Aug 18, 2006  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Crime scene evidence inside the Dupont Circle home of a gay rights lawyer and his domestic partner had been “tampered with” in the bedroom where a prominent Asian-American attorney was stabbed to death on Aug. 2, according to a D.C. police affidavit for a search warrant.

The affidavit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, says police evidence technicians discovered that someone had cleaned up a blood-stained bedroom before police arrived at 1509 Swann St., NW, where attorney Robert Wone, 32, was found suffering from three stab wounds to the chest.

Wone was pronounced dead 12:24 a.m. on Aug. 3 at George Washington University Hospital, police said.

No one has been arrested in the case, and the D.C. Police Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit and the FBI are assisting in the investigation.

Police filed the affidavit to obtain a warrant to search the Connecticut Avenue, NW, law firm office of Arent Fox, where gay rights attorney Joseph Price works. Price and his domestic partner, Victor Zaborsky, are the owners and residents of the Swann Street house with roommate Dylan Ward, police and friends of the couple said.

“While processing the crime scene inside 1509 Swann St., NW, 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,” the affidavit says.

A criminal defense attorney hired by Price and Zaborsky told the Legal Times newspaper that an unknown intruder killed Wone after entering the house from a back door. The attorney, Kathleen Voelker, and an attorney representing Ward, said the three men were cooperating fully with police in the investigation, Legal Times reported.

But Capt. C.V. Morris, commander of the police homicide squad, told reporters at an Aug. 11 news briefing that some of the things residents of the house told detectives don’t add up.

“Some of the information we were told, I just don’t believe,” Morris said at the briefing.

Wone, who lived with his wife in Oakton, Va., was a friend of Price’s from the time the two attended the College of William & Mary in Virginia, friends said. Wone had been spending the night in Price and Zaborsky’s townhouse on Swann Street on the night of the killing after having worked late at his D.C. office at Radio Free Asia, where he served as general counsel, co-workers and police said.

The warrant and affidavit state that police seized Price’s law office computer after a preliminary investigation revealed that Price and Wone had exchanged e-mails and phone calls on the day of the killing.

Price has figured prominently in local gay activism through his role as general counsel and board member for Equality Virginia, a statewide gay rights group. Ward served from 2003 to earlier this year as Equality Virginia’s development director.
 

No forced entry

In the first days following the killing, police declined to provide details about who was present in the house at the time of the stabbing and what, if anything, Price, Zaborsky and Ward knew about the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Morris’ expressed skepticism to reporters Aug. 11 about being skeptical about a statement from at least one resident of the house that an intruder killed Wone after entering the house from the back door created a stir in the neighborhood and among gay activists who know Price and Zaborsky.

“There were no signs of any forced entry to the house, either through the back door or any other location,” says the affidavit, which was written by homicide detective William Xanten III. “The knife that was used in this attack, and located on the table next to the victim, was from a set of matching knives located in the kitchen of the house,” the affidavit says.

“There was nothing that appeared out of place, nothing disturbed, nothing ransacked and nothing was taken,” it says.

Zaborsky works as director of marketing and communications for the milk industry trade group, MilkPEP, which is responsible for crating the popular “Got Milk” ad campaign.

Reached at his office, Zaborsky said neither he nor Price would comment.

Co-workers said Wone worked for the past six years as an associate with the prominent Washington, D.C., law firm Covington & Burling before starting work about one month ago as general counsel for Radio Free Asia.

Radio Free Asia is a non-profit organization that broadcasts news to Asian countries that ban independent news organizations.

Police told worried residents of the quiet street where the incident occurred that evidence they have obtained so far indicates the killing was not part of a random burglary or home invasion. ...