MUNS-ANDREW

NO  LONGER  A  DESERTER

Andrew Lee Muns was born on October 12, 1943, in Mineola, New York.  He was raised in Montclair, New Jersey, and following graduation from Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania he joined the Naval Reserve and went on active duty in October 1966.  In late December 1967, Ensign Muns was assigned to the fleet oiler USS CACAPON (AO-52), at Subic Bay in the Philippines.  Mums assignment as the Supply Officer included responsibility as the paymaster and custody of money which was kept in his office safe.  On January 17, 1968, only three weeks after reporting aboard, Muns was reported missing from the ship.  When an investigation disclosed that about $8,600 in cash was missing from the ship’s safe, officials decided that he had taken the money and run as the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam was causing an increasing number of sailors to go missing.  Although an investigation concerning the missing funds was conducted, no creditable information was developed to dispute the prevalent rumors aboard CACAPON that Ensign Muns had taken the money and ran.  He was thus declared a deserter and the case was closed.

The family of ENS Muns could not accept the official version of his disappearance and clung to the thought that something else had happened.  In the mid-1970s the family decided to have him declared legally dead but when the Navy was asked to supply an American flag for a memorial service, the Navy refused on the basis that Muns was a deserter.  His younger sister in particular could not accept the story of her brother’s disappearance and in the mid-1990s she turned to the Internet, posting a message on a Vietnam veterans’ message board looking for sailors who served with her brother aboard CACAPON.  In a stroke of luck a former member who had logged on to the bulletin board for the first time saw her message and replied furnishing her the names of former crewmembers and wrote, “I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t have stolen the money.”  Tracking down the CACAPON’s captain who had recently died, his widow said her husband had been haunted by Muns’ disappearance and suspected that he may have been the victim of foul play.  Muns’ sister obtained copies of the original investigation reports and had feelings that things did not add up.  She contacted the head of the ‘cold-case” squad at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).  Of particular importance was the fact that the ship’s safe contained over $50,000 when it was examined so it was considered unlikely that Muns would have taken only $8,600 if he was responsible for the missing money. 

Thus, thirty years after the incident, NCIS agreed to reopen the case and investigate it as a possible homicide.  A number of former crewmembers were interviewed who doubted that Muns had taken the money and during the fourth interview of a former Storekeeper Second Class who had served under ENS Mums and was the man who had reported him missing, admitted that he was responsible for the missing money.  He said that ENS Mums interrupted him as he was removing the money from the safe so he fought with Mums and strangled him.  He later disposed of Mun’s body by placing it in one of the ship’s large fuel tanks where it was never discovered.  The man subsequently plead guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to prison.

In June 2001, 33 years after Muns disappeared from CACAPON, a ceremonial casket covered with an American flag made its way to gravesite MC26-L in Arlington National Cemetery.  Nearly 200 family, friends and NCIS employees came from around the country to watch as Muns was given full honors in recognition of his service to the Navy and his country.  "This is what I would like my parent to have had 33 years ago," said his sister. "I'm very proud of my brother. He was a very honorable person.”

Muns is no longer classified as a deserter. 

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)