thedrifter
12-27-06, 01:57 PM
December 27, 2006
Murderer’s ashes to be removed from Arlington
By Kelly Kennedy
A convicted murderer’s ashes will be removed from Arlington National Cemetery under an order contained in a veterans’ bill signed by President Bush on Friday.
The exact date for the removal of the remains is not known.
An omnibus veterans’ measure providing improved benefits and hospital facilities also has a provision ordering that the cremated remains of Russell Wayne Wagner, an Army veteran, be removed from the columbarium at the national cemetery.
Wagner, a Vietnam veteran who died of a heroin overdose, had his remains placed at Arlington in 2005. At the time of his death, Wagner was serving a life sentence for the 1994 stabbing deaths of a Hagerstown, Md., couple, Daniel and Wilda Davis, who were both in their 80s. Their son, Vernon G. Davis, appealed to Congress to have the remains removed.
“It made a pretty good Christmas for us,” Davis said Wednesday during a phone call from his home in Hagerstown, Md. Davis said his family hopes to be there when the remains are taken from the columbarium. “We just want to see him removed,” Davis said.
Davis, who once served on an honor guard for President John Kennedy, said when he heard Wagner was to be buried at Arlington, he didn’t believe it.
“I kind of shrugged it off because I didn’t think they’d ever do something like that,” he said.
In 1997, a law was enacted prohibiting veterans convicted of capital offenses from being buried or having their remains interred at a military cemetery. Previously, the burial ban applied only to those with death sentences or life without a chance of parole. This did not apply to Wagner because his life sentence included a chance for parole beginning in 2017.
Congress changed the law after the Davis family appealed to two senators, Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who worked on revised language.
“I was appalled to discover that the law enacted in 1997 to deny capital offenders burial in national cemeteries did not apply to Wagner,” said Craig, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “While we moved swiftly to close the loophole that permitted Wagner’s burial in the first place, the question remained: should his remains continue to be included among the scores of honored dead in Arlington? For me and Senator Mikulski, who joined me in this effort, the answer was ‘no,’” he said.
Under terms of the new law, the Army, which is responsible for Arlington National Cemetery, has to remove Wagner’s remains, which would either by given to his next of kin or be placed in another appropriate place. Additionally, the Army would have to review all burials and internments at Arlington since 1997, when Congress first attempted to prevent convicted killers from being interred there, to make certain there are no others.
“The inclusion among the honored dead interred at Arlington National Cemetery of persons who have committed particularly notorious, heinous acts brings dishonor to those honored dead and disrespect to their loved ones,” the bill reads. “The removal from Arlington National Cemetery of the remains of a person who has committed a heinous act would not be an act of punishment against that person, but rather an act that would preserve the sacredness of the cemetery grounds.”
Davis said even if it hadn’t been his parents that Wagner had murdered, he still would have been furious because of Davis’s own time as a soldier.
“I had a right to go there, too, in a sense,” he said. “It just didn’t make sense that a convicted killer would be there.”
Staff writer Rick Maze and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ellie
Murderer’s ashes to be removed from Arlington
By Kelly Kennedy
A convicted murderer’s ashes will be removed from Arlington National Cemetery under an order contained in a veterans’ bill signed by President Bush on Friday.
The exact date for the removal of the remains is not known.
An omnibus veterans’ measure providing improved benefits and hospital facilities also has a provision ordering that the cremated remains of Russell Wayne Wagner, an Army veteran, be removed from the columbarium at the national cemetery.
Wagner, a Vietnam veteran who died of a heroin overdose, had his remains placed at Arlington in 2005. At the time of his death, Wagner was serving a life sentence for the 1994 stabbing deaths of a Hagerstown, Md., couple, Daniel and Wilda Davis, who were both in their 80s. Their son, Vernon G. Davis, appealed to Congress to have the remains removed.
“It made a pretty good Christmas for us,” Davis said Wednesday during a phone call from his home in Hagerstown, Md. Davis said his family hopes to be there when the remains are taken from the columbarium. “We just want to see him removed,” Davis said.
Davis, who once served on an honor guard for President John Kennedy, said when he heard Wagner was to be buried at Arlington, he didn’t believe it.
“I kind of shrugged it off because I didn’t think they’d ever do something like that,” he said.
In 1997, a law was enacted prohibiting veterans convicted of capital offenses from being buried or having their remains interred at a military cemetery. Previously, the burial ban applied only to those with death sentences or life without a chance of parole. This did not apply to Wagner because his life sentence included a chance for parole beginning in 2017.
Congress changed the law after the Davis family appealed to two senators, Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who worked on revised language.
“I was appalled to discover that the law enacted in 1997 to deny capital offenders burial in national cemeteries did not apply to Wagner,” said Craig, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “While we moved swiftly to close the loophole that permitted Wagner’s burial in the first place, the question remained: should his remains continue to be included among the scores of honored dead in Arlington? For me and Senator Mikulski, who joined me in this effort, the answer was ‘no,’” he said.
Under terms of the new law, the Army, which is responsible for Arlington National Cemetery, has to remove Wagner’s remains, which would either by given to his next of kin or be placed in another appropriate place. Additionally, the Army would have to review all burials and internments at Arlington since 1997, when Congress first attempted to prevent convicted killers from being interred there, to make certain there are no others.
“The inclusion among the honored dead interred at Arlington National Cemetery of persons who have committed particularly notorious, heinous acts brings dishonor to those honored dead and disrespect to their loved ones,” the bill reads. “The removal from Arlington National Cemetery of the remains of a person who has committed a heinous act would not be an act of punishment against that person, but rather an act that would preserve the sacredness of the cemetery grounds.”
Davis said even if it hadn’t been his parents that Wagner had murdered, he still would have been furious because of Davis’s own time as a soldier.
“I had a right to go there, too, in a sense,” he said. “It just didn’t make sense that a convicted killer would be there.”
Staff writer Rick Maze and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ellie