OZARK, MO — BREAKING NEWS! The Christian County Trumpet received a special update from Major Danny Cazier. His Facebook heckler is called out by name in Major Danny’s latest rebuttal!
Major Danny Cazier was forced to resign as JROTC instructor at Ozark High School last year.
An abrasive antagonist appeared on a public Facebook page, trying his darndest to discredit Major’s case.
The pesty parasite kept it up. So, he’s earned this detailed, Major-esque style rebuttal.
As usual, the Major is so thorough, so complete, he leaves no doubt that the protagonist is full of… horse manure!
Here it is. The grand response which also appears on his website, https://majorcazier.com
Major Danny requests that the public use this information to reply to critics of his case against the Ozark R-VI School District.
Facebook Heckler Called Out by Name
By Major Danny Cazier
I do not know Jeff Murphy. He does not know me. I have never met Mr. Murphy. He has never met me.
Prior to my initiating a phone call with him in September 2022, I had never dialogued with Mr. Murphy.
And he certainly had not with me either. More importantly, his characterization of me is contradicted my nearly everyone who actually knows me (including many hundreds of students and parents), with the understandable exception of a VERY small handful of students whom I have had to discipline.
For the past few months, since discussion of my situation reached social media, Mr. Murphy has made it his personal mission to discredit me.
His purported reason for doing so stems from grave concerns about my character, integrity, behavior, etc. Those concerns all arise from a singular incident that concerned one of my colleagues (First Sergeant), not me.
Our third colleague (Chief) and I were simply audience to it (or at least a portion of it).
Despite his concern having to do with First Sergeant, not me, Mr. Murphy holds me responsible for what he alleges occurred.
To be clear, I do not believe First Sergeant did anything wrong. I believe Jeff Murphy is mistaken in his allegations.
Because his allegations have, all along, hinged on a case of mistaken identity, it has taken me a long time to find any historical basis for his claims.
After all, he initially claimed they were about me.
They were not.
And his claims were so erroneous that I couldn’t connect them with anything from the past. In an effort to try to understand the interactions he purported we had previously had, I even queried both the two colleagues who were there at Ozark High School when I began teaching there and the two who succeeded them and still teach at Ozark High School. No one recognized the name or the face.
The fact is that none of us know him.
And he certainly doesn’t know us.
It eventually occurred to me that perhaps his claims about having mediated by phone a conflict between some JROTC parents and me was a case of mistaken identity. Although it didn’t match the year Mr. Murphy alleged it occurred, First Sergeant had a phone call with parents several years ago that might be the basis of his claim. It also had to do with a freshman cadet, as Mr. Murphy’s story purported.
When it occurred to me that this could be the basis of his claim, I promptly sought him out by phone. I thought we made some progress during that phone call.
While he was a bit slow to accept that his concerns about another instructor could not simply be transferred to me as well (or instead), he ultimately concluded the phone call saying, “You absolutely have my word you will never hear my name again talking about you.”
Sadly, that commitment lasted less than 20 minutes.
And it hasn’t been honored since then either.
Immediately after he made that firm commitment, he proudly proclaimed on Facebook that I had just called him and admitted to our past interactions.
That is most certainly not true.
I instead confirmed that his entire impression of me was based on mistaken identity. Since then, he also hasn’t done very well with his commitment to never disparage me in public again. If he has simply decided that that commitment was made vainly and needed to be renegotiated, so be it.
(But that isn’t normally what one does after saying “You absolutely have my word” about something.)
The majority of what I have seen him post on Facebook (which I abstain from and only see when it is forwarded to me) reflects that he continues to labor under massive misunderstanding about my situation. He continues to talk well beyond his knowledge of situations.
He continues to promote much misinformation, misinterpretation, mis-implication, etc.
Facebook heckler’s attempt at character assassination
Mr. Murphy claims insight into my character on the basis of three perspectives:
1) misconduct toward a former cadet,
2) a multi-party phone call about that incident, and
3) his interactions with me as a former Marine Corp recruiter.
However, he is mistaken on all three counts.
I was not the instructor in question. Neither of us recall my speaking during the phone call in question. And he was not a recruiter at Ozark High School during the time I taught there. I will further address each issue separately.
Mr. Murphy believes that a JROTC instructor (First Sergeant) changed a cadet’s schedule four years ago to insert JROTC into the schedule after her parents had already signed it to exclude JROTC.
If this really occurred, it would be a grave concern that would warrant condemnation.
I do not believe this happened. I am not insisting that this student’s schedule wasn’t altered. I can’t possibly have evidence against that. I am just skeptical that First Sergeant did this. It is counter intuitive.
We all knew far too well that even if such a maneuver escaped parents’ notice until the following school year, they would eventually discover it. And a simple phone call from the parents to the school would restore her schedule to what they wanted it to be. It would have been futile, fraudulent, and entirely inconsistent with the attitudes of JROTC instructors, to try to force parents’ hand in this.
First Sergeant informed Chief and me that this cadet’s parents were not permitting her to continue in JROTC, given other priorities they had for her life. She very much wanted to continue. She was a high quality cadet that we certainly hoped to retain in the program as well.
He informed us that he was going to call the parents to discuss this and requested that we sit in on the phone call. His agenda, as I understood it, was simply to help them see the value of JROTC in facilitating the ambitions they had for her future. I don’t know whether this phone call was at the cadet’s request, the parents’ request, or First Sergeant’s own initiative.
JROTC instructors’ collective impression of the phone call, after its conclusion, was that the stepfather was entirely unreceptive to any argument we offered. He was determined that JROTC offered no benefit to her future personal growth. If he had been led to believe that a JROTC instructor altered her schedule against his and her mother’s wishes, that could well explain the critical tone we perceived in him.
Murphy joins the infamous call
At some point in the phone call, the father brought in an acquaintance who had served in the Marine Corps.
That was evidently Mr. Murphy.
I did not previously recall his having been party to the phone call. My role in all of this was too distant and trivial for this to have made a lasting impression on me. I also didn’t have the same understanding of the situation that Mr. Murphy evidently had. His version would naturally leave a lasting impression on him that my understanding of the situation would not have done for me.
I do now recall Mr. Murphy’s having been party to that phone call. I don’t recall much of what he said. I just recall how puzzling it was to us JROTC instructors after the fact that a former Marine would have such animosity toward JROTC and the veterans running the program.
(He has since further explained on Facebook his contempt for JROTC in general, beyond any specific distaste for Ozark JROTC in particular. I include it below.)
Mr. Muphy reports the family brought him into the phone call mid-way through due to their feeling that the JROTC instructors were bullying him.
I don’t know how our efforts to sell parents on the value of JROTC could have been perceived as bullying.
We had no prior interaction with them.
We had no subsequent interaction with them.
We had no leverage over them.
We were just offering them perspective.
Misinformation, misrepresentation, misunderstanding
They could have ended the phone call at any point. If the father had also been led to believe that a JROTC instructor changed his daughter’s schedule, then perhaps that would explain his interpreting our efforts to inform him about the virtues of JROTC as being undue pressure.
At any rate, if I did speak during the early portion of the phone call with the parents, prior to Mr. Murphy’s joining the call, I am fairly confident I had no significant speaking role in the phone call once Mr. Murphy joined. Importantly, he does not dispute this either.
By his own characterization, in my phone call with him in September 2022, he essentially monopolized the phone call between parents and instructors once he got on.
That means he would have had very little grounds for forming an impression of ANY of us, other than what he had already been led to believe by the family.
Unhinged and antagonistic
After we concluded the phone call, we JROTC instructors expressed complete bewilderment that both the stepfather and a former service member would have such resolute, antagonistic, and dismissive attitudes toward JROTC.
It was startling.
Mr. Murphy reports that the conference call included discussion of the allegation that a JROTC instructor had altered a cadet’s schedule against her parents’ wishes. As that seems the kind of thing on which I would have shared his deep concern and thus remembered, I am skeptical that this is the case. But it remains possible that the allegation did come up.
If Mr. Murphy had been led to believe that First Sergeant altered a student’s schedule to subvert her parents’ will and that we then attempted to bully her parents into forcing her to remain in JROTC against their wishes, I can appreciate his hostility.
I can’t, however, understand how he could have been so readily convinced that these highly unlikely events could have transpired.
And more importantly to my situation, this had nothing to do with me.
Any impressions he developed as a result of it are based on actions attributed to First Sergeant, not me.
Mr. Murphy alleges that he has met me and interacted with me on other occasions as well, in his role as a Marine Corps recruiter.
That is false.
During my September 2022 phone call with him, I asked what years he recruited at Ozark High School.
He refused to say.
Who IS this guy?!
Since none of the four JROTC colleagues (my original two colleagues, then their two successors) I worked with at Ozark High School recognize either his name or face, it is certain that any interactions he had at the high school were too trivial for him to have made an impression on anyone.
This fairly eliminates the prospect of his having any first-hand insight into any of our characters on that basis. Even if we had overlapped, his assertion that our interactions included his having judged our Ozark drill meet are false.
Or rather, even if he judged our Ozark drill meet, we would not have interacted there.
Judges are confined to their judging duties the whole entire, busy day. They get a short break at lunch. I have confined myself to the scoring room the whole entire day at our drill meets. I have had no meaningful interaction with any judges during a drill meet.
However, this may again be a case of mistaken identity. My predecessor in JROTC reportedly had very little patience for recruiters. If Mr. Murphy’s time as a recruiter preceded my arrival, as I presume, then perhaps he had some interaction with my predecessor. And perhaps that has again shaped his impression of me, since he supposed that was me.
Murphy is totally in left field!
In short, Jeff Murphy has no first-hand knowledge of any of the Ozark JROTC instructors.
He has no first-hand knowledge of anything about Ozark JROTC.
He has no first-hand knowledge even of the incident that seems to have formed the basis of his contempt for Ozark JROTC instructors.
He has only a version of that incident that he received from a parent. I do not believe that version to be true.
Mr. Murphy takes considerable umbrage at my denying his numerous allegations against me.
As his allegations mounted, with none of them having any recognizable truth in them, I invited those in contact with him to propose he meet with me.
He declined each invitation.
He has also consistently been resistant to providing any verifiable information about his service.
Since he had claimed that he and I interacted at Ozark High School during his time as a recruiter, and I knew that not to be true, I called the relevant recruiting station to inquire whether he was even a recruiter in the past few years.
They confirmed that he had not been a recruiter there in at least the last three cycles of recruiting station commanders. With nothing recognizable or verifiable in his allegations, the natural conclusion was that he was simply a fraud.
As Johnny Rooster, the sponsor of the “Christian County Trumpet” website, had asked me to explain who Jeff Murphy was, after my phone call with the recruiting station, I shared with him that I had finally concluded Mr. Murphy must simply be a fraud.
Mr. Murphy was incensed that I checked up on any of his story.
He said I should be ashamed of myself for doing so.
He was outraged that I followed the only available evidence to its most plausible conclusion. Since my phone call with Mr. Murphy, I have fully updated Johnny Rooster to let him know that Mr. Murphy is not a fraud.
He is just wrong.
(CCT insert: Jeff Murphy seems to have something in common with Sergeant Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes!
of Hogan’s Heroes!)
Loyal at all cost
Mr. Murphy vehemently objects to the present public criticism of the school leadership.
He adamantly believes that the community’s attitude toward the school district should be unqualified support. In my phone call with him, he expressed the following three sentiments about our duty to support the present administration:
- “I don’t care [about the misconduct of current administrators]. We need to support them.”
- “Whether the board was wrong or the administration was wrong [in their dealings with me], . . . let it go.”
- “If the superintendent is fired for what he’s done . . . then I won’t support him anymore. [Until then,] I am going to support the team we have.”
If district officials are ultimately replaced, he feels we owe them complete support, morally and substantively, until then.
This is a familiar attitude within the military.
In fact, he presumed that I felt (or at least asserted that I should feel) the same way. I don’t at all. Our allegiance lies first to truth, not to people or organizations.
Loyalty to organizations requires that we forgive honest mistakes and be uncompromising critics on deliberate (or even culpably negligent) acts of malice, abuse, mismanagement, etc.
Benefit of the doubt
I have attempted to give Mr. Murphy the benefit of the doubt for as long as possible.
I tried to leave room for myself and others to presume that he was acting honestly while simply suffering from incorrect understanding, mistaken identity, and a misguided sense of righteous crusade.
But his campaign against me has gone uninterrupted, even after his having discovered that his impressions about me were actually about someone else.
It seems that these several months of his railing against me publicly have produced a momentum that is irreversible, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
So I have ultimately decided that continuing to afford him the benefit of the doubt isn’t simply a charitable choice. It is a dishonest one. It is refuted by the evidence.
He is not simply wrong.
He is deliberately wrong.
He is maliciously wrong.
He clearly has an agenda that extends beyond his original case of mistaken identity.
I have no interest in maligning him. I have interest only in exposing the truth.
This requires that I call out and correct his errors. Doing so will necessarily frame him in a negative light. This is unavoidable as he has chosen to behave dishonestly and malevolently.
Murphy’s ugly secret
Despite his resistance to providing any confirmable details about his past, I recently discovered plausible explanation both for this reticence and for his ambivalent attitude toward the military – that is, his simultaneously being fiercely proud of his own service and dismissive of others’.
A cursory check of local court files reveals that in December 2011, he was arrested in Springfield for DWI (case # 1231-CR05353). While he initially pled “not guilty,” he subsequently changed his plea to “guilty.” Another public record on this incident notes “DWI – ALCOHOL – PRIOR OFFENDER { MISDEMEANOR A RSMO: 577.010 }.”
While my brief search didn’t discover direct record of the prior DWI, both the “PRIOR OFFENDER” language in that record and the “MISDEMEANOR A” charge indicate that this was not his first DWI.
An additional record in his name, dated May 22, 2013, reports “Driving while revoked/suspended license /// AS OWNER OR OPER, AUTH ANOTHER TO OPER A MTR VEH W/OUT MAINTAIN FINANCL RESPONS (MTR VEH REQRD TO BE [remainder not visible].”
It referenced case # 1331-CR2624. I did not find record of that offense or case number in the Missouri court system records accessible to the public. Perhaps it was subsequently dismissed.
If the first DWI didn’t end his military career, the second one would most certainly have done so.
The further charge of driving on a revoked/suspended license was simply a final nail in a coffin that may have already been sealed shut by that point.
Perhaps his departure from the Marine Corps was NOT as amicable as he purports.
But if so, it appears his separation was amicable in the same way two spouses might decide to divorce without further conflict after one of them engages in infidelity.
If his discharge was, in fact, “honorable,” as he alleges, it appears that the circumstances necessitating his separation fall far short of that same descriptor.
As I didn’t begin teaching in Ozark until 2-1/2 years after his subsequent DWI, it is certain that he and I did not interact there.
He would already have been discharged from the military for this irresponsible conduct.
Why Murphy fails the smell test
A few observations on Mr. Murphy’s conduct and claims now warrant further commentary:
1. Resents fact-checking – Mr. Murphy is offended at efforts to confirm his claims.
He resists disclosing any verifiable details about his service.
He characterizes my efforts to verify his story and my ultimately doubting his veracity when his story appeared false as my “trying to take [his] service away from [him].”
That is a meaningless and pointless concern.
Mr. Murphy touts his 12 years of service and 2 combat tours as evidence of his unassailable integrity and impeccable character.
But having been in the military is no warrant of either quality.
Combat deployments do nothing to strengthen this claim. They are irrelevant to the point. Integrity and character are manifest through one’s fidelity to truth.
They are manifest through honorable conduct. Attempting to hide behind these two historical anecdotes is a confused move, especially given that his repeat arrests came AFTER his several years of service and combat deployments.
Furthermore, if military service really rendered one immune to challenges to one’s integrity and character, then my own record of service would have insulated me against his slander.
It is confusion to resist fact-checking. Verification isn’t an assault on someone’s integrity.
It is confirmation of it. It is validation of it.
It is precisely how we determine whether someone has integrity. It is precisely how we determine whether someone’s claims are true.
When evidence is available, a responsible audience MUST consider the evidence.
2. Misrepresented his separation from the service – Mr. Murphy has asserted in public dialogue on Facebook: “I am a combat veteran of 2 wars and decided with just 8 years to retirement I would leave the military and pursue a career elsewhere. I am happy with my service and proud of it but I didn’t wish to continue it. I served honorably and left honorably.”
This version of his separation from the military appears to fall far short of the full truth, as detailed above.
It seeks to obscure the ignominious basis for his separation. His not wanting to be candid about his departure from the service is understandable.
We SHOULD allow him to outlive and overcome the embarrassing mistakes of his past. Nevertheless, he can hardly claim that his military service renders his integrity beyond question when this string of offenses came DURING or AFTER his period of service.
3. Implausible claim – During my September 2022 phone call with him, he reported that the JROTC parents who invited him to be part of a phone call “hate [his] guts” and “can’t stand [him].”
Nevertheless, they brought him into this phone call anyway, so desperate were they to find protection from hostile JROTC instructors. While this is trivial and fairly irrelevant to the rest of this story, it is one further illustration of his readiness to make things up.
I know nothing of the relationship between these JROTC parents and him other than that it is simply unreasonable that in the middle of a heated phone call (which the phone call was not), a father would reach out to his nemesis for protection, and that nemesis would just happen to be ready to engage in his defense with no forewarning.
This simply exceeds plausibility.
4. Irrational agenda – During my September 2022 phone call with him, Mr. Murphy accepted that the singular incident from which he informed his opinion about me wasn’t really about me.
He concurs that I likely didn’t even speak during his portion of the phone call about it. He is also by now well aware that he and I never interacted prior to that. Then he ignores all that and carries on unphased, unconcerned, and uncorrected.
It was exactly this indifference to truth that Winston Churchill parodied when he said “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
Mr. Murphy claims his reason for publicly defaming me is to ensure that I never return to the Ozark School District.
This is inconsistent on two accounts. First, my returning to Ozark School District simply isn’t in the cards.
Second, he has made no effort to remove First Sergeant, when First Sergeant is the one he accuses of having done wrong.
Again, I do not believe First Sergeant did as Mr. Murphy claims. So I am not proposing he go after First Sergeant.
I am just pointing out the utter inconsistency of his agenda.
I am reluctant to devote much attention to disproving the numerous specific claims Mr. Murphy has made against me.
After all, as the saying goes, “When you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy. But the pig enjoys it.”
.”
Nevertheless, out of concern that honest members of the community may interpret my silence as indefensibility, I will offer a little commentary on some of the public claims he has made which have reached my attention.
False assertions shredded to bits!
1. ASSERTION: I overstepped big time with a student. And I took her behind closed doors.
RESPONSE: Perhaps I did overstep with a student. If so, the mistake was ultimately in succumbing to her begging my assistance in removing a nose ring she requested my assistance in removing but remained terrified to remove herself.
We were not behind closed doors.
My classroom door was open and in full view of the hallway.
Yes, she could have gotten a friend to help her with this (as Mr. Murphy proposed). In fact, I directed her to do so. I also directed her to go to the bathroom where she had a mirror to work with.
She delayed, believing she could do it herself, until it was too late; her friends were all gone on to morning formation. And she needed to get there too.
(So she couldn’t have then gone to the nurse, as Mr. Murphy also alleged, as she would have been late to formation.) Her fear of injuring herself and her pending tardiness to formation were ultimately factors in my overriding my initial refusal to assist her.
Mr. Murphy has advanced multiple false narratives about this incident, to which he has no first-hand knowledge. He previously made observations on what the witnesses to this incident felt about it, implying he had spoken with one or more of them.
Once he was informed that there were no witnesses, he switched his narrative to my having taken her behind closed doors.
If you would like more information about this incident, it is available on my website, within the context of my response to my Professional Improvement Plan: https://www.majorcazier.com/professional-improvement-plan/.
And the young lady in question has publicly fully confirmed my version of events: https://christiancountytrumpet.com/nose-ring-girl-exclusive-ugly-rumors-silenced/.
2. ASSERTION: No person in a position of authority should physically touch ANYTHING on a student’s body.
RESPONSE: I readily confess guilt then. I regularly touched students.
But I was the LEAST touchy of all four JROTC instructors I worked with (my original two colleagues, then their two successors).
In fact, I regularly told cadets I was “prickly” as explanation of why I wouldn’t hug them when all four other instructors regularly did.
Unless I was touching a kid to safeguard them during training, I nearly always announced to a kid first that I was about to touch them. I have always been quite conscious and cautious about this.
3. ASSERTION: The nose ring girl dropped out of school as a result of this incident.
RESPONSE: This is entirely without basis. Her family simply moved out of the school district.
While I don’t have further insight into her decision to pursue a GED instead of a diploma, it is not too hard to imagine why a senior who moves to a new school in the middle of her final year of high school might find it not as hospitable an environment as she wanted.
4. ASSERTION: “Perception is reality.” Mr. Murphy has advanced this claim as justification for his condemning my having been behind closed doors with this student.
RESPONSE: First, as noted already, I was not behind closed doors with this student.
Second, while this is a familiar saying among military leaders, its intent is to remind them to attend diligently to their conduct, as others will often not bother to consider the truth of a situation.
He seems to use this saying to claim license for ignoring the evidence. That is not what this saying means or does.
We all have a duty to let evidence correct our misperceptions.
5. ASSERTION: I denied he ever mediated a phone call between me and parents over my having changed her schedule. I was finally forced to admit it.
RESPONSE: I will continue to deny that the phone call, as he claimed it happened, ever took place.
However, I will readily acknowledge that another phone call, between colleagues and parents, did take place.
And I was audience to it. He ultimately was a participant in it too.
My denial was sincere. His version of it was far enough removed from the truth that it took me a long time to even “connect the dots” to figure out that this other incident was what he was alluding to.
Importantly, promptly upon figuring this out, I initiated a phone call to him to verify that this was what he was talking about. I wasn’t forced to admit anything. I freely investigated this detail on my own.
6. ASSERTION: I was the district’s biggest bully. I deserved to be fired 10 times before I finally left. The district is much better off without me.
RESPONSE: Implicit in this assertion is the claim that Mr. Murphy is so thoroughly acquainted with the rest of the district that he can make a comparison between me and the majority of other teachers.
That is obviously absurd.
His claim that I deserved to be fired numerous times is entirely without any basis, nor does he attempt to suggest any.
For what it’s worth, when students discovered a real possibility of my not returning to teach at Ozark, one of them initiated a petition calling for my return.
It garnered nearly 900 signatures in the first 72 hours. That is inconsistent with his claims that I was a bully. In fact, the most common end-of-course survey response from my staff cadets my first couple of years is that I wasn’t harsh enough on them.
7. ASSERTION: I am as dishonest as they come.
RESPONSE: It would be refreshing for Mr. Murphy to provide some evidence to examine. In the absence of this, this statement is just unsupported slander.
8. ASSERTION: I continued giving a presentation despite the school’s having instructed me not to.
RESPONSE: This is a most interesting claim, since he would have no first-hand knowledge of it.
This is one of the accusations the school district levied against me in my Notice of Deficiency. If he extracted this from my website narrative, then he already knows how false this charge is.
But then it would be foolish for him to advance it publicly, knowing how thoroughly I had already addressed it. So it would seem more likely that he got this charge from one of the district administrators or board members, who still decline to consider my response to any of their false accusations.
If this is the case, it would offer the most compelling explanation for his personal vendetta against me: he is carrying out this misinformation campaign on behalf of an acquaintance in the district administration or on the school board.
9. ASSERTION: If my story were true, a JAG attorney would defend me. If my story were legitimate, civilian attorneys would represent me free of charge.
How the military handles charges
RESPONSE: JAG (Judge Advocate General) attorneys in the military prosecute charges against soldiers and act as defense counsel for soldiers in their courts martial.
They also provide free legal advice to soldiers who consult them. But they do not represent soldiers in civilian court. Also, they are for active duty soldiers.
I am retired. Mr. Murphy surely knows all this.
His claims about civilian attorneys willingly accepting my case on a contingency basis are equally specious. The school district is represented by an experienced law firm that practices education law exclusively and to whom they have unlimited access.
The district is experienced enough to be very practiced in their illegal campaigns against teachers.
That it is clear the district is acting illegally is not the same as being able to prove that much in court. Law is hardly unambiguous. I have never suggested my case is easily winnable.
My contention all along has been the exact opposite, that the district has carefully constructed a false narrative to give legal pretext to their dismissing me.
But more importantly, this assertion is a “red herring.” It implies that the merits of my case are reflected solely in whether attorneys have lined up to represent me.
It further implies that only attorneys can sufficiently review the evidence to know whether I was dealt with justly. Else, why refer to attorneys at all? Why not just examine the evidence directly.
This reference to attorneys constitutes his attempt to dissuade the public from considering the extensive evidence I have assembled against the school district.
10. ASSERTION: If I had a case, the Army would back me.
RESPONSE: This is yet another instance of Mr. Murphy advancing claims he knows nothing about.
JROTC is an Army program run in public schools at those schools’ pleasure. The only leverage the Army has against a school is to withdraw their JROTC program from the school.
That is counterproductive to the Army’s intent to see these programs flourish in the schools.
It also invites the kind of negative publicity the Army desires to avoid for its JROTC programs. JROTC instructors understand this dilemma and seek to honor both authorities’ requirements as honestly and diplomatically as possible.
11. ASSERTION: I went to a “media outlet” and attempted to assassinate his character.
RESPONSE: As noted in the narrative above, when Johnny Rooster, the sponsor of the “Christian County Trumpet” (CCT) website, asked me about Jeff Murphy I shared with him my eventual conclusion that Mr. Murphy was a fraud.
He had declined to provide any means of verifying the claims he was making. He declined my offers, extended through others, to meet.
When I attempted to fact check his story about having been a Marine Corps recruiter since my arrival at Ozark High School, my findings suggested it was most likely false.
Concluding that he was a fraud was the most logical implication of the evidence.
I have since retracted that claim and updated Mr. Rooster on my findings.
I have no interest in assassinating his character. I am simply airing the truth.
Doing so will have greater impact on his public reputation than any slander I might concoct anyway.
During my September 2022 phone call with Mr. Murphy, he dismissed Johnny Rooster as a “so-called reporter.”
While now accusing me of character assassination, he elevates the CCT to the status of a “media outlet.” As the CCT is one private citizen’s effort to call attention to matters of public concern in Christian County, it is surely disingenuous to characterize it as a “media outlet.”
As he previously dismissed Johnny Rooster as a mere “so-called reporter,” now inflating his platform to the status of a “media outlet” is self-serving and dishonest. He can’t have it both ways.
E-mail sent to the Christian County Trumpet
He further suggests that I might try to deny having sent the text, which was really an email, about him to Johnny Rooster of the Christian County Trumpet. If the CCT is really the “media outlet” he alleges, how could I possibly get away with denying an email I sent to them.
That is absurd.
But beyond not simply denying it, I am going to share the email here, particularly because he has been so selective in representing only a discrete portion of this email each time he posts his grievance to Facebook.
As you read it, keep in mind that this communication was prior to my September 2022 phone call with Mr. Murphy.
The email is right here
From: Danny Cazier
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2022 5:37 PM
To: ‘Johnny Rooster’ christiancountytrumpet@gmail.com
Subject: RE: Jeff Murphy and nose ring incident
Mr. Cockroft,
I understand Christina Tonsing has made contact with the student whose nose ring I helped remove and is arranging for you to chat with her. I did just a little further investigation into Jeff Murphy today and thought you’d be interested in what I found. I contacted one of the three Marine Corps recruiting stations in Springfield. I asked to speak with the station commander. He happened to be the one who answered anyway. His name is (Gunnery Sergeant) Nicholas. I explained that I was trying to determine whether someone had been a Marine recruiter with coverage including Ozark High School. He assured me that his station had responsibility for Ozark High School.
I explained that an individual had been badmouthing me on Facebook and was claiming that his association with me was via his duties as a recruiter at Ozark High School in a time frame that included the 2019-2020 school year.
[SUBSEQUENT NOTE: THIS WAS A MISUNDERSTANDING. HE DID NOT ACTUALLY CLAIM HE WAS RECRUITING AT THAT TIME, AS I UNDERSTOOD HE HAD.] I told him that Sergeant D’Souza had been our recruiter then and that I had never heard of this other guy.
I gave him the name Jeff Murphy and he indicated that he had not heard of him but that he would do some research and get back to me.
As I was teaching when he called back, he texted his response to me. Jeff Murphy was not a recruiter at his station then. He then called the previous two station commanders to check with them. None of them ever heard of him either. I have attached screenshots of his texts to me. From the text messages, you cannot tell that this guy is who I claim he is. If you have any questions about it, feel free to call the Marine Corps Recruiting station directly to speak to Gunnery Sergeant Nicholas.
The relevant station is the one at 3019 S. Kimbrough Ave. Their phone number is 417-881-4044. You can Google that to confirm it.
I previously wanted to remain open to the possibility that there was somehow a case of genuine confusion, including mistaken identity.
I am now persuaded that Jeff Murphy is just a fraud. I briefly entertained the idea of hiring a private investigator to try to confirm his background. While I haven’t confirmed his actual background (i.e., employment history and addresses lived during the time he claims he was in the Marine Corps), I have adequately – for my purposes anyway – confirmed that he wasn’t a Marine Corps recruiter.
He has been offered the opportunity to meet with me and he declined.
I understand you invited him to provide evidence of my being a bully and he declined (despite repeatedly having previously claimed on Facebook that he had evidence he was ready to provide), instead inviting you to provide evidence I am not a bully. He evidently doesn’t understand that the burden of proof lies on the shoulders of the person making an uncommon claim.
As Christina Tonsing just shared screenshots of some of his previous posts, you can readily see the character he has displayed throughout them.
Best regards,
MAJ Danny Cazier
On with the evidence
12. ASSERTION: Jeff Murphy on Facebook: “I also do not agree with JROTC at all. It has merits for sure in discipline and confidence. However, even as a proud veteran I believe JROTC to be indoctrination built on false premise.
Shooting BB guns doesn’t match shooting at people. To me JROTC is fairytale military.
My opinion of course not trying to convince anyone. I have been in schools enough to see JROTC and form that opinion.”
RESPONSE: This was not an attack against me. I offer it here principally for two reasons. First, it illustrates the very dismissive attitude he evidenced against JROTC during the phone call between some JROTC parents and First Sergeant years ago.
Second, it demonstrates his complete ignorance of what JROTC is about.
As a former recruiter, I cannot understand how he can be so confused on this point. JROTC is not a military prep program. The vast majority of its graduates do not go on to, and have no intent to, serve in the military.
JROTC is a citizenship and leadership program. Its purpose is to prepare cadets for life. And at a program as ultra-successful as Ozarks, there is no limit to the number of graduates who will attest to how well the program did exactly that for them.
Conclusion (at least we hope it is!)
I hope not to have to devote any further attention to the fiction that Mr. Murphy will undoubtedly continue to spin, surely with more venom and vigor now that I have exposed him.
I hope that what I have said here is sufficient to convincingly demonstrate that he speaks from complete ignorance and out of some yet-undetermined malicious agenda.
He does not warrant further audience. After all, that a donkey continues to bray does not mean he has something worth listening to.