Local
Wone’s widow takes the stand
Trial begins with wife’s testimony, chilling 911 tape
Katherine Wone, wife of slain attorney Robert Wone, testified this week about her husband’s relationship with the three gay men charged in connection with his murder. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The wife of slain attorney Robert Wone testified this week about her husband’s friendship with three gay men charged with obstructing a police investigation into his murder.
Katherine Wone, who became the government’s first witness Monday in a complex and long-awaited trial, said the couple gave money to a Virginia gay group that Joseph Price, one of the defendants, once chaired.
Price, 39, his domestic partner, Victor Zaborsky, 44, and the couple’s housemate, Dylan Ward, 39, are charged with obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice and evidence tampering in connection with Wone’s August 2006 stabbing death in their Dupont Circle area townhouse. No one has been charged with the murder.
If convicted on all three counts, the defendants face a possible maximum sentence of 38 years in prison.
In testimony divided across two days, Katherine Wone said her husband, who became friends with Price during their days as students together at Virginia’s College of William & Mary, arranged to spend the night at the men’s house on Aug. 2, 2006.
She said he planned to work late at his job in D.C. as general counsel for Radio Free Asia and decided not to drive home that night to the couple’s house in Oakton, Va.
“Do you remember Robert saying he and Joe were good friends?” defense attorney Bernard Grimm asked Katherine Wone during cross-examination.
“Yes,” she said.
“Did you ever see a crossed word between Joe and Robert?” Grimm asked.
“No,” she replied.
In response to questions from Grimm, Katherine Wone said her husband was aware that Price was involved with Equality Virginia, a statewide gay civil rights group, and that he supported the cause of equal rights for “all people.”
She told of how she and Robert Wone accepted an invitation from Price to attend an Equality Virginia fundraising dinner in Richmond one year before the murder. And she confirmed that a photo of the Wones and Price that Grimm showed her on the witness stand was taken at the dinner.
The three defendants have said through their lawyers that an intruder killed Robert Wone after entering their house from a rear door while the men slept in their bedrooms. Each of their attorneys stressed during opening arguments that their clients’ friendship with Wone demonstrated they had no motive to harm him and that the government had failed to find a motive for the murder.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner, the lead prosecutor, noted in his opening argument that the men tampered with the crime scene and repeatedly misled police and homicide detectives investigating the murder. He said the defendants know — but refuse to disclose — the identity of the person or people who fatally stabbed Wone in the chest.
Among other things, Kirschner noted that paramedics and crime scene investigators found almost no blood on Wone’s body or the bed where he was found with three large stab wounds. There were no signs of a struggle, no defensive wounds on his arms, no signs of forced entry into the house, and nothing was disturbed or taken from the house, Kirschner said.
All of this, he said, was evidence of crime scene tampering and completely dispelled the defendants’ claim that an intruder killed Wone.
Defense attorneys representing the three gay men countered that the evidence doesn’t support any of the government’s allegations, including an assertion that more blood should have been found on the scene.
They planned to call an expert witness, a cardiac surgeon, who is expected to testify that the single stab wound piercing Wone’s heart would have killed him within five seconds, shutting down the heart’s ability to pump blood. A stopped heart, rather than a sinister plot postulated by the government, was the reason little or no blood was seen, defense attorneys said.
From the moment homicide detectives arrived at the house to investigate the murder, they became “marred and infatuated in a theory based on ignorance,” prompting them to suspect the men were involved in the murder, said Grimm, who is Price’s attorney.
“Why is a straight man coming to the house of a gay man,” Grimm quoted a detective as saying while interviewing the defendants.
Grimm and David Schertler, Ward’s attorney, said in their opening arguments that the three defendants’ sexual orientation and their three-way relationship played a role in shaping police and prosecutor assumptions that they, rather than an intruder, were involved in the murder.
Kirschner challenged that assertion, however, saying investigators have linked the men to a conspiracy to obstruct the investigation based on a vast array of crime scene findings.
“This case is not about sexual orientation,” he told D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz, who is poised to decide the men’s fate after the defendants opted to forego a jury trial.
“This case is not about the personal relationship of these three. There is nothing negative that can be inferred due to the sexual orientation or lifestyle choices of these men,” he said.
But he noted that Price, Zaborsky and Ward “had powerful bonds among them,” which amounted to a “tight knit family” that is protecting its members from the harm that would come to them “if the truth came out.”
911 tape stirs courtroom
Katherine Wone’s calm testimony was offset Tuesday afternoon when prosecutors played a dramatic audio tape of Zaborsky’s 911 call reporting that Wone had been stabbed in his house.
On the recording, which lasts about 12 minutes, a near hysterical Zaborsky is heard making a desperate plea for help. He tells the 911 operator that a male friend visiting the house “is not conscious” after being stabbed.
When the operator asked him who stabbed the person, Zaborsky replied, “I don’t know who stabbed him. We don’t know how they got in. The person has one of our knives. … I’m afraid to go downstairs.”
The operator then urged Zaborsky to use a towel to stop the bleeding by pressing it firmly on the stab wound. He replied that his housemate, meaning Price, was already doing that in the guest bedroom where the stabbing victim was staying.
In a development that prosecutors have called highly significant, Zaborsky is heard on the tape asking the operator, “What time is it?” The operator, sounding surprised, repeated the question before responding, “11:54.”
One day earlier, in his opening argument, prosecutor Kirschner said that Zaborsky’s question about the time was among the indicators that he participated in a conspiracy to conceal from investigators what really happened during Wone’s brief stay at the men’s house.
Investigators believe Wone arrived at the house shortly after 10:30 p.m. Kirschner followed up on the chronology of the incident when he next called as witnesses William and Claudia Thomas, a married couple who live in the townhouse adjoining the defendants’ house at 1509 Swann St., N.W.
William Thomas testified that he heard a scream coming from the defendants’ house through a wall shared by the two houses on the night of the murder. He said he did not check the time when he heard the scream, but said he remembered hearing his wife watching the 11 p.m. news on Channel 7. His wife backed up that account during her own testimony.
Based on that account, police and prosecutors have said between 12 and 49 minutes elapsed from the time of the scream and the time Zaborsky called 911 at 11:49 p.m.
Investigators have said the scream could have marked the time Wone was stabbed. A delay of even 12 minutes in making the 911 call could have been used to clean the crime scene and hide or discard other evidence linked to the murder.
The Thomas’ testimony was followed by testimony from Jeff Baker, one of the first of the paramedics to arrive at the house in response to the 911 call.
Baker said the first of several highly unusual murder scene observations he made came during his encounter with Ward, who was standing at the top of the second floor staircase when Baker approach the room where Wone’s body was found. He noted that when he asked Ward what happened, Ward ignored him and retreated into his bedroom.
Upon entering the room where Wone was lying lifeless on a pull-out sofa bed, Baker said, he was startled at what he saw. Wone was lying “flat on his back” with three stab wounds to his chest with almost no blood on his body or on the bed, he said.
This was highly unusual for a stabbing, Baker said, based on his experience in responding to hundreds of stabbings during his 14 years as a paramedic.
He said Price was sitting on the bed next to Wone’s lifeless body. There was no towel on Wone’s wounds and Price’s hands had no signs of blood, which would be expected if he had been holding the towel on Wone’s chest.
Baker said he later observed a light streak of blood on Wone’s abdomen that appeared as if it had been “wiped.”
Kirschner said in his opening argument that investigators found the towel in the room, but it had only a small amount of blood on it. He noted that Price told police he found one of the knives from the men’s kitchen in the room where Wone was stabbed.
Authorities later reported that cotton fibers found on the knife indicated that blood had been taken from Wone’s wounds and wiped onto the knife with a towel to make it look like the murder weapon. Although fibers found on the knife matched that of a towel, no fibers were found that matched the shirt Wone wore and which had been pierced by the knife used to kill him, Kirschner said in his opening argument.
Police evidence experts and findings from an autopsy on Wone also showed the blood on the knife covered the entire blade, even though the depth of the wounds on Wone’s chest indicated that blood would not have covered the full length of the blade, Kirschner said.
Kirschner has said this was further evidence that the men tampered with the crime scene to mislead police. He noted that a cutlery set found in Ward’s bedroom had one knife missing. When investigators obtained a duplicate knife from the manufacturer, they found it matched the size and depth of Wone’s wounds better than the bloody knife found at the scene, further suggesting that someone other than an intruder and someone known to the defendants was responsible for the murder.
Defense attorneys disputed these assertions in their opening arguments, saying their own expert witnesses would testify that the cotton fibers on the knife could not be accurately linked to either the towel or Wone’s shirt. Instead, they said the fibers are found in the ambient air and on all objects and were meaningless as evidence in a stabbing.
What really happened, Schertler said in his opening argument, is that the defendants are telling the truth in saying they were not involved in the murder and that an intruder killed Robert Wone.
D.C. attorney Dale Edwin Sanders, who practices criminal law and is not associated with the case, said the part of the government’s case that appears the strongest is its assertion that no evidence exists to show an intruder entered the house to kill Wone. He noted that in cases based on circumstantial evidence, sometimes “missing” evidence becomes the key to the case.
“It’s largely a circumstantial case,” he said. “There’s no smoking gun, but the government has presented a neatly interwoven mosaic of 100 pieces of evidence that all fit together.”
Other observers at the trial said the defense was ready to discredit or downplay the government’s evidence with the aim of establishing enough doubt that Leibovitz would have to find the men not guilty.
Attorneys on both sides have predicted the trial would last about five weeks.
District of Columbia
D.C. Council member honored by LGBTQ homeless youth group
Doni Crawford receives inaugural Wanda Alston Legacy Award
About 100 people turned out Tuesday evening, April 7, for a presentation by D.C.’s Wanda Alston Foundation of its inaugural Wanda Alston Legacy Award to D.C. Council member Doni Crawford (I-At-Large) for her support for the foundation’s mission to support homeless LGBTQ youth.
Among those who attended the event was Japer Bowles, director of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, who delivered an official proclamation issued by Bowser declaring April 7, 2026 “A Day of Remembrance for Wanda Alston.”
Alston, a beloved women’s and LGBTQ rights activist, served as the city’s first director of the then newly created Office of LGBTQ Affairs under then-Mayor Anthony Williams from 2004 until her death by murder on March 16, 2005.
To the shock and dismay of fellow LGBTQ rights advocates, police and court records reported Alston, 45, was stabbed to death inside her Northeast D.C. house by a man high on crack cocaine who lived nearby and who stole her credit cards and car. The perpetrator, William Martin Parrott, 38, was arrested by D.C. police the next day and later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He was sentenced in July 2005 to 24 years in prison.
Crawford was among those attending the award event who reflected on Alston’s legacy and outspoken advocacy for LGBTQ and feminist causes.
“I am deeply humbled and honored to receive this inaugural award,” Crawford told the Washington Blade at the conclusion of the event. “I think the world of Wanda Alston. She has set such a great foundation for me and other Council members to build on,” she said.
“Her focus on inclusivity and intersectionality is really important as we approach this work,” Crawford added. “And it’s going to guide my work at the Council every day.”
Crawford was appointed to the D.C. Council in January of this year to replace then Council member Kenyan McDuffie (I-At-Large), who resigned to run for D.C. mayor as a Democrat. She is being challenged by four other independent candidates in a June 16 special election for the Council seat.
Under the city’s Home Rule Charter written and approved by Congress, the seat is one of two D.C. Council at-large seats that cannot be held by a “majority party” candidate, meaning a Democrat.
A statement released by the Alston Foundation last month announcing Crawford’s selection for the Wanda Alston Legacy Award praised Crawford’s record of support for its work on behalf of LGBTQ youth.
“From behind the scenes to now serving as an At-Large Council member, she has fought fearlessly for affordable housing, LGBTQ+ funding priorities, and racial justice,” the statement says. “Council member Crawford’s leadership reflects the same courage and conviction that defined Wanda’s legacy.”
Organizers of the event noted that it was held on what would have been Wanda Alston’s 67th birthday.
“Today’s legacy reception was a smashing success,” said Cesar Toledo, the Alston Foundation’s executive director. “Not only did we come together to celebrate Wanda Alston on her birthday, but we also were able to raise over $10,000 for our homeless LGBTQ youth here in D.C.,” Toledo told the Blade.
“In addition to that, we celebrated and we acknowledged a rising star in our community,” he said. “And that is At-Large Council member Doni Crawford, who we named the inaugural Wanda Alston Legacy Award recipient.”
At the request of D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large) the Council voted unanimously on Jan. 20, 2026, to appoint Crawford to the Council seat being vacated by McDuffie.
Council records show she joined McDuffie’s Council staff in 2022 as a policy adviser and later became his legislative director before McDuffie appointed her as staff director for the Council’s Committee on Business and Economic Development for which McDuffie served as chair.
District of Columbia
Police mental health struggles gain growing attention
‘My body begins to manifest physically, through depression, stress’
When Scott Silverii began his career as a police officer, he faced daily exposure to traumatic incidents with little guidance or support, particularly in distressed neighborhoods where officers were expected to respond decisively under pressure.
“When I started, the only thing they offered was to suck it up and get over it,” Silverii said. “Any indication that you were hurt meant that you were weak, and if you were weak, it meant you could not be trusted.”
Years later, when Silverii became a police chief, he chose a different approach. Rather than reinforcing silence around trauma, he made mental health support a visible part of his leadership.
“In every critical incident that we had, I would bring the critical incident stress debriefing team in — and I would participate in it,” Silverii said. “I wanted to promote it from the top. That’s what it’s going to continue to take to change the culture.”
Silverii’s experience reflects a broader reality in law enforcement. Across the country, police officers face ongoing mental health challenges linked to repeated exposure to violent crime scenes, fatal accidents, and human suffering — experiences that most civilians never encounter. Long shifts and the responsibility of protecting the public have long been documented to further intensify emotional strain, particularly when officers fear making mistakes with serious consequences.
Silverii, former Thibodaux, La., chief of police and current National Law Enforcement Initiative Manager at Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), said coping mechanisms in the past were often unhealthy.
“A lot of officers, they would drink — sometimes prescription drug use, just different ways,” of coping, he said. Today, he said, the trauma can linger long after an incident: “…you become affected by the trauma. It doesn’t have to happen to you. But when officers respond to a crash, you’re involved… You carry this trauma.”
In some cases, he says, the impact resurfaces every year. “My body begins to manifest physically, through depression, through stress… once I realize it’s the anniversary, I can start dealing with it,” he said.
For decades, police culture discouraged officers from seeking mental health support, often treating emotional distress as a weakness rather than an occupational hazard. In recent years, however, departments have begun expanding access to counseling, peer-support programs, and crisis-intervention training.
In Baltimore, a shift in police culture is tackling the long-standing “shrug it off” mentality toward officer mental health. The Baltimore Police Department’s Officer Safety and Wellness Section, started in 2018, changed how the agency handles trauma, depression, and substance abuse by treating these issues as medical needs rather than disciplinary failures.
A core component of the program is its confidential alcohol addiction treatment, which has seen more than 250 officers voluntarily sign themselves in without fear of termination. This proactive approach has led to a dramatic drop in internal interventions — falling from 250 in 2018 to 48 in 2024 — alongside a decrease in citizen complaints and use-of-force incidents.
The need for such programs is underscored by national data from the Police1 2024 State of the Industry report, which found that 76% of officers cite a lack of time due to heavy workloads as the primary barrier to maintaining their health. More than 50% of respondents report that a significant stigma still surrounds seeking mental health services. Perhaps most telling — 12% of officers nationwide report having no access to mental health resources at all, and 33% have considered calling themselves out of service due to emotional distress or exhaustion.
Chris Asplen, executive director of the National Criminal Justice Association, is a former Washington prosecutor who handled child abuse and other high-stakes cases. He said the emotional weight of the work eventually led him to step away after becoming a parent.
“It became too mentally and emotionally difficult after I had my own child,” Asplen said.
Asplen said his understanding of trauma was also shaped in part by his upbringing. Raised by a parent who struggled with mental illness, he described growing up feeling overlooked. “My father’s mental health issues made me essentially invisible to him,” he said — an experience that later informed how he approached victims in the justice system.
Asplen also pointed to disparities in how mental health crises are handled. His family’s middle-class background, he said, afforded protections and support not available to many others. “Mental health issues for people who are not white and middle class are often treated as criminal matters,” he said.
Experts warn that when mental health challenges go unaddressed, they can affect officers’ judgment, job performance, and interactions with the public. In response, lawmakers and communities have begun exploring preventive approaches. In 2023, Congress passed the De-escalation Act, providing funding for training focused on crisis response, de-escalation, and officer wellness.
In addition to legislative efforts, some communities are turning to violence intervention programs aimed at reducing harm before police are required to respond. One such organization, Roca, was founded in Massachusetts in 1988 and has operated in Baltimore since 2018. According to the organization’s impact data, 87% of its participants have had no new incarcerations after entering the program for at least 24 months.
Police officers in Baltimore and several other cities have been trained by Roca’s nonprofit coaching arm, the Roca Impact Institute, to use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to regulate their emotions and understand the impact of trauma on officers and community members. The training reduced stress, loss of temper and use of force incidents, according to the institute.
A 2024 report by the D.C. Office of the Attorney General showed the city’s violence intervention program’s efforts contributed to an 18% decrease in shootings and a 26% decrease in gun homicides across its target neighborhoods in 2023. Based on the national Cure Violence Global model, the programs treat violence as a public health epidemic through the use of what it calls “credible messengers” to de-escalate conflicts.
But a Washington Post investigation published Feb. 3 found excessive spending that City Administrator Kevin Donahue called a “completely inappropriate use of public money.” A week later, the publication reported that two DC violence interrupters were charged with murder in the death of a Baltimore man in a DC nightclub in 2023.
When done correctly, these programs can offer a secondary benefit by reducing the volume of high-stress calls handled by law enforcement. Advocates say such approaches can lessen the emotional toll on officers by preventing traumatic encounters altogether.
“If we can reduce the amount of trauma that occurs at the scene,” Asplen said, “then we’re a lot further along.”
(Carl Barbett is a senior at Bard High School Early College DC, one of Youthcast Media Group’s journalism class partners. This story was produced under the mentorship of Edith Mwangi, a Kenyan multimedia journalist based in D.C. with a background in international reporting and politics.)
District of Columbia
Key lifestyle changes can help patients cope with diabetes
Small daily choices make a big difference in one’s health
One Tuesday evening after my family finished dinner, I noticed my grandmother sitting on the couch, sweating more than usual. The family room wasn’t hot, and she hadn’t eaten a lot of salty food that day, so seeing her like that made me worry.
My grandmother, Shirley Mitchell, is a 72-year-old who lives with Type 2 diabetes, and moments like this, when her blood sugar gets dangerously low, can happen without warning. Watching her reach for her glucose tablets reminded me how serious her condition is.
Each day, millions of people living with diabetes face a choice that can either play a role in protecting their health or putting it at risk– namely, what they eat. Nationally, 12 percent of the population lives with diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In D.C., nine percent of residents are known to have diabetes, with likely many more undiagnosed, said Dr. Marcy Oppenheimer, a family medicine doctor who practices in Northeast D.C.
“It’s super common, especially as you get older,” she said, estimating that 15 to 20 percent of her patients have diabetes, and another 20 percent have pre-diabetes, where blood sugar is higher than normal but not yet at the level to trigger a diabetes diagnosis.
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a long-term condition that affects how the body controls blood sugar. When blood sugar levels are not managed properly, they can rise too high and cause serious damage to the body. This happens when the body does not make enough insulin or cannot use insulin correctly, which means sugar stays in the blood instead of being moved into the body’s cells where it’s needed for energy.
Having high levels of sugar in the blood over long periods of time causes damage to just about every body system, said Oppenheimer. “It can pretty much cause any part of your body to start failing over the long term, if you have high sugar for a long time.”
While food isn’t the only factor that affects diabetes — genetics play an even bigger role — certain foods can worsen diabetes by spiking the amount of sugar in the blood.
What foods should you eat if you have diabetes?
Healthy food choices play a major role in helping people with diabetes manage their condition. Foods such as vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins like fish and chicken, beans, nuts, and healthy fats digest slowly and provide steady energy. These foods help prevent sudden spikes in blood sugar, which are dangerous for people with diabetes.
Many people with diabetes learn that planning meals, watching portion sizes, and choosing healthier options can make a big difference in how they feel each day.
“I had to slow down and pay attention to what I ate because everything affected my sugar levels,” says Mitchell.
Even small choices, like drinking a lot of soda or eating too much white bread, can cause blood sugar levels to rise quickly, said Oppenheimer.
Which foods can increase the risk or harm of diabetes?
Unhealthy food choices like these can seriously harm those with diabetes. Sugary foods such as candies, cake, cookies, and sweetened drinks cause blood sugar to spike quickly. Processed foods, white bread, and fast food are also harmful because they can be high in unhealthy saturated fats and refined carbohydrates.
When these foods are eaten often, they can lead to weight gain and they make diabetes harder to control and increase the risk of long-term health problems, said Oppenheimer.
Over time, poor eating habits that lead to prolonged high blood sugar can lead to heart disease, nerve damage, kidney problems, and even vision loss.
“Basically, diabetes is an all-body condition or disease, and it just varies from person to person in how it affects you,” said Oppenheimer. “If you have uncontrolled diabetes, it definitely has a negative impact on both your daily life and your long-term health.”
Anyone with diabetes can develop serious complications like blindness — or diabetic retinopathy — and the risk factors are higher for Black, Latino and American Indian or Alaska Native groups, according to the CDC.
What you or a loved one can do to manage diabetes
Mitchell warns others not to ignore the impact of food on their health. “Don’t ignore your health,” she says. “Fix your problems early before they get worse.”
Making lifestyle changes is key because, after all, diabetes changes your entire lifestyle, says Mitchell. “Walking throughout the day has helped me feel better.”
Daniel Dow, a middle school coach at Friendship Blow Pierce Elementary & Middle School in Northeast D.C. who also has diabetes agreed with Mitchell.
“Don’t wait to change your habits, start right away,” he says. “I learned that what I eat before practice affects my sugar for the whole day.”
Mitchell’s and Dow’s experiences show that small daily choices can make a big difference in one’s health. By paying attention to what you eat and how your body responds, you can prevent problems before they get worse. Starting healthy habits early can help you stay strong, focused, and in control of your well-being.
(This article was written by a student in the journalism program at Bard High School Early College DC. This work is part of a partnership between the Washington Blade Foundation and Youthcast Media Group, funded through the FY26 Community Development Grant from the Office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.)
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Cuba bajo presión y sin respuestas
Tenn. lawmakers pass transgender “watch list” bill
