After spending weeks studying the results of the autopsy of their son who was killed in Iraq, the parents of Specialist Byron Wayne Fouty believe their son was tortured by his captors.
His stepfather, Charles Meunier, said the family thinks the captors held him for up to four months and tortured him all the way.
When the autopsy results arrived a month ago, there was a word of caution for his mother, Hilary Meunier, who lives with her husband just outside of San Antonio. The military medical examiner warned her that she should have people who care for her with her when she read the document.
The one-page autopsy report and its four-page supplement offer clues that the 19-year-old may have been beaten and dismembered before he and 25-year-old Staff Sergeant Alex R. Jimenez were killed and buried in a shallow grave. The report's last page said that Fouty's nose had been broken but had "well healed prior to death."
The report also described foot bones detached from commingled remains of Fouty and Jimenez, and finger bones wrapped in a blanket. Part of a pair of handcuffs was found.
Fouty and Jimenez were kidnapped after their convoy was ambushed south of Baghdad in May 2007. Their families were told in this past July that their bodies had been found. Fouty's remains were buried July 25 at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.
