An honor guard consisting of retired Marines that attends each Marine’s burial at Fort Logan National Cemetery will not be there to honor Raymond Sawyer.
Sawyer, who lived in Arvada as recently as 2007, died last month in an Arizona prison, where he was serving a 13-year sentence for the murder of his second wife. He was in his 80s when sentenced.
While in prison, Sawyer was kicked out of the Legion of Valor, a prestigious society for those who have been awarded the nation’s highest military honors.
The Legion of Valor decided that Sawyer’s claim to have received the Navy Cross was a fraud.
Sawyer will be buried Tuesday at Fort Logan.
“We are not going to honor someone who has dishonored us,” said Bob Fischer, a retired Marine colonel from Arvada who is a member of the 1st Marine Division Association honor guard.
Fischer said he was once “good friends” with Sawyer and was the person who nominated Sawyer for inclusion in the Legion of Honor.
“We all feel betrayed,” Fischer said of Sawyer’s deception. “It’s probably one of the worst acts that a Marine can perpetrate on his fellow Marines. We have a bond, a brotherhood, and that’s a violation of that bond.”
Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Joe Ryan, an honor guard member who lives in Greenwood Village, said his former friend, Sawyer, tricked him.
“He not only committed a heinous crime, but he was also guilty of dishonoring the Marine Corps,” Ryan said. “This (burial) would be a complete disgrace. So I’m pleading with the family of Raymond Sawyer, pleading with them to call off this funeral and not disgrace or dishonor these Marines and these servicemen at Fort Logan National Cemetery and to take this funeral somewhere else.”
Last week, 9News spoke with other groups that also did not want Sawyer buried at Fort Logan.
“I think that taxpayers who are footing the bill for this should be irate,” said retired Marine Lt. Col. Tom Richards, the membership director of the Legion of Honor. “Do we want Raymond Sawyer, a murderer, to be buried in the same hallowed ground as Medal of Honor recipients?”
Sawyer’s daughter by his first marriage, Mary Sawyer, told 9News that the family is sticking by its decision to have him buried at Fort Logan.
“It’s not the public’s decision,” she said. “Other people should mind their own business.”
Fort Logan representative Joe Turnbach said Friday that cemetery officials “appreciate the concern of the veterans community” but that the rules governing military burials allow for Sawyer’s interment.
Department of Veterans Affairs guidelines outlined on the agency’s website say the only criminal conviction that can disqualify an honorably discharged veteran from a military burial is a conviction on a capital crime where the sentence involves life in prison or execution.
Francis Sawyer was strangled in 1981, but her husband wasn’t charged until 2007, when a Maricopa County cold-case detective traveled from Arizona to Arvada and got Raymond Sawyer to confess to second-degree murder.
Advocates of the Stolen Valor Act, which criminalizes lying about war medals, had hoped Sawyer would be the first person prosecuted under the act, but Sawyer was arrested on the murder charge first.
Mary Sawyer said the family still believes her father was awarded the Navy Cross.
Sawyer was not charged under the Stolen Valor Act, which was recently declared an unconstitutional violation of free speech by a federal judge in Denver.
