Ongoing FR Analysis: Jack Wheeler Murder

cnn.com ^ | January 9, 2011 | Susan Candiotti and Ross Levitt

[Albion Wilde]

Wilmington, Delaware (CNN) -- Police have found homicide victim John Wheeler's cell phone, according to a taxi driver who was interviewed by investigators this week.

Athel Scott told CNN National Correspondent Susan Candiotti that police told him they found the cab driver's number in the phone of Wheeler, the former Pentagon official who was found dead in a Delaware landfill. He said investigators wanted to know how his number got there. Scott... says he told the police he didn't have any idea.

"I never got a call from the man. I don't know him... He's never been in my cab. I don't know how my number got in his cellphone," Scott says he told police...

[bgill]

But if it was a burglary, she adds, nothing was taken.

That she knows of.

[Gondring]

That night, cameras at a nearby hotel captured him walking toward a rough neighborhood in a dark hooded sweatshirt, tugging the hood over his head. “It looked to me like he was trying to hide his face,” Klyce says. “It wasn’t his clothing.”

And...

About 11:30 p.m. on Dec. 28, though, someone wearing a hooded sweatshirt, who a neighbor said matched Wheeler's husky description, lobbed smoke bombs onto the first floor of a home under construction across the street from his house.

Layman's view: a mental-illness situation could easily fit the evidence. If he was in possession of his faculties and just afraid, his behavior doesn't fit (e.g., why go to wrong garage). Pure speculation: he entered an abnormal mental state (such as a severe manic phase--depending on what meds he was on, it could have been a reaction from meds such as an antidepressant), and then in his last hours, antagonized someone in Newark who offed him and dumped him.

It's not as sexy as a hit, but it might very well be the truth. That doesn't diminish the tragedy.

[PA Engineer]

Thanks for the ping. Interesting new details.

[Paperdoll]

It is another big government cover up, I tell you. Will we eveer know more than we do about Kennedy, Brown or Foster?

[smoothsailing]

Wife thinks he was murdered by a professional. Yeah, a bent nose one with associates from the new construction across the street.

It seems to circle back to that. It just sits there and screams at us.

One of the early FR threads

Excerpt...

"The core of Battery Park is dying, because as can now be seen, the huge mansion will dominate the site....In the very large picture, over history and generations, our country counts on each locality to guard American heritage. Here, in this beloved place, we are failing in that duty....This started when Ms. Marini had her husband illegally knock down the existing historic house. Then Ms. Marini had all the big trees torn down illegally. Ms. Marini just knocked down whatever was in her way."....

...From an e-mail Wheeler wrote, just before Christmas

[HollyB]

Interesting thread, here’s a couple of comments from there that I thought were interesting #21 & 22.

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To: WestCoastGal
Interesting comment at the article link...
nccitizen123 1/15/11 9:40 AM EST I live in Old New Castle and can certainly understand the frustration Mr. Wheeler felt. I attended one of the “public” historic commission meetings regarding the Marini property. Alot of us in town attened because we wanted answers as to why the historic building was allowed to be torn down (there was no permit in place for it’s destruction) and why the new house was allowed to be almost 3 times the footprint of the original historic home. Well, the commission conveniently stepped around these issues and instead had the Marini architect go on with his list of materials to be used on the house. When a few of the locals tried to ask about the illegal destruction and excessive new footprint, they were told in so many words to shut up or wait outside if they couldn’t...so much for it being a “public” meeting. It’s as if the Commission was intimidated by the Marini bunch - I guess they had every right to be! P.S. The height of this house is so threatening - rumors have it that the Marini’s have referred to it as a “Bed and Breakfast”...so much for her respecting the town that she supposedly wanted to build a home in and return to...

21 posted on Sunday, January 16, 2011 7:01:02 PM by smoothsailing
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies | Report Abuse]

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To: smoothsailing
I think the commission is dirty along with the mayor and the owners. Something stinks, including the hit piece written up in Newsweek on Wheeler. Why does the victim wind up looking like the bad guy? They never name the people who are saying what they report, calling them “friends and long-time associates”

There is no way this was a random briefcase/wallet theft, including Mr Wheeler apparently winding up on the ground which his dirty clothes give away, then another random altercation a day later with him winding up dead. I don’t buy it.

22 posted on Sunday, January 16, 2011 7:17:49 PM by WestCoastGal

[smoothsailing]

In the most recent articles Katherine Klyce says Jack Wheeler was found still wearing his Rolex watch and West Point class ring! That was new information to me, those two items are probably worth several thousands of dollars.

Whatever this was, it sure wasn't robbery.

[MamaDearest]

All Vietnam veterans should be screaming about this miscarriage of justice and should be demanding the murderer(s) be found.

They SHOULD be screaming about this, but, in fact, quite a few Vietnam veterans watch NBC and believe what they hear. I have to wonder how their liberal mindset works at their local veterans meetings giving this administrations propensity to be anti-military.

Camp Obama's anti-military trainer (Obama campaign article)

Snip: WND has learned that a senior Obama campaign staffer involved in marshalling college students and other campaign volunteers to get out the vote tomorrow is an anti-military extremist who, even during the popular first Gulf war, steered minority youth away from service in the military.

[smoothsailing]

White House Rose Garden, November 1981

[bitt]

thanks - still wondering what’s what, here...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Albion Wilde.

[Bigg Red]

Watch and ring not taken. This just gets stranger and stranger.

[PGalt]

Thanks very much for the ping. Thanks to all researchers/linkers/educators. BUMP for Jack Wheeler!

[blueplum]

Many thanks!

disappointed to not see mention of the plane tickets to Spain charged on the Missus credit card

[blueplum]

absolutely not a robbery

perp traveled light and took no souveniers that would trace him back to the crime

the neighbors noticed the gopher-bomb dude had on a grey sweatshirt and hat. I assumed it would have been a lighter grey for someone to tell a sweatshirt from a jacket in dim light. The sweatshirt supposedly worn by Wheeler exiting the Nemours building was dark blue.

Nobody at DuPont/Nemours saying anything about lending Wheeler their gym clothes?

Why am I getting a strong suspicion that was NOT Wheeler shown on the security tape exiting the Nemours building at 8:42pm, but was in fact the perp, who had stalked Wheeler to that building?
imo.

[WestCoastGal]

Thanks for pinging me to a few new tidbits on this crime.

Sadly, I wonder if it will ever be solved?

I think once Biden jumped in and sealed everything, that was the kiss of death to finding the real murderers. Maybe the PTB don’t want the killers found! The means, motive, and opportunity always goes back to the Marini’s or his work at Mitre.

Oddly, the sweatshirt with hood up and covering face is possibly someone else exciting the building, perhaps the killer. If there’s underground parking, he could have been murdered there and stuffed in a car trunk and then driven to the dumpsters in Newark.

There is no way this was a random murder - nothing was stolen - no reason to hide body unless the perpetrators thought he would never be found at the dump site.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

I am intrigued by her description of his departure for DC on the28th. “Abruptly.”

She said he went to deliver gifts, a holiday tradition, but has not heard from anyone who might have seen him. Does she know who the recipients were? Did the authorities speak with them? What happened to the gifts?

Holiday gifts aside, I wonder if he suddenly became aware of some sort of threat, coercion or blackmail?

[PGalt]

Thanks very much for the ping. (Sheesh, I had lost track of the Jack Wheeler thread). Lots of catching up to do. BTTT for Jack Wheeler!

[smoothsailing]

Ex-Pentagon official’s iPhone found

Former Pentagon official John P. Wheeler III’s cellphone was found near the scene of a smoke bomb attack on a neighbor’s unfinished home days before Wheeler’s body was discovered at a Wilmington, Del., landfill, investigators say.

The newly revealed detail explains why Wheeler stopped using the iPhone after Dec. 28 and could add to evidence that he was becoming emotionally unstable and vulnerable.

BS--THIS IS NOT A NEW DETAIL. We've known about the cell-phone since the day Albion Wilde started this thread.

So why today are there multiple media reports of this so-called new detail?

[smoothsailing]

Wheeler's wife believes murder not random--Thursday, May 19, 2011

Since the former White House and Pentagon adviser's body was found in that landfill, the mystery has grown as conspiracy theories abound. Was he eliminated by government or foreign agents? Was he the victim of street crime?

Or did it have something to do with the legal war he waged with the people building a house across the street that blocks his view? Someone tried to fire bomb the house and investigators found Wheeler's cell phone inside.

"I tried to call his cell phone and it went straight to voicemail," Klyce said.

Klyce doesn't believe her husband's murder was random.

"It sounded like someone who had thought it out pretty carefully what to do with him and they didn't take his watch or his class ring," Klyce said.