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Bio from POW MIA network

DEAN, CHARLES
Name: Charles Dean
Rank/Branch: Civilian
Unit:
Date of Birth: 05 April 1950
Home City of Record:
Loss Date: 10 September 1974
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 181251N 1073308E
Status (in 1973): none)
Category: 1
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Other Personnel in Incident: Neil Sharman
REMARKS:

Source: Compiled by from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.
Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK.
SYNOPSIS: Charles Dean and his Australian companion, Neil Sharman were aboard a boat enroute to Thakhek, Laos, in early September 1974 when they were captured by the Pathet Lao at Ban Pak Hin Boun. Numerous reports indicate that they were subsequently held in the Kham Keut area of central Laos. Reliable information indicated they were alive in that area as of February 1975. Diplomatic efforts to obtain information from the Pathet Lao about the two have been unsuccessful. Although Dean was captured after the cessation of hostilities in Laos, his name is included on the list of the missing because he is an American on whom the Pathet Lao should have information.

[r1994.97]

PROJECT X SUMMARY SELECTION RATIONALE

NAME : DEAN, Charles, Civilian, Tourist
OFFICIAL STATUS: DEAD, BODY NOT RECOVERED
CASE SUMMARY: SEE ATTACHED
RATIONALE FOR SELECTION: Source reports indicate that at Mr. Dean was in fact detained by the Pathet Lao. There have been no correlated reports of his death subsequent to the many reports Mr. Dean's. detention.

REFNO: 1994 2 Apr 76 (C) CASE SUMMARY
1. (C) On 5 September 1974 Mr. Neil Sharman, an Australian tourist, and Mr. Charles Dean an American tourist, departed Vientiane Laos. They had planned on traveling by road from Vientiane to Paksane, and from there by boat to Thakhek. On 13 September the U.S. Agency for International Development Area Coordinator in Savannakhet , (Laos), received a report that Mr. Sharman and Mr. Dean were overdue. Subsequent information from Laotian sources indicate that on 6 September 1974, Mr. Sharman and Mr. Dean while traveling from Paksane to Thakhek by boat, experienced. difficulties with Neo Lao Hak Sat., (AKA: Pathet Lao), authorities at Hinboun, located in the vicinity of grid coordinates (GC) VE 585 466. At this time they were taken into custody. It is reported that they were held first at Ban Thong Lom, in the vicinity of (GC) VE 380 910, and then four days later moved to a Pathet Lao Police Compound. A review of aerial photography indicates that this camp may be located in the vicinity of (GC) VF 704 157. There are reports that in December 1974 Mr. Sharman and Mr. Dean were moved from this camp, reportedly to Sam Neua, Laos. However, later information places them in the camp located in the vicinity of (GC) VF 699 156 as late as 23 February 1975. (Ref 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5)

2. The US and Australian Embassys in Vientiane made repeated and determined efforts to secure the release of Mr. Sharman and Mr. Dean. Summaries of the incident, subsequent intelligence reports, and photographs of the two men were handed over to high-ranking members of the Laotian Government with requests for assistance. All efforts were unsuccessful, as the Neo Lao Hak Sat authorities consistently denied knowledge of the incident. and the men concerned. Mr. Sharman is currently carried in the status of Captured, and Mr. Dean is currently carried in the status of Dead Body Not Recovered.
REFERENCES USED
1. RPT (U), Chronology of events, undated.
2. MSG (C), Det 5, 7602 AINTELG, 010610Z Nov 74.
3. MSG (C), USDAO Vientiane, 260240Z Nov 74.
4. MSG (C), DIA Wash D.C., 182107Z Dec 74.
5. MSG (C), Det 5, 7602 AINTELG, 120603Z Mar 75.
ASSOCIATED INDIVIDUALS
1. Neil Sharman 1994-0-01
2. Charles Dean 1994-0-02
* National Alliance of Families Home Page ---------------------- 02/07/02
Vt. Governor to Seek Brother's Remains
By CHRISTOPHER GRAFF
.c The Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Charles Dean had just graduated from college and wanted to see the world. After more than a year on the road, with Japan, Australia and Indonesia behind him, he and a friend decided to head north from Laos to Nepal. They never made it: they were stopped at a checkpoint by Laotian communist insurgents, arrested and later killed.
Nearly 30 years later, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is seeking his brother's remains. In another step in his family's long and painful odyssey to unravel the mysteries behind the capture and death, he will travel next week to a remote section of Laos where the body is believed to be buried. Dean said Wednesday he hopes his trip will help ``begin closure'' for his own family as well as for the families of the other 400 Americans still unaccounted for in Laos.
``I recognize it may be pretty heavy duty emotionally for me,'' he said. ``But there are a lot of families in our position and it may be that what I am doing can help them, as well as my own family.'' The governor will leave Sunday and travel to Japan and Thailand before arriving in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, two days later. From there he will travel by helicopter to a base camp being used by the task forces leading the excavations.
Charles Dean, a 24-year-old graduate of the University of North Carolina, and Neil Sharman of Australia were arrested in Laos by the Pathet Lao, a left-wing nationalist group that fought the U.S.-supported government in the 1960s and early 1970s before winning control of the country in 1975. The two men were detained Sept. 4, 1974, while traveling down the Mekong River, and held in a small, remote prison camp. Authorities believe they were killed Dec. 14 while being driven toward Vietnam by their captors. ``Either he tried to escape or they just executed him,'' said Dean, who is unsure why his brother traveled to Laos and whether the Vietnamese or Pathet Lao was responsible for his death. Charles Dean, although a civilian, is considered by the U.S. government to have been a prisoner of war. The effort to recover the bodies of Dean and Sharman is being coordinated by the Defense Department's Joint Task Force Full Accounting, which was created to bring home the roughly 1,900 Americans unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. Dean's visit will be his first, although both his mother and father made trips in 1974 and 1975 to push for the release of their son. The trip grew out of an exchange of letters Dean had with the Defense Department in which he expressed concern that the planned excavation of the possible burial site was being delayed. In addition, he said his family's desire for action increased following the death last year of his father, Howard Dean Sr. ``It would have been very difficult for me to go while my father was alive,'' said the governor. ``It has been very hard for everybody, but it was very, very difficult for him.'' Using information gathered from informants, mostly Lao, the government has worked for the past 30 years to piece together likely sites where Americans are buried or where planes or helicopters carrying Americans may have crashed. It has not been easy because much of the U.S. war effort in Laos, aimed primarily at cutting off communist Vietnamese supply lines that ran through the country, was secret. ``We were bombing the hell out of them,'' said Dean. ``We were denying we were bombing them while they were denying they were holding any American prisoners.'' But through informal networks, the family learned in March or April 1975 that Charles Dean was dead. Since then the family has worked with the Defense Department and others to determine how and where he died.
A new effort by the joint task force to interview locals late in 2000 provided the most reliable information to date: That Dean and Sharman had been taken by truck and killed a few miles shy of the Vietnamese border along Route 8. It is there that Dean will travel. He is hopeful his efforts will prompt an excavation by the American-led team this summer.
``That would be the ultimate closure,'' he said.