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Sailor’s killer to be removed from Arlington thanks to new law – By Hope Hodge Seck (Military Times) / Apr 12 2023
After 30 years in a place of honor at Arlington National Cemetery, the remains of a former Navy lieutenant who kidnapped and murdered a sailor who rebuffed his attentions will be disinterred.
Former Lt. Andrew Chabrol secured above-ground burial for himself in the nation’s most revered veterans’ cemetery while awaiting his execution by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1993 for the murder of Petty Officer 2nd Class Melissa Harrington.
At the time, the Navy simply did not have legal grounds for excluding him, since he’d completed his service honorably. But in early 2019, a small group of veterans, including her husband, spoke out, telling this reporter in a story for the Washington Post about the lasting trauma of Chabrol’s crimes and how disturbed they were by his repose in Arlington.
Now, they say, Harrington is getting a measure of justice long denied to her.
