



"It's over now. I can put this to rest. I got a sincere apology and a promise that they will work to keep this from happening again," Najbar told the News Tribune. "We'll never know who did this. I don't even care anymore. I just don't want it to happen again."

Najbar in January said she tried "one, last-ditch effort" to resolve the situation by asking Franken's office to intervene.


"Please extend our sincere apologies to Miss Najbar," Williams wrote to Franken. Williams also said the Postal Service "will try to ensure" that a similar situation never happens again.



"That they didn't have a way to prevent this is a slap to all veterans," she said. "We're still at war. You'd hope they would have a system in place to prevent something like this. But apparently they still do not."

Frustrated at the lack of a resolution, Najbar filed a federal lawsuit against the United States in 2009, claiming she experienced emotional distress and lost income after the stamping incident. But U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz dismissed the case in 2010, saying federal law doesn't give him the legal authority to decide the controversy raised in Najbar's complaint.



Najbar said she suspects the culprit may have been someone who didn't share her views. After talking to military officials, she said it became clear the letter never got into the military mail system.

Officials from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Minnesota National Guard said no one is authorized to stamp a letter "DECEASED" and return it to the sender. If a soldier has died, all incoming mail is collected and returned as part of the soldier's belongings to the next of kin, not to the sender by return mail. A Department of Defense spokesman at the time said the military mail system doesn't have "DECEASED" stamps. Postal officials also say they, too, would never mark a letter "DECEASED."


