Robert Richards: Marine Who Urinated On Corpse In YouTube Video Found Dead In His Home

Robert Richards, who gained infamy in 2012 when a YouTube video showed him and three other United States Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, has died. Richards pleaded guilty to charges related to urinating on the dead bodies in his 2013 court-martial but though he was knocked down in rank from sergeant to corporal, he was not forced out of the Marine Corps.

But on Thursday, the 28-year-old retired Marine, who left the corps for medical reasons, was found dead in his Jacksonville, North Carolina, home by his wife. The couple had recently sold that home and were planning a move to Florida, their home state, possibly within a week.

“His wife was out of the house for a few hours and then came home to find him laying in his living room dead,” said Guy Womack, a friend and lawyer for Richards. “She was hysterical.”

No official cause of death has been determined, but Womack says that he believes the death of Robert Richards resulted from the “cocktail of medications” he had been taking to treat combat wounds as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Womack said that he did not believe that Richards took his own life, nor that he may have been the victim of a homicide.

A Marine sniper, Richards served three tours in Afghanistan. On his second tour, in 2010, he suffered severe injuries to his brain, neck and foot from a roadside bomb. But after recovering from the devastating wounds, Richards went back to Afghanistan, voluntarily, for a third tour of duty.

During that third tour, he was recorded along with three Marine comrades urinating on the corpses of slain enemy fighters. In the video, one of the Marines is heard to say, “Have a good day, buddy.”

Richards later said the video had never been intended for public view and blamed its release on a “traitor.” But Richards said that he regretted that the video had damaged the reputation of the Marines.

“When you’re under that much stress and in that environment, your whole mental being changes,” Richards once said. “You’re no longer Joe the Family Man. You’re a warrior.”

Reportedly a member of the same platoon as Robert Richards ad been killed by a bomb earlier on the same day that the video was filmed. The Marines in the video believed that the men they killed, then urinated upon, were the same men who killed their friend.