Missing Vietnam-era Sailor Wrongly Declared Deserter

Missing Vietnam-era Sailor
Wrongly Declared Deserter
Navy Balks at Correcting the Mistake
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
September 1999

One month after Petty Officer First Class Leonard Gene Smith disappeared from his ship at a Brooklyn, New York shipyard in January 1973, the Navy declared him a deserter.

Without looking for Smith or even listing him with local authorities as missing, the Navy removed his name from the ship's roster and passed his case to the FBI where he was logged in as a common criminal to be arrested on sight.

When Smith's desperate wife and three children applied for military benefits, the Navy dredged up her husband's deserter status and coldly denied all appeals for help even when members of Congress tried to intervene.

With no help from the Navy, Smith's family had little choice but to resort to welfare. They soon found themselves living in poverty, forced to live in houses where at night they could hear rats clawing inside the walls. For school supplies, the children had to use discarded pencils and scraps of paper.

As time passed, the Navy did little to find out what happened to Petty Officer Smith and nothing to help his family financially or emotionally.

Later, after Smith's wife, Mary, returned to her native Newport News, Virginia, she and her three sons, all of them working, managed to lift the family off welfare and into the lower middle class.

The Navy steadfastly refused to release to Mary any of its investigative records concerning her husband so she could try to prove he was not a deserter.

Last Christmas, Smith's youngest son, Tom, who had successfully put himself through law school, took over his fathers records from his mother and began a basic investigation of his father's disappearance.

On a hunch, he sent his dad's finger prints to the New York police. Computer analysis successfully matched the prints with that of a John Doe, who in March 1973 was pulled "bloated and naked" from the East River near the Brooklyn shipyard where Smith's ship was being repaired.

Tom Smith says the Navy told him in June that in light of the new information his father's deserter status would be changed, but that did not happen.

Smith said he wrote two letters in August asking the Navy to have his father taken off the deserter's list and pay the benefits to which his family was legally entitled. He also asked the Navy to exhume his dad's body and transfer it to his paternal grandfather in Illinois and pay for a proper burial.

The head of the Navy's Casualty Assistance branch refused, saying it couldn't do anything until the Navy changed Leonard Smith's deserter status. "Unless further evidence is presented to the board for correction of naval records that indicates [Leonard Smith] died on the date he disappeared," D.J. Greco wrote, "we cannot certify payment of survivor benefits as if he died in an active duty status."

The 1973 autopsy performed by the New York City Medical Examiner's office lists March 13 as the date Petty Officer Smith's body was found. The body was missing a hand, the top of the skull was gone and fungus was growing inside the brain cavity. The skin was grayish green. The conditions of the body indicate that it had obviously been in the icy river a long time before police found it.

Tom said that soon after, a man identifying himself as "Investigator Heath" called telling him that he couldn't find any Navy records that listed Petty Officer Smith as a deserter.

However, documents do exist proving the Navy declared Smith a deserter.

In a June 1976 letter, the Navy's personnel bureau notified Rep. Margaret Hackler of Massachusetts that Petty Officer Leonard Smith had been declared a deserter and his case was turned over to the FBI.

The Naval Investigative Service, in a December 1981 letter, informed then- Virginia Congressman Paul Trible that it had helped determine Leonard Smith's deserter status.

Then, in a July 1983 letter, the Navy's personnel command told 1st District Rep. Herb Bateman of Newport News that a Hampton Circuit Court ruling which declared Petty Officer Smith "presumed dead" was not sufficient.

"Petty Officer Smith will remain on the deserter list until a federal court declares him dead," wrote Congressional Liaison W. J. Dickinson.

Although Tom Smith has already mailed copies of the congressional correspondence to the Chief of Naval Operations, the Navy is still insisting that he provide an "autopsy report, statements from your father's coworkers, death certificate, fingerprint comparison, ect."

Exasperated by the Navy's response, he expressed his family's frustration: "John Kennedy Jr.'s plane crashes and right away they can send out the Coast Guard and the Navy to find him," he said. "My father's been dead 26 years and I'm just a number. I figured changing the deserter status would be a gimme."

In August, Hampton, Virginia Daily Press columnist Jim Spencer summed up the Leonard Smith case:

"Tom Smith has a notice of death from the New York City Police Department for a 'John Doe.' He has a computer fingerprint comparison from the New York City Police Department that declares that 'John Doe' is Petty Officer 1st Class Leonard Gene Smith.

"At this point, that ought to be enough for the Navy to take action. A good sailor's reputation has been ruined. His remains lie in a potter's field. His family has suffered unnecessarily. This is already an American tragedy."

Sources for this report include: August 1999 columns by Daily Press columnist Jim Spencer.