Vietnam 'veteran found alive in jungle after 44 years' is exposed as a FAKE

FRAUD! US Vietnam 'veteran found alive in jungle after 44 years' is exposed as a FAKE

The man claiming to be a U.S. Vietnam veteran missing for 44-years has been revealed as a fake
Sgt. Robertson crash landed over Laos in 1968 during a special ops mission
Official U.S. Government documents show that the Vietnamese man named Dang Tan Ngoc has been trying to impersonate him for years
Former special forces soldiers have also come forward to pour scorn on his claims to be the former Green Beret
A new documentary claimed to have found him - aged 76 - still living in Vietnam with a wife and children
This would have meant the man who claimed to be Sgt. John Hartley Robertson never contacted his American wife and two children who have believed him dead for 44 years
Despite these new revelations his sister, who is filmed being reunited with him in the documentary, said she knows it is him

Daily Mail
By JAMES NYE
1 May 2013

The astonishing claims of a 76-year-old man found living in Vietnam who says he is a U.S. war veteran presumed dead 44-years ago have been exposed as a hoax.

The story of Sgt. John Hartley Robertson as told by a new documentary 'Unclaimed' gripped the world on Tuesday - raising the astounding possibility that an American POW escaped from his Vietnamese captors and began a family in secret with a local woman - while his wife and two children grieved back home.

However, it can be revealed that the man is not Sgt. Robertson, rather he is a conman who has attempted to suck in members of the Vietnam MIA/POW community and that the CIA performed a secret DNA test on him 20-years ago that confirmed his lies.
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Unclaimed one man's search for missing

It took 43 years to clear Decorated Vietnam veteran missing and murdered

Woman finally has proof her brother wasn't a deserter
Mari A. Schaefer
Inquirer Staff Writer
POSTED: Saturday, November 17, 2012

Marine Cpl. Robert Daniel Corriveau had been under psychiatric treatment.

Virginia Cleary never gave up.

In the 43 years since her older brother, Marine Cpl. Robert Daniel Corriveau, a decorated Vietnam veteran, went missing from the Philadelphia Naval Hospital and was declared a deserter, she never stopped searching for him.

She wrote countless letters, pestered senators and congressmen, traveled from her New Hampshire home to Philadelphia to search news archives, scoured faces in crowds, battled with military and state officials for records, and enlisted police and private detectives.

Every roadblock she hit, she said, only strengthened her resolve and pushed her forward.

Finally, on May 31, Pennsylvania State Police were able to identify the remains of Corriveau, found stabbed to death in Chester County, and they are now seeking the public's assistance in solving the cold case.

"He was matched through my DNA," said Cleary, 58, of Conway, N.H.

On Nov 18, 1968, the same day the 20-year-old Marine from Lawrence, Mass., disappeared from the hospital, an unidentified man was found dead alongside the Pennsylvania Turnpike near the Downingtown interchange.

He was stabbed once though the heart and covered with a Navy pea coat. He carried no identification and became known as "Bulldog John Doe" after the distinctive tattoo on his upper right arm. He was buried at Longwood Cemetery in Kennett Square.
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1 million veterans donate blood to help someone else

Project seeks 1 million veterans to give blood, DNA for disease research
Department of Veterans Affairs working to uncover genetic mysteries

By Meredith Cohn, The Baltimore Sun
4:23 p.m. EST, February 5, 2012

Air Force veteran Aaron Franz of Baltimore has donated his blood for a genetics project by the Veterans Administration. (Algerina Perna, Baltimore Sun / February 2, 2012)

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is looking for a few good men and women to volunteer for a battle it's waging at home — against disease.

Actually, more than a few are needed. Officials overseeing health care for the nation's veterans are undertaking what may be the largest effort of its kind in the nation, to collect medical records and blood samples from a million former service members for a bank of genetic information.

The idea is to give researchers enough DNA and other data to link specific genes to mental and physical maladies, from post-traumatic stress disorder to heart disease, and eventually develop new preventive measures or treatments.

"We did tell them that this may not benefit them directly," said Dr. Joel Kupersmith, the VA's chief research and development officer. "But vets are very altruistic people and they're likely to help if you tell them it will benefit someone else."
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Researchers now looking at PTSD link in DNA?

Veterans taking part in massive DNA project
Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Carolyn Johnson

PALO ALTO, Calif. (KGO) -- Bay Area veterans are answering the call to help with a massive research project and when it is up and running, it could provide new answers for some difficult-to-treat conditions.

Marine Corps veteran Andrew Peters says he was one of the lucky ones. He returned from Iraq with no major injuries but now, eight years later, he is volunteering for a different kind of mission. He is donating his DNA as a part of a massive project being launched by the VA. Its goal is to assemble one of the largest genetic databases ever created.

"As a veteran, it's really a fairly minor contribution for my part for something that is likely to help me down the road, as well as my fellow veterans," Peters said.

"There's many things that we hope to get out of this database and this access, for future researchers," said Dr. Jennifer Hoblyn at the VA in Palo Alto.

Hoblyn is the director of in-patient mental health and says information gleaned from the genetic database may help unlock the physical mysteries of conditions like PTSD.
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Dad freed after 5 years when DNA points to ex-Marine

Illinois man freed after DNA from killings points to ex-Marine in Virginia

By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 5, 2010

An Illinois man who had been charged with fatally stabbing two young girls was freed Wednesday after DNA evidence linked the slayings to an ex-Marine accused of attacking women in Northern Virginia.

Jerry Hobbs, 39, spent the past five years in jail awaiting trial on capital murder charges in the 2005 slayings of his daughter, Laura, 8, and her friend Krystal Tobias, 9, in Zion, Ill. But Lake County prosecutors, who previously said they would seek the death penalty, dropped all charges Wednesday. It was a little more than a month after genetic evidence gathered at the crime scene was matched with a sample that had been entered in the national DNA databank.

The investigation into the girls' killings now is focused on Jorge "George" Torrez, 21, who is charged in Arlington County with two assaults on strangers. Torrez grew up in Zion, where he lived only blocks from the victims' homes. He has not been charged in the slayings, but law enforcement sources said he is the chief suspect.

In February, Arlington police arrested Torrez, an ex-Marine who had been stationed at Fort Myer.
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Illinois man freed after DNA

New DNA evidence may exonerate Dad of murdered girl

Marine investigated in Ill. killings: Report

An ex-Marine charged in the brutal rape of a woman in Prince William County has been linked by DNA evidence to the 2005 deaths of two girls in Zion, Ill, the man's sister told the Chicago Tribune.

Jorge "George" Torrez is accused in the Feb. 27 attack on two women in northern Virginia, during which he allegedly raped and beat one of the victims within an inch of her life.

According to Sara Torrez, Jorge Torrez’s DNA has been matched with evidence found on one of the bodies of two girls -- Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 – who were found beaten and stabbed to death in a park in Zion, a city about 50 miles north of Chicago. Torrez is from Zion.

An Illinois state's attorney quoted by the Tribune would not confirm that Torrez's DNA was found on evidence connected to the killings.

The new evidence could mean exoneration for Laura’s father Jerry Hobbs, who has been held for five years after a confession he says was coerced by police, the Tribune reported.
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Marine investigated in Ill killings

Innocent man freed after 23 years

DNA Evidence Helps Release Man After 23 Years in Prison
Ernest Sonnier is released from prison after he was falsely accused of a crime
Steve Simon KIAH
August 7, 2009


DNA evidence helps release man after 23 years in prison

After 23 years, roughly 8,000 days and nights in prison, Ernest Sonnier is home with family. DNA tests show he may not have committed a rape and abduction from December 1985.

Three hours after a hearing with State district Judge Michael McSpadden, Sonnier, 46, walked into the arms of his family at the Harris County Jail.

The Innocence Project, a national organization working to exonerate wrongfully convicted people, began conducting new tests last year that cast doubt on his guilt, attorneys said.

Sonnier was released on his own recognizance. He will wear a GPS monitoring device and be supervised as a condition of his release while attorneys move to have him officially exonerated.

With his mother and aunt at his side, Sonnier said he worried that he would never see his mother again.

"In jail everyone tells the same story but I told everyone I was innocent," he said. "The evidence was on the table that I wasn't the guy."
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DNA Evidence Helps Release Man After 23 Years in Prison

Evidence frees 23-year inmate 2:10
DNA evidence proves an inmate of 23 years did not commit the crime he was convicted of. KIAH's Steve Simon reports.

The heroes of the wrongfully convicted

Heroes of the wrongfully convicted
For decade, NU center has shaken up justice system
By Steve Mills Tribune reporter
November 16, 2008
The Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law has won freedom for nearly three dozen innocent people and, in that often difficult process, changed how many people think about the state's criminal justice system.

In the 10 years since the center was founded in 1998, it has played a leading role in the exonerations of 19 people in Illinois. Before that, members of its staff were crucial to 14 exonerations. Those include 13 inmates who had been under a death sentence, as well as the country's first DNA-based exoneration, Gary Dotson, who had been convicted of rape.

Among the high-profile cases the center or its founders have tackled and won are those of the Ford Heights Four, exonerated in the 1978 murders of a suburban couple, and Rolando Cruz, exonerated in the 1983 rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville. Three others are detailed on this page.

Through its work, the Center on Wrongful Convictions has made people think twice about claims that the system always works. It has prompted some top city, county and state officials to reconsider their views on the death penalty and other aspects of criminal justice
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