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 approves increased funding for Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs
Increase attached to 2027 budget bill
The D.C. Council on July 14 gave final approval for the city’s fiscal year 2027 budget that includes an amendment calling for increasing the number and size of funding grants that the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs provides for local organizations providing services for the LGBTQ community.
The amendment, called the “LGBTQ Community Grant Amendment Act of 2026,” was introduced earlier this year by D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only gay member.
The D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition called the Parker amendment “a historic measure that establishes the District’s most sustainable model for a vehicle for investing in LGBTQ communities.”
The Council approved the version of the FY 2027 budget bill with the attached Parker amendment in its first of two required votes on June 9. Shortly after voting unanimously to give final approval of an earlier version of the two-part budget measure on July 7 that includes the Parker amendment, the Council sent the bill to Mayor Muriel Bowser for her signature.
Bowser has expressed strong opposition to several provisions in the $22 billion budget measure passed by the Council that are unrelated to the Parker amendment regarding the Office of LGBTQ Affairs. The mayor has yet to say whether she will sign, veto, or choose not to sign the bill.
The latter option would allow the bill to become law if Congress does not choose to overturn it during its required 30-day legislative review period for all D.C. bills. Political observers believe the Council will vote to override a veto if Bowser chooses to veto the bill.
When contacted by the Washington Blade on July 22 to determine where the mayor stands on the budget bill, mayoral spokesperson Daniel Gleick said only, there was “no update on the budget just yet.”
Among other things, the Parker amendment calls for the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs to issue a $980,000 grant in FY 2027 to a private, nonprofit organization in partnership with the office “for the purpose of supporting programs that promote the welfare of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning community.”
It says the organization selected would also initiate its own fundraising effort to expand the amount of funds beyond the amount the office would provide, enabling it to provide larger grants to a greater number of local LGBTQ organizations.
“The legislation arrives at a critical moment, as LGBTQ-serving organizations face unprecedented uncertainty,” the D.C. Budget Coalition said in its comment on the Parker amendment. “Growing demand for services is colliding with shrinking resources, federal attacks on LGBTQ programs, and ongoing threats to local funding streams,” the coalition’s statement says.
In what some observers have called a highly controversial action; the budget bill approved by the Council reverses and restores millions of dollars in budget cuts proposed by Bowser in the budget she submitted to the Council earlier this year.
Among other things, the Council’s budget preserves the current level of funding for housing vouchers, childcare, paid family leave, and other programs slated to be cut in the mayor’s proposed budget, according to a report by the Washington Post.
Bowser points out that the Council approved budget bill calls for using $150 million from the city’s reserve fund, which she and others have said could put the city in jeopardy in future years. The mayor has said the cuts were needed to prevent a major funding shortfall brought about by the action by Republicans in Congress to cut the city’s budget by over a billion dollars.
Rehoboth Beach
Craig Thier says experience, civility are key to Rehoboth’s future
Mayoral candidate cites finance background as key strength
(Editor’s note: This is the third installment in a three-part series profiling the candidates for mayor of Rehoboth Beach, Del.: Commissioners Suzanne Goode, Susan Stewart, and Craig Thier; a fourth candidate, William Raak, filed to join the race but has not responded to multiple Blade inquiries. Visit washingtonblade.com for previous installments.)
Rehoboth Beach City Commissioner Craig Thier says his experience in public service and finance has prepared him to lead the city as residents elect a new mayor on Aug. 8.
Thier, who has owned property in Rehoboth Beach since 2002 and has lived there full time for a little more than five years, said he first sought public office after becoming concerned about the city’s financial planning.
“A couple of years ago, when I decided to run, the city raised taxes and fees across the board unnecessarily. They had a broken budgeting process,” said Thier.
Elected as a city commissioner in August 2024, Thier draws on a background in corporate finance and consulting, He said he could improve the city’s budgeting practices.
“I felt that I could bring that experience in and help the city improve that broken budgeting process,” he said.
Thier said one of his accomplishments as commissioner has been helping transition the city from annual budgeting to long-term financial planning.
“Within the first year, I worked with the city administration to transition us from an annual budgeting process that was really broken to a multi-year planning process,” he said.
If elected mayor, Thier said his first priority would be improving relationships among members of the Board of Commissioners.
“First would be just civility. There is a lot of infighting among some of the commissioners,” said Thier.
He says that he wants to focus on “getting people to work together so that we can get back to the business of the city.”
Thier said disagreements are inevitable but believes they should be handled more respectfully.
“We have to return to civility. People need to respect each other, people need to respect the right of other individuals to express their thoughts and opinions,” he said.
“That lack of civility absolutely has impacted our ability to get the business of the city done.”
He also said meetings should remain focused on the agenda even when commissioners disagree.
“Everyone’s got to tone things down a little bit,” Thier said. “Just because we may not agree with someone’s position doesn’t mean that that position isn’t valid.”
He added that after discussions conclude, commissioners should be willing to accept the outcome.
“People need to be prepared to move on if they don’t have the support,” he said.
Thier pointed to his previous elected experience as another qualification for the mayor’s office.
“I spent 12 years on a school board, five years as president, and I’m finishing up my second year here [as commissioner]. I believe that I have far more experience than anyone else.”
“I’ve been able to accomplish things because of my experience, and I’ve been doing this a long time,” he added.
Thier also said maintaining Rehoboth Beach’s perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index would remain a priority if he is elected.
“It is absolutely a priority for the city,” he said.
“I think it’s one of the great things about the city of Rehoboth Beach is the diversity that’s there, and that we’ve been a very welcoming community.”
Thier credited city staff for helping achieve the city’s perfect score and said he would continue working with LGBTQ+ organizations, including CAMP Rehoboth.
“I have relationships with these organizations. I would continue to foster these relationships,” he said. “It’s critical that we’re doing the things to maintain this perfect score.”
Thier also expressed support for the city’s partnership with Clear Space Theatre Company as it works toward constructing a permanent performing arts venue downtown.
“Clear Space has been part of the community for more than 20 years. I think they’re an important part of the community.”
He said the theater contributes to Rehoboth’s identity as a tourist destination.
“The tourists come to Rehoboth for the whole package: the beach, the boardwalk, our restaurants, our retailers, Clear Space. They’re an important part of that whole package.”
The election will take place on Aug. 8 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. at the Rehoboth Beach Convention Center.
District of Columbia
Is the Metro safe for riders?
WMATA says crime dropped 37 percent on system in 2025
I was inside Benning Road train station in April waiting for my train with two friends on the way to school. It usually took me 25-30 minutes to get from Benning Road Station to school at Congress Heights. As I waited for the train, I kept noticing that every train that got to five minutes away would disappear from the Metro screen before it got to my stop.
I found out from one of my friends that a Metro work vehicle had crashed into a train at Metro Center and that all trains were now delayed. While my friends were able to call their family to pick them up, I had no such luxury. The train was my only option. It took me more than an hour to get to school. I missed my first period because of it and had to make up my work later in the day. I was marked absent because when a student misses one class, they’re marked absent for the day and an email is sent to their parents. I felt irritated knowing that I had to deal with all of these problems that weren’t even my fault due to an incident that happened on a different side of town.
The incident at Metro Center isn’t the only incident that I have experienced on the subway. I have experienced kids fighting and almost pushing me on the tracks, massive delays because a woman was passed out on the train and Metro police pulling out their assault rifles and arresting someone in the station, which caused people to panic and start running.
I later learned the crash that led to me being late to school caused 11 injuries to people who were on the train, according to media reports. And the Metro has experienced other dangerous incidents this year. A man was beaten so badly on Cinco de Mayo that he needed staples in his head and another man was beaten to death by a stranger at the Addison Road station.
However, I’ve never experienced any incident that has led to me getting hurt, nor actually seen anyone get hurt.
So, is the Metro safe?
Metro experienced the lowest crime rate in its history in 2025, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said. The crime rate decreased by 37 percent in 2025 compared to 2024.
Last year, the Metro Transit Police Department increased enforcement efforts department-wide by more than 25 percent, Metro said. WMATA said it is in the process of installing upgraded video systems on our 6000 and 7000-series rail cars, which make up most of the cars in the system. This new camera system allows for live video access to rail cars from Metro’s Integrated Command and Communications Center.
Asked if he felt unsafe using the Metro, Dr. Aruna Rajam, a teacher at Bard High School Early College DC and George Washington University, recalled being on the train with a man who was smoking weed and yelling.
“It didn’t turn physically violent, but it was alarming and made me feel like the situation could go sideways quickly,” said Rajam, who takes the train to both of his jobs, traveling day and night.
Incidents like these are what make Rajam feel unsafe occasionally when he is riding the subway at night: “Late at night — like my 8:45 ride from Foggy Bottom to Springfield — it’s a different atmosphere.”
Jayden Payne, a rising sophomore at Bard, worries even more.
“There was a man who seemed intoxicated, moving around his phone, pretending it was a gun-all up in ladies’ faces,” he said in an interview.
When asked if he would recommend the subway to others, he gave a firm “no” due to all of the incidents that he has heard about that have happened on the Metro.
Erin Bray, who graduated from Bard in June, recalled an incident when a man brought a gun on the train when she was on it. Asked if she felt safe on the subway, Bray said: “No, because there’s not enough security and people keep bringing [weapons] on there.”
Metro said it launched a Safety Risk Reduction Plan to improve riders’ safety and employs several other safety tactics, including Safe Passage patrols to help students in D.C. get to and from school safely.
While all of the people interviewed said that they saw or experienced an uncomfortable incident, Metro said it is increasing its security and safety protocols.
WMATA data coincides with what one of my interviewees said about his experience on Metro.
“I feel safer now than I felt riding the Metro today than I did 10 years ago,” Dr. Samuel Slattery, a social science teacher at Bard High School Early College, said.
He spoke of his experience with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority subway in Philadelphia in comparison: “… That’s what an unsafe train system feels like,” Slattery said.
The week before he was interviewed in May, Slattery said he was on SEPTA and there was a woman “eating beans off the floor of the train,” a homeless man “passed out in the middle of the train,” and a mentally ill woman yelling in his and other passengers’ faces that, “‘Jesus was watching her’ and the rest of us were in contact with demons.” This incident agitated Slattery so much that he said, “Screw this” to his friend and decided to pay extra for an Uber.
Metro riders who want to report an incident or safety concern can call Metro Transit Police (MTPD) at 202-961-2121 or text MYMTPD (696783). Metro also posts a daily Crime Blotter on its website where the public can see the calls MTPD responded to on a given day. The Crime Blotter can be found here: https://www.wmata.com/about/transit-police/crime-stats.cfm
Christian Jennings, a 2026 graduate of Bard High School Early College DC, is a rising freshman at North Carolina State University, where he plans to major in nuclear engineering. He worked with journalist-instructors at Youthcast Media Group on this article.
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