The murder of his ex-wife and two daughters outside a church on Palm Sunday isn't enough to keep an Army veteran's remains out of a national cemetery.
Leon J. Moser, who was executed last week, can be buried at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery because he was honorably discharged from the military."Burial in a national cemetery is based on the character of one's service," Bill Jayne, a spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Cemetery System in Washington, said Tuesday. "It doesn't matter if one later becomes a saint or a millionaire or a homeless person."
No taps or flag-draped coffin are planned for Moser. His ashes will be mailed to the cemetery for a plain burial at an undisclosed date.
"No one can really recall a case of an executed criminal being buried in a national cemetery recently," Jayne said.
Moser, 52, gunned down his former wife, Linda, and daughters, ages 14 and 10, in the parking lot of a suburban Philadelphia church in 1985.
Relatives in Wisconsin didn't claim his remains, leaving arrangements to a funeral home under contract with the state.
Doris Schramm said Tuesday that she was unaware her daughter's killer would be buried in a national cemetery.
"What? I didn't know about this," Schramm told a reporter who called her Bucks County home. "This is a disgrace."