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Can anyone help find information on John McPhee?
Death of Randolph man few knew raises mystery
Detective, veterans try to verify his past
By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | April 23, 2007
RANDOLPH -- Police found the man's body in his first-floor apartment last October.
John McPhee, 76, lived alone, police said, seemed to have no friends, and kept no proof of family in his tidy home. But his landlord did find one important clue about his past, an American Legion membership card.
For months, his body has lain in a Boston morgue, unclaimed , while a Randolph detective and the town's veterans agent continue to call veterans' groups and scour computer databases to prove McPhee had served his country so he may be buried with full military honors.
"If he earned it, he deserves to be buried with honors and not just as a pauper, as an unclaimed body," said Detective Richard Lucey, an Air Force veteran who served in the 1980s.
It has been a frustrating investigation into the past of an intensely private man, whose only companion was a light brown poodle bichon mix named Dasher. The American Legion in Massachusetts confirmed that McPhee had applied for the card and identified himself as a Marine, but Randolph officials have been unable to find a family member to verify his status as a veteran , or locate any discharge papers from the military, which the Department of Veterans Affairs requires for a military burial.
But last week, Lucey got more potential evidence of McPhee's service. McPhee's landlord found a wooden and glass box in the apartment, with several ribbons including the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart, possibly bestowed on McPhee for service in the Korean War, though the medals that might have borne his name were missing. There was also a World War II Victory Medal, which McPhee could have received if he had enlisted at age 16, during the final months of the war.
"He could be a hero," Lucey said.
Or a fraud, said Veterans Agent James Campbell, who served in the Army during the Vietnam War.
"We've been banging our heads against the wall," he said. "If he is a wannabe, he's put together a real good package."
Police found McPhee 's body Oct. 14, following a call from his landlord, who lived above McPhee in a cream-colored two-family house on South Main Street and had not seen his tenant for several days.
Officers quickly concluded that McPhee died naturally. No one had broken into the apartment and nothing seemed out of place. McPhee's 6-month-old puppy was taken by an animal control officer and adopted. A coroner determined that McPhee died of complications from heart disease. The next step was to determine how to bury him.
Town officials gave McPhee's Social Security number to the National Personnel Records Center in Missouri, but the agency could not find him. Campbell said that was not surprising, because during World War II and the Korean War the military assigned service numbers to identify personnel.
Campbell tried local VFW posts, but none of the veterans remembered McPhee. He also had not applied for benefits with the state office of Veterans' Services, so there was no record of him in Massachusetts.
"It's the first case that I recall of this kind, of somebody who cannot prove they're a veteran," said Thomas Kelly, secretary of Veterans' Services in Massachusetts. "And of course the person is not around to prove it himself."
McPhee said little about his time in the service, according to those who knew him. He lived in the South Main Street apartment for nine years and mentioned a wife once to his landlord, but he appeared to have no other relatives, Lucey said. McPhee's landlord declined to comment.
"No one came to visit him," Lucey said. "He pretty much kept to himself."
Some neighbors recalled seeing him walk up and down the street with his dog, but the tall, slightly paunchy man rarely said hello.
An engineer, he had worked for at least a decade at Callahan Inc., a construction firm in Bridgewater, where he was a project superintendent.
John Callahan, the company's chief executive, remembered McPhee as a smart, responsible employee who was proud of his service in the Marines.
When he was not wearing his hard hat, he wore a khaki Marine Corps cap, said Callahan, who described McPhee as easygoing and funny.
There were stickers in his work trailer with the Marine motto, "Semper Fi," or "Always Faithful," other Corps memorabilia, and pictures of John Wayne, Callahan said. "He was definitely a guy who was true blue Marine Corps," Callahan said. "He would conduct his everyday life like he was still in the Marines."
He was always on time. His paperwork was always in order and his trailer was immaculate, Callahan said. "If you went in that trailer, it was more organized than most offices that I'd been in," he said.
One of the few personal effects police found in the apartment was a gold tag with the initials DKM and a date, Feb. 14, 1982. Lucey believes it might be his wife's initials and the date of her death.
On the other side of the tag was McPhee's name and a seven-digit number that Campbell said might have been the service number.
If he is accorded a military burial, a recording of Taps will be played at his funeral and two military officers will stand guard, Campbell said. His marker will include his name, his branch, and the highest honor he received, the Silver Star. It is a privilege Campbell hopes to grant McPhee.
"People took the time out of their lives to defend and preserve the freedoms of this country," he said. "The least we can do is to see to it that their memory is honored for what they did."
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