Re: Dean-Sharman: Woman Follows Missing Trail

Date: February 11, 2004

"Peggy Townsend: Name Dropping

Local woman follows missing soldier’s trail

DIAN CORNELIUSSEN-JAMES knew the location of the makeshift prison camp in Laos where Charlie Dean and Neil Sharman were held in 1974.

She knew the two young men had been held by communist insurgents and that they had been taken from the camp by guards one day and, although the guards came back quickly, Dean and Sharman never did.

But the area where the two men’s bodies were believed to be buried was as big as five football fields.

It would be impossible to excavate the whole place.

But thanks to a tip from a Laotian eyewitness, Dian and field investigators from the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office located the remains of two men believed to be Dean and Sharman near a boulder in a rice paddy not too far from the Vietnam border.

The remains, including a bracelet like the one Charlie (the younger brother of presidential candidate HOWARD DEAN) usually wore, were recovered in November.

Although forensic pathologists are still working to make a positive identification on the bones and see if they can determine how the men died, Dian was thrilled at the find.

The woman, who grew up in Santa Cruz, was the lead investigator in the case and said, like many cases, she developed an attachment to the missing men.

"I was really excited," she said of the recovery.

Dian recently retired as a lieutenant colonel after serving 24 years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force.

The daughter of VIRGINIA GARRETSON CORNELIUSSEN and the late Rev. J. BERNARD CORNELIUSSEN (who was a longtime pastor at the United Church of Christ on High Street), Dian graduated from Santa Cruz High, Cabrillo College, UC Santa Cruz and the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

During her Air Force career, Dian, who is fluent in German, lived in Munich during the Cold War and was periodically sent to the East Bloc to collect information.

Her last military position was working in the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office searching out unaccounted for service people from the Vietnam War. She was hired back as a civilian branch chief in the same office after her retirement.

It’s a job that’s part tracker, part sleuth.

There are more than 78,000 men missing from World War II, 8,100 from the Korean War, three from the Gulf War and 1,870 from the Vietnam War, which is the focus of Dian’s work.

She and others use wartime records, map work, information from the National Archives and eyewitness accounts to locate remains and find out what happened to the soldiers who never came home.

She also works closely with the Vietnam government, who helps her track down Vietnamese soldiers from regiments that may have been in the area where a servicemember was killed or captured.

The information is passed on to field investigators, who will go into the jungles with these witnesses in an attempt to finally lay these soldiers to rest.

It’s an emotional job, in that investigators often meet with the families of these missing soldiers and form a connection with them.

Such was the case with Charlie Dean, a case that captured her heart.

Witnesses had told stories of seeing the two young men in the makeshift prison camp. A number of them said they saw guards take the two men out of the camp and then return very quickly.

There were stories the men were being taken to Vietnam, Dian said, and that they were very ill and died en route.

Other stories said the men were killed.

But finding the men’s remains — and the truth — is hard. Landscape changes, memories fade, according to Dian.

She hopes forensic anthropologists may have some of the answers.

Dian enjoys her job, which is why she still works at the post.

She lives in Annapolis, Md., and is married to ROBERT JAMES, a retired Air Force pilot from Lake Worth, Fla., and a Vietnam veteran.

She has two stepchildren, ASHLEY JAMES, a professor and researcher of fluid dynamics at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and MATTHEW JAMES, who just completed his studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Peggy Townsend at P.O. Box 638, Santa Cruz, CA 95061; fax to 429-9620, e-mail to ptownsend@santacruzsentinel.com or call 429-2488.

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