Two months before his 23rd birthday, on Oct. 27, 1992, while on shore leave in Sasebo, Japan, he was followed into a park bathroom shortly before midnight by two drunken shipmates, one of whom, Airman Charles Vins, watched and occasionally joined in while the other, Airman Apprentice Terry Helvey, kneed Schindler in the groin, struck him in the face and then, cradling his head in the crook of his arm, punched him repeatedly while lowering him to the floor. There, Helvey began stamping on him with the heel of his foot, striking blows from head to crotch that resulted, according to the pathologist who performed the autopsy, in abrasions, contusions and lacerations of the forehead, eyes, nose, lips, chin, neck, Adam’s apple, trachea, lungs, liver — which was pulped “like a smushed tomato” — and penis. The pathologist compared the damage to that of a “high-speed auto accident or a low-speed aircraft accident” and said it was the most severe trauma he’d ever witnessed — even worse than a case he’d seen of a man trampled to death by a horse.

