S4 Ep24: This is Not a Game of Clue: The Murder of Robert Wone
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Have you ever played Clue? Or, better yet, seen the movie? Where someone is murdered and everyone is tasked with figuring out whodunit and how? By the end, of course, the answer is neatly wrapped up with who the killer was, where they did it, and with what. But real life isn't a board game. And it certainly isn't the best whodunit comedy farce of all time.

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I'm someone who is all for a modern-day murder mystery, but am keenly aware that the victim is a real person with loved ones whose lives were shattered by their death. We love an unsolved mystery, but once the cameras are off, the people living inside the mystery are still left with nothing but questions and very real grief.

On the evening of August 2nd, 2006, 32-year-old lawyer Robert Wan made a couple phone calls to friends looking for a place to crash that night. He'd be working late and didn't want to disturb his wife Kathy, who had to be up early the next morning for work.

By 8.45, his good friend Joe Price had offered his guest room in his townhouse at 1509 Swan Street NW in the DuPont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. At 9.30, he called Kathy to say goodnight, told her he loved her, and hung up. Robert arrived at Joe's at 10.30 p.m. It was his first time spending the night, but not his first time there.

Joe and his husband, Victor Zaborski, and Joe's boyfriend, Dylan Ward, who all lived in the house together, had hosted Robert's surprise 30th birthday party at the home two years earlier. When Robert arrived, according to Joe, Victor, and Dylan's account later, Joe and Dylan were watching Project Runway, and Victor was in bed on the third floor in the bedroom he and Joe shared.

While Robert, Joe, and Dylan chatted in the kitchen for a bit, Joe said he thought he saw a spider on one of the outside lights. He used the back door to go out and check on the light. And then the three men said goodnight, with Joe going up to his bedroom on the third floor, Dylan to his on the second, and Robert to the guest room, also on the second floor. Dylan said he took a sleeping pill and could hear Robert taking a shower as he read and dozed off.

And then, at 11.49 p.m., 79 minutes after Robert had arrived on his friend's doorstep, Victor called 911 to report their friend was dead, the victim of an apparent stabbing.

But none of the three men still living inside the house at 1509 Swan Street could tell investigators who had murdered their friend. According to Victor in his call to 911, quote, We had someone in our house, evidently, and they stabbed somebody, end quote. When first responders arrived, they found the three occupants of the house apparently freshly showered. Joe in his underwear and the other two men in bathrobes with wet hair.

And despite having sounded upset on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, detectives said he sounded genuinely upset in the call, Victor nor the other two men were very helpful once help had arrived. EMT Joel Baker recalls the three men not having much to say to him or anyone else there regarding what had happened. Or anything, really.

As Baker made his way up to the second floor guest room, he found Dylan walking out of the second floor bathroom. He asked Dylan what was going on. Without responding, Dylan went into his room and shut the door. When Baker entered the guest room down the hall, he found Joe sitting on the bed with his back to the door. Joe simply said, quote, Later, Baker would report he got a bad enough feeling about Joe that he was hesitant to turn his back on him, afraid, perhaps, that he had a weapon.

Joe wasn't the only one on the bed, though. Lying there on his back, fully clothed and with his mouth guard in, was Robert Wan, who appeared to have been stabbed in the chest. Despite the three stab wounds, there was a conspicuous lack of blood. There were two rather small bloodstains on the bed, but otherwise not much. In fact, whatever blood had been on his abdomen appeared to have been wiped off.

Baker would later recall, quote, it looked like his abdomen had been wiped, kind of like when you wash a window, end quote. There was a small five-inch steak knife on the bedside table, also missing the amount of blood one might expect a knife used to stab someone three times might have. At some point in the early moments of the investigation, Joe said he'd found the knife inside Robert's body, but later he would say he found the knife on Robert's body.

Wherever he found it, though, clearly he or someone had moved it to the bedside table. Robert was transported to the hospital even though he was very much already dead by the time EMTs arrived. Baker would later comment that moving the body from the scene is not protocol and he wondered how much evidence might have been lost in that move. Joe called Robert's wife Kathy and told her Robert had been injured and was being brought to the hospital for treatment.

Listen, I'm no close friend of a man who was found mysteriously murdered in my own home less than an hour and a half after he'd arrived, but I think it was pretty obvious that Robert was dead before he was loaded into the ambulance and taken to the hospital. So either Joe misspoke out of immense grief and confusion, or he misspoke intentionally. It wouldn't take long for police to decide it was the latter.

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Robert Wan was extremely well-liked, with an ambitious and charitable nature. While in high school in his hometown of Brooklyn, New York, Robert wrote an essay about being Asian American, which got published by the Long Island Chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans. The OCA also supported him in his participation in the presidential classroom in D.C., a now-defunct program that brought young people to Washington to give them a window into how government works.

He graduated high school top of his class and went on to graduate from University of Pennsylvania Law School with cum laude honors. During his undergrad years at William & Mary, Robert had joined a secretive society called the Thirteen Club that was focused on doing random acts of kindness anonymously.

While at WM, Robert was in Mortarboard, Omicron Delta Kappa, and the Golden Key Honor Society. He graduated with a degree in public policy and earned the Algernon Sidney Sullivan Award for his "heart, mind, and helpfulness to others." At UPenn, he published an article in their law review about racial harassment in the workplace.

After law school, Robert began a federal clerkship in the Eastern District of Virginia for Judge Raymond Jackson, and then went on to become an associate at Covington & Burling, a white-shoe law firm which was at the time headed up by future United States Attorney General Eric Holder.

Robert was on the board for the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund, chaired the W&M Washington Council, and was a member of the Virginia Governor's Commission on Community and National Service. A member of the American Bar Association Publication Education Committee, he mentored law students and helped to write the OCA Personnel Manual.

In June of 2006, instead of continuing his climb at the prestigious law firm, Robert decided instead to pursue his passion for social justice and took a position as general counsel for Radio Free Asia, a U.S. government-funded nonprofit that works to get unbiased news to people in Asia with poor media environments and those lacking protections for free speech and free press, and to help them get to the top of the media.

to advance the goals of U.S. foreign policy. Though how unbiased a government-funded organization that is pushing U.S. foreign policy can be is a topic for another day, and is neither here nor there, as this is not a story of government intrigue and espionage. Or perhaps it is, but most likely it isn't.

The point is, Robert was successful and passionate and had not, by anyone's account, collected any enemies along the way. His former employer, Judge Raymond Jackson, was the officiant at Robert and Kathy's wedding in 2003. The couple had met at a diversity conference the year before. She'd been working for the American Bar Association, but after the wedding, she'd taken a job as an editor for the Bureau of National Affairs.

Robert and Joe met all the way back when Robert was considering William and Mary for his undergrad. Joe was in his junior year when Robert came in for a tour as a prospective student. The pair bonded over their shared interest in law and politics.

Robert was an out gay man and an activist from an early age. He was considered an A-lister in the D.C. gay community, having founded a group called Equality Virginia in 2006 to advocate for gay rights in the U.S., especially gay marriage. He seemed equally ambitious and passionate about social justice causes as Robert.

The men had been friends for 20 years by 2006. They were close enough that Joe was a pallbearer and had his own receiving line at Robert's funeral. Joe's husband, though not legally as gay marriage wasn't legal until 2009, Victor was a senior marketing manager for the outfit responsible for all those "got milk" ads that contributed to a whole generation of kids' acne and tummy issues. Thanks a lot, Victor.

He and Joe got together in 2000 and had bought their first home together not long after. And then there was Joe's live-in boyfriend, Dylan Ward. Despite graduating summa cum laude from Georgetown with a degree in foreign service, it seems Dylan drifted a bit, career-wise. After Georgetown, he went overseas to teach English and then attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park.

He went overseas again to teach English and then got into publishing children's books, earning a master's in children's literature from Simmons College in Boston in 2003. Dylan met Joe while working in fundraising for Joe's non-profit, Equality Virginia. He co-founded an educational publishing business based in Taiwan and has written and edited a bunch of children's books, some of which are award-winning.

After his stint at Equality Virginia, he took a job for another direct mail fundraising company that specialized in helping small nonprofits, where he was working in August of 2006. Though that same year, he switched careers again when he graduated from the Potomac Institute for Massage Therapy.

It's hard to know for sure what the dynamic between the three men in this triangle actually was. All we really have is speculation. Prosecuting attorney Glenn Kirshner told the podcast The Consult, Real FBI Profilers, that he believed that Joe was at the apex of the triangle, having relationships with both Victor and Dylan, while Victor and Dylan were not in a relationship with each other. That much is pretty well established.

It's thought that Dylan was brought into the relationship because of his interest in BDSM, which Joe shared. Kirshner's theory was that Victor was not interested, and so agreed, enthusiastically or not, to bring in Dylan to satisfy Joe's needs. He also believes that Dylan was actively trying to replace Victor as Joe's primary partner. However, emails revealed later paint a different picture.

About six weeks before Robert Juan ended up dead in the trio's guest room, Joe sent an email to Dylan, clearly upset about where he thought the relationship was headed. The email read, in part, Coming back to the same situation, having been gone from you for the weekend, is, I suppose, when it really hit me.

As you know, I have some experience with losing sexual interest in my partners, and that was never pleasant. But in no small part, because of that experience, being on the other side is decidedly worse. My personal experience has always been that the light doesn't come on again once it goes off.

I know that you are not me, but it is nevertheless nerve-wracking, and I've spent the past couple of days obsessing about why this happened and how, hunting for some clue or understanding, but finding none. I'm sorry your job change is so stressful. That would be nice if that were all it was causing your loss of attraction, but that is hard to imagine for me.

I feared that the change would be tough and thought my affections and attentions would be helpful, not annoying. That makes being pushed away that much harder, as I'm really not sure what else to do to be supportive of you during this challenging time. I know withdrawing and isolating are patterns for you during times of stress, but that is not easy to deal with as someone who loves and cares for you and wants to be there for you when you're under duress.

End quote.

Now, I'm no love expert, but it seems to me that unless Joe's perception was way off, Dylan was not trying to replace Victor. Further emails from Joe to Dylan even suggest they meet up with a potential third partner in hopes of sparking some romance. Dylan seemed a bit dubious of the plan, but willing to give it a try for the sake of the relationship. I don't think the plan, though, ever came to fruition.

All of this is just to color in a little bit of what may have been going on between the three men on and around Robert's visit on August 2nd. Joe, Victor, and Dylan were brought in for questioning, and despite Joe being a lawyer, he sat for six hours of questioning about how his friend ended up murdered in his house without asking for a lawyer. Victor sat for eight hours of interrogation, and Dylan for 12.

All three men insisted an intruder came in through the unlocked back door, killed Robert, and left, all before any of them knew what had happened. But here's the thing. The intruder story is about as preposterous as, I don't know, me winning American Idol. Like, maybe if you squint and look into some alternate timeline where a lot of things were different, you could see it happening, but not today, Bob.

In order for the intruder story to be plausible, one needs to accept the following. 1. This person would have had to climb over a 7-foot fence to get into and out of the backyard without disturbing the cobwebs or pollen on the top of the fence. 2. The intruder came in through the back door and passed by a lot of expensive stuff they could have made off with. 3. If their intention had been to rob the house, how were they planning on getting whatever they took over the fence? 4.

4. The intruder picked up a knife from the knife block on the counter in the kitchen. Not a chef's knife, a 5-inch steak knife. 5. The intruder would then have had to go up about 16 very creaky stairs to get to the second floor in an otherwise quiet house.

I grew up in a house with two sets of old creaky stairs that, let me tell you, made sneaking out as a teenager damn near impossible. I mean, don't get me wrong, I definitely found a way, but frankly, it was easier to scale up the front of the house and come in through the third floor window than it was to get up the two flights of stairs past my parents' bedroom. So this person would have either had to know how to get around the creeks or just happened to walk really quietly.

Six, just at the top of the first flight of stairs on the second floor, was Dylan's bedroom. This person bypassed Dylan's bedroom right at the top of the stairs, turned around, and went down the hall to the guest room where Robert was staying.

This, to me, almost suggests that the person knew Robert was staying in the guest room that night. If the person's intention was just to murder some random person, why didn't they go into Dylan's room? As far as anyone knew at this point, there were only four people, aside from Robert, who knew he was staying there that night. His wife, to whom he was happily married and who was at home 40 minutes away, and the three men inside the house.

7. The intruder then walked all the way around the bed and stabbed Robert three times at the same angle each time, once in the heart, which somehow magically didn't lead to blood all over the bed on which he was presumably stabbed. 8. Robert apparently slept through the attack as there were no defensive wounds on his hands or arms, and the position of the three stab wounds indicated that he never moved.

9. The killer then either left the knife inside or on Robert's chest and then left the way they came, down the creaky stairs, past all the expensive stuff they could have stolen, and back out the back door.

The next-door neighbor reported hearing a scream come from the house while they were watching the local news at 11, anchored by Maureen Bunyan. They watched every night, and they remembered specifically that Bunyan was on screen when they heard the scream, and she only would have been on between 11 and 11.35 p.m.

Joe told the EMT he'd heard a scream, but the story changed at some point. During questioning, Joe and Victor said they heard the door chime, the alarm had not been turned on, and then they heard a low grunting and ran downstairs to find Robert dead in the guest room. It's worth mentioning that during the 911 call, Victor said he heard the door chime after the grunt or scream, not before.

Whether it was a scream or a grunt, unless the neighbors were completely wrong, it would have taken Victor somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 to 49 minutes after hearing the grunt or scream to call the police.

In the 911 call, Victor says he hasn't gone downstairs, which would mean he and Joe heard the grunt or scream, Joe went downstairs to find his friend of 20 years, stabbed to death, the intruder somehow already gone, and then Joe didn't immediately yell for Victor to call the police.

Also, the neighbor didn't hear anyone yelling for someone to call the police. Also, Joe and Victor heard the scream or grunt from upstairs, but Dylan somehow slept through it even though he was on the same floor as Robert. Dylan didn't wake up until he heard both Joe and Victor screaming about what happened.

It took first responders only 5 minutes and 40 seconds to get to the house after Victor dialed 911, which has to mean that all three men had showered immediately before calling 911, as evidenced by EMT Baker saying they looked freshly showered with wet hair. But if Dylan didn't wake up until after he heard Joe and Victor screaming, when did he shower?

And if Joe and Victor heard the grunt or scream sometime between 11 and 11.35, and the police and ambulance arrived at 11.54, they clearly both would have showered after hearing the grunt or scream and presumably before calling 911. Unless, like me, they take two-minute showers, but one doesn't usually call for police and ambulance and then take a shower.

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At autopsy, Dr. Lois Goslinowski found blood clots in Robert's small intestine, indicating that he didn't die immediately. There was evidence of some kind of suffocation because of hemorrhaging in one of his eyes. A rape kit was performed, and some of Robert's own semen was found on his genitals and rectum. Most curious, though, in my opinion, was the finding that Robert had lost two-thirds of his entire volume of blood.

Where was the blood? It certainly wasn't on the bed, except in two small spots. It wasn't on any towels, in any amount that would suggest the men were following the 911 dispatcher's advice to keep pressure on the wounds. The dispatcher told Victor to use a clean towel to apply pressure and to replace the towel with a fresh one once it was saturated with blood, which would presumably happen several times if someone had been stabbed three times, including once in the heart.

not to mention the missing blood from Robert's shirt through which he was stabbed. In fact, there was only one towel with any blood on it at all, and it clearly had not been used to keep pressure on any stab wounds. And Joe certainly wasn't applying pressure to Robert's wounds when EMT Baker entered the room. The knife on the bedside table was tested, and something was definitely off.

White fibers matching the one towel with blood on it were found. But fibers from Robert's shirt were not. There's no reason the knife should have come into contact with the towel. In fact, it looked to some that the towel had been dipped in blood and wiped onto the knife. The knife was 5.5 inches long and the blood was on the blade up to the handle. But the three stab wounds were four to five inches deep.

Generally, when someone stabs someone, they stab them to the hilt or handle of the knife. They don't stop a half an inch to an inch before that. And usually when someone is stabbed multiple times, all three wounds aren't oriented at the same exact angle. The wounds to Robert's chest and abdomen looked almost surgical.

Also, let's say, for the sake of argument, he was asleep when the first stab happened. Chances are he would have woken up and reflexively protected himself. Clearly, Robert didn't move at all during the stabbings and certainly didn't try to protect himself.

So, he had to have been either already dead or completely unconscious when he was stabbed. The lack of blood on the mattress certainly suggests that he may have already been dead. Indeed, it was Dr. Goslinowski's professional opinion that the stabbing had happened after Robert was dead. But even then, it seems like too little blood, at least for this layperson.

Several needle marks were found on Robert's body during autopsy. Some of the marks could be accounted for by paramedics trying to treat or revive him in the ambulance, but others had bruises around them suggesting they happened before he died.

A tox screen found no drugs, alcohol, or carbon dioxide in his system. But, as some of you are probably already yelling, what about succinylcholine, which, aside from being the worst-named deadly chemical, manages to disappear from the blood system so quickly that it basically can't be detected?

Of course, no succinylcholine was found in the house, nor were any syringes. But, you know, neither were any properly bloodied towels or a knife that matched the wounds. What police did find, though, was a knife set in Dylan's bedroom that was missing one knife. A knife that would have been a better match for Robert's stab wounds.

This whole piece of the puzzle is one of the weirdest. First of all, why did he have a kitchen knife set in his bedroom? Like, I often put things down in weird places because I'm distracted, but...

I don't know, something tells me that if I knew the police were on their way because someone had been stabbed in my house with a knife that would likely match the murder weapon that happened to be missing from a knife set that I mistakenly left in my bedroom for some reason, I would probably, I don't know, at least move the knife set to the kitchen before the police got there, even if I wasn't guilty. I

I would probably see the knife set and be like, you know what? That seems really out of place and potentially suspicious. I'm going to go ahead and put it where it's supposed to be. But also, if the knife found on the knife stand was a replacement knife for the actual one used in the stabbing, like, why?

If you're going to get rid of a murder weapon, why not just get rid of a murder weapon? Why replace it with a different red herring murder weapon, complete with wiped-on blood for effect? And if it was the knife from the knife set in Dylan's bedroom, why on earth would he have just left the knife set sitting there?

I mean, look, this whole thing is a sloppy mess. None of it makes any sense, so I suppose harping on the knife set is silly, but, like, what the hell was going on in that house between 10.30 and 11.49 on the night of August 2nd? But the knife set wasn't the only thing police found in Dylan's bedroom. Apparently, as part of his BDSM kink,

Dylan had a copious collection of tools and instruments that the prosecution had a heyday describing and showing pictures of at a motion before the trial.

One such device was an electro stim machine that is generally used on tight muscles, or more recently to simulate the pain of period cramps for men who don't seem capable of understanding that their wives, girlfriends, or daughters are actually enduring the pain they say they are month after month while still carrying on with their lives.

Another use for one of these machines, apparently, is in BDSM activities, including, as prosecutor Glenn Kirshner put it, quote, electric ejaculation of a person who is under anesthetic or otherwise incapacitated, end quote. Despite Joe's attorney Bernie Grimm's assertion that, quote, you can't ejaculate unless you want to, I'm pretty sure you can. It's called rape.

Also, tell that to any teenage boy who wakes up in his own stuff after having had a wet dream. I should pause here to explain that it wasn't until October of 2008 that charges were brought against Joe, Victor, and Dylan. And those charges weren't for murder. They were for obstruction and conspiracy to cover up a murder.

Despite how obvious it seemed that one of the three men in the house that night must have killed Robert Wan, there wasn't enough actual evidence to charge the men with the murder.

So the prosecution used what evidence they did have to argue that the men cleaned up the scene, as evidenced by the white marks on Robert's torso and the almost absolute lack of blood anywhere, as well as the incongruous stab wounds and the missing murder weapon seemingly replaced by a different weapon that was staged to look like it had been used in the murder, and that the men made false or misleading statements to 911, EMTs, and police after the murder.

The three men also insisted on meeting with Robert's widow, Kathy, after she talked to police to see what she found out from them. Not usually something grieving friends would do, I don't think, but, you know, to each their own, I guess.

It's worth noting that during questioning, police leaned heavily on the men's sexuality, questioning why a straight man would even be at their house, because Lord knows gay and straight people can't be friends. And for some reason, Robert's friends and family apparently felt very betrayed when Dylan's collection of BDSM equipment and details about his proclivity were brought to light. This feels like an odd piece to me.

I'm not sure why Dylan's kink or the tools he uses in it would make people feel more or less betrayed about what happened in the house that night. It's not like anyone had a right to know these private things about Dylan. It feels to me as if they're saying, if we had known this about Dylan, this never would have happened. But plenty of people have BDSM fetishes and all kinds of tools and equipment for it, and no one dies because of it.

And, as far as I could tell, none of Dylan's tools, including the e-stim machine, were tested for Robert's DNA. And if they were, none was found.

However, it's entirely possible that the e-stim machine's disposable pads that would have been placed on Robert's penis, either with or without his consent, were disposed of, along with the missing two-thirds of Robert's blood and anything that was on it, the syringe and needle used to inject him with whatever he was injected with, along with the container for whatever he was injected with, and the knife.

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Defense attorney Bernie Grimm, who is, by the way, an incredibly successful defense attorney with an impressive win record, told the Peacock documentary Who Killed Robert Wan that Victor was very obviously genuinely distressed on the 911 call. He said, quote, End quote.

First of all, sir, get Dame Meryl Streep's name out of your mouth. How very dare you. Apparently, you haven't seen her Academy Award-winning performance as the titular role in Sophie's Choice or any number of her other movies. Why that woman has tears in her eyes half the time she's on screen. And clearly, you've never watched anything Viola Davis has been in. How do you conjure up tears like that? Really? Anyway...

The prosecution agreed to a bench trial with no jury. The defense team worried the men's sexuality and the salacious details of the BDSM stuff would be too much for a jury to remain dispassionate about. But apparently, Prosecutor Kirshner had worked with the judge and felt a bit overconfident that she would side with him.

Ultimately, the judge ended up not allowing the BDSM stuff into evidence anyway, which makes some sense to me as there was no actual evidence that any of it was used in the murder. Heart surgeon Henry Lee from George Washington University Hospital testified that the stab wound to the heart would have killed him in seconds, meaning most bleeding would be internal.

I mean, this doesn't sound tremendously science-y to me, and the doctor who performed the autopsy agrees. But also, even if that were possible, what happened to the two-thirds of Robert's blood that wasn't in his body? Did it evaporate? Incidentally, Dr. Lee was more recently found liable for falsifying evidence in a 1985 murder trial that sent two teens to jail for 30 years. So, there's that.

Dylan's mother came forward to be like, oh, I sent him that knife set, but I kept that one knife for myself. Weird, but okay. Attorneys for the defense demonstrated how the front door could have been unlocked by sliding one's arm through the mail slot and reaching the lock on the other side, which would mean they would have locked the door behind them after coming in,

But also, they apparently demonstrated being able to leap over the seven-foot-back fence themselves and also claimed there was a plastic sandbox shaped like a turtle with a lid on it on the other side of the fence that the neighbor claimed had footprints on it the day after the murder.

But even if someone had used the sandbox as leverage on the way in, they would have had to vault over the fence on the way out. And unless they went over the fence both ways without touching the top of the fence like a pole vaulter, it's not a great explanation. Also, how would the intruder have gotten into the neighbor's yard to use the sandbox in the first place?

And if the neighbor's yard was just open, why did the intruder then choose to jump over the seven-foot fence instead of, I don't know, going into the house with the open backyard? Another detail brought out at trial was that Joe's brother, Michael, had a spare key to the house, a detail he'd apparently forgotten to disclose to anyone during the investigation.

Michael had had several run-ins with the law and actually used his spare key to break into Joe and Victor's house three months after the murder and stole more than $7,000 worth of stuff. Michael was supposed to be in a class the night of the murder, but it just so happened that that night was the one night he missed class. Michael's partner insisted Michael was at home in bed asleep with him when the murder took place.

This, to me, feels like a bit of a red herring. Michael was hardly some criminal mastermind. It's hard to imagine he could get away with this elaborate murder and disappear before anyone in the house saw him. Plus, all of Robert's money was still in his wallet, and he had a very expensive watch out in plain view that wasn't taken. ♪

In her 38-page verdict, Judge Lynn Leibovitz seemed to largely agree with the prosecution. She said she did not believe the intruder's story and thought the men did know more than they were admitting. She said, quote, And I am extremely sorry for this, end quote.

And so it was because she didn't have any evidentiary certainty that Judge Leibovitz found all three men not guilty of obstruction and conspiracy. Joe Price, Victor Zaborski, and Dylan Ward are alive and well and living in Florida. Frankly, Florida, you can have them.

Joe, who changed his last name to Anderson, and Victor are still married, and Dylan, who is no longer in a relationship with Joe, changed his last name to Thomas. Just in case you haven't put that together, his name is now Dylan Thomas, like the celebrated poet. Robert's widow Kathy sued the men for $20 million in a wrongful death suit and was represented by none other than Eric Holder.

Each man refused to answer questions using their Fifth Amendment rights, which Kathy pointed out they even used to the question, "Did you kill Robert Juan?"

She settled on an undisclosed amount and said her intention was to distribute the money to organizations that were important to Robert. In an official statement after the civil trial, Kathy said, "...I am moving on, and I want to spend the next 40-plus years of my life focused on good and doing good. I'm happy to leave the defendants to their own devices. They can continue to rot from the inside out with the secrets they've kept."

Robert arrived at their house alive, and Joseph, Dylan, and Victor were in the house, and he ends up dead with three stab wounds to his chest. My gut definitely tells me that they were in some way involved in killing Robert. They're hiding behind the Fifth Amendment, and that is, I guess, the way they want to live their lives." Cold comfort, I would imagine.

Ultimately, if I had to guess, I would say it was Dylan in the guest room shower with a syringe full of something lethal. And I don't think I'm alone in that conclusion. But because there are two other players who won't talk, we may never get the answer neatly presented to us in a little yellow envelope.

Because this was a real-life tragedy and not, unfortunately, one of the best murder mystery farces ever made, starring comic geniuses Tim Curry and Madeline Kahn. Next time on Strange and Unexplained, a real Halloween story that is as terrifying as any horror film out there, The Pixie Sticks Murder.

Strange and Unexplained is a production of Three Goose Entertainment with help from Grab Bag Collab. This episode was written by me, Daisy Egan, with research from the Strange Research Squad. Sound engineering and mixing by Amanda Rossman. If you have an idea for an episode, head to our website, strangeandunexplainedpod.com, and fill out the contact form. I will write back.

For more amazing content, join us at patreon.com slash grabbagcollab, where for just five bucks a month, you get all the Grab Bag exclusive shows. And for eight bucks, you get those plus Amber Hunt's Crimes of the Centuries and Strange and Unexplained early and ad-free. Grab Bag is an all-female and non-binary-owned profit share network where our contributors get to keep ownership of their shows.

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Yeah.

All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the partition. Partition? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too. I just got it for $5.

So how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jollier. ♪

Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at bartesian.com slash cocktail. That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N dot com slash cocktail.

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