Welcome back to the Pathwin Chili, I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. April nineteenth, nineteen eighty
eight, Suncrest, Washington, thirty six year old Doyle Wheeler, a former
police officer from the San Diego Police Department, is attacked inside his home by
a group of armed intruders. They forced Wheeler to write a suicide note.
At gunpoint, Hog tie him and fire a shot which grazes the side of
his head, but he winds up surviving the attack. Evidence seems to link
the intruders to another San Diego police officer named Donovan Jacobs, whom Wheeler had
testified against in a previous murder trial. While Wheeler suspects Jacobs of orchestrating the
attempt on his life, Jacobs believes the incident never even happened and accuses Wheeler
of fabricating the entire story in order to set him up, but the truth
about what actually happened remains unknown. After that, the Path went Chiley,
So today we're going to be doing something a little different from the norm,
as instead of exploring an unsolved murder or missing persons case. We are going
to explore an attempted murder in which the victims survived the attack, or,
depending on who you ask, an elaborate hoax which was orchestrated by the alleged
victim to set up his rival. The story involves a retired San Diego police
officer named Doyle Wheeler who had moved with his family to Washington State before he
was attacked in his home by a group of unidentified intruders who seemingly made affe
failed attempt to murder him. Wheeler immediately suspected that the incident was an elaborate
revenge scheme masterminded by another San Diego police officer named Donovan Jacobs. To say
the least, the two men did not like each other, as Wheeler had
previously taken the stand and said some not so flattering things about Jacobs during a
controversial trial. The case was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, which
aired three decades ago, and was one of the more complex segments they ever
produced. It was a very multi layered story with connections to two of the
biggest criminal cases which took place in California during the nineteen eighties. The Sanya
Seedrome McDonald's massacre and the murder trial of Segon Penn. If you're looking for
the Unsolved Mystery segment on Amazon Prime or YouTube, you will not find it
because it actually only aired on television once and will be discussing the rumored reasons
for this in our next episode. For his part, Donovan Jacobs has always
maintained that he had no involvement in the attack on Doyle Wheeler, and has
even gone so far as to accuse Wheeler of staging the incident in order to
frame him. So on this series of episodes, we're going to look at
both sides of the story and also explore the possibility that the truth might actually
lie somewhere in the middle. Oh, this is fascinating. It's a he
said, he said kind of case. Clarify this for me when we talk
about Donovan and Doyle, was Doyle actually testifying against Donovan as a criminal or
was Donovan on the stand as a law enforcement officer recounting what he had done
in a criminal investigation And then you have his counterpart Wheelers up there accusing him
of things, and then that's the kind of riff is is Donovan already an
accused criminal or is he an officer who is questioned on his police duties.
It wasn't Jacobs himself going on trial. This trial will go into more detail
about later on. Was about a very controversial murder in which Jacobs was one
of the and Wheeler said some very unflattering things about them which kind of pointed
towards the defendant and painted him in a positive life because, as we're going
to talk about, the defendant would accuse Jacobs of escalating the situation which led
to the murder. And Wheeler was the only officer who broke the quote unquote
code of silence in order to say bad things about a fellow police officer.
Okay, okay, that makes a lot of sense. So I mean,
either way, I would have been kind of a red flag. But here
you have Wheeler who comes forward and speaks against an action of a fellow police
officer. We've seen these in major cases like George Floyd, you know,
and people are going there was one officer who said stop and no one listened,
and now he's the villain in the case from all law enforcement officers and
things like this. But it's just as strong as like a blood o's with
a gang, or the loyalty you have to a fellow military officer. When
you're in the military, it's I'm willing to put my life life on the
line for you, and that means the code of blue and the code of
silence above everything else. And so they take that very seriously. And unless
you were trained and raised by very ethical officers, it becomes so easy to
support and kind of boost up each other's immoral behaviors within an institution like that.
And so the fact that Wheeler comes forward and says like things might not
have been handled appropriately, and he comes out against Donovan Jacobs and says these
things were not done in a professional manner, not only would Donovan Jacobs be
against Wheeler, but you'd have a group of officers who also would be so
furious with him because he quote turned on a brother in uniform when really I
need to know more about it, but it sounds like Wheeler was doing the
right thing and saying it didn't go according to plan, it didn't go in
an ethical manner, and so very complicated scenario just to start this out,
and it does start to lay a groundwork of what type of revenge, how
much of a vendetta did Donovan Jacobs have with Wheeler? So tell me more.
We've never talked about a case where the person survived, and now we
need to know who done it. Our story begins in nineteen eighty eight in
Suncrest, Washington, a suburb which is located in Stevens County, nearly ten
miles northwest of Spokane. Our central figure is thirty six year old Doyle Wheeler,
who lives in a rural home with his wife, Bobby, and their
two children. Doyle is a former police officer with the San Diego Police Department
who's been retired from the force for the past two and a half years on
a stress related disability, which we'll be discussing in more detail in a little
while. On the afternoon of April nineteenth, Doyle was home alone fixing the
icemaker and his refrigerator when two men suddenly burst inside the kitchen. At the
time, the garage door was unlocked, so the intruders presumably used it to
end the house. Doyle would later describe both men as being in their late
twenties and having mustaches, with one of them being blonde and the other sporting
dark hair. One of the intruders pulled a twenty two caliber handgun on Doyle
while the other wrapped a rope around his neck, and they forced him into
a nearby office. While he was in there, Doyle claimed he could hear
the sound of someone else roundsacking the master bedroom upstairs, though he never got
a look at the third intruder. The two assailants told Doyle that they were
going to make him write a suicide note, but when he refused, they
started punching and kicking him. Doyle continued to resist, so they used cigarettes
to burn him on his chest and his back. Things finally reached a point
where the intruders told Doyle that if he did not do what they said,
they would wait for his children to arrive home and kill them. This threat
was enough to convince Doyle to cooperate, so the assailants grabbed a pen and
notepad and told Doyle what to write it read quote to the San Diego police,
I lied at the trial about Donovan Jacobs and the police department. I'm
sorry. I make this statement of my own free will. Doyle F.
Wheeler end quote. Holy cow, this is not just a home intrusion.
This is like a torture festival where they're saying, write this letter about specifically
to the police department, specifically about Donovan Jacobs. And you're telling me this
has nothing to do with the Donovan Jacobs situation. Bizarre. And then but
they're also holding this poor man hostage in his home and saying, you don't
do what we say, wait till your family comes home. We'll attack them
too. And they're already sitting there, putting a rope around his neck,
burning him, beating him wild. This is crazy, But they made him
write to the San Diego police I lied at the trial about Donovan Jacobs.
I'm sorry. What else could this possibly be about? How many people would
know this about Doyle? And that's what's so bizarre about this whole situation that
did anyone really think that they would buy this as a suicide note that this
guy is going to kill himself and write a note where he never mentions his
wife and kids. He mentions this one incident about a trial that took place
a few years ago, and just says that I make this statement of my
own free will, which sounds like a statement you would make when you don't
have any free will, when you're being coerced against your will. So that's
what's strange about it is that when you see this, it seems obvious that
Donovan Jacobs might have been the one who masterminded this, but it just seems
a little too easy. So the two men and took Doyle down into the
basement, hogtied him and leaned him over a couch face down. After the
dark haired man went upstairs, presumably to talk to the third intruder, he
returned the basement and walked into the adjacent laundry room, where he picked up
the phone in there to make a call. This prompted the blonde man to
switch on a nearby TV set and turn the volume up really loud so Doyle
cannot hear the phone call. When the dark haired man returned, he pulled
out one of Doyle's old San Diego police badges and pinned it to his He
then told Doyle that they were going to make his death look like a quote
unquote drug rip, before placing a pillow over the back of Doyle's head and
firing a shot down at him. Dole was pretty certain that this was the
end, but at the precise moment the gunshot was fired through the pillow,
he managed to jerk his head to the right. As a result, the
bullet only wound up grazing the left side of Doyle's head and piercing his ear.
Doyle then proceeded to play dead and lay still while the intruders exited the
basement. When he heard the sound of a vehicle driving away outside, Doyle
finally started moving again and made his way to the laundry room. While he
was still hogtied, He then knocked the phone off the table by tugging at
the cord with his foot, and proceeded to use his tongue to dial nine
one one and call for help. Okay, so tell me this. Are
these guys in masks? I mean, he knows their hair color? How
does he know their hair color? They're not in masks? No, Like
they actually showed their faces, and on Unsolved Mysteries they even released composite sketches
of these two men based on Doyle's description. And I should mention that the
actors who play these guys in the Unsolved Mysteries re enactments have some killer mullets.
So that's how you can tell this is the nineteen eighties. Fantastic and
rotary pune. No, I'm kidding, but okay, So then they came
there with the intent to kill. There was no other intent because if not,
if they were just gonna rob him and scare him, they would have
definitely covered their faces. Now, what's crazy to me and how blessed he
is? They only fired one shot. If I came there to hog tie
you to get you to write this confession, to try to, you know,
make this look like someone had come to kill you for drugs, I
would have shot you multiple times to make sure you were dead, especially if
we're related to the police department, so that you couldn't speak. Ever.
Again, there's some tie whether it's actually Donovan driven or not, there's some
tie back to the police department. And they just shot him once, and
by the grace of God, he's just smart enough to move his head slightly
or by chance, moved his head slightly and lives through this event that was
designed with his death in mind. But they did write the suicide note correct,
Robin Well, it's kind of a weird thing where they asked Doyle to
write it out, but they didn't find the note itself. They only found
a legal pad with the outline of what Doyle hadrit written. So it's almost
like they came up with an idea to make him write this suicide note,
then maybe changed their mind and then got rid of the note itself, but
they were able to still make it out on the notepad. So I don't
know what they were trying to accomplish here, because they couldn't have done multiple
shots if they were going to leave the suicide note. But if you're going
to take the suicide note, you'd think you do like two to the chest,
one to the head, if you've abandoned this whole idea of trying to
fabricate a suicide. But I could see how if they'd already shot once and
they were leaving that there, and they'd go, oh, well, I
guess we can't keep shooting. It can only be one shot. It's all
very confusing, But he's hogtied, like how was he going to shoot himself?
Anyway, they've gotten to the point where they beat him. They're like,
heng didn't they put a rope around his neck and all kinds of stuff
they did? Yeah, So it's like, how did they expect people to
buy it was a suicide when he's hogtied and has a wound to the back
of the head. So it's almost like they didn't think this through. Jules,
You're right. It's like it's like they go right to suicide, know,
and then they look around, They're like, where's Fobby Malick when you
need him? Right? Oh exactly. I mean if Fabby was working there,
he would have ruled for sure. It wasn't long before the paramedics and
the Stevens County Sheriff's Department arrived to the scene, and Doyle was rushed to
the hospital for medical treatment. Ultimately, the gunshot, which grazed the side
of Doyle's head, only caused a minor wound, and he recovered quickly.
When police searched the Wheeler home, they discovered that the master bedroom had been
ransacked. Since Doyle's collection of badges from his time with the San Diego Police
Department was lying out in the open, it was theorized that the intruders had
been searching for a badge to pin do his checks. It turned out that
a Toyota Troussel station wagon, which belonged to Doyle's wife, was missing,
after presumably being stolen by the intruders. The following day, the station wagon
would be discovered twelve miles away in the parking lot of the Five Mile Shopping
Center in North Spokane. The Stephens County Sheriff's Department would also find a notepad
where Doyle had been forced to write a suicide note. When they saw the
words San Diego Police and Donovan Jacobs, investigators decided to contact the San Diego
Police Department, and they would make some surprising discoveries. They learned Donovan Jacobs
was a San Diego Police officer who was currently assigned to death duty after suffering
a serious injury in the line of duty. Incredibly, it would turn out
that the phone call made from Doyle's laundry room by the dark haired intruder had
been made to the department's narcotics division. Since they automatically recorded all incoming calls,
a recording could be found of a male caller asking for Donovan Jacobs.
When a secretary told him just a moment, the caller immediately hung up.
So why are we talking about this case? Doesn't it seem crazy that this
wouldn't be connected to Donovan Jacobs. There's literally a fight to get a suicide
note written excusing Donovan Jacobs from whatever claims Wheeler had made against him. They're
making phone calls from this guy's house to the narcotics department asking for Donovan Jacobs.
This is wild. It's also very dumb. If any of these individuals
are actually associated with the police department, have they never worked a criminal case
before? And that's what's so unique about this case, because thinking that Donovan
Jacobs did this almost seems too easy. And as we're going to talk about
later on, Jacobs would claim that whoever did this was trying to frame him
and set them up. And when he says, would I really be too
stupid to like hire guys and have them phone me from the victim's house,
you kind of you say, that's a valid point. I mean, it
just seems like if if Jacobs really did hire these guys and this is the
stupidest murder plot ever, unless you hired these guys and they do these things,
and you're like, you guys are dumbbos and you say that too,
So I mean it could go either way, but but you're right, Robin,
it does make you the insta back and go, what does someone have
that much against this? Donovan Jacobs guy that they'd be willing to bring not
just Wheeler into it, but then they'd also be willing to bring down Jacobs
too. This is very, very bizarre, Like they'd kill someone to get
back at Donovan Jacobs instead of just going after him. And like what if
he used two criminals that he met along the way and their level of sophistication
or forensic countermeasures Given this was the eighties, maybe wasn't that great. So
the idea that the phone call could be traced, maybe they were unaware of
that. It just it does seem a little too on the nose, especially
since if you are going to call and ask for Donovan Jacobs, why not
wait for him to get on the phone. The damage has then been done,
so it does seem odd to hang up. But I mean, who
knows. They could just be that stupid and it could be Donovan Jacobs.
But I mean you could see it from either side for sure. Well,
it turned out that there was no love loss between Doyle Wheeler and Donovan Jacobs.
But before I talk more about Jacobs, I have to shar some more
backstory about Wheeler's eleven year career with the San Diego PD Prior to joining the
department, Wheeler had served in Vietnam and the Army Airborn Rangers, earned three
Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, and several other medals. The big turning
point of Wheeler's police career occurred on July the eighteenth, nineteen eighty four,
when an armed gunman named James Huberty entered a McDonald's restaurant in the Sanya Siedro
neighborhood of San Diego. Over the course of the next seventy seven minutes,
Huberty would proceed to murder twenty one people and move nineteen others before a sniper
from the swat team fired a fatal shot into him. At that time,
this was the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States. Anyway,
Doyle Wheeler was the first police lieutenant who arrived at the scene and would
eventually give an order for the sniper to take Huberty out, but for whatever
reason, there would be a twenty six minute delay before the swat team carried
out the order, and it's believed that Huberty killed his last four victims during
that twenty six minute window. While the delay was not Doyle's fault. He
felt a personal responsibility over the loss of those four lives and became overwhelmed with
guilt. The trauma of seeing all the dead victims at the scene of the
McDonald's massacres seemed to set something off in him, forcing him to take a
leave of absence from the force. I think this is incredible on Doyle's account.
I mean, he has this amazing legacy in the military and in the
police department, and you know, here he's faced with this unthinkable mass murder.
It's actually the this case is what inspired Bloody Wednesday, the horror movie.
But what what you think about here? This is back in the eighties
when police officers didn't really receive any kind of psychological support. They didn't have
any kind of counseling mandatory ability to decompress after a violent interaction. And this
is not just a bad scene. He is engaged in a mass murder where
things don't go the way they would ideally go, and he feels a personal
responsibility God bless him, even though it has nothing to do with him,
for people's lives being lost. And so the fact that he says that's enough.
I got to step away from this for a while, I have to
take a leave of absence. I have so much respect for him and so
much appreciation for the sacrifices he may not just that day, but throughout his
career. It's a big deal. He's a man in the eighties saying I
can't emotionally, I need to step away, and I have so just so
much admiration for that really hurts my heart. Like when you think of all
of the first responders that have to deal with situation like that, Like more
recently, you know that Veggas one where there was what like fifty people or
something like that died, and I kind of imagine the emotional toll and the
trauma that it inflicts upon people who are there and just trying to help.
So I really feel for Doyle here because, like you said, Ash,
I just don't think that they would have had maybe the infrastructure set up with
regards to having like a psychologist there and having that psychologist speak to all of
the people who were involved in seeing and treating an individual or treating the individuals
at the scene, because it has such a deep impact and some people are
going to feel that more than others will. And I think one of the
saddest lines I just said was at that time, this was the deadliest mass
shooting in the history of the United States. Because sadly, there have been
like so many more mass shootings since then, many of which are worse than
this one. But back in nineteen eighty four, the mass shootings were just
not as common. So it really overwhelmed Doyle to like lose twenty one innocent
lives and see nineteen other people get killed on his watch. And during his
Unsolved Mysteries interview, he says that in retrospect, I know that I was
not responsible for any of those deaths James Huberty, and James Huberty alone was
responsible for these deaths, But at the time you just don't think that way.
You just to find a way to blame yourself and think that I could
have done more to save some more of their lives, And it just took
an enormous toil on him. Doyle had always struggled with the idea of having
killed during combat in Vietnam and during the line of duty as a police officer.
He would tell a psychiatrist quote, the other police officers treat you like
a big hero after you shoot someonet but it bothered me. I didn't become
a police officer to kill people. I wanted to save lives. End quote.
Well, I stund corrected. He did talk to a psychiatrist here,
so at least we have this. But when Doyle returned from his leave,
he soon found out that he was being investigated for a sexual harassment complaint filed
by a form female police officer. Doyle always maintained that the officer was lying,
as she had been fired for incompetence years earlier. Following the McDonald's massacre.
Doyle had never hesitated to express his disagreement with how the situation was handled,
and his superiors told him he would be fired if he aired his feelings
publicly. He suspected that the sexual harassment complaint was fabricated in order to discredit
him, but he still wound up receiving a five day suspension for it on
March first, nineteen eighty five. While serving his suspension, Doyle reached his
breaking point when he learned that a movie was going to be made about the
McDonald's massacre. Is that the one that you just mentioned, Dash, Yeah,
it's bloody Wednesday is a movie that came out about that horrific event,
and there's also other movies that have made like a riff on that event,
but The Bloody Wednesday was directly or about that mass killing. The mental anguish
became so overwhelming that he attempted suicide by taking an overdose of xanax. Thankfully,
Doyle wound up surviving, but he knew he could no longer function at
his highest capacity as a police officer. After being diagnosed as suffering from major
depression and work related post traumatic stress disorder, he opted to retire from the
force on stress related disability. That's so sad. There's you know, you
think about your community and how an event like that impacts you. I know.
There was a documentary made years later about the massacre as well, and
there were cable networks over in California that refused to air it because they said
there were too many families impacted by that sences out of violence, and they
said, like, we can't. We're not going to expose them and show
them. You know, if you want to get it, you got to
get a different way. They blocked out the showing of some of those documentary
films even about the shooting. So it was a major major heartbreak in that
community. And then, like you said, Jewels, it's not just this
event. I mean, we have first responders every day who show up and
have to respond to the unthinkable school shootings of children, you know, spouses
begging for their loved one to live. And I mean, I cannot imagine
the secondary trauma that comes from that. I don't know, just the vicarious
vicarious trauma, not secondary vicarious trauma that comes from that. And here he
has not just this event that he responds to. He was in Vietnam.
Again, there was not the correct treatment given to our veterans when they return
from Vietnam. You were told to keep your mouth shut. Vietnam vets will
tell you. You know, World War One and World War Two guys didn't
struggle. Neither do I. Yeah, they all struggled, but they didn't
get the services. They weren't allowed to struggle vocally. And what I love
here is you have Doyle who is learning, hopefully from the help of that
psychiatrist, to vocalize how he feels, and he's being very upfront about what
he's going through, right, and he's saying, I'm struggling, this is
not okay. I won't tolerate injustice. He's becoming a very vocal individual.
I have a feeling that doesn't go over very well in the police department.
And then he gets to a point, I'm sure with the help of his
family, where he says, enough's enough, I've got to walk away.
That's got to be heartbreaking for someone who did take a pledge an oath to
serve and protect other people. And then he says, at got to a
point where that's not really what I was doing. I was doing things that
made me feel sick. Oh yeah, we'll go into more detail about this
later on, but the San Diego Police Department sounded like a pretty toxic place
to work during the nineteen eighties, and I can understand Doyle receiving a backlash
just for daring to experience PTSD or daring to experience trauma or feeling suicidal or
wanting to seek therapy, because I think they just had that toxic masculinity mindset
back then that you just don't you don't deal with your problems like that,
You just suck it up and move on. And I don't think they appreciated
Doyle like not being able to handle this situation. So I think that's why
he decided I have to retire and go on disability. So in April of
nineteen eighty six, six months following his retirement, Dolly received a subpoena to
testify as a defense witness and what had become and what had become a heated
and controversial murder trial for a young African American defendant named Sagon Penn. And
here's where Donovan Jacobs enters the picture. On March the thirty first, nineteen
eighty five, Jacobs pulled over Sagon Penn's pickup truck in San Diego's and Canton
neighborhood. He was backed up by another officer named Thomas Riggs, who pulled
up behind him in his separate patrol car. A woman named Sarah Pina Ruiz
also happened to be in Riggs's car as part of a civilian ride along program.
Anyway, because this is a very controversial incident which had numerous eye witnesses,
there are different versions of what actually happened here depending on which source you
read. Jacobs would claim that he pulled over Penn for making an illegal U
turn, but since Penn had his brother and other passengers in the truck at
the time, it's been alleged that they were being racially profiled as potential gang
members. An altercation ensued, which seemed to escalate when Jacobs asked Pen for
his license and became angry when Penn didn't remove the license from his wallet like
he was told. This soon led to a violent struggle in which Jacobs beat
Pen with his baton until Penn wound up grabbing Jacobs's gun and firing off six
shots. Penn fired one shot into Jacobs's neck before turning and firing three shots
into Rakes. He also fired two more shots through the windshield of Riggs's patrol
car, which wounded Sarah Pina Ruiz. Penn then climbed into Jacobs's patrol car
and attempted to flee the scene, and wound up running over Jacobs in the
process. About a half hour later, Jacobs drove to a police station and
surrendered, while Riggs died from his wounds. Jacobs and Pina Ruiz both survived,
though Jacobs suffered serious nerve damage which left him with permanent paralysis in his
left arm. The following year, Penn would go on trial on numerous charges,
including first to murder in the shooting of Rigs and attempted murder in the
shootings of Jacob's in Pina Ruiz. However, Penn's defense team would argue that
Jacobs had no cause to pull Penn over in the first place, since the
street was too narrow for him to have done an illegal u turn. They
claimed that Jacobs had used racial slurs against Penn before beating them with his baton,
so Penn's decision to steal Jacobs's gun and fire off some shots was an
act of self defense which saved his life. In fact, Penwick claimed that
he had no intention of firing the gun and only pointed it at Jacobs to
get him to stop, but when Jacobs struck him in the arm with the
baton, the gun went off accidentally. Wow. Okay, there's so much
to unpack in that, and it's almost impossible to unpack it because it's going
to be a you know, I don't I'm assuming there was no video evidence
and there weren't a whole lot of people watching this case, coright, I
mean, this is everyone who's involved here is Jacob's, Pina Ruiz, and
Penn. So what you have as you have a he said. He said
case again where people are saying, okay, what was the intent of the
initial reason to pull Pin over? That does matter. We have a traditionally
historic problem of you know, quote driving while black, that black individuals are
targeted for non instigated reasons to be pulled over. And so here he said,
well he did an illegal U turn. Well, diddy or didn'ty How
could we go back and prove that the racial slurs would need to be by
eyewitness and for information as well with someone saying this is exactly what I heard,
this is what I saw. You know, Jacobs isn't going to say
that he did that. Pin is using that as his defense, so he's
going to say that. I'd love to know what Pina Ruiz says happened during
the event, because she's less likely to have as biased as a story to
go with. But Pin does fire six times after that initial accidental firing.
If that's the true story, I guess you could say by the time that
goes off, he panics and he starts just shooting and unloading that magazine.
But my god, without video evidence and without multiple people sitting there telling the
story and having it make sense with it, multiple stories are kind of lining
up. How would you ever dissect this and know what really happened? Yeah,
you're correct, Like this is ninet eight five before there was bodycam footage,
So this really is a he said she said to Oh sorry, he
said, he said type of thing. And because, like I said,
if you go to a different source, you're going to read different accounts of
this case, because different people have different interpretations of what happened. I mean,
I think Serapino Ruiz was too far to really hear, like how what
if Jacobs used racial slurs and how he did the confrontation was. But Penn
did have other witnesses inside his truck, like his brother and some other passengers
who did back up his story that Jacobs provoked everything and used racial slurs.
But of course you could also argue that Penn still got carried away because even
though he did fire a shot of self defense into Jacobs, he did fire
like a couple shots into Thomas Riggs and killed him, even though by all
accounts, Riggs really didn't do anything wrong. So even though this happened like
thirty eight years ago, there are still devisive opinions on whether his shooting was
justified. Well. Like we mentioned earlier, Doyle Wheeler would be called upon
to testify for the defense at Penn's trial and further their argument that Jacobs had
racially profiled Penn. Indeed, Wheeler had been one of Jacob's supervisors, and
he testified that Jacobs had a history of troubling incidents with minorities, particularly African
American suspects, and did not hesitates to describe him as being a racist hothead.
Wheeler recounted one incident where he reprimanded Jacobs for slamming a handcuff black suspect's
head against a wall out of police headquarters without provocation. Wheeler claimed that he'd
tried to warn his superiors about Jacob's bigoted behavior, but nothing was ever done
to stop him. Dealer's testimony would compel some other former San Diego police officers
to come forward and share their own experiences where they witnessed Jacob's exhibit racist attitudes.
One of them even described Jacobs as quote the most prejudiced white person I've
ever known, and quote an ideal candidate for the ku Klux Klan. The
jury seemed to believe this testimony, and it added credence to Penn's claims that
the shooting was an act of self defense against a racist police officer. They
ultimately found Penn not guilty on the murder of Rigs and not guilty on the
attempted murder of Jacobs, though they deadlocked eleven to one in favor of acquittal
on the attempted murder charge of Peno Ruiz. But the District Attorney's office was
not going to let this go, so they filed all new charges against Penn,
this time charging him was involuntary manslaughter in the death of Riggs an attempted
voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of Jacobs. Penn went on trial for the second
time in July of nineteen eighty seven, and once again Wheeler would be called
upon to testify and SHARE's experiences about Jacob's alleged racist behavior. This time,
the jury found pen not guilty on the manslaughter charges as well as the original
attempted murder charge for the shooting of Pina Ruiz. The District Attorney's office elected
not to file any more charges against Penn, and he finally walked free.
Needless to say, the outcome of these trials did not make Doyle Wheeler the
most popular person with the San Diego Police Department. Jacobs always denied Wheeler's accusations
that he was a racist, and a number of people were angry that Wheeler
had broken the code of silence by testifying about that and playing a role in
Pen's acquittal. Following the first trial, Wheeler claimed that he started receiving death
threats, so he decided to escape the controversy by moving his family from San
Diego to send Crest, Washington, where they lived a quiet life until Wheeler
was attacked inside his home by a group of intruders. Okay, so I
there's a lot of problems going on here. Okay. You could have looked
up Jacob's record as a defense attorney. You could have asked for any claims
that have been made against him and any internal affairs reports, these kinds of
public complaints against him, and you would have seen, I'm likely racist offenses,
racist offenses, racist offenses, And you can also ask colleagues what was
his behavior? Well, he was incredibly racist, he was unethical, he
didn't behave correct. In fact, at event A, I saw him do
this. At event B, I saw him do this, which does lead
credence to then an event X, he likely could have operated in that behavior
as well, and he probably did. But it's really hard as an officer
to say, hey, come testify about his character and that's going to prove
exactly what happened in this this ninety fifth event, Right, you're asking someone,
tell me about this person. Well, you know when I when I
work with him, he does this and this, So it is likely that
he would have acted in this same manner in the event we're here about today.
But I wasn't there. I don't know. So you're really setting everybody
up. If they're going to be honest and they're going to be ethical,
you're setting them up to sit up there and say, hey, just tell
me about their character. And someone's character can't prove exactly what they did the
evening that you weren't there watching, So I don't know. It's it's problematic.
It's the best you can do by examining someone's character and previous behaviors.
But when they do that in cases, I don't know if I'm making any
sense, but when they do that in cases, it's really detrimental, Like,
oh, you bring these ex girlfriends up while there's repeated behavior which often
dictates future behavior. Are you proving that he treated his current girlfriend that way?
Right? Are you proving that not? Necessarily? Now you make total
sense because literally the greatest predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So if
you're going to say that because of incidents ABC and D that he is indeed
a racist, he may not himself believe that he is a racist, because
oftentimes our perception of ourselves isn't the perception that other people have. So I
think that is possible, But I also think that it can be dangerous too,
So there is two sides to that. But I also think it's really
interesting that we see Doyle Wheeler and his family have to move from San Diego
to Suncrest. I wonder how tense it was or how much hate or pressure
he was getting because he wasn't working for the San Diego Police Department at this
time, so how much interaction would he have had with all of these individuals.
Was there this feeling of like this oppressive force or that he was in
danger and that dictated his choice to move states? And don't get me wrong,
like Jules, you're spot on there. It's like the whole thing is
problematic and flawed. Don't get me wrong. I'm ninety nine point nine nine
nine percent sure that Jacobs was part of a culture that said, oh,
we're we're elite, we're better than everyone. We've got this, you know,
the Badge of Honor and the Blue Code and all these other things,
and that there was a heavy emphasis on race and ses and these kinds of
things that like, look, if you're poor, if you're black. Back
in the eighties, they would do the thing where it's like a number for
a number. I don't care who goes to prison for what. If you're
a minority, I can lock you away and I can clear this case.
I mean, there was a lot of awful and they're still in twenty twenty
three. Are a lot of awfully discriminatory behaviors by an awful, rotten group
of law enforcement. Small rotten group. But it's very possible that was the
culture in the San Diego Police Department. And if Jacob's presented as a racist
jerk and had multiple complaints, I guarantee you that that probably was his character.
My problem is in this event, when they call up poor Wheeler and
say, hey, tell me about this guy, it's like, Okay,
I wasn't there at this event, like you just want to know about his
character, and it got he almost died because of it. I mean,
there's no way you could say this is not linked to this moment. He's
sitting at there doing the right thing and saying you want to know about his
character, I'll tell you it's not flattering. And then literally this guy gets
hogtied in his home and threatened that his whole family's going to die. Holy
heck. Well, Since Wheeler had been forced to write a suicide note apologizing
for his testimony at the trials, and one of his attackers had made a
phone call to the San Diego PD asking for Donovan Jacobs, Wheeler suspected that
Jacobs had hired the intruders to kill him as part of an elaborate revenge scheme.
In fact, while he could not recall the assailant's name, Wheeler believed
that he recognized the dark haired man who attacked him as an informant with the
Narcotics Division of the San Diego PD, where Jacobs was now working at desk
job. Wheeler even suspected that other members of the San Diego Pede might have
been involved, and that they came after him in order to send a message
to other potential whistle blowers and discouraged them from speaking out against police misconduct.
Well, when the Stevens County Sheriff's Department contacted Jacobs and the San Diego Police
Chief to follow up on this, not only did they deny any involvement in
the attack on Wheeler, but they presented a shocking alternate scenario, what if
Wheeler fabricated the entire attack himself. Jacobs expressed his belief that Wheeler was attempting
to frame him, as well as Garner's sympathy and attention. While the Stephens
County Sheriff's Department found no evidence that anyone from the San Diego Police Department had
orchestrated the attack, but they could not find any evidence that Wheeler staged the
whole thing either, But there was some evidence to support Wheeler's story for starters.
The medical personnel who first arrived on the scene and untied Wheeler claimed that
the ropes were bound so tightly that they did not believe he could have tied
himself up. A medical technician who examined the cigarette in the center of Wheeler's
back also thought it would have been nearly impossible for him to have reached those
spots on his own and burn himself. On the day of the attack,
one of Wheeler's neighbors claimed that he saw a blue Toyota parked across the street
from the Wheeler residence, which seemed at a place. Later that afternoon,
this same neighbor recalled hearing a loud bang which sounded like a gunshot while he
was working in the yard. Shortly thereafter, he saw Wheeler's Toyota to sell
station wagon speeding away down the street, and it was only a few minutes
later before the ambulance arrived at the scene following Wheeler's nine one one call.
Well earlier that same morning, a security guard at the Five Mile Shopping Center
recalled seeing four unidentified men talking outside of blue Toyota in the parking lot,
and as you might recall, Wheeler's abandoned station wagon would be discovered in that
exact same parking lot the following day. Yeah, this is the thing.
I mean, if you say he staged it, he had to say,
I'm willing to endure all of the following things. I'm willing to have this
come in. I'm going to have them burn me, beat me, tie
me up, made me write this note, threaten my family, shoot me.
So he was willing to die in this elaborate manner to set this guy
up like I didn't hate him. I was called to testify. It was
my legal duty to sit there and testify to what they were asking me.
I'm not gonna lie on the stand. I'm already having a middle breakdown.
I don't want to do this anymore. I'm fed up with this department.
It's stressing me out. So I'm going to tell him what they want to
know, and then I'm going to retire and live my life. What benefit
was it for him to stage this? He's not the one that is seeking
revenge against Donovan. And don't you both think that it's odd that if Doyle
Wheeler was going to do this, that he would be doing this when he's
in Seattle. Wouldn't you if you were so compelled to get this attention and
to frame him and you were so wrapped up in it, wouldn't you do
it while you're still in California. It just seems odd that if you felt
like you're like was in danger, that you would go all the way to
Seattle. Now you've got some space, you're far away. What is he
just sitting around board and decides that he's going to do this like after the
trials. I don't know. It just seems strange to me that I'm more
inclined to believe that this was done to him, especially when we factor in
the ropes being tied that tight, and you've got the gunshot and all of
these other things, like we never find the note, just the legal pad.
It just seems like great lengths to go to to try to frame somebody
who's already on trial and you've already given your testimony. I don't know.
I just don't understand what his motivation would be at that point when he's got
a family to protect, and that would only incense all of those other individuals
further exactly, Like that was the main reason he moved from California to Washington
State. Is that he seems like you wanted to get a fresh start with
his family and put this past with the San Diego PD completely behind him,
and here it is just going back into the spotlight because he alleged staged this
attack, and I ought to mention that it would have been physically impossible for
him to do it himself, Like there's no way he could tie himself up.
I mean, somebody had to drive his wife's station wag into this mall
twelve miles away, which means that if he staged the whole thing, he
would have had to hire people in order to beat him up and burn him
and tie him up and move his car. And where's he going to find
people who are willing to do that. It's not like he's a rich man.
It's not like he's going to have a lot of money to pay them
off. So it really seems like he would be going to a whole lot
of trouble without much benefit to himself. And it really sounds like the San
Diego bed were coming up with this stage theory in order to deflect attention away
from themselves. Convenient for them, right to point the finger at Wheeler,
Yeah, absolutely, Like how convenient. Right, this is all on him
because it all went awry. I think they went in there with this intent
that they were going to stage a suicide. That's why the note got written,
and then they look around, like you guys said earlier, where it's
like things aren't lining up for it to be a suicide. He's getting shot
in the back of the head. I'm assuming with the pillow being on his
head, he's also hog tied. None of this is really lining up.
He's getting burned, which he can't do on his own, so I think
it all goes to poop. They called the Narcotics Department and ask for the
man who helped them plan this big no no, and so now they're going
to sit there and say, oh uh, Wheeler did it right, Like
Wheeler staged all this. There's nothing again, there's nothing that would benefit him
to do that. He had gotten away from the toxic environment and was starting
to live a life that would help him heal from the trauma he had experienced.
I love your description of the plan saying that it went to poop.
It went straight to poop. I love that too. Nevertheless, some people
still suspected that it was Wheeler who personally made the phone call to the San
Diego Police Department asking for Donovan Jacobs and attempted to disguise his voice. Since
he had been a lieutenant in the Kemmunit Duications Unit before he retired, Wheeler
would have known the direct private number for the Narcotics Division and been aware that
all incoming calls were automatically recorded. Officers from the San Diego Police Department were
asked to listen to the recording of the call, and while the audio quality
was not great, they did not believe it sounded like Doyle's voice, though
they could not rule him out with one hundred percent certainty. FBI voice experts
were asked to analyze the call and compared to a recording of Wheeler's voice,
but they said it would be difficult to make a positive voice match. The
caller only said nine words during the recording, and the experts said that they
would need at least twenty words in order to make an accurate comparison. Regardless,
they still did a voice comparison test and seemed to lean towards Wheeler not
being the caller anyway. The Stephen County Sheriff's Department asked Wheeler to take a
lie detector test, but he declined. He said he would be willing to
do it if they asked certain individuals from the San Diego PD to to take
a lie detector test as well, but they never made that request. The
California Attorney General's Office and a federal Grand jury would conduct a three month investigation
into the alleged attack on Wheeler, who failed to come to a conclusion about
what happened. Wheeler was shown photographs of several potential suspects, many of whom
resembled the composite sketches which were draught up based on his descriptions, but he
was unable to identify any of them as his attackers. The Attorney General's office
did ask Donovan Jacobs to take a polygraph, but on the advice of his
attorney, he declined to do so. Jacobs would soon retire from the San
Diego PD to enter law school, and he eventually opened up his own practice
and became an attorney who represented police officers in civil and administrative proceedings and defended
them against internal affairs investigations. In October nineteen eighty nine, the FBI investigated
a claim from an informant that he'd been offered fifteen hundred dollars by a police
sergeant to attack Doyle Wheeler because he was a quote bad thorn in the police
department's side end quote. The informant said the intention wasn't to commit murder,
just harm Wheeler enough to shut him up, but he decided to turn down
the job because it was too risky and he was not offered enough money.
However, this informant had also served time in prison for perjury, so he
was not the most credible witness, and as far as I can tell,
his claims were never substantiated. The following month, the case would be featured
on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and while both Wheeler and Jacobs would be
interviewed in the segment, the San Diego Police Department declined to participate, but
in the end it did not lead to any conclusive answers about what happened,
so the full truth about the attack on Doyle Wheeler remains unknown. So I
guess you could say the path went Chiley. Okay, this is wild.
I don't blame Jacobs at all for not taking a polygraph test. This is
a law enforcement agent. I know that I give polygraph tests to people,
and I wouldn't want to take them, right, So I don't really judge
anything about his denial of a polygraph test. I think his attorney was smart.
What's interesting, though, is that then he appears on Unsolved Mysteries,
and I guess you can't really turn down that opportunity. If you feel like
you are going to be the villain in the story and you want to proclaim
your innocence, how do you sit back and let them write a story without
your voice in it. So you've got to tell me, what was it
like? When Wheeler and Jacobs are both interviewed in the same episode, Are
they leaning towards blaming Jacobs and he's sitting there defending himself? Uh? Pretty
much? Yeah, Like both sides are addressing the allegations against them, with
Wheeler saying that the claims that he staged the whole attack are ridiculous and Jacobs
saying that the idea that he would send two men to kill Wheeler and that
they would be stupid enough to like phone the police department and speak directly with
him are ridiculous as well. And we're gonna save this till part two.
But there was be an after effect based on Jacobs's interview on Unsolved Mysteries because
surprise, surprise, he did not like the way he was portrayed and it
would cause some legal action on his behalf. Well, he's an attorney,
so of course of course it would. But okay, so is Wheeler,
is Jacob's the one in the unsolved mystery, saying that Wheeler staged it himself?
Or is he just simply defending his own actions and saying why would I
be that dumb? Oh? He directly accuses Wheeler of staging the whole thing,
and we'll talk about this in our next episode. But he says some
rather derogatory things about him and says that Doyle is like the bad kid in
school who likes attention all the time, and says some pretty offensive remarks about
Wheeler's attempted suicide many years ago. So regardless of whether you think Jacobs was
guilty or innocence of attempting to kill him, I think it's irrefutable that Donovan
Jacobs is a huge jackass. Based on his interview, well, it sounds
like it. And then here's Wheeler. He's like, that's all I was
saying, is he's just a jerk. You saw it for yourself. So
maybe that was enough justice in the moment, but this is wild. I
cannot wait to hear more information on our next episode because I'm sitting here and
I want to know more. It seems so clear what happened, But then
like you said, there's so many things that go well, is it that
simple? Yeah, I'm sorry we're going to have to leave you on a
cliffhanger, as I think this would now be a good time to bring an
end to part one. But join us next week as we present part two
of our series about the attack on Doyle Wheeler. Robin, do you want
to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes.
The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer
these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out
stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon
if you join our five dollars tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus
episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went
Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our
highest tier tier free, the ten dollar tier. One of the features we
offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, where you
can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on
Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background,
where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode.
And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over
was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary
track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be
sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you know a little
bit about the Jules and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of
The Path Went Chili. We've got our Path Went Chili mini's, which are
always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too
short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so
we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the show notes.
So I want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you
have to share us on social media with a friend or to rate review is
greatly appreciated. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwink. So until next time,
be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing
music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers comedy