Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the unexplained death of Jack Wheeler. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up and what we talked about in our previous episode?
Well, this case was featured on the second season of Unsolved Mysteries that came out about four years ago. Jack Wheeler was sixty six years old, had a very distinguished career in Washington, d c. He had worked through three presidential administrations and he had all helped establish the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. But he also had struggles with depression and
polar disorder, which he tried to control with medication. But shortly before New Year's Even twenty ten, he had been spending holidays with his family, but then decided to make an impromptu trip to Washington to continue working. But then, without telling anyone, he decided to go to Wilmington, Delaware,
where he owned a second home. He had been having an obsessive argument over the construction of a house located across the street, and a neighbor wound up calling the fire department because they saw smoke there, but instead it turned out that someone had thrown smoke bombs trying to destroy the ye location, and they found Jack Wheeler's cell phone and they would eventually look inside his house and it appeared to have been broken into, but it appeared
that Jack himself had caused the meths and possibly staged the burglary, and over the course of the next two days, he would be seen wandering around Wilmington, Delaware. He would
be captured on security camera. He would interact with a lot of witnesses and they would say that he seemed very disoriented, that he was asking people for rides and going to locations he had no connection to, and his appearance would get gradually worse, and he was last seen heading towards the town of Newark, Delaware before he disappeared, and the morning of December the thirty first, twenty ten,
they found his body in a landfill. His death was initially ruled to be a homicide due to blunt force trauma because he had a lot of injuries that were consistent with a beating, but they would gradually find out that he had somehow wound up inside a dumpster, so it was kind of ambiguous where his injuries caused. With an encounter with another person who severely beat him and put him in the dumpster, or the injuries caused by the trash compactor, and the medical examiner mistook these injuries
for some sort of homicide. But of course, because Jack worked with the government, there have been a lot of conspiracy theories that someone was falling around and had him killed because of work he was doing. But it's also possible that there was no homicide at all, that his death was just a tragic accident, that he had gone off his medication, was having a manic episode because of his bipolar disorder, and then crawled into the dumpster before
he died. But officially this is still considered to be a homicide that the exact circumstances of Jack's death are still unknown. So at our last episode, we discussed the skepticism that arose from the presentation of Jack Wheeler's case on the Unsolved Mysteries episode and whether or not they were fudging the facts in order to fit a narrative
and add more mystery to the story. I think another thing which may have helped influence people's interpretation of this case is the release of the controversial true crime documentary series Crime Scene The Vanishing at The Cecil Hotel, which came out on Netflix in February of twenty twenty one. It chronicled the twenty thirteen death of twenty one year old Elisa Lamb, whose body was found inside a water tank on top of the roof of the Cecil Hotel
in Los Angeles. The case attained a lot of notoriety in the true crime world because of the release of some security camera footage which showed a Lisa behaving erratically inside a hotel elevator shortly before her death, and once this video went viral, there were an endless amount of
theories about what happened to her. Well. Much like Jack Wheeler, Alisa's struggled with bipolar disorder, and you can make a number of parallels between these two cases since they both involved victims displaying erratic behavior on camera before they wound
up dead under odd circumstances. Now, even though I had received numerous requests to cover it on the Trail when Cold, I pretty much decided that I would never do an episode about the Elisa land case, as I always believed that Elisa blinded into the water tank on her own accord and her death was nothing more than a tragic accident brought on by a mental health crisis. Unlike many other cases of this ILK, Alisa's family shied away from the spotlight and did not seem to think that any
foul play occurred. So, in spite of all the endless speculation about her death online, I really did not think that a crime took place. I know that a number of people were not happy when it was announced that Netflix would be releasing a documentary series about this case,
and felt they were needlessly exploiting the situation. But after the first three episodes focused on all the wild conspiracy theories surrounding Elisa's death and innocent people who were falsely accused of murdering her, the final episode ultimately did reach the conclusion that Alisa likely climbed into the water tank on her own, was suffering through a manic episode, and drowned. So you might be asking, if I was reluctant to do an episode about Alisa Lamb, then why are we
doing one about Jack Wheeler. Well, the key difference between the two cases is that Jack's death was officially ruled to be a homicide. One of the major criticisms of the Unsolved Mysteries episode is even though they presented the scenario of Jack's body being loaded from a dumpster into a garbage truck and transported to the landfill, they never acknowledged the possibility that the injuries he had could have
been caused by the truck's trash compactor. It felt like they were intentionally omitting this key detail in order to make their narrative more mysterious. But that doesn't change the fact that the medical examiner and some of the investigators have expressed their belief that his injuries were consistent with
a beating. Oddly, it does not seem like Lawnman has ever really acknowledged the trash compactor theory either, so you have to wonder if they have good reason to believe foul play took place.
Was the death ever reclassified as unknown or an accident or anything like that, or is it still listed on the books as a homicide.
It is still officially listed as a homicide, so they never actually have changed it.
Wow, Because I know we talked about on the first episode. One of the problems is the medical examiner did not know about the trash compactor and things like that, so when he saw the condition of the body, it was very clear that something had happened to Jack. The injuries indicated something like an assault and blunt force trauma being the result of his death and so or the cause
of his death. And so once you add in the fact of how his body was disposed of, or the injuries that could have come from the transportation from the bin to the landfill, it does create those question marks of where did the injuries come from? Was it before he entered that trash bin, or was it in the process of them taking that trashmentto the landfill? And when you look at that, it is very difficult, especially from a family's perspective. It's ruled a homicide. You said it
was blunt force trauma. You've also mentioned a heart attack was the main cause of his death. Did that come as a result of the blunt force trauma and his heart couldn't keep up with the internal injuries. There's just
not any answers there. It is interesting that they've never reclassified anything, and they've kept it an open homicide case, because if there was a possibility this was an accident or this was unknown, I feel like police would try to reclassify it so that they wouldn't have a cold case lingering on their books, especially if there was indication
that this was a mental health crisis. It's frustrating. I'm frustrated with the story, and I'm not even one of the family members involved in the scenario.
But perhaps it's because they want to leave it as a homicide because they aren't sure, and to have it classified as undetermined would mean that there would be less resources allocated to investigating, isn't that correct?
That's very true, I think so like it remains active. They pretty much say we won't actively put any time and resources towards investigating this, but if someone gives us new tips or new leads, we can look into them, but otherwise we're just kind of leading it off to the side. If it's classified as undetermined, that's true, And.
If they change the classification, then you don't have any of those resources allocated if someone came forward with information.
Well shortly after the Unsolved Mysteries episode came out, an extensive post was made about this case on the Unresolved Mystery subreddit by a poster with the greatest username ever, slut for Bacon. The poster expressed their personal belief that Jack's death was not a homicide and actually expressed a
really interesting theory about why this ruling was made. Jack's autopsy was performed relatively quickly, but at the time the medical examiner had no idea that Jack's body had been loaded from a dempster in to a garbage truck, as it took a couple of days for law enforcement to piece together that scenario. Therefore, it was perfectly reasonable for the medical examiner to initially assume the Jack's injuries were a result of a beating and that an unknown third
party was responsible for killing him. Given that Jack had been a prominent and influential person in Washington, his death received a lot of instant media coverage, with much of the reporting referring to it as a murder. This story may be a case study on how the social status of a victim determines how much attention their death receives
from law enforcement. If an unhoused person or a regular citizen had been found under these circumstances, their deaths may have been written off as an accident and we would
never even have heard about them. However, because of who he was, Jack Wheeler was given the benefit of a full fledged homicide investigation, and even though it doesn't sound like it's turned up any evidence which pointed towards a specific suspect, there may be a reluctance to a knowledge that the original homicide ruling might have been wrong, which
is why Jack's death has never been reclassified as an accident. Indeed, Jack's family have been openly critical about the lack of communication that they've received from law enforcement, so you get the impression that they are not too certain where the investigation stands.
I think when you talk about this valuable victim and the social status of a victim determining the attention received,
we've talked about that extensively before. But what's interesting here, though, is when you couple that with mental health, you have people who, because they've mastered it for so long and so well, and because they have accomplished so much and done so many great things, acknowledging the mental health angle is difficult for a lot of people, right, Like, well, he was really successful, so he couldn't have struggled that bad Like, look at all the great things he did,
He couldn't have struggled that badly to result in his death. I remember, I mean, this is not even on the same level, but I'm trying to help for ADHD or OCD. And the doctor really dismissed me, and he said, look at all the things you've accomplished, Ashley, like that doesn't happen for someone who is ADHD or whatever. And I went, can you please look at my results? Like they're off the charts. I'm definitely ADHD and I have some OCD tendencies.
I had to change doctors to get someone to sit down with me for test results looking through things, and I went, my last doctor wouldn't even validate anything because of the success I had had in my personal and professional life. And I went, that's insane. That's not how mental health works.
Right.
Just because you do a good job either getting help for it, masking it, or coping with it, doesn't mean you don't struggle just as mightily as somebody else. So I think when you present there's this man who's discovered, who's this significant influence in Washington, d C. And it's murder or mental health question mark, people go, no way, not someone like Jack. Jack had it all together, and yet they don't see what Catherine sees, which is behind
the scenes, he's fighting demons on a daily basis. So I think that plays into the scenario as well. When you start putting forward the mental health argument, it's well, what kind of victim is it? Like, let's talk about them. Because someone's super successful, it's much harder for society to see and understand their mental health diagnosis.
Let me first say, I'm sorry that was your experience.
It was so bad.
That is wild that the idea that a mental health diagnosis would be predicated upon somebody's relative lack of success, like, oh, we're not going to diagnose you with that. It's like, are you actually aware of any mental health issues and how they occur in all populations? People of all different professions have mental health issues. Just because somebody is a
success doesn't mean that they haven't been struggling. So the fact that he or is it a he yes, that he didn't listen to you and didn't go okay, Well, her feelings are valid and these are her experiences. I'm not going to take her successes in life as this. Oh well, she can't actually be having these experiences because she's achieved A, B and C. But it seems like that's what's happening with Jack as well. A little bit here.
I really feel like that. I really feel like some it's hard for people to step back and say, how could someone that successful struggle so mightily because we didn't see it, And you think about the fight Jack had to do. Catherine described it, the fight he had to put in daily, so no one did see it except those he was closest with and he could trust because
he didn't want people to hurt like he hurt. He didn't want people to struggle, and so his whole life had been devoted to preventing that struggle in other people and masking it in himself. And so here, when you think about that, him possibly cracking and having that mental health decline so rapidly makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I don't know how open Jack was about his
struggles with depression and bipolar disorder. Like I know that his family was well aware of it, but I don't know if he discussed much with a lot of people in his inner circle in Washington because he was such a prominent and successful figure, and to his family's credit, they have always been very open about it because they think there's no sense like concealing this to try to preserve his reputation because it might shed some light on why he died, and of course it helps a lot
of other people if we're openly admitting that this very successful man also had daily struggles with mental health issues. This is actually not the first tragedy that Jack's wife, Catherine Kleist has ever had to experience, because in February of nineteen ninety five, her sister, Emily Kleis Fischer, was murdered after she was stabbed over fifty times inside her
home in Memphis, Tennessee. The case remained unsawd for eight years until two suspects were finally arrested for Emily's murder, and it turned out she was killed because her son owed his dealer a twenty dollars drug debt. This about a senseless of violent crime, as you can get and believe it or not. In May of twenty eleven, there would be additional drama in Catherine's life when her brother, Henry Klais decided to file a lawsuit in federal court
against Catherine and their sister Ellen. Henry accused them of cyber terror by alleging that they hacked into the email accounts of himself and his wife and did whatever they could to disrupt their lives, even though Jack had been dead for five months at this point. He was also named as a defendant in his lawsuit because Henry claimed that Jack used the knowledge of cyber warfare he had gained from working for the government and the Metra Corporation
to assist Katherine and Ellen with their harassment. The lawsuit would be settled about six months later, but even though Jack was doing work with cybersecurity at the time he died, I think that whole angle, as well as Jack's previous years of service with the government, is nothing but smoke and merrores.
I'm so confused by Henry when you look at this lawsuit filed against the family was settled. Did they agree to terms that benefited Henry.
I have no idea, because usually when they settle lawsuits, they're required to keep details private from the public. But when you see his actions, you do hope that he did get anything, but considering that he's doing this to his sister who has suffered a major tragedy only a couple months earlier. But unfortunately I just don't know the details.
Oh, it's super bizarre. Yeah, there seems to be no consideration for anybody who knows what's happening to Henry and his wife, but seems very fishy that then you need to go after your sisters like how just very very bizarre implication and the tragedy of Emily's murder right and realizing that this is over a twenty dollars drug debt. Catherine really has experienced significant trauma in her life, both before and after Jack's death has as well, So not only is she a widow, but she has also lost
her sister. She's also lost her brother in many ways because he's physically here, but he's attacking them while supposedly they're attacking he and his wife. So it's just tragic. It's like Catherine didn't ever get a break from either supporting her husband, trying to help her family, being chased after by her brother. I mean, I just feel so bad for her. In the midst of this, she still has all those question marks of saying, what actually happened
to Jack? What actually happened to the man that I love and supported and built a life with. There's so many scenarios and she's left really just trying to juggle all of the mess that keeps falling in her lap. It's quite tragic.
If Jack was the victim of foul play, it most likely came at the hands of a random stranger, as I think the shadowy government conspiracy theories surrounding his death are pretty ridiculous. I know Jack's family has pushed forward the possibility that he was the victim of a professional hit. Well, the problem is that we have a digital trail tracking a lot of Jack's movements during the last three days of his life. He spent this time period traveling around
to a number of different locations for inexplicable reasons. Even though there's ample surveillance footage of Jack from various security cameras, had no point does it appear that he's being followed by anyone. It's likely that Jack's death took place in Newark, a town that he didn't have any known ties to or any reason to visit, so how could the killer have known that he would be there in the middle
of the night. Furthermore, Jack did not have any gunshot or stab wounds on him, so the only way it could have been murdered is if someone beat him to death, which does not seem to be the preferred method. Of execution for a professional assassin. However, if Jack's injuries were consistent with foul play, could it be possible that he had a random encounter with someone who administered a fatal beating.
Absolutely, and as what we were talking about earlier, I think he could have run into stranger and the encounter went one of two ways. He scared the stranger, it made him fearful of his own for his own safety, and therefore he attacks Jack and hits him in a way that kills him, and he pulls his body over to the dumpster, or he sees Jack. Jack is completely out of his own sense of reality, right, and is very vulnerable, and this person says, this is somebody I
can attack, right, a crime of opportunity. But either way we still there's no way to prove are those injuries from a beating or are they from that transportation to the landfill. Both could be possible. Some injuries could be from an assault, either because Jack seemed threatening and or was vulnerable, and then he was placed in the dumpster and then secured more injuries, right, succumbed to more injuries, or it's possible Jack just climbed in there and got
hurt in the bin itself. So, oh, this one's just really frustrating. But yeah, I think it could not have been an assassin. An assassin's not going to do hand to hand combat with Jack. It's going to be someone who shoots him or attacks him in a way that removes them from the physical presence of the victim, right so they can get away with it. But a stranger, Absolutely, I think it's a very strong possibility.
Well, let's go back and start at the very beginning. We know that Jack left New York on December the twenty eighth to travel to Washington for work reasons, a decision which did not please his wife, since Catherine thought Jack would be off from Christmas until New Year's and she said they were planning to spend a few days
seeing movies together. However, from what Catherine has said about Jack, I get the impression that he was a bit of a workaholic who had a constant need to feel like he was contributing something to the world, and was not the type of person who could just chill out and relax and spend a couple of days watching movies. Out of all the victims we featured on this podcast, I'd say that Jack Wheeler led one of the most interesting
lives and had a number of impressive achievements. He was probably best known for his role at helping create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and in fact, he was actually portrayed by actor Marshall Colt and the nineteen eighty eight made for TV movie about this story, To Heal a Nation, which starred Eric Roberts as the founder of the memorial, Jan Scruggs. In fact, when Ronald Reagan visited the memorial later that same year on Veterans Day, it was Jack
who introduced him. It sounds like things appeared relatively normal with Jack when he left New York, but at some point during the day he decided to leave Washington and travel to his home in Newcastle, and that's where his odd behavior began. Like we mentioned earlier, it's never been established when was the last time Jack took his medication for bipolar disorder, but if he had suddenly stopped taking it, this would go a long way towards explaining his actions.
Even though his neighbor didn't get a good enough look to positively identify him, I think it seems pretty obvious that Jack was the shadowy figure who tossed the smoke bombs at the house, which was under construction across the
street from his residence. Particularly since his cell phone was left behind at the scene, it sounds like preventing the construction of the house on that property was one subject that Jack was particularly obsessive about, so if he was off his medication and was going through a manic episode, this may have led to an impulsive decision to abandon whatever he was doing in Washington and go to Newcastle
for the express purpose of destroying this home. After all, it had only been about two weeks since Jack's request for a temporary restraining order against the construction was denied by the court, so he may have figured that burning the whole structure down was his only option, even though these smoke bombs didn't do much damage.
Remember that his neighbor, I think it was Robert Dill, said that there were so many times he had to talk Jack down from just going off about this construction that he didn't want to happen across the street, and that you could really tell that even Dill himself was like, I don't want to deal with this. This is ridiculous.
It's kind of out of hand. And so when you think about the obst sessive nature, if someone was off their medication and they're ruminating about something and they're creating this situation that's much bigger in their head than it is in reality. It's already been an obsession of his when he was healthy, but now add that he could be struggling from a mental health episode, he might not be on his medication, and he decides, I'm going to make sure that I stop the construction of this home.
And he gets smoke bombs, which even that indicates does he really understand like the amount of damage that would do. He didn't try to burn it down, gasoline and matches, he didn't do any of that. It's the smoke bombs. But clearly if it was Jack, his phone's there. If it was Jack, then he's trying to end this construction. It's that important to him. He's going to really go to great lengths in his head to end the construction. You can tell if that was Jack, something's not okay,
that he just has completely lost touch with reality. And it's very probable that it was the shadowy figure. It was Jack who's lingering outside that home.
And you make him wonder like when did this happen? Because he was going from New York to Washington to work for a few days, but then just gets this sun compulsion that I'm gonna drive back to Delaware and I'm going to like obsessively burn this place down, even though I have not been thinking about it for the last few weeks. So it makes you wonder, do you just get off his meds at that point, like what made this come into his mind that he felt compelled to do this now?
And then you see he doesn't ever get back to a healthy spot like he's doing that. He reports that he's been robbed and all of his things are missing, but his phone ends up at that house later down the road. All of this stuff starts to just kind of cascade to where he's seen looking homeless, dishoveled, limping around like he's been crying, like he doesn't know where he's at. People are aware enough to stop him multiple times and say can we.
Help, Do you need any help? Sir?
Are you okay? And every time he says he's fine and deny a need for help. But when you put it all together, you're seeing this de escalator, like he's just cascading into this kind of tragic existence of himself, and the only explanation really is that mental health condition.
It makes you think of like chaos theory or the butterfly effect. If he would have taken that help from somebody, how could this situation have played out differently. It's just so sad that in that state, he either didn't feel safe accepting help from somebody he didn't know, or didn't feel as though he needed it, but he did seem lucid enough to feel like he was. I think he said he was dazed in boxed in to family, so he knew that he was struggling, and things seemed to
be not clear. It seemed to be that everything was very opaque. So I just I really really feel for him in this moment. It must have just been so terrifying going through the world and not understanding what is really and truly going on. It also seems that Jack was responsible for vandalizing his own residence and will have
never heard any indication that it was positively identified. I'm sure the bare footprint found in the kitchen clensor likely belonged to Jack, and I think it's interesting that Jack's ceremonial West Point Cadet sword and shield were lying on the floor, and the book about his West Point class from nineteen sixty six was lying open on the counter, As you get the impression that he was taking a
few moments to reminisce about his past. Now, in some sources about the case, you'll read that one of Jack's neighbors reported hearing what sounded like a loud noise of the television inside the Wheeler residence in the days prior
to Jack's death, even though no one appeared to be home. However, according to his neighbor Robert Dill, Jack liked to leave the radio on whenever he was absent from the residence in order to give off the false impression that someone was home and possibly discouraged potential burglaries from taking place. While Dill checked the residence on December thirtieth, he said
the radio was no longer play. So I'm guessing that the noise this other neighbor reported hearing was a radio and not a television, and Jack switched it off at some point when he went inside on the twenty eight.
This is this is so sad. I do think when you look at the at the scene that's left, especially that ceremonial West Point sword and the book from nineteen sixty six, it's open on the counter. It's almost like
he's just sitting there kind of reliving these moments. And remember earlier on you guys said west Point and the service to his country along with his fellow West Point classmates was one of those things that weighed really heavily on him, and that most likely was one of those life changing chapters that really impacted his long term mental health. Right he's serving at this prestigious school where there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of expectation to perform.
He's going off to serve in Vietnam, and while he's in a non combative position, his friends from West Point are not and many of them pass away in Vietnam. And so the fact that he's looking back, it makes you wonder like, was it one of his close friends that had died in Vietnam and the trauma of that
and he's not medicated. Could some of those PTSD moments, some of the memories and triggers, could that have caused a really rapid decline where he doesn't have access to the medication that could have subsided some of those symptoms, And because he's reminiscing about that West Point chapter, it starts to go down this rabbit hole of loss and anger and frustration in fear that he now starts this kind of process outside of the home after he's gone through his West Point regalia.
I just wanted to point out outside of just mania, there can be associated with bipolar disorder an earlier onset of cognitive decline. He can really tax the brain much like epilepsy does, and a lot of the mechanisms aren't understood. But I'm not saying that's what was happening here, but that could have been something that was contributing to the situation.
And we talked in the last episode that one of his earliest sources of trauma was the fact that he lost ten percent of his graduating class from West Point in Vietnam, which really bothered him. And back in the sixties, he just was not equipped to deal with the trauma. So who knows, maybe just reminiscenting about that time and maybe seeing photographs of his fallen classmates just caused something to trigger within him and made his condition even worse.
Was not entirely clear with the timeline is whether Jack tore apart his residence before or after the incident with the smoke bombs. Details are also kind of murky about when exactly police found Jack's cell phone at the scene and traced it back to him. What we do know is that Jack sent an email to his employer the following morning to inform them that his house been burglarized and that a number of important items, including his briefcase and cell phone, were stolen, Yet he never attempted to
report this to the police. Given that Jack was very reliant on his cell phone, I'm sure he probably would have become panicky if he dropped it somewhere, particularly if he realized that he left it outside the house across the street and there was no way for him to retrieve it. If Jack believed that the police were going to find the phone and trace it back to him,
he may have decided to ransack the house. He may have decided to ransack his house in stage of burglary so that he could present a cover story that his cell phone was stolen by an unknown party who subsequently dropped it when they tossed the smoke bombs of course, I don't think anyone would have bought that story, but I'm sure Jack was not thinking rashally at that point. One detail about this mystery, which has never been solved, is what actually did happen to Jack's briefcase, as it
was never found. It's possible that Jack simply left it on the train during one of his trips, and the loss of the briefcase was one of the triggering events which caused his mania to worsen. In fact, I've always wanted if perhaps Jack kept his medication inside the briefcase,
which is why he stopped taking it. It's also never been made clear where exactly Jack sent those emails from on the morning of December the twenty ninth, since he no longer had his self at that point, but it's possible he used a computer at an internet cafe or
a library. We do know that Jack was seen at a Newcastle pharmacy at six pm, and since he often had its prescriptions filled at that location, Jack naeven stinctively decided to go there if he lost his medication, though all he did was ask for a ride to Wilmington. It does seem apparent that something was wrong with Jack. At this point, because the security footage chows him wearing a suit jacket and he does not have an overcoat,
even though the weather was quite cold. When Jack shows up at the Newcastle County Courthouse parking garage forty minutes later, he looks to be in even worse shape, since he's now limping and carrying one of his shoes in his hand. Personally, when I look at the pharmacy footage, it appears to me that Jack is already limping when he walks inside. But there has been speculation that something happened to Jack during that forty minute window between when he left and arrived at the parking garage.
That was my thought originally was wherever his in this transition of when he was going from He was going from DC down to Delaware, right, Ah, yes, yeah, So when he's making that transition, I thought, Okay, maybe that's where he loses his medication. But Jules correct me if
I'm wrong. I feel like if you lost your mental health medication once you've relied on for decades at this point, and you have the wherewithal to sit down and communicate with your family, wouldn't there have been a timeframe where he went crap, I've lost my medicine. I need to go get it, and he's on his way to a place where he has a prescription and he has a pharmacy where he could go in and report his medicine
medicine missing. I almost think his mental health crisis would have had to start in DC where he gets that obsession that he needs to go ruin this home and stop that construction, because had he been aware that I'm on this trip, I lost my medication, I think before a decline, he would have known to replace that medication.
But it makes more sense that the kind of mania started back in DC to get back down to Delaware to stop this home construction, and once he does that, he's already down a spiral where he isn't aware of what the reality is at that point.
We're operating under the presupposition that he didn't stop taking his medication prior to when he lost it, which is also a possibility because I think you're right there are certain things that indicate that he may have been dealing with potential mania earlier than that, such as the Vietnam Forum, what is it or of the West Point for him that he was part of being kicked out of that or temporarily banned, and the obsession with the neighbor. So
I think you're right. Ash. If somebody was very much on top of taking their medication at that time and they lost it, yeah, I think the next logical step would be, Okay, I've got to ensure that I can get this and most mental health medication. You can go into your pharmacy and say I lost my prescription. It's not a narcotic. It's not like anyone's going to go in there with drug seeking behavior looking for something like lithium. But he didn't do that, So I think you're right.
It does indicate that something was going on earlier and.
As Matt as Catherine got at him, and it makes it seem like it was pretty abnormal that he was going to on a holiday ditch the family. She's angry because she said, this is the holiday, like we're doing Christmas. Then we've got this wedding on New Year's Eve, Like why are you going to DC? Why are you going
to work? We have family plans. It almost seems like it's possible he was struggling then as well, not just the computer form you mentioned, but Catherine's really frustrated with him, like, get it together, man, this is not what the plans were. She's really frustrated. They getting a pretty heated fuss, because he even expresses to his daughter that fuss is really
weighing on him. So it's possible that this mania was happening even before his trip, Robin, do you know did the company confirm that, yes, indeed, he did show up and he was working for them, or they had requested him to come work for them in that Christmas holiday time.
No, they never actually did request. It was pretty much his own decision that he wanted to go to Washington and catch up on some work, even though it was supposed to be a holiday. But it's never really been confirmed if he actually showed up. We know that he took the train from New York to Washington and he was there for a few hours, but then he hopped on the train to Delaware, but we don't know what he was doing in Washington. We have no idea if he actually showed up at his office or not.
One detail that the unsolved Mystery segment is frustratingly vague about is who exactly gave Jack a ride from the pharmacy and where did they take him? Did they drop
him off at the parking garage or take him elsewhere. Well, shortly after the release of their episode, Unsolved Mysteries, co creator Terry dun Muir addressed this question during an interview with the website The Wrap dot com, where she confirmed that a man and a woman gave Jack a ride and they were not believed to be involved in his disappearance. But the show was unable to track this couple down to interview them or obtain any specific details about Jack's trip.
But we know that Jack left his car in a train station parking lot garage one week earlier, so he may have asked to be dropped off at the courthouse parking garage because he was under the mistaken impression that his vehicle was there. It's never been conclusively established where Jack went after he left the garage, but the Unsolved Mystery segment did say that the evidence was found to suggest that Jack spent the night in the basement of the Nemorous building, which is where he was seen the
following day. The building is a large complex and there are a number of four doors down in the basement area, so I can definitely believe that Jack might have been able to hide out there undetected. We know that Jack visited the law firm at the building named Connelly Beau Lodge and Huts and asked to speak with the managing partner before he left, even though Jack did not seem to have any apparent connection to that firm. Here's a
detail that I've only seen mentioned in one source. The Wheeler family, as Robin I think mentioned in Part one, did have an attorney named holmb Connolly, who became a spokesperson for them following his death. However, even though colmb Connolly did work at the nemorous building, he was not employed by that particular firm, which was named after an
entirely different Connolly. I have to wonder if perhaps Jack wanted to speak to an attorney because he feared there might be legal problems for the incident with the smoke bombs, but he was so disoriented that he went to the wrong law firm. The surveillance footage of Jack wandering around the basement really paints the picture of someone who seems lost and unsure of what to do. Another point of confusion is that when Jack was filmed leaving the building
later that night. He was wearing a hoodie which didn't belong to him, but there was actually an employee locker room in the basement area, so it's my guess that Jack might have stolen the hoodie from there. The last confirmed sighting of Jack took place at eight forty two PM, and his body was found just over twelve hours later, so what happened during this window of time is a big mystery.
It's also interesting that we have no idea where Jack was sleeping or where he was resting while he was there. He had a home in this area, but it sounds like from the looks of how disheveled he was, how he had dirt all over his clothes, how he was losing clothing items, like he was wearing a suit at first, then he was not wearing the suit jacket, then he had the sweatshirt on. People were reporting he looked homeless
and dirty. You can tell that clearly either he had not tended to himself when he got home, but more likely that he might not have ever gone back home at some point and was kind of drifting around in this manick state and wasn't resting, was sleeping on the street was really just lost and kind of stumbling through. It sounds like he could have had that impulsivity to go down to the locker room and steal a sweatshirt. It was cold outside as well, and remember at one
point he doesn't even have his shoes on. So it's really confusing given that he had the home there. If this wasn't a complete mental break, he would have returned back to his house, and so it's pretty clear that that's going on. The question then becomes what could have happened? Who could he have run into or did he climb into a garbage bind by himself? So that's kind of
that gap. We know he was struggling at this point, We know that he was not doing any of the things that were at his access, getting help, going back to his own home, going to get his medicine from the pharmacy. So then that twelve hours, like you said, what happened there? That's the big question because we know he's on this downward spiral. Did someone take advantage of that, did someone get scared by that? Or was this an accident where simply his mental health overcame him.
Yeah, I'm guessing the main reason he didn't return home is because he knew he'd tossed those smoke bombs into the house across the street and left his cell phone there, so he probably figured, if I try to return home, I'm probably going to get arrested. So he was probably just wander around the city trying to think about what his options were and what to do next. But unfortunately
it just eventually led to his death. And on a lighter note, I do find it funny that one of the partners at that law firm has the last name Huts, So I wonder how many jokes they got about line of lots from The Simpsons. Given that traces of Jack's DNA were found inside a dumpster in Newark, the theory about a garbage truck collecting his body and transporting it to the Cherry Island landfill is logical. But the big question is how Jack made it to Newark to begin with,
since it's about fourteen miles away from Wilmington. Well, we have the account from the eyewitness who believed they shared a taxi CAAP ride to Newark with Jack at around eleven thirty pm. And while the unsaw Mystery segment planted the seed that the witness could have been mistaken. I think this would be the best explanation for how Jack got there. Of course, we still have no idea why Jack would want to make a trip to Newark, but given a state of mind at the time, we really
can't apply standard logic to his actions. Remember, we have reports of him asking people for a ride to Philadelphia while he was at the Nemores Building earlier that day, even though there's no real reason for him to travel there either. So after Jack arrived in Newark, there are
two possible explanations for how he died. He climbed into the dumpster himself, possibly to get warm, and was killed by the injuries he sustained by being picked up by the garbage truck, or he crossed pass with an unknown party who killed him and tossed his body into the dumpster. Even though Jack's official cause of death was blood forced trauma, I guess a third explanation is that he could have suffered a fatal heart attack before he even wound up
in the truck. As it sounds like his family has been given conflicting information about whether or not a heart attack took place, his death may have been a combination of heart attack and injuries. But could the medical examiner have mistaken injuries caused by a garbage truck for injuries caused by a beating.
Well, I would assume that. Well, of course, I would also assume that a heart attack could come on from sudden a physical trauma to your body, When your organs are injured, when you're having internal bleeding, When all those things are happening, I believe your heart has just an equal chance of giving out as well. So I think that you could associate the physical trauma with also being
combined with his heart being affected. I also know that mental health plays a role in heart attacks and things like that, So you know, you see grief and emotional trauma and things like that weighing on people's organ functions and increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
And things of that nature.
So if he's in this heightened state, an injury could have definitely caused a coinciding heart attack. But is it also possible that maybe just the trauma and the pressure inside his body could have also caused his body to shut down. I just there's no way to know what
came first, rights what's happening to his little body. What's sad is the family is getting mixed messages, not because of any kind of nefarious act or any kind of desire to mislead them, but they are getting conflicting information, which further complicates their ability to move forward and understand what actually happened to Jack. They're still asking questions.
If Jack wasn't sleeping, his chance of having a cardiac event goes up exponentially, which with each day that he's missing. So that, combined with the possible trauma from a trash compactor, I think would be a recipe for a heart attack, if that is indeed what happened.
I mean, it's true we were under the assumption he slept the night before, but we can't be one hundred percent sure that he even did sleep, Like he could have spent the entire night wandering around, and which means he would have been up for maybe around forty eight hours at that point, which could have increased his chances of a heart attack.
And even if he was just sleeping a few hours a night, that would still increase his chance of a heart attack. Well, here's a section from a May twenty seventeen article of The Washington Post written by journalist Steve Volk. He was interviewed during Unsolved Mystery segment. It reads quote Connolly hired a private investigator who brought CLIs a theory which remains popular on the internet that Wheeler wasn't actually killed.
In this scenario, Wheeler sought refuge from the cold in a dumpster and died after the drop into a trash truck. Newark police reject this idea, however, saying the autopsy's evidence, which they won't specify for fear of harming the investigation,
is entirely consistent with a homicide. Furthermore, a photograph of Wheeler taken after his death, which a friend of the family shared with their permission, shows Wheeler's face and head covered in bruises that appear to be more likely the product of a sustained pummeling than a drop into a trash truck. Now, admittedly we haven't seen the original autopsy report since it's never been released publicly, but I noticed they kept using the phrase drop into a trash truck
and never actually made mention of the trash compactor. I'd really be curious to know if you could distinguish injuries from a drop.
That's exactly right, like when they made the decision A originally, I understand it right. You get a body that's laying on top of a trash pile and you say, Okay, clearly this person has been bludgeoned to death. There are too many injuries on their body. It is blunt force trauma. But when you back up and you say, wait a minute, you're telling me that they were in a trash container, they were dumped into a trash truck that uses a compactor,
and then they were dumped into this landfill. There's a lot of injury that would be sustained just from that transportation experience. Now, there are ways to look at bruising and when a body is deceased and how the bruising is affected by time of death and all of those kinds of conditions. So there's definitely forensic ways to establish
times of injuries and all of that. But again, given the complicated nature of this case, it would be really difficult to look at injuries to bone injury, to the skin injury and discoloration and definitely no, this is from this event, while this injury is from this event. It would just be very very difficult to kind of separate those out. I would think.
This whole situation is pretty reminiscent of a high profile missing person's case from the United Kingdom involving a Royal Air Force Regiment gunner named Corey mcgeeg, who vanished after leaving a nightclub in Suffolk during the early morning hours
in September of twenty sixteen. The most common theory in that case is that since mcgegu was heavily intoxicated at the time, and there were a number of industrial bins on the route he was last seen taking, he wound up climbing into one before was picked up by a garbage truck and mckeigue was crushed to death. His body was then taken to a landfill site and dumped there. And while the authorities have performed numerous searches of this landfill and found nothing, there is so much waste there
that its fear of mcgeig's remains might be irretrievable. So all things considered, Jack Wheeler's family got very lucky that there was a spot er at the Cherry Island landfill who noticed his body right after it was dumped there. Otherwise it's possible that Jack might still be a missing person of this day, and no one would have any idea what happened to him. The biggest hold in the theory that Jack was the victim of foul play is that he was still wearing valuable jewelry and had cash
on him when his body was found. So if robbery was not the motive for his death, what was If he simply got into an altercation with a random stranger who caused his death, why would they go to the trouble of placing his body in a dumpster? I'd even see in a vehicular hit and run push forward as a potential explanation for Jack's injuries. But again, why would a motorist risk concealing his body rather than simply fleeing the scene?
Yeah, exactly, if you hit him as a motorist, you would just keep ongoing because by the time you physically make contact with his body, hair, fingerprint, skin, all of that has the potential to be transferred. And I don't think that that would be one of the explanations that's plausible here.
When you look at the.
Idea of a robbery, same thing. He looks dishoveled and homeless. I do not think that someone's approaching him to rob him. I do think there are people who when you hear about criminals and the way they operate, some are just opportunistic. And if you have somebody who has a darkness and an evil inside of them, there are people who enjoy
hurting people for fun. And so you see this man who's vulnerable and stumbling around and incoherent, it makes a very easy target that you would assume nobody was going to miss or realize was missing. So I think there's that potential he is vulnerable and therefore he's attacked. I also think he has this history of aggression and anger
and kind of erratic behavior. Can be very very aggressive, to the point where his neighbors, the posters on those forums, they were having to step back and say, you've got to stop. I don't like your behavior. It makes me uncomfortable or it scares me. So if that's what we know can happen when he's not in his best mental health state, it is very possible that he threatens some or scared them to the point where they stood up for themselves and fought back and it went too far.
Are they decided they were going to end his life to protect Fairs or got so angry at him that they ended his life. So all of those scenarios are possible, but the motor vehicle hitting him and taking the time to get out and place his body in a dumpster, and or a robbery, those two just don't seem fitting whatsoever.
However, we do have to make a comparison to yet another case that we've covered which has a number of similarities to this one, and that's the nineteen ninety six death of Blair Adams, who took an unexpected four thousand mile cross country trip from his home in British Columbia before he was found dead in the parking lot in Knoxville, Tennessee. The circumstances of Blair's death were incredibly bizarre, as he was nude from the waist down and thousands of dollars
in different currencies were scattered around the scene. Like Jack, Blair had been acting very strangely prior to his death, as he was paranoid, his life was in danger, and the people were after him, so it seemed a parent he was suffering from some sort of undiagnosed mental health issues. But of course, the key difference is that Blair was killed by a violent blow which ruptured his stomach, something which could not have been self inflicted, so a third
party had to have been involved at his death. When you track Blair's movements, it seems very unlikely that someone could have followed him across the continent, which is why we've always suspected that he was killed by someone he crossed paths with in Knoxville. Given his erratic behavior, perhaps Blair had an encounter with a completely random stranger and said or did something which prompted this person to deliver
a fatal blow to his stomach before fleeing the scene. Theoretically, the same thing could have happened to Jack, as he may have been wandering the streets of Newark and had an encounter with the stranger who beat him and inflicted the injuries that caused his death. This beating could have been caused by nothing more than Jack's saying or doing something which set his attacker or attackers off.
But we also talked about the fact that Jack would have been placed in that dumpster had he been attacked, But the reality is he could have been attacked and then stumbled off and crawled into that dumpster. Himself out of fear, out of paranoia that the people were coming back to get him and finish him off. So my original assumption was that he either was attacked and placed in that bin, or he got in himself to stay warm, But there actually could have been a combination of those two.
That he got beaten and then he himself also crawled into the garbage bin, and those injuries were life threatening. They did cause his body to go into cardiac arrest or internal bleeding caused his death. So I had not thought of that that. You know, there's this idea of, well, would they go to the trouble of moving his body. Maybe they didn't, Maybe they beat him and he s comes to his injuries after he himself gets into the bin as well.
Remember when we discussed the Blair Adam's case. I think that was one of the very earliest episodes we did together on the Path with Chili.
I'm still obsessed with that case.
Yeah, yeah, it's just it's even more bizarre than Jack Wheeler's. But when I remember when I watched Jack's case and Unsow Mysteries, I instantly had flashbacks to the Blair Adams case, and it was thinking what if he crossed paths with someone who beat him so severely, a complete stranger he had no connection with, who decided to take advantage of
him because of the way he was acting. Of course, whoever killed Blair Adams left him out in the open and had no concern about concealing his body, But which once again begs the question about why anyone would bother concealing Jack at a dumpster. But, like Ashley said, perhaps the ANSWER's lie somewhere in the middle. What if someone delivered a severe beating to Jack which was not fatal, and he subsequently crawled into the dumpster to nurse his injuries.
For all we know, Jack could have died or passed out before the garbage truck arrived. In essence, maybe the trash compactor or a heart attack was the exact cause of Jack's death, but he still had noticeable injuries on him from a beating. Under normal circumstances, I would ordinarily go with the explanation that Jack's death was a tragic
accident caused by being loaded into the garbage truck. But I have to reiterate that this isn't one of those cases in which the authorities have closed the investigation because they're confident that no foul play took place. They were the ones who classified Jack's death as a homicide and have given off the impression that they believe his injuries
were consistent with a beating. But we have to harken back to the aforementioned theory that the medical examiner could have made his homicide ruling prematurely and misinterpreted Jack's injuries because he had not yet received any information to suggest that Jack had been in a dumpster and a garbage truck. It seemed like the initial impression was that someone had murdered Jack at another location and dumped his body at the landfill on their own accord.
Which would absolutely justify the ruling that this was a beating, and then he was placed at the landfill.
But then you have those.
Fingerprints and evidence, biological evidence that Jack was in a trash bin that was then dumped and the trash truck that then took his body to the landfill. So once that's actor into play, like you said, it just opens up so many different scenarios of just how did he get there, how and what happened to him before he got into that bin? Was he alive? When he got into that bin, or the injuries because of the trash compactor, like all of those things become really overwhelming when you
think about how many realities could exist here. But what is interesting I was kind of hard on the police earlier. This is like, why not just change the ruling then? But there has to be something where they say, listen, we need to have the ability, if and when a lead comes in that we can investigate this is a homicide. I don't want to tie our hands. I don't want
to remove that as an option. So is it simply just the beating and the bodily injuries where they just don't think Jack could have been solo in this endeavor? Or is there something else, some other piece of evidence that they have they just haven't shared. It's a very interesting dilemma when you talk about it from the police perspective.
They very easily could write it off as an accident and bring it to the medical examiner to have it reclassified. But I agree with you, there has to be something there that they're clinging onto that makes them truly believe that a homicide took place.
Yeah, Like we saw that comment earlier from someone who had seen the autopsy photos and says these look like a beating. They don't look like someone who has injured in a trash compactor. But of course, because those photos have never been released publicly, we can't really judge for ourselves.
Since Jack was such a high profile figure with government affiliations, there would be a reluctance to admit that the original ruling was wrong and acknowledge that there was no foul play. After all, I really hate to see this, but it's possible that the attitude may have been the result of
the stigma which still surrounds mental illness. Since the guy who lived such an interesting, productive life, I think everyone who cared about Jack might have had a hard time reconciling the fact that his bipolar disorder caused him to spend the last three days of his life wandering around terrified and confused, and his death came about because he
crawled to a dumpster to keep warm. It's easier to cling to the idea that Jack was murdered by someone who placed him in the dumpster, because then you have someone to blame. Losing a level one to issues that are related to mental illness is so much harder to process, especially when they spend the last moments of their life doing things which don't seem to make any rational sense.
Since Ray Rivera was never officially diagnosed with anything, you can understand why his family would believe his death was a result of some sort of murder conspiracy rather than him deciding to jump off a roof. All that being said, we've not seen Jack Wheeler's autopsy report, and I assume there are a lot of key pieces of information that
the authorities have never released publicly. If they legitimately have good reason to believe that Jack was a victim of foul play, we would be more than happy to be proven wrong by seeing an arrest someday.
Yeah, this case is just really difficult. When you look at the idea that you have someone who was so successful and in those last moments you can tell he's in a mental health decline. It is heartbreaking. And when you think about this idea of you know, the case is still open. What happens if someday we can prove
that someone had assaulted him. I think it'd be very difficult in trial to convict somebody of let's say, of a high degree of murder, because someone could say, yes, I got in an altercation with Jack, right like, or they could prove that someone had gotten into a fuss with him or assaulted him or attacked him, But it would be very difficult to prove when and how Jack died because if you said the assault was the cause of his death, you need to make sure that there's
no way that that trash compactor could have actually ended his life, right, and that the assault was what killed him. So if the person eventually claimed, hey, he walked away from me after this fuss, yes he could be held accountable for the assault and eventual death, but the degree of charges against him would be so much lower if you couldn't disprove that something else could have happened to Jack, That Jack could have climbed into that band, that Jack
could have been crushed by the compactor. So it's wild because if you're advocating for justice in this case, even that the court case would be so traumatic and difficult listening to different theories of who knows what really happened to Jack that night. It would be a very very interesting case. Even if we did come forward and had reliable evidence that an assault was part of this case, right, how do you prosecute it and prove that the assault
caused his death. It's just tragic all the way around. It's tragic. Jack was such a good human being who worked so hard, and just the thought of the mental health decline makes you, It makes your heart just go out to him and think how sad that that's how his life ended, when he had done so much to give back to people and to make sure others didn't hurt. He died hurting in some way, whether it was mental or physical or both.
I do agree. I think it would be hard to get a murder conviction if they arrested a suspect of being able to prove whether or not a beating could have caused Jack's injuries, or if they were caused by
the trash compactor. But at the same time, I think it would still provide a lot of validation from the family if they can find someone and get them to admit or prove that they beat Jack, because then they can know that, hey, he didn't just wander around and die in his own We at least have someone that we can hold responsible for his death, and we can officially call his death a homicide rather than just him dying lonely and alone of like a heart attack or
something inside a dumpsters, so at least that would give them, I think, some sort of closure. However, I do find it encouraging that ever since the release of the Unsolved Mysteries episode, most of the online discussions I've seen about this case have focused more on the issue of mental
health rather than over the top conspiracy theories. For many cold cases, the opposite is true, So I'm taking this as a sign that people are opening to considering and discussing mental health issues, so there's less of a stigma attached to it. Regardless of whether his death was an accident or murder, Jack Wheeler deserves to be best remembered for the many things he achieved in life, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, rather than the circumstances of how
he died. But if you happen to have any information about the death of Jack Wheeler which points towards a homicide, please contact Delaware Crime Stoppers at one eight hundred tip three three three three. That's one eight hundred eight four seven three three three three, or you can submit a tip through their website at Delaware crimestoppers dot com. Jules Ashley, any final thoughts in this case.
I think this is one of those cases that really does make you step back and pause and think about how blessed we are that the conversation is changing. Robin, you just said it, like, is it getting better where we're able to talk openly about mental health struggles and
what can that do for people? Well, you know, there's a famous quote that kind of references this idea that the people that do the most good around them and are trying to help other people not struggle are people who know struggle the most and know hurt the most, and they just don't want other people to feel the way they feel. You see that in Jack. You see a hero who served our country, who protected dignitaries, who stood next to Ronald Reagan as a memorial gets unveiled
that Jack played a big role in. I mean, these are amazing, powerful things, and yet his wife takes you into their reality behind the scenes and says, look at all the magic my husband did, Look at all the good he did, And yet when he laid his head down, there were such dark demons and they were waiting for him when he woke up. I think he hated himself. It's heavy, and it's a reality that this is not abnormal. So many people we love and care about are struggling
with ease, mental health issues. They're struggling with the darkness and the demons that take over and are much louder than the reality sometimes. And so it is that reminder to reach out to people, to be open to people, to be understanding of what individuals are going through. And you saw people do the right thing in this case when they saw someone struggling. They said, something's wrong. Let me get my supervisor to come talk to this man. Something's wrong. Let me see if we can help this man.
Something's wrong. Let me call him a cap so he doesn't get in a car with some stranger. People really were trying to intervene. And I think as time goes on, you'll start to see more and more education and access to help for people with mental health issues. But it's just it's tragic because he dedicated his whole life to serving our country, to making other people feel safer and happier and to give people peace, and he couldn't find
it himself. My heart breaks for Catherine, who had things before his death that were overly traumatic.
For her.
She had issues after his death with her own family and being estranged from them. So my prayer would just be, like you said, Robin, maybe there's not a criminal case that can be brought forward, but maybe just answers so that there's less question marks for Catherine and her family would be really powerful. But it gives me hope. It gives me hope that you don't look at somebody and
judge a book by the cover. People that are incredibly successful, people that seem to have it all together, people that seem the happiest. Sometimes they're doing that because they're trying to mask the darkness that's behind that joy. And so we're getting better at that. We're getting better at saying pay attention. Right, there's warning signs. And Catherine knew it best. She said, he's a great man, but mann does he hate himself?
Like I know her.
Her dying wish would be if Jack could feel the way he makes me feel, if he could see the man that I see, if he could just be free from the darkness that plagues him, right, that's what she wanted as his spouse. Actually, it seems like that actually
took his life. It's a pitiful tragic case. It's heartbreaking, but it's also really inspiring that we are making changes and that we are trying to become more and more aware of how we prevent more cases like Jack's, where people fall through the cracks because of their mental health.
That insight from Catherine that you just referenced really hit me in the gut when I heard it, because there can be so much shame and so much pain that can be associated not only with dealing with a mental illness, but dealing with society's view of that mental illness, and just as actually just reference we've talked about throughout the conversation is changing, and I think since we first started our podcast to where we are now, I think there's been a huge shift. So I'm really excited to see
where we're at in ten years. But with what Jack was dealing with, I just my heart just breaks because I don't know what happened here. There's any number of possibilities that could have happened. It could have been from the trash compactor, it could have been homicide. I really don't have any insight because I don't know who he could have potentially met and exactly the state that he
was in it's anybody's guest at this stage. The fact that law enforcement seems very hell bent on holding on to the homicide determination made by the original medical examiner, that leads me to believe that there could just be something there that we're not aware of, that they aren't releasing, and they're keeping close to the vest so that if they do have a suspect, or if they do question somebody, that it might be knowledge that only that person would have.
But it breaks my heart seeing that this man went through what seems to be hell over this three day period, becoming disoriented, doing these strange acts like the smoke bombs, and leaving behind his phone, and seeming like some of the actions like I think Robin had pointed out that they could have been logical, and that he was looking to go to a law firm because he thought there
could be legal ramifications for the smoke bomb incident. So he went to Connolly, But he didn't have his full frame of mind to be able to know that that was in his lawyer's office and this wasn't the right Connolly. So you see him making some choices. It seemed to be grounded in some kind of logic, but he's just not fully there and we're not aware if he's sleeping
or not. It's so so tragic that I really hope that we continue to grow as a society and as a culture that consumes true crime towards this space of you know, increased empathy and increased compassion towards victims, And like Ashley just said, it gives me great hope that we are moving in that direction.
Yeah. I mentioned earlier that before I watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode, I had limited knowledge of the Jack Wheeler case, but from what I did know, I mostly had come across conspiracy theories, and they were making it sound like he was working in the government and he knew stuff that he should have and his life was in age or so someone sent an assassin to kill him. So then when I watched the Unsolve Mysteries episode, I was like, Wow,
this story is nothing like this at all. And I'm thinking to myself, if this story had been covered something like ten twenty years ago, they probably would have gone all in on the conspiracy theories and barely even acknowledged his struggles with bipolar disorder, and people would be looking
at this case with a different light. But it is good to know that in recent years people have been focusing more on mental health and they realized that regardless of whether Jack was murdered or his death was an accident, mental health did play a big role in what happened to him. That his strange behavior was not because he was being followed or tracked. He may have thought in his own mind that someone was following him and trying to kill him, but the evidence in the video surveillance
footage go against that. And I do believe that if he was murdered, then the only explanation is that he crossed paths with a stranger and perhaps tried to start a confrontation with them, or this person took advantage to Jack because he was vulnerable, and they gave him a severe beating which played some sort of role in his death.
I mean, it is tempting to think that this was nothing more than an accident, and I can understand the frustration from the family because if it was an accident and there was no one else around and no other witnesses, then there's no way they can ever know for sure. But if it was a homicide, then at least they can find a suspect and possibly learn the full truth.
But like we said, police officially ruled a homicide and they have kept this ruling for the past thirteen and a half years, so they must have information to make them not want to change the cause of death and
still actively investigate this. But they're being pretty tight lipped about this, so we don't really know where the investigation is at at this at some point, but fingers crossed, if this was a homicide, maybe one of these days we will see and rest and finally learn the full explanation for how Jack died.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the trailment Cold Patreon.
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three, the ten dollars Tier one of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawd Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jewels and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into a series. Enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check out those patreons will link them in the show notes.
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Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy