John Wheeler: Decade after White House aide's body was found in dumpster, agencies still clueless about murder
On December 31, 2010, the body of John P Wheeler III, a former White House aide was found badly battered and bruised in the Cherry Island Landfill in Wilmington, Delaware. Although at least 10 different agencies, federal, state and local got involved in the murder case, including the FBI, ATF and DEA, running down every possible lead, the murderer was never found, making it one of the more high-profile cold cases which were never solved.
The second season of Netflix's 'Unsolved Mysteries' opens with this case as it interviews detectives and expert witnesses involved in it and also talks to the victim's family to help decode what might have happened to John Wheeler, who was referred by most as simply "Jack." “A lot of people claim to be patriots. Jack WAS a patriot. Jack was devoted to causes that were for the great benefit of the country such as being executive director of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial," Bayard Marin, Wheeler’s attorney, said.
Who was Jack Wheeler?
Jack served in the Vietnam War and after he came back he began planning a memorial for all who fought and died there. Jan Scruggs, founder, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, said, “Jack was a very exceptional person, a graduate of West Point, a graduate of Harvard Business School, a graduate of Yale Law School. I mean this guy was extremely bright. In 1982, as we were building the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, he provided the overall strategy, guidance, was the chairman of the board. And how could it have happened without him? It wouldn’t have happened.”
The victim had very strong ties to the government which could be understood by merely glancing at his career. From 1978 to 1986, Jack served as special counsel to chairman, and secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), from 1988 to 1989, he was in President G H W Bush’s transition team, from 2005 to 2008, he worked as the special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force, and from 2009-2010 he worked as a consultant in Mitre Corporation.
Investigator Joe Salerno said that since Jack had a very strong network with the government, "he may have been a target of a murder-for-hire type situation.” Steve Volk, an investigative journalist, said, "What we know is that at the time of his death, he was working as a consultant for the Mitre Corporation, which is a defense contracting firm. They specialize in stuff like artificial intelligence, satellite systems for the military. Jack was working in the area of cybersecurity. He was working on the issues that we’re seeing now made manifest with, you know, Russia interfering with the election, Russia and China supposedly hacking into our power grid... The problem is that there’s nothing to connect those parts of his bio to his actual murder.”
Murder, burglary and smoke bombs
Michael Lawson, a retired detective who worked with the Wilmington Police Department at the time, said that when he approached Wheeler's body in the landfill after getting reports of the same, he could see it was a White male with no obvious signs of injury like a gunshot wound or a stab wound. Wheeler was wearing black pants and a white shirt. Some type of black garment covered his upper torso area. A ring stood out “as no ring that I had ever seen before.” It was a West Pont Military Academy ring, class of 1966.
However, an autopsy report suggested that Jack had taken quite a beating. Some of the things listed in the medical examiner’s report included “aspiration of blood,” “contusion,” “rib fracture,” “lung collapse,” “soft tissue hemorrhage,” “external neck injury,” “swollen lips,” “laceration” and “injury to the mouth.” The cause of death was “blunt force trauma."
When Michael Lawson contacted the New Castle Police Department after Wheeler’s body was found and identified on the same day, he was informed by one of the detectives that they were actually en route to Wheeler’s house to investigate a potential burglary. Robert Dill, Jack’s neighbor at the time, discovered Jack’s second-floor window was open. Since he was the caretaker of Jack’s house, he went into the house and saw the house was in disarray. He feared somebody had broken in.
To add to the confusion, a couple of days before Wheeler’s body was found, somebody had set off smoke bombs at a construction site across the street from his house. There wasn’t much damage but police found a cell phone at the scene and when they examined it, discovered it was Wheeler’s. Investigators struggled to tie the murder, burglary, and the smoke bomb incident although they could not dispel it as mere coincidence.
Tracing Jack's steps
After Wheeler spent Christmas with his family in 2010, on December 28, he left New York to go back to Washington DC. Phone records show that he worked in DC for only a day. Investigators believe he must have left DC and went home to New Castle the same day as the smoke bomb incident. Surveillance footage showed him visiting a local pharmacy at night on December 29 looking for a ride to Wilmington, where he had left his car in a garage. At 6.42 pm the same day, Wheeler was seen at a garage trying to find his car but he was at the wrong garage.
In the garage surveillance footage, Wheeler seemed distressed and agitated. He had one shoe off and the other shoe in his hand. He appeared to be cautious of his surroundings as if he was scared that he was being stalked. He told the people in the parking garage that his briefcase had been stolen. It was possible that Wheeler had some mental breakdown due to his disorder or he was being physically attacked. The last footage of Wheeler was him wearing a dark hoodie, walking past the DuPont Hotel in downtown Wilmington.
Wheeler's body was apparently dumped in a dumpster in Newark, Delaware, which was 14 kilometers from Wilmington. Trash car drivers told investigators that it was fairly common that people would climb into a dumpster to find some warmth in the winter. “So there’s been a theory of Jack’s death that maybe he wanders out into the night, maybe he just gets cold and crawls into a dumpster to escape the winter,” Volk said. “When you look at the autopsy and the degree to which he was beaten, it’s just not consistent with a fall from the dumpster.” He also added that Jack could not have been mugged as street robbers leave the body where they attack and usually don’t load it into dumpsters. Also, Jack had some cash on him when his body was found, had his Rolex and West Point ring.
The mystery surrounding Wheeler's death was never solved. Delaware Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward for information leading to the arrest of subjects responsible for the death of the victim.