New clues deepen Wheeler mystery

Source: Delaware News Journal

Nearly 24 hours before the body of former Pentagon official John P. Wheeler III was found being dumped into the Wilmington landfill on Dec. 31, a neighbor who was watching his home found several rooms in disarray.

Read more: http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110222/NEWS01/102220356/New-clues-deepen-Wheeler-mystery

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For those following Delaware's answer to CLUE.

There was a minor piece a few days ago that police had re-visited the house, but no new facts.

The last piece of information was that the cause of death was blunt force injury to the head after an attack.

What a Grade-A USDA Prime clusterf-ck.

Perhaps. Seems he may have carried something significantly more valuable in there. Why would he be fixated upon the bag, instead of his coat?

Who knows what the facts are? We can only guess -- but our guesses will not be accurate.

Very sad for the family.

A reporter noticed kitchen floorboards torn up, in Wheeler's home, early in the police investigation. (I don't know if the police found them that way or they took up the floorboards, following some line of inquiry.) In photos accompanying reports of the police re-visit to the house, they sure look like they're carrying those floorboards out, as evidence (also brown bags and manilla envelopes with evidence). This particular recent neighbors' report of the messed up house is very frustrating because it doesn't mention the kitchen floorboards and the reporter doesn't seem to know about them (thus doesn't ask the neighbor if he saw them torn up).

Another thing that the referenced article leaves out is another neighbor's report that he heard very loud, annoying TV noise coming from Wheeler's house, 24/7, over the four day Christmas period. Wheeler is documented as being in New York at that time and doesn't head to his New Castle home until sometime on Dec 27 or 28. This very much suggests a break-in, and, again, this reporter either isn't aware of that report or doesn't ask these neighbors about it, for unfathomable reasons.

The story they tell makes it sound like Wheeler just blew a cork. But it is a very incomplete story. What if, when he got home, he found the kitchen floorboards torn up and realized that something very valuable, or potentially very damaging to others, had been discovered and stolen? That is a more reasonable beginning to the saga of the next two days.

I would just caution people not to jump to conclusions from half-assed or incomplete news reports. For instance, the suggestions that Wheeler was the victim of a street crime simply don't hold up. It would have to have been TWO street crimes, one on Dec 29, when his briefcase was stolen and he shows up on the parking garage video looking confused and disheveled, and a second one, the next day, on Dec 30 late at night, after he visits a law office in Wilmington and leaves that building, in which he is bludgeoned to death, and his body thrown into a dumpster in Newark (quite a distance from Wilmington). And, in between these two events, Wheeler--West Point grad, Harvard grad, Yale grad, advisor to two presidents, and holding one of the top security clearances in the country--refuses all help that is offered to him by solicitous strangers (money, phone call, cab ride) and does not call ANYBODY--not the police, not friends, not family, not his West Point buddies, not his employers, not his friends at the Pentagon--over a two day period.

Lately, some articles are stressing his bipolar disorder (for which he was taking lithium). There is simply no scenario based on his bipolar disorder that ends in a landfill, just as a street crime scenario, when you know all available details, cannot (or 99% cannot) end in a landfill. Someone with bipolar disorder might mess up his house in a fit of frustration, or looking for something, or might have been involved in a struggle. How does that end two days later with getting bludgeoned to death and your body thrown into a dumpster in another city?

I would also caution people about believing everything the neighbors say. Wheeler's wife, in a recent interview, described New Castle as "a corrupt little town." Wheeler--who was the main force behind the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial--was trying to preserve a military historical site across from his house (War of 1812) as well as protecting the view of the river from his house. (Early reports failed to mention the historical site.) He was involved in a long legal dispute about this. One possibility for what he might have been hiding under the kitchen floorboards is information about local political corruption that could help him in his fight against the new construction. But the corruption would have to be so bad, and so mafia-like, that potential affected parties called out a hit on Wheeler.

This does not explain everything about Wheeler's actions in the days just before this death--Dec 28-30--but it explains a lot. I have developed another hypothesis that Wheeler may have been involved in a whistleblower scene, on a larger scale--that is, military and/or corporate crime. This fits his current employment (for Mitre Corporation), his history as a presidential and Pentagon advisor (the kind of role he played--seems to have been an investigator of some sort), the kind of issues he was involved in (currently, cyber security/cyber warfare, and before, bio/chem weapons, the SEC and nuclear security) and it fits his character. His West Point buddies describe him as a "bulldog" of a military man--straight arrow, persistent, sometimes gruff and unstoppable when he committed to a cause. In the last days of his life, he was pretty clearly involved in something which he could not share with anyone. That is the most striking feature of his behavior in the days before his death--that he refuses all help, doesn't go to the police and cuts off communication with everybody. And that suggests several things, including that he was on the run (fearful), determined to do something that only he could do and that he may have been protecting others.

The cops took floorboards from the house last month.

out of the house as evidence, recently. But I don't think the photos are old. The planks I saw in the photos (clearly being removed by the police as evidence) could have been parts of a cupboard or other wood structure or floor. In any case, this current article's failure to mention the kitchen floorboards--in the context of the house being in disarray (reported by these neighbors, now)--is frustrating. You get a skewed picture of Wheeler from it--as being deranged--when the floorboards being torn up point to motivation for the disarray (for instance, that intruders did it, or that Wheeler threw things around in frustration when he found that intruders had been there and taken something). I've seen DUers jump to conclusions about Wheeler's death on the basis of partial reports like this. And I'm just cautioning against it. You really have to follow events from Christmas on, and especially his last few days on earth, to understand how simple scenarios--that he was the victim of a street crime, or was having a medical problem, etc.--become nearly impossible. And I imagine that's why the police are having a problem, too. This is no simple crime. It is very complex and very baffling.

John Arthur Paisley -- http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpaisley.htm -- George Weisz -- http://books.google.com/books?id=3uPBM7z_62gC&pg=PA462&lpg=PA462&dq=murder+DOE+George+Weisz&source=bl&ots=xDrzKZ3V5m&sig=SZog1QCi44PDfGhYmcCLOcj7-xw&hl=en&ei=Z9plTdVBgrSVB_ns5csN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false -- and William Colby -- http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7144 .