On August 2, 2006, Robert Wone, a married 32-year-old lawyer, decides to spend the night at his friends’ house in Washington DC. Soon after, one of the friends calls 911 saying that Wone has been stabbed to death. What happened during those 79 minutes in the house? Who killed Wone?
Addressing a case with more questions than answers, director Jared P. Scott (Requiem for the American Dream) investigates murder and searches for the truth in the Peacock documentary series Who Killed Robert Wone? Through interviews with friends, family and investigators, Scott sets out to find answers in A clue-like a murder mystery. As the series dives deeper into the case, Scott uncovers the same challenges that baffled investigators more than 15 years ago.
In an interview with Digital Trends, Scott talks about what drew him to the case, how to balance facts with entertainment, and how the show sheds light on a heartbreaking tragedy.
WHO KILLED ROBERT WONE? — “TBD” Episode 101 — Pictured: (lr) — (Photo credit: Peacock)
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Digital Trends: What drew you to the Robert Wone case?
Jared P. Scott: You know, I can’t say I’m a true crime fan. I love a good story. This happens to be a true crime and a fascinating story. It’s one of those stories you can start telling in a bar. i mean o In Search of Sugar Man, where you don’t even have to make a show about it. You can just start talking to someone about this, and your jaw will slowly drop.
Here you have Robert Wone, a 32-year-old prominent lawyer, a promising young man, [who] decides to spend the night with three friends. Seventy-nine minutes after he arrived at his friends’ house, one of those friends called 911 and said he had been stabbed. Then the emergency services arrive from there and describe this strange behavior. The detectives arrive and one of the first things you hear is that these three guys are in white robes. As the prosecutor describes it, “It looks like they just got out of an executive position. They licked their hair.”
So this vision of three guys in a house in white robes, right here, the intrigue is there. The stage is set, and this is it A clue-like a mystery. You had four people in the house that night. One person ends up dead after 79 minutes, and the other three say, “Not me.” It’s a classic black box mystery.
I think everyone loves a murder mystery, so that made me want to do it. I think the other side of that coin is the search for truth and justice for Robert Wone. Most of my films were about injustice, about inequality. The idea of trying to hold someone responsible for this tragic death is important. That’s part of our charge in this genre. Yes, we’re having fun, but we’re also trying to shed light on something, bring it to a national or global level where someone might come forward and give us advice, give us a clue, [and] help us understand what could have happened that night.
You talk about the true crime genre and how you’re not much of a fan of it, but as I’m sure you know, the genre has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years with various series and movies. What do you think makes your documentaries different from all the others?
That’s a good question. I want to add one correction. Not that I’m not a fan. It’s just that I’m not stubborn. Again, I just love a good story, and I think this is a great story. I think we said it well. We tried a lot to find a balance. We did our best not to overdo the speculation. This case is [filled with] wild speculation. We really had to hold back because, again, nobody knows what happened in those 79 minutes except for three guys [who] were there, and all we have on record are their interrogations at night [the death].
Really, it is all speculation, so I think there was humility there. We had to be disciplined and thoughtful and do the right thing. We had to do our due diligence and I think we did it well. We did our best not to try to victimize Robert again. Again, that’s a crazy story. It’s a confusing story. It’s a story stranger than fiction. That’s part of the appeal. But we tried not to. . . it wasn’t rude just to be rude. It’s not that we were trying to dig into something and overemphasize it. In a story like this, you don’t have to. It’s crazy enough on its own.
You can actually be very sober as a storyteller because there is no need to embellish. It’s just a wild ride anyway. I think we wanted to make sure we walked that line in a thoughtful way. But I think it’s a funnier true crime than many I’ve seen. A lot of times people make them because they’re watching the genre, but I think this is just a good story. Whether you’re a fan of the true crime genre or just love a good story, it’s worth a look.
WHO KILLED ROBERT WONE? — “TBD” Episode 101 — Pictured: (lr) — (Photo credit: Peacock)
You answered my next question, which is how do you straddle the line between creating something that is informative and factual, but also accessible and engaging. I think this is one of the most cinematic true crime series I’ve seen and I think it’s very respectful of the subject matter.
I appreciate that, Jason. I’m glad I was able to guess your next question. And I will do it now. Luke Geissbuhler, who is [director of photography] on this (he was also DP on Borat movies), he did a lot of great things. There is a certain integrity that we wanted to bring to this work. Of course, we want it to be cinematic.
Ultimately we take all these different parts, right? You have photos of the crime scene. You have primary source documents with affidavit. You have recreations. You have interviews. You have other pictures. I always want to make them cohesive. It doesn’t have to feel like a jumble of pieces. Documentaries need to feel like a very cohesive, thoughtful, thoughtful mosaic, and I think we’ve managed to capture that. Again, we were able to rely on the themes of this impossible puzzle. There is always something missing. Things don’t add up. Things are not what they seem, and you can see that through the graphics.
You are only as good as the elements you have. You are only as good as the story you have and you have to make the most of it. I think our “characters” were great. They are cute. They are imagined. They are insightful. Robert’s friends are touching. And there is so much empathy there. There is levity when you need it. Everyone has to laugh sometimes in a thriller. Craig [Brownstein] and David [Greer], our bloggers, bring it. Sometimes you have to laugh just to ease the tension or help with the tension.
I think it all adds to that cinematic feel. It’s not just what comes out of the camera. Also, Tyler Strickland did the music, and the music is really cinematic. I know that word is overused, but I believe it is. It’s also the way we weave it all together, [and] that’s how we glue it together. I appreciate you accepting it because we worked hard to make it happen. Also, another good thing is that we had access to a model house. It was something we didn’t do for the show. That was real [model] the house used by the prosecution during the trial.
Who Killed Robert Wone? | Official trailer | Peacock Original
Oh wow. That’s incredible.
That. I mean, the fact that it was about 12 years after the trial was remarkable. We actually wanted to come up with much more evidence, but we couldn’t. The fact that we got that, and we were able to capture it in such a beautiful way, it becomes such a beautiful, visual line that we go back to.
Because again, what happened in those 79 minutes in that house? At first, you feel it might be limited as a storyteller. It’s not like this happened in a cabin in the woods, and you get to shoot these great Ozark landscapes. It’s a small townhouse in Washington DC. We wanted to build on that, and I think we were able to make that small aspect, that narrow aspect, feel big and mysterious.
While making the documentaries, what was the most shocking thing you discovered about the case?
It’s a difficult question because there are so many shocking things, but I’ve searched, lived and breathed so much, that maybe nothing was shocking to me. All this is somehow alchemized in the story. One of the things that gives me pause is one of the things that our interviewees, Craig and David, said. They theorized that maybe the whole sexual assault article was just a MacGuffin. Maybe never [happened]. Ultimately, it never made it to trial, but maybe that’s just a distraction [from the real motive].
The idea that something as confusing and confusing as “whether Robert was sexually assaulted that night or not,” the audience will pick up on. They will go on a journey with DNA to be found and re-examined. There are some shocking revelations, but did any of it matter? Is it just something that distracts us from something else? I don’t know. It could be [it’s] the idea that we don’t know what’s important, we don’t know what’s trivial, and we don’t know what’s important.
The shocking thing is that there was never a smoking gun. There’s never anything we can really sink our teeth into, so you have to look at all these things equally, all these clues. I think it’s maddening because there are so many. Yeah, I don’t know. What if some of these things want to distract us? I think that happens in storytelling, and maybe somehow it happened in our story as well. What if some of these audience-watching pieces are meant to distract from what really happened that we still don’t know?
WHO KILLED ROBERT WONE? — “TBD” Episode 101 — Pictured: (lr) — (Photo credit: Peacock)
Was there anyone you wanted to interview for the series but couldn’t? And why?
Of course. We’d love to sit down with Roberto’s wife, but it’s been 16 years. She continued on. Again, from everything I’ve heard from people who know her, from prosecutors and investigators, she’s a private person. She doesn’t want to relive this story and I understand that. I respect that. Of course, we’d love to have the heart and soul of Kathy Wona, but we also have to be careful in this genre that we don’t victimize the people in our stories. So that we don’t make everyone who is broken by the story retraumatize.
I hope that’s not the case because, again, the idea is for this story to get some attention and for enough people to hear about it and see it, [so] someone call. You use this as a tool for a greater pursuit of justice. Spoiler alert, but no one was tried for Robert Wone’s murder. People have been charged and people have been acquitted of those charges, but no one has been charged with Robert Wone’s murder. This is still an open case.
That’s incredible to me. I knew nothing about this case. It was a roller coaster ride. I know it sounds really corny, but it felt like I was going up and down, up and down. You think you’ve found the answer, and it’s like, “No, that’s not it.” You have to go further because investigators have to go further. There are so many dead ends. It’s amazing and frustrating at the same time.
Oh, yes, totally. It’s frustrating to put that together too. Trying to lead an audience down a path and then leading them to a dead end is difficult. The story can be very circular and I think we still had to tell the story with a narrative arc. Part of how you might talk about the story is quite different from how you would experience it on the show. But I appreciate it.
It’s not trivial. It’s true. There are so many twists and turns. I had the same feeling, and I think most people will too. It’s like, “How did we not know about the story? How is this not a national story?” One of the experts says on the show that this was a murder case, but not a murder trial. Maybe that was it. Maybe if it was a murder trial, I don’t know. It’s one of those things where I go back to your first question, how did I not hear about this? And after hearing about it, God, everyone should know about this. It’s one of those things that once you learn about it, you wonder why you never did it. You want to keep talking about it.
Who Killed Robert Wone? now streaming on Peacock.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn