It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. In one case, it led to a first-degree manslaughter charge and more than one study from the National Institutes of Health. On the night of Dec. 21, 2013, Marine Corps veteran Brad Lee Davis got into an altercation with his stepfather. Three years later, the NIH published its first wedgie-related study, citing Davis' case as a source.
Davis' fight with his stepfather, 58-year-old Denver Lee St. Clair, ended with Davis pulling his stepfather's underwear up over the man's head -- a combative known as the Atomic Wedgie. Unfortunately, the move would kill St. Clair and Davis would go to jail, initially charged with first-degree murder.
After his arrest, Davis claimed he'd never intended to kill his stepfather. He only wanted to embarrass the man, which is the most likely reason he chose to execute the atomic version of the wedgie.
According to Davis, the two were inside St. Clair's trailer in McLoud, Oklahoma, when they got into a verbal altercation. Davis' mother was at the hospital recovering from hip surgery, and Davis was staying the night for an early visitation trip. The men were talking when St. Clair began insulting Davis' mother.
Davis responded by calling his stepfather a bully, and claimed that led to St. Clair taking a swing at him. After the fight, St. Clair was on the ground, according to Davis' statement, when the Marine Corps veteran pulled St. Clair's underwear over his head and snapped a photo. Unfortunately, the underwear band was pulled all the way around to the man's neck, strangling him.
The autopsy revealed that the altercation may have been more than a simple fistfight. The prosecution in the case said St. Clair suffered head wounds that would have killed the man anyway, had he not been strangled by the atomic wedgie. They also allege that Davis staged the crime scene to look like more of an equal brawl.
Davis had planned to claim self-defense during the trial, but pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter instead, a charge that carried as little as four years in prison. The judge in the case, however, was not amused. He believed Davis beat the man before the wedgie and was "troubled" that Davis took photos of his stepfather as he died.
In 2015, the man who came to be called the "Atomic Wedgie Killer" was sentenced to 30 years in prison. The next year, Texas-based Baylor University Medical Center published a literature review with the National Institutes of Health.
It discusses the different types of wedgies and dangers associated with that kind of prank. Davis' case wasn't the focus of the report, but it was central to the example of how wedgies -- especially wedgies with "so-called 'atomic' force" -- can go wrong.
-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on LinkedIn.
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