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You

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You

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Springs back a lot of memories of when I was laced here back on December 31st

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2010

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It's not every day that you receive a phone call regarding a body that's found in the landfill

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In Wilmington, we have you know

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Homicides we have robberies. So this wasn't gonna be anything different from what I was expecting

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As I was approaching the body I could observe that it was an older white male

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There were no obvious signs of

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Injuries such as a gunshot wound or stab wound

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He was wearing black pants a white shirt

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In some type of a black garment covering his upper torso area and as we took a closer look

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I noticed a ring that stood out as no ring that I had ever seen before

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The ring was a West Point ring. I

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Could tell right away that this was someone of notoriety

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This was not our typical homicide that we were dealing with in Wilmington

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You

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Now we turn to a just discovered murder that has stunned a lot of this nation's veterans and those who knew the victim

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His name was John Wheeler

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Jack's murder has all these facts around it that just naturally

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Confound as of this point. There are no suspects. We will continue to bring you break. It was big news at the time

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Detectives are still baffled this morning by the murder of a former White House aide very sensational case

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Thanks, we're gonna turn now to a murder that's mystifying official body found in a landfill and you just think to yourself

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That's a targeted murder sounds like something the mob would do

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Nobody ever intended this person to be found

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Police discovered the body last Friday morning at a landfill and over the weekend officially identified the victim as John Wheeler

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So the sensational aspects of Jack's

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Murder

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Were what first attracted me?

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But you could say that you know I came for the murder but ended up staying for the man, right because he lived a really

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fascinating life

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Let me now introduce to you

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Thank you, Jim a

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Lot of people claim to be patriots

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Jack was a patriot in our youth our hearts were touched with fire in the Vietnam War

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Each American was touched with fire

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Jack was devoted to causes that were for the great benefit of the country such as being

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Executive director of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial John Wheeler served in Vietnam

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And when he came back he began planning a memorial for all those who fought and died there

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Well Jack was a very exceptional person a

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graduate of West Point a graduate of the Harvard Business School a

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Graduate of Yale Law School. I mean this guy was extremely bright

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In 1982 as we were building the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

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He provided the overall strategy guidance was the chairman of the board and

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How could have happened without him it wouldn't have happened it wouldn't have happened

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I actually hired Jack in

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2004 when I got sworn in as secretary of the Air Force

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within the

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George Bush administration

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Jack brought a an intensity to life that few of us manifest

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Jack thought outside of the box before there was a box

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We need to expand our definition of who's wounded not just people killed by a ballistic

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Incident by a bullet or wounded by a bullet. It's got to be people who suffer after the war

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He accomplished so much

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And he did it all with the equivalent of a piano strapped to his back

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Because he had bipolar disorder

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By polar disorder is marked by bouts of like frenetic activity

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But there's also no doubt that it has a really awful

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Reverse side where he could be very impulsive and

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overly emotional

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So there's no question it propelled him forward and it held it back

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and

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What he did get done is all the more impressive because it was that much harder for him

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Jack was passionate about everything he did

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Whatever you ask him to do or ask him about

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Doesn't matter if it was a US foreign policy or the guy next door

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Who needed help with the city council or any it just it didn't matter

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He would put the same energy into everything he did

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Jack and I were married for 13 years

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We lived in Harlem and we had a house in Newcastle

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He had two kids that were twins that he adored and I had two kids and he treated my kids like they were his

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I met Jack when my mother you know started dating him and

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He was a funny

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sort of

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cheesy but very serious man

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Being married to Jack means you're never you it's it's never dull

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Full of unexpected things which I like

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When I first met Jack I

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Remember talking to him and saying something about George Balanchine ballet and

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He said I watched Balanchine choreographed jewels

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I said you did

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Now that's like saying to a drug addict. I have I have a lifetime supply of anything you want

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It was because I love I loved you all that I love all Balanchine ballet a

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Soldier who loves ballet. I just thought I had a lucky I was oh

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I loved him with all my heart. I really did

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I

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Was on my way to Washington and I got a call that Jack Wheeler had apparently been murdered

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And I'll never quite

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Be the same a lot of people who knew him never will you know we everybody loved him

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It was a sudden shock

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There was no indication as to why someone would want to murder Jack Wheeler

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It's very hard to wrap your head around

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That all of a sudden you know Jack had been found in a landfill and it didn't make sense

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To find a body in a landfill seems to me like it would be a place someone who didn't want him to be found would put him

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And I'm very surprised that we actually did find him

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That that to me is a miracle and one that we're very grateful for

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I'm not sure when I got the phone call

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Jack's daughter called me up and she said

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Jack's dead

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It was incredulous. I didn't know I couldn't make sense of it

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It just it didn't seem possible it didn't seem possible that the world could go on without him

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That can't be true. How do you have a world without Jack?

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I remember we went down to see his body at the police station

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We went into the this room and he was covered from

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the chest down with

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Sheet and

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They would let us see just his face and head and the rest of him we didn't see and

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Probably that's just as well because from what I learned later he had been

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pretty well

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Beaten up and tossed around

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This had to be a professional hit job the way he was dumped into that landfill tells me that

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Somebody deliberately went out and got him something is very very wrong and a great tragedy to America

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Jack had a very strong network with government

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He worked as an assistant to the secretary of the Air Force

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for a time and his contacts within the government were extremely strong and

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Because of his government service he may have been the target of a

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Murder for higher type situation

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What we know is that at the time of his death

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He was working as a consultant for the MITRE Corporation, which is a defense contracting firm

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They specialize in stuff like artificial intelligence

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satellite systems for the military

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Jack was working in the area of cyber security

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He was working on the issues that we're seeing now made manifest with you know Russia interfering with the election

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Russia and China supposedly hacking into our power grid. That's the stuff that the Wheeler was working on at the time

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the problem though is

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That there's nothing to connect those parts of his bio to his actual murder

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The confounding part is that when you reach into these things individually

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Your hand just kind of goes right through right you get caught up in it and you can go down all these blind paths. I

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Think that what we have to do because this is such a mystery is absolutely remain open-minded

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The body was here for several hours that day

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You had to call out the evidence detection unit courting off the location to make sure that we did a thorough search I

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Had never searched for evidence of landfill within my 23 year career

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And this being the first time we took precautions

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Any kind of evidence that you're actually looking for could be contaminated with the trash that's mixed in

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We're looking for other pieces of clothing. We're looking for potentially a cell phone and

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We did not find anything other than just trash that had been disposed of

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We were able to positively identify the victim John Wheeler that day

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And after finding out that this was Mr. Wheeler in that he had a house in Newcastle City

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I immediately contacted the Newcastle City Police Department and spoke with a detective

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Who advised me that they were actually in route to Mr. Wheeler's house investigating a potential burglary

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And that's when this investigation turned a page to something larger than finding Mr. Wheeler to landfill

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I

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Knew Jack as a temporary next-door neighbor

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He was never here for very long

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But I got involved in being the caretaker of the house

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Jack he was just an interesting character. I always liked Jack

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He was never one to sit down and just casually talk to you

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He was he was always doing something or had something on his mind

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So any how I

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Was talking to my neighbor and that's when I happened to notice

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That Jack's second floor rear window. It was open

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So being the good neighbor I went over into the house

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Now when I came in

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The storm door was closed, but this door was a jar about like that

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And then I just walked in here and kind of saw the turmoil in the in the kitchen

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The there was a tree a

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Tall tree sitting on that bay window and that was tipped over

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And spices were all over the place. They were all over the floor all over the table

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There were a bunch of broken dishes in the sink and

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Right by my feet there was white powder on the floor and I could see it was probably

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Comet because there was a comet can sitting here on the on the counter and there was also

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Jack's

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ceremonial West Point sword and shield on the floor right here

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And then I did notice that there was a bare footprint in the comet right in front of the sink

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I was sure it was burglary

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Because things were in such a state of turmoil. I figured somebody had broken in and probably through this side door

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Jack's neighbor calls the police and the police happened to have just

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been notified of the body at the at the landfill and discovered Jack there so you can imagine it's a pretty frantic

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scene

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So to add to the confusion there's another investigation happening across the street from Jack's house in Newcastle

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There are new clues in the mysterious death of former White House a John Wheeler

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This is new video you're looking at from inside his neighbor's house under construction

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So it turns out that just a few days before Jack's body was found

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Someone had set off a couple of smoke bombs at a construction site across the street

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There wasn't much damage, but it's a weird turn in the story because

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Police found a cell phone at the site and when they examined it they discovered it was Jack Wheeler's

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So you've got all these things happening at once Jack's body found in a landfill a

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burglary investigation at his house and

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An investigation into the smoke bombs across the street

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So you have to wonder how or if all these things are connected

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In 2010 I was the FBI agent assigned to the violent crime unit in Wilmington, Delaware

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The FBI was called in to the Jack Wheeler case with regards to him having

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past relationship with the Pentagon as an employee and

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The fact that he had worked for a couple of presidential

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administrations

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ATF was involved DEA was involved. We're talking

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At least ten different agencies federal state and local running down every possible lead

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Police are working now to reconstruct the last few days of John Wheeler's life

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Hoping that will help them solve the mystery of who killed his prominent advocate for veterans and why

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The last time I saw him he had been in DC he came up to New York

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on Christmas Eve and we had Christmas Day and

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There are all the kids were there

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We always go to my mom's for Christmas dinner. It was very much like it always is and

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Jack was in very good spirits

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The next day he said he had to go back to DC I

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Was annoyed because I thought we were gonna go to the movies after Christmas. We'd gone to movies that we'd missed

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And it was things that we could do with the kids too, which was always nice

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My mom was not happy that he decided to leave after Christmas

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But that was Jack he was always working and he always had 15 different things happening at once

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So

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We know from the time that he got on the train and went into Washington DC that Jack was on his phone a lot

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So we knew from talking to people that he worked with and his family

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That he lived by the phone, which is a good thing for investigators in piecing together timeline

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On December 28th, Jack goes and works in D.C. for only a day.

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Later that day, Jack's phone records show he must have left D.C.

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and he comes home to Newcastle.

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Jack and Kathy kept this beautiful, elegant home in Newcastle

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right at the edge of a historic park.

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And that night, you've got this smoke bomb incident

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across the street.

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The next day, I had tried to call him and I couldn't reach him.

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And I thought, why would he not be answering his phone?

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That never before had I not been able to reach him.

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He was in a car.

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On the morning of December 29th, Jack contacted Miter where he was employed

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and told them that there had been a break-in at his home.

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He told them that he had lost certain items that he would typically use for access to their business.

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That he had lost his wallet, his key fob, his briefcase, as well as his cell phone.

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His cell phone was extremely important. He used it for everything.

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I'm sure he was very stressed to have lost his cell phone.

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Of course, it is curious that Jack doesn't notify the police that there was a break-in

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and doesn't notify Kathy.

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That's a little weird.

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Once Jack loses his cell phone, that also leaves investigators in a bit of a quandary

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as they're trying to track him and create a timeline of his movements

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because they can't use the cell phone anymore.

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Now that he didn't have his phone, all they had were witness signings,

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which are always accurate and any surveillance footage they could find.

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The video was obtained that showed that Jack had been inside a pharmacy on the 29th in Old New Castle,

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not far from Jack's house.

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Jack's a familiar figure in this pharmacy.

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This is where he gets his prescriptions filled whenever he's in New Castle.

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But this time he's looking for a ride to Wilmington.

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There were a couple of people that worked in the pharmacy at the time

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that heard the conversation and offered to take Jack to Wilmington.

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Investigators believe Jack wanted to get to Wilmington to get his car,

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00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:02,640
which was parked at the Amtrak station there.

238
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:05,640
That's where Jack left his car when he went to New York for Christmas.

239
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:10,640
And so he obtains a ride around 6 p.m. into Wilmington.

240
00:23:12,640 --> 00:23:17,640
And the next we know is around 6.42, I think it was.

241
00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:19,640
He shows up in a parking garage.

242
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:24,640
He's trying to find his car, but he's in the wrong garage.

243
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:28,640
He's blocks from where his car is actually parked.

244
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:29,640
He's parked.

245
00:23:34,640 --> 00:23:36,640
Finding his way around was challenging for him.

246
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:38,640
He was certainly directionally challenged.

247
00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:42,640
That's why, for example, he liked to walk around Madison Square Park

248
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:46,640
multiple times for his exercise, because he knew where it was and it was a square.

249
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:49,640
So it would be hard for him to get lost.

250
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:53,640
He didn't have a good sense of direction.

251
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:56,640
He had almost no sense of direction.

252
00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:59,640
And he would lose things.

253
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:03,640
He would park his car and not be able to find it.

254
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:13,640
Jack was famous for coming home in a cab on days that he'd driven to work,

255
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:15,640
because he would forget where he parked.

256
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:22,640
So he constantly was misplacing his car, because he was so caught up in his to-do list,

257
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:24,640
so caught up in whatever project he was working on,

258
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:30,640
that he just, it was like he didn't want to devote any brain space to remembering where something was.

259
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:42,640
At the parking garage, the footage is haunting.

260
00:24:43,640 --> 00:24:48,640
Jack is in a completely different state than he was in when he was at the pharmacy.

261
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:52,640
He appears in great distress.

262
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:54,640
He's agitated.

263
00:24:55,640 --> 00:24:58,640
He's got one shoe off and the other shoe in his hand.

264
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:05,640
And you could see that at times he appears to sort of peek around a corner or look out a door before he goes through it,

265
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:07,640
like he's scared he's being stalked.

266
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:12,640
And he tells the people in the parking garage that his briefcase has been stolen.

267
00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:18,640
He said to me his parking ticket was inside his briefcase, so I said,

268
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:21,640
well, where's your briefcase at? He says his briefcase was stolen from him.

269
00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:24,640
So when I kept asking him how was it stolen, all he kept saying to me,

270
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:26,640
my briefcase was stolen, it was stolen.

271
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:31,640
That 40-minute time frame between when Jack is seen at the pharmacy

272
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:35,640
and when he appears in so much distress at the parking garage

273
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:41,640
is one of the fundamental foundational mysteries surrounding his homicide.

274
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:48,640
When I saw the surveillance footage, it didn't look like Jack.

275
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:53,640
It looks to me like he was trying to get away from something or someone.

276
00:25:56,640 --> 00:26:01,640
And I think not having his phone, for example, and or being able to find his car

277
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,640
made him more afraid.

278
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:12,640
Jack had bipolar disorder and it may have been the reason he was acting that way.

279
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:19,640
Most of the time I was with him, he was just regular old Jack.

280
00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:23,640
Every now and then he would get a little manic, I guess.

281
00:26:23,640 --> 00:26:26,640
He was pretty diligent about taking his pills.

282
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:32,640
But bipolar disorder is mysterious and very unpredictable.

283
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:41,640
He might have had some significant mental break.

284
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:46,640
And it's also possible that he was physically attacked.

285
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:52,640
Maybe his foot was injured in some sort of scuffle and that's why he pulls off his shoe.

286
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:56,640
It seems like this central mystery and I would love to know what happened

287
00:26:56,640 --> 00:27:01,640
during that 40-minute time span between when Jack is seen at the pharmacy

288
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,640
and when he appears at the parking garage.

289
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:10,640
And I think the same thing happens with the other people.

290
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:29,640
The next time Jack is picked up on camera according to the cops, it's 20 hours later.

291
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:34,640
He's in the basement of the Nemours building, which is an office complex in downtown Wilmington.

292
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:40,640
Investigators later found evidence that Jack spent the night and part of the day in this basement.

293
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:47,640
So this is the corner of 11th and Orange in downtown Wilmington,

294
00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:52,640
where a lot of the police investigation centered on Jack Wheeler's whereabouts

295
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:58,640
that he had been seen on surveillance camera in the tunnel located underneath where we're standing now.

296
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:02,640
And in a couple of shots in the hallways.

297
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:12,640
There are many hallways, accessways, alleyways.

298
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:18,640
There is a fitness center, employee lockers, etc.

299
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:25,640
So there is a lot of ground to cover, looking to see where possibly Jack may have gone into.

300
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:31,640
Some of the employees of the Nemours building had said they had seen something in her stairwell

301
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:33,640
that could have been where somebody would have stayed.

302
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:41,640
We were not able to find any personal effects that would have told law enforcement that belonged to Jack.

303
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:47,640
There's some mystery over why Jack would go to the Nemours building.

304
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:52,640
No one really knows what Jack's connection would have been to that building or that basement.

305
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:58,640
He couldn't get to his car and so now it's like he's gone to ground.

306
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:08,640
His activities seem more like a guy trying to hide and figure out a careful way out of town

307
00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:11,640
to at one point he's asking to go to Philadelphia,

308
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:16,640
potentially I guess to get an Amtrak train to New York where he might join Cathy.

309
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:21,640
And it's just a mystery.

310
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:36,640
At 8.30pm Jack shows up exiting the building.

311
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:38,640
Now he's wearing a dark colored hoodie,

312
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:46,640
which is something the suited Washington DC insider Jack Wheeler had not worn to anybody's knowledge before.

313
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:52,640
This is a valet section for the Hotel DuPont.

314
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:59,640
Jack moves quickly past, probably walking along the same pathway that I'm walking

315
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:03,640
and comes into the view of one camera,

316
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:10,640
continues on through the overpass

317
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:18,640
and that is the last camera shot that we have of Jack Wheeler alive.

318
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:25,640
When I couldn't reach him I was uncertain what to do.

319
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:31,640
I didn't pace around and think oh dear something terrible has happened.

320
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:34,640
I never, I thought something's wrong,

321
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:38,640
but I just didn't like it.

322
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:42,640
I just didn't like it.

323
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,640
I never, I thought something's wrong,

324
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:52,640
but I just didn't let myself imagine that something bad had happened or something terrible.

325
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,640
December 31st 2010.

326
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:10,640
It was just a typical day. It was cold.

327
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:17,640
I went to work, went to the landfill, went up top, dumped off.

328
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:22,640
I got off the scale and I went around to jump on 495 and my dispatch called me and said

329
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:28,640
go back to the landfill they found a body in the pile.

330
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:35,640
When we got up top of the landfill all the bosses from the landfill and everybody was coming up.

331
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:39,640
I seen the body there, stick them up out of the pile.

332
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:43,640
It jolted you a little bit. It kind of freaked me.

333
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:45,640
It was kind of freaked out.

334
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:47,640
I asked them guys to go cover him up.

335
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:51,640
They went and covered him up and we waited for the police to come.

336
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:01,640
Any investigation of a homicide you have a crime scene.

337
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:07,640
You have somewhere to go and early on there was no crime scene to be found.

338
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:15,640
Other than the landfill, after combing through tons and tons of trash,

339
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:23,640
the investigators determined that the trash surrounding the body of Jack Wheeler had come from the city of Newark.

340
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:31,640
That is when the case was turned over to Newark police.

341
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:39,640
And so the Newark police department were able to come up with a particular trash truck that they believed

342
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:42,640
picked up the body of Jack Wheeler.

343
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:49,640
They zeroed in on a couple of dumpsters on its trash route.

344
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:59,640
The forensic unit went out and started swabbing these dumpsters.

345
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:10,640
And thereby were able to come up with a partial DNA match to Jack Wheeler to one of those dumpsters.

346
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:18,640
To my knowledge, he had no connection to Newark, Delaware.

347
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:22,640
I was stunned. I would think, what are they? They must be making a mistake.

348
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:30,640
So this is another big twist in the case because the last time Jack was seen, he was in Wilmington, 14 miles away.

349
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:33,640
Different town.

350
00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:37,640
And in the opposite direction from where he had been walking.

351
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:41,640
So how does he end up in a dumpster in Newark, Delaware?

352
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:54,640
A lot of time was spent just trying to figure out how Jack got out of Wilmington going south into Newark.

353
00:33:55,640 --> 00:34:02,640
There is a witness that came forth that had seen Jack in a taxi cab.

354
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:10,640
According to this witness, Jack Wheeler shared the cab when Jack had heard that the cab was going to Newark.

355
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:12,640
So you have to go with that.

356
00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:19,640
But you also don't want to ignore the fact that the witness may have misidentified just another individual that looked like Jack Wheeler.

357
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:24,640
We don't want to lose the fact that he could have taken a train from Wilmington to Newark.

358
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:31,640
It is very frustrating to not come up with any one definitive answer.

359
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:35,640
We're at the Delaware College of Arts where I usually run my route at.

360
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:37,640
We got two cans here.

361
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:40,640
One's an eight yarder, one's a six yarder.

362
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:42,640
We got the side doors here.

363
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:46,640
If you can tell, the side door's up real high on the eight yarder.

364
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:49,640
If you come over to the side door, you'll see the door.

365
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:55,640
So we're going to go down to the side door and we're going to go down to the side door.

366
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:57,640
The side door's here.

367
00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:00,640
If you can tell, the side door's up real high on the eight yarder.

368
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:13,640
If you come over to the six yarder, the side door ever on the six yarder is kind of shorter to where somebody can climb in real easy.

369
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:16,640
Easier than the eight yarder.

370
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:24,640
When we spoke to the trash truck drivers, they told us that it was fairly common that people would go in there and actually sleep.

371
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:31,640
Or people would go into those dumpsters to find some warmth in the winter months.

372
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:35,640
I'll drive up to a stop and I'll go and put my forks in.

373
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:42,640
And either somebody will pop up through the top or they'll just climb out the side door.

374
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:46,640
We call them hollers because that's all they do is they jump up out of the can and they start hollering.

375
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:48,640
Whoa, whoa, whoa, like that and everything.

376
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:53,640
And sometimes you can hear them and sometimes you can't.

377
00:35:54,640 --> 00:36:00,640
So there's been a theory of Jack's death that maybe he wanders out into the night.

378
00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:05,640
Maybe he just gets cold and crawls into a dumpster to escape the winter.

379
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:14,640
The theory that he crawled into a dumpster to stay warm seems completely preposterous to me.

380
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:22,640
I mean, in part because of the medical examiner's report that, you know, it's concluded that he was murdered.

381
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:32,640
When you look at the autopsy and the degree to which he was beaten, it's just not consistent with a fall from a dumpster.

382
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:51,640
In the autopsy report, there are listed severe injuries such as punctured lung, broken ribs, and he had bleeding in the head.

383
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:58,640
Bruises to the face and orbital bones, temples, mouth.

384
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:04,640
All these places you'd expect somebody to hit you if they were pummeling you and he gets driven down to his knees.

385
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:09,640
And when they describe the cause of death, it's just blunt force trauma.

386
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:16,640
So it seems like a severe beating.

387
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:21,640
What I don't get is why would someone want to beat him so severely?

388
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:28,640
Was it targeted? That's possible. Who would target him?

389
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:34,640
That would create a lot of speculation. Was he in the wrong place at the wrong time?

390
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:53,640
One of the big questions in the case is whether or not Jack's murder was related to what happened in Newcastle that night when he came back from D.C.

391
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:03,640
Late at night, there is a smoke bomb incident at this house across the street.

392
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:12,640
After this incident happens, the police find Jack's cell phone and so one of the theories is he's the one who set off those smoke bombs.

393
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:24,640
Jack was a passionate guy. At the time of his death, he was in a housing dispute with some people across the street who were building a big house on historic Battery Park.

394
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:32,640
You talk to people about why he entered into this big legal effort to stop that house from being built.

395
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:42,640
It was the history of Battery Park. It was the idea that somebody was going to build a private home on what to him was public land and sacred land.

396
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:51,640
Jack liked being there. He liked being in Newcastle a lot. It was quiet and it was old fashioned.

397
00:38:51,640 --> 00:39:04,640
Jack was sort of old fashioned. We were both very unhappy about the house going up across the street and he was very fired up about it.

398
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:11,640
He got it into his head that this can't happen. This is a sacrilege.

399
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:18,640
And bipolar disorder can make you more emotional and illogical.

400
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:30,640
I could just imagine Jack being so upset to come back to his house if he had done the smoke bombing.

401
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:38,640
He comes back to his house. He realizes he doesn't have his phone. He realizes where it must be. And now he's upset.

402
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:45,640
And Jack, who is very hard on himself, just flies into a kind of panic and just starts flinging stuff around.

403
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:55,640
No one knows for sure what happened at Jack's house that night.

404
00:39:55,640 --> 00:40:04,640
And the whole case is so layered in various mysteries that we have to be open to varying explanations.

405
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:12,640
But here's the thing. Jack's personal distress doesn't explain his murder. Someone killed him.

406
00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:17,640
And the question is whether or not it was somebody just happened across him when he was wandering around.

407
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:26,640
And that theory kind of gets blown apart because the circumstances in which he's later found don't fit with a random mugging.

408
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:35,640
Street muggers who wind up killing their victims leave the body where it drops. They don't hide it or load it into a dumpster.

409
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:42,640
The other problem with the robbery theory is that when Jack's found, he apparently had some cash left on him.

410
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:49,640
He has got a Rolex. And he's got his West Point ring.

411
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:57,640
But it just seems unlikely that in the case of a robbery, they're going to miss all that, right?

412
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:00,640
Particularly if they've taken the time afterward to hide the body.

413
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:11,640
I don't think it was random. I do find it strange and unusual that given the reward we offered,

414
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:20,640
that no one came forward with any tips or leads. As my mom said, perhaps because they'd already been paid.

415
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:25,640
But we don't know. That's what we want to find out.

416
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:41,640
We all have enemies. And he may have been in a position where people thought that it would be better if Jack was not on this earth.

417
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:49,640
He always carried this briefcase around with him. Many harness security clearance. That's where he'd keep that stuff.

418
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:51,640
And he claimed the briefcase was missing.

419
00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:06,640
I would look at it and ask the question, what happened to the briefcase? Because we took many international trips and he was never without that briefcase.

420
00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:11,640
Investigators did everything possible to locate this briefcase.

421
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:22,640
But from everything that investigators have searched in any other place that Jack might have been, we have not been able to come up with this briefcase.

422
00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:35,640
As an investigator, I can't exclude any theory. But somebody out there knows something.

423
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:39,640
Came across Jack whether in an insignificant way or not.

424
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:46,640
Even if it's somebody who was not intending harm, but assisted Jack one way or another.

425
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:52,640
They need to call in order to help investigators finally determine what happened to Jack.

426
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:23,640
I was proud of him for all the good work he'd done in his life.

427
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:37,640
And for who he was, his life was devoted to service and service to his country.

428
00:43:39,640 --> 00:43:46,640
His whole life was focused on the way to be useful. That's what he wanted.

429
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:51,640
He was a soldier. He was always a soldier.

430
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:58,640
And he was good. I've never known anybody so good.

431
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:03,640
Oh God, do I miss him?

432
00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:25,640
He was silly and fun and kind. It made you feel good to be around him.

433
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:35,640
Because of how remarkable he was and how full of love he...

434
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:39,640
He cared very deeply about everything he did.

435
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:48,640
And took it to heart. He had the largest heart of anyone I know.

436
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:53,640
So, I don't know, I just miss my dad.

437
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:37,640
I miss him.

438
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:07,640
You

439
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:37,640
You