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I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Okay. This case. Anytime anyone just like interrupts a conversation that I might be having with some other people in the last like month. You can guarantee this is the case I was talking about. I've realised that my specific vibe of case is historical, hopefully something to do with World War II.
World War I if I have to. Yeah. Yours is closed door mystery. Yes. That's your fucking shit, man. You love them. Can't get enough. You couldn't have put it better myself. I couldn't have put it better myself. You couldn't have put it better myself. This case, it's very like Ellen Greenberg situation, but more bonkers.
Way more bonkers. It is way more bonkers. Right, so let's get into it. At 10.30pm on the 2nd of August 2006, Robert Wan, a 32-year-old lawyer, arrived at the DC home of his friend, Joe Price. Robert had worked late that evening and so he was crashing in the guest room of his old college pal. It was a Wednesday and everyone had to be up early the next morning. So Robert, Joe, Joe's partner, Victor Zaborski and their lodger, Dylan Ward.
all turned in soon after. But nobody would be getting a peaceful night's sleep. Because just 79 minutes after Robert arrived at 1509 Swan Street, A 911 call was made from the house. Robert Wan had been murdered. The investigation that followed is one that baffled the police and the public alike. The scene, Robert's injuries, the surviving men's stories, nothing added up. And to this day, 20 years later, the truth of who killed Robert I is still a mystery.
And this is honestly one of the most bizarre stories I've ever come across. And it has jumped to the top of my if I could know what really happened that night cases. Oh, OK. This would be it. I've got a strong theory. that we're going to talk about next week because, yes, this is going to have to be a two-parter. But, yeah, I've spent the last few weeks just like, I've got a board patch from scratching. It's so bizarre. But let's get into it.
Before we get into everything that happened on that strange evening, and then in the days, weeks, months and years that followed Robert Wan's death, we're going to start with Robert himself. He was, by all accounts, an incredibly kind, lovely and intelligent guy. Just two weeks before his murder, he'd been the best man at his friend Jason Tudjinsky's wedding.
In the Peacock documentary on this case, Who Killed Robert One, which is actually, for Peacock, rather good. You can see right from the gate how loved Robert was by everyone. Even in the footage of him at somebody else's wedding, he just genuinely seems like a really nice person. Truly. I know everyone always says that about people who were murdered. But like, sometimes that's not true. But with Robert, it really is. And like...
Even when I was writing this, like talking about Robert's personal life, talking about some of the things that happened to him, it's just writing it down just made me feel so uncomfortable because he just seems like the nicest person. Robert, who was Chinese-American, grew up in Brooklyn and had always excelled academically. He went to the very highly regarded William and Mary College, the second oldest university in the US, after Harvard, that's a good fact.
A school that holds the rare status of Public Ivy for its top quality academic programmes. And it was here that Robert became good friends with Joe Price. Whilst at college, Robert was also a member of the Thirteen Club, a secret society that at first I thought was just some sort of like wanky uni drinking club or something. But it was actually a club that carried out anonymous acts of kindness and philanthropy and tried to dispel superstitions around the number 13.
which is adorable. I have to admit, when this first comes up in the documentary, I'm like, that's coming back later. Yeah. No. Nope. Never comes back up. And after graduating in 1996, Robert went to the University of Pennsylvania Law School. where he consistently ranked top of his class. So it was no surprise to anyone when Robert landed a fiercely competitive position as a law clerk to a judge. I know Americans say clerk, but you're wrong.
Then, in 2000, Robert accepted a job at the illustrious law firm Covington & Burling. During this time, Robert also met and married the woman he described as the love of his life, who's called Kathy. And after six years of the corporate grind, Robert quit his job and in June 2006 moved to Radio Free Asia, a not-for-profit that provides accurate and timely news to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to free press.
Radio Free Asia has also played a major role in exposing what's actually going on in secretive Asian nations to us here in the West, for example, the Xinjiang internment camps. Robert was passionate about his work. saying that he wanted to make more of a difference in the world. So, all in all, in August 2006, when Robert was killed, he did kind of have it all. He had a very happy marriage, according to everyone who knew him and Kathy.
And a job that gave him a real sense of purpose. And on top of that, a solid group of friends who loved him. So now, let's get back to the night in question. Robert finished work at 9.15pm. At 9.30, he called his wife Kathy to say goodnight. Then he called Joe at 10 to let him know that he was heading over. At 10.30, Robert arrived at 1509 Swan Street.
According to Joe, Victor and Dylan, Robert came in. He had a glass of water by the sink in the kitchen. They all stood around making small talk for a while. Then Joe and Dylan showed Robert where he'd be sleeping. And by 1045, they were all in their rooms. And this property, 1509 Swan Street, is a very nice house in a very fashionable part of D.C., DuPont Circle. I don't know it.
But that's what I've heard. That's what I've been told. So if I'm wrong, sorry. And basically this house, what you want to imagine, it's a mid-terrace townhouse that's got three floors and four bedrooms. Now, we're going to be talking about the flaws of this particular townhouse quite a lot in these two episodes. So to keep it simple, we're actually going to go with the American way of doing this.
Because I do think it makes more sense. It is one of the only ones I will concede. You do do floors better than us. Yes. In the UK, we're like ground floor, first floor, second floor. No, no, no, no, no, no. So. For the purposes of this episode and this episode alone, our next episode, we're going to do first floor, second floor, third floor. Everyone with me? Great. So Joe and Victor's room was on the third floor of the house.
While Dylan's room was at the back of the house on the second floor, so the room that's away from the street. And the guest room that Robert stayed in was at the front of the house, also on the second floor. So basically you've got Dylan's room, a hallway and Robert's room. Robert's room is facing out into the front of the house onto the street. And it seems from the evidence that Robert, after he went to his room...
had a shower, got into a fresh T-shirt and boxes, and wrote a couple of emails. These emails were never sent because they were found in his drafts later. Now, one of these emails was to his wife, Kathy, at 11.05. and one was to work, which was saved to his drafts at 11.07. Now, the 911 call was placed at 11.49. So whatever happened to Robert?
I think we can safely say happened within those 40 minutes if we believe that he is the one writing that email, which I think, you know, there's enough like holes in this that we don't need to dig further into that. I think we can. Let's assume. Robert did indeed write that email at 1107. The call is placed at 1149. Gives us a solid 40-minute window to work with. But after all of the men went to their respective rooms...
The plot does start to get a bit hazy, and we'll get there when we get to the police interview section. But for now, we're going to stick to the bare bones of what those men would later claim. Victor and Joe said that they were in bed watching Project Catwalk and they fell asleep at around 11pm. This is in 2006, right? So we're talking OG. Yeah. Wouldn't it have been Project Runway?
Maybe. That would be my mistake. I'm almost certain. If that's the only thing I get called out for this episode, I'll be happy. Project Catwalk's our version. Oh, okay. That's significantly worse than Project Runway. My apologies. Project Runway has recently been revived. I haven't watched it yet, but I hear good things. Okay. I never watched it. Oh, it's fun. It's just a romp. More fun than America's Next Top Model. Nothing is more fun than America's Next Top Model.
It's less problematic than America's Next Top Model. But yeah, they, you know, they still are angry. They still shout each other, still cry over like a safety pin. Great. It's Tim Gunn. Who doesn't love Tim Gunn? They're not shaving people's heads and making men wear those weird like puby. Do you remember the puby weird like lace whip? And Tara Banks just yelling at girls with eating disorders. Good times. Fun. So fun.
Anyway, Dylan says that he was in his room down the hall from Robert, but that he'd taken a couple of sleeping pills and was knocked out, so he didn't hear a thing. Victor and Joe would go on to say that at some point that night... they heard the chime of their back door open. They had an alarm they never set, but there was an electronic chime in place that pings whenever the door is opened. Who would have that in their home?
And they also had like, because some people are like, how could you hear it if it's down on the first floor? But Joe explains this in the police interview. They have like another. transmitter in their room so when the back door opens it chimes downstairs but it also chimes in their room hideous I am considering though getting a like flashy light doorbell that deaf people have okay so Mabel doesn't bark Yeah. I think it's becoming a bit of a problem. Truly.
They might just get one of those in my bedroom. Honestly, it was so good because Little Blue just never barked at anything. He never barked. He was a mute. And now he's been hanging out with Big Blue who barks at everything. That's my problem, yeah. Oh my God. Now he started barking and we're like, you don't bring this. Don't bring this. I thought he couldn't.
He can. He's found his voice. It's a problem. Every time he barks, he also looks like he might die. Oh, yeah. So it's not just annoying, it's also scary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good times. Big blue, man. Fucking hell. I know. Anyway, so that chime doorbell on both floors is what woke Joe up, apparently. And then...
They heard a grunting slash screaming sound coming from below them, and then the chime of the back door went again. So they went down there to investigate, and they found Robert in his room. He'd been stabbed. Joe told Victor to go and call 911 from their room upstairs. And we're going to listen to it now. We are going to break it up because it's seven minutes long so we can reflect on what's being said in more manageable chunks because there is quite a lot going on.
And just to clarify, the operator keeps calling Victor ma'am for some reason and he never really corrects her. So it is a bit confusing. But it is definitely Victor that is on the phone. D.C. Emergency 911, operator 6752, do you need police, fire, or ambulance? What's wrong, ma'am?
We had someone in our house, evidently, and they stabbed somebody. Okay, somebody's inside the house now? I don't know. We heard. Are they bleeding? We see someone bleeding. Someone is bleeding in our house. Okay, where's they bleeding from? I think he's in the stomach. In the stomach? Is he cautious? Uh-oh. Calm down for me. I'm going to send some help, okay? Female or male? It's a male. He's a friend of ours. He's spending the night with us.
Okay, and who was the person that stabbed him? Do you know? Is he conscious? Ma'am, he's not conscious. He's not conscious at all? No. Is he breathing? Listen to me. Calm down. I'm going to help you. Okay, keep breathing. I'm upstairs. And she's downstairs. I don't know. Okay, who's upstairs with him? My partner is downstairs with me now. Don't need to go upstairs.
There's a lot already in the first minute of this call. The first thing Victor says when he's asked what emergency service he needs... He says, we need an ambulance. Which, okay. But he thinks that someone has been in his house and stabbed his friend. But there's no request for the police. And look. I get it. It's just one part of this call and I'm not going to be like, got you. But I don't think it's unimportant because he even says we had someone in our house evidently. But no police.
it immediately makes me feel like his priority isn't figuring out who did this, maybe because he already knows who did this, and he's protecting them. I just think it's weird that he doesn't. also say they need the police because he sounds scared in the call and if that happened to me i'd be like we need an ambulance we need the police we need the police here all that fucking ambulance gonna do stop a person who maybe is still in your house who just stabbed somebody
I think it's weird. I don't know. I think like on its own, if I had someone who had been stabbed, my only concern would be keeping them alive. Okay. So I would only be bothered about an ambulance. I would... think about the police later, I think. Okay. I think it's the fear that is registering on him. But again, like I said, fine. It's one point. Let's continue.
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He also talks about the intruder in the past tense, which does seem a bit strange because how do you absolutely know that he isn't still there hiding in your house? And then they stabbed somebody. Someone is bleeding in this house. It's quite... distant way of speaking. Robert and Victor are friends. They've known each other for years. This isn't just a random person that you found stabbed on the street. So reducing Robert to someone does seem odd.
And like Victor is trying to create distance from Robert and maybe depersonalise him in the situation. I don't know. Again, it's just one other point. But I am always suspicious when somebody starts saying someone about somebody that they know. And the usage of we, we, we. You're going to see this throughout the call. He very rarely says I.
He always says we. And look, maybe again, I'm reading too much into this, but it feels a bit like the retelling of a pre-agreed story between two people. If you're like, we think this. That means you've talked about it. How are you saying we think this if you don't know what the other person thinks? Now, again, each of these points taken in isolation proves nothing. And I certainly don't think we should just be, you know.
pulling up 911 calls and being like, go arrest that person. But the totality of the weirdness of this call to me points to deception on Victor's part. But let's listen to a bit more. Okay, I'm sending paramedics and the police. Okay, who is the person that stabbed him? I don't know. We think it's somebody with an intruder in the house. We've heard a chime to do it. Ma'am, calm down. 1509 Swan Street, Northwest. Am I correct? Yes. Is the person that says that he's in the homes? I don't know.
We got help in route, okay? Pardon me? We have help in route. Thank you. Thank you. They are being route to you now, seeing the police and the paramedics, okay, to assist. Okay, what I need you to do is go downstairs, okay? The place, wherever he was saved at, I need you to get a dry cloth, okay? And just apply pressure to that area. Wherever he was saved at on his body, I need you to take a towel downstairs while you're waiting for the paramedic to arrive and just apply pressure.
Even if the rag or towel is saturated with blood, just get another towel and put it on top, but never lift the first towel off the area. Hold it on. Once it gets sealed, that will be good. Just put another towel on top of that. And just apply pressure until the paramedics are running. Yeah. Yeah. In the heart. In the heart? Yes. Okay, is he breathing? Is he breathing? We have helping right now, okay? You don't know who it was.
Okay, is he breathing? Okay, we have help and roll, ma'am, okay? We do have help and roll. Okay, just go down there and try to tell your husband or the other half to just try to keep him calm and talk to him, okay? Keep them calm and talk to them until someone gets it. And at the same time, get a dry cloth and just hold it right there in the area. My partner's holding it on there. Okay, and once it gets saturated with blood, get another one. Go get another towel, and you can apply it on top.
once it gets filled up with blood. We need you to apply pressure on that area. Okay, just hold it in until the parents get there. They should be pulling up any moment if they're already around to your location. You don't know who did this. We have no idea you did that. Is the door open so they can get in? We don't know how we got in. Okay, well, I'm asking you now, is the door open so the paramedics can get in once they get here? All right.
What were you saying? If the door opens so they can get in. If the door opens so the paramedics can get in the home. I'm going to go down. Is this a private home or apartment? It's a home. It's a home. It's 1509 Swan Street, Northwest. The person had one of our knives. The person that sat and ran out the door with a knife? I think. Okay, anybody get any type of description of the person that came in home? I have no idea. We have no description.
So yeah, a lot of we's. We think it's an intruder. Somebody in the house, we heard a chime at the door. And then there's the towel. The operator is giving Victor a lot of detailed information about applying pressure. to Robert's body with a towel and then replacing it as it gets saturated with blood. But at no point on the call, which is long, do we hear Victor passing on this information to Joe. We never hear him relay these things.
to Joe at all. He just says that Joe is doing them. Even though Victor is supposedly on the third floor while Joe and Robert are down on the second. So how can he see that Joe is applying pressure to Robert's wounds with a towel? Also if we jump ahead for a second, when the police arrive, the towel they found in the room barely has any blood on it at all.
And when the paramedics arrive and they find Joe in that room with Robert's body, he's not applying pressure to his wounds. He's just sat there. And then there's the moment of distraction too, where Victor asks the operator, sorry, what were you saying? Which again, if he's upstairs alone, what's he distracted by? Feels like someone might be there talking to him or signalling to him. And that's why Victor wasn't listening to the operator.
It's like a really clear moment in that section of the call where he is like not listening. And you can tell he isn't listening because the operator is saying things to him. And like is like, are you there? Are you listening? And he's like, sorry, what were you saying? And look, you could say it's a stressful situation. Victor loses focus for a second. What's the big deal? Sure. But then it's what comes immediately after he snaps out of that moment of distraction. They are talking about.
how the paramedics are going to get into the house. But the minute he comes out of that moment of distraction, he suddenly offers up the statement, the intruder has one of our knives. So they're talking about how the paramedics are going to get into the house. She's like, is it a flat? Is it a house? Blah, blah, blah. Are you there? He's like, sorry, what were you saying?
The intruder has one of our knives. Again, I may be reading too much into this, but this very sudden shift of topic to talking about the knife after the moment of distraction.
kind of feels to me and again obviously we are going to do this as humans we're going to like put a story in place based on what we're hearing and obviously we don't have all the information but it really feels like someone was there prompting Victor to say something about the knife to get it on record that the intruder has one of their knives it just feels like such a random inconsequential thing to say in that moment because
I don't know why it would be important to bring up at this point, because the account that all three men later give is that Victor totally lost it when he saw Robert's body. And that's why Joe sends him upstairs to call 911. Right. Because there's actually a phone in the room that Robert has been killed in. Right. And there's mobiles. They have mobiles. It's 2006.
But he doesn't do that. He sends him upstairs to their bedroom to call 911. And he says, the reason I did that is because Victor was so hysterical, right? The minute he saw Robert's body, he's hysterical. So how did Victor know that it was one of their knives?
by the time he was on the call to the operator. Because the story is, they go downstairs, they see Robert's body, Victor freaks out, Joe's like, go upstairs and call 911. How has he gathered that much information? That A, Robert's been stabbed, and B, it's one of their knives. This is going to become a really important point in this story moving forward. So please remember this. Because even if they had found their knife in that spare room with Robert.
And also, let's say he's telling this bit about the knife because they think the intruder's still in the house and he's still got the knife and they're like, he's got a knife, he's got one of our knives. Well, if they found their knife in Robert's room, which is the only way Victor would know that it was their knife.
Then surely the intruder doesn't have the knife anymore, so why mention it at all, let alone as being one of your knives? I don't know. Again, it's a plot point. It's one bit of information that fits into the larger... themes of this story so it's important to remember even if right now it just feels like I'm nitpicking but I agree with you though like if it was just one if it was just one of the many then you know all right it would be negligible exactly
Okay, anybody, any type of description of the person that came in at home? No idea. We have no description. We heard the chime, and we heard the screen from our friends. Okay. And so we... Came running downstairs. We ran in. So you both was upstairs and your friend was downstairs? Yes. You heard the door open and then you heard the scream? We didn't... I didn't hear the door open until after the scream and then...
We ran down the stairs, and we have an alarm, and so the chime went off. Okay. We really need the insurance. Okay, stay in row now, ma'am. Go to the door. They should be putting up any moment, okay? I'm afraid you're going to hear her. The person who's downstairs is the person that was assaulted. No, we're on the second floor.
Okay, so somebody needs to go to open the door for the paramedics. You're not sure if that person's still in the home or not? I have no idea. Okay, we have paramedics here, right? What time is it? What time is it at the moment? 2354. It's 1154, ma'am. Yes. I mean, I'll fill the line with you. I will fill the line until somebody gets here, okay? I won't hang up. We need them right now. I'm not hanging up, but we need help now.
Throughout this call, the story about the door chime, the scream, and Victor and Joe coming downstairs changes multiple times. First, Victor says, we heard the chime, then I heard the scream, and then we ran downstairs. The second time round... He says, we heard the scream, then I heard the chime, and we ran downstairs. And then finally, he says, we heard the scream, we ran downstairs, and then we heard the chime.
And I don't, again, think it's unimportant. It's not just him getting confused because that second time when he says, we heard the scream, then we heard the chime, he specifically says, I heard the scream before I heard the chime. But the first time he said, we heard the chime, then we heard the scream. Like, he can't keep his story straight.
And again, stressful situation, sure. But he's saying it with certainty, but he keeps saying it wrong. And like the order could be muddled at first from shock, perhaps, but... If you remember the first time Victor talked about the intruder at the very start of the call, he doesn't mention a scream at all. He just says, we think there was an intruder, someone in the house. We heard the chime of the back door. So why wouldn't you mention the scream then?
the chime could have been anyone it's not a weird sound here it's in your house all the time but the scream of your friend seems odd not to mention they even have another lodger that lives in the house like in the basement below who comes and goes and sets off the chime so like
The chime isn't like a bizarre thing. The scream is, but you don't mention the scream until nearly like halfway through the call. Again, weird. And then there's a statement he says, I'm afraid to go downstairs. Why? In fact. If this is genuinely playing out in which the men say that it did, right? They come downstairs, they find Robert stabbed. Why was Victor sent upstairs at all in the first place, right? How do they know that it is safe upstairs?
If I thought there could be someone somewhere in my house, I wouldn't want to be alone. No. And I wouldn't want my loved one to be alone either. So it's not Scooby-Doo where you're like, let's split up. You go upstairs, I'll stay down. You don't even know that this person isn't still in your house. You've just found your friend is stabbed. So why are they like, you go upstairs?
According to them, according to Victor and Joe, they didn't see anyone fleeing from the house. They didn't even hear footsteps after they heard the scream. They're very light. We didn't hear any footsteps. So that for me is then how do you know that the person even left your house? So why would you then corner yourself by going further into the house? If this was me, I'd want to get the fuck out of that house.
I'd want to go wait outside until the police and the paramedics got there. Or stay together and tend to Robert. This idea of splitting up and you go upstairs, even though we don't know what's going on upstairs, that seems very bizarre. If you don't already know...
who did this and therefore that there isn't a further threat. Again, just another little point worth mentioning. And so, yeah, I think it's during this call that I think Victor fucks up and he realizes that he's fucked up because the operator is pushing him like so you heard the chime you heard the scream you went downstairs you heard the scream you heard like she's she's confused by it and I think that's when he realizes he's messed up
And he suddenly says, what's the time? Now, maybe as a lot of people like theorize with this case that it was to establish some sort of timeline with the operator. But like for me, I don't really see that because like. the call time would be recorded anyway. A 911 call, the timings would be recorded. That's a good point. So for me, it just feels like a way to distract. Like, what's the best way to distract in a situation is by asking a random abrupt question about something else.
Even those like weird little signs on the tube tell you if you see somebody in trouble, ask them what time it is or ask like what the next stop is because it can like break up a tense situation. And I kind of think that's what Victor's doing here. But again. Maybe I'm thinking too much into it. Let's listen to the next bit. Here they are. Here they are. Stay there. I'm going downstairs. Okay. I'll stand in line with you till you open the door for a pair of minutes, okay? Help us.
We have four minutes stats on our second floor. Ma'am. This is really an emergency. I mean, he's leaving. He's crying. Ma'am, it's going to be okay. Okay, so this is the point at which the paramedics have arrived at the house. And I think there is a real shift in Victor at this point. He now seems hysterical and sobbing like uncontrollably.
But there's more distancing. He says to the paramedic, someone's been stabbed. Someone's been stabbed inside. And then there's the talking to himself. Victor, you can hear him say, what is this? What is this?
and that's not to somebody i think he's saying it to himself because i think it's after the paramedics have gone into the house and he's still on the phone and i genuinely think victor is confused i don't think he understands what's happened and i'm going to put this out there i don't think victor
was involved in the murder. Obviously, we're going to get to theories like way later, but I'm just going to put this out there now. And I think this like, what is this? What is this? Is a real question that Victor is asking himself. But what's interesting is he never asks that on the 911 call. He never says that. Which seems weird to me because there's no confusion on the 911 call about what the fuck is happening.
he's never like what the fuck is going on what is this he asks out when he thinks he's alone by himself talking to himself because it's only at this point that you hear the confusion and i wonder if it's because he's done his job He was told to call 911. He's called them. The authorities are now here and he can at least for now stop the immediate act. And you see that glimpse of the fear, the panic and the confusion breaking through in Victor.
Paramedics arrived at the house at 11.54 and we watched an interview with Jeff Baker. A veteran EMS worker who was the first responder on the scene and he says that when he got to the house he was immediately met with an odd scene. Standing outside the house in a white bathrobe. was Victor Zaborski. According to Baker, Victor was crying, which is what we heard, but wouldn't look at him. He just said, there's been a stabbing on the second floor, which we just heard.
so baker went inside and as he walked up the stairs he saw another man also in a white bathrobe in the hallway at the top of the stairs this man was dylan ward and according to baker He asked Dylan, what's going on? Dylan looked at him, didn't say a word, and just went into his bedroom, which is the first room when you come up the stairs. So he just goes in there.
shuts the door yeah you're gonna start feeling on edge yeah and that's exactly how baker feels and he notes how weird this whole situation is but he turns he's there to do a job and he walks down the hallway of the second floor and into the upper bedroom. And in that other bedroom, he finds a third man, Joe Price. Joe is in his underwear, just his boxers, sitting on the edge of the pull-out bed.
with his back to the door, not applying any pressure with a towel on Robert's wounds. Now firstly, I'm sorry, but you think an intruder broke into your house and stabbed your friend? to death, but you're sat in your underwear with your back to the door of the room in which it happened. So pretty much in the most vulnerable position you could possibly be in. Does that make sense?
Again, if you don't already think the threat has been neutralised because you actually know what happened. I'm trying to think what I would do. I'd sit outside on the front step waiting for the police to come is what I'd do. Exactly. You wouldn't sit with your back to the door in your underwear. Of the room in which there is a dead body of somebody who got stabbed in your house. I might sit outside in my pants. That's fine. I just think, again, one point at a time. I get it. It's weird.
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how he has been to countless crime scenes in his long career as an EMS worker, said that something definitely felt off here. He said he was unnerved and the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. Now again, obviously that is just anecdotal.
evidence from baker like you can take that with a with a grain of salt i'm sure it kind of didn't help that dylan ward just sort of ignores him and goes into a room but there's something there that's putting him off so baker walks into this room in which joe price is sat and saw that on the bed lay the body of a fourth man, Robert I. Robert was laying on the pull-out sofa bed like he was asleep, but in his chest were three stab wounds. A bloody knife was on the bedside table.
and Robert's clothes, watch and wallet were all neatly placed on a chair at the end of the bed. Joe Price told Baker, I heard a scream, so I came down and found this knife laying on his chest. found it odd given the three stab wounds to the chest just how little blood there was at the scene and he's not wrong we've all seen crime photos before with just one stab wound that look like a bloodbath but there's just
So little blood here. There's nothing on the walls or on the ceiling. There's no cast off, no spray, nothing on the floor, just a little bit on the bedsheets. It's a shockingly small amount of blood. On the towel, there's just like... three sort of splotches on the bed sheet and yeah like tmi but like i've had heavier periods that have leaked like it's nothing compared to the injuries that baker is being presented with
Baker also thought that the blood on Robert's midsection looked like it had been wiped. There were smears, like when you clean a window. He also noted... that he thought Robert looked like he had been stabbed, showered, redressed, and then put back in the bed. And it was strange to Baker, on top of all of this.
that the three non-dead guys in the house were all either wearing white bathrobes or were just in their boxes. And all of them, according to him, looked like they had just showered, complete with wet hair. Now, I guess, look, it wasn't that late. I think when you hear this story and like how bonkers it is, you're imagining it's happening at one in the morning. No, it's like they call the ambulance at 1149 and they're there before midnight. They're there within six minutes.
So like, it's really not that late. And the three men did all later say that they had worked out that evening and they'd had showers before they went to bed. Now, some people argue it was a very hot August night. If that was really true, that they had showered before they went to bed and they'd all been asleep just before they called 911, like how long would your hair still be wet? But I'm sure, you know, it's America. They have air con. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not like. No, I'm not.
I'm not hanging anything that much on that. No, no. Sure. Now, the reason people obviously bring this up is because some people speculate that the freshly showered look of the men plus... the total lack of blood at the scene indicates a clean up. We are going to come on to this in a big way next week. For now, all I will say is that no one...
Not the paramedics, not the police, nobody who was in that house ever reported the house smelling like bleach or cleaning products. So that's also not unimportant to note. But again, like I said, we'll come back to that next week. For now, we're going to stay on the scene. Baker checked Robert's body over, and although he was certain that Robert was indeed dead, he did make the call to take Robert to George Washington University Hospital.
In the ambulance, the paramedics made some life-saving attempts, but Robert was officially pronounced dead on arrival. Kathy Wohan, Robert's wife, received a call shortly after midnight from Joe Price, telling her... that Robert had been stabbed and that she needed to get to the hospital as soon as she could. It was only once Cathy arrived that she learned her husband was dead. In hindsight, Baker...
does say that he wishes he'd left Robert in the bed because moving him definitely disrupted potential evidence. And as we'll all go on to see, the life-saving attempts... also interfered with possible explanations for what happened to Robert that night. Meanwhile, Joe Price, Victor Zaborski and Dylan Ward were all taken down to the violent crimes branch to be interviewed.
And I think the police felt pretty confident quite early on that they were dealing with suspects here and not witnesses. So let's now listen to a few clips from the initial interview with Joe. They are interviewed multiple times, by the way. So if you just Google like Joe Price police interviews, there are so many that come up. This is the first time that he is questioned. And it is remarkable to see his demeanor and the story change.
throughout each of the retellings. Finger printing that knife, I mean, somebody jumped our fence and went through that door. It used to tell you what I know. We have an alarm system. The R was on, but it has a function where the doors chime if you open the doors, whether they're locked or not. After Robert was there, we had drinks around the sink.
Went upstairs. We showed Robert where the shower was, where the bathroom was, right down the hall. Here's the bed. We'd already made out the pull-out bed for him. We said goodnight. He said he was going to take a shower before then. He was all sticky. I went upstairs, saw the last five minutes of the show, and then started watching the first ten minutes of some other thing on Spike TV.
I knew Victor was getting annoyed that I wasn't turning off the TV, so I turned it off and he went to sleep. The next thing that I know, I hear the chime. It's two beeps. Beep, beep. But you don't know what happened until you heard the chime. Right. I don't know what happened until I hear the chime. So you wasn't asleep in New York? I was asleep, but it wakes me up. There are two control units. One's right there in your bedroom. Yes, one's down in the frozen room. So I hear that.
It doesn't concern me. It wakes me up, but I hear it, and I think, oh, Sarah came home. Sarah's our tenant. She looks down at the basement. She had said to us, I'm going to go to Tom and John's tonight. I might come back. I might not. She occasionally does. They have a guest room. She'll just crash there.
I thought she came home. No problem. She's very heavy. She doesn't come upstairs. I wasn't worried like, oh, she's going to come find Robert and have a cow or anything. She'd just come in and go downstairs. I don't know how long it was from when I heard the chime. It was not long enough for me to go back to sleep. And I hear, you know, it was yelling, but it wasn't, it was just like grunts or something. But you don't know how long it was. I don't know how long it was, but it was not.
I didn't fall back to sleep. I was still awake when I heard it. And it was pretty close in time to right after I hear the chime. So Victor and I both jump out of bed. We run downstairs. There's, you know... The stairs end at the door. I see the doors open. I see Robert is laying there. The bed cover is pulled back. He's laying there. There is blood on him.
His hand was out like, one arm was out like this, and one arm was like this, I think, or somewhere across his body. And there was a knife, I believe it was laying on him. on his stomach or something like that. I picked up the knife, I moved it, I lifted up his shirt, and I could see, clearly see, there was one puncture wound right on his belly.
I lifted up his shirt a little more. There was a lot of blood on his chest. Before I touched Robert, Victor became very hysterical and I yelled at him to go call 911. Just go do that. He ran upstairs. He got the phone. He came back down or whatever. Was on the phone with him. He handed me a towel. They were telling him to apply pressure. We were doing that.
I was yelling at him about telling him, you know, we need an ambulance right now. We need an ambulance right now. And, you know, eventually the ambulance got there. The, you know, big guys came up. They got Robert. Put him on a stretcher and the police were right after them basically. At some point we went downstairs. I think we were told we had to go downstairs. When I got downstairs...
Dylan or somebody, it might have been one of the officers, said, oh, I think it was Dylan, that the back door was open, you know, or jar, unlocked, whatever. And I looked at it right then, and in fact, the door was, you know, a little... Open. It wasn't completely closed, but it was closed. That's it. Okay. When you came downstairs...
You came by yourself, is that what you said? Yeah. Victor and I ran down the stairs together. And then what did you see? The door was there. It was open. There was Robert laying on the bed. The cover was pulled back. Where's Dylan? Yeah. He was in his room. I saw him, you know, I don't know, in this time frame come out of his room. He, you know, I don't think he heard the chime. You don't know. I don't know. But, I don't know.
I don't know. I saw him come out of the womb. He was putting on a battlefield when he came out. I don't like Joe. No. I don't like Joe. He's definitely a type A type of person.
Alpha, loud, confident, gratingly obnoxious would be my descriptor. But even if we put all of that to one side, the whole interview is weird anyway. He... absolutely is trying his very best to maintain control but he's also fidgety and comes across quite wired and of course being interviewed by the police is scary for anybody but what
struck me the most is that joe doesn't really seem that curious about who could have done this who could have broken into his house and killed one of his oldest friends he's not bothered at all about what police are doing to find out who actually did this I think it's so obvious from even the way he's sitting he's like I'm not scared like that's kind of like the vibe I got from it
out the gate like i'm i'm not afraid i'm not worried no i feel like it feels high octane like i feel like this has happened and he's like right but he's confident that he can talk his way out of this And he just talks and talks and talks and talks and talks. And he's very like, he's trying his best to be very disarming. Unfortunately for him, his story doesn't actually make that much sense. He talks about the chime of the back door and the grunting.
and then the chime again, but he never heard any footsteps going up or down the stairs. Everyone who went through that house during the investigation agreed that it was an old house with wooden stairs that are old and creaky. So how could it be that Joe was woken up by the first door chime, didn't hear any footsteps, but heard some soft grunting from the floor below, and then heard the chime go again, but still no footsteps before the second chime?
Could the intruder have levitated up and down the staircase like we all did when we were children? I know, we all remember. But it is strange. If you're going to lie about hearing door chimes... Why wouldn't you just lie about footsteps as well? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe to keep the timelines fuzzy, but then the second chime of the door going off is them suggesting that the person was leaving.
So I don't know. I don't know. It's weird. But I think more than that, what is weird to me is the behavior that Joe himself confesses to in this clip that we just had. And it's the stuff about Dylan. Because Joe just says that Dylan was in his room. And then at some point during that situation, after they found Robert stabbed and near death or already dead, that Dylan came out of his room putting a robe on.
So basically what he's saying is that he heard some noise downstairs that was scary enough to make him and Victor run downstairs. They come downstairs. They don't see anybody fleeing. They find Robert stabbed. But they don't go check on Dylan, whose room is just down the hall. They never knock on his door. They're never like, Dylan, get the fuck up. Robert's been stabbed. Or are you okay?
Like, there's none of that. They just wait with Robert, they send Victor upstairs, and they just wait for Dylan to come out of his room putting his robe on because he's been woken up by the noise that they're now making. I don't get. that. Why would you just wait for Dylan to make an appearance? Really? What if Dylan was being attacked in his room by this same person who's now gone in there and shut the door? You're not going to check?
Again, it comes back to, for me, a consciousness of guilt, right? It comes back to the fact that you know that the threat has already been dealt with because you know who did it. Otherwise, why are you not checking on Dylan? It doesn't make any sense. So, yeah. Next clip. I know you guys have to figure everything out, but, you know, Barbara's one of my oldest friends. I went to his wedding. You know, he was a freshman in college when I was a senior. His parents were on my...
Is he homosexual? No. Not gay. Never has been. Didn't think about it. No drugs, no booze, nothing. Robert was like the best, you know, absolutely... straight A, you know, no-nonsense guy I ever met. But he didn't... Where was his wife all this time? What do you mean? Well, she wasn't, she didn't come over with him. No, no, she was at home. I saw his wife recently. I saw, like, on Monday she got a new job herself. She just had, like, hip replacement surgery, and she got a new job.
working right across the street from me so we she robert and i actually all tried to go to lunch together last week and uh robert couldn't do it but kathy and i went Like I said, I know Victor and Dylan better than I know my mother. There's no chance on the face of this sort of that either one of them could punch someone, never mind kill someone. It's ridiculous.
Firstly here with this clip for me is like all of the unnecessary extra information about Kathy, who's Robert's wife, like telling the police that he and Kathy had gone for lunch, that she's got a new job, that she's just had surgery. Sorry, Robert's just been killed. What's that got to do with anything? And I get it. Like, people do fear-based babbling. Like, that can happen. But what's very odd to me...
Beyond that, if you want to ignore the whole Kathy thing, what's very, very odd to me is just how certain Joe is that Victor and Dylan must be innocent. He says in that clip that we just heard, I know them both better than I know my own mother. What? What a fucking weird thing to say. Like, okay, with Victor, okay, right? Like...
He is Joe's husband for all intents and purposes, right? They call each other husband and husband. Gay marriage hasn't been legalized yet, but they see themselves as husband and husband, right? And they were in bed together. And they came downstairs together, according to their story, to find Robert.
So yes, I could understand somebody saying, I know my husband didn't do this. I was with him. He was with me in bed all night. We came downstairs and we found Robert together. So I know Victor didn't do it. But how and why is Joe so sure? that Dylan had nothing to do with Robert's murder. Because neither Joe nor Victor, according to their own stories, can testify as to Dylan's movements that night after they all went to bed at 10.45. I don't think I'd be able to.
ever look myself in the face again if there was a stabbing inside my house and I don't wake my housemate up. Even if I've just met them. Yeah. I'm sorry. Even if you were in a fucking hostel. Yes, absolutely.
And you came downstairs and you happened to come across somebody who's been stabbed to death and there's a room next door. You're not going to be like, raise the fucking alarm. You should be like, I'll just sit here until the police get here. I'm sure you're all fine. But actually, when it comes to Dylan's movements or innocence, how can either of them be so sure about...
any of it because he's just their lodger. No, he isn't. There's a lot of stuff going on in that house and now has come the time to explore the quite complicated dynamic. If you have a look at this case at all, you will see the three men, Joe, Victor and Dylan, described as a throuple. That's not quite right. They were trying to make it into something...
sort of resembling that. They did call themselves a family. But at the time of the murders, it was much less a three-way relationship and more two. Two-way relationships happening in the same roof. Which sounds horrendous. But both of these relationships, surprise, surprise, have Joe Price at the centre. So there's Joe and Victor, and then separately...
But actually, that's everything in the same house. Joe and Dylan. Yeah. So it seems that Joe and Victor, who at the time of the murder had been together for six years, it appears that they had a traditional relationship. As Saru said, they refer to each other as husband and husband.
And they had even fathered a child each with a lesbian couple that they were friends with, and they were very involved in those kids' lives. And this seems to have been the life that Victor wanted. And while Joe may have been a top hotshot lawyer... and definitely the alpha in the relationship, Victor's not an idiot. At the time, he worked in marketing for the International Dairy Foods Association and had actually been the point person.
On the Got Milk campaign. It all comes back to Tyra in the end. That's what we're learning. I know. I know. She rules us all. Truly. But yeah, so they've got a very specific type of relationship, Jo and Victor. But Joe wanted something more on top of this successful family man lifestyle. His four-year relationship with Dylan seems to have been far more sexually motivated. And Dylan...
He's a bit of a mystery. To be honest, I really did my best to like dig into his life. And this is all I really could find out. Dylan Ward grew up the son of a very successful cardiologist. He went to Georgetown School of Foreign Service. But dropped out. He then got a degree in children's literature from Simmons University. But after graduating, Dylan just flitted from job to job. He worked for a while at a publishing house in Asia, but that didn't work out.
Then he decided he was going to be a chef and he enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America. But then that didn't work out. And then he went traveling to Thailand, as everyone does, and became interested in alternative therapies. And Dylan had just started working as a masseuse around the time of the murder. Though I have seen many reports that masseuse was just code for escort. And that's very possibly true. Dylan and Jo's relationship.
was one that does appear to have centred on BDSM. Joe was the submissive and Dylan the dominant. That's not massively surprising. Generally speaking, it is typically... people who are large and in charge in their everyday lives who like to be dominated in these BDSM type situations. When the police searched Dylan's room... It was full of all sorts of wild sexual equipment. Ball gags, cages, heavy duty restraints, giant dildos, limb spreaders, whips, electric shock machines. All of it.
And it really is. There's pictures. It's a lot. Hundreds. It's not just like a little fun box with some fluffy handcuffs in. No. It's like full on. And. It's possible that Victor was not into any of that at all. So Joe convinced him to let him have a live-in fuck buddy. That's basically what I think it was. Stranger things have happened. Yeah. I think they're like, look.
we're happy we're in a relationship we're basically married we got these kids and they do a lot of advocacy work which we'll come on to talk about but like joe's like there's something else i need And wouldn't you rather me just have a man in the house that you know and you can see and maybe you'll even get involved sometimes. But I'll just have one man who lives here and who services me. A houseboy. In that situation. Very, very important part of this story, I think.
And look, with this whole throuple slash two people relationship, whatever's going on in this house, it's not for me. It sounds fucking horrible. If you can make that kind of thing work, then go for it. But I do not believe for a second that there was not huge amounts of tension. Oh, yeah. In that. 100%. Lots of slamming doors. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Even in that clip that we heard of Joe, you hear him say.
I was watching TV and Victor was getting annoyed with me for not turning it off. I think it's just it's I know it just feels like one small thing, but I think Victor was pissed that night. And again, we'll come back to that next week. But yes, this dynamic between Joe, Dylan and Victor is absolutely, in my opinion, crucial to this case. So the scenario you're telling is a burglar comes in the house.
for the sole purpose of coming upstairs and stabbing a person who spent one, you know, half an hour in your house. No, I don't think they knew anybody was there. All I can imagine in this, I mean... This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I've never been bugged. My house is never broken into. My car was broken into once. First of all, your house wasn't broken into. It still hadn't been broken into. I understand where you guys are coming from with this, but...
Someone came in our house, took that knife. How did you get in? They came through the back door. How did you know? I heard the chime. The front door of the house was definitely locked. And then did you hear the chime when you went out? I did not hear it. Victor told me that he believes he heard the chime again. I didn't hear it. And then this person, they, then what they did, jumped the fence.
Yeah, and I was sitting in the living room saying to Dylan, like, why in the hell would you jump the fence? Why wouldn't the person going out the back door go through the gate? Amen. Good thinking. Because I didn't get to go out there, but, you know, the gate was...
Okay. There's just, it's honestly, there's hours and hours of interview footage that I have watched and listened to. And it is a treasure trove of just bizarreness. And I get it. You could listen to innocent people talking for hours and find weirdness. But like some of this is just so telling. I love that the police are, you know, they do a terrible job for a lot of this investigation. But I think the initial detectives are asking all the right questions.
Again here, when he says, I didn't hear the chime of the door go again, Victor told me he had it. Again then, why are you sending Victor, your beloved husband, up to make a call from your bedroom? Why are you splitting up from him if you didn't even hear the person leave the house? But that aside.
I love the bit where Jo's like, that's what I said to Dylan when we were sat in the living room. I was like, why in the hell would the person jump out the back? Why wouldn't they go out the front door? And again, I know. I'm coming at this from my bias, but it feels a lot like a conversation they were trying to have to get their story straight. Like they're like, how are we going to say this person got out? And they're like, we'll say we got the back because we can't say he went out the front.
For various reasons, maybe there's CCTV. Again, it's not that late. Maybe they're worried somebody would have seen somebody fleeing. So we'll say he went out the back. And as we'll go on to talk about, getting into and out of the back garden of this house seems very difficult. But there's like, that's what I was saying to Dylan.
How could somebody have done that? Why would somebody have done that? It feels like that's an argument they were having when they were trying to put this story together. Sounds like me, Joe and Chris yesterday being like, OK, but who did it and why and how did they get away with it? Exactly. Exactly. And they're just like, let's keep it as simple as possible. Chime, scream, chime in some, you know, combination of things. But let's not overcomplicate the story. But I am making a musical statute.
Do you normally keep your door unlocked? Occasionally we leave the back door unlocked. Not on purpose, but because we just forget to lock it. We grill out there, you know, four nights out of five. We grilled out there tonight, you know. The grill is literally out the back door. I mean, you know, it's like three feet away from the door. So, you know, it is completely plausible that the door was unlocked.
Well, like I said, when I came downstairs, Dylan or somebody else pointed out to me, oh, you know, the door was unlocked or whatever, when they got down there. The meeting after this deed has been done. You guys see the doors unlocked, so maybe somebody had a key? That's possible. I mean, other than us and our tenants there, there's a few contractors that have keys and that's it. What he doesn't mention there is that his brother also has a key. But again, we will come back to that next week.
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I mean, I don't remember doing that tonight. And in fact, while Dylan and Robert and I were talking around the sink, standing in the kitchen. I was looking out, the back door's all glass, and they had two big glass panels. And I looked down, and there's a light in one of the tree boxes, while they're in both. And I could see something crawling around on top of it. It looked to me like a big bug.
Anyway, I walked outside and looked at it and came back in. That was tonight. What time was it? 10.40 something. I mean, it was after Robert got there before he went upstairs. And I can't tell you, did I turn and lock the thing? I don't know. You know that area? It's a high crime rate of burdens, right? No. You didn't go? No.
We know some of our neighbors. I think of it as a very safe place. The one thing we ever worried about was the guy living in the van behind the house. We called the police about that because we saw a guy getting in the van and we thought...
someone's breaking into the van and the cops came and they said no they talked to some people they came over they said actually the guy has permission or something to live there yeah he does so that's what that was the one and only time i ever felt unsafe i mean You know, the back alley is very well lit. We know the people not directly across the way. If you drive back there, there's Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes.
Like us, we spent a million, too, on the house. But you said you feel unsafe, so... No, I didn't say that. The only time was because when you saw this guy... Yeah, breaking in the van. Yeah, I thought, oh, that's... What time did you set the alarm for tonight? Generally, we don't put it on at night when we're home. We don't turn it on. When we leave the house, we usually turn it on. Truth be told, we don't even... When Sarah comes home, if it's on.
she comes in and disarms it yeah yeah she knows the code yes so she be able to tell us about coming in sure whether it's on or not Yes. Yeah. Yeah, so she actually, like, you know, at some point, I don't know. Does she put it on when she comes in? Not when she comes in. Anytime any of us leave the house, we usually put it on. Although we weren't doing that for probably the first six to eight months we lived there. I mean, we had the system that was installed when we bought the house. But she...
Again, she is a little, I think, more paranoid or whatever, so she said at some point to me or to Victor, oh, we should start using the alarm when we come and go, so now we do. But never at night. Ever since we've looked there, we've never put the alarm on at night. I know that may sound completely stupid. I looked on Capitol Hill on Constitution at 11th for five years in a quote-unquote fringe neighborhood.
Nothing ever happened. It was safe. It was fine. I can show you murders with them. I can throw a rock from 11th and Constitutional to several bodies. I'm just the oblivious, stupid guy living in Washington. This one doesn't really make a whole ton of sense. There's a lot of rambling with regards to the alarm. He lives in the city. It's a nice house and like fine. And sure, people buy alarms and they don't bother setting them. But you don't worry at all.
about safety he says repeatedly in the interview he's like oh nothing bad's ever happened i never i never worry about safety i'm like right you never but you've got a little unit that chimes in your bedroom when the back door opens but you don't care at all about safety i don't
To not even check that your door's locked. Like, oh, yeah, no, we, like, the door might have been open sometimes, we just leave the door open. Okay. Okay, Jo. He also tries to brush it all off and just say, like, oh, I guess I'm just stupid. Which I just don't believe is a word he's ever used to describe himself before. Again, a disarming attempt to present himself as a bit naive, possibly, and...
It's kind of like a, it's just a universal response, isn't it? Don't have to explain myself if I'm an idiot, do I? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's the bit about the spider that we just heard. So he's basically saying... Oh, yeah, we were all standing around. We were having a drink of water when Robert came into the house. We're standing in the kitchen. I saw this giant spider out the back of the window, like in the back garden. And I just went to investigate.
He doesn't say it, but it's basically an explanation of why the door could have been left unlocked. Because he just went out there to look at the spider and may have left the door unlocked. I'm just like, you saw a spider at 10.40pm in your garden. And you just had to go take a look at it. Why? Like, it's such a weird thing to say. And maybe it'd be like, it's so weird, it could just be true. But no, I think it's just to provide a weird, semi-reasonable explanation for why the door was unlocked.
My sister was telling me last night that her friend of hers just moved house. There's a massive spider's nest outside the front door. And the spiders are so big, they set off the ring doorbell. The ring doorbell thinks they are people. No, thank you. They are so massive. That's diabolical.
And look, maybe, much like your sister's unfortunate friend, there was a giant spider out there. Because actually, when the police got there, there were cobwebs all over the top of the very tall fences in the back garden. These fences in the back garden of this house, we're talking seven foot, seven foot tall, and the tops of them covered in pollen and cobwebs, right? Which is very strange if a person...
climbed into... It's all getting very JonBenet Ramsey, isn't it? Exactly. Climbed into your garden over these fences and then climbed back out over the fences without disturbing these cobwebs and this pollen. And again, you could say standalone piece of information doesn't mean much, but I feel like it's all adding up. I think it's also very much worth mentioning the fact that none of the neighbours saw or heard anything, even though, again, it wasn't that late.
Nor did they see anybody fleeing out the back across their gardens. Remember, this house is a mid-terrace. So where else is this person going to go? There is an alley behind the house, but there's a garage first.
So this person would have had to jump onto the roof of the garage and then fall into the alley if they didn't go through other people's gardens. Like a mid-terrace is like one of the safest places you can be. Like how is somebody getting in and out with none of the neighbors seeing anything? Very unusual.
There was also no disturbance to the soil in the planting beds around the fence of the men's garden. Which again, if somebody has landed in that bed, which presumably you would do if you dropped over a fence. How is none of the soil getting disturbed? Very strange, right? So all this, rightly, I think made it very hard for the police to believe that an intruder had come into the house that night.
Well, nobody broke in that house tonight. There's no evidence of anybody breaking in that house tonight. Somebody came in. Well, we also talked to some of your neighbors. Some of these neighbors just happened to be out. Nobody saw anybody come back there and nobody saw anybody back there. I mean, you know.
If there was any other possibility, I'd be right there with you guys saying, okay, maybe this happened or maybe that happened. But there were the three of us in there. Like I said, I know Victor and Dylan better, but I know my mom. there is no chance on the face of the earth anybody did anything to robert um no i mean that that is not the answer you're saying that you know them
I would say they would tell you the same. You sure? I would say so, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you can ask them, but I mean, yeah. One time. I'm not exactly sure what time, but I know that I turned the TV off around 11.05, 11.10, something like that. When we were on the phone, when 911, Victor asked them what time it was, and the person said, you know, told him it was 11.43. So, you know, maybe 1140, I don't know, 1135, something like that. And they told you to do compressions on this.
They told Victor that and, yeah, they said apply pressure. And, you know, I don't know if they told me to check for a pulse or I was checking for a pulse, but I was looking for a pulse. And you moved the night? I didn't move it. Nobody else? Nobody else. You said that, let me go back to this time. You said that you found the body at what time? I went to sleep at 11.
I turned off the TV at 11.05 or 11.10. I was asleep shortly thereafter. And we were on the phone with 911 already applying pressure at 11.43. So somewhere in that... period you know five minutes maybe before i mean as soon as i saw robert you know and could stop victor from screaming i you know i told him to run up and call 9-1-1 so it was and that's minutes within right when you saw the bottom
Yes. How many minutes off of Ireland? Not even one. Not even one? If it was one, it was one. I mean, as soon as I saw it and I grabbed, you know, Victor Buu was literally hysterical and said, go call 9-1-1 and he ran upstairs. And Victor told you that the person that he was talking to on the 9-1-1 call said it was like 11-4-3. Yeah.
yeah they i mean he asked them what time is it and you know i was yelling you know we need anything yes i believe he asked them to say what time you know what to tell him what time it was and this bit Brings us back to the 911 call. How does Joe know? Because that's what we just heard. How does Joe know that Victor asked the operator what time it was? He says, Victor asked the operator what time it was and this is what the operator said.
They were supposedly on different floors. Victor was supposedly on the third floor. Joe was supposedly on the fucking second floor. How does he know? Let's say they spoke about it afterwards, right? Some point between the paramedics arriving... and them getting carted down to the police station, they have a conversation about the 911 call. If they had spoken about it, why would Victor tell Joe? I asked them what time it was, and this is what they said.
Why would that be a conversation that you're having? It really feels to me like Joe wasn't with Robert, that he was standing next to Victor telling him what to say. Why would that be a conversation you would have? It was such a pointless bit of the 911 call, but now Victor is apparently thinking it's so important he told Joe? I don't get it. And look, it's all just weird, but it really, really feels to me like...
Joe was in the room with Victor and he was telling him what to say. And that's why Victor gets distracted at certain points. But it's being it's being orchestrated. What blunts you down, Stephen? The grunting, yelling, whatever, yeah. The what? The what? It wasn't like someone said, hey, what are you doing here? Or anything like that. There weren't words.
What I heard was, like, noises. But it definitely did not sound... Hold on, hold on, hold on. You got the confusion again. Because I clearly asked you earlier. Did you hear anything else? Did you hear anybody scream? You said it was absolutely quiet. You know, you said right after the chime. There was a period of time after the chime when I was laying there and I didn't hear anything.
I heard the chime. I thought, oh, Sarah's come home. Rolled back over, you know, and laid to go back to sleep. I wasn't awake again. I never went back to sleep. The time period was that close. I mean, it was, you know, I don't know if it was 30 seconds, a minute, whatever, but I didn't go back to sleep. I heard the disturbance and we both jumped up. Victor heard it too. I mean, it wasn't the kind of thing you hear in your house and you'd all go down and look.
At what point did Vicar wake up because you didn't sleep? I may have woken him up. I don't know. I mean... No, no. You may. You didn't even know or you didn't. It ain't no way. No, I don't know. I don't remember. See, the story is starting to bother me because first you told...
my partner that you was waiting the first time by the shame and then you was waiting again by you may have thought that he went in and may have thought that he went out you see you didn't hear any noise now you asked me if i was If I heard the chime, I said yes, then it was quiet. It was quiet. I didn't hear anything right after that. Wait, now you're saying that you hear a grumpy noise. After the period of silence. I hear the chime, there's a period of silence. There's grunting.
Something like that loud, several of them and we run downstairs. Who run downstairs? Me and Victor. Did Victor hear this? Yeah, I'm sure when you guys talked to him, he told you he did. No, I'm asking you, did he hear this? I didn't say that he did, yes. So what conversation did you and him have after hearing that noise?
We didn't have any. We just got up and we ran downstairs. I mean, this is all like that. So you didn't say, what's going on? Is somebody in trouble? No. Did you yell out for anybody at all? Did you say, hey, Rob? You okay? I may have said Robert when I ran down the stairs, but yeah, it was instantaneous. We jumped out of bed, we ran down the stairs. After you heard the first son-son, after you heard that noise?
How many minutes or seconds gone by when you heard the grunt noise? I don't know. And all I can tell you is I didn't fall back to sleep. It was close in time. So you said seconds earlier. It might have been a second. I said a minute or two minutes. Well, let me just say this. You hear the grunting, and now you're instantly running down the stairs virtually, right? Yeah.
But no one else is in your house at that point? We don't know. We don't know. You'll see on the 911 tape, Victor didn't even want to go downstairs onto the first floor because he was afraid the person was still in our house. As you're running down the stairs, is your theory that he's running down the other stairs, this person? No, no, I don't know what's going on. I'm asking. No, I don't know. I don't believe, at that point, it is...
Not even in the realm of possible that anything has happened to Robert. All I know is I heard some noise. But really, something did. So what I'm asking you is, where'd this guy go? I believe he ran out of the house. Between the grunting and you running down the stairs, which happens like... Yeah.
Wow, that's fast. I agree with you. Look, it's crazy. I mean, why wasn't the back door wide open? Why wasn't the gate wide open? Why didn't he go out the front door? Yeah, but you would think that you were running to this guy. You would see this guy running. Yeah, maybe. Because you said seconds.
Yeah, I mean it really was... Not minutes, seconds. Yeah, I think that's right. And you didn't hear anybody running down the stairs or anything. So what makes you think it's a burglary if you didn't hear anybody running? Because he knows it as hard. It couldn't be Dylan. I know. You guys don't know it's from Adam, so who knows. You know, we could all be crazy as long as, but, you know.
All I can tell you is it wasn't one of them. It wasn't me. We have no reason on earth to do this. I mean, I know Robert's whole family. I mean... So... Detects are just putting the pressure on, really, aren't they? And pointing out all of the problems with the story. First off, Victor and Jo ran instantaneously down the stairs upon hearing the grunt. Why would they do that?
Why would you do that? And it screams to me like of the Oscar Pistorius case, right? Where he's like, I heard some noises in the bathroom. I didn't even look at whether Reva was in bed with me or not. I just got up, got my gun and started shooting.
I've lived in a lot of house shares in my time. If I hear grunting, I ain't looking. No. I ain't knocking. I'm ignoring. This is what I mean. Victor says it's a scream. And taking the piss out of them in the morning. Great. Victor says it was a scream.
Joe only ever says it's grunting. Right. Why would grunting make you think you need to sit up? You don't say a word. They say, did your partner Victor hear these sounds of words? I don't know. We didn't speak about it. We just immediately got up and ran downstairs.
Why? If something strange happens, the first thing you would say to the person you're with is, did you hear that? What's that? What? What's going on? And then you would go together. Just immediately get up and run downstairs because you heard some grunting. Why? That's strange. Is it not? I don't get it. And he says himself that at that point, it didn't even cross his mind that something could have happened to Robert. But they ran downstairs. And saw nobody.
Saw nobody, even though he says it was instantaneous on hearing the grunting. He ran downstairs, but they didn't see. How did this ninja get out of this house? And it does have to be said that during this particular... Interview exchange, Joe looked absolutely exhausted. Yeah, he does. Now, after this interview, Joe was told that he could go home. The police weren't ready to charge them yet, and he was told he could leave.
But he didn't. Joe went outside with Dylan, Victor and a friend of theirs who had come to the station to help out. They all got into a car and had a little chat. And after this chat, Joe still didn't go home. He came back into the police station and asked to speak to the lead detective. He now claimed that he might have made a mistake, saying that he initially told them that when he found Robert, the knife had been on top of Robert's chest.
But now he's saying that actually maybe the knife had been in Robert's chest and he had pulled it out. That's quite a big difference. Massive difference. And why would that be the part of the story you decide to change? Maybe it's because during this little Mercedes meeting, Victor told Joe that he had confused the story. Yeah, let's have a little listen to a clip of Victor's police interview.
Did you tell him that he was stabbed? I don't remember. I probably did, because I definitely, at that time, I'd been in the room and seen him. So I probably did say he was stabbed. Did you see the knife? I'm confused now because I think I saw the knife the first time I came down the steps, but I really looked so quickly and was hysterical that I don't know whether I did or not. I thought I saw a black handle.
And I thought I saw it. See, when I was telling one of the other detectives, I was... I remember he had... I thought I saw one hand on his stomach. And... And then I remember he had this one hand was like weird because it was like standing up and sort of twisted. And so I thought I saw the handle of the knife resting against him. But when I first told the police officers, or told the detectives here, I told them that he was holding his stomach.
So I don't, I don't really know. I can't, I mean, I know he wasn't holding his stomach with both hands because I vividly remember now the hand because it was so awkwardly positioned. Yeah, like... This is Victor in a whole load of confusion, right? Because he's spoken to a police officer like at the scene or before getting into this interview room. And he said one thing. Now he's saying something else. And this detective is very much.
aware even though he hasn't heard the 911 call yet but is already questioning something quite important to this story i think which is what we mentioned already coming back to the 911 call how did victor know that it was their knife that early on he says himself there i was so hysterical i wasn't even sure if i had seen a knife he says in this police interview i literally says i wasn't even sure when i knew robert had been stabbed but he told the operator
which was a call supposedly made immediately after they found Robert because Victor was so hysterical, Joe sends him upstairs to make that call immediately. He repeatedly says that night to the operator. Robert has been stabbed and the intruder has one of our knives. But now he says, I don't even know when I knew. It's so weird. It's so weird. It really speaks to there being a longer time, the past, between...
Whatever happened to Robert and that 911 call being placed? So this detective, like I said, hasn't heard the 911 call yet, so doesn't know about this discrepancy, but is already challenging Victor. on how he was able to ascertain that much information about what had happened to Robert before the 911 call was made. Especially given how hysterical Joe said Victor was.
And how quickly they claim to have made the call. And the fact that Victor says he wasn't even on the same floor as them. So it's not like he's looking at Robert learning more information as he's looking at him. And Victor has definitely, I think, caused a big problem here for the group with this confusion, telling the first police officers that he spoke to that he had seen the knife in Robert's stomach.
but now saying that maybe it was leaning against his stomach or his side, it's create confusion because it doesn't match up with what Joe said. If you're feeling generous, which I'm not. You could explain away Joe coming back in to change the story as him just wanting to be straight up with the police, but...
It's more likely, I think, that Victor fucked up by saying what he did or they hadn't agreed as a group on what they were going to say about where the knife had been laid. So their stories didn't match up and they realised that later on. I just don't really believe that Joe just forgot or was confused. He doesn't strike me as that kind of person. And it bears repeating, there is a big difference between finding a knife in your friend...
pulling it out of your friend and it lying on top of them. Those are enormously different scenarios that you would probably remember. Especially if you pulled a knife out of your friend. Yeah. Kind of a core memory. Exactly. You'd hope so, wouldn't you? Now, a lot of people get very angry with the police having allowed the men to have this weird little Mercedes chat. And look, the police, like I said, they make a lot of...
Fucking terrible, terrible mistakes in this case. And that's why no one has ever been prosecuted. Spoilers. But they weren't ready to arrest any of them that night. And so the authorities couldn't just hold Victor, Joe and Dylan indefinitely. They had to let them go at some point. And they can't stop them from talking to each other. I know it's not a perfect system, but people do collude and get their story straight. The job of the police is to still crack beyond that and find the truth.
So yeah, the police do fuck up a lot of stuff in a major way as we'll go on to see, but I don't really see how they could have stopped this sort of meeting from happening. We just heard one clip from Victor's interview, but we're going to have a listen to a bit more of it. But Joel was with you. Joe was with me. Was Joe in the bedroom the whole time with you before you heard the screams? Yeah, as far as I know, yes. Because you were dozed off. I was asleep. I woke up to the screams.
I just, I remember hearing the screams and jump startling up and I could feel Joe doing the same thing. Okay. And you and Joe are partners. Yes. Right. Is Dylan in this relationship anywhere? Yes, he is. Okay. All right. And you and Joe have known each other how long? For over six years. And you've been together that long? Yeah. What about Dylan? Dylan's been with us for about four years. Okay.
Does he share an equal partner relationship? No. No, not really. Okay. I mean, it's... I think we're trying to develop at that. in that way, but it's... Okay. You don't need to explain it any further. Yeah, seems like we were right about the tensions running quite high in the house. Definitely not an equal partnership. Yeah, Victor doesn't sound thrilled when he's explaining the dynamics of this, what he is.
Aiming for three-way relationship, but certainly doesn't appear to be anywhere near one. And when you watch the footage of this interview, it does come across loud and clear that Victor is not happy. Victor didn't even know that Robert was staying over that night. He was supposed to be on a work trip to Denver, but he came back early. And it's probably that sort of thing that made him feel out of the loop in his own house.
And Dylan also hints at this in his interview, saying that he had to open the door for Robert and let him in. And it was he and Joe who showed Robert up to the spare room. Victor was normally the host. That would be quite annoying.
Yeah, I think from everybody who knows them, say like Victor is the one who likes to host people. He's the one that plans things. He's the one that like, you know, keeps the guest room up and makes the canapes and does all of that. And so I think it was a bit of a shock to him. to come home early from a work trip. And they have dinner together. And it's only literally when Robert calls Joe at 10 and says, I'm on my way, that Joe's like, oh, yeah, by the way, Robert's staying over.
There's definitely a feeling that Victor was pissed off at being. A, not told about that. And B, he doesn't play a part in the welcoming of Robert, which he normally would do. He stays in his room. And, you know, this is kind of stuff that's come out afterwards. But I definitely think, you know, you could say it's just one pissy night. But I think it's important to how Dylan was making Victor feel or how Joe was making Victor feel.
So let's listen to a bit more. Any problems between y'all? What about between Dylan and Robert? To be honest with you, we're friends with Robert, but it's casual friends. I mean, I couldn't tell you... Five things about his life really. I mean, I just we we've had dinner with them We see them probably three or four times a year. I'm Kathy and Robert. Okay The most recent time we saw them was Kathy had hip surgery. It was hip surgery. And anyway, she had surgery. And so...
We all went out to visit her. We took her a gift basket with magazines and books, and Dylan even wanted to cook something. I mean, it's just, we're... It's... There's absolutely no... Now this is weird because I think Victor here is kind of trying to have it both ways. He describes his relationship with Robert as we just heard as casual. We were casual friends.
But then he goes on to describe, in my opinion, what's a very uncasual relationship. Like, you know, the whole like, we took her this basket, we took Kathy this basket of like goodies, like a care basket after she's had surgery. That's not a casual friend. That's like doing something very nice for the wife of your friend. And you're saying Robert is casual?
I don't think I have any casual friends. What's a casual friend? Good fucking question. An acquaintance? Yes. But that's not a friend. No, it's basically saying it's an acquaintance. But I'm like, well, he's not an acquaintance. He's known Joe for years and years and years since they were at university together.
And you have been with Joe for six years. They basically say, oh, we only see them maybe like six times a year. He says that in another interview. I'm like, six times a year? That's pretty good going. If you live in cities, once every two months, that's not a casual friend. No. That's a good friend. Like, it's all just very weird. And Dylan, let's listen to a clip from Dylan because he runs with this same line.
No, not that I know of. Did you? No, I hardly know the guy. I mean, we've seen him. He's gone to fundraising dinner with us. They've been at our house for breakfast. Kathy... broke her hips or have them replaced. We took, you know, videos to their house and stuff. I mean, that's all. We know them kind of casually. He's just, you know, a friend from college.
I hardly know the guy. Okay. And we don't have to just depend on anecdotal evidence for this or the fact that they have literally been in each other's lives for a very long time. But Joe... Through Robert, a surprise 30th birthday party at 1509 Swan Street, two years before the murder. And at that party, a picture was taken, which you can find on the internet, of Dylan and Victor, each holding up...
a separate birthday cake for Robert to blow out the candles. And they're all beaming. They're like beaming in this picture. Am I hosting a 30th birthday party for somebody at my house who's a casual friend? And also holding up the cake for them to blow out at that point in the party. And I'm just like, I barely knew the guy. Barely fucking knew the guy. But I've got a massive grin on my face. It doesn't make sense to me. What they're trying to do.
is have it both ways because what they do is they say he's a casual friend barely knew him hardly knew the guy so why would i kill him but simultaneously be like but look at all these nice things we did for kathy after she had her operation why would we kill robert we're such good friends with him
is the subtext. So it's like, you can't have it both ways. There are lots of weird and confusing contradictions in this police interview. And soon, detectives got another piece of information that made the intruder story look all the more like total bullshit. As we told you at the top, Robert arrived at the house at around 10.30 in the evening. He was in his room by 10.45, he showered, changed and wrote a couple of emails that he never sent. The last of which...
was saved at 1107, and then at 1149, the 911 call is placed. And something interesting to add to the timeline is that the next-door neighbours, an elderly couple, said that they heard a scream that night coming from 1509 Swan Street. They didn't know exactly what time they heard it, but they were watching Maureen Bunyan, a new show that they tuned into.
every single night, without fail. And that show is on between 11 and 11.30. And this is 2006, before we just watched everything on demand. So that does help narrow down the timeline even more. I really think this is a very, very important piece because if we stick with the assumption that Robert was likely still alive at 11.07 when that last email was written.
The scream had to have been heard before 11.30 because a couple say that they heard it during the Maureen Bunyan show. They just don't know at what time. Even if the scream... was as the show was about to end. So let's say 11.30 at most. The call wasn't placed for nearly another 20 minutes because the 911 call was placed at 11.49.
Victor and Joe both say that they ran downstairs as soon as they heard the grunting slash screaming slash whatever. And they both say that they immediately called 911. It doesn't add up. Because at most, if the scream heard next door happened at the start of the Maureen Bunyan show at 11, then that means there's a 40 minute window between the scream and the 911 call.
Or at least, at the very least, there's a 20-minute window between the Scream and the 911 call, which just doesn't make sense. Now, an interesting question, I think, to ask is who... do we think it was that actually screamed? Was it Robert? Or was it someone else? Perhaps somebody discovering Robert, genuinely, for the first time?
Or perhaps somebody discovering what was being done to him. Personally, and this is just my opinion, I don't think it was Robert who screamed. I think it was Victor who screamed. And that's what the neighbours heard. We'll get into why next week when we go into the autopsy. But I think Victor came down, screamed, they heard it next door. And then that again gives you at least a 20 minute timeline.
or time gap between when the discovery is made and the 911 call is placed. Even if you don't believe me and even if you think it was Robert who screamed, they ran down immediately, apparently, but don't call the police for another 20 minutes. Why? Given that the police did not believe an intruder had been inside the house, and since Victor and Joe could at least vouch for each other, investigators zeroed in on Dylan as the culprit.
Pretty quickly. And he was taken in by the FBI to be polygraphed. He was asked, did you kill Robert Wan? And do you know who killed Robert Wan? Dylan answered no to both questions, but deception was indicated both times. And you know, because we've said it 100 million times, polygraphs don't really fucking mean anything. They're also inadmissible in court.
There is no universal physiological response to deception. So you just cannot have a machine that detects deception. The most a polygraph can do is detect stress. And if someone had been found dead in my house, whether I killed them or knew who killed them or knew nothing at all, I'd be stressed either way, especially if I was being interviewed by the FBI. So I don't really fucking know why they bother. No, I think it's just like a pressure tactic.
Like, you know, they can just say, well, the polygraph says that you're lying. And then that could make the person crack. But of course, the police knew that. This polygraph result wasn't enough. Lie detectors, as Anna said, aren't even admissible in US courts. They needed some hard evidence to point the finger directly at someone. Likely someone who was in the house that night. And the post-mortem...
was going to be key. Now we will get into all that next week in the second and concluding part of our series on Robert Wan. And believe me, you do not want to miss that episode. This episode was very much just a scene setting. taking you into the house that night, showing you the calls, listening to the police interviews. Next week is where we get into the meat of this case. And it is a lot because, yeah, it's just going to get graphic straight away. The semen that they found.
inside Robert Wan's body and who it belonged to is genuinely one of the most shocking and confusing twists I have seen in a case in quite some time. So be sure to come back next week. for part two of Who Killed Robert One, where we will also discuss our theories. Goodbye. Bye. In 1993, three eight-year-old boys were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas. As the small-town local police struggled to solve the crime, rumors soon spread that the killings were the work of a satanic cult.
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It carried 102 men, women and children, risking it all to start again in the New World. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of American History Tellers. Every week, we take you through the moments that shaped America. And in our latest season, we explore the untold story of the pilgrims, one that goes far beyond the familiar tale of the first Thanksgiving.
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