Nine Years Later, No Answers
It’s a dark day to mark. On the evening of August 2, 2006, Robert Wone was slain in the home of his three friends, Joseph Price, Dylan Ward and Victor Zaborsky. The secrets from that evening are locked inside 1509 Swann Street and in the consciences of those three men.
wmrw.com reward posters. Photo courtesy of Washington City Paper
Robert Wone lived his life bringing people together and he’s done so after his passing. The large community who labored on his and the Wone family’s behalf are testament to that. He may have been abandoned by a few, but legions remain loyal to him.
There are few better ways to support Robert’s life’s work than by donating to the memorial fund that was set up to honor him. Please dig deep, cut a fat check and continue hoping (and working towards) a resolution in the case and peace for Robert’s family and true friends.
Robert Wone Memorial Trust 45 North Hill Drive, Suite 100 Warrenton, VA 20186
Any updates on Price, Ward, or Zaborsky? None of them seems to have much of an online footprint, and if you google any of the three, you get hits to the murder of Robert Wone. Is there any news about what they’re up to these days?
Bill, we hope to have an update post soon.
I am very curious too. Where are they and what are they up to?
I thought Joe had set up his own law practice in DC using a friend’s office. However, I cannot find his website anymore. Perhaps he is doing document review or has turned to some other profession outside the law? When you google his name, lots of news sites about the Robert Wone murder turn up.
I think there are several more people who hold secrets about that awful night. I doubt there will be any movement on this case until DC gets a new police chief.
Dylan Ward’s Pure Energy Massage has closed, according to Yelp.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/pure-energy-massage-miami-beach-2
Darn, I am going to south Florida on business next month, and I had hoped to stop by in order to get a boost or, perhaps, a clue.
Well, here’s a name tht has appeared on this website. I recall reports on this page that she attended some of the trial and that she is a friend fro W&M:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/29/cnn-layoff-video-lisa-employee-staffer_n_5737476.html
Her exact role in this mess was never clearly defined: sigh! And, now, we’ll never know what she knew or was told. And, the cold case gets ever colder.
I can’t help but feel a twinge of glee. Time has not been kind to her. What kind of journalist can she be if she was so blindsided by Joe’s lies to continue hanging out with the killers during the trial?
This may seem a bit off track, but have there been any other stabbings in the gay community since then? Not necessarily resulting in murder, but maybe botched robberies and the like?
My initial thoughts are, yes, of course. But I can’t really point to any; certainly none with as many questions as this. Worthy of a little research.
It looks like Victor Zaborsky is still hard at work promoting milk as late as June 2014.
http://www.idfa.org/news-views/headline-news/article/2014/06/19/idfa-arranges-hill-briefings-on-great-american-milk-drive
The thing that surprised me about Zaborsky working in the DC area is that the other two let him out of their sight. You would think they would be concerned that his time away from them would allow him to reconsider their situation. Of course, it’s possible that they need him to be in that job to support the household in Florida, so they have to put up with his absence from their bed.
Victor escaped unscathed — at least professionally.
Clio,
Nice to “hear” your voice again. I remember you had once posted how you like milk and cookies. Milk was in the news today. Not looking good:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/10/31/study-milk-may-not-be-very-good-for-bones-or-the-body/
And just last May the milk industry came up with their new slogan: “Milk equals Life”
http://www.agweb.com/article/milk_equals_life_NAA_Wyatt_Bechtel/
The Post article and the study cited, does not exactly agree.
This murder was very sad, with an innocent, wonderful life so violently taken away. I’m glad that indirectly, Joe and Dylan are still suffering from the murder by their lack of employment and being forever google-bombed.
Any updates would be appreciated. All I can see is that at least one of them is still into some serious sex play…
(Assuming this profile is his)
http://www.xtube.com/community/profile.php?user=culuket
Ca attorney general Kamala Harris’ niece Meena Harris works at Covington in DC. FYI… I don’t know why this is important. Just posting it here. http://www.business-standard.com/article/specials/what-makes-kamala-harris-the-female-obama-115012300923_1.html
What are Price, Ward, and Zaborsky up to these days?
Milk is always in the news:
http://augustafreepress.com/new-dairy-campaign-time-to-get-real-about-milk/
-but that doesn’t mean drs are recommending it:
http://www.thedailymeal.com/entertain/why-you-won-t-catch-some-doctors-and-nutritionists-drinking-milk
Doesn’t matter for Robert Wone since it’s been 8 1/2 years since his life was stolen from him.
I was watching the interrogation videos of the three yesterday, and today I can’t find them. Oy. I’ve skimmed through some of the materials, including the Judge’s opinion, so I’m probably missing a lot. With that caveat, here’s my theory, in a somewhat Faulknerian stream. Either Ward was the murderer, or the murderer was a guest in Ward’s bedroom, possibly Price’s brother, whose presence in the house was unknown to Zaborsky, and possibly unknown to Price until after the murder. Ward had met Wone, and knew that he was going to be an overnight guest, on the same floor as Ward’s bedroom. The “exercising” noise Zaborsky heard from Ward’s room when he arrived home may have in fact been Ward “entertaining” a deliberately-hidden visitor who had arrived earlier in the afternoon/evening. Ward and Ward’s Guest planned on immobilizing Wone chemically overnight and performing some sort of “milking” sexual act on him using the electrification apparatus possessed by Ward (thus explaining the presence of Wone’s semen, and presumably Ward had some experience in the use of the apparatus). Unclear whether Price may have been aware that something was planned by Ward and/or Ward’s Guest (could something have been introduced in the water consumed by Wone, as early as his entering the house?). Something went wrong (Wone started rousing) or, perhaps the knifing was a planned part of some sort of sado-sexual attack. Ward retreats to his bedroom after the knifing, and/or the perpetrator quickly leaves the house, not out the back door, but out the front door (the chime Zaborsky claims to have heard). Something tells me that Zaborsky is, as among the throuple, unwitting about all of this; he is mostly believable in the interrogation, though does not divulge probably sordid, and relevant, aspects of the relationship among the throuple. If Price did not know that his brother (or another person) had been secreted in Ward’s room, during the interval in which Zaborsky is shooed upstairs to call 911, Price quickly is apprised of relevant information by Ward. Price, as Ward’s “submissive,” or now possessing knowledge that implicates his brother, immediately kicks in to “lawyer mode,” seeing his job as, at all costs, to protect his dominant, Ward, and/or his brother. Zaborsky is extremely high strung, only modestly intelligent, and exhausted in the interrogation — I just don’t see him holding it together unless he was, indeed, fundamentally ignorant of the “real facts.” Price and Ward are the pivotal characters.
I think your take is pretty consistent with both the evidence, and the general consensus around here while all this was going on. Always nice to see a new comment pop up.
Interesting little scavenger hunt: Joseph R Price is still a member of the DC Bar with an address of PO Box 531097, Miami FL 33153. His listed e-mail address is andersonjfl@comcast.net. This is the same e-mail address listed by a Joseph Anderson, who was admitted to the Florida State Bar on 10/25/2012. HIS address is 550 NE 94th St, Miami Shores, FL 33138-2848, and his phone number is (202) 997-1325. 202 is the area code for Washington, DC. Is it possible that Joseph Price has become Joseph Anderson and is now practicing law in Florida?
Wow, good research, Bill. I see the Miami Dade tax site online supports what you say. Can one person practice law under two different names? Can one legally have two different names? Wonder about the supporting cast of players whose names arose frequently after the Murder of Robert Wone.
Interesting. The seller is JP and Z to JA and Z. So they sold it to themselves with the new name.
BTW, Anderson is the 11th most common surname in the U.S. according to one website, and even more popular in the UK. Apparently, it means “man” or “manly.”…..
Joe and Dylan do have a penchant for ironic wordsmithing, among other things.
Yes, indeed.
Remember when Dylan was Michael for a time? I guess the first name change didn’t cut it for him.
More info: 550 NE 94 St, Miami Shores, FL 33138-2848 is owned by Joseph R Price and Victor J Zaborsky, so it would appear that Joseph Price has been admitted to the Florida State Bar under the name of Joseph Anderson. Nice trick.
Oh, lordy. Victor Zaborsky is back on facebook.
How many “friends” does he have? What does he post about — his kids, his work, and/or his marriage or what’s left of it?
And twitter.
Who then could have been Ward’s guest? An anonymous top from the milieu of what would precede the Code parties?
Michael and Dylan as a bad-boy couple within/without the trouple is an interesting suggestion.
Here’s a blast from the past:
“…..To which, Ragone recalled Price saying, “There’s a difference between tampering with a crime scene and wiping away blood because you’re freaking out.”
But some say the past is prologue…
It seems so unlawyer-like to make such a statement.
I am waiting for the book. Would be widely read in DC and the gay community in general. And Priceless characters and quotes.
Joe is now using the name Joseph Anderson and the 550 NE 94th St. address in Miami Shores, although there does not seem to be any website for a law practice down in Florida.
http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/33138-fl-joseph-anderson-4233945.html
Anyone know what he is up to these days? Looks like Dylan shut down his massage office.
Dylan seems to fail an any business venture that he attempts. I wonder how much money the trio owes Mrs. Wone.
FYI — the more things change …
http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2015/03/13/dc-police-appoint-first-trans-woman-lead-lgbt-liaison-unit?team=social
I have followed this case for years but recently rediscovered a passionate interest in it.
After much (re)reading, I came up with a theory and was wondering if it had ever been posed–that being: the murder was premeditated. This struck me last night when I was reading how joe price said at his trial in 2010 that in such a short period of time (the 90 or so minutes the murder is said to have occurred in) that the 3 men would have time to get their stories aligned. This is true. It is an awfully short time period to makeup such a rock solid story that all 3 can stick to in separate interrogations. Take into account how staged & cleaned up the crime scene was…plus the fact that wone was drugged with something that paralyzed him yet was untraceable. I just feel like that wasn’t something that was spur of the moment.
Another thought is…perhaps as a lawyer, price had someone on the inside to botch the crime scene? I just think it is a little too convenient that the police messed up two critical pieces of evidence. They messed up handling of wone’s blackberry which could have possibly provided forensic evidence of whether or note he wrote those two unsent emails…as well as the use of the Ashley reagent agent which was misapplied so that the police couldn’t tell whether or not the trace blood on the walls and other areas of the room was actually blood or not.
Anyway, just some theories. It just makes me so mad/sad to re-read everything and see that their story was so blatantly a lie.
Hi Angela;
I know the idea of a premeditated murder has been discussed here in the past, although I confess I can’t recall what posts it was in.
A few thoughts in reverse order:
Yes, there were screw-ups all around. The Blackberry. Ashley’s reagent. The initial questioning of the housemates. The autopsy which missed key tests in a narrow window. There were others. I think, at least for the authors here, these pointed more toward a system that’s imperfect and tolerates a high degree of mistakes. Joe might have been a young partner at a prestigious law firm, but to my mind it seems rather unlikely he had any contact with DCPS, let alone an ‘in’ there.
Was the murder premeditated? We don’t know (although we suspect we know a few people who would know) but a majority of the discussion here has tended more to the “crime of passion” of some form rather than a cold, pre-agreed plot. Speaking with police that night, Joe did suggest it was impossible for them to concoct a story all three could agree to in a short period of time. I wonder if that might have just been Joe-being-Joe: impressed with his ability to think through any situation quickly and form some sort of answer – true or not. And how long would it take to form a story as thin as “someone broke in the back – we didn’t see anything”?
Theories are always welcome; we’re all angry and looking for truthful answers.
I was very slightly acquainted with the three before the murder, and recall at the time I first read of it wondering whether Joe and Dylan, and maybe Victor too, had put together some sort of Leopold and Loeb (Wiki it) perfect-murder thing. To this day, such a theory seems desperately out of character with the men I thought I knew, but then so does the crime of passion scenario. But when it comes to squaring the evidence with theory, I agree premeditation seems a better fit than spur-of-the-moment.
Not sure if this went through. Thought this was interesting.
https://www.proclub.com/Fitness/Group-Fitness/Instructors/Id/442
You do a great job of keeping track of these guys, Susan. Thanks. The lawyer is in Miami, the milkman is in Virginia and the S&M guy is in Seattle. I always figured the dark secret they share would hold them in one spot — making sure nobody revealed anything.
I wonder if the people who employ Dylan Thomas are aware of his colorful background. (I posted earlier but it didn’t seem to go through)
Thanks, Bill 2. It is all very interesting.
OMG — Dylan is back in Seattle! Using a Welsh poet’s name. And, that picture shows he may be aging prematurely.
Dylan Thomas’s most famous work: “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” (1952). One cannot make this stuff up!
His hairline was starting to receed nine years ago. I wonder if he’s combing his hair forward or if that’s rug.
It’s a wig for sure!
Dylan Michael Thomas or Ward, whatever alias he uses now, is no longer on the fitness club’s website. What’s he up to now? Finding another sugar daddy or advertising his … ahem… massage services in Seattle?
It’s now been nine years (and two days) and counting.
Imagine, you’re in a DC bar and meet up with Zaborsky. You hit it off so he gives you his card and you plan to meet on Saturday night. At home, you decide to Google his name. The first thing Google tosses at you is images of Victor Zaborsky heading in and out of court. That’s followed by a link to: Murder of Robert Eric Wone
Zaborsky may have gotten away from his ex-lovers but he can’t get away from the murder of Robert Wone that he helped cover up.
I cannot imagine Victor ever being in another relationship ever again: he’s focusing on his work and his children, one hopes.
Saw this from June. Mentions Swann St: http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/real-estate/does-a-gruesome-murder-lessen-a-houses-resale-value.php
There’s a new gay-friendly B&B in that vicinity called Swann Street B&B: it might be kinda creepy if you know this case!
We miss you Robert Wone. You were such a good person and friend. Wish Sarah Koenig would do a Serial podcast on this case, as it is as fraught with holes as Adnan/Hae Min Lee case.
Thanks, L. We do, too…as I know his many friends and family do. We’re still considering pitching this to Serial – you might want to do the same.
Someone is now vice president of marketing of the Milk Processor Education Program–and it ain’t me.
I’m wondering re the settlement that Victor Zaborsky and partners in troupledom agreed to–Do we know how much $ was paid out and was it a one-time lump sum or a continuous payment? for a certain duration? Thanks.
I’m thinking it was probably a continuous payment since Price is still holding on to the Florida house which is protected from being taken in a settlement. If he sold the house and moved back to DC, the money paid to Price and Zaborsky for the house could be taken by the court.
November 2, 2015, Washington Post article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/murder-houses-the-haunting-final-chapter-in-true-crime-stories/2015/11/02/3a2dbe70-7de1-11e5-beba-927fd8634498_story.html
This is the first time I’ve noticed OJ Simpson in the same story with the Swann Street trio. They followed the same path to Florida to buy a house that can’t be taken in a court settlement.
Now that the trio is split into living in different states, it seems that it would be a good time to question them once again to see how the stories may change. I still think the woman who lived in the basement has info that could put some cracks in their claims of innocence. Could she be guilty of withholding information in a murder case?
Sarah Morgan? What was her name? Time has flown, but it has not been kind to Joseph “Anderson” Price either. He’s listed as legal counsel to Gaping Void on their website and has created an LLC called Tempus Fugit in Florida. They do business consulting and drawings. Do his new colleagues know about his blood stained past?
If DC police take another look at the case, it would be good to start with Sarah Morgan and Scott Hixon.
Soon, it will be August 2 again, and the Wone case is still officially unsolved. Sigh! Ten years have passed, and it is hard to believe that no one has been apprehended for this horrible crime.
Where are all who promised to never forget Robert Wone?
I’m still here. Three weeks ago, a new police chief was named for Washington. We know that Cathy “Do Nothing” Lanier didn’t want to deal with the case because it showed how the cops messed up from the moment they walked into Joe Price’s house. Maybe enough time has passed for that part to be overlooked and the new chief will look into the case. There needs to be further questioning of the woman who rented the basement apartment, Sarah Morgan, and the interior decorator across the street, Scott Hixson. Perhaps they’ll tell the rest of their stories that can make a difference.
I’m still here too. Posted a longer reply a few weeks ago but it did not show up.