Six Marine Security Guards died overseas between January 2022 and January 2024. Two Marines were assigned to the same embassy.
A total of six Marine Security Guards — the elite corps that stand watch at every U.S. embassy around the world — have died while stationed overseas within two years, including two Marines assigned to the U.S. Embassy Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, according to the Marine Corps.
Task & Purpose attempted to reach family members of each Marine to learn the details of their deaths. According to the parents Task & Purpose reached and other public sources, one Marine died of a medical condition, another in a training accident. A third Marine died of suicide, according to his family. A fourth death was also ruled a suicide, a conclusion rejected by that Marine’s mother. Task & Purpose was unable to reach the family of a fifth Marine. The most recent death, which occurred in December, is still under investigation.
Officials with the Marine Corps declined to confirm the details behind the deaths of any of the six Marines. Task & Purpose has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for information related to the investigations into the deaths of all six Marines.
Two Marine guards died 15 months apart while stationed at the same small embassy in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo. Marine Cpl. Christian “CJ” John Zerbe died by suicide on Sept. 18, 2022, a Marine Corps investigation concluded; an investigation is still pending into the Dec. 19 death of Marine Lance Cpl. Nicholas Dural.
The other four Marine Security Guards who died while assigned overseas are:
Of those Marines, Pena’s death was ruled a suicide, though his mother rejects that explanation; Ramirez was accidentally shot by another Marine in a training accident and Hernandez died of a heart attack, according to the Marines’ families.
Task & Purpose could not reach Castillo’s family.
Pena died of a gunshot wound to the head, Prensa Libre reported in 2022. Although the Marines ruled his death as a suicide, Pena’s mother Paula Freites told Task & Purpose that she believes her son was killed by someone else.
“The relationship I had with my child is very intricate,” Freites told Task & Purpose. “I suffer from depression. I’ve been there. I know the signs. I’m not saying that he was happy. He was miserable in Guatemala. He didn’t like it there. He didn’t like the job that they were asking him to do and the abuse, but he was not suicidal.”
Freites said that her son was scheduled to go on vacation shortly before he died, and his mood was happy at the time.
Shortly before Pena’s death, Freites said, family members received a text saying “I love you.” Freites does not believe Pena sent the text. She also said she told investigators that a note Pena left did not sound like him.
“The note addressed me in a way that he never addressed me,” Freites told Task & Purpose. “And then I showed them all the texts and all the documentation that he never called me that. You assume that every child calls their mother ‘mom.’ He didn’t call me ‘mom.’ It’s little things like that. When you know, you know.”
On the early afternoon of September 18, 2022, Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, found one of their own, Cpl. Christian John Zerbe, dead at Post One, the name that all Marine Security Guards use for the detachment’s command post within an embassy. Zerbe’s death was ruled a suicide by a command investigation obtained by Task & Purpose. He had had a fairly typical night out drinking with his fellow Marines the night before, the investigation found, although as the night wore on he told a local woman that he had decided to quit the Marine Security Guard program.
