Being deployed can be tough business. While you’re busy hookin' and jabbin' (ah-punchin' and ah-stabbin’) overseas, concern is ever-present that the infamous, devious snake called Jody might slither his way into the affections of your gal back home.
Sure, you met your wife at Applebee’s just nine days before you deployed, but your marriage is as rock solid as those private first class chevrons you just pinned on.
Despite such concrete relational foundations, however, Jody’s back-home conquest of relationship-demolishing chicanery has coexisted alongside far-flung military deployments throughout all of human history.
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Even the great biblical King David, giant-slayer, went next-level Jody when he developed some Old Testament hots for Bathsheba while her husband, Uriah the Hittite, was off annihilating the king’s enemies.
With Bathsheba impregnated by David, the king ordered his commanders to leave Uriah isolated in the worst part of a gruesome battle to ensure he met his bloody end. That’s harsh, Dave.
But now, Jody isn’t just after your special someone — he’s graduated to coming after your house and belongings as well.
That was the case for the evolved Montana Jody, Erik Robert Hunt, 39, who received a 15-year sentence Wednesday for a laundry list of charges, some of which included squatting in a deployed service member’s Butte, Montana, home for weeks on end, barricading the front door, then selling the man’s belongings, the Montana Standard reported.
Hunt was originally released from jail while awaiting trial for the squatting charges, but just 22 days after being cut loose, he was apprehended again after gallivanting about town on a crime spree, stealing a truck and lifting items from a local Walmart.
Not even the department store’s famous rollback prices could satisfy the Butte man’s desire for thievery.
“I was not out to harm a man that served our country,” Hunt told District Court Judge Ed McLean Wednesday, before adding that he and his girlfriend were homeless and wanted a place “to get warm."
Hunt, who was in possession of methamphetamine when he was taken back into custody, apologized for his actions, but McLean decided against leniency this time around, doling out a hefty punishment while emphasizing the crimes committed against someone “overseas serving the country.”
The service member was reportedly in Iraq when Hunt decided to move in.
It’s a true lesson for all. Guard your family. Guard your home. Jody remains on the eternal prowl, and the deployment is dark and full of terrors.
J.D. Simkins is the executive editor of Military Times and Defense News, and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
