Former Bragg soldier gets 167-year sentence for sex assaults
A former Fort Bragg soldier has been sentenced to 167 years in prison after pleaded guilty to seven assaults on women.
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Aaron Michael Pernell, 25, pleaded guilty Monday in a Hoke County courtroom.
The sentence is in addition to the 50 years he already is serving in a federal prison for a December 2009 sex assault of the wife of a deployed soldier in her Fort Bragg home.
The Army specialist was dishonorably discharged after his court-martial.
Pernell was accused of raping or trying to assault seven women away from the post in 2008 and 2009. Four of the cases were in Cumberland County, and the other three were in Hoke County.
Women told investigators that their attacker broke into their apartments in the middle of the night.
Pernell told Army investigators that "Jason," a voice inside his head, instructed him to attack women.
Family members have said that Pernell returned from a 15-month deployment to Iraq in 2006 as a changed, troubled man.
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