Peter Thomas Helton – U.S. Army Ranger, Scout Sniper, Two Purple Hearts, Blog of Shame

militaryphonies

7 years ago

BACKGROUND

Peter Thomas Helton comes to us from New Albany, IN. He is 43 y/o as of November 2018.

On Helton’s Twitter page, he displays a license plate that implies he is or was an Army Ranger.

On Peter Helton’s LinkedIn page that is shared with his wife, he claims he was in the Army for eight (8) years, was a Scout Sniper and was awarded two (2) Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in combat…

He had addresses that supported his claims of being in the U.S. Army which include Fort Polk, Fort Hood and Fort Benning.

People that doubted his stories came forward.

Peter Helton’s military records were requested through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

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FOIA RESULTS

DoD MANPOWER DATABASE

NATIONAL PERSONNEL RECORDS CENTER (NPRC)

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DISCUSSION and SUMMARY

Although it would appear that Peter Helton did not serve, his situation was looked into further and it was determined that he has served or is serving with an Indiana state guard of some kind. State level military service has a different FOIA process but if he had ever served in the U.S. Army (regular) he would have shown up on the FOIA request to NPRC.

Certainly, if he had attended Ranger training or sniper school. We have heard of ‘scout sniper’ when referring to the Marine Corps but this is the first we’ve heard the term used in context to the U.S. Army.

The DoD Manpower database was searched for dates that he claimed he was in the Army, so there were multiple negative results over multiple years searched, but we included the year 2000 as one that was indicative of negative results.

Since he claims he has two Purple Hearts, he could only have gotten them while on active duty. The only exception to that was the terrorist attack on the reserve center in Tennessee.

So, the national records that we obtained indicated that they could find no record of service for Peter Thomas Helton in the U.S. Army.

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