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Ex-Bush, Reagan official's body found dumped in landfill

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Ursus:
Much of the same material is reworked into the following piece:

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The Philadelphia Inquirer
B R E A K I N G · N E W S

Sighting reported of ex-Pentagon official before death

Posted on Tue, Jan. 4, 2011
By John Shiffman and Kathleen Brady Shea
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS


John Parsons Wheeler 3d's house in New Castle, Del. While Wheeler was involved in a land dispute with a neighbor, his lawyer said he doubted the dispute was related to the slaying.

The prominent retired Army officer whose body was found in a Delaware landfill on New Year's Eve was spotted near a building that includes federal offices in Wilmington before his death, police said this morning.

The announcement came as an FBI spokesman said the bureau planned to "offer technical assistance" in the homicide investigation of John Parsons Wheeler 3d.

The spokesman, Rich Wolf, declined to elaborate. In FBI parlance, the term "technical assistance" often refers to forensic assistance, and does not mean the FBI is conducting a full investigation.

Wheeler, a driving force behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and former senior Pentagon official, was found dead on New Year's Eve in a landfill a few miles from his New Castle home.

On Dec. 28, Wheeler, 66, was scheduled to take an Amtrak train from his consulting job with a defense contractor, Miter Corp., outside Washington, to the Wilmington stop. His body was discovered in the landfill three days later.

This morning, the police announced that he had been spotted about 3 p.m. Dec. 30 near 10th and Orange Streets in Wilmington, a block that includes the offices of the U.S. Attorney and Justice Department. The police statement did not say how he was spotted or if he was traveling with anyone. Police were not immediately available to comment.

Police ruled the case a homicide but would not say whether they had determined how Wheeler died.

"It's a total, total shock - beyond the pale for a community like New Castle," said Bayard Marin, a local lawyer who was representing Wheeler in a neighborhood land dispute. "I exchanged e-mails with him that afternoon, and it was all very routine. Nothing suspicious at all."

The killing drew national attention Monday because of the mysterious circumstances and because of the positions Wheeler had held in the nation's capital.

In addition to helping launch MADD and leading the organization that built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Wheeler worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission on investigations of illegal insider trading and for the Pentagon on cutting-edge issues.

From 2005 to 2008, Wheeler was a special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force, and he helped create the Air Force Cyber Command.

A graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale Law School as well as West Point, Wheeler created a Vietnam veterans job program for the administration of President Ronald Reagan and the Earth Conservation Corps for at-risk youth for the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

"Jack used his institutional pedigree to fight for causes that mattered to him," said his friend James Fallows, an author and writer for the Atlantic magazine.

Wheeler was "a complicated guy, emotional, but someone who really cared about doing the right thing," said Fallows, adding he worked with him on Wheeler's 1984 book, Touched With Fire: The Future of the Vietnam Generation.

Wheeler was profiled with other Vietnam veterans in Rick Atkinson's 1989 book, The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966.

Voted "most likely to succeed" his senior year in high school, Wheeler gave up a scholarship offer from Yale, his mother's choice, and picked West Point, where his father had matriculated.

"A few cadets - Jack Wheeler among them - had doubts about this war," Atkinson wrote, "but they prudently kept their questions to themselves." After the war, Wheeler said "Vietnam reminded him of a huge trampoline with a half-million Americans bouncing around on it uncontrollably."

He nevertheless stayed true to the military, Atkinson wrote. Wheeler framed an epigram a West Point instructor had given him: "War is my business; business is good."

After serving in Vietnam, Wheeler worked at the Pentagon producing and analyzing nuclear-war games. According to Atkinson's book, Wheeler wrote a study that played a role in President Richard M. Nixon's 1969 decision to renounce biological weapons.

When it came time to leave the Army, Atkinson wrote, Wheeler asked friends and family these questions: "What's best for the Army? What's best for the country?"

It was a philosophy, neighbors said Monday, that he brought to New Castle five years ago.

Despite Wheeler's impressive resume and regular commute from small-town New Castle to big-city Washington, neighbors remembered him as considerate and humble.

"Whenever we went to a restaurant, he was the kind of guy who always found out about the server's background and asked how business was going," said neighbor Robert Dill.

Dill said he mentioned to Wheeler recently that one of his sons was fascinated with the giant military transport planes known as C-5s. Wheeler arranged for a tour at a base. "You would have thought the president was with us," Dill said of the reception he and his sons and grandchildren received.

It was Wheeler's passion for history, neighbors said, that put him and his wife, the textile executive Katherine Klyce, at odds with a couple building a home across from his three-story red brick duplex in a historic part of New Castle. The new home was too large for the location and would block views, the Wheelers argued in a court filing.

Marin, the lawyer for the Wheelers, said he doubted the dispute was related to Wheeler's death. "There's always hard feelings about the other side in a case like this, but there was never any personal animosity," he said.

Still, he said he hoped federal authorities become involved in the case, given Wheeler's long connection to the federal government.

Newark Police Lt. Mark A. Farrall said his department was seeking information on Wheeler's whereabouts from Dec. 28 through 31. He said an autopsy showed "the body was not in the Dumpster for a long period of time."

Police in Wilmington went to the Cherry Island Landfill at 9:56 a.m. Friday for a report of a body being dumped from a Waste Management refuse truck. Investigators determined that the truck had made numerous pickups in Newark, starting at 4:20 a.m.

Police said the body's location suggested it had been picked up early in the route.

Anyone with information is being asked to contact Newark Detective Nicholas Sansone at 302-366-7110, Ext. 135.

The Wheeler family issued a statement Monday requesting privacy and declining interview requests: "This is a tragic time. . . . We are grieving our loss."

Contact staff writer John Shiffman at 301-320-6655 or jshiffman@phillynews.com.


Copyright 2011 Philly.com

Ursus:
Hampton Roads

Man who helped get Vietnam wall built found slain
The Associated Press
© January 4, 2011

By Randall Chase


In this May 17, 1994 file photo, John Wheeler III touches the name of a friend engraved in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Wheeler's body was discovered Dec. 31, 2010 as a waste management truck emptied its contents at the Wilmington, Del.-area landfill. His death has been ruled a homicide. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi, File)

DOVER, Del.

A military expert who served three Republican presidents and helped get the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built as part of his dedication to those who fought in that war was found dead in a landfill, and authorities are trying to piece together when he was last seen alive.

The body of John Wheeler III, 66, was uncovered Friday when a garbage truck emptied its contents at the Cherry Island landfill in Wilmington. The truck had collected the trash from about 10 commercial disposal bins in Newark, several miles from Wheeler's home in the historic district of New Castle, but police said they aren't sure which container his body came from.

Police he was seen alive in downtown Wilmington less than 24 hours before his body was found in the landfill.  Newark police said Tuesday that Wheeler was seen about 3:30 p.m. Thursday near the Hotel du Pont, blocks away from the office of an attorney who was representing Wheeler and his wife in a property dispute.

Wheeler's remains were found about 10 a.m. Friday. Police say he was killed.

The spot where Wheeler was seen is less than a mile from the Wilmington train station. Wheeler is believed to have used Amtrak for trips in and out of the nation's capital.

Friends say they traded e-mails with Wheeler — who had not been reported missing — around Christmas. Wheeler also had been scheduled to take an Amtrak train from Washington to Wilmington on Dec. 28, but it's not clear if he ever made the trip, said investigators, who have labeled Wheeler's death a homicide.

Family members may not have reported him missing because they were out of town, Newark police spokesman Lt. Mark Farrall said.

Efforts by The Associated Press to contact his wife, Katherine Klyce, were unsuccessful, but his family issued a statement through the police department.

"As you must appreciate, this is a tragic time for the family. We are grieving our loss. Please understand that the family has no further comment at this time. We trust that everyone will respect the family's privacy."

Wheeler followed in his decorated father's footsteps and attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After graduating in 1966, in the midst of the Vietnam War, he served five years in the Army, including as a staff officer at the Pentagon, and retired from the military in 1971.

In later years, Wheeler, as special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force at the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration, helped develop the Air Force Cyber Command. A citation for his service in 2008 said Wheeler recognized that the military needed to combat the growing vulnerability of U.S. weapon systems to cyber intrusions, according to his biography.

Longtime friend and fellow West Point graduate Richard Radez said that in an e-mail the day after Christmas, Wheeler wrote he believed the nation wasn't sufficiently prepared for cyber warfare.

"This was something that had preoccupied him over the last couple of years," Radez said.

Wheeler's house in New Castle was dark Monday night and no one answered the door. Yellow police evidence tape was stretched across two wooden chairs in the kitchen, where several wooden floorboards were missing.

According to The News Journal of Wilmington, Ron Roark, who has lived next door to Wheeler for seven months, said Monday he had met Wheeler only once and rarely saw him. But for four days around Christmas, he said he and his family heard a loud television in Wheeler's home that was constantly on, but no one appeared to be home.

"It was so loud, we could hear it through the walls, and we found that strange," Roark told the newspaper.

Though the police have searched the home, it was not considered a crime scene, Farrall said.

"We don't have a crime scene at this point," said Farrall.

In New York City, a doorman at the building where Wheeler and Klyce shared a condominium, said he hadn't seen Klyce in two weeks and a package for her had been at the front desk for days. He said two detectives were at the condo in the Harlem section of the city.

New York City police said they couldn't immediately confirm that they were involved in the investigation. Telephone messages left for Klyce at the New Castle home were not immediately returned.

Wheeler spent much of his post-Army career in Washington, D.C. For eight years from 1978 to 1986, he was special counsel to the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

During those years, he also created the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program for President Ronald Reagan and was chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund that helped get the wall built. It is one of the most popular monuments in Washington, D.C.

Fund founder and president Jan Scruggs said Wheeler dedicated himself to ensuring that service members were given respect.

"I know how passionate he was about honoring all who serve their nation, and especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice," Scruggs said in a statement.

In a foreword for the book, "Reflections On The Wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial," Wheeler wrote that the beauty of the wall photos in the book comes from the black granite's reflective quality.

"Before construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, those of us working on the project knew the wall would be shiny and reflective," he wrote. "But no one anticipated the sharp, true, and expansive mirror quality of the wall. The high polish of the black granite surface reflects blue sky, green trees, the Washington Monument, the Capitol Dome, the Lincoln Memorial, and the expressive faces of visitors who approach the Wall."

James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, says he had known Wheeler since the early 1980s, and wrote on the magazine's website that Wheeler spent much of his life trying to address "what he called the '40-year open wound' of Vietnam-era soldiers being spurned by the society that sent them to war."

Wheeler also spent some time self-employed and recently was a consultant for The Mitre Corp., a nonprofit based in Bedford, Mass., and McLean, Va., that operates federally funded research and development centers.

Wheeler's military career included serving in the office of the Secretary of Defense and writing a manual on the effectiveness of biological and chemical weapons. He recommended that the U.S. not use biological weapons. Wheeler earned a master's at Harvard Business School and a law degree from Yale, according to his biography.

He also was the second chairman and chief executive officer of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

"He was just not the sort of person who would wind up in a landfill," said Bayard Marin, an attorney who was representing Wheeler and Klyce in a legal dispute with a couple wanting to build a home near theirs in the historic district.

"He was a very aggressive kind of guy, but nevertheless kind of ingratiating, and he had a good sense of humor," Marin said.

Fallows told The Associated Press that in e-mails over Christmas, Wheeler also was concerned about getting ROTC programs restored at prestigious universities such as Harvard and Stanford. Schools dropped the programs as a result of Vietnam.

Robert Meadus, 85, who lives near Wheeler's New Castle home, described the death as "exceedingly weird."

"The more you think about it, the more implausible it becomes. ... It's a Perry Mason thing for sure."

Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield in Washington, David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., and Cristian Salazar in New York City contributed to this story.


© 1993-2011, HamptonRoads.com

Ursus:
Comment left for the above article, "Man who helped get Vietnam wall built found slain" (by Randall Chase; Jan. 4, 2011; AP / Hampton Roads):


John Wheeler, III
Submitted by Capt. Stu on Tue, 01/04/2011 at 2:01 pm.
He was also one of the main characters in Rick Atkinson's book, Long Gray Line. This book was about the trials & tribulations of West Point's Class of 1966. '66 was the class most decimated by the war in Southeast Asia. The book is a good read, too bad a post script has just been added to it.

Stuart Wade

© 1993-2011, HamptonRoads.com

Dethgurl:
and now-
Former Hill staffer, wife of White House aide, dies in burning car

http://http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/10/former-hill-staffer-wife-of-white-house-aide-dies-in-burning-car/

By: CNN Senior White House Correspondent Ed Henry

Washington (CNN) - Lobbyist and former Congressional aide Ashley Turton, wife of a top White House staffer, was killed Monday in an early morning fire in her garage, according to sources familiar with the still-unfolding investigation.

D.C. Fire Department spokesman Pete Piringer would not confirm the identity of the victim but said the first emergency calls came in around 5 a.m. ET. He said "the main theory now is that this was a crash event and then a fire" in the garage adjacent to Turton's home on Capitol Hill.

Other sources familiar with the investigation identified the victim as Ashley Turton, wife of Dan Turton, a staffer on President Obama's Congressional liaison staff. The couple has three very young children who were at home sleeping during the fire but were all brought to safety.

These sources said they believe that Ashley Turton, who was a lobbyist for Progress Energy, was heading to her job extremely early because of work connected with her company's merger with Duke Energy.

Turton's death shook up a close-knit political community already reeling from Saturday's shooting in Tucson that claimed the life of an aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, and five other people.

"My heart goes out to my longtime friend and former colleague, Dan, and their three sweet children," Shanti Stanton, a lobbyist who previously served as a top aide to then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt (Missouri), told CNN in an e-mail. "Ashley was a dear, dear friend and the rock of her family. She was beloved by everyone who knew her."

Stanton said she and other former Congressional aides were still struggling to comprehend the tragic news about Turton, who was a longtime aide to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, and met her future husband while he was serving as an aide to Gephardt.

"It's hard for me to put my feelings into words at this moment," Stanton wrote in the email about Turton. "I miss her so much already. She was a beautiful, happy, witty, intelligent; generous (I could go on forever) person. She was always there for her family and friends and it is going to take me a very long time to accept she is gone. It is truly devastating and I feel a large hole in my heart."

Fire department officials noted the fire was confined mostly to the garage, with some heat and smoke damage to the house. But the garage is situated in such a way that the rest of the family inside the house probably did not know the car had caught fire.

"Initially when fire crews arrived on the scene the people in the house said all were accounted for, an adult and several kids," Piringer said of Dan Turton and the children.

But Piringer said after the fire was put out and the heavy smoke was cleared from the garage, they found the person's body in the car.

– CNN's Paul Courson and Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

Ursus:

--- Quote from: "none-ya" ---Sounds like a man who knew too much.
--- End quote ---
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