Local

Wone’s widow takes the stand

Trial begins with wife’s testimony, chilling 911 tape

Published

16 years ago

May 19, 2010

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.

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District of Columbia

Community mourns passing of D.C. trans rights advocate SaVanna Wanzer

Acclaimed activist credited with founding D.C. Trans Pride

Published

2 days ago

April 25, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

SaVanna Wanzer (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Three D.C.-based LGBTQ advocacy organizations released statements on April 24 announcing that highly acclaimed D.C. transgender rights advocate SaVanna Wanzer has passed away.

A family member told the Blade that Wanzer died on Friday, April 24 of natural causes. She was 63.

Among other things, the advocacy groups noted that Wanzer is credited with being the lead founder of the D.C. Trans Pride and D.C. Black Trans Pride celebrations and events.

“As a trailblazing transgender activist, educator, and founder of D.C. Trans Pride, D.C. Black Trans Pride, and May Is All About Trans, SaVanna created and led transformative transgender programming during D.C. Black Pride that ensured trans voices, stories, leadership, and lived experiences were centered, celebrated, and protected,” according to the statement from the Center for Black Equity, an LGBTQ organization.

“Her work was not just about representation, it was about liberation, community, and making sure Black Trans lives were honored in rooms, stages, policies, and movements that too often overlooked them,” the statement says.

In its own statement, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, called Wanzer an icon of D.C.’s Black trans community and longtime leader in many LGBTQ organizations.

“SaVanna Wanzer was a D.C. legend,” Tori Cooper, HRC’s Director of Strategic Outreach and Training, said in the statement. “She advocated for many years for the trans community and for people living with HIV, and served with many organizations, including D.C. Black Pride, Capital Pride, and NMAC [National Minority AIDS Council],” the statement adds.

“I can say firsthand that SaVanna will not just be missed for her work, but for her sisterly wisdom and her sense of humor,” Cooper said in the HRC statement.

In its own statement, Capital Pride Alliance, which organizes D.C.’s annual LGBTQ Pride events, called Wanzer a “trailblazer” in her role as founder of Capital Trans Pride, D.C. Black Trans Pride, and the May Is All About Trans events. It says she served on the Capital Pride Board of Directors

“SaVanna was not just an advocate and community organizer but also a knowledge holder and elder voice in our movement,” the statement adds

In an undated statement on its website released before Wanzer’s passing, the D.C. group Food and Friends, which provides home-delivered meals to people in need, including people with HIV and cancer, says Wanzer had been one of its clients in the past. It says she had been living with heart problems since she was 16 and learned she had HIV in 1985 when she went to donate blood while working at the time for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It also says she had diabetes, which was under control.

Among her many involvements, Wanzer also served as a volunteer for D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health, which provides medical services for the LGBTQ community along with other communities. In 2015, Whitman-Walker selected Wanzer as the first recipient of its Robert Fenner Urquhart Award for her volunteer services at Whitman-Walker for more than 20 years.

The Center for Black Equity appeared to capture the sentiment of those in the LGBTQ community who knew Wanzer in the concluding part of its statement on her passing.

“Her vision continues to guide us,” it says. “Her courage continues to inspire us. Her impact will continue to live through every person, every Pride, and every space made more possible because she dared to lead,” it says. “Rest in power, SaVanna Wanzer. Your light remains with us.”

The family member said funeral arrangements are expected to be announced early next week. This story will be updated.

Virginia

Prominent activists join ‘Living History’ panel at Freddie’s Beach Bar

Event organized by owner of new Friends of Dorothy Café in Alexandria

Published

3 days ago

April 24, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Panelists speak at the 'Living History' discussion at Freddie’s Beach Bar on Thursday. (Photo by Kate Pannozzo)

Six prominent LGBTQ community leaders and elders, including a beloved drag performer, talked about their role in advancing the rights of LGBTQ people and their thoughts on how the upcoming generation of LGBTQ youth should get ready to join the movement participated in an April 23 “Living History” panel discussion at Freddie’s Beach Bar.

The event was organized by Dorothy Edwards, who plans to open Friends of Dorothy Café in Alexandria. She said the café will be an LGBTQ community “intergenerational space” that will host events like the one she organized at Freddie’s Beach Bar.

“It will be a space for connection, storytelling, and belonging, especially for LGBTQ+ youth and community members who don’t always have places like that,” she said in a statement announcing the event at Freddie’s.

The six panelists at the Freddie’s event included Kierra Johnson, president of the D.C.-based National LGBTQ Task Force; Freddie Lutz, owner of Freddie’s Beach Bar located in the Crystal City section of Arlington, Va.; Donnell Robinson, who for many years performed in drag as the icon Ella Fitzgerald; Taylor Chandler Walker, a local transgender rights advocate, author and public speaker; Heidi Ellis, coordinator of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; and Leti Gomez, an LGBTQ Latino community advocate and chair of the board of the American LGBTQ+ Museum.

Dr. Ashley Elliott, an LGBTQ community advocate and clinician who also goes by the name Dr. Vivid, served as moderator of the panel discussion, asking each of the panelists a serious of questions before opening the event to questions from the audience.

Among the issues discussed by the panelists was who was “centered” and who was excluded in the earlier years of LGBTQ organizing. Elliot also asked the panelists to address topics such as racism within queer spaces, gender dynamics, and strategies for coalition building between the LGBTQ community and other movements, including civil rights, feminism, and immigrant rights.

Each of the panelists expressed various thoughts on how the LGBTQ rights movement can make changes in response to the questions: “What can we do better?” and “Who is being left out?”

“I’m overwhelmed and so thankful that everyone on this panel said yes and agreed to come,” Edwards told the Washington Blade at the conclusion of the event. “I think every one of those people, including the moderator, was so brilliant and has done such good work for this community,” she said.

Edwards noted that each of the panelists, who have been involved in LGBTQ advocacy work for many years, talked about how they interact with younger LGBTQ people who are just beginning to become involved in activism.

“Truly, it’s an intergenerational conversation, and their wisdom and their words and their experiences can be disseminated to younger generations and people who want to do this work, people who want to fight for our community,” Edwards said.

“I was pleasantly surprised,” Lutz said. “I thought it was a good turnout, and everybody was very enthusiastic and engaged,” he said. “And I think it was great and fabulous.”

Lutz has operated Freddie’s Beach Bar for more than 25 years and has hosted numerous LGBTQ events. A sign above the front entrance door to the popular LGBTQ bar and restaurant says, “Straight Friendly Gay Bar.”

Edwards said the April 23 event was recorded and she will make arrangements for the recording to be released for others to view it. The Blade will post the link in this story when it becomes available.

District of Columbia

Second trans member announces plans to resign from Capital Pride board

Zion Peters cites ‘lack of interest in the Black trans community’

Published

4 days ago

April 23, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Zion Peters, a member of the Capital Pride Alliance Board of Directors who identifies as transgender, told the Washington Blade he plans to resign from the board “due to the lack of interest in the trans community, specifically the Black trans community.”

Peters continued, “Nobody has checked on me in the last two months so that shows their level of unprofessionalism towards their board members and the community as a whole.”

If he resigns, Peters would be the second known trans person to resign from the Capital Pride board since February, when longtime trans activist Taylor Lianne Chandler informed the board of her resignation in a detailed letter that was sent to the Blade by an anonymous source.

Chandler, who served as chair of the Capital Pride Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, and Intersex Committee, stated in her Feb. 24 letter that she resigned from the board out of frustration that the board had failed to address instances of “sexual misconduct” within the Capital Pride organization. The organization’s and the board’s transgender-related policies were not cited in her letter as a reason for her resignation.

The Blade learned of Peters’s plans to resign from an anonymous source who thought Peters had already resigned along with four other board members identified by the anonymous source. The others, who Capital Pride confirmed this week had resigned, include Anthony Musa, Bob Gilchrist, Kaniya Walker, and Dai Nguyen.

Musa and Gilchrist told the Blade they resigned for personal reasons related to their jobs and that they fully support Capital Pride’s work as an organization that coordinates the city’s annual LGBTQ Pride events.

The Blade has been unable to reach Walker and Nguyen to determine their reasons for resigning.

Capital Pride CEO Ryan Bos and Board Chair Anna Jinkerson didn’t respond to a Blade question asking if they knew why Walker or Nguyen resigned.

In response to a request by the Blade for comment on the resignations and the concern raised by Zion Peters about trans-related issues, Bos and Jinkerson sent separate statements elaborating on the organization and the board’s position on various issues.

“We can confirm that the individuals you referenced, except for Zion, no longer serve on the Capital Pride Alliance Board of Directors,” Jinkerson said in her statement.

She added that following the WorldPride festival hosted by D.C. last May and June that was organized by Capital Pride Alliance, the group anticipated a “significant level of board transition,” with many board members reaching the end of their terms. But she said many board members chose to extend their service or apply for an additional term, showing a “powerful reflection of commitment.”

Without commenting on the specific reasons for the resignations of Peterson, Walker, and Nygun, Jinkerson noted, “As with all volunteer leadership roles, transitions occur for a range of personal and professional reasons, and we appreciate those transitions with both understanding and gratitude.”

In his own statement, Bos addressed Capital Pride’s record on transgender issues.

“The Capital Pride Alliance is committed to supporting and uplifting the Trans community through our work with the Trans Coalition under the Diversity of Prides Initiative, our partnership with Earline Budd on the LGBTQ+ Burial Fund with a focus on our Trans siblings, our collaboration with the National Trans Visibility March, and our ongoing investment in programming for Transgender Day of Visibility and Transgender Day of Remembrance,” Bos said in his statement.

“We also recognize there is always continued work to be done, and we always welcome feedback from our community to ensure our commitment remains unwavering,” he said.

At the time of her resignation in February, Chandler said she could not provide specific details of the instances of sexual misconduct to which she referred in her resignation letter, or who allegedly engaged in sexual misconduct, saying she and all other board members had signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement preventing them from disclosing further details.

Board Chair Jinkerson in a statement released at that time said she and the board were aware of Chandler’s concerns but did not specifically address allegations of sexual misconduct.

“When concerns are brought to CPA, we act quickly and appropriately to address them,” she said. “As we continue to grow as an organization, we’re proactively strengthening the policies and procedures that shape our systems, our infrastructure, and the support we provide to our team and partners,” she said.