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

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heretik:

--- Quote from: "BuzzKill" ---Might be someone thought he knew to much; Or it might be someone thought he was not as appreciative of historical districts as he should be.  


--- Quote ---"He was just not the sort of person who would wind up in a landfill," said Bayard Marin, an attorney who was representing Wheeler in a dispute over a couple's plans to build a new home in the historic district of Old New Castle where the victim lived.
--- End quote ---

There are those who take that sort of thing very seriously.

Editing to add a thought: Maybe he knows what is killing the birds (and fish) in Louisiana, Arkansas and Sweden?
--- End quote ---

 :roflmao: ....not that I'm a insensitive snit but that was just to funny.

Ursus:
Here's some more coverage...

Related Video: Ex-Pentagon official's body found in Del. landfill

-------------- • -------------- • --------------

Posted on Tue, Jan. 4, 2011
Ex-Pentagon big found slain in Del. landfill

By WILL BUNCH & JAN RANSOM · Philadelphia Daily News
bunchw@phillynews.com 215-854-2957


Wheeler

HE WAS a West Point-trained Vietnam War vet who spent the last three years of the George W. Bush administration as a top Air Force official working on highly sensitive projects like cyberwarfare that could be used against adversaries like Iran.

But that was just one résumé line in the remarkable career of John Wheeler III, 66 - a driving force behind the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, first chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and ex-secretary of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Friends and authorities also said Wheeler could be hard-charging and contentious - as evidenced by a bitter, years-long and very public dispute with a neighbor in Old New Castle, Del., his primary home.

Sometime last week, someone murdered Wheeler, authorities said, and apparently threw his body in a Dumpster. The cause of death is still being investigated.

Initial reports had said Wheeler was supposed to have taken an Amtrak train from Washington to Wilmington, but as of last night it was unclear if he ever boarded.

In fact, no one has been able to account for Wheeler's whereabouts between last Tuesday and 10 a.m. Friday, when his body was found.

The shocking discovery was made on New Year's Eve morning, when Wheeler's remains were dumped at Wilmington's Cherry Island landfill out of a Waste Management trash truck that had just completed a route of commercial trash bins in Newark, Del.

The initial reports of Wheeler's death - which Delaware authorities have ruled a homicide - sound like something out of a Tom Clancy mystery novel.

Those in his shocked circle of friends are baffled at who would want him killed and why.

"It's just puzzling and astonishing," said James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, who had been close friends with Wheeler for some 30 years, since they worked together on a book on how Vietnam affected their generation.

"Jack was always very involved in the question of the military-civic connection," Fallows said, "and how the health of the nation and its populace depended on the health of and respect for the military."

The two men had most recently been in touch over Wheeler's latest crusade - seeking to get ROTC programs restored at the Ivy League universities.

Since the end of his most recent stint as a special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force, Wheeler worked as a consultant for a nonprofit defense outfit, the Mitre Corp., that develops technologies for the Defense Department.

Wheeler lived with his wife, Katherine Klyce - described by the Wilmington News Journal as owner of a handwoven Cambodian silk company that did business in Delaware and in New York City - several miles away in Old New Castle, a historic community on the Delaware River below Wilmington.

Wheeler and his wife were reportedly well-known in the neighborhood for a feud with an adjacent property owner who was planning a new home - now under construction - that Wheeler claimed would block his view of a park. The couple filed a lawsuit against the project in 2009.

"It was kind of the thing in a small town," Robert Meadus, 85, a neighbor, said last night. "The town was kind of divided."

Police were called to the construction site last Tuesday, the paper reported, over a report of a smoke bomb.

"There are so many things investigators are looking into," said Newark police Lt. Mark Farrall, adding that police were aware of Wheeler's lawsuit. "It is something they will look into."

In his work, Wheeler had been concerned with much higher-profile forms of conflict, including the possibility that cyberwarfare could be used to thwart Iran's ambition to construct a nuclear weapon.

In recent months, reporters from the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune had interviewed Wheeler on speculation about cyber attacks against Tehran's nuclear program.

Born into a military family, Wheeler rose to the rank of colonel in the Army and served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. He went on to earn degrees from Yale Law School and Harvard Business School.

But his crowning achievement was his work to raise money and build a political consensus for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and its project on the National Mall in Washington, which for years was marked by controversy over everything from its unorthodox design to its dark color.

"He was a very dedicated public servant," said Jan Scruggs, president and founder of the veterans' memorial fund. "He was deeply religious and interested in theology."

"He was a very emotional person, which I mean in a good way," said Fallows, who said that Wheeler's intense passion for anything he did was what allowed him to accomplish so much. Now, those who knew Wheeler are struggling to consider who would have wanted him to disappear.

"It would never enter my mind for anyone to be killed or murdered in that fashion and disposed of," said Meadus, his neighbor. "I mean, that was horrible. This is a very well-educated sophisticated man."

Anyone with information regarding the case should call Detective Nicholas Sansone at 302-366-7110 ext. 135.


Copyright 2011 Philly.com

seamus:
"He was just not the sort of person who would wind up in a landfill," said Bayard Marin, an attorney who was representing Wheeler in a dispute over a couple's plans to build a new home in the historic district of Old New Castle where the victim live


              just exactly who WOULD be the sort of person,to wind up in a landfill? Condecending fuck. :nods:

Ursus:
Comments left for the above article, "Ex-Pentagon big found slain in Del. landfill" (by Will Bunch & Jan Ransom; Jan. 4, 2011; Philadelphia Daily News):


Posted 3:49 PM, 01/04/2011
Fallon also said of Wheeler: "He was a complicated man of very 'intense' (and sometimes 'changeable') 'friendships, passions' and causes." Interesting arching eyebrows.
— Designator V[/list]
Posted 11:40 PM, 01/04/2011
He initially had reservations about killing 3 million people in Vietnam, but later decided "Oh what the heck" and helped the American military do it. A minor league Robert McNamara.
— orange rhino[/list]
Posted 5:02 PM, 01/06/2011
Method of death??
— dogman5[/list]


Copyright 2011 Philly.com

Ursus:
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Posted on Tue, Jan. 4, 2011

Mysterious death in Del. of man long prominent in U.S. government

By John Shiffman and Kathleen Brady Shea
Inquirer Staff Writers


John P. Wheeler 3d spent his life in public service. His body was found in a landfill.

He chose West Point over Yale, knowing he'd be sent to an unwinnable war. He survived Vietnam, then led the tumultuous effort to create a memorial on the National Mall.

He attended the best law and business schools, but he remained in public service. He helped the Pentagon plan for nuclear war in one century and cyber warfare in the next. He was the first chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Now, Delaware authorities are trying to learn how and why John Parsons Wheeler 3d was killed.

His body was discovered on New Year's Eve in a landfill a few miles from his New Castle home. Police have few clues and are seeking the public's help.

On Dec. 28, Wheeler, 66, was scheduled to take an Amtrak train from his consulting job with a defense contractor, Mitre Corp., outside Washington, to the Wilmington stop. He never arrived home. His body was discovered in the landfill three days later.

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 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.

An FBI spokesman, Special Agent Rich Wolf, said the bureau was "aware of the murder but not involved at this time."

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

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