Robert Wone: Part 1

Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail and may be sensitive for some listeners. All witnesses, purchas of interest, and suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are finally getting back to our regularly scheduled programming with a Right Now and True Crime headed into a unsolved case. So I am so glad to be back. So let's dive right into Right Now and True Crime. First thing is, we talked about the Alec Baldwin trial and how the case against him was dismissed, and now the armorer, Hannah Gutier's read is officially seeking a new trial. And I do think that everything that went on with Alex trial is going to help Hannah because Hannah was sentenced to some prison time for her role in the death of Helena Hutchins. So this is just going to help with her appeal process and her seeking a new trial based on what happened with Alex Trials, so it will be really interesting to see what ends up happening with that unfortunate news. In the case of missing Corpus Christi, Texas and m College student Caleb Harris, he went missing March fourth. He was last seen at his off campus apartment, which was the cottages at Corpus Christi on Ennis Jocelyn Road. So they had found some remains at the wastewater station that is right near Ennis Joplin Road, and they have officially confirmed that those remains do in fact belong to Caleb Harris. His parents came out and said, officially, we all have heavy hearts this evening as we learned of the positive identification of our sweet Caleb. We will grieve our son, but we are in peace knowing he is with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So sad. I can't even imagine what his poor parents are having to go through and his family are having to go through as they navigate this. This might be a situation too. It doesn't appear that there is foul play involved, but it very well maybe a situation where it was just a unfortunate accident and that unfortunately Caleb ended up losing his life because it did not happen far from where he lived. So it's really sad, really unfortunate. He was actually last seen two forty five am Monday, March fourth, twenty twenty four, near the apartment, like I said, and he had let his dog out and then he, I guess, just walked off. He left behind his car, his keys, his wallet. There was a pin from his cell phone around three am that morning, and that is the last time anyone saw or heard from Caleb, and very unfortunate, sad that it took so long for them to find him. I really don't know all the circumstances at this time, and I don't think I think it's going to be a while before we know exactly everything. But as of right now, they're saying it doesn't appear that foul play was involved. But I will continue to keep you guys updated on everything. He is young, only twenty one years old, had his whole life ahead of him, so I know that his family is so grieving right now, but at least they do have that closure. Okay, moving on, you guys, remember I've talked about the Micah Miller case. She is the woman who allegedly committed suicide in the midst of going through a separation from her husband, who is a pastor. He talked about her death at church. It was all just really weird and eerie. So her husband is called JP Miller, John Paul Miller, and there is going to be an interview that is going to be airing with him on News Nation with Ashley Banfield Friday at ten pm Eastern. I am going to play a little preview from the interview because it's just bizarre and it's JP Miller. He's done a lot of questionable things. We still don't know exactly the role that he had in his wife's death, allegedly in my opinion, But let's listen to a little bit of this interview. This is just a couple minute clip and if you want to see the whole interview, tune into Banfield Friday night for more. Here we go. One of the videos that has surfaced recently is from years ago. I'm sure you know what it is. You're sitting face down on the ground and you're freaking out and you're talking about early squealing about being eaten by ants, take in the wrong meds that you missed your family engine, cause is your medication something they gave you? I mean for viewers, for people watching it, the common thought is what is going on here? And do you have a drug problem? So I fell out of a tree, a giant magnoia tree. It was like three hundred years old. I broke twelve bones. It was ten to twelve bones. I don't know if you count, figure yeah, it count anyway. I have all this metal in my body, and I'd never taken pain nets in my life, and I just had my body cast taken off, and so I took a little bit too much pain meds that day. That's it. That's just what cossette. I don't remember any of them, those two thousand and seventeen, sixteen, sixteen, twenty sixteen, two thou sixteen, and think it was like ten years ago, eight years ago, whatever. And I was missing my family. My wife, Mike had we started through an affair and so we were both married to people and then you know, we got divorced. And I was missing my family because I'd lost my you know family at the time, and I was on pain meds and it just all just put it together. But fell out of a tree, broke a bunch of bones took to me paint meds. That was that story. Not hallucinogenics. Not what would a lucinogenic be make you hallucinate? What makes you hallucinate? Drugs like illegal drugs, hallucinogenic drugs. Yeah, oh, I've never done legal drug my whole life. Okay, well, crap, that was a liar. I'm sorry. That was a liar. When I was sixteen years old, one time I was in a truck with two of my friends and they were both smoking pot. I didn't smoke any but they do a thing called hot box, and so I got some of that and I tried steroids one time. Dude, this guy is such a performative a whole In my opinion, I cannot deal with him. There is just something about him. I really want to watch this interview because I want to know more about what he has to say. He's so like self involved and pretentious. I just cannot So the video that they were referring to is somebody had released this video of him where he was allegedly on like illegal substances and having like hallucinations. He's on the ground crying. You can't even understand him. It like goes on forever and ever and ever. You heard a little bit of the clip in what I just played, But this guy is something else, and I really really need to know more. And the fact that he said that his and MICA's relationships started as an affair kind of shocked he's admitting to that because he and Micah knew each other when Micah was young. She was like fourteen thirteen fourteen when she first met JP. He's quite a few years older than her, and in my opinion, there was definitely some grooming going on and some manipulation, because it always is the older man preying on the younger woman and manipulating them. And it's going to be interesting to really hear what JP has to say because the whole thing is just really, really shady. As we know, he was allegedly abusing Micah in god knows what ways, but she had spoken out about it in the months leading up to her death, and it's just a tragic story all around. So I cannot wait to check out that interview because I want to hear more about what he has to say, because this guy is a real, real piece of work. So that is all for right now. In True Crime, we are going to go ahead and get started with today's episode. Today's episode is going to be part one of two, and I will say that I initially started recording this episode without my microphone because I was recording during the hurricane. I didn't have my micro with me, So the first few minutes of the episode probably sound a little less quality than the latter parts of the episode, so that is why. But regardless, the story is a really interesting one that definitely needs to be told. So I hope you guys enjoy part one and I will be bringing you part two on Sunday night Monday morning, so I hope you guys enjoy. Okay, guys, today we are going to be talking about the unsolved homicide of a man named Robert Wan. Robert Wan was born on June first of nineteen seventy four. He was a fourth generation Chinese American. He was born in Manhattan, New York, but he was raised in Brooklyn, New York. And Robert was a very smart guy. He had a lot of ambitions. After he graduated from high school, he went to the College of William and Mary. Robert was studying law, and it was at William and Mary that we met one of our key players in the story, who is named Joseph Price. So he met Joseph at William and Mary, and Joseph was a senior in the nineteen ninety two nineteen ninety three year. Joseph was also a law student, and him and Robert shared many social activities and they became very very quick friends. From here on out, I'm going to be referring to him as Joe instead of Joseph because he primarily went by Joe. So Joe ended up graduating in nineteen ninety three. Robert was a couple of years behind him, so he stayed in school and eventually graduated in nineteen ninety six. So once Robert graduated, he went on to serve as a law clerk to a judge in Virginia. He then went on to work in some commercial real estate law for about six years, and he also worked with an attorney in Washington, d c. And he also did a lot of work with the Organization of Chinese Americans. He was very involved in that organization and he served as general counsel for them as well. In June of two thousand and three, Robert married a lovely woman named Catherine and they decided that they were going to settle down in Virginia. Robert had decided to leave the law firm that he was working for and he ended up getting hired as general counsel for Radio Free Asia. And this is the job that Robert had when he was unfortunately murdered. Robert also was a very, very proud Asian American. He did a lot in the Asian American community and at the time of his death, he was the president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association. So this is a guy that had a lot of accolades. He had a lot of goals in his life. He was very career driven, but he also was really close with his family, and he was newly married, so obviously in love with his wife. They were an amazing perfect couple, and he had just started this new job. So everything was seemingly going perfect in Robert's life. So with Robert starting this new job at Radio Free Asia, he was working in downtown Washington, and the commute could be a lot to go from Washington to Virginia and back and forth and back and forth, especially when he had to be at work super super early in the morning. So on August second of two thousand and six, Robert had reached out to several friends that lived in the Washington area to see if it was possible if he could stay with them. That way he would have easier access to his job rather than going back and forth to Virginia. And unfortunately, the first person that responded and texted him back was his college friend Joe Price. So Joe lived in a neighborhood called DuPont Circle, and he lived on Swan Street, and he lived in a row house. He was in a domestic partnership with a man named Victor Zaborski. And actual fun fact about Victor Zaborski. If you guys remember back in the nineties, like late nineties, early two thousands, there was that got Milk campaign that was a massive movement for a while. Victor Zaborski is the one who is one of the creative geniuses behind the got Milk campaign. So that's a fun fact. So he lived with Victor, who was his domestic partner, and he also lived with another guy named Dylan Ward. So there was the three of them that lived in this row house. So here's where things get a little skewed and interesting. To say the least. So Joseph Price, Joe was very into BDSM and he wasn't really getting what he wanted as far as that goes. When it came to Victor, Victor just wasn't really vibing with that mentality. So Joe decided to bring a third person into their relationship, and that person was Dylan. So these three essentially were in a polyamorous relationship and they all lived in this row house. And the way that it's explained is that Victor loved Joe and would do anything for him. Joe loved Dylan and his world revolved around Dylan. So there was definitely a very interesting dynamic between the three of these men in regards to their relationship and who was in control and who was just along for the ride. So I think this is a really important thing to understand and paint a picture of because it's going to come into play as we continue to talk about the story. So the night of August second, Robert had worked late at his job, and then because Joe took him up on the offer, Robert went ahead and made his way to Joe's home around ten thirty pm. Neighbors recall hearing a scream during the eleven PM newscast and a nine to one one call made at eleven forty nine pm by Victor z Ofwarski then came in and we are going to listen to that nine to one one call now and then we are going to break it down. DC Emergency Namure one operated six seven. Do you need ponine quiet from? What's wrong? Man? We had someone na in our health evidently, and they sab somebody. Okay, come have the house now. I don't know. We've heard I'm a bleeding, Come one bleeding. Someone is bleeding in our health? Okay, where an't they bleeding from? I think I think in the stomach? May be conscious. Oh, I'm down for man. I'm gonna send him up. Okay. Female or male, says the male. Who's a friend of ours, who's spent you're spending the neighborhood? Okay? And who was the person that stabbed him? Do you know if he's conscious? We need now doing man he is, tell me he's not conscious, he's not conscious at all. No. Where is he breathing? They send to me, calm down, I'm gonna help you. Okay, he breathing. I'm upstairs and he's downstairs. I don't know. Okay, who's downstairs? Foot town. My partner is downstairs with him the house. Don't mean to go upstairs the politics immediately Okay. Who is the person? O coy. I'm sending the paraman and the police. Okay, who is the person that stabs him? I don't know. We think that's somebody that sugar in the house. You've heard the trying the door fifteen A man calm down fifteen O nine one street and offwest of my correct. If the person that says something gets in the home, yeah, we gotta help him roll okay me, we have help him rout here. They are playing wrong, see you now, I'm saying the police and the paramedics. Okay, So what says okay, what I need you to do is go downstairs, okay, the place where wherever he was staying there. I need you to get a drank, law okay, and just apply pressure to that area. See this whatever he was staying there on his body, and then you can take a towel down to this while you're waiting for the paramedics to arrive and just apply pressure. Even if the rag or tower is saturated with blood. It's getting another towel and put it on top, but never lifted the first tower off the area, holding on. Once they get killed that we're blood. To put another towel on top of that and just applying pressure into the paramedic yeah yeah, and the heart. Okay. If he's breathing, we have help him rout now. Okay, you don't know who it was, don't don't help Okay, is he breathing, but help okay, we have help her route now, I'm okay, we do have help her out. Okay, just go down there and try to tell you how thing or your other the other half to just try to keep him calm and talk to him. Okay, keep him calm and talk to him till someone gets there. And at the same time, get a drink cloth and just hold it right there in the area. Yes, okay, okay, And once you get saturated with blood, till get another one. Go get another town. And you've been implying on top of town once to get killed double blood. As we leave, we need to to apply pressure on that area. It's a plasture, okay, it's the only thing till the paramedics gets there. They should be putting up any moment if they're already around to your location. You don't know who did this. We have no idea. It's the door open so they can get in. You don't know how they got in. Okay, well I'm asking you now, if the door open so the paramedicine get in once they get here, all right for anything, If the door open till they can get in. It's the door open so the so the paramedicine get in the home. I was gonna go the that's a private home on apartment. It's a home. It's a home at thirteen or nine Swan Street off Flaine. The person has one of our lives. Uh, the person that stays them ran out the door with a knife, I think. Okay, anybody gave any type of description of the person that came in the home, We have no description. We hurt. We heard the chime. Have we heard the screens from our and okay, and so we came running downstairs. Were running. So you both go upstairs and your friends downstairs. You heard the door open and then you heard the screen. We didn't. I didn't hear the door open until after the screen, and then we ran down the stairs and we heard we are we have an alarm until the time went off. Okay, as the indoors, we really need to endoorance. Okay, they are wrong. Now, man, go to the door. They should be putting up any moment. Okay, I'm afraid to go on the Okay. The person who's down, says, is the person that was supported. So we're in the we're on the second floor. Okay, so somebody need to go on open the door for the pair of men. You're that share of that person still a home and I have no idea. Okay, we have paramedy road. Okay, what kind of it? What time is it at the moment? Twenty three fifty four? Is eleven sixty four? Man? Before? Yes, I mean I'm sailing the line with you. I'll sail the line. Said. Somebody gets their kind, we'll hang on bringing them right now. I'm not hanging up, but we we need help now. Okay, there route, ma'am, the iron route. Let me know when you hear the paramedic and you look the wind and coming, I'm looking out the window and I see nothing. I see nobody. Okay, it seemed like the apple, but the Iron route. Man, they're coming here. They are here, they are, They're there because I'm going downstairs. Okay, I'll tell the mine with you. See you do for paramedics, Okay, but we don't want to stop throwing a second bore, ma'am. That's really the rest man. He'll be okay, Okay. So that is a NIM one one call. It was long, but I wanted to play the whole thing because I think Victor's demeanor during the NIMAL one call is really really important to the story. So we're going to talk all about everything in a little bit. But essentially what we're getting from the nine one one call is that Robert was asleep on the second floor Victor and Joe, oh, and I don't know where Dylan was. We're asleep on the third floor, allegedly, and they heard screaming, they heard the alarm doorchime, and then they found Robert with a stab wound to his chest. So they're very much painting a story of an intruder to this somebody broken. They took a knife from our kitchen and then stabbed Robert with this knife, and then they fled. So that is very much the story that is being painted. And I personally think you can tell a lot by a nimal one call. Now, of course, people are going through trauma. You can't necessarily put a lot on how someone reacts to a traumatic situation if they're extremely calm or if they're extremely panicked. But I do feel like Victor's nine one one call, for the most part, seems pretty genuine and like pretty sincere. I feel like he is definitely upset and dealing with a lot. Now you also have to realize that Robert was good friends with Joe. I don't know of his relationship with the other two men, if they were just acquaintances or if he knew them really, really well. I assume he probably did have some type of friendly relationship with Victor, because Victor and Joe had been together for quite a bit of time at that point, so I assume Victor did know Robert pretty well. But this is a really traumatizing event. You can tell that Victor is just taken aback by this whole thing, and he genuinely does seem concerned. So paramedics arrive to the scene. Police arrived to the scene. Joe goes ahead and calls Robert's wife, and unfortunately Robert was pronounced dead at George Washington University Hospital at twelve twenty four am on August third of two thousand and six. When the paramedics arrived, they very much described that everyone in the home was very calm. None of them seemed to be frantic or even helping to direct the paramedics to where Robert was. So the main paramedic that was on scene that night said that as he was making his way to the victim, Robert on the second floor, he encountered a man who was in a towel, wrapped at a towel, and they locked eyes, and the paramedics said, like, what happened, what's going on? And he completely disregarded anything he said and walked into another bedroom and closed the door, so he didn't engage with him at all. So the paramedic continued to make his way to the second floor to try to get to Robert, and he sees another man who is kind of standing kneeling over Robert, and he said, I heard a scream. The paramedic goes in assesses Robert, and interestingly enough, the paramedics said that he saw that he had a stab wound, but there was no blood on Robert. There was no blood in the bed where Robert was lying, so he said he immediately the hair on the back of his neck started to get stand up, and he just felt like something was majorly off with this whole scene. Investigators come in and they are of course analyzing everything, and one thing that kind of struck all of them as very odd is all three of the occupants of the home. They were all there. They were all dressed in white robes. They looked like they had been freshly showered, their hair was slicked back, and when they met to talk with them, you know, as a whole, it very much appeared that they were going with the story that the back door was unlocked, somebody broke in, the knife that was used to stab him was from a set in our kitchen, and that was that they were able to sneak out without anyone knowing anything. And the investigators initially said that when they were trying to get a story from the guys, that Joe was the one who was talking. He was the one who was like the leader, and any time that one of the others tried to chime in and say something, Joe would just give them a look. Basically, alluding to you need to stop talking. So the investigators very much knew that Joe was the person who was spearheading all of this and that potentially there could have been more going on than met the eye. Initially it might have been more than just an intruder. Another thing that they found extremely odd was that there was no blood. There was just a little bit of a bloodstain on the bed that Robert allegedly had been killed on. There was a towel nearby that had just a little bit of blood, hardly anything, and that they found just had a little bit of blood on it. Like usually in a stabbing, even if it's just a single stab wound to somebody, there is an enormous amount of blood because that's what the whole bleeding out thing means, that there's a lot of blood that you lose from your body. In this situation, that was not the case. So immediately investigators knew that there was way more to this than met the eye. So they end up bringing all three guys down to the station to question them. They brought down Dylan, Joe, and Victor, and initially law enforcement and the detectives that were working this case, we're trying to figure out why Robert would be staying in a home with three gay men if he was straight. They were trying to maybe allude that he was there for different reasons other than just it was convenient for his job. But all three men said, he is very happily married, He loves his wife straight. There is nothing of a sexual nature going on with him and us. He was just there to spend the night, and he was an old friend of Joe. Joe and him had been friends since college and they had just continued to keep up with each other. They were also both in the same business. They were both in law, so they also had a lot in common in those regards. And that is the whole reason that he initially reached out to Joe, is because he knew that Joe lived in the city and would be able to put him up for the night, and that way he wouldn't have to take the transit back and forth to Virginia. So this was basically just like an old friend doing a favor for another old friend. So they all kind of say the same story. They were all asleep when initially Victor and Joe heard the door time, and they woke up and then they hear like grunting sounds, and then they find Robert and he has been stabbed. And then in in the midst of that is when Dylan wakes up and realizes what has happened. So they are very much sticking with this intruder theory. It was an intruder. Somebody came in. They didn't come in the front door, because the front door is for sure locked. They must have come in the back door. So investigators check out the back door and look to see what's going on back there. They have a little backyard. It is quite small, and there's also a security privacy fence that is also dead bolted. It is seven feet high, so somebody easily could have scaled it jumped over it. But what investigators found is that there was a lot of cobwebs that kind of were on the fence and none of those had been disturbed. There was no dirt or pollen or anything like that that had been disturbed. There was no evidence of anyone entering the home breaking in. Nothing was disrupted. Everything in the home was in pristine condition. Nothing was missing or knocked over or anything like that. Another really good important note to take in here is the house is extremely old. It is over one hundred years old. And there are sixteen stairs from floor one to floor two, and they are wooden and they are creaky, and you would easily hear someone going up them, and you would easily hear if someone was running down them trying to escape after committing this horrific crime against Robert, and none of them heard a thing, and that does not track with intruder. It does not track. Joe says that when him and Victor discovered that Robert had been stabbed, they walked in. The room is dark, They see that Robert has been stabbed. The knife is laying on his chest. So Joe picks up the knife and puts it on the table next to the bed, and in that Victor is freaking out, and Joe tells Victor go downstairs and call nine one one, or go upstairs and call nine on one. So that is then when we hear that nine one on phone call. So Joe is just sitting there with Robert, and that is exactly where the paramedics find him when they finally arrived to the house, just kind of kneeling over his body, just sitting there. I think he was applying pressure like the nine on one operator had told them to. He was applying pressure to his wound, but there just wasn't a lot of blood, which is very interesting in a stabbing type of attack. So it makes you question and detectives questioned as well, like did somebody clean up this crime scene? Was there some tampering with the crime scene beforehand? There is a lot going into this, So detectives eventually decide that the intruder theory is bs. They know that whoever stabbed Robert and killed Robert was in that house. There was four people in that house. One of them ended up dead. Three other people in that house are all sticking with this intruder theory story that this intruder came in without a weapon, they grabbed a knife from the butcher block in the kitchen, and they went and they targeted the one man that did not live at the house. None of it made sense, so investigators started to try to poke holes in their theory. Now, Joe and Victor were sleeping in an upstairs bedroom when all of this went down. Dylan allegedly maybe was in his room, but there's nobody to alibi that or say that for a fact. But yet when investigators tried to maybe suggest to Joe that Dylan is the one responsible for this, he very much backs him one hundred percent and says, there's absolutely no way he could never even slap someone, much less kill somebody. I know him, and I know Victor better than I know my mom. There's no way that he would kill Robert, or that Victor would kill Robert. Very much just coming to his defense eight hundred and ten percent, even though he has no way to say that, I know for sure that Dylan was in his room when this was happening. And at this point, Joe's a lawyer, He is smart. He knows that he is potentially being looked at as a suspect in this, but he says, I have no reason that I would ever want to kill Robert. He is one of my best friends. We've been friends since forever. I've known him since he was eighteen. Nobody in this house would ever do anything like that. And he is just fiercely sticking to a story that this was an intruder, And investigators are definitely doing their due diligence trying to poke holes in this intruder theory and essentially trying to get them to turn on each other, because if there's three people that are maybe involved in some type of cover up, there's usually a way to get one of them to speak and tell the truth about what really happened. That is a lot of times what these investigators do in these situations is they tried to wear down these people so eventually one of them will come forward and say exactly what happened. And that is what they are trying to do with Joe. They're trying to do it with Victor, and they're trying to do it with Dylan. So they realize that Dylan is like their weak link and the outlier, so they go ahead and do a lie detector test on him, and they asked him two questions, did you kill Robert? Do you know who killed Robert? And they found that deception was detected on both of those answers, And at that point they're telling the other two, we know who did this. He failed his lie detector test, and we know that you guys are covering it up or you know more of what's going on than you're letting on. And both of them are saying, no, we don't know anything. They're sticking with their story, and Joe at this point is like getting very very agitated, and he knows his rights, he knows that he doesn't have to continues to talk. He knows he can leave. They tell him you were free to go, so he leaves, and then within it not a long time later, he is banging on the door of the Lee detective begging to talk more. So they talk to him more, and this is the time that he changes his story. Initially, he said that when he walked in, he saw Robert lying on the bed and he saw the knife lying on his chest, so he picked it up and moved it. Well, now he says, I really don't know if the knife was in him and I pulled it out, I can't remember, but I lifted up his shirt and I saw that there was a stab wound in his belly and there was a lot of blood on his chest. So this definitely changes things because if you walk in on a crime scene, of course it's going to be traumatic given the fact that it is one of your best friends. But if you pull a knife out of someone's chest, you are going to know that you pulled that knife out of your chest. That is traumatic and you're not going to forget it. You're not going to forget if it was lying on the chest versus actually in his chest. Those are two completely different things. And the fact that he changes the story is very interesting because nobody knows what happened because nobody else was there. So the fact that he changed his story is a huge red flag. And he says, you know, I know my prints were on it. I know that I'm dumb. I know that I shouldn't have touched it, but I did because I was trying to help my friend. And he is single handedly poking holes in his own story and making himself look worse. So we are going to go ahead and call that good for part one, because we have a lot, lot, lot more to cover, and this one, honestly, is so interesting that I feel like two parts is appropriate because we haven't even gotten into the meat and potatoes of this case yet. It's going to get really, really interesting. I did want to credit the Peacock documentary Who Killed Robert One for a lot of this episode. I also did like some online research. I always will link my resources in the show notes, but I did want to credit the Peacock documentary because it was really well done and really really good. But we are going to call that good for part one, and I will see you next time for part two of the mysterious death of Robert Wan. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.