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All Staff Sgt. William Neverette wants to know is why.

A year ago, his 18-year-old daughter was murdered and mutilated by her soldier-husband at Fort Lewis, Wash.

“Losing your only daughter is like taking a part of you and ripping it out,” he said. “It’s waking up every day and wondering, ‘Why did this happen? Why did he do what he did?’”

Nabila Bare was killed July 12, 2005, in the home she shared with her then-19-year-old husband at Fort Lewis. She was stabbed at least 71 times, and; a pentagram was carved into her stomach.

On May 19, a military jury found Spc. Brandon Bare, a machine-gunner with 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, guilty of premeditated murder and two counts of indecent acts, for chopping his wife to death with a meat cleaver and desecrating her corpse. He was sentenced the next day by the military panel to life in prison with the possibility of parole, busted to E-1 and dishonorably discharged. He is serving his term at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Neverette said he’s frustrated that defense attorneys tried to paint his son-in-law as the victim, a scarred combat veteran who believed his wife had been unfaithful.

“I know my daughter very well,” Neverette said. “I know she wouldn’t do something like that. ... Everything [the defense] brought out was hearsay. They didn’t have the evidence to prove it.”

Spc. Bare deployed to Iraq in the fall of 2004 with the Stryker brigade. The unit, which returned to Fort Lewis in July 2005, was based in the Mosul area in the north.

On March 24, 2005, he was injured in a grenade attack and sent home to recover from his wounds. Witnesses at his trial testified that he struggled with stress and anger, the Tacoma News Tribune reported.

But Neverette, a drill sergeant at Fort Benning, Ga., said he doesn’t believe Iraq caused Bare to kill his young wife. Neverette’s wife, Irene, agrees. “If he loved my daughter, he shouldn’t have hurt my daughter,” she said. “He should’ve let her go.”

“There’s no way I can ever accept any apology from him for what he did,” Sgt. Neverette told Army Times. “He tried to apologize in court. He tried to read off a piece of paper. To me, that doesn’t come from the heart. He could not even look me in the eye when we were in court.”

Nabila was “16, going on 17,” when she met Bare, Neverette said. Bare was 18 and had just joined the Army. At the time, Neverette was stationed at Fort Lewis; his daughter and Bare met during a family outing at a local bowling alley.

“He always seemed like he was a good kid,” Neverette said.

When his daughter told him she was going to marry Bare, who was soon to deploy to Iraq, Neverette said he suggested they get engaged first.

“Me being the dad, being the protective one, for two weeks straight I asked her, ‘Is this what you want?’” he said.

“Both of them seemed happy, and since he was going to Iraq, I said, ‘This is the only reason I’m letting you marry my daughter.’”

Bare turned himself in the day he killed his wife and confessed to investigators.

Neverette said he learned that Army Criminal Investigation Command investigators found satanic books and “very, very dark literature” in the young couple’s house.

“I had no knowledge of this,” he said. “It shocked me.”

Neverette said he was “so angry” when he walked into the Fort Lewis courtroom. “It took everything inside of me just to hold myself together,” he said. At one point during the trial, he broke down and cried for an hour. That happened when Bare “was describing how he was on top of my daughter, and how he kept on hitting her with a meat cleaver,” he said.

“Just hearing that tormented me. I sit here and ask myself, ‘How can a jury not convict him for life without parole after everything he did, and how much damage he’s done?’”

The details of his daughter’s murder have prompted Neverette and his wife to seek counseling. Their two boys, 14 and 12, miss their sister, Irene Neverette said.

“I’m not the same person I used to be,” Neverette said. “He’s done a lot of damage toward my military career.”

Irene Neverette said she rarely leaves the house. “We’re still going through hell,” she said. “I lock myself in the house. I cry at home. I don’t trust anybody to watch my boys now. ... I know we have to move on with our lives, but it’s hard. My daughter’s gone.”

It took about two months before William Neverette, a 13-year soldier who was in the Marine Corps for four years, could go back to work as a drill sergeant.

“This kept my mind occupied a lot,” he said. “I enjoy being a drill sergeant. I enjoy my job.”

As he and his wife struggle to move on, they’re also struggling with about $20,000 in debt, mostly related to their daughter’s death, including funeral expenses, Neverette said. “I’m looking every month whether I can make it to the next payday or not.”

The Neverettes also have had to hire a lawyer to help in a dispute over their daughter’s $100,000 life insurance, William Neverette said.

Much of the couple’s time since the slaying has been consumed by legal issues. But the sheer emotional trauma of losing their daughter so suddenly and so violently is certain to worsen as the anniversary of her murder nears.

“The only thing I know is, I’m taking a week off work because I don’t think I can handle it,” he said. “I wish I could just wake up one day and say it was a nightmare. But it’s not. It’s like living in hell every day of our lives, knowing what he did. For us, there’s hopelessness every day.”