A father wages an all-out war against the Pentagon to disprove the Army’s declaration that his newly deployed daughter died of suicide in Iraq.

It was a hot summer morning in St. Louis when John Johnson got the news in his doorway: His daughter was dead. LaVena was 19, a former honor student, and a freshly deployed soldier in Iraq. Devastated, her father asked the Army how she died. The answer that came back stunned him: “Self-inflicted gunshot wound.” Johnson couldn’t believe it; not his little girl. For the past five years, Johnson has waged an all-out war against the Pentagon to disprove the Army’s suicide finding. Now, FRONTLINE investigates the circumstances around the death of Johnson’s daughter, uncovering hard truths about how the Army handled the death of one of its own.