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smear campaign? - updated

UPDATE: New clues deepen Wheeler mystery

Nearly 24 hours before the body of former Pentagon official John P. Wheeler III was found being dumped into the Wilmington landfill on Dec. 31, a neighbor who was watching his home found several rooms in disarray.Chairs lay on their sides. A large plant was tipped over. Wheeler's U.S. Military Academy sword was out of its scabbard and on the floor. Broken plates lay in the kitchen sink. A dusting of Comet cleanser covered the floor. A door had been unlocked and an upstairs window opened.

So someone was there, perhaps there with him. After all, he was MURDERED. But what does this mean?

Dill's account, however, could be more evidence that Wheeler, who had returned to Delaware and was spotted in New Castle and Wilmington the previous evening, was increasingly confused and erratic in the days before he was killed.
Except that his wife said he was disoriented every day of his life. She said the behavior on the tape is NORMAL for her husband. Seeing as he was MURDERED, that rather than blaming him for inexplicably making a mess of his own home, we think it makes more sense to wonder whether someone was in the house, perhaps with him, looking for something? Some information perhaps? As a matter of fact, in the early days after the murder, a radio station reported that another neighbor reported hearing loud noise and saw police tape at the home. Let's not let this fall through the memory hole:

http://www.examiner.com/criminal-profiles-in-national/john-p-wheeler-iii-the-neighbors-twist

Wheeler’s last neighbor, and the one who has the most to share about the week surrounding his death, is Ron Roark.

John’s neighbor Ron heard loud noise emminating from John’s television during Christmas week, and it wasn’t the usual occassional program, as Roark says: it was so loud as to be disturbing…and it was continuous for days.
Delaware law enforcement aren’t saying how John P. Wheeler III died, but they are denying his home was the crime scene. However, according to WTOP FM Radio, two wooden chairs in the Wheeler’s kitchen had yellow crime scene tape stretched across them–and several wooden floorboards near the two chairs were missing.
This could indicate that John P. Wheeler took that Amtrak train and actually made it home. He might also have had an unexpected guest who felt noise was called for as he searched for something buried in the kitchen–and left John Wheeler tied to a chair.
Police have not indicated how John Wheeler died, thus it is not know if torture was part of that death. But unusually loud television noise is often used to mask the sounds of activity others are not meant to hear in the criminal world, and John P. Wheeler did die by foul play.

Radell Smith reported that back in January. She sure has changed her tune in the meantime.

See: terrorists upgrade their weapons
See: some problems are unpatriotic
See: we do not recommend cooperating with this plan
See: let's ask Alice



^^^^^^^

John Wheeler's widow believes he was assassinated.

The widow of former Washington insider John Wheeler believes her husband was assassinated by a hit man. Katherine Klyce told a British newspaper that the way her husband's body was dumped in a landfill could only have been pulled off by a professional. Investigators are still re-tracing the hours leading up to the discovery of Wheeler's body on New Year's Eve at the Cherry Island Landfill in Wilmington, Del.
Klyce expressed her growing frustration with law enforcement, saying "If you write anything, I hope you write that the cops just made our lives miserable." 

It seems clear that Klyce knew little about her husband's whereabouts in the days before his death, and even in the first days after his death. So why would she be treated like a criminal? For expecting answers to how her husband was murdered and dumped in a landfill? Is that somehow unreasonable?

Wheeler had a dispute with neighbors. They own a home in a historical district.
Then things get hazy. At 11:30 p.m. the night of Dec. 28, firefighters discovered a smoke bomb in the half-built house across the street from Wheeler's house in New Castle. The new home has been the subject of a long-running dispute between the Wheelers, who moved to New Castle in 1999, and the owners of the property, Frank and Regina Marini. The police haven't named Wheeler as a suspect in the smoke bomb incident. But local news organizations have reported that police found Wheeler's cell phone in the new house.  
Of course, whoever murdered Wheeler could have arranged for all that, to damage Wheeler's reputation and make him seems unreasonable. He can no longer defend himself.

In contrast, we noted the other day that the Department of Justice might back Chabad of Litchfield County, CT, in their bid to expand a structure in the historical center of town. Chabad wants to expand the building from roughly 2,500 square feet to 20,000 square feet. When the Historic District Commission ruled that that was a bit much for the small congregation in the middle of the historical and tourist district, and suggested 5,000 feet instead, Chabad claimed RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION.

In denying a certificate of appropriateness, the Historic District Commission cited the scope and scale of the project as being too invasive and out of character with other buildings in the heart of the tourist-destination town.

Chabad saw the December 2007 denial as an example of religious discrimination, and in its lawsuit it both cited the horrors of the Holocaust and gave examples of other buildings in the historic district that had been greatly expanded, including the original structure that is part of Oliver Wolcott Library on South Street.

The plaintiffs claim that the actions of the defendants in blocking Chabad’s plans not only represent violations of the Jewish group’s civil rights but also violate the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person’s Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) and state statutes.

The sole comment to the story says:

"Here we go again. I caution the U.S. Government to look closely at the lies perpetrated by the Chabad on behalf of the good people of Litchfield. There are no Nazis here. Just liars. The town has worked with the Chabad for years and has allowed a doubling of the footprint, which is appropriate for such a conservatively attended congregation. Now they are getting the Government Involved. BIG government should not get involved in small town politics. The Chabad is seemingly up to furthering it's bullying and literally shoving themselves down the collective throats of a town that thrives on it's heritage and New England charm. We acknowledge and accept the Chabad into our community years ago, but the accusations and lies must stop. We hope the Government [does not? - ed.] bows down to this terrible abuse of power."
Just imagine if some Muslims wanted to build a 20,000 square foot mosque in the historical district, and the commission said no. Do we think the DOJ would consider backing their claim of religious discrimination? Of course they wouldn't, unless the teevee heads needed another controversy to get everyone hating Muslims afresh, like the mosque at ground zero. But Chabad doing something utterly outrageous? You will not hear about it. Just goes to show you who runs this country.

See: a jarring sight

Chabad lighting their giant Menorah on the White House lawn.

But getting back to Wheeler, and how the police treat his family...

The lack of communication has frustrated Klyce. "They have been so bad," she said. "They've made my life so miserable." After Wheeler's death, the whole family went down to the Newark police station for questioning. "They treated us like criminals, all of us," said Klyce. "They were rude." The cops confiscated credit cards, financial records, and Wheeler's computer. In recent weeks, some of her cards have had mysterious charges, including two plane tickets from New York to Madrid totaling $3,000, according to Klyce.

What kind of police work is that? How could it possibly remain unsolved who charged two plane tickets to Madrid on Wheeler's or his wife's credit cards, which the police had previously confiscated?

Klyce believes professionals killed her husband, and that only by a miracle was his body noticed, and we agree.

See: terrorists upgrade their weapons

Klyce explains that her husband regularly appeared disoriented, and the videos widely circulated showing him wandering around lost were not unusual behavior for him. Wheeler's doctor, who has known him for forty years, agreed.

Klyce saw the videos, and said Wheeler appeared normal—for Wheeler, at least. Wheeler's doctor, who has known him 40 years, agreed, according to Klyce. Wheeler had a terrible sense of direction. "He was disoriented every day in his life," she said. "He couldn't walk from here to CVS without specifically drawn maps." "He was probably most definitely lost," she added. But she disputes the notion that he was crazy or demented. Wheeler, who was bipolar and took lithium for his condition, didn't always respond to social cues. "He was a touch Asperger-y," she said. "He couldn't read faces. He couldn't gauge other peoples' reactions." What about the shoe in his hand? "He didn't care about clothes," she said. "Jack was oblivious. Nothing sartorially peculiar about Jack is out of the ordinary."
Rather amazing that we learn about this NOW, weeks after the case has dropped off the radar, when his wife and doctor presumably held these opinions all this time. Did the media neglect to ask them? Did the media neglect to mention this important detail in all the coverage of Wheeler's disappearance?

Also, more details about the fight with the neighbors:

Wheeler was most recently in a disagreement with Frank and Regina Marini, the couple who were building the house across the street from Wheeler's house in New Castle. Wheeler objected not just because the new house would block their view of the Delaware River, but because he was annoyed that they were building on a historic battery where cannons sat during the War of 1812, Klyce said.
Wheeler threw himself into the legal fight over the Marini house. "He was a very intense person," said Klyce. "Everything he did he was intense about." First, the Wheelers got 82 fellow residents to sign a petition opposing the construction. In 2006, they formed a "Save Battery Park" group. In 2009, they accused the Marinis of improperly uprooting trees. Still, construction proceeded, and in December, a judge ruled that it can continue if the Historic Area Commission makes an exception. Klyce blames their failure to block construction on local politics: "It's a corrupt little town."

No doubt. It does not sound all that unusual for people to have heated disagreements over historical districts. Just look at Chabad in Litchfield getting the DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE involved so that they can expand a 2,500 square foot building to 20,000 square feet, as they throw about religious discrimination and the Holocaust as justification. Talk about being unreasonable.

These details from the Slate story are very helpful. They allow us to have a more complete picture of Wheeler. These details counteract the narrative that Wheeler may have been drugged, that he may have been the victim of random violence, that he was unreasonable about his neighbors house.


But over at The Examiner, Radell Smith finds it rather suspicious that Klyce would give out this information, defending her husband. Smith thinks it makes Klyce look bad.

Open homicide investigations are never helped by widows taking law enforcement to task in public venues, or sharing information police choose to keep close to the vest. Instead, it is almost like sabotaging the effort on purpose.


It NEVER HELPS to take law enforcement to task in public..... ? It is ALMOST LIKE sabotaging the effort on purpose.... ?

What effort is that? The effort to not find out what happened to Wheeler? The effort to use his credit cards for trips to Madrid? Perhaps we are confused.

Since Katherine Klyce chose to speak out on the matter of the murder of her husband, she will now reap the result of that action through the commentary and article comments sure to follow from the general public.

...Smith wrote, racing to the the first to cast suspicion on Katherine Klyce.

Why would a widow potentially jeapordize [sic] the investigation to find her husband's killer? What does she hope to gain from the public by doing this? And how can she hope to have good relations with the investigators after publicly saying such things about them?
But, as Klyce explained in the Slate article, she DOES NOT HAVE good relations with the investigators. That has been her frustration. They have treated her like a criminal from the outset, as explained in the Slate article, even though she was not in touch with her husband or even necessarily in the same state during the week that he was missing and murdered. The police have been rude to her. Mysterious charges have appeared on their credit cards. The police seem to have taken an ANTAGONISTIC ATTITUDE to the Wheeler family from the beginning. So rather than asking what does Klyce have to gain by doing this, perhaps we might consider WHAT DOES SHE HAVE TO LOSE?

The obvious conclusion to be drawn would be that Ms. Klyce drew the suspicion of the law enforcement community for some reason and when forced to comply with questioning and requests for financial documents and credit cards -- which she says police did request from her -- she began to think that attacking the police publicly might be her best legal recourse.

We don't know in what universe that seems to be the OBVIOUS CONCLUSION. Klyce reports how she and her family were treated, once again, from the Slate story:

After Wheeler's death, the whole family went down to the Newark police station for questioning. "They treated us like criminals, all of us," said Klyce. "They were rude." The cops confiscated credit cards, financial records, and Wheeler's computer. In recent weeks, some of her cards have had mysterious charges, including two plane tickets from New York to Madrid totaling $3,000, according to Klyce.

The police treated the entire family like criminals and confiscated credit cards, financial records, and Wheeler's computer.

If the "law enforcement community" had SOME REASON for suspecting Klyce and the rest of the family, perhaps they should share it.

Smith then goes on to cast further aspersions at Klyce for hiring a lawyer to represent her in her interactions with the police. Somehow hiring a lawyer makes Klyce suspicious, according to Smith.

This particular attorney began making the media rounds himself to publicly take issue with the investigative efforts recently, providing an exclusive sit-down interview with Delaware Online -- or as they are also known "The News Journal". While making media rounds, hiring lawyers to do it for you and complaining about the police does not in any way make you guilty -- or prove you are guilty of a crime--it sure does make the public wonder why the fences are going up....Newark Police Department has remain tight-lipped and ever committed to finding the killer of John P. Wheeler III. Both the Newark PD and the Delaware ME offices have been extremely quiet about the investigation to date, and this recent media interview by Katherine Klyce helps the general public understand better why that might be.
What exactly is Smith implying here? If there is some evidence against Klyce, what on earth might it possibly be? Will we ever learn about it or is the idea simply to hint around darkly without ever having to come up with a single supporting fact, while at the same time disparaging anyone who dares to question the "law enforcement community," or who hires a lawyer to help them with hostile investigators?

^^^^^^^

Regarding this attorney of Klyce's, his name is Colm F. Connelly, a former US attorney for Delaware.

Connelly has an office in the Nemours Building where John Wheeler was last seen by witnesses.

Colm F. Connolly, former United States Attorney for Delaware, is a member of Morgan Lewis's Litigation Practice and the managing partner of the firm's Wilmington office. Mr. Connolly's practice focuses on complex commercial and intellectual property litigation, white collar criminal matters, and corporate investigations.
As Delaware's United States Attorney for more than seven years, Mr. Connolly managed all federal criminal prosecutions and the legal representation of the departments and agencies of the federal government in all civil matters filed in Delaware courts. Mr. Connolly has tried dozens of cases in federal and state courts and has argued numerous cases before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and Third Circuits. He has handled a broad range of subject matters, including complex contractual and patent disputes, theft of trade secrets, export control violations, healthcare and corporate fraud investigations, RICO litigation, environmental and antitrust offenses, and FDA regulatory violations.





"The Nemours Building, now also known as the Residences at City Center, was built in 1936 as a second office building in the city of Wilmington for the DuPont company. The building is 164 ft tall (50 m), and is between Orange & Tatnall Streets and 10th & 11th Streets." Skyscraper City







Reportedly, Wheeler spent a large amount of time in the Nemours building on December 30th, where he visited the Delaware Small Business Administration office. To our knowledge, no one has suggested that Wheeler met with Connelly.


We would think Mr. Connelly has seen plenty of corruption in his line of work.

Reportedly, Connelly has a very good reputation as a prosecutor, but for some inexplicable reason Joe Biden, also from Delaware, declined to endorse Connelly for a federal judgeship back in 2008.

The Colm Connelly connection to Wheeler appears to lead down some other rabbit holes having to do with the US vs AIPAC spy case, the US attorney firing scandal, and Mike Castle, R-DE, who got a little run for his money by Christine O'Donnell this past fall. 

We don't know if any of these are important to the Wheeler case, but perhaps.We can only imagine what sorts of interesting conversations someone like John Wheeler might have had with someone like Colm Connelly. The two men were acquainted and according to Connelly, met once before in 2009.


The surveillance videos of Wheeler at the Nemours Building have not been released and Connolly said the family would like to see those videos to verify that the person seen in the recordings is in fact Wheeler.
Police said Wheeler is seen on the recordings wearing a hooded sweatshirt, but Connolly said Wheeler's family never saw him wear a hooded sweatshirt.
Connolly said a Washington-area attorney who had been acting as a go-between for Wheeler's family and Delaware law enforcement reached out to him earlier this month to take over that job because of Connolly's familiarity with Delaware.
Connolly is in private practice with law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, which has offices in the Nemours Building. Connolly said it is possible Wheeler was looking for him on Dec. 30, but he said he has no reason to believe that was the case. Connolly said he had not been hired by Wheeler or Wheeler's family at that time and had no appointment to meet with Wheeler on that day.
Connolly said he had met Wheeler only once before, in the spring of 2009.

Connolly confirmed that Wheeler's family had previously done business with a different law firm in the Nemours Building - Connolly Bove Lodge & Hutz - whose offices Wheeler visited on Dec. 30, and where Wheeler reportedly asked for train fare before abruptly departing.
According to the timeline:

3:30 p.m. -- Wheeler is spotted in the area of 10th and Orange streets in Wilmington.

Wheeler visited the 10th-floor offices of the Connolly Bove Lodge & Hutz law firm in the Nemours building and asked to speak to a managing partner. [INSERT GIANT GAP - ed.] He also asked for train fare before leaving.

8:30 p.m. -- Surveillance video captures Wheeler wandering through the Nemours Building at 10th and Orange streets. Several people approach him because he appears disoriented or confused. Wheeler declines their help. He is dressed differently from the day before.

8:42 p.m. -- Wheeler is picked up on surveillance video leaving the Nemours Building through doors on the 11th Street side. He then continues southeast on 11th Street, walking through the Hotel du Pont valet parking area, crossing over Market Street, and is last seen walking on the west sidewalk of 11th Street, toward the city's East Side.

What did he do for five hours in the Nemours building? Did he speak to the managing partner at Connelly Bove Lodge & Hutz? Is this a secret?

Reportedly, his visit to the Delaware Small Business Administration office was brief.

Jayne Armstrong, Delaware District Director for the SBA Office issued the following statement, but would not comment on anything that took place during the encounter with staff at the office at 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 30th.
"SBA cannot provide any comment on this matter; however, we can confirm that Mr. Wheeler briefly came in to the SBA office on Thursday, Dec. 30th. SBA staff has provided information on this to authorities and will continue to cooperate fully with them on this matter."

We do not see those five hours accounted for.

^^^^^^^

The possible connections from Colm Connelly to Mike Castle are interesting. This past election season Christine O'Donnell upset Mike Castle's candidacy for the senate seat in Delaware. Then O'Donnell imploded, leaving Democrat Chris Coons with the seat.

See: process of analogy
See: politicians

Mike Castle is now out of office, as of January 2011. 

Mike Castle's top twenty supporters in 2007-2008 were:

1 Young, Conaway et al
2 Bank of America
3 Morgan Stanley
4 DuPont Co
5 American Bankers Assn
6 American Express
7 American Podiatric Medical Assn
8 American Speech-Language-Hearing Assn
9 Capital One Financial
10 Honeywell International
11 HSBC Holdings
12 KPMG International
13 National Assn of Home Builders
14 National Auto Dealers Assn
15 National Education Assn
16 New York Life Insurance
17 Tuesday Group PAC
18 JPMorgan Chase & Co
19 Goldman Sachs
20 Marvin & Palmer Assoc

Also see: Who is Castle really working for? Part III, September 2006

I found 29 bills introduced by Michael Castle that benefited a very narrow constituency. Each if the 29 bills dealt with the suspension of tariffs for various chemical compounds that I thought were related big pharma. As it turned out the bills are designed to benefit of the bio-ag-chemical industry. So, I must have missed the press conference, but Michael "Straight Arrow" Castle seems to have taken the poor downtrodden bio-ag-chemical industry under his wing....Maybe our crusading U.S. Attorney, Colm Connolly always concerned about public corruption could issue a subpoena and get to the bottom of this.
We don't know if Colm Connelly got to the bottom of it.

Mike Castle introduced lots of legislation beneficial to big pharma, to allow companies like AstraZeneca, Dupont and Syngenta to import chemicals no longer produced in the US. The chemicals happen to work well with genetically-modified crops.

But now poor Mike is out, and he can no longer help his buddies in big pharma and banking.

As far as we can tell, people like Mike Castle and Joe Biden would not be fans of Colm Connelly, even though Castle submitted Connelly's name for US Attorney for Delaware back in 2001.


^^^^^^

We don't yet see an explanation of what Wheeler did for five hours in the Nemours building, and who he may have met, and what they may have discussed.

But he was murdered shortly thereafter. That just looks suspicious, no way around it. But where are the stories asking who Wheeler met with and what they discussed? And where are the surveillance videos?

We haven't seen those stories yet. Instead we see some people in the media casting aspersions at Wheeler's family, but they present no evidence of wrongdoing by the family. We were NOT SURPRISED AT ALL to see The Examiner pushing that angle. We have noticed The Examiner in the thick of many dubious narratives.


That is a story for another day... how The Examiner works. The media outlet is owned by Philip Anschutz, a Christian billionare activist, self-made of course (aren't they all), based out of Denver, CO. The Examiner pays contributers between $0.006 and $0.008 per page view. Under cover of this homespun bootstrapping little media shop, wildly successful while getting content for next to nothing, preying on people trying to break into journalism careers, they also include contributers like Alfred Lamebremont Webre, for example.

Webre, of course, graduated from Yale, was a Fulbright Scholar, general counsel to the New York City Environmental Protection Administration, futurist at Stanford Research Institute (where he directed the proposed 1977 Carter White House extraterrestrial communication study), NGO delegate to the United Nations and the UNISPACE conference, and judge on the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal. So, in other words, your typical person struggling to make a name for himself as a journalist getting paid less than a penny per pageview as The Examiner's Seattle Exopolitics expert? Something like that. The alternative view is that The Examiner provides a great cover for getting globalist news and viewpoints into the minds of unsuspecting readers, at the expense of all those people submitting content nearly for free.

In a rich twist, Wikipedia, bastion of 24x7x365 revisionist history management, blacklists The Examiner as an unreliable source. Classic.


Comments

chuckyman said…
There is a definite stench about this one A.P. When we look at the testimony like that of Kay Griggs we see that ‘murder for hire’ is as common place as ordering takeaway. The timeline and gap mentioned is probably very important. The chances of the rent a cops pushing it are minimal.

For Katherine Klyce the only way she will see justice is if she finds it herself. The fact that the media are slinging mud in her direction means she is pushing against a very dirty system. She needs to get louder for her own protection.
A. Peasant said…
we agree C. there's a lot of possibilities and most of them aren't good. this story got pushed off the pages by other events.

we are thinking he was being followed and possibly harassed before he went in there, and whatever happened in that building (who he met with or what) sealed his fate. at least that is what it looks like from here.

we note that in other news, Davis has been outed as a CIA agent.
malcontent said…
Nice catch AP. FWIW, some of the antagonistic behavior by the local authorities certainly comes from their standard operating procedures being disrupted by the nature of Mr. Wheeler's line of work. In all likelihood he has no records that they would normally access in the murder investigation. In other words, according to the records, he doesn't exist and yet they have a body and lots of news coverage that makes them look hapless.

Also, those plane tickets could have been an automated obfuscation from the federal level as well to programatically hinder financial transaction tracking by anyone looking to see what the black bag world is up to.

I'm sure he took some trips in his lifetime to destinations where he did nothing for a specified time then came home still handcuffed to an empty briefcase. Once you go that deep into that world, you can never leave it entirely.

We seem to agree that the world of secrets he occupied is directly responsible for his death. Will we find out who or which misdeed was gong to be betrayed?

We can only hope that accountability and humanity are more important to the operators of that world than the greed of empire.
Penny said…
I have to agree with chuckyman, the wife has one tough slog, to get through this.

With the media all too willing to sully her.

I see she has made it clear she has had an uncomfortable relationship with law enforcement.

Why is the media not questioning that?
Why are they not wondering what is the reason behind the hostility towards the widow?
Rather then smearing her in a manner clearly indicative of cooperating with law enforcement?

She must know that law enfarcement has no intention of getting to the truth of this case.
A. Peasant said…
hmm, i dunno malc. i'm not convinced of that line of reasoning.

Pen, that's what it looks like to me.
A13 said…
HI A.p
You could make a Twilight Zone episode out of this case , really head fracking, and incredibly interesting.
You have done a great job here and we all need to keep this story about wheeler, above the radar, so to speak, because i feel it goes deep and goes where they don't want us to...which is always temptation.
heads up sister!
Cheers A13
A13 said…
Hi A.P another thing that realy bugs me about this one is the fact that his wife says he was always disoriented, and kinda aspergery...but why the hell would he be working/ contracting for MITRE corp if that was the case??

Man you have to be on youre toes, and articulate and intelligent and outwardly presentable if you were to have anything to do with them,

so that is a big Suss for me.
and BTW, i had a visitor last night on fedjit from New Castle Delaware...aggh. weird.
A13
A. Peasant said…
hi A13, first off don't worry about the visitors. they come, they go...

re: Wheeler's condition. sometimes really creative people are a little 'off' compared to everyone else, you know what i mean?
malcontent said…
I'm just saying that there are inherent issues that exacerbate state and local versus federal agencies when processing dead bodies like this.

The press just does what they are told like obedient children.