5 Dark Facts Every NCIS Fan Needs To Know About Mark Harmon

The murder of his family

Gibbs was married four times; his last three marriages ended in divorce. His first wife, Shannon, and their eight-year-old daughter, Kelly, were killed by cartel member Pedro Hernandez.

While Gibbs was serving overseas in Operation Desert Storm, Shannon agreed to testify after witnessing Hernandez kill a Marine sergeant. On the way to a safehouse, Hernandez shot the driver, and the car crash killed Shannon and Kelly.

After learning of their deaths, Gibbs tried to die by walking into enemy fire. He survived but remained in a coma for days. The story links that self-destructive episode to why he never locks his front door.

A fiancée lost to a coverup

Gibbs became engaged to fellow Marine Ellen Wallace. In 2001, she investigated a coverup involving a 1998 military operation in Kosovo, and Marine Daniel Kent killed her to conceal his role.

Her murder happened on September 10, 2001. For years, people believed she had died in the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon. Although Gibbs and Ellen had ended their engagement the previous July, her death left him with deep guilt.

In Season 16’s “Hail and Farewell,” construction workers find Ellen’s remains. Gibbs learns she was not killed in the attacks and, despite being removed from the case, pursues Kent, now a brigadier general, until he confesses.

Protecting his former mother-in-law

In Season 7’s “Mother’s Day,” Gibbs’s team investigates the death of Captain Joseph Norton, who had been dating Joanne Fielding, the mother of Gibbs’s late wife. The investigation reveals that Joanne killed Norton because she believed he was tied to the cartel responsible for her daughter and granddaughter’s deaths.

Gibbs questions Joanne in his basement, where she confesses. He then attempts to arrest her, but her lawyer, Margaret Allison Hart, points out that Gibbs never read her Miranda rights, making the confession invalid. The account says Gibbs knowingly failed to give the warning in front of Hart, allowing Joanne to avoid charges.

A painful loss in childhood

Gibbs’s family hardships began when he was young. In Season 10’s “The Namesake,” he talks with his father about his mother, Ann Gibbs, who died by suicide after taking an overdose of medication.

Ann had cancer and did not want her husband, Jackson, or her son to watch her decline. Jackson’s best friend, Leroy Jethro Moore, was the only person who knew about her plan.