Schepansky Military Letter Raises Army Eyebrows

Ray Schepansky's 2000 job application to Plymouth-Canton Schools includes a "special order" letter from a U.S. Army Lt. Col. James L. MacMullin.

The letterhead on the stationery, dated Sept. 19, 1999, appears to be from the Department of the Army's Personnel Administration Center, based at Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN. But the fort was closed in 1995 and turned into national park and residential area.

This letter states Schepansky, who had been in the U.S. Army for 17 years and finished his military career as a sergeant first class, was getting promoted to captain. The letter states he would be assigned to the "U.S. Army Special Operations Branch (U.S. Army Reserve) with a date of rank as 30 June 1993. Cpt. Schepansky is further assigned to the U.S. Army Officer year group 1994 effective this date."

Several Army officials said it would be unheard of for a former member of the military to receive a U.S. Army Reserve commission six years after leaving the service.

Mark Edwards, chief of media relations at the U.S. Army Human Resources Command in Fort Knox, KY, expressed some doubt about the MacMullin letter.

"I do have some concerns about the attached document being authentic, but I can neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of the document with the information I have here," he wrote in an email to Canton Patch.

Another detail also caught the eye of Army officials who examined the letter. The spelling of the handwritten signature does not match the typed name. Instead of "MacMullin," the last name appears to be written as "Macnillin." It also appears that MacMullin does not exist in U.S. Army Human Resources Command's databases, according to Edwards. Canton Patch was unsuccessful in locating any public record of him.