Independence man charged with pretending to be Medal of Honor recipient

July 11, 2002

By Matt Campbell
The Kansas City Star

The man in the photograph wore the summer white uniform of a U.S. Navy admiral with a Medal of Honor upon his breast.

The man said he had been a highly decorated Navy SEAL in Vietnam and was writing a book about his experiences.

But the man never served a day in the Navy, authorities say.

However, he may serve time in prison for wearing a naval officer's uniform and the Medal of Honor without any right to do so.

Ralph Ervin Crowder of Independence, alias Roy A. Toups, was charged Wednesday in a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Kansas City with impersonating an officer and a military hero.

"An impersonator has to be a very insecure person -- a person who has been nowhere and done nothing," said Gary Littrell, a recipient of the medal, the nation's highest accolade for valor. Littrell, vice president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, said he was saddened by such people.

Crowder, 46, is in the Cole County, Mo., jail on a probation violation charge stemming from a bad-check case in the 1970s. He is expected to make his initial appearance before a federal magistrate today.

He faces up to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine if convicted on the Medal of Honor count and six months and a $5,000 fine if convicted on the uniform count.

According to the criminal complaint, Crowder came under scrutiny last month when a sharp-eyed private investigator from North Kansas City noticed things were wrong in a photograph he saw of Crowder in uniform.

Michael Davis, himself a Navy veteran, saw the photograph in the office of Crowder's girlfriend. Davis noticed some medals that were out of place and a particular badge that never would have been worn by an admiral.

Davis contacted the FBI, which has been rounding up unauthorized Medals of Honor since 1995. That's when it became known that a Long Island company on contract with the government to make the medals had been overproducing them, and they were being illegally sold at trade shows across the country. The company pleaded guilty to overproducing the medals in 1996, was fined and was barred from future government business.

But many of the at least 300 unauthorized medals are still out there.

FBI agents confronted Crowder when he arrived at the office of his girlfriend. Crowder, who was going by the name Toups, produced a supposed National Security Agency identification badge that was "immediately recognized as fraudulent," according to the complaint.

When questioned, Crowder admitted he had never served in the Navy and had purchased the uniform and medals from a surplus store in Albuquerque, N.M., the complaint said.

Agents ran a background check and determined Toups was an alias. Crowder later admitted his true identity, and then officials discovered the outstanding arrest warrant, the complaint said.

Jeff Lanza, spokesman for the FBI, said this was the first case he knew of in the Kansas City area in which an individual has been charged with illegally wearing a Medal of Honor.

Crowder's medal has not been recovered. He told agents he had left it with a former girlfriend in Cape Girardeau, Mo. Anyone with information about it or any suspect Medal of Honor is asked to call the FBI at (816) 512-8200 or the Congressional Medal of Honor Society in South Carolina at 1-(843) 884-8862.

Army Col. Roger Donlon of Leavenworth, one of three living Medal of Honor recipients in Kansas and Missouri, said impostors were a disgrace to those who had served their country.

In July 1964, Donlon, then a captain, exhibited "superhuman effort" in saving lives and defending a heavily outgunned position during a five-hour, predawn battle at Nam Dong, Vietnam, according to his citation.

"I just did my job," Donlon said Wednesday.

To reach Matt Campbell call (816) 234-4905 or mcampbell@kcstar.com