<\/p>\n
A<\/span>ngelina Resendiz\u2019s voice<\/span> on the phone was frantic. She was calling a friend from the barracks room of Jermiah Copeland, a fellow sailor at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. They had spent the evening together, kissing and drinking, and now Resendiz, 21, needed to leave.<\/p>\n It was the last time anyone would hear from her. When Resendiz\u2019s friend arrived at the barracks 15 minutes later, the pair was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Navy failed her,\u201d Resendiz\u2019s mother, Esmerelda Castle, told The Intercept. After her daughter\u2019s disappearance, friends and family spent a week scrambling to find Resendiz. Castle found the Navy\u2019s reports in that time unclear, delayed, or downright false.<\/p>\n A first-of-its-kind Intercept investigation has found critical shortcomings in the U.S. military\u2019s procedures for documenting and preserving records\u00a0of homicides that result from domestic abuse, including intimate partner violence<\/span>. The Pentagon\u2019s mandated reports<\/a> to Congress appear to substantially undercount<\/a> these killings, omitting nearly half of cases.<\/p>\n In the six years before Copeland\u2019s murder of Resendiz, the Pentagon recorded 41 domestic abuse<\/span>-related homicides committed by service members. The Intercept identified nearly twice as many: at least 73 potential cases involving 79 victims \u2014 almost all of them women \u2014 during the same period. Reports for fiscal year 2025, when Resendiz was murdered, are due in November.<\/p>\n The Intercept examined publicly available news articles<\/a>, obituaries, court records<\/a>, memorials<\/a>, and other data to investigate the specifics behind the Defense Department\u2019s numbers. Reporters also used data obtained<\/a> through a Freedom of Information Act request on Army noncombat fatalities<\/a> to match names, because some news coverage did not mention the victims\u2019 and alleged perpetrators\u2019 military service.<\/p>\n A killing qualified for the dataset if it occurred in fiscal years 2019<\/span><\/a> to 2024<\/a>; if the perpetrator was a member of the military at the time<\/a> of the crime; and if the case involved a homicide<\/a>. The database only includes cases where a victim of the violence had dated or was in a romantic relationship<\/a> with the suspected perpetrator<\/a>, and it includes multiple women living abroad who were foreign citizens<\/a> dating American troops.<\/p>\n In the fiscal years since the second Trump administration took power, The Intercept found at least 10 service women or women working for the Defense Department have died from intimate partner and domestic violence, six of them killed by male co-workers. An additional 10 civilian women have been killed by male military personnel in intimate partner violence-related homicides during the same period.<\/p>\n A Pentagon spokesperson acknowledged The Intercept\u2019s queries about the discrepancy in homicide rates but did not respond to detailed questions before publication. <\/p>\n