SAT写作素材35：Bringing Back Honor

　　SAT写作素材分享35：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 ships safe; 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 wouldnt have stolen the money, said Rosaire, who supplied Taylor with names and some photographs of other crew members.

　　Taylor tracked down the ships captain, only to learn that he had recently died. But his widow told Taylor her husband had been haunted by Muns disappearance, suspecting that Muns may have been the victim of foul play.

　　Taylor combed through the Navys original reports of the investigation, and found things that didnt 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?

　　The Muns family 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.