In Wheeler's final days, details of a disheveled man

[woodsprite]

The latest article link to the News Journal
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110105/NEWS01/101050356/Wheeler-s-disheveled-final-days

So, we have
- his neighbors hearing loud TV coming from his place day/night for four days over Christmas,
- he shows up disheveled in New Castle at a drug store in the center of town (about a 5 min walk from his house and another
5 min from the police department),
- then he shows up disheveled in Wilmington looking for his car saying his briefcase was stolen (surveillance video)
- then he shows up dead at Cherry Island landfill.

with some new twists:
"A man who identified himself as the security manager at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington said late Tuesday, "We're cooperating with police." He declined further comment."

"Over the past three days, no one has answered the door at the house, which sits on a slope overlooking Battery Park and the Delaware River. In the kitchen, several wooden floorboards are missing and the area is roped off by yellow evidence tape strung from the stove across two wooden chairs."

Wonder what the toxicology reports will show?

[pacalo]

1. This sounds like a John Grisham plot, except we'll never know the details.

[jberryhill]

2. "Wonder what the toxicology reports will show?"

Assassination by "drug him and let him wander around for a few days" would be unusual.

There are criminals who spike drinks with stuff that is pretty nasty, and leaves the victim to be something of a zombie for a long time.

Some prescription drugs can cause transient global amnesia, e.g. Ambien, Lipitor.

Maybe a stroke?

[woodsprite]

3. If a crime had happened in his house and he was roughed up, wouldn't

you think he'd go to the cops instead of the Happy Harry's down the street. Doesn't make sense.
Stroke may make sense since he seemed to be disoriented and showed up at the wrong parking lot for his car. The other parking lot where it was found was one where he had a regular monthly parking permit.

When I originally heard about it, I was thinking despondent early New Year's drunk passes out into a trash bin and doesn't wake up before the truck picks him up, but some of this other stuff doesn't sound like that's the case.

I thought the 'floor-board' thing was interesting, but what they found may or may not have had anything to do with the current owners. In old houses, you could find almost anything. In ours, we found an old school 'weekly reader' that had the original Pledge in it, several old antique booze bottles, old business cards, a 'feminine cleanliness' kit from the Victorian era (in a wooden box with instructions, etc.), an empty tin of sardines, a really old box of Kellogs cereal, advertisements for homes with newfangled gas lighting and indoor plumbing, and antique Playboy magazines. All of those were found in our walls, soffits or floors of our old house. Those were just the 'memorable' items. Working on that house was like opening a time capsule.

[jberryhill]

4. edit - answered my own question

Remember that tourist a while back in Philly who ended up wandering around town in a fog for days after having a spiked drink?

----

Wheeler, who led fundraising efforts in the 1980s to construct the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, was last seen alive at 8:30 p.m. Thursday inside the Nemours building at 10th and Orange streets in Wilmington, Newark police Lt. Mark Farrall said today.

That was about 13 hours before his body was discovered at the landfill.

Farrall said video surveillance confirmed Wheeler was in the building Thursday evening.

“On this video, Mr. Wheeler appears confused," Farrall said. Investigators have also learned that earlier that day, "Mr. Wheeler was approached inside this building by several individuals who offered assistance to him, which Mr. Wheeler declined."

[mimitabby]

5. one can hope

that we will get the real results of the toxicology tests.