Navy Frees Alleged Deserter Six Weeks After His Arrest

Guiles L. Gadsby, a Lancaster man arrested six weeks ago on charges that he deserted the Navy a day after enlisting in 1976, was set free Friday.

Gadsby had contended that he was the wrong man.

“I never enlisted in the Navy,” he said shortly after arriving home Friday night. “Someone else forged my signature.”

Navy officials, however, said they remained convinced that Gadsby was a deserter, but that there was little to be gained by bringing the 38-year-old reservoir operator to courts-martial. Gadsby had insisted all along that he never joined the Navy but was honorably discharged from the Army after serving in Vietnam in 1970-71.

“Given his age, the length of time it would have taken to prepare this case, plus discrepancies that were surfacing . . . it was decided to dismiss the charges against him,” said Julie Swan, a Navy spokeswoman in San Diego, where Gadsby had been held.

With no fanfare or apology, Gadsby was given an honorable discharge from the Navy, handed a $303 seaman’s paycheck at 12:02 p.m. for the time he spent in Navy custody and placed on a 3 o’clock bus to Los Angeles. He arrived home at 8:30 p.m. to a shower of hugs and kisses from his wife.

“I told her I love her,” he said.

His wife, Vickie, was ecstatic.

“It’s nice to see the good guy win once in a while. There’s been a lot of damage done, a lot of emotional trauma,” she said.

Gadsby said he expected to return next week to his job with the Las Virgenes Water District after spending some time with his wife and children. His employers held open the job while Gadsby was forced to remain at the San Diego Navy base, spending his accumulated sick time and vacation days.

Gadsby’s attorney in San Diego, Maxine Dobro, insisted Friday that her client was let go after the Navy realized that its case against him would not stand up in military court.

“I suspect they were trying to figure out a way all week to get out from under this,” Dobro said. “It must be a terrible embarrassment for them.”

Last month, after Gadsby was arrested, Navy officials said that a man with his name, signature, Social Security number and military history walked into a recruiting station in 1976 in Denver and enlisted for a two-year hitch. That man was inducted and given a one-way plane ticket to San Diego, where he was to report for further orders.

He never arrived.

A special team of Navy investigators located Gadsby last month through California Department of Motor Vehicle records. He was arrested, taken to San Diego and, after receiving a recruit haircut and uniforms, was placed in the brig. He stayed there for a week before being assigned to a base work detail, cleaning barracks.

He was allowed to return home on weekends.

A Navy spokesman in Washington suggested last month that fingerprints presumably taken when Gadsby enlisted would prove that he had, in fact, signed up. The spokesman later conceded that no fingerprints had been found.

Dobro, meanwhile, found two expert witnesses who furthered Gadsby’s claims that he was in college in the Los Angeles area at the time the Navy suspected him of enlisting in Colorado.

The first witness, a noted handwriting analyst, said he found “significant fundamental differences” between Gadsby’s handwriting and that of the enlistment form bearing his name.

The other witness, a lie detector technician with the San Diego Police Department, administered a polygraph test to Gadsby and found that Gadsby “was being truthful when answering the relevant questions.” Those questions were: “Did you ever enlist in the Navy?” and “Did you ever sign enlistment forms?” The answer to both was “no.”

Both Dobro and Gadsby said they believed that an acquaintance of Gadsby, whom they would not publicly name, may have assumed Gadsby’s identity when signing the enlistment papers 11 years ago.

Gadsby claimed Friday night that he bore no ill feelings toward the Navy.

“I’ve maintained that I’ve always been for America,” he said. “I’m not mad at the Navy. I just wish they hadn’t persecuted me and my family.”