On New Year’s Eve, sanitation workers at the Cherry Island landfill in Wilmington, Delaware made a gruesome discovery as they unloaded trash from their route in Newark. Somewhere along their usual circuit, they’d picked up a human body. The mystery deepened when the corpse was identified as that of Washington insider John P. Wheeler III. This was no fly-by-night drug addict or hapless criminal. By all accounts, John Wheeler was an influential man. Wheeler was a decorated war veteran and West Point graduate. He’d studied at Yale and Harvard. Over the course of his career he worked for three US Presidents and served as the first chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial fund. In the words of Wheeler’s friend and attorney Bayard Marin, John Wheeler “is just not the kind of guy who gets murdered.”

And make no mistake. Wheeler was murdered. According to the Delaware medical examiner’s office, the former Secretary of the US Securities and Exchange Commission ‘died as a result of blunt force trauma’ after he was assaulted. There’s another twist to this story: Wheeler was last seen on the afternoon of December 30^th in the vicinity of the Hotel du Pont. Witnesses to his last few sightings between the 28^th and the 30^th described Wheeler as ‘disoriented.’ Yet Delaware law enforcement does not believe narcotics or toxins contributed to his death. The investigation is still underway, with assistance from the FBI.

Was John Wheeler the victim of a random act of violence? Or was he, as multiple conspiracy theorists allege, the victim of a planned attack?

In our next post, we’ll look deeper into Wheeler’s past, from his dispute his neighbors to his work with the Mitre Corporation.

In the meantime, why not learn more about conspiracy theories? Click here to read our article on conspiracy theories.