Four years after Robert Wone was stabbed to death, no one has been charged with his murder and authorities say the investigation into the homicide is still ongoing.
Wone, a 32-year-old lawyer, was killed Aug. 2, 2006, when he was stabbed three times in the chest while staying overnight at the home a friend from college.
That friend, Joseph Price, and his two housemates, Dylan Ward and Victor Zaborsky, were acquitted this summer of conspiring to cover up the slaying after a high-publicity trial.
Homicide charges have never been filed in the case.
Gwendolyn Crump, spokeswoman for Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier, said the investigation is ongoing. Bill Miller, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., also said his office is continuing to look into the case, but “we don’t have anything to report right now.”
Both Crump and Miller declined to elaborate on steps being taken in the investigation. In this case, the passage of time isn’t a problem because the evidence has already been collected, said Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney for D.C. The challenge, he said, is finding “a witness that’s willing to tell what happened.”
Wone was spending the night at the trio’s Dupont Circle town house because he was working late at his job as general counsel for Radio Free Asia.
The three have maintained that an intruder broke into the house at 1509 Swann St. NW and stabbed Wone, who was staying in a second-floor bedroom. In acquitting Price, Ward and Zaborsky, D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz called that theory “incredible.” She said it is “very probable” that the three men know who killed Wone, but prosecutors did not prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Wone’s widow, Kathy Wone, has filed a $20 million wrongful-death suit against Price, Ward and Zaborsky.
The proceedings were stayed in the civil case during the criminal trial, but a status hearing is scheduled for next month.
Proceedings in the civil case could help criminal prosecutors, diGenova said. If defendants in a civil case don’t testify, jurors are allowed to infer that they are not doing so because it would hurt their case.
“The more legal proceedings, the better” in trying to gather evidence and build a criminal case, diGenova said.
