Camille Paglia, the American Oriana Fallaci (though a good argument can be made that Oriana Fallaci became the American Oriana Fallaci in the years before her death), has some terrific stuff in her most recent column, including an excoriating criticism of the left’s statist religion. You can read lots of reactions to that stuff elsewhere, I’m sure, but more interesting to me was a letter that she published from one of the four gay men who together publish a blog dedicated to considering and perhaps investigating the death of prominent young DC attorney Robert Wone, in 2006, a case whose pursuit has been agonizingly slow and, in their view, largely under-reported in, at least, the national media.
I have spent the morning poring over the information at their site, especially in the media links that they provide there, and it’s a fascinating and disturbing story, but not just on account of the murder. The best way to bring it to you, I think (and not because I don’t think that you should read the posts that they have there, but because I’m practiced at the art of clusterfarking the links), is to begin in medias res:
Prominent young lawyer Robert Wone was “restrained, incapacitated, sexually assaulted, and stabbed” in a Dupont Circle home in Washington, D.C., in 2006, police said in an arrest affidavit released Friday that sheds new light on a high-profile homicide investigation.
The 13-page affidavit explores the lives of the three men living at the $1.2 million town house on Swann Street Northwest, their friendship, their romantic relationships — and their alleged meddling in a two-year investigation into the slaying of a promising lawyer.
One of the men, Dylan Michael Ward, 38, was arrested in Florida last week on an obstruction charge in connection with the murder. Ward is being held without bond in federal custody and is expected to return to the District of Columbia.
*******
In August 2006, Wone had recently left Covington & Burling to take a job as general counsel for Radio Free Asia. He knew he would be working late the night he was killed and had arranged to stay with Price, an old friend from college, rather than commute home to Oakton, Va., where he lived with his wife, Kathy. It was the first time he spent the night at the Dupont home, police say.
When paramedics arrived, they told investigators, Zaborsky, Price and Ward seemed placid. One paramedic, a 15-year veteran, remembered feeling that something was “very wrong” as they tried to question the men. The other, a 10-year veteran paramedic, said the conduct of the men “made the hair on the back of [the paramedic’s] neck stand up.” Wone lay on the bed, supine, his wounds apparently clean and the bed covers folded neatly, as though Wone had been “stabbed, showered, redressed, and placed in the bed,” one paramedic observed.
Police discount the theory that an intruder killed Wone. Wone’s wallet, Movado watch and BlackBerry were on a table at the foot of the bed where his body was found. Nothing in the room was disturbed. The “insignificant” amount of blood on the bed was inconsistent with a violent stabbing, police said.
“By all accounts and evidence, Price, Zaborsky and Ward have a very close relationship and clearly have motive to preserve and protect the interests of one another,” Detective Bryan Waid said in the affidavit.
In Ward’s bedroom, police recovered shackles, metal and leather collars, wrist and ankle restraints, mouth gags, black spandex hoods, and an electrical shock device, among other items, according to the affidavit. There were books on inflicting pain and enslaving for sexual gratification. A New Yorker magazine on the floor was opened to an article titled “Late Works, Writers Confronting the End.” Ward said he had been reading the article before Wone was killed.
The home in question, in Dupont Circle, belonged to another prominent attorney, Joseph Price, who shared it with his long-term partner, Victor Zaborsky, and another man, Dylan Ward, with whom Mr. Price had a sado-masochistic relationship that seems to have been condoned by his partner, but not shared in. So, as the bloggers state, it’s not a three-way relationship, but a pair of two-way relationships. Mr. Zaborsky has stated that Ward–the only one of the three who has been arrested thus far, was in effect a charter member of the family, whom they were working to integrate. Numerous pictures of Price and Ward engaging in their mutual interests were found on a computer confiscated from the home.
The murdered man was a friend of Mr. Price’s from William and Mary, which they attended as undergraduates before pursuing their law degrees. He had been married for several years, and was exclusively heterosexual. He and his wife lived in Oakton, VA, and having attended a late meeting, as the above notes, he’d arranged to spend the night with his friend, who shared a room with his partner, but had two guest rooms–one of which was occupied by Dylan Ward and another by Robert Wone on the night of his murder. At 11:49 that evening, August 2, 2006, Mr. Price called 911 to report that he had discovered Mr. Wone stabbed and moaning in the guest room after awakening to the intruder alarm. He reported that they were attempting to staunch the wound with a towel. When the paramedics arrived, they encountered the scene sketched out above.
The three told police that they believed that Mr. Wone was the victim of a botched burglary attempt, but the police were skeptical, since there were no signs of forced entry from the back door, where the three witnesses speculated that the intruder must have entered. Furthermore, as also stated above, valuables in Mr. Wone’s possession were still at the foot of the bed.
Another problem with the story soon emerged. A neighbor, who had been watching the 11 PM news, heard a man, whom he believed to be Mr. Zablonsky, scream during the half-hour telecast. Therefore, police believe that anywhere from 19 to 49 minutes must have elapsed before the occupants called 911 to report the murder. Here there is another point of confusion in the story: Mr. Wone reportedly was stabbed three times, twice in the chest and once in the abdomen, through his tee-shirt, yet the knife that Mr. Price claims he extracted from the victim’s chest before beginning to try to compress the wounds bears no fibers from the tee-shirt, though it appears that the knife blade was wiped on the towel. Whether or not that tee-shirt was part of the bedclothes that are mentioned above is not stated, but fibers from the towel on which the knife appears to have been wiped do appear.
The three men all deny that any of them had any involvement in the murder, of course. The investigation of the murder scene indicates without a doubt that evidence was expunged. First, there’s nothing like the amount of blood that one would expect from such a crime in evidence, though there are splatter patterns around the bed in which Mr. Wone presumably died, revealed by ultraviolet light. Second, cadaver dogs were attracted to both a dryer lint trap and a porch drain that contained traces of the victim’s blood. This and other vital information, including that several needle marks appeared on Mr. Wone’s body (which suggest he might have been administered a paralytic, though no such substance has been discovered in the forensic investigation, to my knowledge) and that he appears to have been restrained and sexually assaulted were only made public on the release of an affidavit accusing two of the men of tampering with evidence and obstructing the investigation. Earlier accounts make no mention of a sexual assault, and all three men readily agreed to provide DNA samples and fingerprints to the FBI investigators.
Mr. Price was a pallbearer at Mr. Wone’s funeral.
That in itself is strange enough. But in November of the year that Mr. Wone was murdered, when the suspects had all decamped to other lodgings (Mr. Ward to a Florida home owned by Price and Zablonsky), the home in Dupont Circle was robbed of approximately $7,700 worth of electronics, including a widescreen TV and a couple of video recorders. One of the Price-Zablonsky couple discovered this while picking up mail at the lodgings. Police nabbed one Phelps Collins, a friend of Joseph Price’s (also gay) brother Michael (Michael Price was also arrested in connection with a car that his partner had reported stolen). Police had been led to Collins by checking out the local pawn shops, where they found the stolen electronics, and at the time he was arrested, Collins had a broken crack pipe in his pocket.
Collins subsequently said that he was given the key to house by Joseph Price’s brother Michael, who had also shut off the intruder alarm. A grand jury took up the burglary case, and in March of 2007, the Washington Blade reported:
In a written motion filed before Judge John Ramsey Johnson in December, Michael Price’s attorney said an order the judge issued at the time of Michael Price’s arrest, which prevented him from having any contact with his brother, had created “undue hardship†for Michael Price.
“The complaining witness, Mr. Joseph Price, is defendant’s brother and closest relative,†the court motion said. “As such, he provides much of defendant’s financial support and he has been defendant’s principle caretaker for the past 10 years.â€
The motion, written by defense attorney Eric Glass, said Joseph Price, his domestic partner, Victor Zaborsky, and the couple’s roommate, Dylan Ward, each consented to the request that the stay-away order be lifted. Johnson lifted the order on Dec. 7. Police have said they could find no evidence linking the burglary to Wone’s murder, although they were hoping that information obtained from the burglary would lead to clues in the murder case.
Charges in the burglary were later dismissed under very strange circumstances:
A D.C. Superior Court judge on Aug. 15 dismissed charges against two men arrested last November for allegedly burglarizing a Washington townhouse on Swann Street, N.W., where the unsolved murder of attorney Robert Wone took place three months earlier.
Judge John Ramsey Johnson dismissed second-degree burglary charges against Phelps Collins, 36, and Michael Price, 35, after the United States Attorney’s office decided not to seek an indictment against the two men within a required nine-month period following their arrest.
Under the city’s criminal code, felony charges must be dismissed if the government fails to obtain an indictment within that time frame. At the government’s request, Johnson issued the dismissals “without prejudice,†which allows the U.S. Attorney’s office to reinstate the charges at a later date.
Nota bene: once again, the Washington Blade seems to have had more interest in the case than the Washington Post, though they report much of it, and it is largely through the Blade, and now the bloggers that interest in this case has been kept alive.
Well, if you think this is bizarre enough so far, I’m sorry to report that that’s not true. In my cursory reading of the articles linked from the Who Murdered Robert Wone site, I wouldn’t have gotten this information had it not been provided by the Blade:
A 36-year-old man charged with the Oct. 30 burglary at a Washington townhouse on Swann Street, N.W., where the unsolved murder of attorney Robert Wone took place nearly three months earlier, lived nearby in the Adams Morgan home of a local gay activist who worked as a volunteer on the campaign of Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty.
Phelps Collins, who was arrested Nov. 10 for allegedly stealing about $7,700 worth of electronic equipment from the Swann Street house, had been living at the home of gay activist Jerry Clark at 1939 Calvert St., N.W. at the time of his arrest, according to police and court records.
Clark serves on the board of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and has been an active member of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest gay political group.
Mr. Price also practiced law in relation to gay and lesbian issues, and he and his partner had been earlier referenced in a 2004 USA Today article about the changing face of the family, as having provided sperm to local lesbian couples who were raising their biological sons in the area.
So far, I’ve omitted to mention the widow. Kathy Wone has met frustration at every turn:
One issue with the investigation is its vagabond status in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Three times now the case has been transferred. It was originally handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen Covell. When she went on leave, Thomas “Tad” DiBiase, a deputy chief of the office’s homicide division, took it over. Then DiBiase resigned abruptly in April, and the case circled back to Covell, who recently transferred out of homicide to the national security division. Both declined to comment on the case. Now, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Feitel has taken it over, according to Channing Phillips, the principal Associate U.S. Attorney.
The resignation of Mr. DiBiase, in particular, raised some eyebrows:
The reasons for the departure of Thomas “Tad” DiBiase, a deputy chief of the homicide division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, are still unclear. The U.S. Attorney’s Office would not talk much about it, but there is plenty of speculation and contradictory accounts among police, prosecutors and defense attorneys — some of it circulating on the Internet.
In an e-mail, Channing Phillips, principal Associate U.S. Attorney, said, “His departure had absolutely nothing to do with the Wone investigation.” DiBiase, 42, has hired former executive assistant U.S. Attorney Robert “Monty” Wilkinson, now with Troutman Sanders, to handle his severance.
A 12-year veteran of the federal prosecutor’s office, DiBiase was widely respected by colleagues and cops, and some say his departure has hurt morale and has stalled casework in the homicide division. Lawyers connected to the investigation into the August 2006 murder of Wone, the former general counsel of Radio Free Asia, said last week they did not know who was replacing DiBiase as prosecutor for the probe.
Mrs. Wone was blocked from pursuing a civil suit until the criminal investigation is completed. And who, until recently, was Mrs. Wone’s attorney? One Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General of the United States. Before he was appointed (and before anyone starts jumping on him) Holder did come out with a public statement asking for help in the investigation and suggesting that the suspects have not been very forthcoming with information. Still, it’s almost inconceivable that he should have let the statute of limitations on bringing charges against Collins and Michael Price lapse without screaming bloody murder.
On November 20, 2008, Joseph Price was indicted for obstruction and turned himself in. Wait: all three were indicted, Dylan Ward having been arrested three weeks earlier in Florida.
I’m going to hazard a guess: whatever one or more of the suspects administered Mr. Wone either didn’t work well enough, or worked all too well. Reverting to the electrical shock device noted in the original block quote, is this a taser or some kind of cattle prod? Could the victim have been subdued with that? Would it have left hypodermic-like marks? I don’t know. So, I’m going to go back to reading the accounts, and will see what else strikes me as relevant.
UPDATE: More from that last link above:
The police affidavit made public after Ward’s arrest says that the housemates gave detectives the following accounts:
Wone arrived about 10:30 p.m., and soon the household had retired to bed. Price and Zaborsky said they were awakened by a chime that sounds when a door to the townhouse is opened. Moments later, they said, they heard a series of “grunts” from beyond their room. They said they went to investigate and found Wone on the guest room sofa bed. A 911 call was placed at 11:49 p.m.
Price said he found a knife on Wone’s chest and moved it to a nightstand. Police said that knife’s blade was inconsistent with Wone’s wounds and had been smeared with Wone’s blood. The murder weapon is more likely a knife that remains missing from a cutlery set in Ward’s room, police said.
The EMTs said they saw hardly any blood. One of them noted “a very light film of blood with striation marks as if someone had taken a towel and wiped it down Mr. Wone’s chest,” the affidavit says. The other EMT said it appeared that Wone had been “showered, redressed and placed in the bed.”
A medical examiner found evidence that someone had restrained Wone by blocking his airways, possibly by holding a pillow to his face, the affidavit says. The medical examiner also found more than six fresh needle marks on his body.
The affidavit alleges that Wone was sexually assaulted while he was incapacitated. As for Wone being stabbed while unconscious, the affidavit says his wounds were “remarkably clean . . . perfect, slit-like” holes, meaning he did not struggle as the knife was plunged into his chest.
UPDATE 2:
The subsequent links provide little more evidence on the circumstances of Mr. Wone’s death, per se, focusing mostly on the legal wrangles of the litigants. Interestingly, though the property at which the murder took place was purchased years ago for well over $1 million, and despite the DC real-estate market’s having been largely insulated from declining property values, Mr. Price was unable to find a bail-bondsman in the District to offer up the $100k bond that the court ordered as security. Later, DC Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg, ordered that the three be released from monitoring, having determined that they didn’t pose a flight risk.
A piece in the Washington City Paper suggests that there are a couple of serious questions regarding the treatment of the evidence. As noted above, preliminary blood tests didn’t determine the presence of any drug on the normal forensic schedule. Did the FBI preserve samples of the victim’s blood for further testing? The police reports state that cadaver dogs identified the lint trap in the dryer and the porch drain as places that had blood traces. Did they retain that evidence for further testing? One of the early articles–I don’t recall which off the top of my head–noted that the investigation was handled by a Gay and Lesbian Outreach division of the PD. I mention this not to suggest anything untoward, but only because it seems possibly germane.
That’s all I’ve got based on the links at the site, though I do recommend that you go there and check it out, if you’ve got any interest. I’ll have to double back and add more links as time allows.
Sarah W. adds this point of law in the comments:
“Still, it’s almost inconceivable that he should have let the statute of limitations on bringing charges against Collins and Michael Price lapse without screaming bloody murder.â€
Minor point – the statute of limitations, proper, has not lapsed. The state has the option to re-arrest and to try the suspects on the original charges.
Also adding this:
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner, chief of the homicide division, argued that Price had been less cooperative than his co-defendants.
Kirschner said Price told court authorities at the time of his arrest that he had never used drugs. But Kirschner said subsequent investigation determined that Price had either possessed or distributed crystal methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy. Price’s attorney, Bernard Grimm, called the allegations “completely false.”
Price, a lawyer himself, is on paid leave from the firm Arent Fox.
Wow Dan. I frankly just skipped over that letter in reading Camile’s article, not knowing anything of it. But you have put together a string of absolute horrific “coincidences”. This is way more than political correctness.
Good work.
I read that for a bit too. Very strange story. But, I’m sure the investigation will only 1) encourage gay bashing or 2) reveal something unseemly related to these gay men. I think it’s just best we leave it alone.
The kidnapping, rape, and murder of Jesse Dirkhising didn’t amount to much, either. People who talk about it are called homophobes.
Are these guys connected somehow, or is it simply that gays will not be prosecuted for crimes having to do with gay sex?
Nothing unusual here. It’s more the Europeanization of America. Politicians, bureaucrats, police officers, lawyers have, in Belgium and France, been exposed (but not punished) running abduct-torture-rape-murder gangs several times. In America, this sort of thing was once confined to the Catholic Church–why would homosexuals in politics behave any differently than the homosexuals in the Catholic Church? I supposed in a century or two, this story may make a good _LA Confidential_-style novel, but the interlocking interesting here in encouraging and permitting corruption are too powerful to overcome.
Best not to stay overnight with one’s “friends” is the lesson here. There are some bonds stronger than friendship.
tehag
If the victim had been gay, and the “suspects” surrounding the case hetero, I imagine we’d see a different situation. There would probably already be a movie in the works. Book deals.
Not to belabor the point, but heteros killing homos is part of a larger truth. A “narrative.” Gays (possibly) killing heteros? Isolated incident. Nothing to see here.
It is NOT that I think there is a gay cabal of hetero-killing psychopaths. But, if “this” is an isolated event, than so is the gay killing events that happen in our society.
Shit, they even did a play at the high school in my home town about Matthew Shepherd.
“Still, it’s almost inconceivable that he should have let the statute of limitations on bringing charges against Collins and Michael Price lapse without screaming bloody murder.”
Minor point – the statute of limitations, proper, has not lapsed. The state has the option to re-arrest and to try the suspects on the original charges.
But those right wing christians are the real menace. Take away their rights. Give more rights to gay sadomasochists- if you don’t, you hate gays.
I’m telling you, if this had been done to somebody in my family, it would be one of the few times I’d consider taking the law into my own hands.
i wasn’t aware of this story, but is very interesting to me. and it makes me so fucking angry i could scream.
in the fall of 2007 one of my dearest friends since college (he moved me into my first dorm room in 1980) died under extremely peculiar circumstances in a fancy townhouse in DC. he was gay, as was the suspect. who had had another man die also under most peculiar circumstances in the same apartment a mere four days earlier. the suspect was released very quickly, and the investigation closed and the whole thing called a tragic accident/OD. having spoken to my friend in the days just before it happened (about a writing project he was going to assist me with) i do not believe the official story, and absolutely believe he was murdered. as does his sister, who tried for months to get the investigation reopened, to no avail. if you want the gories google dean johnson. if i read those articles again i’m going to start crying hysterically and not get anything done today.
and weirdly, i had a long crazy wonderful dream about him last night. i don’t believe in ghosts, but if i did…
there is something VERY wrong in washington, i mean besides our fascist emperor and corrupt congress of whores.
Louchette, can you gather up some links for me?
Any group that doesn’t have any rules to restrain it will act without rules.
This is true of illegals, this was true of priests in the Catholic Church, and it is increasingly true of gays (along with other protected minorities – blacks, hippies, Muslims, whatever). When social norms no longer apply, whether it’s common courtesy, employment regulations, or actual laws, what is to stop someone from doing whatever they feel like? It’s a sad side of human nature that we frequently do only what we’re forced to do.
I do not, in any way, mean to imply that gays as a group are evil or violent or anything. And I don’t mean to imply it of illegals, blacks, priests or whoever else I mentioned. What I am saying is that evil people within that group are able to act with impugnity because the group as a whole is “protected.” As in, bad people are given a pass to act badly.
Ella: Rope.
Stop giving a fuck about the gayness here, kids. It’s a sideshow. It changes press coverage but not the case, which is only about this: If you have the right friends (especially in D.C.), you can get away with murder.
It’s well enough known that it’s why some people get politically connected, e.g., Ted Bundy. In his case, it bought him time to kill more women while being repeatedly passed over as a suspect because the was Ted from the campaign.
Really? Really? Really?
He, who blatantly and egregiously neglected his duty to his client, and the list of prosecutors who ducked this case rather than blow a whistle on it, or, God forbid, charge a “prominent” name with murder — not good men.
Worse than killers. Much worse.
The only good news here is that they seem to have given up on railroading that Phelps Collins guy. Conscience? Nope. They found out, late, who his man was.
Your tax dollars at work.
it will hurt, but sure. i’ve been upset about this for over a year now. regular HTMLs for links? or some kind of forum code? a lot of the details, including his sister’s battle with the DC authoritahs are buried deep in comments on ‘the motherboards’ (NY nightlife forum site.) but there are plenty of links at places like NYMag, the NY post, village voice, etc. too, since he was the top downtown party promoter here for 2o+ years.
Whatever you think most important, louchette.
spycho @ 18… damn straight. and IIRC (and i may not) the suspect in my friend’s murder/death had heavy connections at the DoD.
damn my lysdexic typing. psycho and PIMF.
louchette: This site uses standard HTML for links — <a href=”URL”>link text</a> You can cut&paste that string if you like, and customize it for the specific purpose.
If you put two or more links in any one comment, the filters will assume you’re a spammer and your comment will just disappear. Sometimes (I reckon it has to do with the phase of the Moon or something) you can get away with two links, but for the most part you should stick with one per comment.
Regards,
Ric
(who regularly forgets that last and wonders where the comment went)
You can email them to me, if you prefer: vermontaigne-at-gmail-dot-com
Oh, yes — if you have lots of links, go register at the pub and do a nice long post. You’ll have a WYSIWYG editor and can insert as many links as you like. Then you can come back here and do a one-link comment using the permalink to your post (it’s under the time of the comment.)
Regards,
Ric
Well, the media angle plays in beyond more than just the gayness angle. The press ignores (because of the gayness angle) but that, in turn, provides cover for the crime.
these should get you started dan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/fashion/14dean.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10022007/gossip/pagesix/gay_legend_in_mystery_death.htm
http://gawker.com/news/game-over/dean-johnson-and-the-death-of-nightlife-310877.php
http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18883886&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=569341&rfi=6
http://www.queerty.com/dean-johnson-death-investigation-continues-20071011/
if i have the energy i may try to plow thru the motherboards comments again, but anyway, that is where his sister beth left her updates about the investigation, etc.:
http://motherboards.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/23310500341/m/15110682241
follow-up:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-02-05/news/dean-johnson-s-e-mails-shed-new-light-on-his-strange-death/2
there was much too much that was strange about this whole thing; from him being found with no ID (and the body not being identified for so long despite mr. saleh knowing exactly who he was) to mr. saleh’s government connections to the other death in his apartment that week. were there drugs in dean’s system? yes. but i had seen him and spoken to him frequently over the previous year and he had cleaned himself and his life up. he was still taking prescription drugs. he had lived with AIDs for over 20 years, and had gotten some serious injuries, including a horrifically painful back injury.
i will always believe that there was foul play involved, that maybe he knew too much about the private lives of these wealthy saudis, and that it has been covered up by some very powerful people.
doh! just posted before seeing all this nice advice. and TY dan and ric. my comment is probably in an approval queue due to the number of links. =P
approval queue?
Okay, well, I’ll email Jeff about that.
Yeah, that’s the point I was trying to make. Badly. Any time there is “protected” (or, in psycho’s better term, connected) group, no questions asked, then bad actors can take advantage.
Good example: football players. Or athletes in general. But I’m from Oklahoma, and in this part of the country, football can get away with almost anything, as long as they’re good and their team wins.
For the liberal MSM, protected groups are liberal/PC minority groups, like gays (but certainly not only gays), and/or people in the Democratic party.
It’s terrible when reality surprises people. Too many people still believe we live in the America of the past. American is ruled (so far, incompletely) by a new nobility, whose essential characteristics are exposed in their actions.
He should not have trusted his friends. That his friends took their seigneurial privileges over his sexuality was to be expected, once he placed himself in their manor.
I predict little will be reported about this alleged crime until witnessess can be procured who can claim he led a double life, frequenting rough sex bars–that their testimony will be worthless will not matter. Like the excuses given to hand Jeffrey Dahmer his victims, the murder will be excused–just another gay evening gone a little too far.
psycho and tehag, I must protest:
I’M NOT NAIVE! I say that really loud to everybody when I find myself in a rough neighborhood.
It sounds like he was stabbed after he was already dead. But there’s no telling but that he wasn’t gay or gay-ish himself. It’s a funny world.
dan, i sent you an email.
Happyfeet,
that is what I thought, dead men don’t bleed.
Thanks, louchette.
Well, if he was gay they prolly wouldn’t have had to kill ’em. Just saying.
Maybe they assumed he was gay and were surprised to find out that the guy just wanted to crash on the couch, as he had originally claimed. Normal people go “oops, sorry dude” in that situation, instead of raping and killing the guy.
I was thinking more of a tragic gay accident than they ever would have meant to kill him on purpose. For reals when you hear about the killing on purpose ones they like to keep them alive longer it seems before they kill them. I see this in movies all the time and sometimes on cable so I know a lot about it.
Well, if we’re going to go all hypothetical, I’ve seen plenty of R-rated movies too, and it would appear to me that they drugged the dude to rape him, but he came out a tad too early and was going to cry rape. Out comes the knife.
Law & Order SVU episode # 126. Just guessing, there.
I just can’t tell you from just the stuff up there that it’s 100% dead certain it wasn’t a consensual sort of deal, how it started. He wasn’t in a hurry to get home to his wife is sort of a salient fact.
So, you’re saying every dude is just a few drinks away from becoming teh ghey?
crap.
that’s terrible.
habing covered prosecutors for years, i can say that with some prominent exceptions, they are almost always outgunned, outclassed, outmanned and for all too many, out of their league.
No… just saying from what you read up there you can’t say anything for sure. I didn’t follow any of the links.
Well, it mentioned that he was not gay. But, really whether he was gay or experimenting that one night doesn’t really change things too much.
I’m sure he wasn’t trying out the “let’s be bound and murdered” lifestyle.
Well, no… but I think tragic gay accident and stabbed later to make it look like a conventional murder explains a lot, including why he was at the S&M B&B place to begin with.
What about the puncture wounds?
Besides, Happy, that isn’t nearly as interesting.
hf, I tend to agree with Carin. Seems to me likely that one of them would have copped a plea, maybe, if it was a consensual thing gotten out of hand.
But we’ll see. Apparently Price was subjected to a polygraph. Prosecution’s also trying to dig up as much evidence as possible from the computers and have subpoenaed the BlackBerry and phone records.
I say Happyfeet doesn’t watch enough teevee. That kind of married guy murdered in gay trist” is sooo 1970s. I’m thinking Rock Hudson’s “McMillion and Wife” (ironic, no?) plot-line.
Ok, with my html failure I’m off to lift weights.
ok. Someone definitely knows more than they’re telling I think.
Its not like there is a pretty solid tradition of ghey ritual murderers or anything. Seem like once a ghey does something lamentable, the ghey identity thing goes by the wayside, and they become, like Jim Jones, John Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Andrew Cunanan, or those priests with their hands on sixteen year old adolescent boys – somehow un-ghey.
I think D.C. townhouses are sort of inherently very 70s, really. They’re definitely not the future.
I didn’t know Jim Jones was gay.
“I didn’t know Jim Jones was gay.”
Only to the extent that he had sexual relationships with men. Jonestown was a decorating disaster.
Jones was bi.
Yes, but can you out-bench your html failure?
I disagree with that statement in the sense that these “groups” have no rules to restrain them. That is a rather broad brush. There are bad apples everywhere. If you look at the numbers, Catholic priest abuse is about the same as Protestant minister abuse, Jewish Rabbi abuse, etc. Such cases of abuse are relatively rare in all cases and statistically there is no significant increase for Catholics. However, what made the Catholic clergy abuse unique is that many bishops tended to settle cases quietly and kick the can down the road by transfering problem priests to other parishes, where they would abuse again. Had they simply defrocked such priests, there would be no scandal.
Which brings us back to this matter. This is a very disturbing case on its facts and how it has been investigated. The scandal by the government, like the scandal for the Catholic Church, is not in the act as in the failure to investigate and deal with the act. The question is why?
Which brings in the broader question of hate crimes. I am not saying killing someone randomly because they happen to be a different race or gender or sexually orientation is not relevant for determining culpability and sentancing if found guilty, but the crime is for the criminal act. If a gay guy rapes another gay guy, it is still rape. It is still hateful. If some rednecks kill a black guy for merely walking down the road, they absolutely deserve the death penalty. Not because the victim is black, but because they killed a human being in a heinous and morally depraived way.
And in Matthew Shepards’ case, turns out he was really killed over a drug deal gone bad. His killers thought by saying he came onto them in a gay way they could use that as a defense for killing him. Well that lie cost them, because all it did was focus national attention on a case and probably increased their sentances. The “he is gay so he had it coming defense” does not work even in Brokeback Mountain Wyoming. I give credit to Rosie O’Donnell on the Sheppard case, she was asked to get involved in the gay outrage over that matter and she said she would prefer not to unless there was a similar outcry over the Bird case (the black gentleman who was dragged by the rednecks in Texas).
“what made the Catholic clergy abuse unique . . . ”
. . . is that the Media got to construct an untrue narrative of “pedophilia” to smear an enemy in the “culture wars.” The overwhelming majority of these cases were a matter of an adult man (the priest) carrying on a sexual relationship with a sexually mature, adolescent male – something that is historically within the mainstream of homosexual experience. This, after decades of leftist infiltrators within the Church insisting that gays should be allowed to become priests.
The funny thing is that this quintessentially gay behavior was characterized as the product of repression and a constricted sexual morality.
Alec–there was a lot of abuse and most of it was not consenting. I agree that many of the perpetrators may have been repressed and deeply screwed up gay men taking advantage of youths and alterboys but the fact that the absuers tended (statisically) to track abuse rates in other religious demominations suggests that these were limited bad apples who were not screened out (and the Church desperate for priests was not screening candidates all that hard in the sixties, seventies, and eighties). That is no longer the case. The real issue of the scandal was bishops, like Cardinal Law, who transfered abusers again and again to parish to parish. Granted the media of course has its own motives, but blaming the media for running with those stories is blaming the messenger. There is no defending the Church on that. It badly handled the issue.
I think it’s both salient and germane that people do crazy things, especially when they’re messing around with those new drugs that’re out there now.
In NoCal we called influential “gay” people with multi-million dollar homes the “Gay Mafia.” Nice cars, awesome pads.
Still, I think Happy’s angle makes the most sense here. Consensual “games” can go very wrong. I new a guy whose adult brother died engaging in a silly masochistic act with a friend. It was just a phase, neither was “gay:” they were just young, stupid, working class guys.
Maybe the reason that no one wants to prosecute this case is, they can’t discern the murder from teh GHEY. Where does the crime begin and the human right end in a private residence? It’s a briar-patch for any state’s career-driven AG.
I wonder if this is on Excitable Andy’s radar?
Radar? Even if it were radar, though, I think this is the sort of thing that requires a little concentration before one launches into hysteria.
“there was a lot of abuse and most of it was not consenting”
How do you know this? I take your statement to mean that they were underage and incapable of consent?
“I agree that many of the perpetrators may have been repressed”
Clearly not – repressed would indicate some sort of compunction, of which there was little or no evidence. They were very clearly comfortable with their orientation.
“but blaming the media for running with those stories is blaming the messenger”
I blame the media for creating a false narrative. Sex between an adult and a 17 year old is not “pedophilia.” The media wrote the story that it believed would discredit the Church, degrade its cultural influence, and empower those within and without it who seek to change it into what the Episcopal Church has become.
You know what I find annoying about this thread? Thus spake Ella:
“I do not, in any way, mean to imply that gays as a group are evil or violent or anything. And I don’t mean to imply it of illegals, blacks, priests or whoever else I mentioned.”
The very fact that Ella felt the need to add this statement speaks volumes about how degenerated this culture has become. Anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together, and who actually read her post would know full well that she was not implying that “all (fill-in-the-blank)” protected groups are e-vil.
Yet you can bet your collective ass that there are plenty of people out there who, even if they did read Ella’s post, would even now be screaming RACIST/BIGOT/HOMOPHOBE/FROG FORNICATOR/ETC to all and sundry.
As for the case in question, I hate to say it, but this does not surprise me. I’ve lived and worked around “teh gheys” for well-nigh forty years, and I can tell you that while not all gays are into BDSM or the like, there are some weird, creepy and downright dangerous mofos in that “community”. And yes, even moreso that your equivalent sized “straight” group. So the idea that some Dom top macho man might decide, especially after having a few drinks along with his drug of choice, that Mr. Straight-Married-Lawyer had a really pretty ass that really needed his tool in it and (fill in rest of the story here) is not so surprising after all.
Alec–obviously there may have been some victims who were really not victims (such as consenting 17 year old teenagers) but those individuals are limited. I don’t disagree with you that the media has its own agenda for “reform” of the church.
For the most part, the victims of clerical abuse were real victims. Lots of these cases involved pre teens (grade school), early teens, etc. Have you seen these people testify about their abuse? The clergy who engaged in the abuse were scum (and when I say they were repressed in no way to I mean they are not culpable for their behavior) and should have been booted, prosecuted, etc. when it was apparent what they were up to.
If you think this is just made up stuff, well you are no better than Cardinal Law who allowed it to happen under his watch.
Everyone who engages in actual pedophilia are scum. Word. But, despite the surprising numbers of those employed in public schools who commit crimes against our children, I have yet to ever seen an expose on the pedophile lurking in our public schools. The media had an agenda.
The hand-wringing over “how could a PRIEST” do such a thing is tiresome, because it is -duh- criminal disgusting behavior. I didn’t know a pedophile had some sort of sense of these things and said to himself that he should get a job more in line with his sexual predilections.
The “only” issue was that these priests weren’t prosecuted. The whys of that is all I’m really concerned about. The jokes about Catholics and alter boys and priests. That is all garbage.
I think the AP did an investigation on teachers what do the bad touch thing
here is the October article
meaning October 2007
Alec is right. This whole “pedophile priest” thing, especially in the past eight years or so (as I recall, the MSM started their clarion call not long after Bush was first inaugurated; what a coincidence) is a media-generated mountain out of a mole hill.
I first read about this way back in 1992, while on a trip to a vendor facility just outside of Boston. It was in a local weekly paper; a really big write-up on the whole issue. Again, in 1992. But you heard nary a peep about it in the MSM. Of course, the Clintons had just been elected, too. Coincidence?
Fact remains that this story WAS out there, YEARS before the MSM decided to make an issue out of it.
And the word “pedophile” gets bandied about way too much. Another fact is that, just as Alec said, “The overwhelming majority of these cases were a matter of an adult man (the priest) carrying on a sexual relationship with a sexually mature, adolescent male – something that is historically within the mainstream of homosexual experience.” Deal with it.
Joe:
You still haven’t addressed how you know that the victims were all pre-pubescents? For the record, I think that a consenting 17 year old is still a victim, but that he is not the victim of a pedophile.
“If you think this is just made up stuff, well you are no better than Cardinal Law who allowed it to happen under his watch.”
Ummm, thanks for putting words in my mouth. They are tasty, like pie.
You’re asserting the same false dichotomy that the media did. I see what happened for what it was – Gay predatory behavior. Actual, clinically-defined pedophilia was a minute fraction of the “abuse.” It doesn’t stop being “gay” because it is bad, and because the gays involved are villains. That is the framework within which the media plays its game – gay is always light and smart and fun and hip and good. There is no darkside to gay culture/lifestyle that dare be mentioned – the second a GLTB does something horrific, the gay is whitewashed, or the story suppressed.
In contrast, when a GLBT is a victim, it is a terrific opportunity for the media to hector the “norms” and push the agenda.
Oh, and as long as Joe brought it up, insofar as the Bird case and the media’s handing of same; there was a bit of information about that murder that, except at the very beginning when it sort of “accidentally” slipped out, but was suppressed thereafter.
Most people think those three cockholsters in Jasper, TX just randomly came across Bird and decided to kill him for being black. That’s certainly what the media wanted you to think.
Not so. Turns out at least one of those rednecks and Bird knew each other from prison. There was bad blood between them and so these miscreants decided it was time for payback. Does this justify their crime? Hell, no. But was it merely the act of some of your typical Texas rednecks murdering someone for kicks because the guy was out “walking around while black”, the way the media wanted it portrayed?
Hell, no.
Carin is right. There is abuse all the times in the secular world. The difference is it is not generally allowed to linger for years. They get fired. I am not saying sexual abuse of children is a Catholic or even a religious thing. It is not. But the Catholic Church screwed up badly in some cases in dealing with such abuse.
Alec. There were thousands of victims. Some were sixteen and seventeen year old kids engaging in sex with an adult. Obviously a very bad thing for a clergy member to be doing. Certainly grounds for immediately defrocking (if proven). But peodophilia? Of course not. It is pededastry.
When you start getting past sixteen is gets a lot worse. Is it pedephilia? No. But it is very bad.
But when you get below 13 years of age, then it is time to send out the posse with the rope (metaphorically of course, I do not want someone like Patterico accusing me a death threat). There were kids as young as eight and nine who were sexually molested. A few cases of children even younger than that. There was a lot of evidence of a deviant priests (granted a tiny minority of priests) who abused more than 100 children of a variety of ages and who did so for years, transfered from parish to parish, some of which were sent to psychiatric counseling by the Church specifically to deal with their unnatural urges.
“historically within the mainstream of homosexual experience”
If you have the stomach for it, go into a gay bookstore, or surf amazon for pictorial representations of ephebic, teen boys (whether they are minor teens or young looking men) who are eroticized for use as softcore by gay men. Its an open secret that the Media will keep in confidence with its allies in order to present the preferred narrative.
Alec–how about this one.
“Alec–how about this one.”
What about it? An anecdote is not data.
This has gotten off topic. You can tell cause of someone used the word ephebic. 74 comments about a dead lawyer. This blog is weird.
Alec–I am not disagreeing that homosexuals in the priesthood made this problem worse. But given that the statistics for individual adult clergy involved abuse were not radically different than other religious or secular groups, that cannot be the whole story. The problem for the Roman Catholic Church was these scumbags criminals (and I agree that pedastry is not as bad as peodophilia, but it is still very bad) were allowed to repeat their actions again and again. That is no longer the case. The policy is now zero tollerance.
Sorry happy I agree it is off topic. I really do not feel like debating this issue any more. I do not have ths statistics at my fingertips and I suppose I could go research them to satisfy Alec. I know the statistics are more weighted to pederastry than peodophilia, but both occurred and all of it was bad in matters of degree.
i think O!’s mental state is ephebic.
This does seem to be getting more attention than the average DC homicide. Must be because of the PC.
More than the average DC prominent lawyer weirdo gay sex drug evidence tampering murder?
Then, WHERE’S GRETA?
More media attention? WTF are you talking about? The (gay) guys who started the blog did so because they can’t figure out why no one seems to care about the dead (possibly straight) guy. Today is the first I’ve heard about it, and it’s 2.5 yrs old.
who killed chandra levy?
They finally figured that one out, router.
Meya is totally discounting the media’s lack of interesting in broadcasting a (possibly) gay murder. Meaning, gays murdering someone. Now, if it had been straight dudes murdering a gay dude, as I said earlier, we’d already have seen the book deal and the Made-for-TeeVee movie. Possibly a play for high school kids. It’s all about whatever the working narrative can be made to be.
“Meya is totally discounting the media’s lack of interesting in broadcasting a (possibly) gay murder”
Dude, they’re discounting this much less than a lot of black and hispanic homicides in DC — I don’t know how many of those you’ve heard of in the last 2.5 years. Like I said, must be because of the PC
You mean, black on black homicides? Mostly gang or drug related? Gee, I wonder why I haven’t heard of this stuff.
Of course, in Detroit, I’ve heard plenty.
blacks killing blacks – dog bites man for liberal media. now teh ghey killing shush
“Gee, I wonder why I haven’t heard of this stuff. ”
I told you. Because of the PC.
teh ghey thing should have been extinguished long ago according to darwin
lots of illegal aliens killing folks in dc?
Well, that Meya, and the fact that you can only report so many times that a black gang-banger got shot by another black gang-banger w/o it getting … you know … a tad repetitive.
But a bunch of gay guys killing a hetero? If they were really interested in selling papers they’d put that on the front page.
check the nyt stock price
that’s because classified ads at the time were still making money
“that’s because classified ads at the time were still making money”
The latest was just last fall.
Though, I didn’t check the coverage at the moonie times. I don’t think they have much financial pressures. Try there.
Made front page of the Metro 3 times in 2.5 years? That’s coverage? That’s about average with weekend garage sales
“That’s coverage? ”
It’s no Chandra Levy. But I didn’t check the moonie times. Do you read them?
No,
I don’t live there and have no idea what moonie times are. I just thought it was an odd statement, metro 3 times in 2.5 years sounds like it is a non story.
I am with you Carin. It is the first I am hearing of this too. And drugging a friend and possibly gang raping and killing him, yeah that is notorious enough without the gay angle to warrant some national attention.
Then you add it is in DC, involved Eric Holder as an attorney, and a blown statute of limitations, and I am shocked I have not heard of this before. Something stinks and it ain’t in Denmark.
http://whomurderedrobertwone.com/faq-wone101/
http://whomurderedrobertwone.com/
“I really do not feel like debating this issue any more. I do not have ths statistics at my fingertips and I suppose I could go research them to satisfy Alec.”
Gee, it’s almost like you let someone else do your thinking for you and accepted the narrative in lieu of the facts of the thing.
Peruse what passes for “pleasure” south of Market Street in San Francisco on a Friday night, and you’ll never listen to Andrew Sullivan’s sermons about torture the same way again.
I’ve said this a million times, but, for some reason, it didn’t get through to Andy or John McCain.
[…] his sometimes being late to perform the proper around-reaching, I try not to be disappointed when he doesn’t respond in timely fashion to something that I’ve done that I feel merits wide… I figure that he and others will get around to it when they’ve got the time. Posted by Dan […]
This is NOT at all on Andrew Sullivan’s radar. Mostly because he either has his head in the sand or up his butt. You can bet that he read Paglia on the Wone murder yesterday, but he remains conspicuously silent. Andrew is pro gay marriage (and so am I) as well as defendant Joe Price. Andrew won’t write on anything that might run counter to his biases.
Surprising how little coverage this has received.
Oh wait, three gay men murdering a straight? In BDSM activity? Oh, yes, we must keep that quiet. It might make a bad media image.
Dan:
I’m sorry this is so late in the thread, but this is a hell of a post!
I really enjoy your collage pieces, but the longer ones like this with appropriate updates are exceptional.
Well done.
This is only slightly related, but may provide some insight.
I once learned of an accidental suicide where the victim had been using his professional, after-hours access to dental offices to breathe nitrous oxide while masturbating. One dentist came into his office one morning to find the guy asphyxiated on the floor with porn mags next to him. The police (and coroner, I presume) agreed to call his death a heart attack, so as to shield the guy’s wife and kids from what really happened. It was just one of those “gentlemen’s agreement” things that officials used to do — and maybe they still do — to protect the innocent.
In this case, there may be some question as to whether the victim voluntarily subjected himself to BDSM activity with these guys. (What evidence is there that he was “exclusively heterosexual”?) I mean, Oakton is only 17 miles from D.C. and HOV restrictions on I-66 end at night. Why did the guy think it was worthwhile to pack an overnight bag and camp out in town, rather than sleep in his own bed?
Of course, that doesn’t excuse his killing, and neither does it entitle the police to sit on their hands with murder/manslaughter charges. What I’m wondering is whether they hoped the guys’ story wouldn’t be closely scrutinized and might stand up, for the benefit of the victim’s family.
In this and many other cases, it’s what’s not on paper that’s usually the most revealing.
I read your post, but not all of the comments. However, I have to add to Michael Rittenhouse’s comment #111 that I also am skeptical that Wone, the murder victim, was straight just because he also was married.
I expect it is not as common as it used to be — even recently — for gays to marry heterosexually and be sexually active as predators in the gay community. I call them “predators” since they only come to the gay community to look for sexual prey rather than a potential life partner, since they already have one.
When a heterosexually married man is caught in a homosexual encounter, the most likely explanation always is that he is gay and married for the perquisites of heterosexual life, such as status and professional promotion. And the same goes for heterosexually married women caught in a lesbian encounter.
If you want the scoop on gay politicians who have married heterosexually, follow HillBuzz, a blog by some very politically connected gay men in Chicago who worked tirelessly for McCain/Palin after the nomination was stolen from Hillary.
Cynthia
[…] movers and shakers, before I offer my commentary, but on occasion I can be moved to add something a little more substantive, even if I’m not paid to […]
[…] The reason that I’ve become interested in posting about Dean Johnson’s death is that it was mentioned by louchette in the comments to my post on Robert Wone. What does Johnson’s death have to do with Wone’s? Both of them died under mysterious […]
[…] site; proteinwisdom.com contributor Dan Collins saw us mentioned by Paglia and then wrote a provacative piece on the Wone case shortly after. You may also have seen some of his smart takes lately in the […]
[…] The Robert Wone case, which I’ve written about here […]
[…] take on this pathetic episode. There are some good writers over there. You’re not one of them, Edroso. Posted by Dan Collins @ 5:14 am | Trackback SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Letterman […]
In response to the earlier comment by Alec Leamas
“If you have the stomach for it, go into a gay bookstore, or surf amazon for pictorial representations of ephebic, teen boys (whether they are minor teens or young looking men) who are eroticized for use as softcore by gay men. Its an open secret that the Media will keep in confidence with its allies in order to present the preferred narrative.”
Interesting, it sounds as if you have wandered into these bookstores and cruised the web looking for such pictures often.
This is such a ridiculous statement. Do you know how much porn and erotic material about ‘young-looking’ or underaged girls is generated by heterosexuals? It easily outnumbers the stuff that you are talking about.
You, like other commentors here, are trying to paint a picture of gays as more deviant and unchecked in their lusts than heterosexuals. There are as many, if not more, heteros in the S&M, bondage or whatever ‘communities’ than there are gays. Straight pornography is largely more violent than gay porn is – with common images of women being choked, degraded and restrained during sex acts.
I don’t know what happened in this case. Whoever killed Mr. Wone should be locked up without any special treatments. But the incident is breeding a lot of nutty perspectives about gay people and all of our ‘privileges’ in society. Give me a frickin break.