service. Absolutely, that is what it does, and it elevates a fake. It elevates a fraud.

I would want most people to understand stolen valor. Get to know what it is. Be cautious if you hear a story. Do not automatically assume. Let other veterans talk to the person because another veteran can have that discussion and pick out stolen valor like that.

If you are in a social circle and you know true veterans, and you hear that one person is telling this story, tell another one of your veteran friends. They will start asking questions. Usually what happens if the person is lying is that they back away and leave. They have to go. Or they will not know how to answer the questions.

I would always access someone you know is a true veteran and let them know what you are hearing about this person. Then let them figure it out for you. That is probably the safest way.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Were you, or have you been, in the military yourself?

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
I joined when I was very young, and I got out during basic training. They recycled me twice. While I was in there, I found out from a captain in the kitchen that what kind of schooling I had been promised while I was in the service was not going to happen. I told him what kind of schooling I was supposed to get, and he basically said, “You will never get that amount of time to get that much school out of the way while you are in the service.”

I said, “But that is what I was told by my recruiter.” He said, “You will not get that much time.” I said, “I cannot do this.”

I told my drill sergeant I did not want to be there anymore. They are not automatically going to say, okay, you can go home. He said, “You are doing a good job. I think if you stick around a while, you will adjust to this.”

I was not adjusting to it, and I kept saying, “I do not want to be here.” They actually put me in basic training twice, and probably midway through the second training, I started to break down. I just did not want to be there. I got out. It was not dishonorable. It was just a general discharge. It does not hurt you.

There were people in my same platoon who were attempting suicide to get out. I just held my ground and said, “I do not want to be here because I was lied to.”

That experience did not make me think about the military in a lesser way. I have even more admiration for it because I saw the front end of what people have to sacrifice to stay in. I was the anomaly. I was the one you could say could not make it. It just was not for me, and it was not wartime. It was peacetime.

But I ended up admiring more the people who stuck it out. I did not walk around telling everybody and making up a story. I did not say I was in the military and doing expert things. I just did not want to be there anymore. I failed at it, in essence. But I came out of it with an even healthier respect for what our people in service do, going through basic training, handling it, and doing it.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Absolutely. I had two people from my family who were in the military. My cousin spent almost all his life in the military. He loved it. My nephew got out of the military. I think he could not handle it, and I do not know exactly what he did, but I got word that he either broke his leg or something of that nature. He was discharged out of the military.

You have to look at that because the military is not for everyone. I know they lure you in. My grandson and I were just talking about this because he is 17, and the military center is right across from the school. They come to the school and talk to the guys and girls about the military. They offer a lot of different resources, which is good. However, you just have to make sure you understand what you are really getting into.

Everything we do sometimes, you have to research. Me and research, that is my friend. Anytime I want to create something, establish something, or do anything, I am a research fanatic because I like to make sure I understand what I am getting into.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
I was 16. I am in my upper 60s now, so back in the day, I think recruiters used to get away with a lot of the story. I do not think they can get away with some of the things they used to do. Now I think it is far more truthful. I think there are ways that they just do not tell dishonest things. Back then, they had a lot more leeway on how they got people to sign the paper.

Like I said, I developed a healthy respect. My dad was a Korean War-era vet. My uncle was in the National Guard. My two nephews were both in Afghanistan and Iraq. I had a cousin who was in Vietnam. It is through my family. Based on my experience with this guy, I want to protect the honor of true heroes in the military. That is another part of educating. We want to protect our true heroes.

I found somebody out of the blue on a stolen-valor Facebook site. This guy said, “David, I think I can help you.” We started talking on Messenger and then by phone. He was a military vet who worked with the FBI on some of the more egregious cases they hear about. He wanted to take mine on.

Military records are very well protected. You cannot get access to those easily. Within 10 minutes, he came back and said, “Here is why he was discharged.” We always thought it was a sexual impropriety off base with a minor because we heard that story, and that was in his family. But he actually received a bad-conduct discharge for drugs.

They probably did not have enough facts with the sexual incident with the minor off base, but they had the facts with the drugs. So he was booted with a bad-conduct discharge. It gets a little grainy because even when people get those kinds of discharge, they can still leave with some services, but I do not believe he gets any, or he gets hardly any, military services.

My sister, for many years, was saying, “When we go to counseling for his PTSD,” and then she would say, “When he comes home from counseling, he is a mess.” All of a sudden, I realized that all those years, when she was saying “we go to this,” I do not think he ever went to a counseling session. It did not come out until she actually said in her suicide letter, “When he comes home from counseling.” She was leading me to believe she was right there doing all of this. She was leading me to believe she had all of his military papers and saw the things that said he was a hero. But she never did. She never uncovered the things that are covered up.

The sad thing about his new target is that I look at her and see my sister. That was one of my forgiveness moves. I almost got dragged out of the court hearing where I was going to the court cases he was involved in. That takes us on a different path, but it is in the book.

I looked at her after I upset her by something I did in the courtroom toward him, and I just said, “That is my sister.” It is the same. They are just targets to him. They all have the same personality makeup and desperation. Her sister was saying she had been lonely. They lived together for many years. They were best friends, these sisters, until he came onto the scene.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
I commend you. I am totally inspired. I know we are up for time, so can you tell everyone how someone can contact you if they want to discuss this, have you on their show, or purchase your book?

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
I will show you what the book looks like.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
Yes, I love it.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
The names and locations are changed. You are on a different part of the country. I did not mind you introducing me by my real name, but as I get better at this, I am going to say, “Just call me Michael.” That is the name right there.

I do not worry about it too much. Like I said, even that veteran through his FBI resources told me I did not have to change all the names and locations. But I did not want another veteran getting himself in trouble for doing something. Through the forgiveness stuff, I do not want to see him harmed in that way. I want to see his behavior stop so he stops hurting people.

You can get the book through AuthorHouse.com. It is self-published. I have done other books through self-publishing. This is the hardest book to write because there were so many feelings associated with it, and the grieving and the anger and everything.

Go to AuthorHouse.com and plug in Blood Fake. I think Blood Fake comes up, and the word Blood Fake is in blue. That is what you click on, and you will get to the book to buy the book. If you get it off AuthorHouse.com, you will see on the site that there is an information email at the top-hand corner to contact the author. You will see there is a place to get in touch with the author. I will be checking that every week or so to see if there are people interested.

I think your system, BBS Radio, has my information as well. In the larger picture, word of mouth is always very valuable because it comes from people who heard the story directly, or they like and respect you, or they like the way I told the story. I think that is always going to be very powerful.

I ask people who watched it, if they are interested, to purchase the book or just tell other people about the book.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
You are absolutely right. The book, to me, is a word-of-mouth book because it is something women have gone through and are going through. It is a wake-up call, and it is something that can enlighten you.

For me, I would want the book to be on my shelf in my foundation because a lot of the young girls I meet go through trauma. A lot of them have men, boyfriend trauma. It is a good book to sit back with, have a discussion, and read so you can get greater insight about what happened to someone else. The best experience is when someone else has gone through an experience and can share it with you.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
This is the loving message because I get very direct coming down the home front near the end of the book. These women are being targeted. It is not a healthy relationship. For a mother to say this guy thinks that my boyfriend is more important than my girls, I am saying there is a high possibility of that. You have got to check yourself.

Here is the loving message behind that: generally, they are very nice people. You deserve better. These women deserve better.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
With that being said, I have reached my destination, and I leave you with this quote: “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand.”

Until next time, do have a blessed day, and I will see you next week.

Speaker 2 – David Wilson, Guest:
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 – Pamela L. Henderson, Host:
You are welcome.

Speaker 3 – Announcer / Prerecorded Promo Voice:
Thank you for listening to All-Roads Lead 65 Max Radio with Pamela Henderson. Join us every other week on Tuesdays, 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, on BBS Radio Station 1.

Please visit allroads65max.org and become a volunteer or sponsor. Be the change you want to see in this world. With your help, we can make a difference in our society and uplift those who so desperately need our help. Thank you for tuning in.