thedrifter
05-13-07, 08:20 AM
05/13/2007
Luckie wraps up military, law enforcement career -- maybe
Bob Campbell<br>Staff Writer
Midland Reporter-Telegram
Of all his experiences in a rich and sometimes difficult life, J.
D. Luckie's despair at abandoning villagers to their fate in Vietnam has motivated him more powerfully than any.
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The 58-year-old native Houstonian joined the Marine Corps after graduating from high school at Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco and served 19 months in Vietnam with the Corps' Civil Action Program.
Just having retired as a district attorney's investigator, he supervised a combat-buffeted 600-man international police force in Kosovo from 1999-2000 and pursued a series of cold cases as a result of his Vietnam-related regret.
"We worked with two villages, one friendly and the other non-friendly, near Dong Ha and the mouth of the Cua Viet River in the northern provinces," Luckie recalled. "We were like the Marines' Green Berets.
"I felt guilty when the Ninth Regiment of the Third Marines pulled out in November 1969 because a lot of people I knew in that village probably never made it out of there. I volunteered for Kosovo to try to set right the wrong done to those people. We walked off and left them and that's troublesome."
Hobbled by back surgeries for three ruptured discs and a mysteriously fractured vertebrae and blocked leg arteries, he would accept the invitation of his Kosovo employer, Dyn Corp, to serve in Iraq if he could regain his health. "I would do it for the children," he said.
"The ones who always get hurt are the elderly and children."
In the meantime, Luckie and his wife, the former Ellen Coloney of Broadalbin, N.Y., are camping in the Big Bend.
When asked if he has ever worried about getting hurt, Luckie said the examples of his late father Everett, an Air Force pilot in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and older brother Freddie Mack of Yuma, Ariz., a retired USMC colonel who served three tours in Vietnam, made his commitment automatic.
"I went in with 180 guys and in 30 days, only 20 of us were left who hadn't been killed or wounded," he said. "That's hard for somebody 18 years old. I don't know of any vet who comes out without a little survivor's guilt.
"You think about it for a second, but that's not going to keep you from going. You have a calling to go."
Always having thought of himself as a military man, he spent 10 years with the Midland police as a juvenile officer and patrol sergeant and two years as a petroleum landman in the early 1980s. Luckie rejoined the MPD until becoming an investigator when Al Schorre was elected district attorney in 1984.
He went to Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia to head a 75-man unit that was decimated at Blackbird Bridge in Mitrovica on Feb. 4, 2000, when 2,000 Albanians attacked a smaller Serbian force. "We had a mess out there," he related in his soft-spoken, casual manner.
"There was a bunch of killing taking place and some of my men were held hostage. After that, the United Nations sent me 600 police officers from 32 nations. I met every day with a general from the French army, which was useless.
"This was a couple of years before they called President Bush a cowboy. The general called me a cowboy and I came in the next day in a Stetson and spurs with a cigar in my mouth. I informed him I would rather be a cowboy than a coward, which he was. I said he had a stripe down his back like (cartoon skunk) Pepe le Pew.
"The U.N. said that was politically incorrect and I used some words about part of my anatomy."
Luckie had met and been befriended by the five-member Dragojlo family in Mitrovica after a rocket propelled grenade blew him over a car. He worked through the U.S. State Department to move them to Amarillo upon returning for them in September 2001.
"I had a concussion and broken ribs and we didn't have a lot of corpsmen," he said. "The Dragojlos bandaged and fed me and then they got a death message from the Serbs on their door. I wasn't going to let the same thing happen to them that happened to those 60-70 people in that village in Vietnam."
Luckie had a second reason to return -- to show former deputy Terry Lowe maps of possible locations of Daytina Hulslander, whose remains were found by hunters on an oil lease near Garden City late that year as Luckie, riding daily on horseback, closed in on the primitive pyre immolated by drip gas. Hulslander had been missing for three years and her husband Alan pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In one of a half-dozen other successful cold case investigations, Luckie found and subpoenaed a host of witnesses to testify two weeks ago in the 20-year-old murder of convenience store clerk Verna Peace. Wilmer Lee "Snake" Cobb got a life term and authorities say two other men may now be indicted.
A pilot since 1974, Luckie was severely disheartened by the Dec. 5, 1976, deaths of his father, a retired Air Force colonel, and mother, the former Pauline Ivy, in a twin engine Cessna 310 crash near Robert Lee caused by a pitot tube malfunction of air speed and altitude gauges. He didn't fly again until the late '80s, when state narcotics officer-flight instructor Mario Tinajero requalified him.
"J.D. (for Jerrold Dwayne) is the kindest person I have ever known," said Tinajero, who succeeded him at Schorre's office. "He treats everybody equally and is not prejudiced at all.
"He looks at both sides of the coin and is one of the toughest people I have ever seen, physically and mentally. He can work 24 hours a day. He is unbelievable. He doesn't have to do the things he does and I don't see how he has endured so much."
Tinajero said that along with camping, Luckie enjoys reading books about Vietnam and other wars and newspapers and magazines about current events.
Luckie's son Scott is a Marine major who flew Harrier aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan and will return to Iraq in August in an Osprey, about which he wrote a tactical manual. The couple's daughter is Michelle Duoto, a Houston occupational therapist. They have four grandchildren.
"When we have a trial like Cobb's or Hulslander's, we're the state and we're there for the victims and their protection," Luckie said. "It doesn't come easy and some officers and prosecutors are not willing to put in the necessary effort."
Ellie
Luckie wraps up military, law enforcement career -- maybe
Bob Campbell<br>Staff Writer
Midland Reporter-Telegram
Of all his experiences in a rich and sometimes difficult life, J.
D. Luckie's despair at abandoning villagers to their fate in Vietnam has motivated him more powerfully than any.
Advertisement
The 58-year-old native Houstonian joined the Marine Corps after graduating from high school at Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco and served 19 months in Vietnam with the Corps' Civil Action Program.
Just having retired as a district attorney's investigator, he supervised a combat-buffeted 600-man international police force in Kosovo from 1999-2000 and pursued a series of cold cases as a result of his Vietnam-related regret.
"We worked with two villages, one friendly and the other non-friendly, near Dong Ha and the mouth of the Cua Viet River in the northern provinces," Luckie recalled. "We were like the Marines' Green Berets.
"I felt guilty when the Ninth Regiment of the Third Marines pulled out in November 1969 because a lot of people I knew in that village probably never made it out of there. I volunteered for Kosovo to try to set right the wrong done to those people. We walked off and left them and that's troublesome."
Hobbled by back surgeries for three ruptured discs and a mysteriously fractured vertebrae and blocked leg arteries, he would accept the invitation of his Kosovo employer, Dyn Corp, to serve in Iraq if he could regain his health. "I would do it for the children," he said.
"The ones who always get hurt are the elderly and children."
In the meantime, Luckie and his wife, the former Ellen Coloney of Broadalbin, N.Y., are camping in the Big Bend.
When asked if he has ever worried about getting hurt, Luckie said the examples of his late father Everett, an Air Force pilot in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and older brother Freddie Mack of Yuma, Ariz., a retired USMC colonel who served three tours in Vietnam, made his commitment automatic.
"I went in with 180 guys and in 30 days, only 20 of us were left who hadn't been killed or wounded," he said. "That's hard for somebody 18 years old. I don't know of any vet who comes out without a little survivor's guilt.
"You think about it for a second, but that's not going to keep you from going. You have a calling to go."
Always having thought of himself as a military man, he spent 10 years with the Midland police as a juvenile officer and patrol sergeant and two years as a petroleum landman in the early 1980s. Luckie rejoined the MPD until becoming an investigator when Al Schorre was elected district attorney in 1984.
He went to Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia to head a 75-man unit that was decimated at Blackbird Bridge in Mitrovica on Feb. 4, 2000, when 2,000 Albanians attacked a smaller Serbian force. "We had a mess out there," he related in his soft-spoken, casual manner.
"There was a bunch of killing taking place and some of my men were held hostage. After that, the United Nations sent me 600 police officers from 32 nations. I met every day with a general from the French army, which was useless.
"This was a couple of years before they called President Bush a cowboy. The general called me a cowboy and I came in the next day in a Stetson and spurs with a cigar in my mouth. I informed him I would rather be a cowboy than a coward, which he was. I said he had a stripe down his back like (cartoon skunk) Pepe le Pew.
"The U.N. said that was politically incorrect and I used some words about part of my anatomy."
Luckie had met and been befriended by the five-member Dragojlo family in Mitrovica after a rocket propelled grenade blew him over a car. He worked through the U.S. State Department to move them to Amarillo upon returning for them in September 2001.
"I had a concussion and broken ribs and we didn't have a lot of corpsmen," he said. "The Dragojlos bandaged and fed me and then they got a death message from the Serbs on their door. I wasn't going to let the same thing happen to them that happened to those 60-70 people in that village in Vietnam."
Luckie had a second reason to return -- to show former deputy Terry Lowe maps of possible locations of Daytina Hulslander, whose remains were found by hunters on an oil lease near Garden City late that year as Luckie, riding daily on horseback, closed in on the primitive pyre immolated by drip gas. Hulslander had been missing for three years and her husband Alan pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In one of a half-dozen other successful cold case investigations, Luckie found and subpoenaed a host of witnesses to testify two weeks ago in the 20-year-old murder of convenience store clerk Verna Peace. Wilmer Lee "Snake" Cobb got a life term and authorities say two other men may now be indicted.
A pilot since 1974, Luckie was severely disheartened by the Dec. 5, 1976, deaths of his father, a retired Air Force colonel, and mother, the former Pauline Ivy, in a twin engine Cessna 310 crash near Robert Lee caused by a pitot tube malfunction of air speed and altitude gauges. He didn't fly again until the late '80s, when state narcotics officer-flight instructor Mario Tinajero requalified him.
"J.D. (for Jerrold Dwayne) is the kindest person I have ever known," said Tinajero, who succeeded him at Schorre's office. "He treats everybody equally and is not prejudiced at all.
"He looks at both sides of the coin and is one of the toughest people I have ever seen, physically and mentally. He can work 24 hours a day. He is unbelievable. He doesn't have to do the things he does and I don't see how he has endured so much."
Tinajero said that along with camping, Luckie enjoys reading books about Vietnam and other wars and newspapers and magazines about current events.
Luckie's son Scott is a Marine major who flew Harrier aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan and will return to Iraq in August in an Osprey, about which he wrote a tactical manual. The couple's daughter is Michelle Duoto, a Houston occupational therapist. They have four grandchildren.
"When we have a trial like Cobb's or Hulslander's, we're the state and we're there for the victims and their protection," Luckie said. "It doesn't come easy and some officers and prosecutors are not willing to put in the necessary effort."
Ellie