A bloody murder in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., has both police and the gay community trying to figure out just what happened.
This much is clear: Robert Wone, 32, was stabbed three times in the chest with a butcher knife in his house on the quiet 1500 block of Swann Street on the night of Aug. 2. It is a long-gentrified area in the middle of the capital's gayest neighborhood, where homes go for over a million dollars.
Police initially theorized that it was the work of an intruder, but later began to back off of that hypothesis. There was no evidence of forced entry.
Wone was of Chinese heritage and grew up in New York City. He had worked for six years as an attorney with the prestigious Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, and only a month earlier had moved to become general counsel for Radio Free Asia, a nonprofit organization that broadcasts news to Asian countries that lack free press. He also was president-elect of the local chapter of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
He lived with his wife of three years in the Virginia suburbs. But with his long hours at work, he often spent the night in town with friends from his college years. That night, he and a colleague attended a D.C. bar association course and separated about 9:30.
A call at 11:49 to 911 reported that Wone had been found stabbed in a second-floor bedroom of the residence. An ambulance transported him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead at 12:24.
'The evidence we have found so far would lead us to believe Mr. Wone was not the victim of some happenstance; this attack was specific towards him,' Sgt. Brett Parson would say after further investigation. He is commanding officer of the D.C. Gay and Lesbian Unit within the police department, an openly gay officer who has become a legend within the community.
The house where the murder occurred is owned by Joseph Price, 34, a college friend of Wone's, and his lover Victor Zaborsky. The couple was prominently features in an article on gay parents in USA Today in 2004; each had provided sperm to a lesbian couple that had produced two sons.
Price is an intellectual property attorney who co-founded the gay-rights group Equality Virginia and serves as its legal counsel. He has litigated several prominent gay rights cases on a pro bono basis, including the decision handed down last week by the Vermont Supreme Court on child visitation for a lesbian couple who dissolved their civil union.
Nobody has been charged yet in Wone's murder but speculation naturally centers on Price and Zaborsky, as it is their residence. A third person is believed to reside in the basement mother-in-law unit that does not have a separate entrance. And there are reports of a dinner party at the residence earlier in the evening.
Was it a hook up gone bad? A lover's triangle quarrel turned violent? The nature of the act suggests a crime of passion. Perhaps alcohol or drugs also played a role. There are more questions than answers at this point.