March 5, 2021 • 58 mins
John Parsons Wheeler III -- Jack to his friends -- was a mover and shaker in the Defense industry. Over the course of his career he worked with three different Presidential administrations, and also built a reputation for his tireless charity work. So how can we explain the strange series of events that led to his untimely death, his body discovered in a landfill? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is all they called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission controlled decand here in spirit. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. We are delving into
a true unsolved mystery today. If you're a younger person,
(00:50):
you might not have heard of John Parsons Wheeler, the
Third unless you saw the recent Netflix reboot of Unsolved Mysteries.
It's a story that largely disappeared from mass media headlines
in a very weird way. I mean, you've heard of
Eliza Lamb, but have you heard of John Parsons Wheeler.
(01:12):
Here are the facts. First things first, whether or not
you have ever heard of this man. If you live
in the US, his career has probably impacted you in
some way. Uh. He's one of those guys who it
seems like since his early days he was destined for
the heights of the military political class. Oh yeah, an
(01:35):
absolute heavyweight and and a sharp guy to boot. John
Parsons where the third Jack two his pals, was born
on December four in Laredo, Texas, and he was to
some degree kind of destined to follow in the footsteps
of those that came before him and his family line. Uh,
and was in fact groomed for the type of illustrious
(02:00):
political and military career many would only ever dream of.
He came from a long line of these career military men,
including one relative who served in both the Confederate Army
and then later the United States Army. Yeah, he ended
up going to the US Military Academy, which you may
know as West Point. That's the way it's generally referred to.
(02:21):
Very prestigious place if you're going to go that route.
And then he was a fire control platoon leader in
New Jersey back in the middle late sixties, and he
ended up getting a Bachelor of Science degree from that institution. Yeah.
Important note about his classmates his cohort at West Point.
(02:41):
Many of these men would go on to lose their
lives in Vietnam, and his experiences with the war had
a tremendous influence on his career, his personal beliefs, and
possibly debatably, the end of his life. UH. This class
(03:02):
at West Point is documented in a book written by
former Washington Post journalist named Rick Atkinson. The name of
the book is The Long Gray Line. This book spends
a lot of time on Wheeler himself if you read it,
and Wheeler had a copy of it at his home.
He served as a staff officer in Vietnam. He served
(03:26):
with the Office of the Secretary Defense. He served with
the Joint Staff before he left service in one His
schooling is particularly interesting because it was his gateway to
the upper echelons of American society. He enrolled in Harvard
Business School in sixty nine, got a master's in Business admin.
(03:50):
He got a degree in law from Yale in seventy
and he worked with fancy law firms in d C.
The ones that kind of blur the line between private
and public power. UH. They're often called white shoe law firms.
You may hear them referred to as such. He served
as a clerk for George E. McKinnon. He was a
(04:12):
high level official for the SEC Securities and Exchange Commission.
This guy had his finger in a lot of pies. Uh,
he was during this time at the SEC side. Note,
he was investigating major cases of insider trading. So, long
story short, he was accepted by the often invisible ruling
(04:37):
class of this country and he moved extensively in this circle. Well,
and he's also if anyone knew of his work, if
you're imagining the people on the other side of those investigations,
he was already potentially making enemies just putting it out there. Yeah,
great point, Matt. Let's let's talk a little bit about
(04:57):
his career, because the space ace he occupies is a
bit alien, I think to a lot of the general public.
You could describe him as a defense consultant, but that
is a very vague term. Yeah, it seems almost like
a gray area kind of where it could encompass a
whole lot of things that maybe aren't public knowledge. Yeah, exactly. No.
(05:22):
Al So, he was known for working in that often unexamined,
liminal space between the FEDS and private companies and then
charities and nonprofits, and of course, as long time listeners
know some of those organizations, not all, but some of
them are much more closely related than they would have
(05:44):
you believe, according to you know, their f a q
s on their websites. UH. For most of the people
in the US. Wheeler's most notable, well known work is
his assistance in the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
in DC's instrumental in making that happen. UH. He worked
(06:04):
for a cavalcade of different institutions and organizations, Amtrak, Mothers
Against Drunk Driving, three different three different Republican administrations, Reagan
and then Bush, and then Bush again when that guy
put his son into office. And he also worked for
(06:25):
the Miter Corporation. Remember that last one. It's going to
be important later. His career was not without controversy, especially
moving in and out of so many institutions. Maybe we
can talk a little bit about his roles with charities
and with UH with businesses as well. He was extremely
(06:46):
active in various nonprofits, and I think that's probably the
way to put it, very specialized nonprofits. UH. And he
was the founder and CEO of this thing called Vietnam
Children's Fund. By many accounts, at least if you look online,
appears to be a great organization, at least the forward
facing things about it. He worked with President Bush, like
(07:08):
we said, the father to create this thing called the
Earth Conservation Corps. He also served as president CEO of
the Deafness Research Foundation. I mean, just listen to what
we're saying here. This man was NonStop working with organizations
that appear to be for the great or the greater good.
At least that's the way. That's the way it seems.
(07:31):
He also had a really solid rep for Oh yeah,
this is great, solid rep returning failing businesses around. Now,
that's sounds sounds great right on paper, But when you
turn a failing business around, like what does that really mean?
Like what do you have to do to turn a
failing business around? It's when you start hearing like corporate
buzzwords like pivot, you know. Yeah, and it could be
(07:54):
you know, and it could be everything from specializing in,
you know, making a company speciales in one small thing
that is a profit center, and then getting rid of
a whole bunch of other things that a company does,
such as the case with Macy's. Uh, Macy's you'll remember
from them all when you were a kid, and some
some places now I think they're Macy's unless they're all gone,
(08:15):
I can't remember. But he turned that business around. He
got him out of bankruptcy right, which may have entailed layoffs.
That's that's the elephant in the room, the badger and
the bag. There under euphemisms like streamlining, pivoting, or focusing.
But he did manage to write this ship uh small
note about Vietnam Children's Fund. By the way, they build
(08:39):
elementary schools in Vietnam, and they do a pretty great
job at it. There's still around. If you want to
learn more, you can. You can just find them online.
But perhaps the most unpredictable aspect of Wheeler's post military
career was this late stage professional plot twist. He was
(09:00):
well into his sixties when he developed an intense interest
in cyber security, and that's what led him to the
Miteror corporation. It also it also turned him into one
of those guys who always has a briefcase inexplicable, always
has a briefcase. This in the huhs no telling, No,
(09:23):
literally we don't know, but behind the scenes, you know,
we have to realize that this this person was human
being and he struggled with his own demons. He suffered
from depression and bipolar disorder. That's not speculation. He received
diagnosis in this regard and this resulted in these bouts
(09:44):
of frenetic action and then unpredictable at times drastic mood swings.
But you know who's perfect, Well, he's He's he's clearly
a workaholic, right, and I'm sure in many ways that
helped him at least if you if you watched the
I think we mentioned it that unsolved Mysteries up episode
(10:06):
as well as you read online stuff that has been
written by his wife. He he thrived quite a bit
from that energy that he that he got, not necessarily
from bipolar disorder, but just that existed within him inherently, right, Right,
someone defining themselves by their continual actions, right, there must
(10:26):
always be a goal to pursue. He's not really a
kick back and smell the morning do with a nice
hot cup of coffee kind of guy. He's got stuff
to do. But given his track record and given the
success and the benefits of the work he does, his
legacy seems assured. Until one strange day in November, very
(10:50):
last day of December thirty one, there are some workers
at the Cherry Island landfill near Wilmington's, Virginia. Yeah, they
see the body of an elderly man plummet from the
back of a garbage truck onto a heap of trash.
This turns out to be the body of John Parsons
(11:12):
Wheeler the Third. He was sixty six years old. Today's episode,
what happened? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. Officially, this death has been
(11:33):
ruled a homicide. However, it is a homicide that comes
with a lot of unanswered questions. And the further you
dig into this story, the stranger it becomes. So maybe
we start with the relevant details. Should we start with
the landfill? What do you think? I think that's a
perfect place to start. When these workers found Wheeler's body, UM,
(11:56):
he had the look of having been severely beaten. He
was wearing a white shirt, black pants, and a black jacket.
And an important detail, he was wearing a class of
nineteen sixty six ring from the West Point Military Academy. UM.
And the thing that was unusual about it is that
(12:17):
he still had things like that clearly very valuable ring
that any average street mugger would have taken. Not to
mention the absolute lack of care that went into quote
disposing of this body. I mean, it was really just
dumped in plain view. We're gonna talk about this later on,
(12:37):
but just to end up where his body ended up,
it was either someone taking great care to put a
body in a dumpster and hope that it would never
be discovered again, because it is actually quite unlikely that
they would have discovered him amongst all the trash that
was dumped that day from from the truck. The other
the other side of the coin is if his body
(12:59):
was dumped by somebody or just put into a dumpster
like that. You're right that there's a lack of care
in that. I don't know, it's weird. It's both sides, right,
It's it's a lack of care, but it's also it
appears to show um intent I guess if if someone
actually did put him in there to try and hide
a body. Yeah, that's that's the thing. It's alarmingly easy
(13:24):
to dispose of an organism in a landfill, especially a
large one. You just you have to work out the
timing and you have to you know, like the day
of the week when a lot of dumps come in.
Things like that. This should not be confused or mistaken
as it's confused for mistaken as advice on where to
(13:45):
put bodies. We're not giving you that. We are saying
that the average I would say, not not pre planned
or orchestrated. Mugging or murder doesn't usually resultants in the
perpetrator having the presence of mind to dispose of the body.
You know what I mean. If you are if you
are robbing someone, the robbery goes wrong and you stab them,
(14:10):
wound them, named them, or shoot them, your first instinct
is going to be to leave the scene immediately rather
than sit around and think, hey, should I stash this
in some bushes assassin's creed style or something like that.
It just it doesn't often happen that way. So Wilmington's
is on the case. Authorities contact the police in Newcastle, Delaware,
(14:34):
where the Wheeler family has a second home, and they
the Virginia Police informed the Delaware police of this. A
few days earlier, just after Christmas round December, Wheeler had
told his wife he had to spend a few days
working on an important project at the minor corporation. He
(14:57):
told her he'd be staying at the Metropolitan Club in
downtown Washington, and they argued about this we know, they argued,
this is not speculation because we can see the email
and text records, and he was emphasizing this was important.
He even talked to his therapist about the argument. He
was trying to trying to smooth things out diplomatically until
(15:20):
the point that he fell completely out of contact with her.
And then police found a series of phone calls that
made this seem like more than an accidental death or
a mugging. That's right, but more than you know, offering
any real solutions. Just raised a significant number of new
questions to the circumstances surrounding Wheeler's death. One call from December,
(15:47):
the day Wheeler traveled to Washington, d C. Came from
a resident of Newcastle named Scott Morris, who saw PM
what he described as quote, the darkened silhouette of a
man standing in the frame of the house under construction
across the street, methodically lighting what looked like small balls
(16:09):
of fire and tossing them onto the floor. Huh. Really
descriptive and and and kind of eerie. Um. The police
called to the scene. Um didn't find any damage of note,
but Morris remained disturbed by by what he saw, the
sense of desperation um, and the purpose of what was
(16:33):
going on in this scene really stuck with him. He
described it as creepy. He says, the figure appeared very calm,
and when he finished, he turned very deliberately and walked
away towards the path along the Delaware River. Yeah. So
we know the thing about eyewitness accounts is that they
they're essentially combo meals. Right. The main entree in these
(16:57):
combo meals is going to be the fact foul description
of what happened. But the side order, you know, the
fries and the drink are the the person's own perspective
and opinion put on put upon what they saw. So yes,
for Morris, this appears to be purposeful. He he somehow
(17:22):
from body language, because he didn't speak to this person,
he somehow believed or got the sense that they were
quite deliberate. But that doesn't necessarily mean they are because
he didn't talk to them, right, and he didn't see
who it was. That's a hugely important detail here. But
another hugely important detail. That construction site was something Wheeler
(17:45):
was involved in in an antagonistic way. It was part
of an on He was part of an ongoing legal
dispute over the construction of this particular house, and he
was going hard on the paint too. He hated the
idea of it being built Partially, yes, it would block
his his home's view of the land and the water,
(18:06):
but from his perspective, at least the way he explained it,
the area was historic because back in the day, early
colonists and then later revolutionaries built a defense battery on
that land. So to him building anything on that land
other than perhaps a monument to those earlier forces was
(18:28):
profoundly offensive. It was a kind of sacrilege. But then
we have to ask ourselves, was that sincere or was
that just like his rationalization for this construction that he hated,
you know what I mean? Anyway, he was involved, well,
he was involved, and he was trying to stop it.
His wife says that he was essentially on a mission
(18:49):
to stop this thing. And we know from just from
his past life and in his actions everything that he's done,
he he sees something as a goal and he goes
for it, and that's again like his mission, right, so
you can imagine that he was very feeling, very very
strongly about this, and from from what I've read this,
(19:10):
this incident appears to have been like smoke bombs that
weren't gonna didn't seem to cause any damage really to
the house, didn't seem to cause anything else besides this disturbance. Um.
But the weird thing is that John Wheeler's cellular phone
was recovered in that house, the house that was under
(19:30):
construction where the silhouetted man or person lighting smoke bombs
was found or was seen, let's say, very strange, Yeah,
leaving the accusations of his involvement or his guilt in
this instance, leaving those all to the side. The timeline
(19:51):
becomes really weird when we think about when he had
the phone and when he didn't, how the phone got
from him to that place in uh place on the
banks there. And then there is another call police discover
on December, the day before Wheeler's body is found. There's
a guy named Rob Dill d I l L. He
is one of the wheelers neighbors there in Newcastle, and
(20:14):
he reports that someone has broken into the Wheeler's home.
I believe he's the same neighbor also who said they
had a TV on very loud when he knew there
was no one home and he was just doing anything
neighbors do, keeping an eye on the house. He had
noticed a window a jar in the Wheeler house and
(20:36):
the exterior door the storm door was closed, but the
interior door was also a jar. And then he found
he found some weird, weird stuff when he went into
the interior. There was a disarray in the kitchen, you know,
like somebody had been rooting through things in a hurried manner.
(21:00):
John had a ceremonial sword and shield. They were covered
with powder by the sink. Rob Dill notices a footprint
in powder in front of the sink, and when the
police show up. The weird thing is that nothing seems
to have been stolen. Stuff was messed with, but no
(21:20):
one No one took expensive electronics, No one took, you know,
some of the art that the Wheelers had. The stuff
the kind of stuff you would normally steal if you
were just a garden variety be an e dude. But
there was one detail that caught their attention. Amid all
this disarray, investigators found a book on the kitchen counter.
(21:43):
The book was open, as if someone had been reading
it before they left. Can you guess what the book is?
If you guessed the long gray line. You are correct, yeah, man.
And and just the fact that his ceremonial sword and
she we're hanging out down there. I mean, that's a
(22:03):
it's weird. Spices some comment maybe wherever the white substance was,
and those things. I don't know. It's weird. It's tough
because initially what that sounds like to me is frantically
searching for something in your own house and then uh
maybe finding it or not finding it and getting upset
(22:25):
and leaving. Um that's where forget or or you know
there's something I've hidden something, or I I know I've
hidden something, but I'm not sure where it is. I
think it might be under the sink, and like just
pulling everything frantically out from drawers and from under the sink.
I don't know. That's what it sounds like to me,
(22:45):
Rather like, as you said, for all the reasons you've
already stayed up been rather than someone going into the
house and robbing it, unless they were just trying to
leave a message of some sort, right, unless there was
possibly someone from his past. Right, this is the thing.
We don't know what page the book was on, you know,
(23:06):
when it was open, was it indicating a specific, somehow
significant passage unknown at this time. But then also we
see an alternate possibility that maybe Wheeler himself is panicked
or he's hurried for some reason, because when people are
hurrying from their own house, they don't always close the
(23:28):
windows or the doors, right, because the logic is, it's
my house, I'll just come back into it, right. Uh So,
the initial investigations tell us increasingly strange things. On January third, uh,
just a few days after the discovery of his body,
up I reported Wheeler's death was ruled a homicide, but
(23:51):
a friend of his that he knew through the legal
circles he moved in noted, this is just not the
kind of guy who gets murdered. This is not the
kind of guy you find in a landfill. But the
official cause of death again, his homicide, and that was
specified in several obituaries that came out shortly after. So,
(24:13):
according to his obituary in the Washington Post, while just
read your quote, uh quote, the cause of death was
blunt force trauma inflicted by unknown assailants in Wilmington, Delaware,
not far from his home in Newcastle, Delaware. But as
these investigations continued, many more troubling details started to rise
(24:35):
to the surface. Wheeler seemed to not only have been beaten,
but beaten to the point of of like the beating
inducing a heart attack you can only imagine, UM. And
several eye witnesses would report that Wheeler had been seen
in really rough shape, holding a shoe, his shoe, stumbling
(24:56):
around um under duress and Wilmington, Delaware. Um. He was
telling people in this uh Unsolved Mysteries that we talked
about the top of the show. They interviewed some of
the folks that that saw him UM, and he claimed
to have lost his briefcase or rather even even more so,
had it stolen. UM. And he kept repeating it like
(25:21):
he was in some kind of fugue state. UM, whether
it's suffering from some sort of mental breakdown or just
days from having been attacked or or you know, and
disheveled and all that. But it really does the plot
does thicken. UM. There's some footage you can see, UH,
he's on camera from his kind of you know, wander UM,
and you can see he's kind of pacing around frantically.
(25:44):
He's holding this shoe. It almost looks like he's mumbling
to himself. Um. He looks very disoriented on these CCTV videos. Um,
and he claims to have been robbed and needed a
ride out of town. And does this my side note here,
but when first look at the footage, you see and
you see an elderly man that does appear to be
(26:05):
out of sorts for one reason or another. And in
my mind, initially what I see is disorientation, like disordered,
disoriented person. I don't maybe I don't know where I am.
I'm confused about what's going on and why I'm here.
That's what it looks like. But according to people who
knew him, well, there's several interviews outside of that Unsolved
(26:27):
Mysteries show that include his wife and several people that
knew him and his wife speaking about others words, but
they all say that he looked in distress, as though
he was, uh what what did they I think, Ben,
you kind of put it that way hunt hunting or
being hunted essentially, like he was in distress for one
(26:49):
reason or another. That that's their opinion, right, Yeah, And
that's that's a phrase we'll use later in the episode
because it does incapsulate exactly how he um, how he
was behaving, and again we see the issue with eyewitness reports.
People are putting their own perspective over the events, or
(27:09):
it's a better way to say it is they're seeing
the same events through the lens of their own perspective
and their preconceptions. Here's the thing. This doesn't appear to
have come out of nowhere because email records show that
on December twenty nine, he had contacted his colleagues at
(27:30):
the Miter Corporation reporting a home break in. He said
that his cell phone has been stolen, his badge, his
ID badge, his security fob, and his briefcase. There's a
mystery here. We know his records for cab calls, we
have interviews with cab drivers who spoke with him, when
you know his records for emails and text but after
(27:54):
he reported his phone being stolen, it's not clear where
he was ending these other emails from or how he
was sending them. Was it an internet cafe or something
like that. We simply do not know. There are no
further reports of him until six pm when he walked
into the nearby Happy Harry's pharmacy. This was like his
(28:16):
you know, it's like his CVS or his Walgreens down
the street or right eight, I guess, depending on where
you live, Dwayne read if you're in New York. I'm
just naming pharmacies at this point. But he uh, he he,
he knows the people who worked there. Uh. He is
friends with one of the pharmacists and he comes in
and he asked this guy if he can get a
(28:38):
ride to Wilmington's. And multiple times people try to offer
him assistance, and for varying reasons, he always turns the
assistance down. It's it's strange. Can we talk about why
he wants to go to Willington's. At least according to
that documentary or the Unsold Mysteries episode, it's because his
(28:58):
car was parked somewhere where he left his car park
somewhere and he wanted to go find it, but he
wasn't quite sure where it is, and according to his
wife and others, he would he was constantly losing his
car essentially after he would park it. Yeah, d C
is a tough place to park in, I mean a
lot of the Northeast in general. But also he was
(29:21):
doing something that I think will be familiar to a
lot of people who parked their car for a long
time during quarantine. He just hadn't been around his car
for a minute, right, so he wasn't quite sure where
he put it. That doesn't The important thing here is
that's losing your car in that way is not indicative
of an unwell mental state. Yes, and and that's the
(29:44):
story that he was giving to people to for the
reason to get to that area. But we're not, I
don't know, we can't definitively prove that's why he needed
to get to Wilmington's right, Just that that's what he
said to some people, but not all. That's a very
good point. So he looks particularly rough when he's in
one parking lot talking this parking attendant. Uh. He has
(30:06):
one shoe on the other is ripped and in his hand,
and it turns out that he is in the wrong deck.
His car is in a different nearby parking deck. There
are He eventually leaves the scene. There are no further
sightings of him until December, when he visits a high
rise to speak with a senior partner at a law firm.
(30:30):
He leaves before he actually meets with this person, but
he also, according to someone else in the office, asked
for money to take the train. Somewhere before he left,
surveillance cameras captured him exiting the building. Uh. He was
walking east toward a place called Rodney Square, and this
(30:51):
leads if you walk past Rodney Square, this leads to
an area of the city that is known for historically
high rates of crime. That footage is the last time
John Parsons Wheeler is seen alive. The next morning, he's
found dead in that in that landfill. It is interesting
to note as well, it appears that he may have
(31:11):
spent the night underneath that building where there are there's
a series of tunnels essentially that go throughout the area,
and he was definitely seen on camera down there. Uh.
And he was also seen in the same clothes he
was wearing earlier. And then when he exited the building,
somehow or for some reason, he had gotten ahold of
(31:32):
a black hoodie, put that on and wore that out
of the building the next night. And then folks who
knew him, his wife, for example, who were interviewed for
that Unsolved Mystery episode um said that was just completely
out of character for him, like that's not something he
would have ever worn. But it was also very cold
for sure, but it's like it didn't belong to him.
(31:52):
He got it from somebody or some somewhere found it
or something, yeah, or maybe picked it up paid cash,
as he did have cash on him to the very
end of his life and beyond. Uh So, when his
body is found at the landfill, police in Newark, New Jersey,
end up taking the case because there's evidence that the
(32:13):
trash truck that had his body in it made stops
in Newark, which means that Wheeler's body somehow ended up
in a dumpster about thirteen miles away from where he
was last seen on video or where he's last provably seen.
As far as the information law enforcement has released, how
(32:35):
much have they released? Not all of it, not by
a long shot. We're gonna pause for word from our sponsor,
and then we're going to dive into some of the
theories and remaining questions regarding the death of John Parsons Wheeler.
We're back earlier. We noted that whomever was throwing smoke
(33:01):
bombs at that construction site, whoever they were, they weren't
throwing explosives. You know, this wasn't C four. They were
lighting fires. The smoke bombs didn't really have the capacity
to do permanent damage. No, I mean that we we
kind of all know what smoke bombs are. The kind
of things you can buy at a joke shop or
(33:23):
a fireworkshop, and they're sort of considered like the whimpiest
of fireworks. But they make cool plumes of colored smoke.
Which would you would have thought that the the eyewitness
people would have mentioned the smoke bombs. I mean, they
put out a lot of a lot of smoke, and
it's usually brightly colored, like blues or purples or pinks
or whatever. Um, But it wasn't. It was at eleven
(33:46):
eleven eleven thirty PM when that was happening, right, So
it was described as being silhouetted, so when there when
you would have had to have some direct light to
see the effects there. But you're right, I mean, these
things they don't even really explode. They just kind of
you light the few using it sparks and then once
it hits, it really just starts shooting out the smoke.
So they wouldn't have done any damage. You can't really
do a thing with smoke bombs other than you know,
(34:08):
disappear if you're like a cool ninja or something. So
could he have made an enemy? I mean, he's definitely involved,
or someone definitely wanted it to look as if he
were involved, because his cell phone ends up at the
construction site. So did he lie to the Miter corporation
and say that he had lost his cell phone prior
(34:30):
to this to try to escape culpability? Uh? Did someone
sell steal his cell phone and put it at the
construction site. That's kind of complicated frame up, isn't it.
There would have to be a compelling reason to do that.
Or was the smoke bomb a signal for a meeting?
You know, like was I mean that sounds silly, but
(34:50):
maybe the smoke bomb at a construction site was maybe
the construction site was a quiet place to meet that
he thought would be you know, he'd be able to
have a confidential conversation. There's another question, like when you're
talking about the minor corporation materials and I don't mean,
you know, I don't want to put anything on John.
I don't know what he was doing or what his
motivations were, but I can imagine all of those assets
(35:13):
for a company could be valuable to somebody, Right, You're
absolutely right. Uh, there's there's something else here. You know,
we see a couple of points where this could have
been a simple robbery or a series of unfortunate, completely mundane,
non espionage related events. Uh. But there there's some problems
(35:38):
with that too. So first, as you would pointed out earlier, Matt, Uh,
the body has things on it that a mugger would
have stolen. Very nice Rolex watch, He's got that class
ring from West Point. He still has cold hard cash
on his person. Why would robbers leave all those things
(35:58):
on a victim? If verse they were, If there were
robbers at his home, what were they looking for? It
was certainly not high end art, It was not electronics,
other valuables. None of those were touched. They were just
searching frantically for tumeric apparently. Uh. But the problem here
is one of geography. Honestly, it's a it's a series
(36:20):
of bizarre disturbances. And even if you you do the
footwork and look through, uh, the documented timeline of where
he went and when, you will see that this appears
to be a man on the run. He is either
being hunted or believes he is being hunted, or possibly
(36:41):
at some parts of the timeline, he himself is hunting someone,
which leads us to ask the question, are we talking
about murder for higher? I mean yeah, I mean, you know,
you you mentioned completely correctly been like the way this
man looks, the way he's pacing in this bathroom, it's
like he's high from somebody. It's like he's trying to
(37:02):
escape some unseen assailant, you know. I mean that really
that's how it rings for me. I don't know if
you guys read it that way, but but I really
got strong vibes that that he was being chased. Yeah,
I mean, I can imagine it. We have to wonder,
and again I I end up going back to the
Miter Corporation because he only worked for them for what
(37:24):
two years a year or two years two thousand nine,
I think two tho until his death. Um, he was
just a consultant with them, and who knows what consulting
work for the Miter Corporation actually looks like? Who knows
what information he was dealing with and had, you know,
privileged to knowledge too, And of I gosh, I have
(37:45):
to put a giant it's not an allegedly, it's not
it's it's my own thoughts and it's I wonder if
his work with a minor corporation had something to do
with this. Yeah, I don't think that's out of the
realm of possibility at all, because at this at this point,
(38:06):
you know, the US intelligence community is well aware of
the asymmetrical information warfare that countries like Russia and China
and the DPRK or North Korea are actively waging against
the US. And to be fair, the US is doing
the same thing with those countries with countries in the
Middle East. I mean, take a map, spin it around
(38:30):
and just throw a random dart at it and you'll
probably hit a country that the US is fine on.
So there are a lot of state level actors that
would be very interested in his work at minor corporation.
This takes me back to that point we made earlier
about having a lot of potential enemies because he had
(38:52):
a lot of potential projects. It's a nexus of speculation,
and there's really there. There's a disturbing part here that
I wish uh some of those documentaries we mentioned spent
more time on, and it's this. So we've talked about
CCTV before, Closed circuit television. This stuff is you know
(39:13):
generally right now it's not all interconnected, right, So like
the pizza shop on one side of the street may
have a couple of security cameras and the cupcake factory
or whatever on the other side of the street may
have their own set of cameras, but they don't really
share data. Thing is, law enforcement can legally obtain those,
(39:35):
especially in the case of an investigation of a heinous
crime like a murder. Wilmington's in particular, is inundated with cameras.
It is lousy with cameras. There's so so many, and
we know that they're Therefore, there has to be more
footage of John Parsons Wheeler on that faithful night. But
(39:58):
if you look at aaw enforcement statements, you just don't
see that footage. You don't see the vast majority of
what could be out there. And looking at the facts alone,
it's plausible that this investigation was at some point and
from some high level stone walled. That doesn't mean that
(40:18):
someone you know, working for Miter killed him, or working
for the CIA or you know, some other intelligence organization.
It just means that whoever murdered Wheeler, and whatever their
motivations for doing so were, there's something about the story
the US government actively does not want you to know.
Going even further than stone Walld, you could almost say
(40:40):
manipulated or compromised. Right, Yeah, maybe can I can I
put something out there if I'm gonna this is this
is insane. I'm just gonna say it. Imagine the three
of us. Imagine if for some reason, my heart was
out to get us. All of our devices are inextricably
(41:02):
linked to my heart. Doesn't mean they're tracking them necessarily,
but any use that we would have on our machines,
even on our phones, likely could be linked back to
that company in some way. And if we needed to
get away because we were being hunted for some reason,
We're not and we will never be by iHeart. A
(41:26):
good A good strategy maybe to get rid of all
of those potential links and devices. So I'm I'm imagining
that there could be a scenario where John got rid
of all of that Miter Corporation stuff on purpose, because
he wasn't trying to get away from somebody else. He
was maybe trying to get away from them, yeah, or
(41:46):
maybe maybe trying to uh do something like do a
burn the village to save the village strategy, And maybe
brick his devices. He would have he would have known
how to actually brick one too, how to how to
make that information uh as closely irretrievable as possible. But
that that missing briefcase, that's one of the keys here.
(42:08):
He was never without it. It's never been found. All
we know about what could have been in the briefcase
is that it must have been related to his cybersecurity
work at Miter Well not must have, but that's the
most likely scenario. Uh, we just don't know. You know,
it reminds me of a show that I worked on,
(42:28):
Murder and Oregon about the well, I mean, it's it's
conjectured by the folks who truly believe this is what happened.
That this public official was assassinated, um because he knew
too much about corruption and the Oregon State prison system.
And when he was killed, it was you know, shocked
(42:49):
up to being a mugging. Um. He was stabbed in
the heart outside of his office building. But guess what
was missing? Uh when when they found his body a
briefcase full of the presentation materials. Back then it would
have been floppy disks before PowerPoint and cloud based stuff.
Um and supposedly that was never recovered, and that had
(43:12):
this presentation that he's about to give that was going
to blow the lid off of all this like literally
cops like smuggling meth out of prisons and into prisons
and really horrible, gnarly stuff. Um. You know, again, none
of this has ever been proven, but the case seems
really strong and this really has the same ring of
that to me. Well, and he was going to meet
(43:33):
some people at that the corporate offices right in that building. Yeah,
he had been in the Uh. He had been meeting
wanting to meet with the legal team. Uh. He had
also been around the DuPont building at the same time.
And again he had emphasized to his family and to
his colleagues that he was he had to work, even
(43:55):
though it was like the end of the year, like
he had to go in and knock out some incredibly
crucial off with miner It is currently unknown whether the
last several hours of his life were spent in Willington's
or in Newark. There's no conclusive murder scene that has
been found, or at least there's none that's been discussed
(44:16):
with the public. And if there's an exact time of
death that has also not been released. In fact, going
to my earlier theory that there's some stonewalling or some
of education here. On January eight of twenty eleven, just
a few days after his body was discovered, Wilmington's city
councilman named Kevin Kelly told police not to quote go
(44:40):
overboard in investigating this man's death at the top. Yeah, right,
that's weird. It's like, okay, yeah, look into this murder.
But you guys, don't make it a whole thing. You know,
it's a high profile person who passed in a very
strange way, and you say, don't don't worry about it. Yeah,
chill bro right. Uh. At the time of this recording
(45:04):
of our recording, Uh, any toxicology reports on Wheeler that
may have, you know, indicated some kind of substance in
his in his body. Uh, they are unavailable to the
public medical examiners. I found a couple of sources saying
that the examiners indicated they either found no abnormal chemicals
or nothing that played a role in his demise. Because
(45:26):
we have to remember, some substances can be metabolized very
quickly and they'll still have damaging effects. But when you
check the body afterwards, uh, they'll be clean, you know,
and they'll have appeared to die of something like asphyxiation
or heart failure. Russia does polonium on purpose, it's so
that you know it's Russia. There are other much uh
(45:49):
much less apparent substances. What was the stuff not Navalni
got hit with in his underwear, Nova Chukchuk. That's the
the whole point, at least according to that phone call,
if you believe it it was, that it would be untraceable,
you'd have no idea what happened, right, But then also,
how much of an expert is that guy if he's
(46:12):
going to talk about that stuff on the phone, well
he's so yeah, okay, come on, he was. He was allegedly,
at least according to his belief, was talking to one
of his handlers. Okay, al right, but yeah, alright, Well,
far be it for us to criticize someone else just
trying to do their job. So in some ways this
case does bear similarities to that still unsolved death of
(46:34):
Eliza Lam. We have video footage, have records of communication.
What we do not have, however, is anything like an explanation. Yeah,
not even close. And unlike the case of Lamb, it
appears the world at large has moved on from the
(46:55):
mysterious death of John Wheeler. It really does seem that way.
I'm I'm thankful that Unsolved Mysteries came back with this
episode because it feels like it's really jumped started at
least discussion online in a lot of places, because I
think it's been eleven ten ten years, almost eleven years.
No eleven years, got huh, It's just it's been so long. Uh.
(47:19):
And one of my one of my big questions coming
away from this, after reading everything, watching all this stuff,
there are two scenarios for me. One is that he
really was going through some kind of mental state where
he was either manic or or super low right where
(47:40):
where he was just going through something. I'm not confused
is the wrong word, but he just what he was
focused on other things, and what we what we see
in the footage is him truly in a distressed, confused
state and he's not sure what's going on. He's trying
to find his car, then he gets lost. He has
no way to communicate because he doesn't have a cell phone.
(48:01):
He's he can't get back to his wife, who would
you know, like be his mental rock or or another
family member, somebody familiar that would kind of help him.
And he's cold, he's in a different place. Maybe a
car took him to Newark and he didn't expect to
go to Newark for some reason, or somebody he got
in a car with, uh, with bad intentions took him
(48:25):
to new Wark instead of where he wanted to go.
And you know, that's one potential thing. And along with
that is maybe he was cold and he climbed into
a dumpster, which is a common thing that occurs when
it's very very cold outside and there's no other place
to go. Dumpsters are used in that Unsolved Mysteries episode.
(48:47):
There's there's a few people who work in that industry
saying that, Yeah, it's very common for us to load
the truck up to one of these dumpsters, you put
the forks in, and then somebody will pop out the
top or jump out the side, and like, well whoa
whoall stop stop, I'm in here. And I'm not saying
that John would or wouldn't do that. It's just a
real possibility, right, Yeah, Yeah, it's a real possibility, and
(49:09):
it's an excellent point. Uh. We do also need to
point out that, you know, the family, the survivors, his relatives,
his friends, his colleagues have all also you know, done
their best hiring investigators, putting out rewards for information. But
still at this point, uh, there seemed to be no
(49:31):
leads the like. The craziest question is could could a
government agency of some some actor, some state actor, or
a faction thereof have targeted him for his extensive high
level knowledge. He knew a lot of stuff, you know.
But the thing is, he seems by all accounts to
(49:53):
be a real company man, like he's ideologically loyal. He
doesn't seem like he's the type to divulge secret intelligence,
to spill the to spill the espionage beans, or anything
like that. So then we have to ask, you know,
when you get all Jacob's ladder with this, but we
have to ask whether there might be a personal revenge
(50:13):
mode of at play. Could it have been something related
to Vietnam there's no solid proof, or or that house,
that house across the street where he was trying to
shut that thing down. The yeah, I think that's a
real possibility that he made a personal enemy somehow, one
way or another. The other thing I want to bring
up with that dumpster just really quickly. I'm sorry that
(50:35):
I didn't finish that thought there. If you're in a
dumpster like that, imagine the physics of one of these
big forklift trucks picking up a dumpster if you're inside
of it, and then dumping it forcefully into the back
of a truck. Then also think about the fact that
a lot of those dump trucks have a compressor function
on purpose to compress trash. Imagine if you got stuck
(51:00):
in there accidentally, are caught unawares, get dumped in there,
and then get crushed to a certain extent. His the
injuries that are shown on that report, like crushed ribs,
like he appeared to have been beaten up. But I'm
wondering this sounds so silly, and I do, and I
don't mean to discount the work of any corner of
(51:22):
any medical examiners, But like I'm I'm I'm trying to
imagine how much damage would be done to a human
body if it went through that process. If you're in
a lot of fairly malleable trash, how much would a
human body actually get crushed. Would it be to the
extent where you wouldn't recognize the damage was being done
(51:46):
because you would have differing points hitting the body, right. Like,
I know, it's weird to get into the physics of
what that would be like, but I'm just in my mind, like,
what if it was just him being in that compactor
that caused the damage? Tell me if that's I just
don't know. It's not stupid at all. But even if
(52:07):
the thing is, even if that's the case, it doesn't
explain some of those other things leading up to the devise, right, So, um,
if it is, if it is something like that, it's
it's still I would say, no, less tragic. That's a
horrible way to go, especially when you're already having what
appears to be a very hectic and unpleasant series of days. Uh. Yeah,
(52:31):
it's quite It's quite possible. It's also possible that maybe
he was beaten before. Uh maybe maybe he was beaten
near to the point of death and then escaped into
a dumpster to hide. It is possible. Again, all the
things that we're saying right now are possible but not
not proven. You know, there there are questions that have
(52:54):
just become tougher to answer over time, because again, in
my opinion. Uh, something was up with the investigation on
some level. What what would you say about that, Mat, Yeah,
I mean from what we found there from Kevin Kelly,
that seems off. That seems really really off. This was
a high profile person that was you know, appeared to
(53:17):
be beloved in many circles, especially in the upper echelons
of at least the Republican Party. Um, if not you know,
the without using the phrase deep state, the the non
elected parts of the government, right right, Uh? Yeah. One
one thing is for sure. Something about this, if not
(53:40):
the direct murder or homicide accidental death, something about this
appears orchestrated. It appears that someone had a plan and
whatever this was, it was not a random break in
and a random mugging. Uh. Something, Something was play, something
(54:00):
was afoot. But what you know, Matt, I, I know
we're in deep water here because we're we're exchanging theories,
we're sharing possibilities. But without access to more information or
a deathbed confession or something, I think everybody is at
(54:21):
a loss to explain this. A lot of the things
we just mentioned are currently equally plausible or equally possible.
I should say, Well, we want to know what you
think what happened to John Parsons Wheeler the third right
to us. You can find us on Facebook. You can
find us on Twitter. Were conspiracy Stuff at both of those.
(54:44):
On Instagram, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can also
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Gets Crazy. I you like that. It's just like our
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can go over there and hang out with listeners just
like you have discussions. You will be surprised at how
excellent and online discussion can be about topics like this.
(55:08):
It's it's wonderful, highly recommended and an update from from
the Here's where it Gets Crazy front Apparently, Uh, there's
talk about writing a stuff they don't want you to know,
a piece of fan fiction. Yeah, yeah, so romantic. I
don't know. We're we're not in charge of This is
(55:30):
from Holly, one of your fellow listens, So we we
will be having it. We will be figuring it out
at the same time you do, folks. Uh. One nice note.
It looks like this might be used potentially to raise
money for some charities in the Marshall Islands, so being
(55:52):
for a good cause. Um, but yeah, that's that's the
that's some of the stuff that you will see on
here's where it gets crazy. If you are not given
to exploring social media, totally get it. You can call
us directly. We have a phone line that we are
doing a great job at. Now keep you track of Uh.
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be the whole of the telephone law. But but we
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(56:35):
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Then let us know if we can use your message
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(57:18):
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(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is all they called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission controlled decand here in spirit. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. We are delving into
a true unsolved mystery today. If you're a younger person,
(00:50):
you might not have heard of John Parsons Wheeler, the
Third unless you saw the recent Netflix reboot of Unsolved Mysteries.
It's a story that largely disappeared from mass media headlines
in a very weird way. I mean, you've heard of
Eliza Lamb, but have you heard of John Parsons Wheeler.
(01:12):
Here are the facts. First things first, whether or not
you have ever heard of this man. If you live
in the US, his career has probably impacted you in
some way. Uh. He's one of those guys who it
seems like since his early days he was destined for
the heights of the military political class. Oh yeah, an
(01:35):
absolute heavyweight and and a sharp guy to boot. John
Parsons where the third Jack two his pals, was born
on December four in Laredo, Texas, and he was to
some degree kind of destined to follow in the footsteps
of those that came before him and his family line. Uh,
and was in fact groomed for the type of illustrious
(02:00):
political and military career many would only ever dream of.
He came from a long line of these career military men,
including one relative who served in both the Confederate Army
and then later the United States Army. Yeah, he ended
up going to the US Military Academy, which you may
know as West Point. That's the way it's generally referred to.
(02:21):
Very prestigious place if you're going to go that route.
And then he was a fire control platoon leader in
New Jersey back in the middle late sixties, and he
ended up getting a Bachelor of Science degree from that institution. Yeah.
Important note about his classmates his cohort at West Point.
(02:41):
Many of these men would go on to lose their
lives in Vietnam, and his experiences with the war had
a tremendous influence on his career, his personal beliefs, and
possibly debatably, the end of his life. UH. This class
(03:02):
at West Point is documented in a book written by
former Washington Post journalist named Rick Atkinson. The name of
the book is The Long Gray Line. This book spends
a lot of time on Wheeler himself if you read it,
and Wheeler had a copy of it at his home.
He served as a staff officer in Vietnam. He served
(03:26):
with the Office of the Secretary Defense. He served with
the Joint Staff before he left service in one His
schooling is particularly interesting because it was his gateway to
the upper echelons of American society. He enrolled in Harvard
Business School in sixty nine, got a master's in Business admin.
(03:50):
He got a degree in law from Yale in seventy
and he worked with fancy law firms in d C.
The ones that kind of blur the line between private
and public power. UH. They're often called white shoe law firms.
You may hear them referred to as such. He served
as a clerk for George E. McKinnon. He was a
(04:12):
high level official for the SEC Securities and Exchange Commission.
This guy had his finger in a lot of pies. Uh,
he was during this time at the SEC side. Note,
he was investigating major cases of insider trading. So, long
story short, he was accepted by the often invisible ruling
(04:37):
class of this country and he moved extensively in this circle. Well,
and he's also if anyone knew of his work, if
you're imagining the people on the other side of those investigations,
he was already potentially making enemies just putting it out there. Yeah,
great point, Matt. Let's let's talk a little bit about
(04:57):
his career, because the space ace he occupies is a
bit alien, I think to a lot of the general public.
You could describe him as a defense consultant, but that
is a very vague term. Yeah, it seems almost like
a gray area kind of where it could encompass a
whole lot of things that maybe aren't public knowledge. Yeah, exactly. No.
(05:22):
Al So, he was known for working in that often unexamined,
liminal space between the FEDS and private companies and then
charities and nonprofits, and of course, as long time listeners
know some of those organizations, not all, but some of
them are much more closely related than they would have
(05:44):
you believe, according to you know, their f a q
s on their websites. UH. For most of the people
in the US. Wheeler's most notable, well known work is
his assistance in the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
in DC's instrumental in making that happen. UH. He worked
(06:04):
for a cavalcade of different institutions and organizations, Amtrak, Mothers
Against Drunk Driving, three different three different Republican administrations, Reagan
and then Bush, and then Bush again when that guy
put his son into office. And he also worked for
(06:25):
the Miter Corporation. Remember that last one. It's going to
be important later. His career was not without controversy, especially
moving in and out of so many institutions. Maybe we
can talk a little bit about his roles with charities
and with UH with businesses as well. He was extremely
(06:46):
active in various nonprofits, and I think that's probably the
way to put it, very specialized nonprofits. UH. And he
was the founder and CEO of this thing called Vietnam
Children's Fund. By many accounts, at least if you look online,
appears to be a great organization, at least the forward
facing things about it. He worked with President Bush, like
(07:08):
we said, the father to create this thing called the
Earth Conservation Corps. He also served as president CEO of
the Deafness Research Foundation. I mean, just listen to what
we're saying here. This man was NonStop working with organizations
that appear to be for the great or the greater good.
At least that's the way. That's the way it seems.
(07:31):
He also had a really solid rep for Oh yeah,
this is great, solid rep returning failing businesses around. Now,
that's sounds sounds great right on paper, But when you
turn a failing business around, like what does that really mean?
Like what do you have to do to turn a
failing business around? It's when you start hearing like corporate
buzzwords like pivot, you know. Yeah, and it could be
(07:54):
you know, and it could be everything from specializing in,
you know, making a company speciales in one small thing
that is a profit center, and then getting rid of
a whole bunch of other things that a company does,
such as the case with Macy's. Uh, Macy's you'll remember
from them all when you were a kid, and some
some places now I think they're Macy's unless they're all gone,
(08:15):
I can't remember. But he turned that business around. He
got him out of bankruptcy right, which may have entailed layoffs.
That's that's the elephant in the room, the badger and
the bag. There under euphemisms like streamlining, pivoting, or focusing.
But he did manage to write this ship uh small
note about Vietnam Children's Fund. By the way, they build
(08:39):
elementary schools in Vietnam, and they do a pretty great
job at it. There's still around. If you want to
learn more, you can. You can just find them online.
But perhaps the most unpredictable aspect of Wheeler's post military
career was this late stage professional plot twist. He was
(09:00):
well into his sixties when he developed an intense interest
in cyber security, and that's what led him to the
Miteror corporation. It also it also turned him into one
of those guys who always has a briefcase inexplicable, always
has a briefcase. This in the huhs no telling, No,
(09:23):
literally we don't know, but behind the scenes, you know,
we have to realize that this this person was human
being and he struggled with his own demons. He suffered
from depression and bipolar disorder. That's not speculation. He received
diagnosis in this regard and this resulted in these bouts
(09:44):
of frenetic action and then unpredictable at times drastic mood swings.
But you know who's perfect, Well, he's He's he's clearly
a workaholic, right, and I'm sure in many ways that
helped him at least if you if you watched the
I think we mentioned it that unsolved Mysteries up episode
(10:06):
as well as you read online stuff that has been
written by his wife. He he thrived quite a bit
from that energy that he that he got, not necessarily
from bipolar disorder, but just that existed within him inherently, right, Right,
someone defining themselves by their continual actions, right, there must
(10:26):
always be a goal to pursue. He's not really a
kick back and smell the morning do with a nice
hot cup of coffee kind of guy. He's got stuff
to do. But given his track record and given the
success and the benefits of the work he does, his
legacy seems assured. Until one strange day in November, very
(10:50):
last day of December thirty one, there are some workers
at the Cherry Island landfill near Wilmington's, Virginia. Yeah, they
see the body of an elderly man plummet from the
back of a garbage truck onto a heap of trash.
This turns out to be the body of John Parsons
(11:12):
Wheeler the Third. He was sixty six years old. Today's episode,
what happened? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. Officially, this death has been
(11:33):
ruled a homicide. However, it is a homicide that comes
with a lot of unanswered questions. And the further you
dig into this story, the stranger it becomes. So maybe
we start with the relevant details. Should we start with
the landfill? What do you think? I think that's a
perfect place to start. When these workers found Wheeler's body, UM,
(11:56):
he had the look of having been severely beaten. He
was wearing a white shirt, black pants, and a black jacket.
And an important detail, he was wearing a class of
nineteen sixty six ring from the West Point Military Academy. UM.
And the thing that was unusual about it is that
(12:17):
he still had things like that clearly very valuable ring
that any average street mugger would have taken. Not to
mention the absolute lack of care that went into quote
disposing of this body. I mean, it was really just
dumped in plain view. We're gonna talk about this later on,
(12:37):
but just to end up where his body ended up,
it was either someone taking great care to put a
body in a dumpster and hope that it would never
be discovered again, because it is actually quite unlikely that
they would have discovered him amongst all the trash that
was dumped that day from from the truck. The other
the other side of the coin is if his body
(12:59):
was dumped by somebody or just put into a dumpster
like that. You're right that there's a lack of care
in that. I don't know, it's weird. It's both sides, right,
It's it's a lack of care, but it's also it
appears to show um intent I guess if if someone
actually did put him in there to try and hide
a body. Yeah, that's that's the thing. It's alarmingly easy
(13:24):
to dispose of an organism in a landfill, especially a
large one. You just you have to work out the
timing and you have to you know, like the day
of the week when a lot of dumps come in.
Things like that. This should not be confused or mistaken
as it's confused for mistaken as advice on where to
(13:45):
put bodies. We're not giving you that. We are saying
that the average I would say, not not pre planned
or orchestrated. Mugging or murder doesn't usually resultants in the
perpetrator having the presence of mind to dispose of the body.
You know what I mean. If you are if you
are robbing someone, the robbery goes wrong and you stab them,
(14:10):
wound them, named them, or shoot them, your first instinct
is going to be to leave the scene immediately rather
than sit around and think, hey, should I stash this
in some bushes assassin's creed style or something like that.
It just it doesn't often happen that way. So Wilmington's
is on the case. Authorities contact the police in Newcastle, Delaware,
(14:34):
where the Wheeler family has a second home, and they
the Virginia Police informed the Delaware police of this. A
few days earlier, just after Christmas round December, Wheeler had
told his wife he had to spend a few days
working on an important project at the minor corporation. He
(14:57):
told her he'd be staying at the Metropolitan Club in
downtown Washington, and they argued about this we know, they argued,
this is not speculation because we can see the email
and text records, and he was emphasizing this was important.
He even talked to his therapist about the argument. He
was trying to trying to smooth things out diplomatically until
(15:20):
the point that he fell completely out of contact with her.
And then police found a series of phone calls that
made this seem like more than an accidental death or
a mugging. That's right, but more than you know, offering
any real solutions. Just raised a significant number of new
questions to the circumstances surrounding Wheeler's death. One call from December,
(15:47):
the day Wheeler traveled to Washington, d C. Came from
a resident of Newcastle named Scott Morris, who saw PM
what he described as quote, the darkened silhouette of a
man standing in the frame of the house under construction
across the street, methodically lighting what looked like small balls
(16:09):
of fire and tossing them onto the floor. Huh. Really
descriptive and and and kind of eerie. Um. The police
called to the scene. Um didn't find any damage of note,
but Morris remained disturbed by by what he saw, the
sense of desperation um, and the purpose of what was
(16:33):
going on in this scene really stuck with him. He
described it as creepy. He says, the figure appeared very calm,
and when he finished, he turned very deliberately and walked
away towards the path along the Delaware River. Yeah. So
we know the thing about eyewitness accounts is that they
they're essentially combo meals. Right. The main entree in these
(16:57):
combo meals is going to be the fact foul description
of what happened. But the side order, you know, the
fries and the drink are the the person's own perspective
and opinion put on put upon what they saw. So yes,
for Morris, this appears to be purposeful. He he somehow
(17:22):
from body language, because he didn't speak to this person,
he somehow believed or got the sense that they were
quite deliberate. But that doesn't necessarily mean they are because
he didn't talk to them, right, and he didn't see
who it was. That's a hugely important detail here. But
another hugely important detail. That construction site was something Wheeler
(17:45):
was involved in in an antagonistic way. It was part
of an on He was part of an ongoing legal
dispute over the construction of this particular house, and he
was going hard on the paint too. He hated the
idea of it being built Partially, yes, it would block
his his home's view of the land and the water,
(18:06):
but from his perspective, at least the way he explained it,
the area was historic because back in the day, early
colonists and then later revolutionaries built a defense battery on
that land. So to him building anything on that land
other than perhaps a monument to those earlier forces was
(18:28):
profoundly offensive. It was a kind of sacrilege. But then
we have to ask ourselves, was that sincere or was
that just like his rationalization for this construction that he hated,
you know what I mean? Anyway, he was involved, well,
he was involved, and he was trying to stop it.
His wife says that he was essentially on a mission
(18:49):
to stop this thing. And we know from just from
his past life and in his actions everything that he's done,
he he sees something as a goal and he goes
for it, and that's again like his mission, right, so
you can imagine that he was very feeling, very very
strongly about this, and from from what I've read this,
(19:10):
this incident appears to have been like smoke bombs that
weren't gonna didn't seem to cause any damage really to
the house, didn't seem to cause anything else besides this disturbance. Um.
But the weird thing is that John Wheeler's cellular phone
was recovered in that house, the house that was under
(19:30):
construction where the silhouetted man or person lighting smoke bombs
was found or was seen, let's say, very strange, Yeah,
leaving the accusations of his involvement or his guilt in
this instance, leaving those all to the side. The timeline
(19:51):
becomes really weird when we think about when he had
the phone and when he didn't, how the phone got
from him to that place in uh place on the
banks there. And then there is another call police discover
on December, the day before Wheeler's body is found. There's
a guy named Rob Dill d I l L. He
is one of the wheelers neighbors there in Newcastle, and
(20:14):
he reports that someone has broken into the Wheeler's home.
I believe he's the same neighbor also who said they
had a TV on very loud when he knew there
was no one home and he was just doing anything
neighbors do, keeping an eye on the house. He had
noticed a window a jar in the Wheeler house and
(20:36):
the exterior door the storm door was closed, but the
interior door was also a jar. And then he found
he found some weird, weird stuff when he went into
the interior. There was a disarray in the kitchen, you know,
like somebody had been rooting through things in a hurried manner.
(21:00):
John had a ceremonial sword and shield. They were covered
with powder by the sink. Rob Dill notices a footprint
in powder in front of the sink, and when the
police show up. The weird thing is that nothing seems
to have been stolen. Stuff was messed with, but no
(21:20):
one No one took expensive electronics, No one took, you know,
some of the art that the Wheelers had. The stuff
the kind of stuff you would normally steal if you
were just a garden variety be an e dude. But
there was one detail that caught their attention. Amid all
this disarray, investigators found a book on the kitchen counter.
(21:43):
The book was open, as if someone had been reading
it before they left. Can you guess what the book is?
If you guessed the long gray line. You are correct, yeah, man.
And and just the fact that his ceremonial sword and
she we're hanging out down there. I mean, that's a
(22:03):
it's weird. Spices some comment maybe wherever the white substance was,
and those things. I don't know. It's weird. It's tough
because initially what that sounds like to me is frantically
searching for something in your own house and then uh
maybe finding it or not finding it and getting upset
(22:25):
and leaving. Um that's where forget or or you know
there's something I've hidden something, or I I know I've
hidden something, but I'm not sure where it is. I
think it might be under the sink, and like just
pulling everything frantically out from drawers and from under the sink.
I don't know. That's what it sounds like to me,
(22:45):
Rather like, as you said, for all the reasons you've
already stayed up been rather than someone going into the
house and robbing it, unless they were just trying to
leave a message of some sort, right, unless there was
possibly someone from his past. Right, this is the thing.
We don't know what page the book was on, you know,
(23:06):
when it was open, was it indicating a specific, somehow
significant passage unknown at this time. But then also we
see an alternate possibility that maybe Wheeler himself is panicked
or he's hurried for some reason, because when people are
hurrying from their own house, they don't always close the
(23:28):
windows or the doors, right, because the logic is, it's
my house, I'll just come back into it, right. Uh So,
the initial investigations tell us increasingly strange things. On January third, uh,
just a few days after the discovery of his body,
up I reported Wheeler's death was ruled a homicide, but
(23:51):
a friend of his that he knew through the legal
circles he moved in noted, this is just not the
kind of guy who gets murdered. This is not the
kind of guy you find in a landfill. But the
official cause of death again, his homicide, and that was
specified in several obituaries that came out shortly after. So,
(24:13):
according to his obituary in the Washington Post, while just
read your quote, uh quote, the cause of death was
blunt force trauma inflicted by unknown assailants in Wilmington, Delaware,
not far from his home in Newcastle, Delaware. But as
these investigations continued, many more troubling details started to rise
(24:35):
to the surface. Wheeler seemed to not only have been beaten,
but beaten to the point of of like the beating
inducing a heart attack you can only imagine, UM. And
several eye witnesses would report that Wheeler had been seen
in really rough shape, holding a shoe, his shoe, stumbling
(24:56):
around um under duress and Wilmington, Delaware. Um. He was
telling people in this uh Unsolved Mysteries that we talked
about the top of the show. They interviewed some of
the folks that that saw him UM, and he claimed
to have lost his briefcase or rather even even more so,
had it stolen. UM. And he kept repeating it like
(25:21):
he was in some kind of fugue state. UM, whether
it's suffering from some sort of mental breakdown or just
days from having been attacked or or you know, and
disheveled and all that. But it really does the plot
does thicken. UM. There's some footage you can see, UH,
he's on camera from his kind of you know, wander UM,
and you can see he's kind of pacing around frantically.
(25:44):
He's holding this shoe. It almost looks like he's mumbling
to himself. Um. He looks very disoriented on these CCTV videos. Um,
and he claims to have been robbed and needed a
ride out of town. And does this my side note here,
but when first look at the footage, you see and
you see an elderly man that does appear to be
(26:05):
out of sorts for one reason or another. And in
my mind, initially what I see is disorientation, like disordered,
disoriented person. I don't maybe I don't know where I am.
I'm confused about what's going on and why I'm here.
That's what it looks like. But according to people who
knew him, well, there's several interviews outside of that Unsolved
(26:27):
Mysteries show that include his wife and several people that
knew him and his wife speaking about others words, but
they all say that he looked in distress, as though
he was, uh what what did they I think, Ben,
you kind of put it that way hunt hunting or
being hunted essentially, like he was in distress for one
(26:49):
reason or another. That that's their opinion, right, Yeah, And
that's that's a phrase we'll use later in the episode
because it does incapsulate exactly how he um, how he
was behaving, and again we see the issue with eyewitness reports.
People are putting their own perspective over the events, or
(27:09):
it's a better way to say it is they're seeing
the same events through the lens of their own perspective
and their preconceptions. Here's the thing. This doesn't appear to
have come out of nowhere because email records show that
on December twenty nine, he had contacted his colleagues at
(27:30):
the Miter Corporation reporting a home break in. He said
that his cell phone has been stolen, his badge, his
ID badge, his security fob, and his briefcase. There's a
mystery here. We know his records for cab calls, we
have interviews with cab drivers who spoke with him, when
you know his records for emails and text but after
(27:54):
he reported his phone being stolen, it's not clear where
he was ending these other emails from or how he
was sending them. Was it an internet cafe or something
like that. We simply do not know. There are no
further reports of him until six pm when he walked
into the nearby Happy Harry's pharmacy. This was like his
(28:16):
you know, it's like his CVS or his Walgreens down
the street or right eight, I guess, depending on where
you live, Dwayne read if you're in New York. I'm
just naming pharmacies at this point. But he uh, he he,
he knows the people who worked there. Uh. He is
friends with one of the pharmacists and he comes in
and he asked this guy if he can get a
(28:38):
ride to Wilmington's. And multiple times people try to offer
him assistance, and for varying reasons, he always turns the
assistance down. It's it's strange. Can we talk about why
he wants to go to Willington's. At least according to
that documentary or the Unsold Mysteries episode, it's because his
(28:58):
car was parked somewhere where he left his car park
somewhere and he wanted to go find it, but he
wasn't quite sure where it is, and according to his
wife and others, he would he was constantly losing his
car essentially after he would park it. Yeah, d C
is a tough place to park in, I mean a
lot of the Northeast in general. But also he was
(29:21):
doing something that I think will be familiar to a
lot of people who parked their car for a long
time during quarantine. He just hadn't been around his car
for a minute, right, so he wasn't quite sure where
he put it. That doesn't The important thing here is
that's losing your car in that way is not indicative
of an unwell mental state. Yes, and and that's the
(29:44):
story that he was giving to people to for the
reason to get to that area. But we're not, I
don't know, we can't definitively prove that's why he needed
to get to Wilmington's right, Just that that's what he
said to some people, but not all. That's a very
good point. So he looks particularly rough when he's in
one parking lot talking this parking attendant. Uh. He has
(30:06):
one shoe on the other is ripped and in his hand,
and it turns out that he is in the wrong deck.
His car is in a different nearby parking deck. There
are He eventually leaves the scene. There are no further
sightings of him until December, when he visits a high
rise to speak with a senior partner at a law firm.
(30:30):
He leaves before he actually meets with this person, but
he also, according to someone else in the office, asked
for money to take the train. Somewhere before he left,
surveillance cameras captured him exiting the building. Uh. He was
walking east toward a place called Rodney Square, and this
(30:51):
leads if you walk past Rodney Square, this leads to
an area of the city that is known for historically
high rates of crime. That footage is the last time
John Parsons Wheeler is seen alive. The next morning, he's
found dead in that in that landfill. It is interesting
to note as well, it appears that he may have
(31:11):
spent the night underneath that building where there are there's
a series of tunnels essentially that go throughout the area,
and he was definitely seen on camera down there. Uh.
And he was also seen in the same clothes he
was wearing earlier. And then when he exited the building,
somehow or for some reason, he had gotten ahold of
(31:32):
a black hoodie, put that on and wore that out
of the building the next night. And then folks who
knew him, his wife, for example, who were interviewed for
that Unsolved Mystery episode um said that was just completely
out of character for him, like that's not something he
would have ever worn. But it was also very cold
for sure, but it's like it didn't belong to him.
(31:52):
He got it from somebody or some somewhere found it
or something, yeah, or maybe picked it up paid cash,
as he did have cash on him to the very
end of his life and beyond. Uh So, when his
body is found at the landfill, police in Newark, New Jersey,
end up taking the case because there's evidence that the
(32:13):
trash truck that had his body in it made stops
in Newark, which means that Wheeler's body somehow ended up
in a dumpster about thirteen miles away from where he
was last seen on video or where he's last provably seen.
As far as the information law enforcement has released, how
(32:35):
much have they released? Not all of it, not by
a long shot. We're gonna pause for word from our sponsor,
and then we're going to dive into some of the
theories and remaining questions regarding the death of John Parsons Wheeler.
We're back earlier. We noted that whomever was throwing smoke
(33:01):
bombs at that construction site, whoever they were, they weren't
throwing explosives. You know, this wasn't C four. They were
lighting fires. The smoke bombs didn't really have the capacity
to do permanent damage. No, I mean that we we
kind of all know what smoke bombs are. The kind
of things you can buy at a joke shop or
(33:23):
a fireworkshop, and they're sort of considered like the whimpiest
of fireworks. But they make cool plumes of colored smoke.
Which would you would have thought that the the eyewitness
people would have mentioned the smoke bombs. I mean, they
put out a lot of a lot of smoke, and
it's usually brightly colored, like blues or purples or pinks
or whatever. Um, But it wasn't. It was at eleven
(33:46):
eleven eleven thirty PM when that was happening, right, So
it was described as being silhouetted, so when there when
you would have had to have some direct light to
see the effects there. But you're right, I mean, these
things they don't even really explode. They just kind of
you light the few using it sparks and then once
it hits, it really just starts shooting out the smoke.
So they wouldn't have done any damage. You can't really
do a thing with smoke bombs other than you know,
(34:08):
disappear if you're like a cool ninja or something. So
could he have made an enemy? I mean, he's definitely involved,
or someone definitely wanted it to look as if he
were involved, because his cell phone ends up at the
construction site. So did he lie to the Miter corporation
and say that he had lost his cell phone prior
(34:30):
to this to try to escape culpability? Uh? Did someone
sell steal his cell phone and put it at the
construction site. That's kind of complicated frame up, isn't it.
There would have to be a compelling reason to do that.
Or was the smoke bomb a signal for a meeting?
You know, like was I mean that sounds silly, but
(34:50):
maybe the smoke bomb at a construction site was maybe
the construction site was a quiet place to meet that
he thought would be you know, he'd be able to
have a confidential conversation. There's another question, like when you're
talking about the minor corporation materials and I don't mean,
you know, I don't want to put anything on John.
I don't know what he was doing or what his
motivations were, but I can imagine all of those assets
(35:13):
for a company could be valuable to somebody, Right, You're
absolutely right. Uh, there's there's something else here. You know,
we see a couple of points where this could have
been a simple robbery or a series of unfortunate, completely mundane,
non espionage related events. Uh. But there there's some problems
(35:38):
with that too. So first, as you would pointed out earlier, Matt, Uh,
the body has things on it that a mugger would
have stolen. Very nice Rolex watch, He's got that class
ring from West Point. He still has cold hard cash
on his person. Why would robbers leave all those things
(35:58):
on a victim? If verse they were, If there were
robbers at his home, what were they looking for? It
was certainly not high end art, It was not electronics,
other valuables. None of those were touched. They were just
searching frantically for tumeric apparently. Uh. But the problem here
is one of geography. Honestly, it's a it's a series
(36:20):
of bizarre disturbances. And even if you you do the
footwork and look through, uh, the documented timeline of where
he went and when, you will see that this appears
to be a man on the run. He is either
being hunted or believes he is being hunted, or possibly
(36:41):
at some parts of the timeline, he himself is hunting someone,
which leads us to ask the question, are we talking
about murder for higher? I mean yeah, I mean, you know,
you you mentioned completely correctly been like the way this
man looks, the way he's pacing in this bathroom, it's
like he's high from somebody. It's like he's trying to
(37:02):
escape some unseen assailant, you know. I mean that really
that's how it rings for me. I don't know if
you guys read it that way, but but I really
got strong vibes that that he was being chased. Yeah,
I mean, I can imagine it. We have to wonder,
and again I I end up going back to the
Miter Corporation because he only worked for them for what
(37:24):
two years a year or two years two thousand nine,
I think two tho until his death. Um, he was
just a consultant with them, and who knows what consulting
work for the Miter Corporation actually looks like? Who knows
what information he was dealing with and had, you know,
privileged to knowledge too, And of I gosh, I have
(37:45):
to put a giant it's not an allegedly, it's not
it's it's my own thoughts and it's I wonder if
his work with a minor corporation had something to do
with this. Yeah, I don't think that's out of the
realm of possibility at all, because at this at this point,
(38:06):
you know, the US intelligence community is well aware of
the asymmetrical information warfare that countries like Russia and China
and the DPRK or North Korea are actively waging against
the US. And to be fair, the US is doing
the same thing with those countries with countries in the
Middle East. I mean, take a map, spin it around
(38:30):
and just throw a random dart at it and you'll
probably hit a country that the US is fine on.
So there are a lot of state level actors that
would be very interested in his work at minor corporation.
This takes me back to that point we made earlier
about having a lot of potential enemies because he had
(38:52):
a lot of potential projects. It's a nexus of speculation,
and there's really there. There's a disturbing part here that
I wish uh some of those documentaries we mentioned spent
more time on, and it's this. So we've talked about
CCTV before, Closed circuit television. This stuff is you know
(39:13):
generally right now it's not all interconnected, right, So like
the pizza shop on one side of the street may
have a couple of security cameras and the cupcake factory
or whatever on the other side of the street may
have their own set of cameras, but they don't really
share data. Thing is, law enforcement can legally obtain those,
(39:35):
especially in the case of an investigation of a heinous
crime like a murder. Wilmington's in particular, is inundated with cameras.
It is lousy with cameras. There's so so many, and
we know that they're Therefore, there has to be more
footage of John Parsons Wheeler on that faithful night. But
(39:58):
if you look at aaw enforcement statements, you just don't
see that footage. You don't see the vast majority of
what could be out there. And looking at the facts alone,
it's plausible that this investigation was at some point and
from some high level stone walled. That doesn't mean that
(40:18):
someone you know, working for Miter killed him, or working
for the CIA or you know, some other intelligence organization.
It just means that whoever murdered Wheeler, and whatever their
motivations for doing so were, there's something about the story
the US government actively does not want you to know.
Going even further than stone Walld, you could almost say
(40:40):
manipulated or compromised. Right, Yeah, maybe can I can I
put something out there if I'm gonna this is this
is insane. I'm just gonna say it. Imagine the three
of us. Imagine if for some reason, my heart was
out to get us. All of our devices are inextricably
(41:02):
linked to my heart. Doesn't mean they're tracking them necessarily,
but any use that we would have on our machines,
even on our phones, likely could be linked back to
that company in some way. And if we needed to
get away because we were being hunted for some reason,
We're not and we will never be by iHeart. A
(41:26):
good A good strategy maybe to get rid of all
of those potential links and devices. So I'm I'm imagining
that there could be a scenario where John got rid
of all of that Miter Corporation stuff on purpose, because
he wasn't trying to get away from somebody else. He
was maybe trying to get away from them, yeah, or
(41:46):
maybe maybe trying to uh do something like do a
burn the village to save the village strategy, And maybe
brick his devices. He would have he would have known
how to actually brick one too, how to how to
make that information uh as closely irretrievable as possible. But
that that missing briefcase, that's one of the keys here.
(42:08):
He was never without it. It's never been found. All
we know about what could have been in the briefcase
is that it must have been related to his cybersecurity
work at Miter Well not must have, but that's the
most likely scenario. Uh, we just don't know. You know,
it reminds me of a show that I worked on,
(42:28):
Murder and Oregon about the well, I mean, it's it's
conjectured by the folks who truly believe this is what happened.
That this public official was assassinated, um because he knew
too much about corruption and the Oregon State prison system.
And when he was killed, it was you know, shocked
(42:49):
up to being a mugging. Um. He was stabbed in
the heart outside of his office building. But guess what
was missing? Uh when when they found his body a
briefcase full of the presentation materials. Back then it would
have been floppy disks before PowerPoint and cloud based stuff.
Um and supposedly that was never recovered, and that had
(43:12):
this presentation that he's about to give that was going
to blow the lid off of all this like literally
cops like smuggling meth out of prisons and into prisons
and really horrible, gnarly stuff. Um. You know, again, none
of this has ever been proven, but the case seems
really strong and this really has the same ring of
that to me. Well, and he was going to meet
(43:33):
some people at that the corporate offices right in that building. Yeah,
he had been in the Uh. He had been meeting
wanting to meet with the legal team. Uh. He had
also been around the DuPont building at the same time.
And again he had emphasized to his family and to
his colleagues that he was he had to work, even
(43:55):
though it was like the end of the year, like
he had to go in and knock out some incredibly
crucial off with miner It is currently unknown whether the
last several hours of his life were spent in Willington's
or in Newark. There's no conclusive murder scene that has
been found, or at least there's none that's been discussed
(44:16):
with the public. And if there's an exact time of
death that has also not been released. In fact, going
to my earlier theory that there's some stonewalling or some
of education here. On January eight of twenty eleven, just
a few days after his body was discovered, Wilmington's city
councilman named Kevin Kelly told police not to quote go
(44:40):
overboard in investigating this man's death at the top. Yeah, right,
that's weird. It's like, okay, yeah, look into this murder.
But you guys, don't make it a whole thing. You know,
it's a high profile person who passed in a very
strange way, and you say, don't don't worry about it. Yeah,
chill bro right. Uh. At the time of this recording
(45:04):
of our recording, Uh, any toxicology reports on Wheeler that
may have, you know, indicated some kind of substance in
his in his body. Uh, they are unavailable to the
public medical examiners. I found a couple of sources saying
that the examiners indicated they either found no abnormal chemicals
or nothing that played a role in his demise. Because
(45:26):
we have to remember, some substances can be metabolized very
quickly and they'll still have damaging effects. But when you
check the body afterwards, uh, they'll be clean, you know,
and they'll have appeared to die of something like asphyxiation
or heart failure. Russia does polonium on purpose, it's so
that you know it's Russia. There are other much uh
(45:49):
much less apparent substances. What was the stuff not Navalni
got hit with in his underwear, Nova Chukchuk. That's the
the whole point, at least according to that phone call,
if you believe it it was, that it would be untraceable,
you'd have no idea what happened, right, But then also,
how much of an expert is that guy if he's
(46:12):
going to talk about that stuff on the phone, well
he's so yeah, okay, come on, he was. He was allegedly,
at least according to his belief, was talking to one
of his handlers. Okay, al right, but yeah, alright, Well,
far be it for us to criticize someone else just
trying to do their job. So in some ways this
case does bear similarities to that still unsolved death of
(46:34):
Eliza Lam. We have video footage, have records of communication.
What we do not have, however, is anything like an explanation. Yeah,
not even close. And unlike the case of Lamb, it
appears the world at large has moved on from the
(46:55):
mysterious death of John Wheeler. It really does seem that way.
I'm I'm thankful that Unsolved Mysteries came back with this
episode because it feels like it's really jumped started at
least discussion online in a lot of places, because I
think it's been eleven ten ten years, almost eleven years.
No eleven years, got huh, It's just it's been so long. Uh.
(47:19):
And one of my one of my big questions coming
away from this, after reading everything, watching all this stuff,
there are two scenarios for me. One is that he
really was going through some kind of mental state where
he was either manic or or super low right where
(47:40):
where he was just going through something. I'm not confused
is the wrong word, but he just what he was
focused on other things, and what we what we see
in the footage is him truly in a distressed, confused
state and he's not sure what's going on. He's trying
to find his car, then he gets lost. He has
no way to communicate because he doesn't have a cell phone.
(48:01):
He's he can't get back to his wife, who would
you know, like be his mental rock or or another
family member, somebody familiar that would kind of help him.
And he's cold, he's in a different place. Maybe a
car took him to Newark and he didn't expect to
go to Newark for some reason, or somebody he got
in a car with, uh, with bad intentions took him
(48:25):
to new Wark instead of where he wanted to go.
And you know, that's one potential thing. And along with
that is maybe he was cold and he climbed into
a dumpster, which is a common thing that occurs when
it's very very cold outside and there's no other place
to go. Dumpsters are used in that Unsolved Mysteries episode.
(48:47):
There's there's a few people who work in that industry
saying that, Yeah, it's very common for us to load
the truck up to one of these dumpsters, you put
the forks in, and then somebody will pop out the
top or jump out the side, and like, well whoa
whoall stop stop, I'm in here. And I'm not saying
that John would or wouldn't do that. It's just a
real possibility, right, Yeah, Yeah, it's a real possibility, and
(49:09):
it's an excellent point. Uh. We do also need to
point out that, you know, the family, the survivors, his relatives,
his friends, his colleagues have all also you know, done
their best hiring investigators, putting out rewards for information. But
still at this point, uh, there seemed to be no
(49:31):
leads the like. The craziest question is could could a
government agency of some some actor, some state actor, or
a faction thereof have targeted him for his extensive high
level knowledge. He knew a lot of stuff, you know.
But the thing is, he seems by all accounts to
(49:53):
be a real company man, like he's ideologically loyal. He
doesn't seem like he's the type to divulge secret intelligence,
to spill the to spill the espionage beans, or anything
like that. So then we have to ask, you know,
when you get all Jacob's ladder with this, but we
have to ask whether there might be a personal revenge
(50:13):
mode of at play. Could it have been something related
to Vietnam there's no solid proof, or or that house,
that house across the street where he was trying to
shut that thing down. The yeah, I think that's a
real possibility that he made a personal enemy somehow, one
way or another. The other thing I want to bring
up with that dumpster just really quickly. I'm sorry that
(50:35):
I didn't finish that thought there. If you're in a
dumpster like that, imagine the physics of one of these
big forklift trucks picking up a dumpster if you're inside
of it, and then dumping it forcefully into the back
of a truck. Then also think about the fact that
a lot of those dump trucks have a compressor function
on purpose to compress trash. Imagine if you got stuck
(51:00):
in there accidentally, are caught unawares, get dumped in there,
and then get crushed to a certain extent. His the
injuries that are shown on that report, like crushed ribs,
like he appeared to have been beaten up. But I'm
wondering this sounds so silly, and I do, and I
don't mean to discount the work of any corner of
(51:22):
any medical examiners, But like I'm I'm I'm trying to
imagine how much damage would be done to a human
body if it went through that process. If you're in
a lot of fairly malleable trash, how much would a
human body actually get crushed. Would it be to the
extent where you wouldn't recognize the damage was being done
(51:46):
because you would have differing points hitting the body, right. Like,
I know, it's weird to get into the physics of
what that would be like, but I'm just in my mind, like,
what if it was just him being in that compactor
that caused the damage? Tell me if that's I just
don't know. It's not stupid at all. But even if
(52:07):
the thing is, even if that's the case, it doesn't
explain some of those other things leading up to the devise, right, So, um,
if it is, if it is something like that, it's
it's still I would say, no, less tragic. That's a
horrible way to go, especially when you're already having what
appears to be a very hectic and unpleasant series of days. Uh. Yeah,
(52:31):
it's quite It's quite possible. It's also possible that maybe
he was beaten before. Uh maybe maybe he was beaten
near to the point of death and then escaped into
a dumpster to hide. It is possible. Again, all the
things that we're saying right now are possible but not
not proven. You know, there there are questions that have
(52:54):
just become tougher to answer over time, because again, in
my opinion. Uh, something was up with the investigation on
some level. What what would you say about that, Mat, Yeah,
I mean from what we found there from Kevin Kelly,
that seems off. That seems really really off. This was
a high profile person that was you know, appeared to
(53:17):
be beloved in many circles, especially in the upper echelons
of at least the Republican Party. Um, if not you know,
the without using the phrase deep state, the the non
elected parts of the government, right right, Uh? Yeah. One
one thing is for sure. Something about this, if not
(53:40):
the direct murder or homicide accidental death, something about this
appears orchestrated. It appears that someone had a plan and
whatever this was, it was not a random break in
and a random mugging. Uh. Something, Something was play, something
(54:00):
was afoot. But what you know, Matt, I, I know
we're in deep water here because we're we're exchanging theories,
we're sharing possibilities. But without access to more information or
a deathbed confession or something, I think everybody is at
(54:21):
a loss to explain this. A lot of the things
we just mentioned are currently equally plausible or equally possible.
I should say, Well, we want to know what you
think what happened to John Parsons Wheeler the third right
to us. You can find us on Facebook. You can
find us on Twitter. Were conspiracy Stuff at both of those.
(54:44):
On Instagram, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can also
head on over to our Facebook group Here's where it
Gets Crazy. I you like that. It's just like our
segment that's been on the show since the beginning. You
can go over there and hang out with listeners just
like you have discussions. You will be surprised at how
excellent and online discussion can be about topics like this.
(55:08):
It's it's wonderful, highly recommended and an update from from
the Here's where it Gets Crazy front Apparently, Uh, there's
talk about writing a stuff they don't want you to know,
a piece of fan fiction. Yeah, yeah, so romantic. I
don't know. We're we're not in charge of This is
(55:30):
from Holly, one of your fellow listens, So we we
will be having it. We will be figuring it out
at the same time you do, folks. Uh. One nice note.
It looks like this might be used potentially to raise
money for some charities in the Marshall Islands, so being
(55:52):
for a good cause. Um, but yeah, that's that's the
that's some of the stuff that you will see on
here's where it gets crazy. If you are not given
to exploring social media, totally get it. You can call
us directly. We have a phone line that we are
doing a great job at. Now keep you track of Uh.
(56:14):
It is one eight three three st d w y
t k UH. You call, you'll hear a voicemail message
telling you you're in the right place. You get three minutes.
They belong to you. Uh. Do what thou wilt shall
be the whole of the telephone law. But but we
do have a Yeah, but we have a couple of
(56:35):
recommendations that may be helpful for you if you find
yourself kind of like scrambling. Oh yeah, first thing, go
ahead and tell us what you want us to call
you on air. Doesn't have to be your real name.
Whatever you want Malkovich is fine, We'll just call everybody Malkovich.
Then let us know if we can use your message
on the air. Um, really, I mean, if you call it,
(56:56):
I don't want to limit you. If you call in,
we really want to use it on the are. Just
let us know if it's okay. Then after that, tell
us your message. Try and keep it as brief as
you possibly can. If you end up needing to, you know,
tell a longer story or something, we would recommend rather
than leaving it on the voicemail, go ahead and send
us an email. And many of you have been doing
(57:18):
this already. Thank you so much for listening and for
just you know, doing this. It really does help us out.
We can We can get through an email message pretty quickly.
If you want to send us an email, it's really easy.
Shoot us a message. We are conspiracy at i heart
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(57:55):
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