I wonder how the police can be so sure that it was even a murder, since John Wheeler apparently spent some time in a trash truck after being inside a dumpster in Newark. Don't trash trucks compress the contents of dumpsters after they empty them?
From the way he seemed to be acting on video and from the testimony of the people who last saw him, perhaps John Wheeler either hit his head when he was robbed of his briefcase or he had a stroke. His attorney said that he seemed mentally sharp when he last spoke to him on the phone on December 27, so that probably would rule out Alzheimer's dementia. He was carryng one of his shoes because it was broken and he had no overcoat even though it was very cold. Perhaps he was cold, climbed into a dumpster in his addled state to get warm, and died of exposure or after he was compressed in the trash truck?
Of course, this theory fails to explain why the television at his home in Delaware was blaring for days or why reporters saw yellow crime scene tape on two kitchen chairs or why some of the floorboards there had been pried up and were missing.