Varnado Simpson

After three unsuccessful attempts, Simpson took his own life in his home on Sunday, May 4, 1997, at the age of 48, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

In 1989, in an interview for the British documentary Four Hours in My Lai, Simpson claimed to have killed 20 to 25 people and added scalping and bodily mutilation to his description of events. "The baby’s face was half gone, my mind just went…and I just started killing. Old men, women, children, water buffaloes, everything… I just killed… That day in My Lai, I was personally responsible for killing about 25 people. Personally. Men, women. From shooting them, to cutting their throats, scalping them, to...cutting off their hands and cutting out their tongues. I did it. A lot of people were doing it, and I just followed." Simpson said something had snapped at him after the initial murder of the woman and his discovery that he had also killed a child. At this point, Simpson was heavily medicated for his severe psychological disorders.

In 1982, he was admitted to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, where he was diagnosed with chronic and severe post-traumatic stress disorder after recounting his actions in the village, as well as his recurring fears that the dead villagers would come back to wreak vengeance upon him. For years, he lived with all of his doors and windows locked and shuttered.

In 1977, Simpson's 10-year-old son was accidentally killed by a random shot fired by some neighborhood teenagers. Simpson recalled the day later by stating, "He died in my arms. And when I looked at him, his face was like the same face of the child that I had killed. And I said: This is the punishment for killing the people that I killed." Simpson's daughter died of meningitis a few years before he committed suicide.

In a 1970 interview, when Simpson was asked what he thought was a war crime, he considered the entire Vietnam War to be a war crime.

In a 1969 interview with The New York Times, Simpson admitting to killing 10 at My Lai, and said all of them were adults. However, the day before, he confessed to NBC that he had killed a child with his mother. During the New York Times interview, when Simpson was asked if he had seen any children killed at My Lai, he said he did not want to answer that question, telling the interview that it was painful for him. Simpson then ended the interview abruptly by leaving early.

After being discharged later in 1968, Simpson got a job at a bank before returning to college.

Varnado Simpson (October 7, 1948 – May 4, 1997) was an American mass murderer and U.S. Army soldier who participated in the My Lai Massacre, torturing, murdering, and mutilating multiple South Vietnamese civilians. He committed suicide out of guilt nearly 30 years later.