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Major Michael R. Osborn Letter |
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[If you have trouble reading this scanned copy, we have
reproduced it in type]
(FROM MICHAEL R. OSBORN, MAJOR, USMC, TO RICHARD DANZIG, NAVY SECRETARY)
31 March 1999 Honorable Richard Danzig Dear Secretary Danzig: Mr. Bruce Tyler Wick, an attorney from Westlake, Ohio, has been retained by Terry M. Helvey, a sailor currently serving a sentence to confinement at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Ft. Leavenworth, KS. Mr. Wick contacted me during fall, 1998, when I was then Deputy Director, Appellate Defense Division, Navy-Marine Corps Appellate Review Activity. Terry Helvey's case has been reviewed and affirmed on appeal before military courts. Terry Helvey wrote your predecessor in 1997, asserting that his participation in the death of Allen R. Schindler was part of a larger conspiracy by Navy leaders to eliminate undesirables from the ship on which Helvey served. After this letter, Terry Helvey was visited at the Disciplinary Barracks by one of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents who had investigated his case, who advised Terry Helvey that he was suspected of conspiracy to commit murder. Terry Helvey, after advice of his Miranda rights, chose to say nothing further. Mr. Wick was then retained, and has become familiar with the facts of the Helvey case. Through a series of letters and telephone calls, he has made great effort to gain an audience with Naval officials with the authority to direct a serious, open-minded investigation into allegations by Terry Helvey that Allen Schindler died as a result of the specific instructions of superiors who had recruited him as a ship-board enforcer-revelations he chose not to make at trial out of a misguided sense of loyalty to the very superiors who directed his actions. Mr. Wick's repeated efforts were met by repeated refusals by those in authority to actually consider the possibility Terry Helvey was, in fact, following orders. His efforts were also met by a Navy position that Terry Helvey was the property and problem of the Army, not the Navy, since he is confined at Fort Leavenworth and his discharge from the Navy has been executed. |
