SAT写作素材:Bringing Back Honor

When Ensign Andrew Lee Muns suddenly vanished nearly 34 years ago, the U.S. Navy branded him a deserter and a thief. It was 1968; the U.S. was waging an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam and sailors went missing all the time. Muns was the new paymaster aboard the USS Cacapon, a refueling ship based at Subic Bay in the Philippines. When he dissapeared, the Navy discovered that $8,600 was missing from the ship since Muns had access to safe, officials decided that he had taken the money and run. Case closed.

But Muns sister, Mary Lou Taylor, couldnt accept the official version of her brothers disappearance. She vowed to uncover the truth and restore her familys honor. It broke my fathers heart He literally had a heart attack three years later, said Taylor. Im not blaming the Navy for his heart attack, but it was harder than just losing a son.

In the mid-1970s, after years of holding out hope that Muns might return, his family decided to have him declared legally dead. But when they asked the Navy to supply an American flag to present to his family at the memorial service, the Navy refused .

Eventually, Taylor decided to change that. She turned to the Internet, posting a message on a Vietnam veterans message board looking for sailors who served with her brother on the Cacapon.

In a stroke of luck, a former member of that crew, Tim Rosaire, had just logged on to the bulletin board for the first time.

"I instantly knew what it was," he said. "I wrote her back saying, 'Yes, and I may have been one of the last people to see him." "I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't have stolen the money," said Rosaire, who supplied Taylor with names and some photographs of other crew members.

Taylor tracked down the ship's captain, only to learn that he had recently died. But his widow told Taylor her husband had been haunted byMuns' disappearance, suspecting thatMunsmay have been the victim of foul play. Taylor combed through the Navy's original reports of the investigation, and found things that didn't add up. "There were people on the ship who were deliberately lying to create a motive for why Andy would have left," she concluded. And while $8,600 was missing, there was $51,000 left the safe. If her brother had stolen the money, why not all of it? TheMunsfamily wanted the case reopened, but the Navy said substantial new evidence was needed to do so. So in the mid-1990s, Taylor set out to find that evidence. She found the agent who had originally investigated the case for the Naval Investigative Service, Ray McGady. McGady helped Taylor get the attention of Pete Hughes, head of the newly created "cold-case" squad at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Hughes soon agreed that there were a number of questions that remained unanswered. Thirtyyearslater, for the first time, the focus now shifted from a theft to a homicide. Hughes assembled a team of homicide investigators, including a criminal profiler. They studied the statements from 1968 and began reinterviewing crew members. Suspicion began to focus on several former crew members, inc luding Michael LeBrun, He had access to the safe and was one of the first to suggest thatMunsmight have deserted. Eventually, LeBrun's defenses crumbled, and he described in detail how he had strangledMuns. He said that he had stolen the money and thatMunshad caught him. LeBrun said he panicked and killed theensign. Lebrun explained how he dumped the body in one of the ship's huge oil ' body was never found. The interview was recorded on videotape. Lebrun was charged with murder. But he pleaded not guilty and is out on bail. Hughes

A federal judge has agreed, in part, ruling that prosecutors cannot use the videotaped confession because LeBrun's constitutional rights were violated. Without a legal and reliable confession, the government does not have much of a case. But Taylor said she finally got what she was looking for. 33yearsafterMunsdisappeared aboard the Cacapon, a ceremonial casket covered with an American flag made its way to a gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery. Friends, family and naval criminal investigators came from around the country to watch asMunswas given full honors in recognition of his service to the Navy and his country.