Phony Vietnam Veteran Pulls Hoax On Town -- Stroudsburg Left Wondering Why

STROUDSBURG, Pa. - Among Vietnam veterans here, John Murray was known and liked.

Although relatively new to the area, he had quickly become one of them - an Army officer who had been captured in 1968 by the North Vietnamese, who fashioned an American flag in captivity using berries and his own blood, and who contracted cancer from Agent Orange.

He wore a black patch over his left eye - a war injury, he said - and medals on his uniform: a Purple Heart, a Silver Star with clusters, a Bronze Star, a slew of ribbons.

In September, he presented his framed, homemade POW flag, no bigger than an index card, to a local veterans group in a ceremony that was written up and photographed by the local newspaper.

On Oct. 22, Murray, 48, stood proudly in his bemedaled lieutenant colonel's uniform next to Gen. William Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. troops in Vietnam, at a veterans ceremony he organized at Smithfield Beach in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

Westmoreland spoke eloquently to the 200 veterans and their families who had gathered there to honor POWs and MIAs. Murray, his manner crisp and military, his event a splendid success, was one of the heroes of the day.

Now, as it turns out, he wasn't a hero that day or any other. Not by a long stretch. He is now reviled by veterans and their families as an insensitive imposter, and he's in trouble with the law.

His eye injury, he has since admitted to police, did not happen during the war but during a fight at work one day. His stories about homemade flags and Vietnam and Agent Orange and being a POW were hoaxes, too, authorities say.

A federal grand jury indicted Murray last week and charged him with making a false statement to the U.S. Department of the Interior. He signed "Col. John Murray" on his application for a permit to use the national park for the veterans' ceremony, and for that, he faces a maximum penalty of a $250,000 fine and five years in prison.

Local police have also charged him with driving under the influence.

Murray, who is awaiting trial on the DUI charge and is to be arraigned in Scranton in the federal case, could not be reached.

On Oct. 23, according to Pocono Township police, Murray was driving along Route 611 in Stroud Township and crashed his Lincoln into a pile of rocks.

Four miles down the road, he drove through an intersection and hit a utility pole, snapping it in half. That brought the police.

They measured Murray's blood-alcohol level at 0.10, the legal definition of drunk in Pennsylvania, and determined that he was also driving under the influence of drugs, which they described as an antidepressant.

Police then discovered that Murray had no driver's license, and when they asked his date of birth, he gave not one, but three. They began calling around. Eventually, the dubious tale of the military hero began to unravel, with Murray admitting he had never spent a single day in the armed service.

"Everybody is stunned," said Rick Staples, chief of the Pocono Valley Police Department. "The guy's good. Everybody loved him. He was a good guy. He was a hero, somebody you honor."

According to the chief, Murray told police, "I didn't do anything wrong. I only wanted to help."

Investigators still don't know much about him. They know he is from Corning, N.Y., that he did not promote a military identity there, and that he worked at a resort in Bushkill, Pa., before showing up a few years ago in Stroud Township, where he lives with a girlfriend and their two children.

Police describe his manner throughout their investigation as cool and smooth. And they puzzle over why he did it.

Others are less philosophical.

Doug Witcraft, who served in Vietnam for 23 1/2 months and is now sergeant-at-arms for the Pocono chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, said Murray "took advantage of a lot of innocent people. Quite a few were taken in. He deserves what he gets."