On February 6, 2013 Rep. Patrick Meehan of Pennsylvania asked for and was granted permission to address the United States House of Representatives for one minute regarding an issue of importance.
What he said was deeply disturbing:
“Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the family of Sergeant Brian LaLou from Chester County, Pennsylvania. Tragically, in the summer of 2012, Sergeant LaLou took his own life while he was at his duty station at the U.S. Embassy in Greece. What happened next was unconscionable.”
“During the course of an autopsy performed by Greek authorities, his heart was removed and not returned to his body before it was sent home to his family for a proper burial. When the Greek Government finally sent the family a heart, it was not their son’s. The DNA testing revealed that it belonged to someone else”, he said.
“Mr. Speaker, I wrote to the Commandant of the Marine Corps in December seeking answers for this young man’s family. The response from the Pentagon so far has been silence. The LaLou family deserves answers. They deserve peace of mind. It is time for the Greek authorities and the Pentagon to tell Sergeant LaLou’s parents what happened to their son’s heart, because we know what happened to his family’s”, said Rep. Meehan (source: Congressional Record http://thomas.loc.gov/).
We tried to talk with officials at the Pentagon about this situation and officials refused to even discuss it. One citing national security concerns? No one I talked to wanted to go on record about this matter, citing concerns of being punished for talking with unauthorized personnel about military affairs pertaining to the death of a soldier.