Hit The Showers
The closer we look at the affidavit one thing becomes clear; Joe and Victor certainly appear guilty of overpaying for a house with so many problems.
Dylan Ward’s account of the “chitchat” that he, Price and Wone engaged in before retiring tells of even more mechanical issues. Besides the hot guest room Robert was to sleep in, he said, “Joe talked about the shower breaking.”
1509 Swann 2nd floor bathroom
Ward later tells police, “We… took Robert upstairs, showed him the bed. He said he wanted to shower, we showed him the shower, and that’s when I went to bed.”
Ward said that from his bedroom, “he heard Mr. Wone take a shower, then go in into his (guest) room.” So we’re led to believe that the broken shower must have been in the master bath.
Yet within an hour, Wone and the three defendants each apparently managed to take showers from what we think was the house’s one working shower.
Four showers in an hour, or was it five?
Page 6 of the affidavit relates what DC police witnessed upon arriving at 1509:
“several MPD officers noticed that Price, Zaborksy and Ward were together in the living room, all wearing crisp white robes and appearing as if they had just showered.”
According to their statements, the three claimed to have been asleep, awoke to the sounds of their friend being murdered, sprang into action by providing first-aid and calling 9-1-1. Joe says on page 10, “…from the minute we found Robert, until the minute the, you know, the ambulance people were there, I was kneeling next to him.”
So exactly at what point did he Victor and Dylan manage to grab showers, in perhaps less than a half hour, all in the same bathroom, but never having left Robert’s side?
If the police are to be believed, this peculiar series of conflicting events, compressed into such a short period of time may seem to further strain the credibility of the defendants’ time line. But it gets more troubling.
The attending EMT’s (W-2) statement on page 2 of the affidavit says that, “… it appeared as if the (Wone’s) body had been stabbed, “showered, redressed, and placed in the bed.” Stabbed then showered – Robert’s second of the evening.
1509 Swann Patio Drain
More troubling still: a cadaver dog alerted police to the presence of human blood in the backyard patio drain, right next to the garden hose that, “was uncoiled as if it had been used recently…”
– Craig
I’ll say this for them. I think they spent a lot of money fixing up the house after the police left. The police tore up the walls, the floors and much more. The amount of stuff carried out of that house by the police was just incredible. One can only assume that it was the demolition was being directed by the FBI from underneath the tent they had on the block for so long. This forced the trio to basically redo the house completely it seems. Based on the idea that owners always do a better job on things than machers on spec, even if they are going to sell, the following seems to make sense. The people who bought the house for 1.5 got a much better house than the trio did when they bought it.
If the defendants had stabbed and/or moved Robert’s body while clothed, you’d think they would have needed to only wash their hands, face and dispose of any blood stained clothing…..considering they presumably “showered” leads me to believe they had blood on their bodies, which further leads me to believe they were naked when they stabbed Robert, lending further credence to the sexual assault.
I think you (Craig) are reading too much into the alleged broken shower comment. The shower head in either of the bathrooms could have broken recently enough to make it a conversation topic, but Joe could very well have already gotten it fixed by the time Robert visited.
CD, I agree with you. Why did they have the need to shower? Why was Joe in his underwear when the EMTs arrived? When innocent people have stumbled upon a stabbed friend, they don’t quickly think of showering themselves off before the police arrive.
Re Nelly’s questions:
1) “Why did they have the need to shower?”
Perhaps they need to wash blood evidence off.
2) “Why was Joe in his underwear when the EMTs arrived? ”
Perhaps he put underwear on after his shower or, alternatively, perhaps he slept in underwear.
3) “When innocent people have stumbled upon a stabbed friend, they don’t quickly think of showering themselves off before the police arrive.”
Exactly. So why did they appear to have been freshly showered?? Because they are….guilty of wrongdoing?
Craig, I agree with you. I was asking those ?’s rhetorically. 😉
Sorry Nelly….hard to tell someone’s intent is this forum.
It may not be just blood, but perhaps DNA from Roberts’s body? If there was any evidence of Robert’s skin * on any part of the defendants body, then … bingo. * There had to be a lot of skin to skin contact in moving Robert from the murder scene, to the shower, then dressing him, and placing him in the guest room. So it would not necessarily need to be the worry only of blood. In addition, think of the cleaning products that would be needed to clean up the blood… each participant who helped in the clean up would not want to smell of Mr. Clean or bleach when paramedics arrived. (And we all know how hard it is to get rid of the smell of bleach from our hands just from doing laundry.)
The cleaning products smell….good point, Anon.
The cleaning products smell…..good point, Anon.
If the shower had broken recently, maybe there are repair records out there. I don’t see Joe as a Mr-Fix-It, especially with his work load. Same for a malfunctioning a/c.
Workload. Yeah workload. Gotta be the workload.
Seems he was just a busy lil beaver …
Indeed.
Craig says: “So exactly at what point did he Victor and Dylan manage to grab showers, in perhaps less than a half hour, all in the same bathroom, but never having left Robert’s side?”
Perhaps the reason there was blood at the doorway leading to the downstairs apartment is because one of them showered down there. If so, maybe whoever it was brushed or touched the doorway on his way down.
If Dylan had taken a sleeping pill, is it possible that he needed a shower to wake himself up enough to talk to the EMTs/police?
He didn’t talk to the EMTs at all. He returned to his bedroom.
Interesting article from BLT……….
Crucial evidence found…..crucial evidence missing.
But the crucial evidence found, could be more important the crucial evidence missing.
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/04/prosecution-defense-squabble-over-evidence-in-wone-case.html
The timeline is even tighter with those emails between Robert and Kathy – 11:05 and 11:07? How in the world did so much happen in so little time? It just makes no sense.
Good eye CD. Thanks. My Google news alert didn’t pick this one up. I gotta digest this.
Showers were taken by all, and some cleaning fluids were certainly used, but they were all essentially redundant. Readily-available latex gloves and plastic or rubber tarps (eventually discarded along with their clothing) would be much more protective in our DNA-tracing age, as Joseph knew so well.