Four years had passed since her son had died in an explosion in Baghdad and Carol Thomas Young was getting no closer to knowing why.
Her lawsuit against the famed special forces operative who had employed her son -- and refused to pay an insurance settlement when he was killed -- had stalled. The Murray mother dropped the suit, saying she would leave Don Feeney's fate in the hands of a "higher court."
She didn't think it would be the Iraqi courts.
Feeney, a former Delta Forces soldier who parlayed his military experience into a decades-long mercenary career, was being detained by Iraqi officials over the weekend, along with his son and three other men who worked for his company, CTU Security Services.
CNN reported Sunday that an Iraqi security source said three of the men were being held on suspicion of direct involvement of the death of another contractor, who was found bound, blindfolded and fatally stabbed in a car in Baghdad's Green Zone last month.
If the suspects are charged and set over for trial, it will be the first time that Americans are tried in Iraq's Central Criminal Court since Iraqis gained jurisdiction over security contractors accused of crimes. The law was changed in the wake of the infamous Nissour Square in 2007.
"We must keep in mind that these men are innocent until proven guilty," Young said. "But we also know what he is capable of."
Utah National Guard soldier Brandon Thomas, Young's son, died May 7, 2005, when the convoy of security vehicles in which he was riding was attacked, likely by a car bomb. Young, a veteran of the U.S. Marshal's Service, set out immediately to understand what had happened.
But she said her efforts were thwarted by Feeney, who had recruited her son to Iraq.
Meanwhile, insurance settlements that the families of Thomas and Colorado native Todd Venette, also killed in the bombing, believed they had been promised, did not materialize.
In a 2007 interview with The Salt Lake Tribune , Feeney said the families had mistaken expectations. He said that he had never spoken to the men in his company about life insurance, as Thomas, Venette and several other contractors who worked for CTU had independently told their families.
"It wasn't talked about," Feeney said from Hong Kong, where he had moved his company after the bombing and, at that point, had avoided being served with the suit. "And furthermore, I don't think they cared. Everyone who does the job that we do knows the risks involved. You make good money and you stash it away for a rainy day."
When that day came, CTU officials claimed that $20,000 in cash payments made to Thomas for work in Iraq had all "burned up in the explosion," Young said. "His stories about the money just grew more and more implausible."
Meanwhile, the families said, Feeney wouldn't return their phone calls as Young, along with Venette's mother, Debbie Casida, sought information about the attack.
Casida said she was "floored" when she heard that Feeney had been detained this weekend in the death of James Kitterman -- a friend of her son's and a longtime colleague of Feeney.
"I never thought he'd turn on one of his own ..." Casida began, as the women spoke on a conference call. "...but he turned on our kids," Thomas interjected.
Casida conceded the point. "I keep hoping for the best in everyone, but I keep getting surprised," she said.
But Feeney's wife said Sunday that there is no reason to think the worst about her husband or son. She said they were merely being held as Iraqi authorities try to sort out what happened to Kitterman.
"Don and James were very good friends for a number of years," Judy Feeney said from her North Carolina home.
She said that her husband wasn't even in Iraq at the time of Kitterman's death and said her son and the other CTU employees had solid alibis.
"We're anticipating a good outcome," she said. "No charges have been filed and we don't anticipate that at all."
Judy Feeney said she has been granted limited contact with anyone in Iraq but that she had heard her husband and son were being treated well while in Iraqi custody.
For her part, Young said she wasn't surprised by the detentions.
"There's a lot of arrogance in that group," she said.
