Wife of Only Man Still Listed as POW Kills Self

The wife of the only U.S. serviceman still officially listed as a prisoner of war in Southeast Asia killed herself Thursday. She was 57.

Dorothy Marian Shelton, who was active in POW/MIA organizations urging the federal government to bring home American servicemen they say are being held captive, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at 9:15 p.m. at her home in the 7900 block of Deerfield Street, according to the San Diego County coroner’s office.

Her husband, Air Force Col. Charles E. Shelton, was captured after his RF-101C fighter-reconnaissance plane was shot down April 29, 1965, while on a mission over northern Laos, according to the Defense Department. Shelton, who was then 33, was seen alive on the ground by other U.S. pilots, according to a Pentagon report.

The Pentagon lists Shelton as dead but also as the only American POW still in Southeast Asia.

Shelton was convinced that her husband and other American servicemen were alive and being held captive in Southeast Asia and that the U.S. government abandoned its efforts to bring them home, according to press accounts of her activities in the POW/MIA organizations.

“The U.S. government could bring out living POWs any day of the week,” Shelton said in 1989 during a Vietnam veterans march to draw public attention to the fate of 2,340 U.S. servicemen listed as missing in action in Southeast Asia.

In 1989 Shelton said she received a report from a “U.S. agent” that her husband had been seen alive in a high-security Vietnamese prison camp near Hanoi.

At her home Friday afternoon, relatives and friends gathered to console each other. A black POW/MIA flag was posted in the front yard.

Relatives declined comment, but Michael Clark, who identified himself as a Vietnam veteran and friend of the family, read a brief statement expressing the family’s thanks for all those offering condolences.

Shelton devoted her life to her family, husband and POW/MIA advocacy efforts, Clark said. Her greatest wish was that all prisoners of the Vietnam War be returned home, he added.

Clark said Shelton was an active member in the San Diego chapter of Task Force Omega, which he said was a national organization dedicated to locating and bringing home U.S. servicemen who may still be prisoners of war.