I defaulted into the job of ship’s legal office onboard the USS Camden (AOE-2) when the officer who had the job was fired.
Most of my duties were routine. It was when we were tied up in San Diego in August 1984 that my job became anything but routine.
In the wee hours of Aug. 13, I found myself restlessly pacing the room. Something seemed out of place, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I wasn’t particularly concerned about refresher training, or REFTRA, the reason we were in San Diego. I was finishing up my breakfast with supply officer Eddy Fishburne just about the time the REFTRA team was scheduled to arrive.
Suddenly the ship’s intercom clicked on announcing a security alert. The phone in the wardroom rang, and Fishburne answered it.
"Oh, are you kidding?
"Really!
"Yes, he’s standing right here," he said, turning to look at me.
"Yes, I’ll tell him."
Fishburne hung up the phone, and a serious look came over him as he reported the news.
"Tom, they just found a body. It looks like he may have been shot in the head with a shotgun."
I later learned that a young sailor who had just reported onboard in Alameda was the victim of a severe battering. His body was found in the space designated as "After Battery," the room where batteries were changed out.
The upper portion of his skull was gone from above the bridge of his nose to over his right ear, past the midline of the skull to the base just above the neck. The cerebral artery had been severed, and the corpse had bled out almost completely onto the steel deck.
It was only a matter of time before two men were apprehended.
The After Battery also doubled as a division lounge and workout room for the cargo-handling crew. On the night of Aug. 12, those left onboard by duty or restriction held a party with liquor they had sneaked onboard.
After midnight, there were only three people left in After Battery — the victim and the two suspects, Seaman Blackshire and Seaman Apprentice Crebessa.
I spent the next several days assisting the Naval Legal Services Office with the case. The trial by court-martial was held after we had returned to Bremerton, so I had to arrange to get 30-plus witnesses back to San Diego.
The trial was swift, since the two admitted to the charges.
We had asked for the death penalty for Blackshire, the murderer, but the officers were persuaded Blackshire was acting out childhood traumas.
This is what happened: Blackshire was tanned and handsome with a ripped physique. The victim had apparently been making advances on various members of the crew since he reported on board. The objects of these advances brushed them off without a word.
Blackshire did not, but he began to have second thoughts about what had happened and got Crebessa to lure the victim back to After Battery. Blackshire wailed away at his head with a dogging pipe, striking more blows than the coroner could determine.
The experience of this murder and the subsequent court-martial is the strongest memory of my 20-year career.
1984 was a year overshadowed by death. Another of our sailors died that January of a heart attack while running on deck. My mother died of breast cancer that February and then this murder.
I was able to reach inside myself and maintain my professional demeanor, but I never felt the same about the Navy thereafter.
Lt. Thomas Munyon, USN, retired, is originally from Los Alamos, N.M. He started his Navy career as a training device man stationed at NAS Whidbey. He later went into the Navy Scientific Education Program and earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from the University of Kansas and a commission. He and his wife, Utahna, live in Marysville.
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