Kathy Wone testified Tuesday about a “terrifying page” in her life as she met with the men accused of covering up her husband, Robert’s, murder to hear their account of what happened the night he died.
Wone was the first witness to testify Tuesday in the obstruction of justice trial of the three men who prosecutors say entered a pact to keep the truth of her husband’s death from police.
The men, Joseph Price, 39, Victor Zaborsky, 44, and Dylan Ward, 39, had shown up uninvited to her Oakton, Va., home two days after the slaying. Her house was crowded with friends and family, so she escorted the three men downstairs for privacy.
Price, a prominent local lawyer, did the all the talking. Wone wanted to know if her husband had fought back.
Price made a stabbing motion and said he heard, “Uh, Uh, Uh,” she testified. But she stopped him before he could say anymore.
“I felt like I had opened a book to its most terrifying page and I needed to slam it shut,” Wone said.
Wone was a promising 32-year-old lawyer when he was killed. His widow wore a purple cardigan to the stand, and spoke in a soft, halting voice as she described the events that tragically altered her life.
Prosecutors said they do not know who killed Robert Wone because the trio cleaned up the crime scene and misdirected detectives. The men are charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence. If convicted, they face up to 38 years in prison.
Police found bondage paraphernalia in the house, and prosecutors later theorized Wone was injected with a paralytic drug and sexually assaulted before he was stabbed.
The housemates say an intruder broke into their house and killed Wone.
In other testimony Tuesday, the housemates’ neighbor, William Thomas, testified that he was awakened and heard a “desperation scream” sometime between 11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. The timing is significant because it would have happened at least 19 minutes before Zaborsky called emergency crews.
Thomas said he was sure of the timing because he could hear Channel 7 news anchor Maureen Bunyan announcing the 11 o’clock news. Paramedic Jeff Baker, who said he’s handled hundreds of stabbing calls, testified that when he got to the crime scene, “Alarm bells went off. Hair went up on the back of my neck.”
When Baker reached the top of the stairs, he said he asked a man in a white bathrobe, “What’s going on?” But the man said nothing and turned away, Baker said
In the guest bedroom, where Wone’s body lay on a pulled-out coach, another man, Price, was seated before moving to the side while keeping his back toward Baker.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz will decide the men’s fate. They opted to have the bizarre circumstances of the case weighed by a judge rather than a jury.
Leibovitz listened intently as Wone described her impressions of the men on trial. She said she considered the men to be kind, but she conceded that she didn’t know them as well as she thought she did. “I was surprised to learn certain things,” she said.
