Are they saying he made it home and someone killed him in the house? Maybe I'm having some kind of transglobal shit in my brain, but I am having a terrible time following/ making heads or tails of this story. Floorboards? TV noise? Huh? Can no newspaper simply tell a story anymore starting with who what when where why?

Short-term memory loss is a dirty little secret Lipitor/statin side effect. Not uncommon, but not acknowledged by Drs and Pharma. Do we know he was on Lipitor?

So far as I know, we (the pubic) don't know anything about drugs except that the pharmacist knew him. This kind of confusion is something that I think a pharmacist would especially watch out for. This sounds like more than short-term memory loss to me.

The reporting has been quite strange.

That's because the papers are hoping against hope that its a huge scandal that will generate loads of $$$.

Except the television noise part of the story happened the weekend before the disappearance, according to the neighbors who heard the noise.

A pretty straightforward summary in Philadelphia Daily News.

Nope. Not a published clue about the location of his death.

Unfortunately, the Newark Police were first assigned to the investigation, since it was believed his body was dumped in Newark.

The Newark Police is pretty much like Mayberry RFD - except there is no Andy Griffith and no Barney Fife... the town drunk runs the place.

A signature Newark Police moment was when of their best and brightest pulled over a car for running a light. The car stopped on a railroad crossing, and as the cop was writing up the ticket, a freight train appeared. The cop ran to HIS car, so the crossing gate wouldn't hit the hood. The driver was left to scramble for his own safety, and the passenger asleep in the backseat was killed on impact.

The first part of their investigation was probably to breathalyze the corpse and run a check for unpaid parking tickets.

I'd speculate that Wheeler had a mild stroke.

The dead birds? Chemtrails, of course.

The main things I continue to wonder about:

1-His car remained parked where it was in Wilmington since he parked it there on December 13, so if he took the train on December 28, how did he get to the house in New Castle?

2-If he didn't take the train, was he driven from DC on December 28? By whom?

3-Was his briefcase stolen, as he said to one of the witnesses, or was it simply lost in his confused wanderings?

Given his presence at his consultant job on December 28, and the nature of the work there, when he would have normally left with his briefcase, unless he was already disoriented when he left there and could have forgotten it, and given the type of security clearance he had, the briefcase strikes me as important to find. The guy could have been kidnapped and drugged. I don't think that's too far a stretch in terms of speculation. It's at least as plausible as dementia.

Have they established the car was never moved? I thought that wasn't certain.

According to the parking lot records, the car was parked there near Amtrak on December 13 and never taken out. I'll try to find where I read that in a bit.

Kimba, this isn't the report I was thinking of, but there are so many I can't find it again.

From Newark Police Lt. Mark A. Farrall:

Thanks Addy!

Lots of stuff I didn't know in this post:


police have his cell. The found it in the house across the street. Cops think Wheeler might have set off the smoke alarms. Phone shows Wheeler called a cabby, and cops took the cabby in for questioning yesterday. Investigators tore up the floorboards. They dusted kitchen floor and found prints by workboots. Wheeler was wearing loafers.

and other stuff:


http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?secti ... id=7883768

This is new to me:

From the article:



I can see Orly and the other lunatics saying this is evidence of Muslim involvement. Seriously.

Because a lot of the primary reportage is being done by the News Journal which, I swear, is written by seventh graders. I'm surprised they didn't say Wheeler "accidentally the whole bottle".

Then, you have the investigation spearheaded by Newark Police, which are an adjunct to UDel campus security.

It's Keystone Cops meets The Front Page.

His body had better tell the story, since any evidence collected by the Newark Police will, sure as shooting, be spoliated.

Our Medical Examiner's office is, however, world class.

This is really a sad story and probably says a lot about those who suffer from strokes and mental illness and the way society fails to protect them. It sounds to me as if Mr. Wheeler had a stroke. The onset for mental illness would have been too rapid. After the stroke it sounds as if he may have been victimized as well. I can't tell if the evidence is clear that he was murdered. Could he have voluntarily crawled into a dumpster and then been crushed?

Assuming it was foul play, the correct title for this thread, BTW, should be

"Body of Murdered Military Expert Found in Del. landfill."

Bodies aren't murdered; people are.

Google maps time.

His house is in New Castle. He was wandering around Wilmington.

The DUMPSTER was in Newark. Newark is on the western border of New Castle County (right at the Mason-Dixon Line), 10 miles west of Wilmington as the crow flies.

New Castle proper is about 4.5 miles south of the southern end of Wilmington.

Leaving aside how he got from New Castle to Wilmington without his car, there is NO clue how he got all the way to Newark.

My house is about equidistant from New Castle, Wilmington, and Newark. I was out running errands on the 29th and could have passed him for all I know. I drove by the dumpster location at least three times on the 28th and 29th.

The cell phone in the house across the street sounds like a set up. It would suck if there were two independent dramas going on at the same time.



The body is the only part that dies, as far as we know.

I believe it was the ME's office that deemed this a murder, or, more likely, a homicide. Since we haven't seen an autopsy report, I would have to think they must have had some evidence of homicide, as opposed to an accidental death (crushed by the truck's compactor). Perhaps stab wounds, bullet wounds, ligature, etc.

It sure is a curious case. He clearly was having mental impairment issues. What caused those will also likely be revealed by the final autopsy report, which could take weeks, waiting on the toxicology.

ME said homicide within 24 hours. Figure, from getting the body, making a preliminary exam, identifying the body, and contacting family, the basis for their homicide conclusion must have been pretty obvious.

Stern hypothesizes a stroke, perhaps based on both the limp (which was not new) and the confusion, while others have talked about drug effects and dementia. Is it true that mental illnesses do not show this kind of sudden onset? If so, why have we let people plead temporary insanity for horrendous crimes? For that matter, we also don't know the confusion was of a sudden onset, but his wife ought to be able to clear that up.

A new tidbit of information is that at about 5:00PM December 28, Wheeler, or someone posing as Wheeler, posted a message to a forum for 1966 graduates of West Point.

Wheeler was angry about how the NCAA has turned college football into a money game and advocated West Point withdrawing from the NCAA. About 25 hours later he was at the pharmacy refusing an offer to call a cab for him.

A bit off topic, but last night I had an odd little dream where Wheeler said he saw Wes Clark read "Darkness at Noon" in 45 minutes at West Point. I hadn't realized this was the same guy, but it's true, he said it in the New York Times during the 2004 primaries.

This thing just gets weirder and weirder.

Wheeler is believed to come back from DC on a train early Tuesday evening. He leaves his car parked at the Amtrak station.

The neighbors' partly constructed house was damaged by smoke bombs (rat bombs) on Tuesday night.

Wednesday 6 PM Wheeler is at the pharmacy in New Castle asking for a ride.
Wednesday 6:40 PM he is wandering around the wrong parking lot in Wilmington, carrying a shoe, and looking for his car. He is wearing a suit with jacket, no tie, no coat.

Thursday morning, he shows up at a coffee shop in Wilmington with what the waiter describes as "the most bloodshot eyes I've ever seen". He is now wearing a black zippered hoodie.
Thursday afternoon, he is seen on a traffic cam video in the business district.
Thursday evening 8:30 PM he is last seen on surveillance video wandering around inside an office building.

Friday morning 4:20, trash truck starts its route in Newark.
Friday morning 10 AM, body spotted coming out of trash truck at landfill. The truck picked up trash from 10 dumpsters in Newark, and his body was located such that it was not in the truck when it left the yard.

-----

Okay, so now it is being reported that Wheeler's cell phone was found in the neighbors' house, which sustained $1000 damage from the rat bombs. Wheeler's cell phone contains the number of a Wilmington cab driver (wasn't reported inbound or outbound). Cabbie says he doesn't know Wheeler or how the number got there.

There were knobby boot prints on Wheeler's kitchen floor. Wheeler was wearing loafers.

How could this be known? Does this mean that Wheeler's body was outside the closed hatch of the truck?