Speaking publicly for the first time about what he saw the day Wheeler vanished, Dill told USA TODAY that he wondered whether he had stumbled onto a crime scene. A side door to the house was open — not much, just a crack. Chairs had been knocked over, and the radios were silent. Dill had left them on a few days before. That's how Wheeler liked it when he was gone: radios on and tuned to NPR. As he once told Dill, the sound made it seem as though someone was home.
In the kitchen, broken plates sat in the sink. A tall plant had been overturned. And Wheeler's cadet sword from West Point lay on the floor, unsheathed. Dill remembers a heavy dusting of Comet cleanser on the kitchen's wood plank floor — and what he believes was the print of a bare foot in the powder.