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This page has been mentioned by a media organization. The mention is in: Arthur Hu (27 March 2009). "The Robert Wone Case and the Real Cowards". Asian Week. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

	Murder of Robert Eric Wone has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result January 6, 2009 Articles for deletion Kept February 9, 2009 Good article nominee Listed
	A fact from this article appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on January 8, 2009.
Current status: Good article

Archives

1

More sources to augment existing coverage.

• Gay defendants blast officials in Wone case
• Robert Wone Case: Two Possible Gaps in Police Work
• New Charges Filed in Death of D.C. Attorney
• Break in D.C. Lawyer Murder Case

Undue weight?

Does anyone else feel that the second half of the article gives undue weight to suspicion concerning the roommates' roles in the incident? As I type that it almost sounds silly, as obviously the roommates are closely wrapped up in the matter; however, there have been no charges filed against them with respect to the killing, and I'm concerned that the article, in weighing in detail on things like the civil suit, the length of the investigation, the widow's public request, and the attorney's encouragement to the roommates to effectively "come clean" goes beyond what we should prudently, with due regard for WP:BLP, write at this time? I'm considering editing that area, but would like other's thoughts. Xymmax _{So let it be done} 15:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

A couple of things to remember:

1. Each of the three roommates has been charged with two separate crimes, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, in relation to the events of that night.
2. WP:UNDUE "the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each." Fact is, many, many RS which focus on the crime focus on the roommates' actions, backgrounds, and roles to a much greater extent than this article does. If anything, in order to not give UNDUE weight, we need to expand the coverage of the three men. While it may seem like there's undue weight, unless one goes through and reads the RS'es, it's not really possible to assess the appropriateness of weight. Jclemens (talk) 16:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow, excellent discussion. I've now read each of the online sources in full, and I still have a few concerns, which I'll list at the bottom after your conversation w/ Beniboi. Xymmax _{So let it be done} 16:16, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

A far as I could tell that was the main reason for the AfD, that the three living people from the murder scene were being pegged as murderers in various ways. If they did it we need to wait for reliable sources to state so otherwise their role here should be dry and matter-of-fact. -- Banjeboi 23:42, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

... which was a complete waste of time, as BLP concerns don't apply to Wone and editing should be used to solve any BLP issues regarding others involved.

At any rate, nothing unsupported is said about any of the housemates. Aside from CadenS engaging in well-poisoning, no one here is accusing anyone of murder. Having said that, the relevant actions of the housemates have been covered in pretty extensive detail by multiple media sources, such that excluding them from the article would violate WP:UNDUE. Remember, BLP is not a reason to avoid saying anything that might cast someone in a negative light--it's a reason to do so only when and to the extent that such negative light is justified (demanded?) by the coverage in the underlying sources. Jclemens (talk) 00:01, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Benjeboi, I just reviewed the coverage of the roommates in the article again. Is there any specific part of the article's coverage of those men that you do not find "dry and matter-of-fact"? Jclemens (talk) 00:04, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The AfD was not a complete waste of time, IMHO, they usually aren't. This article wasn't created two years ago when he was murdered, it was created quite recently after obstruction of justice charges were brought forth. BLP concerns the living people discussed in relation to a murder. Wone himself, IMHO, passes GNG but this article wasn't about him as much as the investigation.

Yeah, you're right, of course. I was certainly frustrated by it, but it certainly prompted me to improve sourcing and coverage. Jclemens (talk) 01:43, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

• This quote "found the three residents’ calm behavior unusual; none was screaming or even helping direct the paramedics." seems misleading. I wouldn't include it as it seems to lead the reader to conclude they were acting suspicious, ergo guilty. The rest of that section lays out the important content - that investigators found that the crime scene had been tampered with.
  
  • It establishes the eyewitness testimony of the first persons on scene. I'd call that important in any crime-related article. It might be too prominent because for a while whether the article was about the person or the crime was ambiguous. We can certainly add more material so that doesn't stick out so much.
    • Which is unneeded, no one is disputing they were there. What exactly does this eyewitness account gain our reader's understanding? It shows a POV which is problematic.
• In that same section the bit about Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit of the D.C. police is just dropped in there. Lose it unless it's actually supporting something.
  
  • I'll see if I can't find some more context for it. The Advocate mentioned it, and I know nothing about it. How usual or important is such a liaison unit? It seemed unusual and interesting to me, hence its inclusion. My supposition is that the unit's involvement meant right away that the DC Police expected this to be a case important to the DC gay community.
    • That's OR, but maybe tie it in somewhere else so it's NPOV.
• Prior to the news conference, Kathy Wone expressed frustration with the time the FBI crime lab was taking to process evidence, writing "It has been trying at times as we continue to wait for the FBI to complete their analysis of all the samples that were taken" in an email. We're quoting an email? That seems like a bad idea.
  
  • We're quoting her email to a Washington Post reporter, excerpts of which were printed in that paper and specifically referred to as an email, yes.
    • Use the excerpt from the published paper if it's really needed. This is not a big deal that someone note her frustration with an investigation.
• At the two year anniversary of Wone's murder, no press conference was held, and neither the Wong family or police had any comment. We're stating what didn't happen? That also seems like a bad idea.
  
  • We can drop it, but I put it in there to contrast with the hoopla and press conference of the first year anniversary. The absence of a press conference was reported by RS's, as you can see from just the story titles ("two years later...").
    • That seems like a reason to write a newspaper article to fill your newspaper but not noteworthy for our purposes.
• Eric Holder's inclusion in the lede is also problematic as that ref only gives the slightest mention with no relevance that this is important to this case or Holder. If there is a ref that that is a big deal then switch it out or perhaps it should go - also as a BLP issue.
  
  • Explain to me how this can possibly be a BLP issue? Lawyer, client--who happens to be the widow of a former lawyer who worked at the same firm--pro bono. Quote, attributed to RS. If Holder's disclosing it on his Attorney General vetting paperwork, which is what that first ref is, it's not a controversial issue. At any rate, yes, there are plenty of sources who mention Holder in a non-trivial way in connection to this case. Right now, he's mentioned in three separate sections. Want me to pull them together into one centralized place?
    • What we report here impacts people in the real world, we should err on doing no harm. Get rid of that ref as it is the very slightest of mentions for that statement and show another one that says his inclusion on the case is such a big deal it's needed for the lede, per WP:Lede.
• In addition to Washington D.C. area and Asian-American outlets, national outlets such as ABC News and gay publications such as the Windy City Times and New York Blade have carried related stories. These seems pure puffery, it would be better to convert these to actually stating something relevant about the case instead of "me too".
  
  • This is explicitly there to dispel the spurious notion that the murder is non-notable. If you've changed your position on this article's notability from the initial position you took in the AfD discussion, perhaps because it's been renamed, I don't see a reason to keep it. Pardon my overkill here, but when multiple editors look at an article with multiple Washington Post and WSJ coverage, and conclude "not notable" I just scratch my head and keep adding sources.
    • The AfD is over so convert or delete them. Recounting media mentions is usually avoided like this. A case where it works is comparing how many media storie compared on a suject from year to year or comparing news stories about Obama compared to news stories about McCain during the same time period.
• All three external links; "Complaint against Dylan Ward (pdf)", "Defendants motion for pretrial release," "Wone Lawsuit Complaint (pdf)", should be removed per our linking policies. They shouldn't be needed, IMHO, anything worth us writing about will be covered by the news media. -- Banjeboi 00:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I see them as meeting WP:ELYES #4, and don't see any applicable WP:ELNO. Can you be more specific about what EL guideline you think they fail? At any rate, thanks for your specific feedback--I hope my responses have been helpful, and look forward to continuing the dialogue and improving this article. However, I didn't see you mention anything, aside from maybe the first bullet point, that was specifically directed at the residents. I echo your concern that we be as fair to them as possible while reflecting the RS's accurately, so if anything else pops up, please add a note here if you don't feel like editing it yourself. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 01:42, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
    • The WP:EL test is rather stringent; does the EL significantly illuminate something that the article does not if the article is written at an FA level. I suggest moving them to the talkpage if they are a needed source for future editing of the article. You could even put them in the archive just so you can find them if you really need them. IMHO you shouldn't need them at all as the newsmedia has covered the aspects that we are reporting here and if they aren't including details then likely we shouldn't either. Another BLP concern that isn't being discussed here is the families of the victims and of the accused. What we write here effects them as well. If these guys, or one of them is convicted then we report then when it's RS published. But many cases have turned up other surprises and there are convicted felons later released as wrongly convicted. We should avoid speculative writing and go for dry in sensation (possible sex) crimes. We weren't there - we don't know. -- Banjeboi 02:28, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I agree with most of Benjiboi's proposed edits. Let me list my concerns, and see how everyone feels.

1. The lede should have some indication of notability - not so much in the Misplaced Pages sense, but rather to show the reader why they should care. The first couple sentences in the aftermath section might work up here.
2. My preference would be to take the civil suit out of the lead. It's tangential issue to the murder, although worthy of mention. This goes hand-in-hand with the lede's failure to explain why we should care about this case. To me it has the feel of providing an excuse for name dropping Eric Holder in the lede when he's more of a peripherial player.
3. Do we really need to know that Wone's parents lived in NY and moved to DC? What possible relevance does this have to anything?
4. The quote about Wone being straight and happily married is terribly out of place, because at the point it's mentioned the reader has no context to understand why this information is relevant. We should move it.
5. Same with the Holder quote about dying horribly - at the point it appears in the article, we don't even know how Wone died.
6. The section on Wone's death should perhaps be promoted to immediately after the lede? Since the article is about the murder, that would quickly provide context for the article.
7. Why do we mention that the 3 housemates attended the funeral - surely there is nothing extraordinary or noteworthy about that? Given the current status of the article, this feels as if we are silently inviting the reader to be shocked at their gall, otherwise I don't see the point.
8. I don't like the paramedics statements being included. I see that it is properly sourced, but what are these guys, human lie detectors? We're loading on (sourced) speculation of the roommates' guilt.
9. I'm also not a big fan of the line about the police G & L Liason being involved but Sgt X declining to say why. Again, it's factual, it is appropriate for a news story, but less so for an encyclopedia article.
10. The 2 year anneversary section should go per Benjiboi.
11. If the three roommates currently are in jail, is there any need to add that they initially were released on electtronic monitoring? Not a big deal either way though.
12. I'd remove the line about the "possibility of more charges". There's ALWAYS the "possibility" of more charges. If they come, we cover it. If they don't why point it out?

Normally I'd boldly edit these in, but I don't want to do any kind of unilateral editting on a GAN. What do you all think? Xymmax _{So let it be done} 16:16, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

So, I don't have a lot of time to edit today, but here's the parts I support and will do when I get a chance (possibly tomorrow) if no one else has done them before then:

• Remove the list of other local papers that have carried the story.
• Reorganize and copyedit any of the existing material for flow or organization. I have some concerns with a couple of the removals, but moving the holder stuff.
• Wone's parents could be removed, but if we want to cover the timeline of the night of the murder, it serves to place them in the vicinity so that Kathy could pick them up enroute the hospital. This is one of several parts of the article that is leftover from its ambiguity as a crime or biography article.
• The three roommates are not in jail--they were arrested, then placed on home monitoring with a curfew, and they're essentially unrestricted and free on bail like normal misdemeanor criminals rather than potential murder suspects. Obviously, if you didn't get that out of the article, one of us needs to make it more clear.

These are a few sections that I still don't think need to be removed, but probably should be modified based on the outcome of our discussions here. Might want to break these down into separate discussions on this talk page:

• Paramedics This is my bias as an EMT, but EMS workers see people on the worst day of their lives every day. When they say someone is acting "weird" there's a whole diverse spectrum of "normal" to a paramedic that the average person would consider weird, hence them being taken seriously by the police, etc. There's more about what the paramedics found unusual about the crime scene in RS. How about we expand it to include additional things the paramedics were reported to have found unusual about the crime scene, thus deemphasizing the roommates' behavior?
• Liaison Unit I really want to know what this is, what they do, why they were called in, and why The Advocate saw fit to dedicate about 1/6th of their single-page article to their involvement. I agree it's somewhat contextless right now and doesn't tell the reader everything he or she might want to know... because it doesn't tell me everything I want to know about this facet, either.
• Second Anniversary It could be reworded and combined with the prior paragraph about the first anniversary. It's pretty harmless, sourced, and emphasizes that this mystery murder case went into and remained in apparent hibernation until as recently as a couple of months ago.
• Funeral Attendance I think this, if done right, should show that the roommates were acting appropriately--depending on how the reader reacts to the roommates, it may either portray them in a more positive or more negative light. It should be phrased neutrally, and maybe moved into a section with their denials and rebuttals--they were grieving like normal, until the police started making accusations and hinting at them being suspects, and then they lawyered up like any smart but innocent person would do.

One additional request on the Holder stuff: That's what the DYK hook is, so if you alter his stuff in any significant way, please double check T:TDYK for 31-January and make sure the hooks are still valid and, if not, update them, please. :-)

Again, now that we've gotten a polemical editor or two out of the mix, I think we're progressing well on civil dialogue towards consensus. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 16:56, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Kathy Wone email

That statements attributed to a Kathy Wone email were referenced as the contents of an email in the Washington Post, which reprinted parts of/quoted from the email. They were the only quotes directly from her I found in RS, and if memory serves me right, it looked in context like a press release email--something that Mrs. Wone sent out prior to the press conference. What, exactly, needs clarification about it? Jclemens (talk) 03:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

It reads as if we looked at the email and cherry-picked something. Instead, IMHO, we should clarify it was ___ newsource that reported her concerns. Obviously an email itself is usually unnotable but in this case the content was reported by a news source. I think we should be clear the reason we are reporting it is because a reliable source thinks it's relevant. -- Banjeboi 09:56, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'll take a shot at that. Jclemens (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, adjusted the quote. Feel free to tag it again if it's still unclear. Jclemens (talk) 17:24, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for working on it, I've tweaked a bit more. -- Banjeboi 03:33, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, your way is simpler. I was too tied to what the Post said about how they got the statement--fact is, if they published it as her words, we really don't care how they got it. Jclemens (talk) 05:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

No prob. -- Banjeboi 21:53, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Title of this article

I am confused as to why this article is entitled Murder of Robert Eric Wone? Most other Misplaced Pages articles of a similar nature are entitled "the Death of ..." or "the Killing of ..." or "the Homicide of ...". That is, most articles specifically avoid the term murder, at least before a murder conviction is obtained. This also holds true for most other news sources as well (newspapers, TV, online, etc.), outside of Misplaced Pages. So, is there any insight into the title of this article? Also ... from what little I know ... isn't this a case of a weird sex game, gone wrong? In other words, there was some sex play gone wrong, that -- for some reason or another -- ended up in Wone's killing / death? One (or two) did the killing ... and then all three orchestrated the cover-up. That's the sense I have gotten from all I read. Which is quite distinct from intentional murder (i.e., "Hey, guys, when Wone gets here later on tonight, let's all plan to kill him!"). This is a bizarre case indeed, but I am not sure that murder is the correct phrase. Any input? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 06:11, 23 June 2009 (UTC))

The medical examiner has adjudicated Wone's death as a homicide. Note that there are more "Murder of..." articles than "Homicide of..." and "Death of..." is probably insufficiently precise, as no one is disputing that Wone was killed as a result of human action--the housemates' story has been that an intruder killed Wone, so there seems to be no serious objection to characterizing his death as a murder. Jclemens (talk) 06:34, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't think that I understand your reply. Could you elaborate? As I read your post, it seemed you were advocating that "homicide" is more appropriate than "murder" ... until I got to your very last word in the post. So, I am confused as to what you are saying. Also, the housemates are claiming "murder by an intruder" ... a theory completely eliminated by authorities as impossible ... and, apparently, also eliminated (eventually) by the housemates themselves. Which all gets me back to my original question. My understanding is that they killed Wone in a sexual assault gone wrong ... and not a flat-out intentional murder. Am I missing something? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:46, 23 June 2009 (UTC))

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