Police Say Crime Scene Was Altered

Three men were at home when Robert Wone was killed Aug. 2. (Mel Barnhart, Radio Free Asia - Mel Barnhart, Radio Free Asia)

Two weeks after a prominent lawyer was killed in a Washington townhouse, D.C. police are still searching the home for clues, and they believe crime scene evidence was cleaned, according to court documents.

The body of Robert Wone, 32, general counsel for Radio Free Asia, was found Aug. 2 in a Swann Street NW townhouse. He had been stabbed three times in the chest. The house is owned by two men who are well known in the gay community. They and a third resident at home the night of Wone's killing have hired criminal defense lawyers.

Police said Wone was spending the night at the townhouse near Dupont Circle because he had worked late and did not want to drive home to Virginia, where he lived with his wife. She has declined to speak publicly since his death.

Wone was a college friend of one of the townhouse's owners, Joseph Price, a lawyer.

In an affidavit to search Price's office at the law firm of Arent Fox, police assert that the scene had been altered.

"Technicians were able to determine that the crime scene had been tampered with, including that the area where the victim's body was located had been cleaned," said the document, which was first reported in Legal Times.

Police said they also were struck by what they did not find.

"A lot of evidence we should have seen at the house, we didn't see," Capt. C.V. Morris, head of the police department's violent crime unit, said yesterday.

Police used chemicals and an artificial light to detect trace blood on the walls, floors, door frame and sofa bed near where Wone's body was found, according to the affidavit.

Police took a computer from Price's office, looking for e-mails to and from Wone, the document says.

Three men, including Price, were at the house when Wone was killed. The second man is Victor Zaborsky, who owns the home with Price, according to property records. The third is Dylan Ward, who works for a software company in Virginia.

Kathleen E. Voelker, an attorney for Price and Zaborsky, did not return a phone call yesterday.