The death of Washington D.C. political insider John P. "Jack" Wheeler is one of the cases profiled on Unsolved Mysteries Volume 2, but one thing episode 1, "Washington Insider Murder" omits is what happened to Wheeler's wives. Netflix is currently producing a revival of the show (it premiered on NBC in January 1987) that uses interviews and reenactments to present the details of cases that range from murders and missing persons to unexplained paranormal phenomenons. Wheeler's (aged 66) body was found at the Cherry Island landfill in Wilmington, Delaware on December 31, 2010, and his death was ruled a homicide. This December marks the 10th anniversary of Wheeler's death, and since the episode began airing, conspiracy theories regarding what happened to Jack Wheeler have flooded the internet.
At the time of Wheeler's death, the case garnered national attention due to the high profile of the victim, who was a former Pentagon official and served as a presidential aid to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. A veteran of the Vietnam war, Wheeler, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, played an instrumental role in the erection of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, serving as chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. After a public service career, Wheeler took a job in the cybersecurity division at Mitre Corporation, a Virginia-based non-profit organization.
Jack Wheeler spent Christmas with his wife, Katherine Klyce, at their New York home. He departed for Washington on December 28, 2010, and video footage coupled with eye witness accounts paint a confounding picture of Wheeler's actions in the days leading up to his death. Wheeler arrived in New Castle, Delaware, on the evening of the 28th. Surveillance footage placed him at a local pharmacy on the 29th and at a parking garage in Wilmington, where he looked distressed and disheveled. The last footage of Wheeler alive showed him walking by a nearby hotel on December 30th. His body was traced to a dumpster in Newark, Delaware. Further convoluting the case's facts was an ongoing investigation involving a house across the street from the Wheeler's home in New Castle. Someone set off two smoke bombs, and police found Wheeler's cell phone at the scene (Unsolved Mysteries leaves out Wheeler was the prime suspect.) The episode "Washington Insider Murder" has reignited the general public's interest in Wheeler's case and personal life.
Elisa Wheeler
On October 17, 2020, Heavy, the online news and entertainment website, offered an "update" on Elisa Wheeler, Jack Wheeler's first wife, and mother of their twins John Parsons Wheeler IV and Katherine Marie Wheeler. The piece offers no recent information about Elisa Wheeler, who does not appear on Unsolved Mysteries, nor has she spoken publically or offered any theories regarding her ex-husband's death. In 1989, The Washington Post printed a lengthy profile about Jack Wheeler and Jan C. Scruggs's struggles to see Scruggs's vision of a memorial to commemorate the 57,000 Americans who died in Vietnam realized. The article revealed that Jack and Elisa's children were both born with birth defects and briefly chronicled the couple's harrowing first two years as parents.
In 1997, the Daily Press reported that Elisa Wheeler, an ordained minister, would be replacing Rev. Richard Bardusch as the part-time rector's associate at St. John's Episcopal Church in Hampton, VA (Bardusch resigned after he disclosed he was gay, causing dissent among parishioners.) Elisa was a 1981 graduate of the Virginia Theological Seminary.
Katherine "Kate" Wheeler spoke about her father to The Washington Post in 2017: "For me, he will always be primarily my father. But I am very aware that he made a big, positive impact on the world beyond me, and in some way, that has made his death easier.”
Katherine Klyce
In the immediate aftermath of Wheeler's death, Klyce was visibly front and center in the efforts to find her husband's killer, but as interest in the case waned, and no suspects emerged, Klyce was left with her grief and no answers. Klyce is featured prominently on the Unsolved Mysteries episode along with her daughter Meriwether Schas. Klyce recalls, "Being married to Jack means... it's never dull." She claims Jack adored his children from his previous marriage and treated her children as if they were his own. "Oh, I loved him with all my heart. I really did."
In a 2011 interview, Klyce told Slate that she had been upset with her husband because he chose to return to work early — they had planned to spend the week between Christmas and New Year's together. This is addressed in the Netflix episode as well, with Klyce commenting that she had hoped they would see a movie with the children. Despite the disagreement, she didn't sense anything unusual. "He seemed like Jack," she told Slate. In an article published in The Washington Post in 2017, Klyce said, looking back, she believed her husband was in the midst of a bipolar episode at the time of his death. On Unsolved Mysteries, she comments that this may explain his erratic behavior at the parking garage.
Klyce, who founded an importing business in 2004, became frustrated by law enforcement's handling of the case. Klyce, her children, Wheeler's children, and his sister and mother offered a $25,000 reward for information that led to the killer's arrest. In 2017, Klyce increased the reward to $50,000. Klyce told The Washington Post she was convinced Wheeler set off the smoke bombs across the street from their New Castle home (Klyce doesn't directly implicate her late husband on the Netflix series.) In the premiere of Unsolved Mysteries Volume 2, which tackles six new cases, Klyce states neither she nor Wheeler was happy about the construction of a new home on a parcel of private land in historic Battery Park, but according to Klyce, her husband became "fired up," and she thought his bipolar disorder was making him behave emotionally and illogically.
Klyce also shared with The Washington Post that computer hacking might have played a part in her husband's death. Wheeler became obsessed with investigating Delaware officials and agencies convinced that the state was rife with corruption, which he based on the construction of the Battery Park house. Klyce voiced suspicions that Wheeler's attempted arson or hacking got him into trouble. "I think he might have pissed someone off, and I think his movements reflected that. He was trying to stay out of sight because someone might have been following him.” Klyce has remained steadfast that Wheeler's death wasn't just a random act of violence. In 2016, Klyce attended the 50th reunion for the West Point Class of 1966 to represent her late husband.