John Wheeler III LAW ’75, a Vietnam war veteran who also served as an aide to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, was found murdered on New Years Eve. His body was found in a Delaware landfill shortly before 10 a.m., and authorities ruled that the death was a homicide,the Washington Post reported. He was 66.

Wheeler chaired the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund from 1979 to 1989 and played a key role in the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., according to the Post. He was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and he became special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force under President George W. Bush.

The ABA Journal reported that Wheeler was last seen leaving an Amtrak train from Washington, D.C. to Wilmington, Delaware. A worker at the Wilmington Cherry Island Landfill saw Wheeler’s body last Friday in “a truckload of trash that was being dumped at the landfill,” reported the Washington Post. Authorities have not yet released any information regarding suspects or motive.

“This is just not the kind of guy who gets murdered,” Bayard Marin, an attorney who represented Wheeler, told the ABA Journal. “This is not the kind of guy you find in a landfill.”

Wheeler is survived by his wife, Katherine Klyce, with whom he lived in New Castle, Delaware.