Army Sgt. Edgar Patino was a student of psychological warfare, also known as psyops, when he was arrested and charged with killing another soldier carrying his baby.

Concern about his psyops training was raised after police said he used symbols at the crime scene and in letters to police and media in an apparent attempt to frame the slaying as being carried out by a serial killer.

It sounds all good and spooky, but Army officials say he didn’t learn anything that might have helped him hide from detectives as they investigated the death.

“There’s no mind control or anything that looks good on a Hollywood screen,” said Ben Abel, a spokesman for the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg. “Really, people make it out to be much more sinister than it is.”

In fact, Abel said, Patino was likely only sitting in a classroom at Fort Bragg learning how to work with an interpreter in a war zone when he was removed from training around the same time he was named as a person of interest in the death of Army Spc. Megan Touma.

Touma was a dental specialist from Cold Spring, Ky., who began a relationship with the married Patino while both were stationed in Germany. She was pregnant with his child when she followed him to Fort Bragg in June. Police believe the pair met in a Fayetteville motel room the day after she transferred to the base, and her decomposing body was found in room’s bathtub a week later.

Authorities last week charged Patino, 27, of Hope Mills, with first-degree murder in Touma’s death. Authorities have said he acknowledged fathering the 23-year-old’s unborn child.

Inside the motel room, police found a circle-and-cross symbol, the same as used by San Francisco’s Zodiac Killer, drawn in lipstick on the room’s mirror.

Police also believe Patino wrote typewritten letters to police and The Fayetteville Observer featuring the same symbol. The letters purported to come from a serial killer claiming responsibility for her death.

Fayetteville Police Sgt. Chris Corcione said last week that Patino wrote the letters as a way to throw off detectives.

While that led to suspicions Patino was using his psyops training to try and escape detection, it’s likely that he hadn’t yet reached the part of his training that teaches soldiers ways to influence a foreign population.

Some might call it propaganda, but Harvard University government professor Joseph Nye said psychological operations are more of a way for the United states to project “soft power.”

“(It’s) the ability to get what you want by attraction rather than deception,” he said. “If you mislead people or use propaganda and lose your credibility, you lose your ability to attract.”

Officials at the Kennedy school, where the Army also trains its Special Forces soldiers, said Fayetteville police have inquired about Patino’s training. While they won’t detail it publicly, they described a normal psyops training course.

To start, selection requires both security clearance and high scores on a pair of Army aptitude tests. In the first two weeks of training candidates learn information-gathering techniques, working with interpreters and understanding the culture where they will be assigned to serve.