Who Killed Robert Wone?, the new Peacock original documentary, tells the story of the promising young lawyer found stabbed to death in his friend’s Washington, D.C. rowhouse in August 2006, and the crime draws comparisons to jigsaw puzzles, M.C. Escher drawings, and even the Clue board game. Covering one of the most mysterious and unsettling cases in modern D.C. history, this two-part whodunit about is the latest addition to Peacock’s true crime offerings, and is unlike anything the platform has put out thus far. Which is understandably what helped draw filmmaker Jared P. Scott in.
CinemaBlend spoke with Scott, the director and executive producer of Who Killed Robert Wone, ahead of its streaming debut. Our conversation touched on the nature of the crime in question, as well as the multi-year criminal investigation into what actually happened the night of August 2, 2006 that led to charges against Joe Price, Victor Zaborsky, and Dylan Ward, though not for the alleged murder of their longtime friend.
When asked what initially drew him to the case of Robert Wone, and why he thought it would make for such an engaging true crime documentary, Scott explained the “stranger than fiction moment” that he couldn’t get out of his head:
As soon as you hear the start of this about how a promising young man goes to stay over at his friend's house on August 2nd - it's 79 minutes later, one of his friends calls 911 saying he's dead. You're like, 'That's kind of a short timeframe.' And then the detectives arrive, and all three men are in white bathrobes. So the idea, that's kind of a stranger than fiction moment. As soon as I had that visual of three guys sitting on a couch with these white terry cloth robes, I was like, 'Oh, God, this is like an amazing start to a show,' and I think from there, there's just a number of bizarre, perplexing, and baffling pieces to this.
The visual of those three men wearing seemingly identical robes, and appearing to be freshly showered after their friend was killed a short time earlier, is something that comes up time and time again throughout the two-part documentary. Oddly enough, it’s not the strangest aspect of Who Killed Robert Wone? — not in the slightest — but that's for another time.
Glenn Kirschner, the federal prosecutor eventually charged the three men with obstruction of justice charges, referred to the case throughout the doc as his “white whale” that got away. Meanwhile, the defense's attorney Bernie Grim described the case as being one that results in more questions than answers. Touching on the ever-evolving nature of the unsolved murder case, Jared P. Scott remarked:
To use the puzzle analogy, I mean, it's like you're piecing a few together and then a puzzle piece comes along and it doesn't fit. And you have to undo those other pieces you put together. So it can become very circular and very maddening, and there's a labyrinth-esque quality to this.
But as Jared P. Scott said during our conversation, it might be best to go into Who Killed Robert Wone? knowing as little as possible about the case besides the interest-grabbing logline: four men went to bed one night, and 79 minutes later, one was dead, and the other three were suspects. But if you’d like a brief glimpse into what the documentary covers, the Who Killed Robert Wone? trailer is worth a watch.
Who Killed Robert Wone? is currently streaming in full for anyone with a Peacock Premium subscription. And don’t forget to check out our 2023 TV schedule for all the latest on all the upcoming shows coming out this spring.
