An Army lieutenant colonel is under investigation after reportedly spinning an insane web of lies over several years in order to carry out affairs with several women.
Lt. Col. Richard Kane Mansir, a civil affairs officer based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, has had “serious, long-term relationships” with at least six other women over the last five years, while still married to his wife of 18 years, according to a Daily Beast report. The investigation was first reported by Army Times.
According to Army service records, Mansir has served with the 91st Civil Affairs Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, and Army Special Operations Command. He commissioned as a second lieutenant in 2003, and has received the Bronze Star, four Meritorious Service Medals, Joint Service Commendation Medal, and three Army Commendation Medals.
Throughout the relationships, Mansir reportedly lied about being on deployments, going so far as to provide at least one woman with deployment papers the Daily Beast said appear to be fake, and receiving the Silver Star. According to his Army record, Mansir previously deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012; he has also served in Kuwait, Mali and Germany, according to the Army, though they did not specify when. The Daily Beast reported he has not been overseas since 2014.
He has also not received a Silver Star, according to his record.
Mansir reportedly rented a townhouse for one woman he was engaged to, Chelsea Curnutt, while he was living on base and she was pregnant with their child, went on trips with another woman he was engaged to, and even met the womens’ parents. He reportedly told women he was divorced from his wife at the time — whom he was very much still married to and had three children with, and said one of those three children, his daughter, had died.
“He’s got this playbook,” one woman who was engaged to Mansir in 2017 told the Daily Beast. “He tells these lies about his dead children, about his [post-traumatic stress disorder], his deployments, and all the horrible things he’s had to do. He creates all these imaginary traumas to cloak his lies in.”
In 2019, the crime of adultery under the Uniform Code of Military Justice was rebranded as “extramarital sexual conduct.” The maximum punishment is a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay, and up to a year of confinement. Lesser punishments include administrative separations or court-martial with reduction of rank, lesser time in confinement, and punitive action.
Sharon Mulligan, a spokesperson for the Center for Initial Military Training at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, told Army Times that the Army “is aware of and investigating the allegations against Lt. Col. Mansir.” The Daily Beast reported that Mansir has also been suspended amid the investigation. The Army confirmed on Wednesday that the investigation was still ongoing.
Mansir’s bizarre alternate reality came to light after Curnutt, who he was dating and expecting a child with, went looking for him in June after not hearing from him for days. The last communication they’d had was when Curnutt called him to tell him she was having contractions. He told her not to bother him at work, the Daily Beast reported, and didn’t respond to “dozens” of text messages and calls in the hours afterward.
According to The Daily Beast, Curnutt then called support staff at Joint Base Langley-Eustis and was connected with a sergeant major who called Curnutt “by the name she thought belonged to Mansir’s ex-wife.” The sergeant major informed Curnutt that Mansir was on leave, so she called the woman she believed to be Mansir’s former wife.
“I was like, ‘Listen, I know you probably don’t like me because I’m the new person in his life, but I’m calling you out of desperation because I haven’t been able to find Kane,’” Curnutt told the Daily Beast. “And she goes, ‘Chelsea, we’re still married.’”
Mansir and his wife, who is unnamed in the Beast report, have been married for almost 18 years, according to the Daily Beast; she moved back to Illinois last year to “give him some space” while they were having marital issues. She was planning to move back to Virginia in January when “she got a phone call from another woman telling her she was engaged to him.”
When Curnutt went looking for Mansir, she reportedly found him at his parents’ house with another woman. It was then that Mansir’s secret life began unraveling.
Curnutt, Mansir’s wife, and the woman who was engaged to Mansir in 2017 began working together to untangle all of Mansir’s lies, according to the Daily Beast report, finding that he was apparently having serious relationships with at least four other women over the last five years and that he “had a habit of dating Army subordinates and widows of men who died in combat—women who’d be too embarrassed to say anything about it, or whose careers would be ruined if they did.”
Curnutt posted an old video on Instagram on June 23 showing her and Mansir cutting into a cake to reveal the gender of their baby. Curnutt said in the post that when the truth about Mansir came to light, her friends “confronted me and told me they knew something was reallllly off but they didn’t want to make accusations.”
“Watching my gender reveal now vs. then, all I see is a tainted memory,” she said. “It disgusts me seeing him ACT the way he did knowing that it was all just a facade.”
You can read the Daily Beast’s insane account of Mansir’s “crazy secret life” here.
This article was updated after publication to clarify the timeline and people involved in the unraveling of Mansir’s secret life.
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