Three Gay Men Were Accused of Killing Robert Wone. This Doc Tries to Unravel the Mystery.
All true-crime docuseries strive for total bingeable intrigue, but when amateur-sleuth blogger Craig Brownstein states that Who Killed Robert Wone? is “the craziest fucking story and will absolutely curl your hair,” he’s not overstating things. Director Jared P. Scott’s two-part Peacock affair (available now) is a non-fiction inquiry whose every new twist contradicts, if not outright negates, those that preceded it. The result is the rare whodunit in which the answer seems relatively clear, albeit in the absence of bedrock evidence to support it.
Who Killed Robert Wone? concerns the August 2, 2006, murder of Robert Wone, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who worked as the general counsel for Radio Free Asia. On the night in question, the straight and happily married Wone, having stayed late at the office, chose to crash at the Dupont Circle home of his college buddy—and prominent gay rights advocacy lawyer—Joe Price at 1509 Swann Street, which Price shared with his partner Victor Zaborsky and Dylan Ward, the third member of their polyamorous relationship. Wone arrived at the home at approximately 10:30 p.m., and 79 minutes later, at 11:49 p.m., Zaborsky made a tearful 911 call in which he stated that Wone had been stabbed by an intruder. Then, weirdly, he asked the operator what time it was, and announced that the perpetrator might still be in the house with a knife—even though, as investigators subsequently learned, Zaborsky knew the murder weapon’s location.
Jeff Baker was the responding EMT, and in Who Killed Robert Wone?, he reports that the scene he encountered was a bizarre one—something echoed by lead detective Bryan Waid. Price, Zaborsky, and Ward greeted authorities in terrycloth robes and towels, as if they’d just finished showering. Wone was lying in a guest room bed with three stab wounds to the chest, surrounded by a shockingly small amount of blood; the knife that had ostensibly ended his life lay on the bedside table beside him. Baker says that Wone’s body looked like it had been washed and wiped clean, but Price, Zaborsky, and Ward posited a wholly different scenario: that an intruder had accessed the house via an unlocked back door (after hopping a rear property fence) and killed Wone with one of their kitchen knives. This fiend had then escaped the same way that he entered, all without attracting their attention; they only learned of Wone’s demise after hearing some strange grunts coming from his room.